Private and Intellectual Conflicts and the Mysteries of the Empresas Políticas in the Unpublished Letters of Juan Antonio de Vera, Count of La Roca, to Diego Saavedra Fajardo (1634-1640)

Abstract

The unpublished correspondence between two renowned Golden Age writers and diplomats reinforces the view that intense political and intellectual networks and circles reigned in the diplomatic corps and the cultural milieu in the seventeenth century. Juan Antonio de Vera, Count of La Roca, and Diego Saavedra Fajardo, a diplomat from Murcia, needed each other as information hubs, intellectual control points and transmitters of cultural goods. They engaged in professional debates about the foreign policy of Madrid. La Roca repeatedly treated the diplomat with disdain and condescending superiority. A note on the Empresas Políticas casts a shadow on its first edition and highlights a puzzle.