Spanish cultural transfers to Costa Rica (19th and 20th centuries).

Abstract

Inserted in the powerful flow of cultural transfers maintained in contemporary times between Europe and Latin America, people, objects, knowledge and methods of thought and intellectual work traveled from Spain to Costa Rica. Although most of their contributions responded to state demands, some resulted from requests made by Costa Rican civil society actors. Depending on the needs of the receiving party, the strategies implemented by it combined in different proportions the appropriation, reuse or rejection of what Spain issued. Prioritizing the context of reception and the role of cultural mediators, the article analyzes the use that the nineteenth-century project of the Costa Rican nation made of the cultural transfers received from Spain, the contribution of Spanish Krausism to liberal-democratic tendencies in that republic. and the collaboration of Spanish professors in the middle of the 20th century in the reform of the Costa Rican university system.