‘Europe is elsewhere,’ notes Luisa Passerini (1999: 10–11), in relation to England's attitude to the continent to which it belongs. The model she proposes of Europe is imaginative: it consists in a civilized culture based upon the assumptions and practices of courtly love. In her persuasive and vigorous study of England's attitude to Europe in the interwar years, she details the varied aspects of this style of civilization. Subsequent writings on the topic have confirmed Passerini's hypothesis, but, in the case of Spain, have also commented on difference (Sinclair 2010 forthcoming; Labanyi 2010 forthcoming). For Spain, Europe is a place not belonged to, and yet comes to be a buzz-word for ‘foreign’, ‘modern’, ‘development’, ‘adventure’ (or indeed, as experienced also in the English context, as ‘liaison’, ‘flirtation with the exotic and sophisticated’).

In the official mind above all, ‘Europe’ for Spain of the early twentieth century is of unclear meaning. The efforts of the JAE, from its inception in 1907, were directed towards making Europe (or at least specific sections of it) more accessible to educated Spaniards.