Content area
Full Text
María Moliner (1900-1981) belonged to the generation of the first women university graduates in Spain who pursued a profession. Her work involved setting up rural libraries during the Second Republic in order to disseminate culture and literacy. In the aftermath of the Civil War the Moliner family suffered reprisals on the part of Franco's regime. María dropped eighteen places on the promotion scale in the Faculty Corps of Archivists and Librarians. During this new stage of her life, Moliner found time for a fervent intellectual interest: her passion for words. Around 1950 she began to prepare the comprehensive Diccionario de uso del español (Dictionary of Spanish Usage).
The Spanish parliament only recently passed the Law on Historical Memory, constituting a further step forward in the recognition of Spain's Second Republic (1931-36), which was challenged by a military uprising that led to a cruel, fratricidal conflict. The victorious rebel generals imposed a dictatorship that remained in power until democracy was reinstated in 1976.1
The ideals of democracy and equal opportunities were buried beneath a fascist ideology that ensured Spain was subject to oppression and ostracism. Only now, following years of major investment projects and public policies geared toward change, can we consider this dark period to have been almost overcome. Nonetheless, the lost years will never be recovered, nor will those people who sacrificed their lives in the war, spent years in exile, or were persecuted for their ideas. Maria Moliner is among this last group. This article describes and pays tribute to the part she played in forging today's Spain, specifically within the sphere of public libraries. It sheds light abroad on the mission of a woman who dedicated herself to the cause of disseminating culture in the belief that this would mitigate the injustice, irrationality, and misery of a Spain that now, thanks to the implementation of democratic ideals, has been consigned to the past.
Moliner alone undertook the enormous task of editing the famous dictionary that bears her name. It is an extremely important book, but not her only one. There is another, lesser-known, but not any less important side to her life undertaken over the course of ten years, from 1929 to 1939. These years coincide almost entirely with the period...