Spain

A Unique History

Stanley G. Payne

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Publication of this volume has been made possible,in part, through support from

the Program for Cultural Cooperation betweenSpain's Ministry of Culture and United States

Universities

The University of Wisconsin Press1930 Monroe Street. 3rd Floor

Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059uwpress.wisc.edu

3 Henrietta StreetLondon WCE 8LU, England

europanbookstore.com

Originally published in Spain as España: Unahistoria única,

copyright © 2008 by Stanley G. Payne, Jesús Cuéllar(trans.),

Ediciones Temas de Hoy, S.A. (T.H.)English edition copyright © 2011

The Board of Regents of the University of WisconsinSystem

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPayne, Stanley G.[España. English]

Spain: a unique history / Stanley G. Paynep. cm.

Originally published in Spain as España: una historiaúnica, c2008.

ISBN 978-0-299-25024-9 (pbk: alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-299-24933-5 (e-book)

I. Spain — History. 2. Spain — Historiography. I. Title.DP63.P1913 2011

946-dc222010015039

To the memory of Francisco Javier de LizarzaInda (1928-2007), most loyal of friends

ContentsList of Maps

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: The Image of Spain

Part I The Formation of a Hispanist

Part II A Reading of the History of Spain

1 Visigoths and Asturians: "Spaniards"?

2 Spain and Islam: The Myth of Al-Andalus

3 Reconquest and Crusade: A "Spanish Ideology"?

4 Spain and the West

5 Identity, Monarchy, Empire

6 Spain and Portugal

7 Decline and Recovery

8 The Problem of Spanish Liberalism

Part III Dilemmas of Contemporary History

9 Republic ... without Democrats?

10 Who Was Responsible? Origins of the Civil Warof 1936

11 Moscow and Madrid: A ControversialRelationship

Relationship

12 The Spanish Civil War: Last Episode of WorldWar I or Opening Round of World War II?

13 Spanish Fascism a Strange Case?

14 Francisco Franco: Fascist Monster or Savior ofthe Fatherland?

15 In the Shadow of the Military

16 Controversies over History in ContemporarySpain

Notes

Maps

The Hispanic Peninsula in 800

The Hispanic Peninsula in 1300

Provincial divisions of modern Spain

Abbreviations

ARMHAsociación para la Recuperación de laMemoria Histórica (Association for theRecovery of Historical Memory)

BOC Bloque Obrero y Campesino (Workers andPeasants Bloc)

CEDAConfederación Española de DerechasAutónomas (Spanish Confederation ofAutonomous Rightist Groups)

CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo(National Confederation of Labor)

ETA Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homelandand Freedom)

FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica (IberianAnarchist Federation)

FET Falange Española Tradicionalista (laterMoviento Nacional)

ICGP International Conference Group on Portugal

INI Instituto Nacional de Industria (NationalInstitute of Industry)

JSU Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (UnitedSocialist Youth)

NDH Independent State of Croatia

ORGAOrganización Regional Gallega Autónoma(Autonomous Regional Organization ofGalicia)

PCE Patido Comunista de España (CommunistParty of Spain)

PNV Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque

PNV Nationalist Party)

POUM Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista(Workers' Party of Marxist Unification)

PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español (SpanishSocialist Workers' Party)

PSUC Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya(United Socialist Party of Catalonia)

SSPHS Society for Spanish and PortugueseHistorical Studies

UCD Unión de Centro Democrático (Union ofDemocratic Center)

IntroductionThe Image of Spain

All history is specific and singular, and therefore inkey respects unique. Though certain similarities maybe observed, all history is also in some sense"different," just as all human beings have many thingsin common yet in every case remain differentindividuals. At a certain level of comparison andabstraction many common factors and characteristicsmaybe identified in the histories of diverse countries,yet the history of every land also remains individualand in important ways different from all others.

Some histories have seemed more singular, moredifferent from the supposed norm, than others, and inwestern Europe the history of Spain has for severalcenturies been considered the most unique. What hasoften been called "the problem of Spain" firstemerged in the seventeenth century with the decline inmilitary and economic power, accompanied by anearly failure in "modernization," even though issues ofunity and stability were resolved in terms ofmaintaining the status quo. After the great work ofJuan de Mariana was published in 1602, Spaniardsvirtually ceased to write general histories of Spain, anactivity that became increasingly the work of Frenchand British authors during the eighteenth century.Foreign historians tended to see Spain's history asdifferent from the supposed western European normand also as problematic. Although the nationalisthistoriography of the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies claimed to resolve the problems, many have

not agreed. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, for example,was one of the greatest Spanish medievalists duringthe twentieth century. He lived half his life as aRepublican émigré in Buenos Aires, but he was alsoa practicing Catholic and ardent Spanish patriot.When he published a massive two-volumeinterpretation of his nation's history in 1956, he titled itEspaña, un enigma histórico.

Attitudes toward major aspects of Spanish historyhave generally been more negative and critical than toany other west European country. This begins with theevaluation of the Visigoths, often seen as divided,inept, and quickly decadent. The medieval kingdomshave been viewed as peripheral and backward, theReconquest as dubious, conflictive, and long delayed.While the relative tolerance of a large and thrivingJewish community in the Middle Ages might haveearned Spain good marks, the Inquisition and thesubsequent expulsion brought opprobrium. The use ofHabsburg military power and the terms of theconquest of America generated widespread criticism,while the seventeenth-century decline was soon seenas the most classic case of "decadence" since the fallof Rome. From that time on Spain has been viewed invarying ways as a special "problem," defined invarying terms-and sometimes with regard to quitedifferent issues-from the seventeenth century to thepresent.

This was less the case during the Middle Ageswhen Spain was perceived as a normal and regular, ifgeographically peripheral, part of Latin Christendom.The popularity of the pilgrimage to Santiago deCompostela rivaled that of Rome, while the struggle

against the Muslims sometimes took an internationalcharacter, as foreign crusaders and adventurersintermittently flocked to the peninsula. In the laterMiddle Ages Italian merchants increasingly foundcommerce and finance in Spain to be lucrative, whilethe crowns of Aragon and Castile played normal rolesin the west Mediterranean and west Europeaninternational systems.

The sixteenth century was characterized by agrowth in Spanish prestige, somewhatcounterbalanced by the steep rise in criticism anddenunciation that Julián Juderías would baptize fourcenturies later as the Black Legend. Diplomatic andmilitary prestige was very high, soon to beaccompanied by cultural influence. Castilian becamean international language, and by the beginning of theseventeenth century Spanish literature was widelyread abroad, either in Castilian or in translation. Spainwas a religious leader as well, along with Italy playingone of the dominant roles in the Counter-Reformation.Classic Spanish religious writings in theology andphilosophy, such as those of Francisco Suárez or Luisde Granada, would sometimes be read extensively,even in Protestant countries, into the eighteenthcentury.

During the late sixteenth century, a dual image ofSpain developed. On the one hand was respect forthe empire and for the monarchy's military power(strongly tinged with fear), accompanied by respectfor its literary and intellectual culture, all the whilecoexisting with the Black Legend stereotype of cruelty,fanaticism, and lust for power and destruction. Asmilitary power declined, negative stereotypesincreased, though their content began to change.

increased, though their content began to change.

To be sure, west Europeans had found Spain anexotic place even in the fifteenth century, with anoriental touch in so far as it was the only western landwhere sizable numbers of Jews and Muslims might befound. As travel increased during the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, visitors, especially those fromFrance, left an increasing number of accounts. Theycould not get used to smaller portions of food, theabsence of beer and butter, the heavy use of garlic,olive oil, and saffron. Xenophobia was commonthroughout Europe, but the Spanish seemed morexenophobic than most. Arrogance was the qualitymost commented on about Spaniards both at homeand abroad, while visitors were also taken aback bythe egalitarian manners of the lower classes, findingthat beggars insisted on being addressed as "señor"and requested almsgivers to remove their hats whenproviding charity.1

The most positive evaluation seems to have beenmade from the opposite end of Europe. The elite ofCatholic Poland, on the extreme eastern frontier ofWestern civilization, facing Muscovy and alsosometimes the Turkish empire, developed somesense of affinity with a Catholic Spain on theborderlands of Christendom far to the west and south.Polish leaders who intervened in Russia during itsearly seventeenth-century "Time of Troubles" likenedthemselves to Spanish conquistadores extending thefrontiers of Catholicism and European civilization.2Later, in a manner partially parallel with the decline ofSpain, the large Polish-Lithuanian empire in easternEurope would falter, then eventually disappear fromthe map altogether. By the early nineteenth century the

historian Jan Lelewel would develop a broadcomparative and parallel history of Poland and ofSpain from the sixteenth through the eighteenthcenturies.3 Even in the twenty-first century, Polishcommentators are the least likely to engage in"politically correct" criticism and commentary ondevelopments in Spain.

Broadly speaking, the content of foreign imagesand stereotypes of Spain has changed its terms andemphases in different historical eras.4 These may beroughly categorized as (1) the classic Black Legendstereotype of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;(2) "enlightened" criticism of the second half of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries; (3) the"romantic Spain" myth of the nineteenth century; and(4) the composite stereotypes of the late nineteenthand twentieth centuries, which revived aspects ofeach of the foregoing versions, sometimes adding tothem contemporary political content that often creatednew myths and stereotypes. What they all have incommon is the penchant for stereotyping,simplification, and Manicheanism, with little or noconcern for the diversity of Spain, not merely in term ofits regions but also with regard to varying politicalvalues or projects, cultural attitudes, and practices,and even differences in religious emphasis. At thesame time, we should recognize that much of thecontent in these images and stereotypes was firstdeveloped by the Spanish themselves, beginning withFray Bartolomé de las Casas in the sixteenth century.In more recent times, particularly, nearly all the mostabsurd and exaggerated statements about Spanishculture and history have been made by Spaniardsthemselves.

