"Menéndez Pelayo" and Ortega's Rhetoric against the Restoration

Abstract

This paper studies the role of the figure and the work of Menéndez Pelayo in the writings of Ortega y Gasset, analyzing the places where appear explicit and implicit references to that. The paper concludes that “Menéndez Pelayo” is a topos of depriving authority that is part of the rhetoric of the young Ortega against the Restoration, and of the old Ortega against the national catholic culture of the isolated Franco’s Regime.