Hospitality Requested or Offered and French Women Travellers in Spain, from the Duchess of Abrantes to Jane Catulle-Mendès

Within the broad framework of the accounts of female travellers to Spain, and the thematic line represented by hospitality (or inhospitality), this paper aims to draw attention to a form of hospitality present in some accounts that could be called requested or offered. That is to say, a type of hospitality that is clearly different from spontaneous hospitality, which is not mediated by the social category of the traveller, which is offered disinterestedly, without expecting anything in return beyond gratitude. The two most interesting accounts, from this perspective, are that of the Duchess of Abrantes, in the early nineteenth century, and that of Jane Catulle-Mendès in 1913.