The Black Legend viewed the Spanish as cruel,bloodthirsty, sadistic, powerhungry, and monstrouslydestructive, while "enlightened" attitudes from the lateseventeenth century on described a militarilyweakened Spain as no longer cruel or dangerouslydestructive, but as a land inhabited by proud, lazy,ignorant, and unproductive people, dominated byhollow vanity and spiritual benightedness.5 Spaniardswere no longer to be hated and feared, but rather tobe pitied and scorned.

The early nineteenth century became a time of"paradigm shift," with a new emphasis placed on theromantic and the picturesque, increasingly interpretedin terms more favorable to the Spanish. Foreignertravelers had often found elements of the exotic andpicturesque in the country, but in earlier timesevaluated such aspects in a negative manner astypical features of a strange and rather hostile land.The French, British, and American travelers andwriters, who forged the "romantic Spain" myth in thefirst half of the nineteenth century, focused on certainstereotypes that they interpreted as the enchantingreflection of a distinct premodern, pre-industrialculture possessing positive features, which, if notsuperior (or even equal) to those of their owncountries, were at least worthy of esteem. Theformerly fanatical Spanish were now seen as peopleof faith and ardent commitment who spurned the crassmaterialism of northern countries. What was oncecalled ignorance was now viewed as a sense of honordisappearing from the commercial society of otherlands. Behavior once denounced as violent nowbetokened courage and the capacity for self-sacrifice.The rudeness and egalitarianism of the lower classes

was no longer evaluated as a Spanish grotesquerie ofthe uncouth but as the survival of a sense of authenticand individual personality no longer found in thehumdrum world of London and Paris.6

"Romantic Spain" was no more real than the BlackLegend, to which it was related, and was not by anymeans uniformly positive in its evaluation but gave anew twist to the old stereotypes. From the earlynineteenth century the two visions often coexisted inthe images of Spain held in other western lands,being vaguely combined in modified forms by manyobservers and commentators. The comparatively slowrate of modernization during the nineteenth centuryserved only to perpetuate these stereotypes, as didthe political and military failures of the period. Theromantic Spain motif was so firmly established as lateas the midtwentieth century that the tourist program ofthe Franco regime even co-opted certain aspects of itin the commercially successful "Spain is Different"tourist promotions of the 1950s.7

All this did nothing, however, to incorporate thehistory of Spain into the broader history of Europe, forit meant that Spain continued to be seen as anexception, a kind of Other. Aside from its success inoccupying much of the Western Hemisphere, theplace of Spain within broader European and Westernhistory from the fifteenth century on continued to beviewed as either negative and destructive or passive,relatively nonparticipatory, and irrelevant. The partialexception was medieval Spanish history, which wasseen to play a certain role in Europe's development. Adeeper, more comprehensive and objective treatmentof Spanish history by scholars abroad would emergewith the great expansion of historical studies in the

with the great expansion of historical studies in the1960s and afterwards. Even then, progress at firstwould be limited, for some of the foreign scholarswriting about contemporary Spain in the second halfof the twentieth century had only a limited grasp ofSpanish history as a whole, and so in their commentson earlier periods would either consciously orunconsciously repeat certain standard tropes drawnfrom the myths of romantic Spain or the BlackLegend, or both.8

Only the completion of socioeconomic andeducational modernization during the later years ofFranco, followed by the success of the democraticTransition, would finally put an end to most of thesestereotypes, at least with regard to contemporarySpain. There, by the end of the century, the old mythswould, as J. N. Hillgarth puts it, "be replaced by aneven more misleading generalization, that Spain is aEuropean country with a historical trajectory exactlylike any other." 9 The work of the historian is neverdone.

Part I

The Formation of aHispanist

The study of Spain is rather unique among scholarlyenterprises in having become an "ism" —"Hispanism." Scholarly activity is normally recognizedas an "ism" only when it pertains to a very broad fieldof study, as in "classicism" and "orientalism," not withregard to a single country. Foreign scholars who studyGermany or Russia are sometimes described asGermanists or Russianists, but the term "Germanism"or "Russianism" is not normally applied. The word"hispanista" was originally used in Spain during thelate nineteenth century in two different senses, one ofthem being equivalent to panhispanista orhispanoamericanista, applied to those who soughtcloser ties among all Spanish-speaking countries, thesecond referring to foreign scholars who dedicatedthemselves to studying Spanish themes. During thefirst half of the twentieth century, the second sense ofthe term came to predominate.

Hispanism originated during the nineteenth century,parallel to the estheticism of the "romantic Spain"concept developed primarily by the writers and artistsof France and England. As distinct from the latter,however, scholarly Hispanism developed at the sametime as the expansion of the universities, even thoughit was vitally assisted by independent scholars andphilanthropists. Although individual Hispanists mightbe found throughout western Europe, their work

appeared especially in French and English, and to alesser degree in German, during the course of thenineteenth century, developing rapidly in the UnitedStates. By 1909 Martin Hume, perhaps the leadingBritish Hispanist of his generation, would declare thatthe North American academic world "now standsabsolutely pre-eminent in this branch of learning."Three years later, in a lecture in Salamanca, Miguelde Unamuno expressed much the same judgment.1

The origins of Hispanism in the United States arecomplex.2 Hume referred to what he termed an"instinctive mutual attraction" between Spain and theUnited States, but that is probably an exaggeration.The remote origins of the United States lie inElizabethan England, for whom Spain was the majorenemy and which sedulously cultivated what morethan three centuries later would be termed the "BlackLegend," certainly not a promising beginning.Moreover, during the eighteenth century, thegovernment of Spain was generally aligned withFrance, the principal enemy of Great Britain, and theattitudes of the Black Legend continued to informAmerican attitudes during the nineteenth century, andto some extent during the first half of the twentiethcentury as well.

Spain was much more important for the UnitedStates during the early years of the American republicthan it would be later. The empire reached its all-timegreatest geographical extent just as the United Stateswas being born in the 1770s, and the revival of theSpanish navy meant that it continued to be aEuropean power of some significance. Theintervention of Spain on behalf of the thirteen coloniesin their war of independence against Great Britain

in their war of independence against Great Britainwas of some importance in the American victory,while imperial Spain would continue to be thesouthern neighbor of the United States throughout thefirst generation of its existence.3 The fledglingAmerican republic initially established only three full-scale embassies (as distinct from more modestlegations) abroad, in London, Paris, and Madrid,relations with Spain being surpassed in importanceonly by those with Britain and France. Even after mostof America was lost to the Spanish crown, two of thethree territories closest to the United States-Cuba andPuerto Rico-were retained, so that Spain wouldremain an important neighbor throughout thenineteenth century a relationship that reached a violentclimax in 1898. After that, connections with Spaindwindled, though they became more important againduring the Second World War and the Cold War.

Interest in Spain among American scholars seemsto have stemmed from three sources: (1) theimportance of classical Spanish literature, whichalways enjoyed respect in the English-speaking world,facilitated by the fact that Spanish is not a difficultlanguage for English-speaking people to learn toread; (2) the importance of relations with Spain duringthe nineteenth century; and (3) the sense of Spain andof Spanish culture as fundamental to the greaterWestern Hemisphere, and therefore of greaterimportance to the United States than these would beto most European countries.

Its scholarly origins stem from the second quarter ofthe nineteenth century. George Erving, chargéd'affaires of the Madrid embassy during the 1820s,may be considered the first American Hispanist

scholar, publishing the first book to appear in Englishon the language and culture of the Basques. Americanwriters of the same generation also helped to developthe myth of romantic Spain. Washington Irving (in thisregard the earliest ancestor of Ernest Hemingway)published the longest-lived of all American books onSpain, Tales from the Alhambra (1831), whichremains in print after nearly two centuries. Aconsiderable number of travel books and historicalworks published by Americans during the nineteenthcentury continued in this vein. The first major work oferudite Hispanism was George Ticknor's History ofSpanish Literature (1849), followed by the widelyread works of the historian William Hickling Prescott.4Prescott was, in fact, the first major Americanhistorian of any European country; thus, at least inserious American historiography, Hispanism initiallyled the way. Not for another half century wouldsubsequent American historians of Europe rise toPrescott's level in terms of primary research andinterpretative synthesis, and his achievement was allthe more notable in that he was nearly blind.

It may have been Prescott, even more than Irving,who set the tone. He was the greatest Hispanisthistorian of his era in any country, but Prescottprovided a sort of canonical statement of the BlackLegend during the nineteenth century, defining whatRichard Kagan has termed the "Prescott paradigm,"which would long dominate attitudes toward Spain.This interpretation made of Spain the very opposite ofthe United States, its intrinsic antithesis. "Americawas the future — republican, entrepreneurial, rational;while Spain — monarchist, indolent, fanaticalrepresented the past." 5 This vision — vision more

than analysis — would be repeated in a series ofbooks on Spain, the American Southwest, and LatinAmerica during the nineteenth century, and wouldresonate on a broader, more popular level during theSpanish-American War of 1898.

