Abstract
For the last five hundred years, Spanish society has had to deal with an apparently uncomfortable fact: that for at least half a millennium, Iberia was mainly populated by Muslims. For a nation that aspired to be recognized not only as European, but even—for at least two centuries—as the undisputed leader of the Christian world, it has been very hard to come to terms with that reality. Accordingly, Spaniards have developed many different discursive strategies to deal with that past, from attempts at erasing it from Spain’s history as antithetical to the authentic essence of Spain, to proud self-identification with it. Islamophobia and racism have played a key role, not only in terms of negating or marginalizing that past, but also in defending that history as an essential part of the Spanish national identity. The obvious outcome is the history of the construction of a nation’s identity, a tangled and seemingly perennial struggle between different conceptions of Spain’s past, present and future.
The original text in Spanish of this chapter has been translated by Caroline Haslett, to whom I am deeply grateful. It was carried out under the auspices of the “Ramón y Cajal” program (RYC-2017-23105) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
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Notes
- 1.
Américo Castro, Sobre el nombre y el quién de los españoles (Madrid: Sarpe, 1985), 98. For a good introduction in English to Castro’s thought see Guillermo Araya, “The Evolution of Castro’s Theories,” in Américo Castro and The Meaning of Spanish Civilization, ed. José Rubia Barcia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 41–66.
- 2.
Ramiro de Maeztu, Defensa de la Hispanidad (Madrid: Graf. Universal, 1934), 205.
- 3.
For this debate, see, principally, Santos Juliá, Historias de las dos Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004); José Álvarez Junco, Mater dolorosa: la idea de España en le siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus, 2001).
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- 5.
Castro, Sobre el nombre, 47.
- 6.
Castro, Sobre el nombre, 35. Castro speaks about the “vaccines that will immunize” Spaniards against the evils provoked by the historiography he denounces.
- 7.
Castro, 35.
- 8.
Castro, 36.
- 9.
Castro, 44.
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Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, 3 vols. (Madrid: Librería Católica de San José, 1880), 3:834.
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Castro, Sobre el nombre, 33, 36, 48–49.
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Maxime Rodinson, La fascination de l’Islam (Paris: La Découverte, 2003), 71–76; Jan Loop, “Islam and the European Enlightenment,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: a Biographical History, vol. 13: Western Europe (1700–1800), ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 16–34; Sadek Neaimi, l’Islam au siècle des Lumières (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003).
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That is to say, the Spanish intellectuals that followed the example of the French Enlightenment.
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Jesús Torrecilla, Guerras literarias del XVIII español: la modernidad como invasión (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2008), 133–41; Jesús Torrecilla, “Ilustrados y musulmanes: usos de al-Andalus en el XVIII,” eHumanista, n.o 37 (2017): 342–56.
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Manuel José Martín, Historia verdadera del falso, y perverso profeta Mahoma (Madrid: Manuel Martín, 1781).
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- 24.
Arabist Francisco J. Simonet provides us with a paradigmatic example of this type of position; see Bernabé López García, “Origen, gestación y divulgación de la Historia de los mozárabes de Francisco Javier Simonet,” Awraq, n.o 22 (2005): 183–211.
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See Christiane Stallaert, Etnogénesis y etnicidad en España (Barcelona: Proyecto A Ediciones, 1998), 72–88; Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida, El antisemitismo en España (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2002), 233–49.
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Cit. in Paul Preston, El holocausto español (Barcelona: Debate, 2011), 86–87.
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Christiane Stallaert, “«Biological» Christianity and ethnicity: Spain’s construct from past centuries,” in The Dynamics of Emerging Ethnicities: Immigrant and Indigenous Ethnogenesis in Confrontation, ed. Johan Leman (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2000), 113–45.
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- 39.
“Madrid por dentro,” La Voz de la Provincia: Diario Conservador, 20 July 1897.
- 40.
“El asesinato del médico de Endrinal de la Sierra,” El Adelanto: diario de Salamanca, 25 July 1907.
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Pío Baroja, El árbol de la ciencia, 26a ed. (Madrid: Cátedra/Caro Raggio, 2012), 262.
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Benito Pérez Galdós, Aita Tettauen (Madrid: Viuda e hijos de Tello, 1905), 5, 16.
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El Moro Muza (pseud.), “Cuestiones africanas,” El Debate, 28 September 1920.
- 47.
A group of writers and intellectuals that came to prominence around 1898, the so-called “year of the Disaster”, when Spain lost its last colonies in Cuba and The Philippines, what made that the public debate about Spanish decadence gained unprecedented urgency.
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Luis de Zulueta, “El renacer del Oriente,” La Libertad, 11 January 1922.
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Miguel de Unamuno, El porvenir de España y los españoles (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1973), 23.
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Manuel Machado, Alma. Museo. Los Cantares (Madrid: Librería de Pueyo, 1907), 23.
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Blas Infante, Ideal andaluz (Sevilla: Joaquín L. Arévalo, 1915), 83.
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Gregorio García-Arista, “El idioma y sus apellidos: Andalucía interviene,” ABC, 4 December 1926.
- 54.
Antonio de la Rosa, “Un doctor, unos árabes, y yo,” La Voz, 11 December 1926.
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Gregorio García-Arista, “El idioma y… otras cosas: un faquí, los moros y el arroz con leche,” ABC, 6 January 1927.
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Reinhart Dozy, Histoire des Musulmans d’Espange jusqu’à la conquête de l’Andalousie par les Almoravides (711–1110), 3 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1861), 3:350.
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On the history of Arabic Studies in Spain, see particularly Bernabé López García, Orientalismo e ideología colonial en el arabismo español (1840–1917) (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2011); Manuela Marín, “Arabismo e Historia de España (1886–1944): introducción a los epistolarios de Julián Ribera Tarragó y Miguel Asín Palacios”, in Los epistolarios de Julián Ribera Tarragó y Miguel Asín Palacios, ed. Manuela Marín et al. (Madrid: CSIC, 2009), 11–434.
- 58.
Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos, 1:645. On the relationship between Menéndez Pelayo and the Arabists, see Pablo Bornstein, “An Orientalist Contribution to «Catholic Science»: The Historiography of Andalusi Mysticism and Philosophy in Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín”, Religions 10, n.o 10 (2019): 568.
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Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, La ciencia española, 3rd ed. 3 vols. (Madrid: Pérez Dubrull, 1887), 1:253.
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Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, “Prólogo,” in El Filósofo autodidacto, by Ibn Tufayl, translated by Francisco Pons Boigues (Zaragoza: Comas Hermanos, 1900), xvi.
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Julián Ribera, Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española (Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1912), 6, 10–11.
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Julián Ribera, “Contestación,” in La escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia, by Miguel Asín Palacios (Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1919), 395.
- 63.
On this question, see Fernando Bravo López, “Völkisch Versus Catholic Islamophobia in Spain: The Conflict Between Racial and Religious Understandings of Muslim Identity,” Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos, n.o 22 (2017): 141–64.
- 64.
Contrary to the arguments propounded by some authors; see, particularly, Stallaert, “«Biological» Christianity”; Stallaert, Etnogénesis y etnicidad.
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Bravo López, F. (2023). Moorish Blood: Islamophobia, Racism and the Struggle for the Identity of Modern Spain. In: Feldman, D., Volovici, M. (eds) Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16266-4_4
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