Spanish Modernist literature is the literature of Spain written during the Modernism (beginning of the 20th century) as the arts evolved and opposed the previous Realism. Parnasianism and Symbolism The influence of these two movements, which were developed in France from the middle of the 19th century, was very important to the appearance of Modernism in Spain. Parnasianism, named after its first appearance in the magazine "Le Parnasse Contemporain" (1866–1876), is a literary style that postulates art for art's sake, far from the important and sentimental ambitions that Romanticism defended. Those in favor tried to create "beautiful objects", approaching exotic subjects and ornamenting them with a musical language, but which are cold. The father of this school was Leconte de Lisle. Symbolism, however, has a transcendental ambition. The main figure of the movement is Charles Baudelaire. For the author of The flowers of evil, all the universe, spiritual, and terrestrial, forms a harmonious set, united to each other by invisible correspondences, and the personality of the poet is the one in charge of revealing them. This way, for example, a sun hiding could be seen by the writer as a decay symbol, while a sunrise would symbolize the Renaissance. This assumption suggests comparisons to the poet, but fundamentally metaphors. Literary Modernism in Spain: context In Literature, the precursor of Modernism in Spain was Realism. The disaster of the 98 The Spanish–American War, known in Spain as the Disaster of the 98 or War of Cuba, arose between Spain and the United States in 1898, during the regency of María Cristina, widow of the king Alfonso XII. For Spain it meant the loss of the overseas colonies and the end of the formerly powerful Spanish empire. The Regenerationism The intellectual movement that thinks objectively and scientifically about the causes of the decadence of Spain as a nation between the 19th and the 20th century is called Regenerationism. It expresses a pessimist judgement about Spain. The regenerationist intellectuals divulgated their studies in journals with a big diffusion, so the movement expanded. The Free Institution of Education Among the organisms of great importance at this time, it is possible to emphasize the Free Institution of Education, founded in Madrid in 1876 by the university professor and thinker Francisco Giner de los Ríos. With philosophical ideas of German origin, he undertook a hard work of cultural modernization of Spain, in education and investigation. His