Introduction Challenges of the Spanish and Hispanic American worlds in Valery Larbaud’s work and thought

The introduction to this collective volume by Gil Charbonnier and María Isabel Corbí Sáez aims to frame the question of the issues at stake in the Spanish and Hispanic-American worlds in Valery Larbaud’s life and work. His stay in Alicante, living at locals’ homes from 1916 to 1920, meant the recovery of his youthful passion for the Hispanic language and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic and set him on very fruitful paths from all points of view. Effectively this axis of Larbaldian studies counts on various academic researches, from the founders of Anne Poÿlo and Paulette Patout on, nevertheless there still remain many aspects to cover on all the facets which defined the Alicantine guest of honor, who received an unavoidable international recognition as creator and passeur in the aftermath of the Great War. It’s a fact that the imprints of the Spanish and Hispanic-American worlds on his work as a novelist, poet, critic and translator offer new spaces to explore, Larbaud's reflections on intercultural exchanges between Europe and the South American continent, as well as on the role to play by Spain in the European context, do invite analysis of his contribution at that time to the idea of Europe as a cultural and political project.