Spain: the trials and triumphs of a modern European country
By Michael Reid
Yale University Press, 2023
Michael Reid’s book begins with this remark from 19th Richard Ford, English travel writer of the last century: “Nothing pains the Spaniards more than to see volume after volume written about themselves and their country by foreigners…” This is where Reid leaves off, but Ford keep on going: “…who have only cast a cursory glance at one half of the subject, and at that of which they are most ashamed, and which they consider the least worthy of notice.”
Spain’s international image has not benefited from much subtlety throughout history. Stanley Payne roughly summarizes the typical labels placed on Spain by foreigners: Cruel, bloodthirsty, sadistic and destructive in the 16th century.th century and the first half of the 17thth century; militarily weak, ignorant, lazy and unproductive in the second half of the 17th century and the 18th century; culturally picturesque and romantic but of little political relevance in the 19th century; and a combination of all of the above in the 20th century (Spain: a unique story2011, p.5).
Besides the sun, the beach and cold beers on the terrace, prejudices about the arrogance and propensity of Spaniards to fight with clubs The Goya style is still present in international media. As a fun exercise, I challenge the reader to find a New York Times article on Spain that does not make a connection between current events and the civil war (1936-39) and the Franco dictatorship (1939- 75). Fortunately, international coverage of Spain has become more sophisticated in recent years, and some very good books are being written by masterful vivisectionists of Spanish politics. Reid’s book is one of them. Reid observes Spain from the unique perspective of the foreigner who inhabits it. He lives in Madrid and knows the country perfectly. Between 2016 and 2021, he was Spain correspondent for The Economist.
The book covers a wide range of key topics to make sense of Spanish politics of the last four decades: the constitutional arrangement of the 1970s, tensions between center and periphery mainly involving the Basque Country and Catalonia, the ups and downs the lows of the monarchy, historical memory on the Franco regime, gender equality, the terror of ETA, the ordeal of the financial crisis of 2008 and the austerity that followed, the indignant movement of the last decade and the rise of the far right over the last decade. Reid describes the period between 1975 and 2000 as a “golden age” in Spanish history. In contrast, over the past two decades, “shadows have virtually obscured the sun” (p. 12).
In my opinion, Reid romanticizes the transition of the 1970s and the decades that followed — a trend that, frankly, is not uncommon among baby boomers whose forties coincided with that era. This is not only the period in which ETA committed most of its crimes, but also the period in which the Spanish state sponsored terrorism against suspected ETA members on both sides of the French-French border. Spanish (1983-87). It is also a time of missed opportunities to develop a strong welfare state and well-resourced social housing stock, a subject to which I devote half a chapter in my own book. book. Moreover, the last quarter of the 20th The century saw widespread corruption and political incompetence in central government and many regions, the central subject of Paul Preston’s work. A people betrayed (2020). Although the Spanish economy has boomed relatively speaking, it has done so on the basis of two pillars: tourism and real estate development, both of which would prove economically and environmentally unsustainable.
The Spanish overcame enormous difficulties in the 1970s. The transition to democracy may not have been fair or just, but it worked. The 1978 Constitution and the transition to democracy were, with all their limitations, two of the best things to happen to Spain in the 20th century.th century. But we are in the 21st century now. The obstacles to democracy in the 1970s were political and human in origin. Those who erected the barriers, the men who led the dictatorship and later justified it, have never been held accountable. Even if it may have been functional, the Spanish transition is not exemplary and people would do well to avoid complacency.
Reid criticizes Catalan and Basque nationalism and independence sentiment. It applies Hobsbawm’s (1983) notion of “invention of tradition» in Catalonia (2023, p.61). Spain, however, seems to be taken for granted, as if it were somehow an immutable reality. Actually, all nations are invented, or socially constructed if you prefer. They are “imagined communities» (Anderson, 1983), and this includes Spain, as well as the idea of the Basque Country and Catalonia as nations. As Hobsbawm himself observed in Nations and nationalism since 1780, “nationalism comes before nations; nations do not create states and nationalisms, but the reverse” (1992, p. 10).
Last April, the two Basque nationalist parties (PNV-EAJ and EH Bildu) obtained their best result in history – a total of two thirds of the votes cast – even though self-determination and independence were barely mentioned in the speech. campaign. The following month, both the Spanish center-left (PSC-PSOE) and the right and far right (PP and Vox) achieved their best results in years at the expense of the nationalist parties (Junts, ERC and CUP), which , if taken together, suffered a heavy defeat in elections defined by a weak turn out.
The question of the nation is a recurring theme in Spanish politics. It comes and goes like the Guadiana River in Andalusia (an expression, I admit, that only Spaniards or people who know the country very well will understand). Spanish politics since around 2010 has recalled that the constitutional planning of territories in 1978 constituted a ceiling for some – in the center – but a floor for others – in particular, but not exclusively, in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This is an eminently political issue that touches on national identities as well as less symbolic but more practical issues related to fiscal policy, resource distribution and public investment. It is a political question which will not be resolved, in the sense that it will not end, because it is part of what makes Spain different. It is a question that can only be dealt with – or “taken with you,”conllevanza” as Ortega Put the.
Disagreement and uncertainty over the number of nations in Spain – one, three, more? – need not be a weakness. Disagreement can actually be transformed into a source of strength, transforming uncertainty into diversity, something to be proud of. In a democratic society, disagreements are not the problem; the problem lies in how companies and their leaders treat them.
Reid writes that “Spain served as a mirror, often distorted, onto which observers projected their own visions and fantasies” (2023, p. 3). This is indeed the essence of Esperpentoa literary style that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. In Bohemian lights, a play from the 1920s, Ramón del Valle-Inclán makes Max Estrella reflect in his last breaths: “The tragic sense of Spanish life can only be rendered through a systematically distorted aesthetic… Spain is a grotesque distortion of European civilization… The most beautiful images on a concave mirror are absurd. Let us love the reflection in front of a concave mirror, because when you hold a concave mirror to idols, the distorted image you receive is their true nature.
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