Specters of the Secular: Spiritism in Nineteenth-century Spain

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which spiritists forged a political identity in late nineteenth-century Spain. Although distinguished by their belief in the possibility of communicating with the dead, spiritists also shared characteristics — a concern for Spain’s regeneration, an embrace of rationalism and a demand for Catholic reform — with other dissident groups at the time, and like those groups, found themselves pushed into the political arena when the Restoration-era church refused to tolerate religious difference. Debates over the secularization of cemeteries in particular granted spiritists a degree of public legitimacy and brought them into the circle of freethinkers who embraced republicanism.