The slogan “Spain is different” was used to promote tourism when the country began to open up during the Franco era. Nigel Townson, in his History of Modern Spain, also argues against this mantra pretty convincingly, showing how Spain moved along with the mean European trends both politically and economically
The transformation of RTVE from the late 90s and early 2000s (televised bullfighting, historical programs promoting Spanish pride) to mid-to-late aughts (removal of aforementioned programming for left-wing coded slop) signaled the changing of the guard.
The central thesis is true and it's a good article. Cheers. Now, there are certain points I would disagree with:
1. "Napoleon spoke of a backward country of priests and friars; it was this Spain, led by the liberals who would later dissolve the monasteries, that dealt him his first defeat — at Bailén, when Wellington was yet to enter Spain"
I don't think the war of independence in general nor the victory of Bailén in particular can be distinctively attributed to liberals —nor to reactionaries, for that matter. Truth is that anti-french leaders ended up in both sides of the political divide after the restoration of Ferdinand VII, and —unless there be some exhaustive quantitative analysis which settles the matter— attempts both left and right to try appropiate the war of independence have relied mostly on cherry-picking. Yes, we can find important liberal leaders in the fight against the French —Riego, Álava, el Empecinado, etc.—, but also reactionaries —Zumalacárregui and the Spanish episcopate and clergy at large— and moderates. This precisely shows that it was a national war, not primarily an ideological one —of course defense of religion and monarchy was an integral part of it, but in any case also those who wanted to reform or demote those two generally took arms against the French. And if we look specifically at the battle of Bailén, General Castaños, Malet and Saavedra later collaborated with the absolutist administration of Ferdinand VII. Castaños also took part on the moderate government of María Cristina but was persecuted during the liberal triennium, so one would rather say he was a moderately conservative loyalist to the monarch actually in charge —a character typical of Bourbon enlightened absolutism.
2. "Even the Carlists, mostly northern reactionaries who went to war against the liberal state, fought for ‘God, Fatherland, King’, in that order"
That Carlists had patriotism as one of their core tenets is profoundly true. Now, I think that the idea of Carlism as a basque-catalonian northern movement is obsolete, specially if we're talking about the 1833-1840 war. There were Carlist conspiracies and uprisings through the whole of Spain, the question would rather be why their first successes were primarily in the Basque Country and Navarre, and to a lesser extent Catalonia. I think that the primary cause of this is that the Diputaciones never got rid of the royalist volunteers corps which later turned into carlist guerrillas, while the late fernandine army had dissolved them in the greatest part of Spain. That and also geography.
3. "when Napoleon kidnapped Ferdinand VII and placed his brother, Joseph, upon the throne, European and American Spaniards alike agreed that sovereignty had reverted to the Spanish nation"
I don't think that this is true unless nuanced. There were many opinion on the matter, but the most common position on 1808 was that the people got to use sovereignty through the interim in which Ferdinand VII was unable to. Now, I don't think that a temporal sovereignty is true sovereignty. That the people had obtained full sovereignty and could even do without the king —as in actual popular sovereignty— was a radical position which was mainly used by the filthy traitors who took America from us. I don't think that even the 1812 Constitution (which I deeply despis) can be equated with that thesis.
4. "Many of these suggestions were heeded by the Spanish Bourbons, who, far from being French lackeys, embarked on a programme of reforms to ensure further centralisation and nationalisation, and the recovery of economic and diplomatic primacy. This partly explains the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767"
What refers to Bourbon reforms is certainly true. They were good kings, at least until Charles IV. But even if it is besides the point I cannot help myself to say something on the jesuits. I'm very receptive to the main traditional arguments for the expulsion of the Jesuits —that their fourth vow undermines monarchical power, that they have too much power, they conspire for their own ends, etc.—, and I've long sympathized with them, but the more I look into it the more I find them to be simply untrue. The expulsions and suppression of the Jesuits was pushed forward by the libtards of the XVIII century through lies and half-truths and the actual serious motives that drove some good men of State against the Jesuits were mainly slander. In any case, the good that the Jesuits did (as religious, scholars, statesmen, etc.) was far greater than their suppossed evils. This merits a mostly separate discussion.
5. "The 1812 Cádiz Constitution is yet another demonstration of Spain’s normality — ‘liberal’ is a Spanish word, after all"
I'll end with a purely etymologycal consideration. I'm not sure it's true the often repeated claim that "liberal" in the political sense comes from Spain. It may be that the Spanish liberals were the first to use that label as their primary party name, but I've found that Joseph de Maistre already writes in 1805 about "ce qu’on appelle aujourd’hui les idées libérales" regarding constitutionalism.
Thank you for commenting. As I mentioned privately, I largely agree with you. I could hardly expect Pimlico’s readers to have an expansive, perfectly nuanced command of Spanish history, hence my simplifications.
1. I do not mean to speak of our War of Independence, elsewhere known as the Peninsular War, as a liberal enterprise; it was a national one. This is the point of my piece: despite its notorious querulousness, the national element in Spanish politics has never been absent.
2. Yes, the Carlists were not purely Basque, Aragonese, or Catalan. There were certainly Carlists in Granada, for example, as well as in Extremadura and southern Castile. I nonetheless think it’s fair to speak of the Carlists as a northern-shifted movement.
3. I agree. It is nuanced. The lawyers who argued in favour of popular sovereignty were not, at least at this stage, fully fledged republicans, and they did not intend for universal suffrage to take hold. Even in the permissive 1812 Constitution, suffrage was in practice quite limited. The popular sovereignty of 1808 falls within Spain’s traditional grant of certain political prerogatives to local authorities, especially municipalities, and thus to local notables. As a concept, it remains far removed from mass democracy.
