Spain, without a motherland

The absence of a common idea for patriotism weakens Spain and its interests.

Opinion article by Eduardo San Miguel Velasco

In the wake of the recent national holiday of October 12, the day on which Columbus first set foot in the Americas, I would like to offer the following reflection. This drifts along the paths of philosophy and history, but it has a lot to do with international relations and, unfortunately, it is relevant lately.

Spain is an identity without a defined homeland. In fact, Spain is a union of identities without a defined homeland. This is something like an individual who knows his personal history, but is incapable of understanding it as valuable and his own in its full extent. It is, therefore, an individual unprotected by time and its wisdom. We are a country that lives from day to day with no other existential guide than the absurdity of the fight between taifas.

Moreover, I fear that the next taifa kingdom to emerge will be Madrid, increasingly predisposed to the particularist battle. The heiress of Castile wants it all and is not going to do anything about it. Except demand it or, perhaps, force it. Worse still, the absence of a Madrid plan for all Spaniards is an embarrassing embarrassment for the capital. If the thinking head of the notion of Spain does not discourse or does so in partial terms, how can we expect the idea to last?

In any case, given this strange form of amnesia that Spain suffers from, it is not surprising that our common identity, despite having at least five centuries of a most plural and exciting culture, is absolutely incapable of projecting itself abroad, provoking the same interest from European neighbors such as France or Germany. This is a suggestive detail for those in charge of our foreign policy interested in soft power. Also for our intellectuals.

Spain is an identity without a defined motherland.

So far I have not defined the homeland, only the consequence of its lack. For this reason, and taking advantage of the component of Hispanidad to which our national holiday supposedly appeals, I would like to take the opposite path. Let us look for our homeland outside the peninsula and its provincial conflicts. Because Spain, separated from the Americas, is the least of it. Let our homeland be the pride of what is common in balance with the criticism of what is our own. In the end, the value and appropriation of history demand a mixture of total reason and universal sentiment.

The Spanish imperial experience, including decadence, offers an exceptional pride characterized by four elements: the unparalleled beauty of the Spanish language; the love of democracy whose revolutionary ardor was felt from the Cortes of Cadiz to the sabers of the liberators in the final battle of Ayacucho; the intellectual truth of humanists such as Bartolomé de las Casas; and the melting pot of peoples, races and cultures once beautifully embodied by Mexico City.

It is worth remembering the duality of this city, for it is the equanimous balance of our history. The beautiful Tenochtitlan, as described by Cortés' own expedition, was destroyed by Spanish barbarism. And, by the will of the barbarians themselves, it later became the nerve center of the first great globalization of humanity, the first great rapprochement after millennia of almost absolute separation. The order of the factors is of no interest to us: the terrible is terrible and the admirable is admirable.

The Spanish imperial experience, including the decadence, provides exceptional pride

With these points of convergence, on both sides of the Atlantic we can and should identify ourselves without misgivings as unique, yes, but also as peers. We see that feeling proud of the Spanish homeland should be easy, but in Spain it is not possible because the patriot does not make it easy. He does not have his feet on the ground, he jumps up and puts himself at the height of the sun. Of course, this generates embarrassment, caricatures, burnt egos. Apparently, there are flag patriots, there are health care patriots, there are patriots of our freedoms...and I say above all there are patriots of unconnected chunks.

We need our feet to sink into the mud as did the boots of the Thirds in the Dutch marshes. Let reason lead to self-criticism. If there was a Bartholomew, it is because there was a mita in Potosi that exploited hundreds of thousands of innocent people as slaves. We enjoy the lyrics of Juan Rulfo, however, his Mexican compatriots are still unable to read many of the glyphs with which some of their ancestors honor them.

The exercise of self-criticism is extensible in all directions and requires a tough national debate, but, embracing it with pride, we will have the necessary arguments for a conversation about what we want from the future. Only in this way are we true patriots with a common enterprise worthy of our time. As Ortega y Gasset said, precisely a century ago: Spain exists to try.

We need to recover the homeland in order to, with renewed eyes, attempt the new Spain.