There was, however, from the mid-nineteenthcentury on a minority current within American writingabout Spain that was less negative and rather moreobjective toward the country's problems. Its first majorexponent was the Baltimore lawyer and sometimediplomat Severn T. Wallis, who published twojudicious and well-balanced books between 1849 and1853 about contemporary Spanish problems.6 Wallisdid not find Spain to be hopelessly deformed byhistory, culture, or national character, but to besuffering from a series of problems and flawedpolicies, which were amenable to reform and need notpermanently handicap the country.7 This minoritycurrent, however, would not completely come to thefore until the beginning of the full flowering of a laterAnglo-North American Hispanism in the field of historyduring the 1960s.

Somewhat ironically, the Spanish-American Warmore or less coincided with the initial flourishing ofAmerican Hispanism at a high scholarly level, theproduct of the expansion of American universitiesduring the latter part of the nineteenth century. Thenext century would bring the opening of the privatelyfunded Hispanic Society of America in New York, andthen completion of the classic study of the Inquisitionby Henry Charles Lea. Despite the major work ofhistorians such as Prescott and Lea (and later RobertB. Merriman), American Hispanism would focusheavily on the esthetic, with the proliferation of

heavily on the esthetic, with the proliferation of"Spanish departments" in American colleges anduniversities, departments dedicated almostexclusively to the study and teaching of language andliterature.8 During the first half of the twentieth century,Spanish history (by comparison, at least) probablyreceived less attention than it had earlier, and moreoften than not was entirely missing from historycurricula, although the study of Latin American historyslowly and steadily expanded. As it was, the study ofSpanish history was nearly nonexistent when I enteredgraduate school in 1955.

Moreover, arguably the only book in English at thattime that had attempted a searching analysis of theproblems of contemporary Spain was GeraldBrenan's The Spanish Labyrinth (1944). Based onBrenan's experience of more than a decade in Spainand his research in secondary literature in the BritishMuseum, it probed many of the key political and socialissues, often with a depth and originality not to befound elsewhere. Nonetheless, despite Brenan'slengthy personal experience in the country, he oftengot lost in his labyrinth and sometimes fell far short ofobjectivity. As William Phillips has pointed out, in hisbroader judgments and conclusions Brenan often fellback on his own reworking of the stereotypes of boththe Black Legend and "romantic Spain." He insistedon the existence of a national character dominated byspontaneity and by "faith," a "religious ideal" that didnot stem from Christianity (since Brenan was not aChristian) but instead "is doubtless due fundamentallyto the influence of Moorish ideas in Christiancommunities. The deepest strata of Spanish thoughtand political sentiment are oriental." 9 Only in the finalyears of his life did Brenan retract such stereotypes in

an article published in the Madrid daily El Pais.

The question most frequently asked me, especiallyin Spain, was what led me to become a Hispanist inthe first place. This was never part of any careful planbut simply developed as a consequence of a series ofevents and experiences, some of them perfectlyfortuitous. I was born in 1934 in north Texas in Denton,just to the north of Dallas, then a small town of around12,000 inhabitants. My parents were "northerners"who had moved to Texas from Colorado in the hopeof encountering better economic conditions during theGreat Depression, a hope that was completelydisappointed. Denton was not part of Hispanic southor southwest Texas, but was almost entirely Anglo-American (with a small segregated black population)and culturally more part of the southern "Bible Belt."There were very few Mexicans, though a slightinfluence of Mexican food was noticeable. During myfour years in elementary school in Denton, I only verybriefly had one classmate who was bilingual inSpanish.

During World War II, however, the Texas Board ofEducation decided that the new global context made itdesirable that all Texas schoolchildren, from at leastthe fifth year of elementary education, should study aforeign language. This was done in a very simple andrudimentary way, having the homeroom teachersimply insert two hours of language study per weekinto the existing curriculum. Few, if any, of theteachers were particularly expert in a foreignlanguage, but the language almost universally chosenwas Spanish, which had already become the onemost widely studied in the country. There was one

Mexican girl in my class, named Carmen, whohappened to be relatively bilingual, and it quicklybecame apparent to me that Carmen possessed afluency and precision of pronunciation that quitesurpassed our teacher, so that I tried to pattern mypronunciation on that of Carmen. The amount ofSpanish that I learned in this way was nonethelessminimal. In June 1944 my family became part of thegreat wartime migration to California, where languageinstruction in the elementary schools was notpracticed, but nonetheless my brief exposure toSpanish during 1943-44 had, in retrospect, set aprecedent.

The standard curriculum in American secondaryschools at that time offered (indeed, required) foreignlanguage study only during the final two years. In thelarger schools the choice lay between Spanish,French, and German, and it seemed natural that Ichose Spanish. When I entered university-levelstudies at Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley in1951, I found that the curriculum required both a majorand a minor field of concentration. It was a foregoneconclusion that for me the former would be history. Ihad been strongly attracted to history since my earlychildhood, though my reading had been informedmuch more by stories of Indian fighting and historicalnovels than by scholarly studies. Yet approachinghistory through the imagination was almostundoubtedly the best way for a boy to do so, and itgave me a certain empathy with the past that I couldthen apply in a more systematic and scholarly fashionlater on.

For my minor field of concentration I chose Spanish,without the slightest hesitation, simply because I found

without the slightest hesitation, simply because I foundstudying the language interesting and congenial. Atthe age of seventeen or eighteen I had little if anythought of using it in a serious way. Moreover, studiesin Spanish or about Spanish-speaking countries in theUnited States had come to focus primarily on LatinAmerica, not Spain. Thus as an undergraduate Ilearned something about Spanish literature but almostnothing about the history of Spain, nor, for that matter,did the latter then interest me in the slightest. For me,serious historical study revolved around the UnitedStates, England, Germany, and Russia. I did learn toread Spanish reasonably well and began to develop amodest conversational ability in the language, but I stillhad not a thought of using it for more advanced work.My principal research paper dealt with the Colombianpoet José Asunción Silva, not with a Spanish writer,and when my Spanish instructor suggested that Imight want to learn Portuguese as well, I shrugged thesuggestion off, having at that point no particularinterest in the Iberian Peninsula. (I could not haveimagined that within less than twenty years I wouldbecome, so far as I know, the only American historianever to write a history of Portugal.)

My most absorbing interest in history and culture,during the last two of my four years as anundergraduate, was focused on Russia. At that time,immediately after the death of Stalin, the Soviet Unionseemed at the height of its power, but I was moreattracted by the literature and culture of Russia, and byits history prior to Communism. This seemed to methe most singular and fascinating of Europeanhistories, because of the uniqueness of the cultureand the character of its development. The Russianlanguage was not taught at my small college, however,

so I was not prepared to enter a doctoral program asa candidate in Russian history. I made application tothe Russian Institute at Columbia University, then theleading center of Russian studies, but the instituteasked for further letters of recommendation, aresponse that was held up for some three months inthe mail. By the time that it arrived, the deadline hadlong since passed, together with my principalopportunity to become a Russianist. But "no hay malque por bien no venga" (there is no ill that doesn't leadto good) — this breakdown in mail delivery proved ablessing in disguise. Temperamentally I would havebeen unsuited to research in the Soviet Union, whichwould have been a source of endless irritation andfrustration. Undoubtedly I would have accomplishedmuch less in that field, but I never abandonedaltogether my interest in Russia. Even after beginningresearch on Spanish history, I took six weeks duringthe summer of 1956 to enroll at the University ofCalifornia-Berkeley in order to begin the study of theRussian language. In retrospect, however, I nevernecessarily curse inefficient mail service, because in1955 it had possibly changed the course of my life forthe better. I received only one good offer of afellowship to begin graduate study in 1955. It camefrom the Claremont Graduate School (now ClaremontUniversity), one of the cluster of colleges in Claremont,at the eastern end of Los Angeles County in SouthernCalifornia. Claremont provided the encouragement tobegin work on Spanish history and also an attractiveand supportive environment for me to gain theexperience needed to make the transition from asmall college in a rural setting in northern California toa much more complex and sophisticated scholarlyenvironment in Columbia University and the city of

New York two years later.

It was during the summer of 1955 that I firstdeveloped an interest in Spain as a possible area ofresearch, stemming from two books that I read at thattime. One was a treatment of Spanish society andculture, The Spanish Temper (1954), by the notedBritish literary critic (and avocational Hispanist) V. S.Pritchett; the other was a book on Spanish art history,focusing especially on the Middle Ages, whose titleand author I have long since forgotten. These twoworks were in fact the first that I had ever selected toread on Spain (aside from the minimal readingrequired in literature courses) and both fired myimagination, for the very first time giving me the ideathat Spain might be a genuinely interesting — andoriginal — area of study. Since at Claremont I hadbeen accepted in modern European history but wasobviously not going to be specializing in Russia — afield not then offered at Claremont — I had to find afocus for my initial research.

The faculty at Claremont were completely receptiveto the idea of working on Spain, which seemed tothem both valid and original. I had two different facultyadvisors, the first being Henry Cord Meyer in Germanhistory, who served as my Europeanist advisor. I alsoworked for him as a research assistant and learned agreat deal from him about becoming a professionalscholar and about European history more generally.

