The two Spains
The two Spains (Spanish: las dos Españas) is a phrase from a short 1912 poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, used to describe the fundamental political cleavages that have divided Spanish nationalist thought since the Napoleonic Wars.
History
[edit]The concept of a bitterly divided Spain in fact predates Machado's poem.[1] Subjects to the Spanish crown in the 19th century divided primarily on three issues:[2]
- the "social question", a class struggle engendered by burgeoning industrialization and urbanization;
- church and state separation vs. integralism; and
- whether the Spanish lands should develop a centralized "Spanish" identity inspired by Castilian mores, or develop more local regional identities (e.g. Catalan, Basque, etc.).
The disagreements resulted in the Carlist Wars, a series of civil wars that began 1833 and concluded with the Francoist regime a century later. In 1836, during the First Carlist War, journalist Mariano José de Larra wrote "Aquí yace media España, murió de la otra media" [here lies half of Spain, dead of the other half] shortly before his suicide.[3]
As a historical model for the long 19th century, Machado/de Larra's two Spains is "far too simplistic". It retrojects 20th-century political poles, "one clerical, absolutist and reactionary, and the other secular, constitutional and progressive", into a time period when these political axes did not always align. It thus intermixing the centralizing enlightened absolutism of 18th century Bourbon monarchs with a decentralizing "untrammeled enjoyment" of traditional aristocratic and clerical privileges. Nor were the populacho — the mass of the common people "pursuing a dimly perceived agenda of their own" — particularly loyal to any side of the debates in the long term.[4]
Shortly before WWI, Machado wrote his famous poem.[citation needed] it is short and untitled, number LIII of his Proverbios y Cantares [Proverbs and Songs].[5] As the Generation of '98 sought to rejuvenate their nation, they initially believed that the debate circled around whether and how much Spain ought to Europeanize.[6] However, the course of the 20th century, and especially social response to the Spanish Civil War, has made it clear that the axis of conflict lies instead on whether and how modern Spain is a nation state or a rump Spanish Empire.[7][8][9] In the process of analyzing this phenomenon, they popularized Machado's phrasing.[1]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Juliá Díaz, Santos (2004). Historia de las dos Españas [History of the Two Spains] (in Spanish). Madrid, ES: Taurus. ISBN 84-306-0516-9.
- ^ The literature on Spanish nationalism is extensive. See e.g. Vilar, Pierre (1986). La Guerra Civil Española [The Spanish Civil War] (in Spanish). Barcelona: Crítica. p. 11. ISBN 84-7423-285-6. Likewise Tuñón de Lara, Manuel (1986). España: la quiebra de 1898 [Spain: The 1898 breach] (in Spanish). Sarpe. ISBN 84-7291-983-8 divides the quiebra threefold. Contrariwise, López Burniol, Juan-José (6 January 2010). "El problema español". El País. adds a fourth problem, viz. civil–military relations.
- ^ de Larra, Mariano José (2 November 1836). "El Día de Difuntos de 1836: Fígaro en el cementerio. "Aquí yace media España; murió de la otra media."" (in European Spanish). Archived from the original on 9 July 2018.
- ^ Charles J. Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age, Blackwell, 2000. ISBN 0-631-14988-0. p. 40–41.
- ^ Proverbios y Cantares Archived 21 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine, LIII, Antonio Machado.
- ^ Abellán, José Luis (10 May 1994). "El «¡Que inventen ellos!» de Unamuno" (Interview). Fundación Juan March. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014.
- ^ Sopeña, Andrés. El florido pensil [The Flowering Garden] (in Spanish).
- ^ "Elorza vs Álvarez Junco, o cómo ven dos catedráticos la nación española" [Elorza vs Álvarez Junco, or how two professors see the Spanish nation] (in Spanish).
- ^ "Hacia una historia de ida y vuelta" [Towards a dialogic history]. El País (in Spanish). 6 February 2010.
External links
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