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STATE BUILDING AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
The difficulties inherent in building a liberal state in a country that had lost
a vast empire in the nineteenth century and hardly retained any international
weight were not minor. Grappling with that past was not the best ingredient
for the forging of a solid national identity — and nor were the country’s present
or its uncertain future’. The century had started with a terrible war against
the French (War of Independence, 1808-1814) and it ended with the loss of
the last remaining colonies — Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines — to
the United States. Violence was commonplace and the liberal state created a
militarized security force, the Guardia Civil (1844). A centralized structure,
modeled on the French template, subjected local institutions to central
control along a clear hierarchy, at the bottom of which were local councils
(ayuntamientos), followed by provincial councils (diputaciones) presided over
by civil governors (delegates of the central government in each province). This
province-based structure essentially remained unaltered after 1833, except
for the division of the Canary Islands into two provinces in 1927, which
brought their total number up from 49 to 50.
The politization of the administration and the absence of professional
criteria in the recruitment of public servants were other salient traits of the
Spanish state. Personal trust was the route to selection and promotion in any
sector, and supporters of a political boss or faction could expect favours and
privileges while strict application of rule of law was reserved for adversaries.
In such a world, it is little wonder that the most distinguished public servants
— including those in the military — sought to make their prerogatives ironclad.
Identification with a corps was much more intense than any sense of belonging
to a state marked by constant legislative transformations, sudden political
shifts and even frequent regime change. A case in point was the institution
of seniority-based promotion for Artillery Corps officers, guaranteeing
promotions based on length of service rather than a merit-based system which
could easily pave the way for outright favouritism’. Another instance of this
was the civil governors’ 1901-1902 campaign in support, among other causes,
of the professional promotion of those who had held public office throughout
their career (in particular, those who had been civil governors)”.
Ortega y Gasset aptly characterized the situation of a state in which every
body of public servants fought above all to defend their group interest with
little concern for those of other bodies or for the nation’s general interest.
10 Regarding the relationship between the past and the construction of national identity, see:
Carolyn P. Boyd: Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875¬
1975, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997.
New officers in the Academy of Artillery had to sign collective commitment to this minority¬
based promotion system (escala cerrada): Antonio Cordén: Trayectoria. Recuerdos de un
artillero, Sevilla, Espuela de Plata, 2008 [1971], 125.
Juan Madariaga y Suarez (conde de Torre Vélez): Nuevo régimen local: (campana de los ex
gobernadores en 1901-1902), Madrid, Asilo de Huérfanos del S.C. de Jestis, 1902.
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