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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. + 72e