There was no one at Claremont who specialized inthe modern history of Spain, as indeed no such fieldwas offered in any other graduate school, though avery few American scholars, such as C. J. Bishko atVirginia, worked in earlier Spanish history. Gabriel

Jackson at that time was teaching at WellesleyCollege, but this was a women's institution with nodoctoral program. At Claremont I was thereforereferred to the only professor who taught LatinAmerican history, Hubert Herring. This was a fortunateencounter, for at that time Herring was one of the fewLatin Americanists in the United States with aninterest in Spain. Herring had been at one time aProtestant missionary in Latin America, but laterturned to an academic career and was best known fora popular textbook on general Latin American history,Good Neighbors, published in 1955. He had visitedSpain three times and at least had some sense of thecountry.

Herring encouraged my interest and alsosuggested a very fruitful research topic. I myself hadfew ideas about that, for the notion of working onSpain had just entered my mind, and I had had neithertime nor opportunity for the preliminary readingneeded to select a topic. I believe that I firstsuggested Manuel Azaña as a topic; besides Franco,he was one of the few figures in contemporarySpanish history that I had even heard of. Little did Isuspect that he would later become a sort of bêtenoire of mine.

Herring, to his credit, wanted me to do somethingdifferent and rather more original. He suggested thefigure of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, whom I hadnever heard of, but I responded instinctively toHerring's guidance and to what seemed to me aninteresting project. This became my master's thesis, atwo-hundred-page study titled "José Antonio Primo deRivera and the Beginning of Falange Española"

(Claremont Graduate School, 1957), which focusedon the movement during the years 1933-36.

This was a mere start, and I assumed that I wouldhave to switch to a completely different theme for mydoctoral dissertation. Consequently I had no idea thatthis was only the first step in what would become afifty-year involvement with the history of Falangism andFranquismo, and later with the comparative history offascism in general. I had no personal research"agenda" and at that time had no more interest infascism and/or the radical Right than in a dozen otherthemes. Moreover, at that time there was no such fieldas "fascist studies," and those would begin to emergeonly in the following decade of the 1960s.

I wrote to José María de Areilza, then ambassadorin Washington, asking for any materials that he mightbe able to provide, and he sent to me copies of theObras completas and the Biografía apasionada byFelipe Ximénez de Sandoval. The only primary datathat I had to consult was the complete collection of ElSol for the years of the Republic, then held in thelibrary of UCLA, not far away. This gave me arelatively accurate and objective account of the firststreet violence between Falangists and the Left in1933-34.

It is important to understand that none of myprofessors, not even Herring, knew anything in detailabout contemporary Spanish history, so I had the totalpersonal responsibility of the autodidact. I nevercomplained about this, because I have a good deal ofintellectual independence and felt perfectly capable oflearning Spanish history on my own.

During this first phase, the only professor with whomI talked who had extensive personal knowledge ofcontemporary Spanish affairs was the CatalanSocialist and former Republican diplomat, LuisMonguió, then at Mills College in Oakland. LikeFrancisco García Lorca and a number of otherprofessional diplomats who had supported theRepublic, after the Civil War Monguió became aprofessor of Spanish and Latin American literature,and soon joined the Spanish Department at theUniversity of California-Berkeley. Perhaps his majorwork was a volume of criticism that appeared duringthese years on La poesía posmodernista peruana;this caught my eye because I have always consideredPeruvian postmodernism the most interesting schoolof poetry in Latin America during the twentieth century.

Time and distance had not moderated nor addedany complexity to Monguiós understanding ofcontemporary Spanish politics, which he assured mewas simply a class struggle between "exploiters" and"exploited." When I pointed out to him that mypreliminary research indicated that under the Republiclethal violence was first used in Madrid by the Left andnot by Falangists, he simply dismissed the data out ofhand as erroneous. This was my first experience ofthe extraordinary imperviousness of the Spanish Leftto any critical research findings, and to their persistentuse of a mythified treatment of history. At that time,however, I merely attributed this to the personalidiosyncrasy of Monguió, for I was then stronglysympathetic to the Left.

Since Claremont did not at that time offer thedoctorate in European history, after two years I had to

move on for my doctoral studies. Only in 1956-57 did Icome firmly to abandon any further consideration ofworking in Russian history. I had a brief chat withNicholas Riazanovsky in the summer of 1956 atBerkeley, where I studied the Russian languageintensively for six weeks, and he told me that hejudged that the field of Russian history was becomingadequately developed and no longer in such need ofyoung scholars as had been the case a few yearsearlier. My last Russianist application, to study withDonald Treadgold at the University of Washington in1956, had produced only the meager offer of analternate teaching assistantship, and I then put thatoffer firmly behind me.

In 1957 I applied for admission to the doctoralprograms at Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago. Allthree admitted me and offered a fellowship, thoughonly in the case of Chicago was the fellowship largeenough to pay my full expenses for a year. I decided toaccept the fellowship at Columbia not because thatuniversity was any more prestigious than the othertwo, but because I calculated that a university in a citylike New York would be more likely to have theresources to foster research in a new field such as thecontemporary history of Spain. This was notsomething that I knew for a fact but more an intuitivehunch or wager, which, in fact, turned out to be exactlycorrect.

Columbia proved to be the best choice for threedifferent reasons. First, it had adopted an accelerateddoctoral program, which required of students alreadypossessing a master's degree scarcely more than twosemesters of class work (most of which could betaken simply as "registration credit"), as well as a

taken simply as "registration credit"), as well as awritten qualifying examination and a two-hour oralexamination for the doctorate, before moving on todissertation research. Thus, given the powers ofconcentration that I possessed at that time, I had onlyto spend one academic year meeting requirements atColumbia, whereas at Harvard and Chicago two fullyears or more would have been required. Thisenabled me to move much more rapidly and greatlyeased the potential financial strain, since I wasotherwise hard put to finance graduate study.

Second, I had the good fortune to have ShepardClough as my adviser at Columbia, although I had notbeen aware of this ahead of time, and it formed nopart of the reasoning behind my selection of thatuniversity. It turned out that Clough had served on theadmissions and fellowship committee of the HistoryDepartment the year before and had urged that afellowship be offered to the potential young candidatein Spanish history. Clough was a former student ofCarlton J. H. Hayes, who had been ambassador inMadrid during 1942-45; Clough was a specialist inmodern French and Italian economic history. Aboutthat time, his Economic History of Modern Italy wasawarded a prize by the Italian government. Cloughhad no knowledge of Spanish history but thought ituseful and even important that others study the topic.Thus I became the first of several students to carry outresearch on Spain under Clough (the next would beEdward Malefakis). He strongly supported my work,helping me to obtain a fulsome research fellowshipfrom the Social Science Research Council (SSRC),which would in fact provide more money than I couldspend in the very inexpensive Spain of 1958-59.

The third advantage that I derived from Columbiawas key contacts with the Spanish émigré community,which worked out even better than I had hoped. Thefirst Republican exile I met was Emilio GonzálezLópez, who had been one of the two key leaders ofthe Organización Regional Gallega Autonoma(ORGA), the main party of the Galicianist LeftRepublicans (its other principal leader being CasaresQuiroga). In exile Don Emilio was for many yearsprofessor of Spanish literature at Hunter College (CityUniversity of New York), and I had several fruitfulconversations with him about contemporary Spanishhistory and historiography, in addition to the politics ofthe Second Republic, in which he had played such anactive role. Though González López had been a manof the Left, he was not sectarian like Monguió butobjective and insightful. He was, in a totally informalway, the only instructor in Spanish history I had had tothat point.

In addition to my discussions with Don Emilio, Imade a series of other contacts, such as those withEloy Vaquero, a veteran politician of the Radical Partywho had been a cabinet minister under Lerroux, andwith the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT —National Confederation of Labor) leader andjournalist, Jesus González Malo, who was married tothe literature professor Carmen Aldecoa. ThroughGonzález Malo I was introduced to the biweeklyEspaña Libre, founded originally by Left-leaningRepublicans (if I recall correctly) but supported byother sectors of the Spanish Left in New York. Laterthe first book review that I ever wrote for publication,on Victor Alba's Historia del Frente Popular,appeared in España Libre.10

By far the most significant for me of the émigréSpaniards whom I met in New York was JoaquínMaurín, cofounder of the famous Partido Obrero deUnificacion Marxista (POUM — Workers' Party ofMarxist Unification). He would become an importantfriend, with whom I maintained frequent contact up tothe time of his death in 1973. In some sense Maurín"adopted" me almost as a kind of American stepson.He was a remarkable man and a very good friend,retaining the vigorous personality and rather strikingphysical appearance that had made him a key leaderamong the revolutionary Left during the early 1930s.His Franco-Russian wife, Jeanne Lifschitz, was ratherpuzzled by the special relationship that developedbetween us, for, though by 1958 Maurín was largelysocial democratic in his political outlook, she knewthat I did not at all share the revolutionary Marxistorientation that characterized his active career inSpain. I can only say that there quickly developed aspecial elective affinity between us on the basis ofcertain shared interests and a mutual liking andesteem. Maurín appreciated the seriousness of myscholarly interest and the willingness to work hard at it— things that he had never encountered before inAmerican attitudes toward Spain during what wasalready his decade-long exile in New York. Soon hisconcerns became almost paternal, unfailinglysolicitous of my best interests and well-being. Muchmore sophisticated than most of his revolutionarycounterparts of the 1930s, Maurín had also preservedmuch of the puritanism of his Aragonese origins andsternly warned me of the dangers of "Caribbeancorruption" when I went to Havana in June 1960 toinspect Castro's revolution. I will never forget our lastfarewell in 1973, when he was already stricken with

what was a fatal illness. Since it was raining, heinsisted on accompanying me with his umbrella as Ihailed a taxi in front of his apartment building in NewYork.11

I was originally introduced to Maurín by FranciscoGarcía Lorca, a brother of the poet, whose career asa diplomat had been cut short by the Civil War. Hedeveloped a second career as Spanish literatureprofessor at Columbia, where he was one of theeditors of the Revista Hispánica Moderna. GarcíaLorca was a member of the tribunal of my oraldoctoral examination, which took place late in April1958. During the course of that examination FrankTannenbaum, then the senior professor of LatinAmerican history at Columbia, queried me about thecharacter of the contribution of Spain to LatinAmerican civilization. I knew that Tannenbaum was aproponent of the Black Legend, was interestedprimarily in the Indian and black populations of LatinAmerica, and always tended to denigrate the role ofthe Spanish. There were obviously severe limits to theextent that any humble student could question theopinions of a professor who formed part of thetribunal, but I have always had an independent streakthat rebelled against forms of political correctness. Ichose very carefully the terms of my response andindicated that the positive contributions of Spain toLatin American civilization should not be dismissedout of hand.

