Spain on the couch

Spain has been thrown back on the couch and many authors make a diagnosis based on the symptoms that afflict her and wonder if there is a cure. The onslaught of national populism, the push of globalization and the demands of the new digital civilization, the various crises that the pandemic is dragging on, the international scene with a European Union from which the United Kingdom has left, geopolitical changes, conflicts of all kinds ... and, in the midst of all this, what happens to a Spain touched by its particular problems, such as the Catalan separatist challenge and the sudden growth of the extreme right. The historian José Álvarez Junco (Viella, Lleida, 78 years old) explored in his now classic

Mater dolorosa

(Taurus) the idea of ​​Spain in the 19th century, Pilar Mera Costas (Vigo, 43 years old) has reconstructed a decisive journey from a past that continues to cast its shadows on the present on

July 18, 1936

(Taurus) and Sergio del Molino (Madrid , 41 years old) deals with

recent episodes

in

Against Empty Spain

(Alfaguara) based on the issues he dealt with in his famous previous book.

Question.

Why this return to Spain as a theme?

Sergio del Molino.

I am interested in Spain as a political community and I am concerned because I see that it is disintegrating. Since progressivism we have not paid attention to this disintegration and we have not realized that all the irrational part, the one that has nothing to do with the enlightened heritage, has been exploited by populist forces that have resurrected some topics of the nationalism of the century XIX to pierce, erode and destroy that political community. I am interested in reflecting on Spain not as a nationalist or a Spanishist, but as someone who has understood that the political community that we call Spain is the best tool we have right now to live in a democracy. Any other alternative goes against it, reduces it, distorts it. The dilemma is how to deal with populism by re-appropriating the nation,but not in the manner of the great essences claimed by the writers of '98, but rather from constitutional patriotism.

José Álvarez Junco.

Why Spain now? Why again? It is nothing new, it is a problem that reappears periodically. A distinction must be made between state and nation. The State exists, it controls a territory, with its problems and shortcomings. And the nation is something ideal, a belief, something subjective, based on both cultural and objective blocks: a language, a folklore, legends, heroes. There was an old imperial monarchy called Spain, or what was called the Hispanic Monarchy or Catholic Monarchy, which has nothing to do with the current state. It had territories in the Iberian Peninsula, in Flanders, in Italy, in America ... It was something else. Starting in 1808, with the political crisis of the Napoleonic invasion, the beginning of the liberal revolution and the loss of an immense part of the empire, it is necessary to rebuild what is Spain and it was very difficult to do in the 19th century.And something new emerges. The tax system of Fernando VII has nothing to do with that of his father, Carlos IV - there are no more incomes from America - nor does the administration, nor the territory, nothing to do with it. It is something else. It is built with many difficulties, with some liberals who advance in zigzag, with the absolutists who return, with a very weak State, with a highly disputed discourse: if we are above all Catholics or if we are above all liberal. And that continues to this day. At the end of the 19th century, with the crisis of 98, alternative nationalisms emerged: Basque and Catalan. Seeing that the ship sinks and is about to sink, they say they are something else and seek to build an alternative identity.Neither the administration, nor the territory, nothing to do with it. It is something else. It is built with many difficulties, with some liberals who advance in zigzag, with the absolutists who return, with a very weak State, with a highly disputed discourse: if we are above all Catholics or if we are above all liberal. And that continues to this day. At the end of the 19th century, with the crisis of 98, alternative nationalisms emerged: Basque and Catalan. Seeing that the ship sinks and is about to sink, they say they are something else and seek to build an alternative identity.Neither the administration, nor the territory, nothing to do with it. It is something else. It is built with many difficulties, with some liberals who advance in zigzag, with the absolutists who return, with a very weak State, with a highly disputed discourse: if we are above all Catholics or if we are above all liberal. And that continues to this day. At the end of the 19th century, with the crisis of 98, alternative nationalisms emerged: Basque and Catalan. Seeing that the ship sinks and is about to sink, they say they are something else and seek to build an alternative identity.if we are above all Catholic or if we are above all liberal. And that continues to this day. At the end of the 19th century, with the crisis of 98, alternative nationalisms emerged: Basque and Catalan. Seeing that the ship sinks and is about to sink, they say they are something else and seek to build an alternative identity.if we are above all Catholic or if we are above all liberal. And that continues to this day. At the end of the 19th century, with the crisis of 98, alternative nationalisms emerged: Basque and Catalan. Seeing that the ship sinks and is about to sink, they say they are something else and seek to build an alternative identity.

