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NATIONALISM AND NATION-BUILDING IN SPAIN (1875—1939)
movements.? In reality this thesis formed part of the dominant narrative within
Spanish historiography at the time, what Santos Juliá has called the paradigm
of failure: this narrative asserted that the Spanish case was exceptional, because
it stood apart from the European norm in all the great processes of modernity,
such as industrialization or the passage from liberalism to democracy.? On this
point in particular, this narrative of failure focussed on the process of Spanish
national identity construction, which had failed by comparison with those of
other countries considered to be successful, above all France. Overall, these
ideas advanced the spread of a melancholy view of history, which noted failings
more than achievements and the specific facts of each situation.
In the last fifteen years this panorama has changed substantially. The
integration of Spanish historians into international networks for the study
of nationalism and national identities has facilitated comparisons with other
national examples, above all in Europe, and undermined the idea of Spanish
exceptionalism. At the same time, the French case has been demythologized,
and the existence of a supposedly general norm, from which Spain stood
apart, has been discarded. A great many different discourses and expressions
of Spanish nationalism have been analysed, which emerged very strongly from
the 19'* century onwards. It has been possible to demonstrate the enormous
complexity of the mechanisms of nationalization, from the top down but also
from the bottom up, originating not only in the state but also in civil society,
and at all times open-ended and in constant evolution. The importance has
also been underlined of regionalisms as forms of Spanish nationalism, and
not just as embryos of the alternative nationalisms of Catalonia, the Basques
or even Galicia. And in conclusion, the idea of failure has been disproved, or
at least relativized, and Spain has been identified as one of the countries that,
in contrast to many others in Europe, did manage to construct and sustain a
nation-state in the contemporary era. A nation-state that was disputed and
problematic, with deficiencies and aspects that lagged behind other countries,
but one that lasted. That is to say, the old melancholy has disappeared.*
This aside, in the modern historiography of Spanish nationalism up to
the present day, modernist approaches have also come to predominate over
the ‘primordialist’ or “perennialist” ones. That is, the majority of historians
look upon national construction as a modern phenomenon, and only a few
argue that the Spanish nation has existed ever since the Middle Ages or the
2 Fernando Molina — Miguel Cabo Villaverde: An Inconvenient Nation: Nation-Building
and National Identity in Modern Spain. The Historiographical Debate, in Maarten Van
Ginderachter — Marnix Beyen (eds.): Nationhood from Below: Europe in the Long Nineteenth
Century, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 47-72.
3 Santos Julia: Anomalia, dolor y fracaso de España, Claves de Razôn Practica, Vol. 66, 1996,
10-21.
* Javier Moreno Luzén — Xosé M. Niifiez Seixas (eds.): Metaphors of Spain: Representations of
Spanish National Identity in the 20th century, New York-Oxford, Berghahn, 2017.
* 67 °¢