An Inconvenient Nation: Nation-Building and National Identity in Modern Spain. The Historiographical Debate

Nationalism studies between methodological nationalism and orientalism: an alternative approach illustrated with the case ofElGreco inToledo,Spain

“…Thus, the so‐called War of Independence of 1808–1814 (the name itself is clearly a product of a nationalist interpretation of the past) is generally seen as a starting point for Spanish nationalism, whereas the humiliating defeat in the Spanish‐American War of 1898, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and the transición (the transition to democracy after the death of Franco in 1975) are seen as the major turning points. Moreover, the focus in Spanish historiographical debates has overwhelmingly been on the rise of peripheral nationalisms in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia and the related issue of the supposed weakness of Spanish nationalism (Archilés ; Molina and Cabo Villaverde ), whereas widely used Spanish concepts such as regeneracionismo (a nationalist motivated movement that pleaded for more state intervention after 1898), castizo (purely Spanish) and nacionalcatolicismo (national‐Catholicism, the right‐wing nationalist ideology of the Franco‐regime) also suggest that the Spanish case is fundamentally different from others.…”

What do historians really think about biography?

“…Espartero was at the very centre of such mobilization, of what the nation "mean[t] to ordinary people" who, through their autonomous activity, could "construe a national identity out of elements that are not always scooped out to them by the elite... [and] fashion their own national heroes and narratives". 46 Burdiel's "coro de voces" is crucial here. In Espartero's case, it consists of the many thousands of ordinary people all over Spain who admired, even revered, the man they saw as the unyielding champion of liberty and, especially, the bringer of peace after a long and brutal civil war, "una guerra frátricida de siete años" as so many of them said.…”