This systematic study of Spanish literary theory and criticism in the first half of the nineteenth century enables us to reach several firm conclusions regarding the character of the Romantic movement in Spain. Romantic literary theory, lent initial impetus by the tenacious endeavours of Böhl von Faber, developed cohesively in the 1820s. This Romantic historicism continued to provide the framework of ideas for Spanish literary criticism during the crucial years 1834–7, when the advent of a new and radical Romantic approach briefly gained the support of writers. Larra promoted the essential features of the historicist vision even while disagreeing with the ideological associations it had acquired. His more stringent sense of determinism contributed to a change in the emphasis of later Romantic criticism, towards a growing social awareness. With the development of the idea of literature as a stimulant to social regeneration, critics widely canvassed its dynamic potential as a positive moral guide, with the power to inculcate desirable attitudes and valuable emotions and with the ability to provide contemporary society with lessons to be learned by the consideration of past events. A progression from firmly established bases then culminates in the work of Fernan Caballero, in a developing cycle begun by her father Johann Nikolaus Böhl. Spanish Romanticism was therefore longerlived than most modern critics have suggested, and more consistent in its embodiment of a specific framework of ideas than they have been prepared to recognise.