The slogan “Spain is different” was used to promote tourism when the country began to open up during the Franco era. Nigel Townson, in his History of Modern Spain, also argues against this mantra pretty convincingly, showing how Spain moved along with the mean European trends both politically and economically
Fascinating and insightful article. Thank you.
The transformation of RTVE from the late 90s and early 2000s (televised bullfighting, historical programs promoting Spanish pride) to mid-to-late aughts (removal of aforementioned programming for left-wing coded slop) signaled the changing of the guard.
The central thesis is true and it's a good article. Cheers. Now, there are certain points I would disagree with:
1. "Napoleon spoke of a backward country of priests and friars; it was this Spain, led by the liberals who would later dissolve the monasteries, that dealt him his first defeat — at Bailén, when Wellington was yet to enter Spain"
I don't think the war of independence in general nor the victory of Bailén in particular can be distinctively attributed to liberals —nor to reactionaries, for that matter. Truth is that anti-french leaders ended up in both sides of the political divide after the restoration of Ferdinand VII, and —unless there be some exhaustive quantitative analysis which settles the matter— attempts both left and right to try appropiate the war of independence have relied mostly on cherry-picking. Yes, we can find important liberal leaders in the fight against the French —Riego, Álava, el Empecinado, etc.—, but also reactionaries —Zumalacárregui and the Spanish episcopate and clergy at large— and moderates. This precisely shows that it was a national war, not primarily an ideological one —of course defense of religion and monarchy was an integral part of it, but in any case also those who wanted to reform or demote those two generally took arms against the French. And if we look specifically at the battle of Bailén, General Castaños, Malet and Saavedra later collaborated with the absolutist administration of Ferdinand VII. Castaños also took part on the moderate government of María Cristina but was persecuted during the liberal triennium, so one would rather say he was a moderately conservative loyalist to the monarch actually in charge —a character typical of Bourbon enlightened absolutism.
2. "Even the Carlists, mostly northern reactionaries who went to war against the liberal state, fought for ‘God, Fatherland, King’, in that order"
That Carlists had patriotism as one of their core tenets is profoundly true. Now, I think that the idea of Carlism as a basque-catalonian northern movement is obsolete, specially if we're talking about the 1833-1840 war. There were Carlist conspiracies and uprisings through the whole of Spain, the question would rather be why their first successes were primarily in the Basque Country and Navarre, and to a lesser extent Catalonia. I think that the primary cause of this is that the Diputaciones never got rid of the royalist volunteers corps which later turned into carlist guerrillas, while the late fernandine army had dissolved them in the greatest part of Spain. That and also geography.
3. "when Napoleon kidnapped Ferdinand VII and placed his brother, Joseph, upon the throne, European and American Spaniards alike agreed that sovereignty had reverted to the Spanish nation"
I don't think that this is true unless nuanced. There were many opinion on the matter, but the most common position on 1808 was that the people got to use sovereignty through the interim in which Ferdinand VII was unable to. Now, I don't think that a temporal sovereignty is true sovereignty. That the people had obtained full sovereignty and could even do without the king —as in actual popular sovereignty— was a radical position which was mainly used by the filthy traitors who took America from us. I don't think that even the 1812 Constitution (which I deeply despis) can be equated with that thesis.
4. "Many of these suggestions were heeded by the Spanish Bourbons, who, far from being French lackeys, embarked on a programme of reforms to ensure further centralisation and nationalisation, and the recovery of economic and diplomatic primacy. This partly explains the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767"
What refers to Bourbon reforms is certainly true. They were good kings, at least until Charles IV. But even if it is besides the point I cannot help myself to say something on the jesuits. I'm very receptive to the main traditional arguments for the expulsion of the Jesuits —that their fourth vow undermines monarchical power, that they have too much power, they conspire for their own ends, etc.—, and I've long sympathized with them, but the more I look into it the more I find them to be simply untrue. The expulsions and suppression of the Jesuits was pushed forward by the libtards of the XVIII century through lies and half-truths and the actual serious motives that drove some good men of State against the Jesuits were mainly slander. In any case, the good that the Jesuits did (as religious, scholars, statesmen, etc.) was far greater than their suppossed evils. This merits a mostly separate discussion.
5. "The 1812 Cádiz Constitution is yet another demonstration of Spain’s normality — ‘liberal’ is a Spanish word, after all"
I'll end with a purely etymologycal consideration. I'm not sure it's true the often repeated claim that "liberal" in the political sense comes from Spain. It may be that the Spanish liberals were the first to use that label as their primary party name, but I've found that Joseph de Maistre already writes in 1805 about "ce qu’on appelle aujourd’hui les idées libérales" regarding constitutionalism.
Thank you for commenting. As I mentioned privately, I largely agree with you. I could hardly expect Pimlico’s readers to have an expansive, perfectly nuanced command of Spanish history, hence my simplifications.
1. I do not mean to speak of our War of Independence, elsewhere known as the Peninsular War, as a liberal enterprise; it was a national one. This is the point of my piece: despite its notorious querulousness, the national element in Spanish politics has never been absent.
2. Yes, the Carlists were not purely Basque, Aragonese, or Catalan. There were certainly Carlists in Granada, for example, as well as in Extremadura and southern Castile. I nonetheless think it’s fair to speak of the Carlists as a northern-shifted movement.
3. I agree. It is nuanced. The lawyers who argued in favour of popular sovereignty were not, at least at this stage, fully fledged republicans, and they did not intend for universal suffrage to take hold. Even in the permissive 1812 Constitution, suffrage was in practice quite limited. The popular sovereignty of 1808 falls within Spain’s traditional grant of certain political prerogatives to local authorities, especially municipalities, and thus to local notables. As a concept, it remains far removed from mass democracy.
4-5. Points noted. No disagreements.