Pilar Mera Costas.

Spain has reappeared as a problem for more or less 10 years. It is a mixture of generational crisis with economic crisis and with crisis of the Western world. It has to do with that kind of successful death of social democracy. It's like the crisis you have at 40, but it happens to Spain when it discovers that something is wrong. It's like a soccer team: you have a wonderful generation that wins everything. What happens immediately after is to play like never again and lose like always. So you have to make a replacement so that things continue to work, to adapt to everything that is being transformed. We don't like making changes when something doesn't work.How to leave Sergio Ramos and not summon him? How can we leave Villa with what it means? The responsibility cannot always fall on them because the conditions are different. And that's when we ask ourselves who we are and what we want to be when we grow up, and when we discover that there are stories in the past that would allow us to participate in something common.

The dilemma is how to reappropriate the nation, but not from the essences, but from constitutional patriotism

Sergio del Molino

Q.

What are these stories, is there a way to build common references?

S. del M.

There is a history that my generation despises a lot and it is that of the construction of the current democracy and the Constitution of 1978. And it has become fashionable to demonize it.

As soon as it has been seen that democracy had serious structural or conjunctural problems (such as corruption), the response has been a proposal for absolute refounding instead of trying to see the enormous achievement that was achieved during the Transition.

It is necessary to fill with

sex appeal

that extraordinary moment, turn it into a shared story.

Those born in the seventies, my generation, despise it deeply.

It is one of the great failures of democracy.

Today it seems that everything was spun and that it responded to a greased plan, to a logical concatenation.

But then it was not like that.

There was no epic, it's true, they were just gentlemen who smoked and got along badly.

We have not known how to tell it well: an era full of violence has closed and the future has opened.

PMC

We can all come to an agreement: what came after 78 is much better than what was before.

But I do not agree that the assessment is entirely negative: even those who spoke of the regime of 78 campaigned with the Constitution in hand.

S. del M.

It was pure opportunism.

PMC

I do not care if the results can be used. Sometimes you have to be a little pragmatic to be able to meet at some point. And that can be a good starting place. The epic is overrated. Maybe we have to lower it. We tend to do very loud readings that are

contrarianistic:

we are against everything.

You say yes, they say no.

And vice versa.

We get distracted by the noise and right now they are all speeches about the cultural battle and about the impossibility of agreements.

A lot of polarization, a lot of tension, a lot of discussion, but in this legislature, decisions are also made in Congress.

The minimum vital income (only with the abstention of Vox) or the Child Protection Law has been approved by a majority with a fairly large majority.

And a few more laws.

If we talk all the time about what we are not capable of building, we fall into the trap of talking about who and not what.

And there are some qués that are done.

Haha

I have dedicated my life to being a myth critical historian, with idealized views of the past in terms of good and bad, paradises, falls and redemptions. A friend who did the degree with me and who was dedicated to banking and has been rich often tells me: why do you dedicate yourself to destroying myths with what you would earn by building them? Is right. We are going to build some now. There is, of course, that of the Transition. The question must be asked forward: what do we want to be? The future is not nation states, isolated and culturally homogeneous communities. The future will be multicultural: communicating will be easier, we will know more languages ​​than our parents, we will travel and marry people who live thousands of miles away. To get used to that futureWhy don't we enhance the multicultural aspects of our past? Why don't we talk about the Spain of the three cultures? Something grinds there: we should talk about the Iberian Peninsula, Spain did not exist then. But there was a political unity in that border territory between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, and in which large Jewish communities had taken refuge. In Toledo there was a school for translators that would have been unthinkable in Paris.In Toledo there was a school for translators that would have been unthinkable in Paris.In Toledo there was a school for translators that would have been unthinkable in Paris.

