Irene Mendoza Martín (University Complutense of Madrid) PhD Student, « Celebrity, glory and fame: public figures in Spain (1875-1936) » (supervisor : Dr. Carolina Rodríguez-López) “How to reach the glory. Spanish actresses and celebrity at the beginning of the 20th century” Thanks to my presence in the Métis Summer School called “Mass Culture : new approaches, new issues (19th and 20th centuries)”, I had the chance to share part of my work with other colleagues. In my thesis project I am researching the promotion and celebrity of different Spanish actresses in the last years of the 19 th century till the beginning of the sound cinema in Spain (1932), date so close to the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Spain, the historiography about artists is not so developed. In fact, most of the works that we can find are based on hagiographies, for this reason, one the objectives of the project is to form some biographies of these actresses. Some of the studies cases chosen are: María Fernanda Ladrón de Guevara, Carmen Viance, María Guerrero, Imperio Argentina, Catalina Bárcena… Due to this chronology and the topic of research (SALAÜN, 2011), it was so closed to the mass culture theme and its development in the dates that I work. The paper presented in the summer school was only based in the study of the press of the époque and the reception of several actresses. This was a great election because most of my colleagues’ research also involved this mass media. Due to this fact, a big dialogue started between us. It all started with Jean-Yves Mollier’s conference in which one of the transversal topics was the reception and the relevance of the numbers, not so common in