My response was carefully noted by García Lorca,who was pleased and later recounted it to Maurín. Thelatter in turn then wrote it up in slightly exaggeratedform as a stirring defense of Spanish civilization,

publishing it in España Libre and elsewhere. Thispoints up the extent to which the Republican exiles,despite their critique of current Spanish institutions,maintained a strong and defensive Spanish identityabroad, almost to the point of a cultural nationalism.

The most important thing that Maurín did for me wasto open the route to the oral history research that Iwould soon undertake in Spain. He put me in touchwith his veteran POUMist colleague Julián Gorkín (oneof the POUM leaders prosecuted in Barcelona by theNegrín government in 1938). Gorkín was active inParis with the exiled opposition and was also avigorous anti-Soviet publicist. He maintained contactwith Dionisio Ridruejo, who by that point had joinedthe active opposition to the Franco regime and hadformed a small clandestine social democratic groupwith Enrique Tierno Galván and a few others. Gorkín'sletter of presentation to Ridruejo would befundamental in initiating the long series of contactsthat I would develop for my research with current andex-Falangists.

I embarked for Spain in September 1958 on theQueen Mary. The era of transatlantic jet travel wouldbegin just one year later, so that I participated in thefinal phase of ocean voyages just before they wouldbe rendered technologically obsolete. My first stopwas in Paris, where I was able to meet a variety ofémigré political personalities, ranging from Gorkín toJosé Antonio de Aguirre. Julio Just, a former leader ofIzquierda Republicana from the Levante, even invitedme on a short bus trip to the Paris suburbs to meet theelderly Diego Martínez Barrio, then president of theRepublican government-in-exile. At that point the

former Radical and Unión Republicana leader was oldand feeble, and our conversation lacked substance,but it was very generous of just to take me to meethim.

The most interesting Republican political figure inParis at that time was José Antonio de Aguirre, headof the Basque government-in-exile, which inhabited itsown separate building in the "Delegation d'Euzkadi"on the Right Bank of the Seine. The position oflecturer had been arranged for Aguirre at Columbiaduring World War II as a sort of wartime "cover," andthus I came from the university with a strong letter ofintroduction to him. On the personal level Aguirre wasmost engaging and likeable, very friendly andagreeable to talk with. He gave me a great deal oftime, and we had a very interesting and lengthyconversation about Spanish and, especially, Basqueaffairs, which was repeated nine months later when Icame back through Paris. My interest in Basquenationalism was awakened by these conversations,though prior to them I had read almost nothing aboutthe Basque Country.

Only many years later would I learn that Aguirre'slectureship at Columbia had been largely artificial, apolitical arrangement. Nor did I understand altogetherthat Aguirre had so much time to spend with anAmerican doctoral student because at that pointBasque nationalism was in the doldrums, a state ofweakness and inactivity that would lead to theemergence of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA —Basque Homeland and Freedom) only a few yearslater.

From Paris I traveled by rail to Spain by way of

Toulouse. I wanted to make contact with the SpanishSocialist leadership there, which had possession ofthe mediation proposal of José Antonio Primo deRivera of August 1936, confiscated by IndalecioPrieto and eventually deposited with the partyleadership. Rodolfo Llopis, the party secretary,received me promptly and brusquely, and withintwenty-four hours provided me with a photocopy of thedocument.

I entered Spain by way of Port Bou and Barcelona,where my main goal was to meet the great historianJaume Vicens Vives, who already ranked in my eyes— limited though my vision was — as the outstandinghistorian then practicing in Spain. Vicens invited meto his home and then to dinner the following night in arestaurant in the old Plaza Real. This was thebeginning of my friendship, and also discipleship, withVicens, a striking personality whom I still consider themost dynamic historian that I have ever known. Icannot precisely explain why he took such an interestin me, since I had no work to show him except for aseminar paper written at Columbia the precedingspring, based on very little in the way of primaryresearch but incorporating much material from theextraordinary holdings of the New York Public Library.Altogether I saw Vicens on five different occasionsthat year — three times in Barcelona (September andDecember 1958, April 1959) and twice in Madrid(February and May 1959). We talked about the historyof Spain and of Catalonia, and also the domesticpolitical situation.

I spoke at length with Juan Linz, who was beginningwork on an SSRC postdoctoral fellowship at the sametime that I started my predoctoral research. He had

time that I started my predoctoral research. He hadspotted my name on the SSRC list and had written tome before I had left home. Linz had convinced me thatthere was not likely to be any change prior to thedeath of Franco, but early in 1959 Vicens wasengaged in negotiations with monarchist dissidentsand still hoping that enough pressure might be exertedto effect a change of regime, a hope that he hadabandoned by the spring of that year. Our finalmeeting in May 1959 consisted of a dinner withVicens and his wife at a sidewalk cafe not far from thePlaza de España.

Vicens made a more powerful impression on methan any other historian I have known. His examplewas one of extraordinary dedication, energy,analytical ability, concern for opening new fields, andalso of a rigorous self-control and objectivity-the latterto an extent rare even among professional scholars. Itwas Vicens who pointed out to me the importance ofa study of the politics of the military, which would bethe subject of my second major book. When I learnedof his death from lung cancer in June 1960 I couldscarcely believe it, for he had always seemed so vital,lively, and full of energy. He accomplished a greatdeal in what turned out to be a relatively short career.When I published the book on the Falange the yearafter his death, it seemed most appropriate and fittingto dedicate it to the memory of Vicens.

As I began research in Spain at the beginning ofOctober 1958, I had no clear idea what to expect, butenjoyed the carefree self-confidence of youth, which inthis case proved appropriate. I appreciated that theregime had become somewhat more moderate and,though still a police state, was not totalitarian, which

hopefully would allow me some freedom for research.As a precaution, the announcement of my researchaward from the Social Science Research Council hadbeen camouflaged, listing my topic simply asresearch on "corporatist ideology" in Spain. As itturned out, the timing was ideal: with the passage oftwenty years since the Civil War and the frustration ofthe Falangist revolution, a good many veterancamisas viejas (lit. "old shirts") were willing to serveas oral history subjects, while my status as a NorthAmerican research student also proved anadvantage. The Pact of Madrid with Washington hadbeen signed five years earlier. Though it may not haveguaranteed freedom of activity for an Americanscholar, it certainly helped. My status as a foreignerand as a doctoral student was also useful, for theformer freed me from identification with either of thetwo bands in the Civil War, while the latter went somedistance to establishing bona fides, without ulteriorpolitical motives. Thus I think that I was accepted forwhat I was, by most but of course not all, of mySpanish research contacts.

Central to the project was the active assistance ofDionisio Ridruejo, without which it probably could nothave been carried out. Ridruejo accepted my letter ofintroduction from his distant political colleague Gorkínand provided almost every kind of help that he could.This consisted primarily of two things: a lengthy seriesof discussions in the book-lined study in his home onthe calle de Ibiza, on the far side of the Retiro Park,and an even more lengthy series of introductions to alarge number of veteran Falangist militants, most ofwhom were willing to talk with me.

Here once more the timing was good, becauseRidruejo had only recently passed from nonsupport ofthe regime to active opposition. His generosity andhis effort to be honest, objective, and self-critical wereimpressive. All the later years of his life werecharacterized by a deep moral concern not to repeatthe errors of his youth but to make amends for themand to do all he could to achieve a responsible anddemocratic future for Spain. I never achieved thepersonal friendship with Ridruejo that I did with Vicensand Maurín, but I was deeply grateful for hisassistance and extremely impressed with hisintellectual and moral seriousness.

At that time no archives dealing with the Falangewere open, so my research was conducted in twoquite different dimensions. The first was the officialpublications, newspapers, and secondary literatureavailable in the Biblioteca Nacional and theHemeroteca Municipal; the second was oral historywith Falangist militants from the 1930s and withsurvivors of other political groups, as well. At that timethe term "oral history" was scarcely used, and I hadhad absolutely no training in it. I simply threw myselfinto the water and learned to swim. If I had hadappropriate methodological instruction, I wouldprobably have done better, but interviewing is a matterpartly of intuition, of asking the right questions, and ofrapid adjustment, not merely formal techniques. Themajority of the Falangists and others whom Iinterviewed sought to be helpful, though of courseoften not very objective, and sometimes providedimportant information and data. Only a minorityrefused to speak seriously or made elaborate effortsto deceive. The relatively good results that I obtained

were partly the product of timing, because they couldnot have been achieved to the same extent a decadeearlier.

