This project focuses on a literary network active in Madrid in the decades following the Spanish
War. Known as Ágora (1955-1973), the group ran a publishing house, a literary journal and a
poetry prize and hosted a weekly soirée that attracted some of the most notable dissident writers
and intellectuals in post-war Spain. Remarkably, the group was run by a woman, Concha Lagos, in
a period when women were generally excluded from public life and relegated to domestic roles.
After the Civil War, Franco implemented a policy of autarchy and isolationism. Scholars have often
regarded the culture of this period as cut off from both Europe and the rest of the Spanishspeaking
world. This project attempts to revise this inward-looking vision of post-war literature by
showing how the Ágora circle managed to create a network of writers that extended not only
throughout Spain but also beyond its borders, including Latin American, American, European and
exiled Spanish authors. The goal of the project is to recuperate the exchanges among these writers
and to trace the role of Ágora in creating a space for dissident literature and thought in post-war
Spain. More specifically, it will examine how the circle promoted writers excluded from official
literary circles (women, dissidents, etc.) and created contacts with foreign writers who helped to
disseminate Ágora authors abroad and whose works were in turn translated and published by
Ágora in Spain.