1/1, January 1892-February 1897.
6 pesetas in Spain, 10 pesetas abroad; 16 pp.
The journal did not assign volume numbers and preferred to announce grandly that the issues were published in the 25th, 26th, etc. year of the Criterio Espiritista's beginning in 1867. Anastasio Garcia Lopez (1823-1897), a homeopathic doctor and president of the "Asociacion Espiritista Espanola," was the driving force behind the creation of the the "La Fraternidad Universal" society in Madrid in December 1891 and of this journal. The society had as its unenviable purpose to become the overarching organizer of all spiritualist societies in Spain, to which local societies were to send delegates, and organized the Congreso Espiritista Iberoamericano e Internacional in Madrid in October 1892, for which it was the offical organ, to demonstrate the feasibility of the notion. Garcia Lopez was also director of the Criterio Espiritista, the first Spanish spiritualist journal, that had undergone vast changes in name and content in the 25 years of its existence:
El Criterio Espiritista (1868-1877)-->El Espiritista (Madrid and Saragossa, 1878-1879)-->El Criterio Espiritista: Revista Mensual de Estudios Psicologicos y de Magnetismo (1880)
This journal, under the same name as the society, appeared in January 1892, announcing itself as "Segunda epoca de El Criterio Espiritista." It can not have ever been very successful. The last number of 1894 complained of the financial difficulaties caused by the non-payment of subscribers and said that going forward delinquent subscribers would not receive the journal. The caution may have had an effect since the journal is said to have lasted until February 1897, just before the death of Garcia Lopez, but no issues survive after 1894 and circulation must have been slight. The journal carried contributions by Camille Flamarrion ("Voyage to the Planet Venus," etc.) and other standard spiritist authors, extensive reviews of the doings of societies around Spain, minutes of the Executive Council of the society, newspaper excerpts on the phenomena of spirits, and communications from spirits. The famous medium Tomás Sánchez Escribano wrote regularly for the journal. BNE.
