Today, 12 October, is a national holiday. It is Spain's National Day, a celebration rooted, oddly enough, not in Spain but in Argentina. In 1913, there was the first Fiesta de la Raza - the festival of the race, the Spanish race. This fiesta grew out of what was already a celebration in Buenos Aires for Columbus. Today is symbolic in different ways - National Day, Columbus's discovery of an island that he thought must have been near China, the day of the Virgen del Pilar (Spain's female patron saint) and the day of the Guardia Civil. Given events in Catalonia, you couldn't conceive of a day that is more symbolic.
The old festival of the race became the Día de la Hispanidad - a global event in honour of Spanishness, with all its faded imperial glory. The 1913 fiesta was fifteen years after the terminal blows to Spanish imperialism that were inflicted by the Americans. The Caribbean and The Philippines would never be the same. One hundred and four years on from that first fiesta, it might be argued that this imperialism is once more faltering - Catalonia (some of it) wants away.
Amidst all the angst, posturing and navel-gazing surrounding Catalonia and its desire to leave the Spanish Empire, there is a subtext of a race nature. The Catalans, and it isn't the other way round, have been characterised by some commentators as racists. One should qualify this by saying that some Catalans have been characterised in this fashion, those who seemingly - so the argument goes - consider themselves superior to the Spanish. Racism and xenophobia have been allowed to consume the secessionist tendency: racism and xenophobia directed at an inferior race, the Spanish.
Where do such notions spring from? To an extent they are manifestations of a moral superiority founded on centuries of victimhood. Yet curiously, the same victimhood does not reveal itself in demands for independence in the likes of Aragon or the Balearics (despite what Més might think). If any region really has a claim, then it is Aragon, which did after all hold the crown of which Catalonia was once a part.
It also comes from perceptions of greater culture, greater sophistication, greater entrepreneurialism. Catalonia was fundamental to Spain's emergence as an economic power. It was not a region lumbered with idleness. It is not an Andalusia, with which there has long been an antagonism and one which, for a good period of the twentieth century, had strong racist connotations.
The Catalans, those who identify squarely with Catalonia as opposed to those who do not, are therefore a race apart: the un-Spanish Spanish. The Fiesta de la Raza is someone else's national day, someone else's race.
Yet really it's all about regional rivalries that extend way back when. History, to be honest, can at times get extraordinarily tiresome. But Catalonia and the Catalans aren't the only ones to perceive themselves as different. What is this Spanishness within Spain that is celebrated? Like other countries, it is a combination of old cultures, such as the Basques (who've been doing a reasonable job at keeping their heads down just lately) and the Galicians. Spain and Spanishness are thus historical accidents, conveniences, contrivances. But the same can be said for most countries.
While most of Spain will wave its flag today and line up against the treacherous Catalans, in the Balearics there is the mini-me of Catalonia. Independence-driven Catalans look upon the Balearics with a patronising and wonky Oriol Junqueras eye. The Balearics are good Catalans, when of course the great majority are no such thing. But the Balearics are cousins (inferior? cousins) for the fomenting. Division with Spain needs an outlet beyond the borders of Catalonia. The Balearics provide an outlet. Or at least a small minority might believe so.
There is of course division. We've witnessed it on the streets. On Saturday there was the unedifying but somewhat bizarre sight of a one-time Partido Popular president of the Balearics defending his stall with Mallorcan sovereignty literature. Cristòfol Soler is now a supporter of independence. The stall was attacked by Joan Font of Sa Fundació Jaume III: "We are Mallorcans, we are not Catalans." Mallorcans but also Spaniards.
Font has caused a bit of embarrassment for the university because he's a teacher there. The university wishes to declare its neutrality, which was why the dean of the philosophy and letters faculty, Miquel Deyá (a one-time director of universities for the PP), took down two independence flags, only to then be branded a fascist. Deyá was part of the education ministry when schools placed Catalan flags on buildings in defiance of José Ramón Bauzá. And now, Ciudadanos, whose leader has been willing Rajoy to adopt Article 155, are denouncing indoctrination of an independence nature in Balearic schools.
