El debat entre aliadòfils i germanòfils a la premsa local del Vendrell (1914-1918): un réflex a través del setmanari penedesenc 'El Baix Penadès' (1)

Abstract

The official neutrality of Spanish State did not avoid that the impact of the First World War (1914-1918) entered in our society. Very soon, the Spanish and Catalan public opinion divided between aliadophiles, in favour of democratic powers, and germanophiles, these favourable to a victory of Central Empires. In Catalonia, catalanist left-winged political catalanist thought greeted the European war how an opportunity that would propel, with the wished victory of France and England, a democratic renewal of the State and attained at last the satisfaction of Catalan wishes of freedom, concretised in a political autonomy. In this article it is pretended to follow and recover in detail the positions defended in the articles that did reference to the Great War in the weekly Penedes newspaper El Baix Penadès, a publication of local and regional character very next to the political party UFNR. This follow-up will allow visualising with which readings of war and of the blocs in fight could connect the readers from El Vendrell as well as the implication of local press in questions that went further of the Penedès reality.