Let's go back to the welfare state.

Populisms work on the fear and insecurity that poverty brings

Pilar Mera Costas

S. del M.

That ended like the rosary of dawn.

Haha

A minority prevailed over the other two and expelled and tyrannized them. But here there were three cultures. Then there is that man, Bartolomé de las Casas, who spent his life defending the Indians and criticizing their enslavement. Let's forget that he proposed to solve that problem that the work be done by blacks from Africa, but let us highlight his fight for the Indians. The Cortes of Cádiz came and liberalism came, the Spaniards had to go out and there were several waves of political exiles, which ended in 1939. Those Spaniards who went out into the world contributed things to the countries through which they passed. In Mexico his cultural contributions were enormous and are recognized more there than here. Let's elaborate that myth, let's teach it in school. And, of course, the Transition. Then the national characters still worked,and a couple of Britons who were in London having a tea or a whiskey could say to each other in 1936: have you heard what is happening in Spain? They are killing each other. Why? Because the Spanish are like that. And why are they like this? Because they kill each other when they don't understand each other. A circular argument, absurd, but which was repeated when Franco died. There were illustrious Hispanists, like Richard Herr, whom I have great respect, who said that the Civil War was inevitable. That generation did one thing that disproved those stereotypes and of which we can be proud.but that was repeated when Franco died. There were illustrious Hispanists, like Richard Herr, whom I have great respect, who said that the Civil War was inevitable. That generation did one thing that disproved those stereotypes and of which we can be proud.but that was repeated when Franco died. There were illustrious Hispanists, like Richard Herr, whom I have great respect, who said that the Civil War was inevitable. That generation did one thing that disproved those stereotypes and of which we can be proud.

P.

In a society as fragmented as the current one, what can serve as a glue for the future?

S. del M.

In an open and complex society, identities are multiple, elusive, ethereal, one identifies with many things. No one identifies only as Spanish, or only as Catalan, or as Murcian. You identify yourself with multiple cross-sectional and contradictory references. Populism simplifies a lot, sweeps away complexity to build a completely univocal identity, and that, from a democratic point of view, is difficult to oppose. Democracy offers complexity and is disaggregated, it has no glue. What unites its members is a social contract based on reason. That irrational component that populisms take advantage of, we Democrats despise. How to deal with them then? It's almost impossible. They confront us with a practically unsolvable dilemma. If liberal democracy stands defending its complexity,populism easily sweeps it away. And if it confronts populism with its own weapons, it also becomes a populist, which is what we are seeing in Spanish society now. Populism runs through all political discourses. If one triumphs, to the right or to the left, it infects all the others. It would be necessary to insist a lot on the rationalist legacy, on the enlightened legacy, but we lack that attachment, that aspect of the national that we have left in the hands of the enemies of the open society. I am aware of the danger and I know that only with the weapons of reason and the enlightened legacy and the liberal legacy we do nothing. We are lost.Populism runs through all political discourses. If one triumphs, to the right or to the left, it infects all the others. It would be necessary to insist a lot on the rationalist legacy, on the enlightened legacy, but we lack that attachment, that aspect of the national that we have left in the hands of the enemies of the open society. I am aware of the danger and I know that only with the weapons of reason and the enlightened legacy and the liberal legacy we do nothing. We are lost.Populism runs through all political discourses. If one triumphs, to the right or to the left, it infects all the others. It would be necessary to insist a lot on the rationalist legacy, on the enlightened legacy, but we lack that attachment, that aspect of the national that we have left in the hands of the enemies of the open society. I am aware of the danger and I know that only with the weapons of reason and the enlightened legacy and the liberal legacy we do nothing. We are lost.I am aware of the danger and I know that only with the weapons of reason and the enlightened legacy and the liberal legacy we do nothing. We are lost.I am aware of the danger and I know that only with the weapons of reason and the enlightened legacy and the liberal legacy we do nothing. We are lost.

