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JAVIER MORENO LUZÓN
In addition one saw the rise of what was known as Hispanoamericanismo,
‘Hispanic-Americanism’, the search in the Spanish-speaking countries of the
Americas for a substitute empire to replace the one that had been lost, an idea
that exalted the role of Spain as the supposed head of a multinational cultural
community, Hispanoamérica or la raza, ‘the race’. This was a movement
driven by civil society, and which secured the declaration of 12 October, the
anniversary of the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492,
as Spain’s national day, a holiday that has survived under all the different
political regimes up to the present day.
With regard to education, the majority of the political and intellectual elites
interpreted the ‘Disaster’ at the hands of the United States in the same way
that the French had interpreted their defeat by Prussia in 1871: as the triumph
of a more developed country, economically and scientifically, over a backward
one. Consequently, one saw a notable new impetus in concern for education
and in favour of public education, the better preparation of teachers and an
opening to international trends in science. This was an effort in which the
leading role was initially taken by the liberal left, in the face of the reticence
of Catholics, but which was subsequently taken up and shared by a range of
political tendencies, both under the military dictatorship of the 1920s and
during the democratic republic of the 1930s. By 1930, illiteracy had fallen
to thirty per cent. Whether under one version of Spanish nationalism or the
other, schools were required to produce conscious and patriotic citizens, who
identified with national symbols like the flag.’
Also, in the same manner as in other European states of the time, from
Great Britain to Italy, the Spanish monarchy promoted its own fusion with
the national identity, by means of royal tours and great ceremonial events
such as the coronation and later the wedding of King Alfonso XIII. This was
not a case of the construction of a dynastic patriotism on the Austrian model,
but of the emergence of a Spanish nationalist monarch, very active in political
life, in the style of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
Lastly, one other feature that stood out in the years following the ‘Disaster’
was the growing presence of the army in the definition and extension of the
national identity. Emulating European models, such as the French but above
all that of Germany, the military took upon themselves the need to intervene
in political life in order to combat the sub-state nationalisms, which they
considered separatist, and to create patriots by educating the soldiers who
undertook military service, which was made compulsory in 1912, and
promoting the militarization of children and young people through ‘children’s
” Javier Moreno Luzon — Xosé M. Nujfiez Seixas: Los colores de la patria.
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