Oldal 67 [67]
JAVIER MORENO LUZÓN
ended the political instability habitual for most of the 19" century, at one
end, and the civil war that was the culmination of a new era of instability and
political conflict in the 1920s and 1930s at the other. In this period we can see
that Spain was experiencing many political and cultural problems similar to
those seen in other parts of the world, in Europe and the Americas, so that it
is especially useful to integrate the Spanish case into a global, comparative
vision of these processes. In addition, Spain’s nationalist movements were
influenced by what was happening in other countries, such as, for example,
Hungary. As Anne-Marie Thiesse has pointed out, there is nothing more
international than the formation of national identities.’ I shall highlight the
principal features of a state nationalism, Spanish nationalism, and of its rivals
in the sub-state nationalisms of Catalonia and the Basque Country, as well
as, in addition, the multiple projects and efforts that arose to ‘nationalize’
ordinary citizens, stimulate national feeling and create alternative national
imaginaries, and the clashes that occurred between different nationalist
discourses and practices.
The historiography on nationalisms in Spain has experienced an upward
curve, from a low level of interest to one much greater. Up to the end of the
1980s and beginning of the 1990s, Spanish nationalism was given scarcely any
attention by historians. The Catalan and Basque nationalist movements, in
contrast, had attracted a great many studies. This was an academic reflection
of the dominant climate in the transition from the Franco dictatorship to the
current democracy. Spanish nationalism was associated with the dictatorship,
while the nationalist movements around Spain’s periphery formed part of
the opposition to Franco; hence, when the dictator died in 1975 there was a
real feeling of a fresh spring for these peoples, who celebrated their national
identities in opposition to a Spanish one, reasserted their own myths and
symbols and sought to find their origins in history. They even went so far as
to place the existence of Spain as a nation in doubt.
After democracy had been consolidated, historians began to give attention to
Spanish nationalism. At this time a highly influential thesis became widespread
on the dynamic between nationalisms in contemporary Spain: the so-called
thesis of ‘weak nationalization’. According to its proponents, the inefficacy
of the State and the lack of interest in this area shown by the ruling elites,
opposed as they were to democratic participation by the people, had created
a vacuum in the ‘nationalization’ and development of national identity among
ordinary citizens which, in the transition from the 19" to the 20'*centuries,
was exploited by Catalan and Basque nationalists to develop their own political
1 Anne-Marie Thiesse: “Les identités nationales, un paradigme transnational”, in Alain
Dieckhoff — Christophe Jaffrelot (dirs.): Repenser le nationalisme: Théories et pratiques,
Paris, Sciences Po, 2006, 193-226.
* 66°