“No war”
(Not to the war).
Just at the same time as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a mysterious anti-war graffiti appeared on the floor of the promenade near the Guadalete River, in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz).
The place, thousands of kilometers from ground zero of the conflict, is not by chance.
The black letters on the granite floor now make up a strange still life with the bust representing Piotr Potemkin, the first Russian ambassador to Spain.
The bronze sculpture with its copious beard and exotic clothing recalls the precise moment in which Potemkin landed in Cádiz and later stayed in El Puerto in December 1667. That, despite the shocks caused by cultural barriers, was the beginning of relatively stable diplomatic relations, with comings and goings over the centuries,
The expulsion in mid-April of 27 diplomats and employees of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Madrid —although not the current ambassador, Yuri Korchagin— in response to possible war crimes committed in Ukraine has taken the ties between the two countries to their limits. lowest hours in recent years.
But it is not the first time that conflicts and historical events have caused Spanish-Russian relations to be "temporarily suspended at key moments in which the system of alliances in Europe placed both States on opposite sides", as the historian recalls and professor at the Rey Juan Carlos Jorge Pajarín Domínguez University, in his review of the work
Russian Diplomats in Spain
.
Or that the connections between the two powers were practically non-existent, as was the case before Potemkin's arrival in Cádiz.
The doctor in History, Russian interpreter and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, Ángel Luis Encinas, has documented a good part of the correspondence that both territories maintained, as early as the 10th century, as well as the first descriptions that Spanish travelers they came from a culture that was as far away as it was exotic.
The first diplomatic contact took place centuries later, already in 1519, after Charles I (1500-1558) sent a letter informing the great prince of Muscovy Basil III (1505-1533) that he had ascended the throne.
The return letter arrived in the hands of the scribe Yakov Polushkin in 1523, considered the first Russian charge to set foot on Spanish soil.
However, it was not until 1667 when diplomatic relations became regular with the arrival of the first ambassador to Spain,
"The motivation of Tsar Alexis I for that trip was political and in relation to the Turkish question", as Encinas points out, referring to the negotiations that Russia had with Poland after a war between the two countries and the confrontation that it had with the Ottoman Empire threatening its borders.
With these wickers, Potemkin arrived in Cádiz on December 4, 1667 aboard an Italian merchant ship that traded with Armenian caviar, after a long journey that began in Moscow in July of that year.
The Duke of Medinaceli, Juan Francisco de la Cerda, invited them to stay for two weeks in the mansion of a Dutch merchant who lived in El Puerto de Santa María, while his meeting with the regent Mariana of Austria, mother of Carlos II, was organized. , after the death of Felipe IV.
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From the first moment, the diplomatic trip was full of shocks and misunderstandings that had to be resolved on the fly.
“Both the difference in mentalities and the difference in protocol played a very important role.
Russians and Spaniards were somewhat ignorant of how they should behave.
The Spanish Council of State decided that the same Turkish protocol had to be applied to the Russians, it would be because they were from the East, but they were different,” says Encinas.
In fact, the first clash occurred when the Russian entourage of more than 60 people refused to pay for their accommodation in El Puerto, understanding that the Tsar's representatives should be entertained free of charge, although in the end they decided to pay the bill to avoid problems. .
After leaving the Cadiz town,
frugal Spaniards
Mariana of Austria came to give an affirmative response to those claims in another letter.
However, as Encinas points out, geostrategically, "Spain could not play any role because it had its military strength in its European and American conflicts."
In June 1668, the Russian delegation left the country through Irún, leaving behind abundant documentation of that first cultural contact, such as those writings in which Potemkin was surprised at how little the Spanish drank alcohol, to the point of assuring not having seen "not even a drunk swaying through the streets."
It would not be the last time that the ambassador had the opportunity to contrast impressions like that.
In 1681 he returned to Spain, already under the orders of Tsar Teodoro III, at which time he was portrayed by Juan Carreño de Miranda, court painter,
After those first stable connections, it was not until 1723 that Cádiz hosted the first Russian consulate in Spain —which was operational until 1914—, due to the important movements of goods that the city was involved in with much of the world.
“From that moment on, the port of Cadiz plays an important role in relations between Spain and Russia.
We can talk about stable relations from that Spanish consulate”, explains Professor Encinas.
A few years after that permanent diplomatic presence, in 1727, the Duke of Liria Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart became the first Spanish representative of a permanent mission in Russia.
Yuri P.Korchagin, current ambassador of the Russian Federation in Spain, at the embassy headquarters in Madrid in April last yearADOLFO BARROSO
Since then, Spanish-Russian relations have been marked by periods of comings and goings.
Like the years in which the Russians interrupted relations in the first half of the 19th century, after denying the legitimacy of Elizabeth II.
Despite this, the Russian sailors continued to travel to the Arsenal de la Carraca de San Fernando —a military shipbuilding center—, “on an excursion, they took some vines, took them to the Crimea, acclimatized them and created the famous sherry of Crimea that continues to exist”, points out Professor Encinas.
Even after Franco's coup d'état —which put an end to a few years of closeness between the already USSR and the Second Spanish Republic—, the links continued to exist, under the facade of diplomatic tension and ideological distance.
In fact, in 1943 the Spanish dictator went from selling tungsten to Nazi Germany to communist Russia, through an Egyptian port.
Even in the sixties, "the exchange of oil for Sarita Montiel's films dubbed into Russian" took place, according to Encinas.
With the beginning of democracy in Spain, relations normalized, until the arrival of Yuri Korchagin, current ambassador for ten years and who has been caught in the post by the worsening of relations motivated by the annexation of Crimea (2014), like the current invasion of Ukraine.
Western tension with Russia has had various consequences in the cultural world, to the extent that the Pushkin Institute —equivalent to the Spanish Cervantes Institute— of the University of Cádiz already announced that it was freezing its dissemination activity until the war was over.
All in all, Professor Encinas is confident that the current context will not deteriorate relations between Spaniards and Russians: “Regardless of the political climate, neither Spanish culture in Russia nor vice versa will suffer.
Fortunately, the academic world is more aware of the reality than the politician.
What we are not going to do is the madness of destroying ten centuries of cultural relations due to the decisions of some gentlemen who are not part of the cultural and scientific world”.
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