Nature, culture and symbol: the image of the mountain of Peñalara in the modern spanish view of the landscape
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Abstract
The mountain has occupied a very outstanding place in the modern visions (geographic and cultural) of the landscape. It has acquired frequently a high symbolic value, related to its own nature and the cultural meaning that has been attributed to him. It is what it has happened to some Spanish mountains throughout 19th and 20th centuries, as they exemplarily demonstrate to the images of the Mountain range of Guadarrama offered by diverse intellectual circles of liberal and reformist ideology. This paper is dedicated to consider the image of the mountain of Peñalara, the most elevated of the Mountain range of Guadarrama, trying to delimit its cultural and symbolic dimensions. That image was satisfied during the period between 1875 and 1936, and incorporated the keys of the modern vision of the mountain landscape, initially promoted by the romanticism and prolonged and updated throughout the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. All it helped to understand the mountain of Peñalara not only like one finished expression of the values of the nature, but also like a place singularly equipped with cultural qualities, between which the one was counted to constitute a true symbol of own history and the national identity associated her.