Menéndez Pelayo, hoy

On very few occasions has the presence of a writer in bookstores depended as much on political vicissitudes as it has in the case of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo. Protagonist of bitter ideological and political disputes in his youth, more temperate and less ardent in his maturity, his name has served as a banner for the Spanish reactionary right, and, as an almost inevitable opposite, he has been uncritically reviled by most of the left, which has insistently and repeatedly linked Menéndez Pelayo with the Franco state