La librería "Relieve" en el panorama cultural vallisoletano(1951-1960)

Résumé

The role of bookshops as spaces of cultural and social life is achieving more and more importance in the area of cultural history. This thesis presents the analysis of the activities carried out by the bookshop Relieve, established in Valladolid in 1951, both from a commercial perspective as well as from a bibliographic production and cultural activity point of view. In addition, it is intended to contribute to the recreation of the cultural environment of Valladolid during de 1950s. The study is not restricted to just local interest, but intends to contribute to learning more about cultural life in the Spanish provinces during these years. To this effect, this thesis proposes the study of the history of Relieve and its cultural impact on the city of Valladolid during the first Francoism, as well as to emphasize the intellectual profile of the bookseller, Domingo Rodríguez Martín, as a man committed to Republican culture, working within the narrow confines of the dictatorship and generating around him a nucleus of dissident culture in parallel to the official line. An analysis is made of the role of the bookseller ─centred around the bookshop/bookseller─ carrying out the typical activities of an antiquarian bookshop and more specific bibliographical activities, his relationship with other bibliography booksellers of the period, as well as with the world of books and editing. The study goes deeper into the profession of the bookseller, emphasizing the distinction between the real bookseller and the dealer who just trades in books. Special attention has been paid to the documental study, after an exhaustive analysis in which the reliability and authenticity of both oral and written sources have been evaluated. The use of different perspectives of analysis gives this thesis an interdisciplinarity which enriches to a great extent the final result. In these pages, information science is applied to the treatment of documental analysis, bibliographic studies and cultural history, as well as the discipline of history which underpins the foregoing...