LUIS ALEMANY
Ynamela
Thursday, December 26, 2019 - 4:12 PM
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- History. Right ellado
The Spain of 2019 seems like an insecure teenager who seeks in an obsessive way the approval of others and goes from narcissism to the most frightful crisis of self-love . That is a conclusion that remains after chatting with the historian Ricardo García Cárcel on The Dream of the Indomitable Nation (Ariel), the book he wrote a long decade ago, in the centenary of 1808, and which now reappears expanded for the Spain of Imperiophobia and Imperiophilia.
«The problem of the image of Spain did not exist in 2008 . There was the ideological problem of both Spain and there was the territorial problem, but there was no debate about the image of Spain in Europe, ”explains the historian from Barcelona. «Surprisingly, we now have the debate of María Elvira Roca Barea and José Luis Villacañas, the image of Spain became a transcendental issue».
Why? «It is the response to anxiety and the need for national self-esteem that the Catalan problem has generated in the Spaniards. There is a demand for identity stimuli that flatter us , that take us away from this feeling of depression and none, of this 'they don't want us'. Look, in 1992, in the Olympic euphoria, I already wrote a book about the black legend that said that the myth had to be buried , that Spain was Europe and its history was normalized. Well: the years have passed and this anxiety reappears for the opinion of others as collective anguish ».
"Today," García Cárcel continues, "I would have put a simpler title on this book. I would have called it The dream of the Spanish nation , without further adjectives. The dream is whether or not the Spanish nation can be maintained as it is with such a pessimistic mood as the one that affects us. 1808, from that negative point of view, it is the moment in which the Spaniards and, especially, the Catalans, opted for a Spanish nation to which they put the adjectives of indomitable, of indomitable, of resistant ... I stress the thing of the Catalans because Catalonia had a lot of prominence on the patriotic side ».
The dream of the indomitable nation is not a book on collective psychology, although it tells us about the insecurities of the Spaniards: it is, in fact, a historical study on the facts of the period 1808-1812, which identifies the myths of the War of the Independence, clarifies them and explains their effect on the later history of Spain: emotion (that of May 8); betrayal (Godoy); pride and fury (guerrillas); corruption and ineptitude (the regular army); the idealized fullness (the Cortes of Cádiz) ... The funny thing is that all sides (that of the liberals, that of the conservatives and that of the Frenchmen) used the same myths to twist them in different directions.
Let's start with the Frenchmen. If we had been the children of an enlightenment of the court of Charles IV, what would have been the reason to be French ? «The decision was very logical. Before the invasion of Napoleon, appeared the alternative of patriotism that put the nation above ideology. The Frenchmen, in reality, were pragmatic, they thought that Napoleon was as French as the Bourbon dynasty and that the clothes were not to be torn because the king was a foreigner if his program was good.
In García Cárcel's book there is also a demystification item: the text follows the life of concrete, bungling, opportunistic and lonely figures. «Well, they are the same opportunistic and bungling lives as those of the patriots. The problem of French- speakers is expressed in Fracasología , by Roca Barea: it is the reproach of treason. I hear that stigma now in Catalonia for any alleged deviationism from the most extreme orthodoxy of nationalism . So I distrust the word a little ».
It is time to take Goya's picture of the sticks. «The liberal revolution of 1808-1812 was very particular. More rhetoric than real, more media than effective , more destined to satisfy public opinion than to solve social problems ». This is read on page 334 of The Dream of the Indomitable Nation . «There was a lot of staging in the Cortes of Cádiz, but it was a felt staging. The men of Cádiz believed that they were creating a new Spain, assuming the inheritance of 1789 and adapting it to the country. Then, polarization saw the virtues of the project, ”explains García Cárcel.
It is the polarization that leads to frustration: "Throughout the nineteenth century floats the contradiction between the constitutional theoretical discourse of 12, with the whole apparatus of constitutional sovereignty and others, and political practice, which is not up to par " .
Actually, García Cárcel's book is a refutation against that polarization that separates 1808 and 1812 as opposite milestones. «The Dos de Mayo is an example of political instrumentalization. All my generation was educated in the mythology of the War of Independence in which the Dos de Mayo appeared represented a patriotic, emotional moment, an archetype of popular uprising against the invader . Then, in the university years, we deconstructed that national epic mythology that we linked to Francoism. Today, my opinion is that Dos de Mayo was an emotional tear, yes, but it also has a link with the constitutional patriotism of 1812. The thesis of the book is that 1812 is the culmination of that emotional, irrational and confusing patriotism that began in 1808. It was irrational but led to the first text that propagates national sovereignty .
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