A photocopy of the official police report on myactivities that had been prepared in 1959, which Irecently obtained, observes of its subject that "hisappearance is innocent in the extreme though, in fact,he has possession of documents and contacts thatare very interesting, having interviewed peopleranging from General Aranda to Ridruejo, Suevos,and Hedilla." It goes on to detail two primarydocuments, copies of which had been provided by myinterlocutors, some of whom, of course, were incontact with the police. The report concludes, almostplaintively, that "the work of Stanley Payne is attractiveand innocent in appearance," which made it possiblefor me to carry out research that for someone in anofficial or political capacity "would be against nature,inherently more difficult, more suspicious. As it is, hecan even publish a book in all tranquility there ....beyond the state and in any event relying on theUnited States, without having to deal with the Spanishgovernment, despite the latter's authority." 12 All ofwhich was true enough.

The first person whom I sought when I arrived inMadrid was Juan Linz, and our long talks together inthe autumn of 1958 were invaluable, the beginning ofa half century of friendship and scholarly collaborationthat has benefited me more than my contact withanyone else. Juan was an invaluable source ofinformation, analysis, and advice on Spanish affairs,indispensable in forming my first informed perspectiveon contemporary Spanish politics and history. By theearly part of 1959 he was back in New York,

early part of 1959 he was back in New York,beginning his teaching career at Columbia (latermoving to Yale in 1968). Juan Linz is the mostoutstanding analyst of comparative modern Europeanpolitics that I have encountered — probably the best inany country during the later twentieth century —combining encyclopedic empirical knowledge with adepth of analysis, comparative study, and scholarlyimagination, which have been unrivaled. He helpedme a great deal in each of the two main fields ofinquiry that I would develop — contemporary Spanishhistory and the comparative history of fascism — sothat it was only fitting that in the 1990s. I dedicated twobooks to him.13

The other particularly close friend during the firstyear in Madrid was Francisco Javier de Lizarza, towhom I was introduced indirectly by Jaime del Burgo.Javier Lizarza, like Juan Linz, was a dear friend for anentire half century, and throughout ever the mostreliable and true. Scion of a distinguished NavarreseCarlist family, he led in the effort to maintain thehighest ideals of traditionalism in the politically correctsociety of the late twentieth and early twenty-firstcenturies. Following his death in October 2007, it isappropriate that the present book be dedicated to ourhalf century of the warmest friendship.

In Madrid I made contact with Clay La Force, alsoon an SSRC fellowship, who was preparing adissertation in economic history at UCLA on stateindustrialization initiatives in the reign of Carlos III,later to be published by the University of CaliforniaPress. Clay and I would subsequently be colleaguesbetween 1962 and 1968 at UCLA (he in economics, Iin history), where he would go on to become the

distinguished director of the Graduate School ofBusiness Management.

In the late autumn of that first year, Juan Linzindicated that we should make the acquaintance of ayoung American woman "working on Antonio Maura,"as current misinformation had it. This turned out to beJoan Connelly Ullman, at that time the director of theInstituto Internacional, who later completed animportant dissertation and book on the SemanaTrágica, as well as developing an influential career atthe University of the Pacific and the University ofWashington. She, Clay La Force, and I made up thetrio of American dissertators in Madrid that yearworking on Spanish history of the two precedingcenturies, something of a portent of things to come,since we would have many successors.

Two years later Edward Malefakis, who came rightafter me at Columbia, would begin his research inMadrid. His dissertation on the Republican agrarianreform would in fact constitute the deepest and mostaccomplished piece of work of all the Americandissertations of those early years. I was fortunate inmy fellow-researchers, for all were able scholars andhave remained good friends, though in later years theonly one whom I would see fairly regularly was EdMalefakis, especially because of his home in Madrid.

It was a unique privilege to live and work in Spainbefore the close of the 1950s, for at that time manyaspects of traditional Spanish society and culturewere still alive. In those years manners and moreswere in fact more formal, hierarchical, andconservative than they had been a quarter-centuryearlier, a result of the counterrevolution wrought by the

Civil War. At that moment I could scarcely haveimagined that within no more than a decade — by thelate 1960s — the society and culture would have beendrastically transformed by a vertiginous process ofmodernizing change, for good and for ill. I had arrivedjust in time to witness the final phase of moretraditional Spanish life before it disappeared forever.Undoubtedly the new society, eventually a politicaldemocracy, would be much freer and moreprosperous and also in some ways happier, but itwould also lose touch with many of the values,symbols, and mores that had made Spanish societyand culture distinctive. Hence in part the obsessiveemphasis on fostering local and regional identities,together with the local festivals, that became somarked by the last years of the century.

A major concern during that first year in Spain wasto make my own assessment of the Spanish and theirculture (in the sense of ordinary society rather thanhigh culture). The stereotypes of "romantic Spain,"thanks to Ernest Hemingway and others, were by nomeans dead in the 1950s. Because of the Civil Warand the Franco regime, Spain was viewed as anexceptional country, and the Spanish as ratherexceptional people, given to violent conflict and fits ofpassion. Even the government had adopted the touristslogan that "Spain is different," though its intentionwas not the same. My concern was to determinewhether the Spanish really were "different" or rathernormal people whose life had simply been marked bysevere conflicts. After my first two months in Madrid Icame to the conclusion that the Spanish were indeedbasically normal people, not a collection of fanaticsand extremists, though like all national groups they

exhibited certain cultural idiosyncrasies.

I also devoted considerable time to travel that year,crisscrossing much of the country by bus, train, andplane, with special attention to several parts of thenorth and to Andalusia, spending more time in thesouth than I ever would again. In the process I met anddealt with people from every social background andall parts of the political spectrum, with the soleexception of the Communist Party. My own role wasstrictly that of researcher and observer. The only timethat I was tempted to become involved politically waswhen I learned of the plight of the blind CNT leaderFélix Carrasquer, once more in jail, since internationalpublicity might improve the chances for his release.He was indeed released early in 1959, without furtherprompting from the outside, and I was able to visitCarrasquer within days of his regaining liberty.

Of all political sectors, the one that most impressedme on a personal level was the Pamplonese Carlists,with whom I made contact in December 1958. Whatmost struck me about the Carlists was theirspontaneity, forthrightness, and lack of affectation.Their authenticity was impressive, and initiated whatwould become a long-term friendship with a number ofthem.

The doctoral thesis on the Falange was largelywritten during the summer of 1959 and defended atColumbia the following spring. My first teaching tookplace at Columbia during 1959-60 and at HunterCollege (City University of New York), after which Iwas offered a regular position at the beginning level atthe University of Minnesota in 1960. I submitted themanuscript on the Falange to the Stanford University

Press and obtained a quick acceptance, the bookappearing in October 1961. A year or so later the newémigré press Ruedo Ibérico, founded by JoséMartínez in Paris, asked for the rights to editions inSpanish and French, which then came out in France in1964-65.

The success of the book, generally well received onevery hand, was gratifying and even surprising. It wasalso related to the fact that contemporary Spanishhistory was then a completely unworked field. Virtuallyall the reviews were favorable, some of themextremely so. The review that appeared in the Revistade Estudios Políticos was inevitably negative,standing as the more or less official response of theregime, but I understood that this would have to be thecase, and in fact had the response in such an organbeen favorable, it would probably have indicated thatthere was something seriously wrong with the book.

The original study of the Falange was no more thana doctoral thesis, based in part on oral history, animmature work some passages of which are a bitembarrassing to read in retrospect. It was in fact atraining device for a fledgling historian who still had agreat deal to learn, both about researching and writinghistory in general, and about contemporary Spanishhistory in particular. Although the findings about theFalange as an attempt to impose fascism in Spainwere all negative, the book made some allowance forthe charismatic qualities and intentions of JoséAntonio Primo de Rivera and some of the originalFalangists — more so than would have been the caseat a later stage in my career as a historian. There wasan element of youthful romanticism in the style of

writing that would have been impossible for me tosustain ten or twenty years later, but which probablyhelped to convey the human drama of the Spanishdisaster of those years. At any rate, the first printing inEnglish sold out and soon led to a second, whichmeant that the book remained available on the marketat the Stanford University Press for thirty-five years,until 1996. Ruedo Ibérico undoubtedly sold even morecopies in Spanish, but José Martínez never issuedroyalty reports to his authors in the manner of a normalpublisher, so one never knew. Ruedo Ibérico alwaysstruggled financially as an émigré press, unable to selldirectly in Spain, and depended on the sales of a fewparticular titles to stay afloat.14 We generallyunderstood this and did not complain when yearssometimes passed without any payment of royalties.

The year 1961 was in fact the time of theemergence of contemporary Spanish history as ascholarly field in English, with the publication of HughThomas's The Spanish Civil War and BurnettBolloten's The Grand Camouflage, on the fate of therevolution in the Republican zone, as well as my ownbook. There was a kind of symmetry between them,with one history of the Civil War in general, a secondon the Left, and a third on the Right. The mostimportant of these was Thomas's book, even thoughits first edition carried the inevitable number of minorerrors. It was a major scholarly achievement, and theproduct of a young autodidact abroad, Thomas beingonly three years older than myself.