Division, but in truth only small. Which flags will fly in Mallorca today?
Showing posts with label Spain National Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spain National Day. Show all posts
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Thursday, October 13, 2016
The Many Days Of 12 October
Spain's National Day, Spain's National Holiday, Spain's Day of Hispanicity, the day of the Guardia Civil, the day of the Virgen del Pilar, the day of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Make your choice. Yesterday was all of them.
They still refer to the "Día de la Hispanidad" - Hispanicity - albeit that a 1987 decree sort of abandoned the notion. As a national day, the Hispanicity concept was one that first surfaced outside Spain: in Argentina to be precise. In 1931, a one-time Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires proposed that there be one. By that time, Argentina had been celebrating Columbus for some forty years. In 1913, they came up with the Fiesta de la Raza - the festival of the race, the Spanish race. That's another option to add to the 12 October list.
Hispanicity, a form of international nationalism, now seems a gloriously anachronistic and archaic concept. At the time that it surfaced, Spain was entering yet another of its periods of turmoil. Perhaps Hispanicity was something to cling to, an attempt to boost a nationalist morale that had been shattered by, among other things, the losses to the Americans at the end of the previous century.
Five years after that ambassador, Ramiro de Maeztu, proposed the name, what happened? Well, I think we all know what happened. Under Franco, allied to the image of the Virgen del Pilar, here was the perfect means to express what "Spanishness" meant - deeply conservative, highly Catholic, militaristic, fascist.
With the exception of the latter, this was a meaning that had characterised Spain for decades previously, though goodness knows there had already been fascistic tendencies in a line from Ferdinand VII to Primo de Rivera; earlier than even Ferdinand it might be said. A further characteristic was turmoil; it was pretty much the normal state of affairs during the nineteenth century, as liberalism vied with conservatism and usually came off worse.
Was this a fair assessment of Spanishness? And what assessment can be made nowadays? The Civil War has defined Spain ever since. Yet here was a country which had more than 120 years previously given the world the notion of liberalism. Here was a country which during the last century spawned three of the greats of the world of art - Dali, Miró, Picasso - heirs to the crown of arguably the greatest of all, Francisco de Goya. It was a country of suppressed sophistication, a factor which perhaps contributed (and still does contribute) to the fascination that Spain has for the foreigner.
On the surface, Spanishness was also its enduring images, such as the bullfight and flamenco, ones that the Franco regime was only too willing to promote. But there was what lay under the surface. Writer after writer sought to dissect and analyse it. Ernest Hemingway, Laurie Lee, George Orwell. Not all the writers have taken the Civil War as a theme, but many have and still do. Victoria Hislop's "The Return" is a more contemporary example.
The war continues to inform and inspire the foreign writer. It's unsurprising, given that fundamentals of that time continue to inspire national (and independence) debate. The fascism and militarism no longer exist. Hispanicity, in the sense of some form of fading global power, has faded further. The images have altered. The bullfight has been replaced by the beach. Tapas and football are Spain's global brands. But the struggles remain between conservatism and liberalism, the monarchy and the republic, the church and the secular authorities.
The tensions within Spanishness are created by anti-Spanishness. Some of it is vehement, just as it has been since the days, three hundred years ago, of Felipe IV and his Catalan repressions. Some of it is less so, but in its current-day guise it can cause a collision between one of the global brands and a key reason for the tensions. Barcelona's Gerard Piqué will retire from international football. Pro-Catalan, pro-independence, he says he feels unwanted by the national team. The national team: Spain, España, Spanishness writ large for the current day.
The National Day was against the background of the political chaos caused by the two elections. In truth, this chaos is a re-emergence of how it always was. The years of transition, the boom years under González and Aznar and the stability of politics might be seen as their own anachronisms; Spain has historically not done stability. And into the chaos have come throwbacks to the 1930s - those divisions between left and right, wholly unreconcilable and with the corruption which defined attempts at mock democracies prior to the war.
