The activity of trafficking is inevitably and rightly associated with business (and with busyness). It is about the to and fro of exchanges, about barters, bargains, happenstance, opportunism. These characteristics constitute not only the activity of commerce, but are the vital part of cultural exchange. This book sets out to look at cultural trafficking in Spain, and in particular to look for what is dynamic, lively and imaginative in it. Spain in the early decades of the twentieth century engaged in dynamic and extremely complex types of cultural exchange with elsewhere. Its great (and obvious) trading ‘partner’ is Europe, yet Europe is not a single entity. In concentrating, as I shall, on Europe, I am conscious that there are at least two major other significant trading areas for Spain: Latin America and the United States. Both of them will figure from time to time in these pages, but both merit their own separate treatment.

In addition to this, regretfully, it has not been possible to provide an extensive consideration of the part played by Catalonia. A great deal of the emphasis of the first sections of the book is upon urban activity, and with a prime emphasis on Madrid. The reason for this has been partly strategic, and partly determined by beliefs about the effective centrality of Madrid in the trafficking of culture. Martínez Rus (2003: 209, 222) refers to some 276 publishers existing in Spain in 1935, 120 of whom were based in Madrid and 98 in Barcelona, a feature of the cultural profile that bears out the importance of Madrid, but also signals the significance of Barcelona.