The two letters from Miguel de Unamuno to Quintín de Torre in December 1936: Philological examination and the chance fate of the second

Abstract

In the last weeks of 1936, the sculptor from Bilbao Quintín de Torre Berástegui and Miguel de Unamuno exchanged several letters. The former was in Espinosa de los Monteros, a town in the north of Burgos, very close to a war front established. The second was in Salamanca, a city from the beginning leaned towards the rebels, but where there was a relentless repression against those who did not sympathise with “el Movimiento”. Don Miguel's two letters contained the tremendous disappointment of his own expectations when he sided with the military uprising against the Government of the Republic. After a careful examination of the facsimiles kept in the Casa Museo Unamuno in Salamanca and of several printed reproductions of these letters, the possibility of the existence of some manuscripts of them is raised here and, more important, the well-founded hypothesis that the second one did not go out of Don Miguel's desk drawer.