Yet it was not all decline. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Spain experienced what some have called its cultural 'Silver Age.' This period was marked by an explosion of creativity in every field: literature, art, music, and cinema. Figures such as Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and Luis Buñuel took Spanish culture to an international level.
Surrealism, Cubism, and other artistic avant-gardes found fertile ground in Spain. This was a moment when Spanish artists and writers broke with tradition and began experimenting with new forms of expression. In literature, the Generation of '27 marked a turning point, and in cinema Buñuel pioneered auteur filmmaking that challenged established norms.
But this cultural renaissance was abruptly interrupted by the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The war not only destroyed the country's physical infrastructure but decimated its cultural infrastructure too. Many of the great artists and intellectuals of the time were murdered, exiled, or censored under the Franco dictatorship that followed. The Silver Age became a dark age for Spanish culture, and many advances achieved in those years were buried beneath the regime's repression.