Health, disease, and national decline

It is often overlooked that the revelatory observation that would define Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s avant-gardism first appeared in his earliest writing in the newspaper La Región Extremeña between 1905 and 1907. In these under-examined works, his first-hand reporting on the poverty in Madrid and his engagement with narratives of national and bodily health and disease, particularly those of Krausist orientation, would be decisive in steering him towards the issues of autonomy and self-expression that would inform his work for years to come.