At the time that his book appeared, I had beenworking for some months on a history of the SpanishCivil War of my own, but quickly concluded that at that

stage I would be unable to improve on Thomas's work.I soon decided to follow up on Vicens's suggestion ofthe importance of a book on the politics of the military,being able to carry out a full year of research on it inSpain during 1962-63, thanks to a Guggenheimfellowship, which came as a result of the book on theFalange and especially of the good offices of mysenior colleague at Minnesota, John B. Wolf, a notedspecialist on the history of seventeenth-centuryFrance.

I had first returned to Spain in the summer of 1961,where my efforts were devoted to preparing a briefstudy on the historiography of Vicens Vives, whichbecame my first major article.15 Most of that summerwas devoted to an extensive honeymoon with my newbride, Julia Sherman, a psychologist fromMinneapolis, as we spent nearly two and a halfmonths crisscrossing Europe on Eurail passes.Among many other adventures, we twice passedthrough the Berlin Wall during the first week of itsconstruction.

The year 1962-63, dedicated to researching thepolitics of the military, was memorable for a number ofthings, but perhaps most of all because it was the lastfull year that I spent in Spain in which the old socialand cultural order was largely intact. After May 1963 Ipassed the longest period of my life without returningto the country. I was busy with a new position in UCLA,developing new courses, and becoming a father, and Idid not return to Spain until September 1967, a periodof more than four years. The mid-1960s constituted aturning point in economic development, and when I gotback to Madrid I found that things were not the same.It was not merely that the number of automobiles had

It was not merely that the number of automobiles hadgreatly increased, so that I encountered the first major"modern" traffic jams that I had ever seen in Spain, butmore importantly that social and cultural attitudes werealso changing rapidly. The ambience was much moreliberal and more hedonist, almost exaggeratedly so,much more in line with attitudes and values incontemporary western Europe.

Research on the politics of the military was in someways more difficult than working on the Falange, thepossibilities of oral history greatly reduced. I spent aconsiderable amount of time that year at the ServicioHistórico Militar, then on the calle de los Mártires deAlcalá, and used the same heterogeneous mix ofsource materials that had been employed in theFalangist study. The resulting book was published byStanford in 1967 and soon afterward in a Spanishedition by Ruedo Ibérico. Its most important findingwas that in political terms the military were not asmuch of an independent variable as most of us hadthought. Although they had intervened, or tried tointervene, many times between 1814 and 1936, theseinterventions, whether successful or not, were muchmore dependent on general political variables than onthe purely independent volition or ambitions of themilitary. This book was also very well received,particularly in a major review by Gerald Brenan in theNew York Times Book Review.

It was completed after I had moved to Los Angeles,where I taught at UCLA from 1963 to 1968, passingrapidly through the ranks from assistant professor tofull professor, and serving also as vice-chairman ofthe department (my first term in administration) in1967-68. Though I had lived the greater share of my

early life in California, and though in the mid-twentiethcentury Los Angeles had remained a very attractivecity, that too was changing rapidly by the 1960s. Theenormous expansion and crowding, the massivevolume of traffic on the freeways and elsewhere, thegrowth of smog and other pollution, and the pervasiveinfluence of a peculiarly Southern California/Hollywoodform of hedonism and materialism — all contributed toan increasingly disagreeable ambiance. My wife and Idecided in 1968 that we would be happier in a moretranquil and stable environment at the University ofWisconsin in Madison, whose environs were rathermore similar to those of a major European university,such as Cambridge or Marburg, located in a smallcity.

During the Los Angeles years I was also involved inmy first major undertaking in broader Europeanhistory, being asked by my old mentor ShepardClough to write part of a new multivolume textbookcalled A History of the Western World (but meaningessentially the history of Europe, the Mediterranean,and the ancient Near East, at least in the originalversion.) Together with Otto Pflanze, the notedhistorian of Germany, who had been my colleague atMinnesota, I wrote the third volume on nineteenth andtwentieth-century Europe, published in December1964. This project went through two revised editionsduring the next eight years, in which it was broadenedto become one of the first of the subsequentlyfashionable histories of the world. It also becamemore extensively illustrated, enjoying a viablecommercial life of about a decade and a half, the firstpublishing project from which I drew any significantincome in royalties.

I was also asked by the New York publishing firmThomas Y. Crowell to write a very brief study of thecontemporary situation in Spain, which became theshort volume Franco's Spain (1967). This took littletime, but was my first effort to analyze and summarizerecent developments in all the major aspects ofSpanish affairs, dealing with social and economicchanges, cultural life, and international relations, aswell as with the politics of the Franco regime.

The 1960s were a decade of greatly expandedinterest in history in all the Western world. The studentactivists who became famous in that era wereespecially attracted to history, but beyond that,general cultural conditions stimulated enrollment inhistory courses among the enormously expandedstudent populations of that decade. Interest in historycourses among university students generally follows asort of cyclical pattern. The 1960s were an especialhigh point and enormously stimulated the zeal ofpublishers to bring out new history books. More thanat any other time in my experience, they took theinitiative in offering lucrative contracts to historians,rather than simply responding to manuscriptspresented by the latter. Altogether, I accepted fourpublishers' initiatives during the 1960s — theaforementioned textbook, the short project oncontemporary Spain, a proposal to prepare a historyof the Spanish revolution of the 1930s, and also thesuggestion that I develop a general history of Spainand Portugal.

The Spanish Revolution stemmed from theinvitation of Jack Greene, a specialist in the era of theAmerican Revolution of the 1770s, to write one of ten

volumes in a series called Revolutions in the ModernWorld. That a volume on Spain was even includeddemonstrated considerable perspicacity by Greene,since many general and comparative treatments ofmodern revolutions tend to ignore the Spanish case. Iwas certainly aware of the presence of therevolutionary worker movements and of the revolutionin the Republican zone during the Civil War, but knewlittle about them. My research was initially assisted bytwo special collections that had become available inCalifornia, the Southworth Collection at the Universityof California-San Diego and the Bolloten Collection inthe Hoover Institution at Stanford, both particularly richin materials from the Republican zone.16 Data on theCNT-FAI, as well as the POUM, were also available atthe Institutional Institute of Social History inAmsterdam, but I would not be able to gain access tothe Civil War archive in Salamanca (then generallyclosed to researchers) for another five years.

Research for this book would turn out to mark a kindof watershed in my grasp of Spanish politics. I hadbeen brought up in the standard politically correctunderstanding of contemporary Spanish affairs, whichholds that the Right was iniquitous, reactionary andauthoritarian, while the Left (despite certainregrettable excesses) was basically progressive anddemocratic. My investigation of the revolutionaryprocess in Spain produced quite different findings,revealing that the Left was not necessarily progressiveand certainly not democratic, but in fact during thecourse of the 1930s produced a regression inSpanish affairs from the relative liberal democracyachieved in 1931-32.

The Spanish Revolution was brought out in NewYork by W. W. Norton in 1970 and became my firstbook to appear inside Spain, thanks to two factors.One was the new press law introduced by FragaIribarne four years earlier, which finally began toloosen restrictions on publication; the other was thatthis book offered a critical perspective on the Left,rather than on the Right, as in the case of the twoprevious books, so that it might theoretically be moreacceptable to the censorship that continued to exist.Even so, there was continuing resistance in officialcircles to permitting a book of mine to appear withinSpain, a resistance only finally vanquished by avigorous review published by Ricardo de la Cierva,strongly endorsing publication. Without this initiativeby La Cierva, the book might not have appeared,despite the eagerness of Alejandro Argullós to publishit in the new series on contemporary Spain presentedby Ediciones Ariel. Due to a mistake on the part of theagent in charge of the series, a completely separateSpanish edition was brought out by Argos Vergarafive years later, while the Tokyo firm Heibonshapublished a Japanese translation in 1974, thanks to astrong recommendation made to them by JoaquínMaurín prior to his death.

Equally or even more important was the invitationextended by Norman F. Cantor, the imaginativemedievalist who served as history editor for ThomasY. Crowell, to write a full-scale general history of Spainand Portugal. This had not been done in the English-speaking world for a very long while and presentedme with a great opportunity, for it was the preparationof this book that gave me a full grasp of the history ofthe peninsula for the first time. It was nonetheless a

daunting undertaking, which occupied me for fouryears and required a huge amount of reading in thesecondary literature. Though it was possible to readno more than a fraction of the enormous bibliographypertaining to the subject, that bibliography had not yetundergone the exponential expansion that took placeduring the latter part of the century and which wouldmake such an enterprise by a single scholar totallyimpossible within any finite amount of time. My goalwas not merely to narrate facts but to renderintelligible the peninsula's history, so that mostsubsections of each chapter were organized byconcepts, not chronology. In general I think that I wassuccessful in achieving an analytic focus on thesubject matter that generally made sense, althoughsome points would have to be modified as a result ofthe massive research by historians during thedecades that followed. The most original aspect forme was coming to grips with the history of Portugal,which first gave me an understanding of that country'shistory and decisively broadened my perspective onthe peninsula.

Crowell was soon taken over by Dun andBradstreet, which immediately lost interest in theproject, so that I managed to redirect it to theUniversity of Wisconsin Press, thanks to an invitationfrom Thompson Webb, its director. This initiated mylong collaboration with this university press. A Historyof Spain and Portugal came out in two volumes in1973, remained in print for about fifteen years, andwas briefly a History Book Club alternate selection. Aslightly revised and expanded Spanish edition wasfinally published in five brief paperback volumes byCarlos Alberto Montaner's Editorial Playor in Madrid

between 1985 and 1987, enabling the Portuguesechapters to be grouped together as a one-volumeBreve historia de Portugal (1987), which for severalreasons was at that time unique among publicationsin Spanish on Portugal. An inexpensive reprint editionwas done by Editorial Grupo five years later, and adigital edition of the original first volume of the Englishedition was later made available by the digitalpublisher LIBRO in 2002.