PMC

Perhaps part of the answer is in the past. What worked after World War II? If we don't lose perspective, what happened between 1914 and a little bit beyond 1945 is far worse than what we have now. And what worked after the war was the creation of the welfare state and gradually starting to build a united Europe. Maybe recovering those ideas is good. Populisms work when there is fear, division and insecurity. And there is fear and insecurity when there is poverty. So the first thing is to try to prevent the economic crisis from being very big after the pandemic. And there is a positive sign: this time something was learned about the 2008 crisis because Europe's response has been different. Perhaps it was easier because evil affects many.But what matters to me are not so much the intentions and reasons as the consequences of the decisions. And there are consequences: the positive thing is that the State is rebuilt and strengthened. It is true that there is this fear of raising taxes and that money is better in the pocket of citizens. We are not capable of realizing that, if this money is not in the State's pocket, it will be the citizen who has to spend it on the doctor, the school, on so many things. We are right, yes, but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.And there are consequences: the positive thing is that the State is rebuilt and strengthened. It is true that there is this fear of raising taxes and that money is better in the pocket of citizens. We are not capable of realizing that, if this money is not in the State's pocket, it will be the citizen who has to spend it on the doctor, the school, on so many things. We are right, yes, but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.And there are consequences: the positive thing is that the State is rebuilt and strengthened. It is true that there is this fear of raising taxes and that money is better in the pocket of citizens. We are not capable of realizing that, if this money is not in the State's pocket, it will be the citizen who has to spend it on the doctor, the school, on so many things. We are right, yes, but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.It is true that there is this fear of raising taxes and that money is better in the pocket of citizens. We are not capable of realizing that, if this money is not in the State's pocket, it will be the citizen who has to spend it on the doctor, the school, on so many things. We are right, yes, but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.It is true that there is this fear of raising taxes and that money is better in the pocket of citizens. We are not capable of realizing that, if this money is not in the State's pocket, it will be the citizen who has to spend it on the doctor, the school, on so many things. We are right, yes, but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.but how do we fill ourselves with feelings without falling into populism? Maybe we have to be softer, even a little more tender. Sometimes we are so hard on each other and on ourselves that we only notice the bad, the bad, the bad. It's hard to find a hole if we're negative all the time.

HAJ

What glue can join us?

The one that attracts me is constitutional patriotism.

It is not about telling people that we are the best and the smartest, it is about being able to appreciate who we are and tolerating the dissident, we have done that kind of thing in the past and it is about doing it in the future. .

And that must be taught to children.

Also to look at the horrors of the past.

The Transition was made largely out of fear, out of fear that the Civil War would repeat itself.

S. del M.

That generation kept a memory of the war that now no longer exists.

I believe in a federalist solution.

It is the best way to govern large and culturally complex countries

Jose Alvarez Junco

JAJ

That's why I say you have to show what happened.

But that is very complex compared to the discourse of a populist, who says that we are the best, long live Spain and give the hype.

That one wins the elections for sure.

Q.

Where to point then?

JAJ

I firmly believe in a federalist solution with well-defined competencies at four levels: municipalities, autonomous communities, the State, Europe.

Clearly established competencies and resources: each area must know what taxes it charges.

It is a wonderful solution invented by the Americans in the 18th century and it is the best way to govern very large geographically and very culturally complex structures.

S. del M.

Spain continues to ride several models.

It is untimely to propose a centralist State and it is probable that the federal one is the reasonable structure, as long as we advance towards a Europe with those wickers.

But on that road we have stayed halfway.

Autonomism is an interim solution to not make any decisions.

PMC

I don't think the autonomous state has gone so bad.

Maybe it is not enough anymore, but for a long time it worked and in terms of territorial solidarity it continues to work.

Many times what must be solved are technical issues, that my health card works everywhere, for example.

While we complain we do not look for solutions.

Stop complaining means start looking for solutions

JAJ

But the problems are still there.

The Catalan elites continue to propose a break with the State.

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