“Our purpose”
One of the biggest flaws that outsiders find in Catalan people is their lack of worldliness, their lack of sociability, their rusticism -often labelled as rudeness- when they could be more justly described as shy. This is the heritage of all those countries in which, for reasons of custom or intellectual level, men and women have little or no social relations with each other.
Thanks to God, it is not to be feared that Catalan women will become easily masculinized. Instead, it seems appropriate to feminize them, elevating their intellect to the level of their recognized moral virtues, so that they may become more than now the true dream companions of the studious and enterprising men, without losing any of their instinctive grace and gentleness, but quite the contrary.
Catalan women, by temperament and perhaps by atavism, are some of the few women who can achieve and keep the right environment of their social duties in modern civilization. In essence, they are a little arrogant, without lacking – for that same reason - a courageous drive. They love, above all, their home and their peace, and we understand that, whatever new path they take, they will carry their holy loves and their beliefs for the great truths.
However, based on this principle, we believe that the time has come to direct the intellect of our women, who already feel and make us feel an urgent need.
We want that, in order to cultivate their spirit, they do not have to drink from distant springs, because the water they drink from comes from lands with speeches and customs that do not always agree with ours. Blasts of feminism come to us from those progressive lands, but we cannot receive them all. A selection that agrees with what is now Catalonia must be made, and this selection must be made gradually, interestingly, caressing the woman, hence, we understand that, like those frin the most cultured nations, Catalan women can and may contribute to the exaltation of their homeland, enlightening and educating themselves to open new fields.
It is clear that men, along with women of cultivated spirit and serious and varied training, always feel less displaced and do not shy away from female company. On the contrary, they seek the soft note that is lacking in their temperament, and the day when men and women will be able to speak to each other freely of other things different of that of unhealthy futility, that day will be undermined by malice, hateful criticism and consequent slander.
Catalan men will then become more refined, losing much of their instinctive toughness, they will unconsciously entrust the world, which lacks so many sympathies now here and abroad, and which must be one of the pillars of the improvement of our race. In the meantime, women will be more eager to learn, to know, to teach, to cooperate in the great, useful and beautiful things of a people who are reborn, and so far, for pleasure. Women will not be - as now - afraid to speak to men, because they will be able and will know how to be interested in everything that is the object of her studies and desires, without men - as now happens so often - being violent when they see themselves obliged to have too many conversations at home... homely or too empty. Up to today, Catalan intellectuals, scientists and artists have lived without doing anything for women, with no interest in them, as if they were nothing more than a maternal machine or a luxurious object; something indispensable, but without great transcendence. In a word, something a little more necessary than tobacco; and even, women, when they do not see among the other women, as ignorant, as futile as them, a life full of chores or of canticles and jumps of a jailed canary, she is turned into a very harmful element, an element of unemployment, of uselessness, a presumptuous and effeminate element and who will soon be transformed into an adventure seeker.
Feminal, then, comes to woman as a friend who, in their language, will talk to them about everything that may be useful to them, about everything that may please and interest them in the current artistic, industrial and social moment.
In twenty decorated pages, we will try to include useful and pleasant graphic information, and in addition to an illustrated story and a musical section, it will give 16 pages of a pamphlet, starting with the collection of the unpublished Poesies catalanes by Mrs. Massanès.
Finally, we can only say that, starting Feminal with the conviction that we come to fill one of the most obvious needs of our renaissance, we hope that our work will be understood by men and women, and if it is not received with the enthusiasm that guides us who do it, we hope that at least is received with the good desire to encourage the idea and purpose of Feminal."
Editorial from the first issue of the magazine Feminal (Barcelona), no. 1, 28 April 1907.
Facsimile edition of the complete collection in the Library of Catalunya and in the Library of Communication and General Newspaper Library of the Autonomous University of Barcelona; digital edition in the Virtual Library Joan Lluís Vives. The original text can be found here: (17-02-2022), <https://www.escriptors.cat/autors/karrc/editorial-de-karr-al-primer-numero-de-femina>
