6 - Conclusion

Summary

Juan de Grimaldi's adult life seems to divide into two discrete segments. One segment covers the time he spent in Spain as theatrical impresario and stage director, years which are marked by his activity preceding and during the advent of Romanticism. The other covers the time he spent in Paris as a businessman, newspaperman, and social figure. But the two segments intersect not in any point in time but rather in a posture – an attitude – for Grimaldi's divergent talents nearly always shared one thing in common: his love for Spain. His love for Spain manifests itself in a love for complex negotiations, surprising spectacles, diplomatic mysteries, behind-the-scenes plots, and circuitous intrigues. Grimaldi's attention to Spain focused upon few of the characteristics identified by other French observers. He cared little for the colorful costumbrista Spain described by numerous French travelers to the peninsula and wasted no time searching for the flashing eyes and tambourine cadences which attracted so many northern Europeans to this stubbornly independent country. Not only did he observe Spain; he absorbed it. He imbibed its language, its literature, its politics, its social climate. Although his stay in the Iberian peninsula was of brief duration (1823-36) when compared with the length of his life, he became, in many ways, more Spanish than French (“a good Spaniard at heart”).