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JULIO PONCE ALBERCA
the terms ‘Spain’ and ‘nation’. Titles in this vein have experienced significant
growth since the 1980s, as the division of the country into Autonomous
Regions spread to the whole of its territory. At the same time, recent decades
have witnessed the development and growth of regional studies — linked to
the establishment of the State of the Autonomies — giving rise to veritable
‘national histories’ in the case of peripheral nationalist movements (Catalonia,
Basque Country, Galicia, etc)’.
Both the existence of a nation identified with the borders of a state and the
presence of national sentiment at the local or regional level (i.e., a sub-state
level) tend to be grounded in real or imaginary cultural and historical elements
configuring a common identity developed through time and space. Language,
customs, common historical experience, tradition and historical rights
are some of the salient elements in the construction of national sentiment
reflected in a ‘collective psychology’. However, the concept of ‘nation’ implies
a purported unity — in other words, it takes it for granted that all members
of a community share the same sense of identity regarding a given territory.
Though seen as indisputable in the nationalist worldview, this is no more
than an unwarranted assumption. The existence of non-nationalist groups
in societies considered to have nationalist majorities is well documented, as
Juan Pablo Fusi has shown’. Especially in an increasingly globalised world
in which growing mobility intensifies shared identities, this remains true
despite the assumption that a nation involves total community identification,
no exceptions made.
Yet nationalism represents more than an ideal and idealized construction
of acommunity’*. As an ideology, its end goal is statehood. Despite its emphasis
on culture (language, tradition, history), a nation amounts to little without
the existence of a corresponding state, that is, a sovereign political structure
(self-government) and an institutional framework for the management and
distribution of resources (administration). It is thus little wonder that nations
have sought to become nation-states, organizing their territory, passing laws,
creating citizens and forging systems for internal and external defense (police
and military forces). All this, of course, is made possible through taxation to
1 This can be verified using the data base of books published in Spain: http://www.mcu.es/
webISBN/tituloSimpleFilter.do?cache=init&prev_layout=busquedaisbn&layout=busquedais
bn&language=es.
Juan Pablo Fusi: Identidades proscritas. El no nacionalismo en las sociedades nacionalistas,
Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2006.
A good summary of the development of nationalist historiography since the late nineteenth
century can be found in: Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzön: Evoluciön y rasgos de las historiografias
de los nacionalismos en España, in C. Rina Simén (ed.): Procesos de nacionalizaciôn e
identidades en la Peninsula Ibérica, Caceres, Universidad de Extremadura, 2017, 50-57.
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