Then came the colossal shock of the American war and a sudden transvaluation of all the old values. Anti-clericalism got on its legs and Socialism got on its legs, and out of the two grew that great movement for the liberation of the common people, that determined and bitter struggle for a fair share in the fruits of human progress, which came to its melodramatic climax in the execution of Francisco Ferrer. Spain now began to go ahead very rapidly, if not in actual achievement, then at least in the examination and exchange of ideas, good and bad. Parties formed, split, blew up, revived and combined, each with its sure cure for all the sorrows of the land. Resignationism gave way to a harsh and searching questioning, and questioning to denunciation and demand for reform. The monarchy swayed this way and that, seeking to avoid both the peril of too much yielding and the worse peril of not yielding enough. The Church, on the defensive once more, prepared quickly for stormy weather and sent hurried calls to Rome for help. Nor was all this uproar on the political and practical side. Spanish letters, for years sunk into formalism, revived with the national spirit, and the new books in prose and verse began to deal vigorously with the here and now. Novelists, poets and essayists appeared who had never been heard of before--young men full of exciting ideas borrowed from foreign lands and even more exciting ideas of their own fashioning. The national literature, but lately so academic and remote from existence, was now furiously lively, challenging and provocative. The people found in it, not the old placid escape from life, but a new stimulation to arduous and ardent living. And out of the ruck of authors, eager, exigent, and the tremendous clash of nations, new and old, there finally emerged a prose based not upon rhetorical reminiscences, but responsive minutely to the necessities of the national life. The oratorical platitudes of Castelar and Cánovas del Castillo gave way to the discreet analyses of Azorín (José Martínez Ruiz) and José Ortega y Gasset, to the sober sentences of the Rector of the University of Salamanca, Miguel de Unamuno, writing with a restraint which is anything but traditionally Castilian, and to the journalistic impressionism of Ramiro de Maeztu, supple and cosmopolitan from long residence abroad. The poets now jettisoned the rotundities of the romantic and emotional schools of Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda, and substituted instead the precise, pictorial line of Rubén Darío, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and the brothers Machado, while the socialistic and republican propaganda which had invaded the theatre with Pérez Galdós, Joaquín Dicenta, and Angel Guimerá, bore fruit in the psychological drama of Benavente, the social comedies of Linares Rivas, and the atmospheric canvases which the Quinteros have painted of Andalusia.