La invencion de Espana. Nacionalismo liberal e identidad nacional

Abstract

La invencion de Espana. Nacionalismo liberal e identidad nacional. By Inman Fox. Madrid: Catedra, 1997. 224 pages. A new book on modern ideology and literature by Inman Fox, to whom we owe so many elucidations of Spanish writers of the turn of the last century, must command attention. The book makes a very promising start by exploring the invention of national identity according to the concepts of nationalism formulated with great precision, among others, by Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm. For these authors the construction of nationality is a conscious process, which has to be consensual and depends on language and literary expression as its cultural glue; the same tongue is not necessarily shared by all the members of the nation-state, but a written-- language commanding common assent or at least acquiescence is an essential feature. Such ideas are of great relevance to modern Spanish political ideology. . In successive chapters, and drawing on much previously published material, Fox sums up the contributions of the Ateneo, the Institution Libre, historians like Lafuente and Canovas, regenerationalists like Costa and Altamira and the school of Menendez Pidal to the construction of a liberal-- based national identity, essentially Castilian-centered, before arriving in chapter vii to the figures we associate with the Generation of 98 and commenting finally on the otra Espana, traditionalist and authoritarian, which fed on some of its ideas. Unfortunately, he refers to the imagined community concept only desultorily and without following up its indications or fully justifying his own title. He does not consider, for instance, the deleterious effect Ortega's insistence that only Castile has real conditions of leadership (180) has on the chances of incorporating peripheral nationalities into a common imagined community. When he comments perceptively on Azorin's importance in the establishment of the canon of Spanish literature (137), we might add that this canon manages to evade completely the great contributions of Catalonia and Galicia to medieval Spain. And that there are other historic townships or landscapes worthy of aesthetic attention other those of Castile and, by extension, Andalusia. Interesting aspects of these chapters are the critical approach to Ganivet's sense of history (though I miss any reference to Javier Herrero's book on Ganivet or Herbert Ramsden's studies of Ganivet and Unamuno), and the perceptive comments on Ortega's attitude to Azorin and Baroja. On Machado, there is a certain confusion between poems on Castile published in 1912 and those printed subsequently (155-56). The major opportunity that is missed concerns the nacionalismos perifericos. Fox makes a worthy effort to take Catalan and Basque nationalism into account by devoting a chapter to them, but his analysis is almost entirely derivative from secondary sources. Despite an awareness of the relation between industrial strength and the rise of Catalan nationalism and some welcome detailed attention to Almirall and Prat de la Riba, a critical analysis of Catalanist ideology and motivation from inside is largely lacking. …

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