A novel, a collection, a house, a Museum: Four steps on Enrique Larreta´s Spanish fantasy in Buenos Aires.

Enrique Larreta (1875-1961) was an Argentine writer, diplomat, and millionaire. During his travels he visited Spain and, as many contemporary travelers, he felt attracted to its history and contrasts. After that, Larreta wrote a novel, Don Ramiro´s Glory, inspired by the Spanish sixteenth century. The book was very well received by many European writers and critics and, because of that, the Argentinean government decided to send Larreta to France as ambassador. He lived in Paris from 1910 to 1916, and while there, spent part of his huge fortune constructing a fantastic Spanish art collection, focused on his novel’s epoch. After he returned to Argentina, he transformed a traditional “criollo” house into a kind of Spanish Palace in order to recreate the ideal architectural framework for his art collection. He lived there until the end of his life, and, after that, the government bought the house in order to create our Spanish Art Museum. However, as Croce noted, “all history is contemporary history,” and Larreta's tells us much more about his epoch than about the sixteenth-century Spain. It touches on topics ranging from cattle fortunes and politics, through the “Hispanic” reaction against the early twentieth-century global immigration, to the exotic-orientalist visions of Spain.