God, religion, and liberal ambivalence in Larra’s journalistic work (1828–1837)

This article examines the religious and theological dimensions of Mariano José de Larra’s journalism, a largely secondary yet far from marginal aspect of his work. Drawing on a corpus of thirty-two articles published between 1828 and 1837, of which sixteen contain analytically significant religious or theological references, the study adopts a qualitative, hermeneutic approach attentive to lexis, tone, rhetorical function, publication context, and cultural tradition. It argues that Larra’s use of religious language exceeds anticlerical satire and functions as an instrument of social, moral, and political intervention. His journalism presents God as final judge, providential mystery, and ultimate consolation, while treating Christianity as a moral and communal resource whose social value persists even amid liberal criticism of ecclesiastical power. The analysis identifies affinities with Lamennais, Tocqueville, Pascal, Burke, Schopenhauer, Unamuno, and Kierkegaard, without reducing Larra to any single doctrinal lineage. It also shows how his Catholic cultural formation informs his treatment of sin, vice, providence, death, and popular religiosity. The article concludes that Larra occupies a sui generis position among nineteenth-century Spanish writers: a liberal but not fully secularist intellectual, sceptical of moral progress without Christianity and irreducibly torn between modern emancipation and nostalgia for a lost spiritual order altogether.