, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, a pioneer of Fascism in Spain and founder and editor of La Gaceta Literaria, 1 Spain's leading vanguard literary and cultural journal, embarked on what the Gaceta referred to as a ''largo y singular viaje de trascendencia nacional y literaria'' [a long and singular voyage of national and literary transcendence] (Piqueras Gaceta Literaria 1/423). 2 At the insistence of nationally acclaimed scholars of Sephardic history and culture, the Spanish Ministry of State sponsored Giménez Caballero on his trip, designed to assess the situation of the Sephardic communities of Europe and Asia Minor, the possibilities for Spanish commercial and cultural expansion in the region, and the success of Spain's prior philosephardic campaigns. Taking this voyage as a point of departure, this article examines Ernesto Giménez Caballero's interest in the Sephardim through a close study of the Gaceta Literaria, government reports documenting his voyages to the Sephardic world, and documentary film. Until recently, Giménez Caballero's importance in Spanish intellectual history has been trivialized by his caricaturization as a sensationalist ideologue. As Enrique Selva has recently argued, perhaps more than any other Spanish intellectual of his time, Giménez Caballero fully immersed himself in the divergent intellectual tides of the interwar period, by placing himself ''en el centro del huracán'' [in the eye of the hurricane] (Selva Giménez Caballero 15). Moreover, it was precisely this posturing*which some scholars have dismissed as extravagant and histrionic* that allowed Giménez Caballero to play a seminal role in articulating and assimilating Fascist doctrine in the Spanish context, even to the point of becoming, in Selva's words, ''la mayor incarnación de la vía a través de la cual se formula la ideología fascista y se comienza a difundir en nuestro país'' [the greatest incarnation of the particular path through which Fascist ideology was formulated and began to be disseminated in Spain] (15Á6). As Douglas Foard argues, Giménez Caballero's trajectory was not anomalous or eccentric, but rather representative of the volatile political and intellectual climate throughout Western Europe in the interwar period. Most recently, other works that discuss Giménez Caballero have focused on his interest in the Sephardim. Certain authors have concluded that his ''philosephardism'' must be understood as ''instrumentalist'' and subordinate to his nationalistic and imperialistic designs and characterize him as ''un fascista filosefardí que deviene antisemita'' [a Fascist philosephardist who turned antisemitic] (Rohr 30; Á lvarez Chillida 273). Others have discussed the importance of the imagery of ''Sepharad'' in the elaboration of Hispanidad and in the vanguard origins of Spanish Fascism (Rehrmann 51Á74; Shammah Gesser ''La imagen'' 67Á88). Shammah Gesser
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