Entrepreneurship, knowledge and employment

Pessimism and Entrepreneurship: A regenerationist discourse in the memory of the people?

Pérez Calle Begoña, University of Zaragoza
Esteban Martínez Miguel Angel, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Ciencias de la Documentación e Historia de la Ciencia
Lope Salvador Víctor, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Lingüística General e Hispánica

Regenerationism was a well known moment in the history of Spain and dealt with by History, Historiography, Economic Thought and other disciplines. From the end of the 19th century, the arguments of the regenerationist authors reached the Spanish discourse, politically, economically and socially, impregnating arguments and themes of a pessimistic halo that questioned the vices of Spanish life, condemning its corrupt elements, regretting the situation in which the country was, accompanying it with diagnoses exposed as catastrophes. In one way or another, they presided over the foundations of many economic initiatives in the country, university education, press articles and other media. But on the other hand, these arguments were often accompanied by a dose of hope for a better future, which was to involve the people and the government, with a parallel fomentistic discourse always loaded with good intentions. This discourse offered a wide variety of solutions for the problems described, sometimes difficult to carry out, when not impossible, but in others operational and chaired by political pragmatism. The Regeneration implicitly involved the condition of entrepreneurship, an undertaking that had to begin with an action to cleanse the Caciquismo and on the other prophylaxis against the evils that threaten the country. The Spanish people had to be the protagonist and participant in the possible advances that could not fall back into the hands of the oligarchs owners of a cartelized country. It was the condemnation of the corruption of the moment. During the last years we attended speeches where, more than a century later, we heard again the condemnation of corruption associated with the evils of the homeland and solutions that incorporate the entrepreneurship of people as an active element for a new regeneration. This paper tries to check whether this pessimistic discourse accompanied by the invitation to undertake was, in one way or another, in the memory of the people

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Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Regenerationism, Caciquismo, Corruption

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