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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 °¢