But there is one thing which is now very different and which undermines any psychological yearning for Hispanicity. It is Europe. Yes, Spain has done well by Europe, but the country is grateful. Catalonia would also be grateful. A new Spanishness of regional acceptance and forgiveness might just breed a new form of nationhood.
They still refer to the "Día de la Hispanidad" - Hispanicity - albeit that a 1987 decree sort of abandoned the notion. As a national day, the Hispanicity concept was one that first surfaced outside Spain: in Argentina to be precise. In 1931, a one-time Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires proposed that there be one. By that time, Argentina had been celebrating Columbus for some forty years. In 1913, they came up with the Fiesta de la Raza - the festival of the race, the Spanish race. That's another option to add to the 12 October list.
Hispanicity, a form of international nationalism, now seems a gloriously anachronistic and archaic concept. At the time that it surfaced, Spain was entering yet another of its periods of turmoil. Perhaps Hispanicity was something to cling to, an attempt to boost a nationalist morale that had been shattered by, among other things, the losses to the Americans at the end of the previous century.
Five years after that ambassador, Ramiro de Maeztu, proposed the name, what happened? Well, I think we all know what happened. Under Franco, allied to the image of the Virgen del Pilar, here was the perfect means to express what "Spanishness" meant - deeply conservative, highly Catholic, militaristic, fascist.
With the exception of the latter, this was a meaning that had characterised Spain for decades previously, though goodness knows there had already been fascistic tendencies in a line from Ferdinand VII to Primo de Rivera; earlier than even Ferdinand it might be said. A further characteristic was turmoil; it was pretty much the normal state of affairs during the nineteenth century, as liberalism vied with conservatism and usually came off worse.
Was this a fair assessment of Spanishness? And what assessment can be made nowadays? The Civil War has defined Spain ever since. Yet here was a country which had more than 120 years previously given the world the notion of liberalism. Here was a country which during the last century spawned three of the greats of the world of art - Dali, Miró, Picasso - heirs to the crown of arguably the greatest of all, Francisco de Goya. It was a country of suppressed sophistication, a factor which perhaps contributed (and still does contribute) to the fascination that Spain has for the foreigner.
On the surface, Spanishness was also its enduring images, such as the bullfight and flamenco, ones that the Franco regime was only too willing to promote. But there was what lay under the surface. Writer after writer sought to dissect and analyse it. Ernest Hemingway, Laurie Lee, George Orwell. Not all the writers have taken the Civil War as a theme, but many have and still do. Victoria Hislop's "The Return" is a more contemporary example.
The war continues to inform and inspire the foreign writer. It's unsurprising, given that fundamentals of that time continue to inspire national (and independence) debate. The fascism and militarism no longer exist. Hispanicity, in the sense of some form of fading global power, has faded further. The images have altered. The bullfight has been replaced by the beach. Tapas and football are Spain's global brands. But the struggles remain between conservatism and liberalism, the monarchy and the republic, the church and the secular authorities.
The tensions within Spanishness are created by anti-Spanishness. Some of it is vehement, just as it has been since the days, three hundred years ago, of Felipe IV and his Catalan repressions. Some of it is less so, but in its current-day guise it can cause a collision between one of the global brands and a key reason for the tensions. Barcelona's Gerard Piqué will retire from international football. Pro-Catalan, pro-independence, he says he feels unwanted by the national team. The national team: Spain, España, Spanishness writ large for the current day.
The National Day was against the background of the political chaos caused by the two elections. In truth, this chaos is a re-emergence of how it always was. The years of transition, the boom years under González and Aznar and the stability of politics might be seen as their own anachronisms; Spain has historically not done stability. And into the chaos have come throwbacks to the 1930s - those divisions between left and right, wholly unreconcilable and with the corruption which defined attempts at mock democracies prior to the war.
But there is one thing which is now very different and which undermines any psychological yearning for Hispanicity. It is Europe. Yes, Spain has done well by Europe, but the country is grateful. Catalonia would also be grateful. A new Spanishness of regional acceptance and forgiveness might just breed a new form of nationhood.
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