From the time of my first visits to Barcelona andBilbao in 1958-59, and after my initial discussionswith Aguirre and Vicens Vives, I had formedconsiderable interest in the peripheral nationalisms. Ithought that they were important in the country'scontemporary history and would also be important inthe future, though for some time neither I nor manyothers would understand how large a role they wouldplay in the politics of a future democratic Spain. After1970 the emergence of a radical form of Basquenationalism in ETA achieved greater prominence thanthe more moderate initiatives of the Catalanists,exactly the opposite of the relative salience of the twomovements during the years of the Republic.

My original intention was to prepare simply a verylong article on the politics of Basque nationalismunder the Republic for a special issue oncontemporary Spain to be published by the RivistaStorica Italiana.17 During the summer of 1971 I visitedthe University of Nevada in Reno to spend a briefperiod researching the collection of the BasqueStudies Program, initiated there not long before. I hadknown the noted Basque bibliographer Jon Bilbao fornearly fifteen years, having been introduced to him by

Aguirre and having stayed at his home in Guechobriefly during an earlier visit to Bilbao. He and theanthropologist William Douglass, the long-termdirector of the Basque Studies Program, urged me toexpand the long article into a short monograph onearly Basque nationalism. I had never conceived ofthis as a full-length project, but at that time there wasscarcely any scholarly literature on the topic, so overthe next year and a half I expanded this into a briefaccount of the early political history of the Basquemovement, up to 1937.18

During those final years of Franco's life, the culturalenvironment was becoming progressively relaxed,even as politics became more active. I developedsome ambition to publish this brief book in Spain,encouraged by the reforms of Pío Cabanillas asminister of culture, with Ricardo de la Cierva asDirector General de Cultura Popular. I mailed a copyof the manuscript to La Cierva in the winter of 1974,and on the eve of an international conferenceconvened in March of that year by the Instituto deCultura Hispánica, I received a telegram from LaCierva telling me that he considered it "important" topublish the book in Spain. A few days later I carried acopy of the manuscript with me to Madrid and quicklyreached a deal with Sebastian Auger to bring it out inBarcelona with the latter's ambitious new publishingfirm Editorial Dopesa.19 It published a Spanish editionwithin six months, in August, which was cruciallyimportant, for Cabanillas was dismissed by Francolittle more than a month later, bringing in turn theresignation of La Cierva.20 Had this taken place only amonth earlier, publication of the book would havebeen prohibited. As it was, a special book fair in

Bilbao, in which the book would have been one ofthose featured, was canceled. Dopesa provided agood advance for the book but submitted statementsthe next two years indicating that few copies weresold, which seems quite doubtful, according to allreports. Because of the dearth of material on Basquenationalism at that time, this gained for me altogetherexaggerated credentials as a Basque specialist,which I really was not. I did no further research in thearea after 1972-73, while only a few years later, afterthe death of Franco, work in that field would expandexponentially.

The 1960s and 1970s were the only decades inwhich contemporary Spanish history attractedattention abroad, due to the Civil War legacy and thereputation of Spain as an "exceptional country" underthe Franco regime. With modernization and thesuccess of the democratization after Franco, thisstatus disappeared. On the international level, interestin contemporary Spanish history dwindled altogetherduring the 1980s.

Conversely, for the first and only time since the CivilWar, interest in current Spanish politics grew rapidlyduring the 1970s, peaking with the years of thedemocratization but also continuing to some extentinto the 1980s, before dropping away with theapparently complete stabilization of the new system.During those years I played an active role in adviceand commentary on Spanish politics both on thegovernment and academic levels, for in politicalscience there were very few scholars with anyexpertise on the country, so that a historian like myselfwas called on to do double duty as political analyst.

Interest in and speculation about the country'spolitical future began to build slowly after the officialrecognition of the succession of Juan Carlos in 1969.The two questions that loomed on the horizonconcerned (1) how far the next chief of state would goto encourage the introduction of democracy, and (2)whether Spanish society had been transformed to theextent that such a process could successfully becompleted. The experience of the Civil War and theofficial doctrines of the dictatorship had developed acertain discourse about the country's "familiardemons," according to which Spaniards wereculturally and psychologically unsuited for democracy.Certainly all earlier parliamentary systems had failedsooner or later, and in all but one case (theRestoration regime) sooner rather than later.Nonetheless, when I completed my treatment ofbroader peninsular history for the two-volume work in1970, I pointed out the achievements of parliamentarygovernments in Spain's past, which seemed tosuggest that a more developed society might be ableto cope with democracy and also concluded thatsomething so anachronistic as the dictatorship, evenif extensively reformed, might not be able to survivevery much longer. The problem was not so much thatparliamentary government could not function in Spainbut that the chief political actors had simply to respectthe rules of the game, which had hardly been the casein most of the earlier parliamentary regimes.

During his first year as official heir apparent, JuanCarlos was inevitably very guarded in remarks aboutany future plans, while Franco's health remainedrelatively stable as of 1970 and the opposition wasentirely impotent. Therefore, when the influential

American journal Foreign Affairs asked me early in1970 to write an article on the current politicalsituation in Spain and its future prospects, myprognosis, too, was guarded. The resulting article, "Inthe Twilight of the Franco Era," noted the extensivesocial and economic transformation of the country,and suggested that the present system would changeand evolve under Juan Carlos, but that the immediateprospects were for "continuity more than change." 21

That was technically the case as of mid-1970, butthe situation continued to evolve rapidly, and duringthe next two years Juan Carlos gave clearer signalsregarding his future plans, while by 1973 Franco'shealth was deteriorating seriously. During these yearsthere were several conferences and seminars inWashington on Spanish affairs, including a specialseminar at the Foreign Service Institute on July 12,1972, on the "Spanish military," focused on their likelybehavior following the death of Franco. In the spring of1975 Washington upgraded the ambassadorship toMadrid by appointing the veteran Welles Stabler, adistinguished career diplomat and former assistantsecretary of state for southern Europe. I participatedin the orientation seminar organized for theambassador-designate on May 1, 1975, and washopeful about the country's political prospects, thoughthe new ambassador was perhaps not surprisinglyapprehensive about what he would soon encounter inMadrid.

The strangest meeting in Washington on the eve ofFranco's death took place on June 10, 1975, when aLeft-liberal pressure group, the Fund for New Politics,collaborated with representatives of the opposition

Junta Democrática to sponsor a private,nongovernmental hearing in one of the congressionalmeeting rooms. Approximately fifteen peopleparticipated, together with various members of thejunta, ranging from Opus Dei to the Communist Party.The message of this hearing was that the U.S.government should act directly to control the Spanishmilitary after Franco's death; if it did not, any transitionto democracy would be almost inevitably thwarted.This was possibly the only time that a foreignCommunist entity urged American intervention in itscountry's affairs.

I was the only participant who challenged thisviewpoint, pointing out first that the most activemember of the Junta Democrática was theCommunist Party of Spain, something that had beencarefully ignored in the public presentation of thishearing. I held that American intervention or pressurewould not be necessary and that Juan Carlos, aftersucceeding Franco, would introduce effectivedemocratization that the great majority of Spanishpeople would support, and that the Socialist Partycould play a constructive role in representing the mainforces of the Left. The analysis that I advancedconcluded that the Spanish military only intervened inmoments of crisis, deep division, and disruption oflegality. If the democratization process maintainedstability and proceeded through legal channels, themilitary were not likely to reverse it. This analysisproved substantially correct.22

The summer of 1975 was a grim time inWashington, as North Vietnam violated its peaceagreement to launch an all-out military offensive, whichresulted in the fall of South Vietnam. Communist

resulted in the fall of South Vietnam. Communisttotalitarianism was expanding not merely in southeastAsia but also in some parts of Africa, while thePortuguese Communists seemed to be gainingdominance in Lisbon and the future of Spain was indoubt. The Department of State therefore called aspecial conference on the prospects of "The Left inWestern Europe" in June 1975. These prospectswere not encouraging, since the Revolution had notyet brought democracy to Portugal, and HelmutSonnenfeldt, at that moment perhaps HenryKissinger's principal subordinate as assistantsecretary of state, lamented that for five hundred yearsthe Russian empire had never ceased to expand. (Infact, it would continue to expand for five years more,Soviet influence reaching its peak worldwide by 1980with the rise of Afro-Communism and the invasion ofAfghanistan.)

In Spain, however, events moved rapidly andsurprisingly smoothly from the appointment of AdolfoSuárez as prime minister in July 1976.23 Shrewd andconstructive political management helped to keep themilitary from interfering, and the Spanishdemocratization became something of a model, tolead the "third wave" of major twentieth-centurydemocratizations during the 1970s and 1980s.Between 1975 and the 1980s the handful ofHispanists who dealt with politics and contemporarySpanish history were in considerable demand fromvarious institutions and universities in the UnitedStates, so that we formed a sort of "traveling circus,"which appeared with slightly varying membership in avariety of different settings.

By 1979 Felipe González had moderated both the

Marxist doctrines and the political tactics of thePartido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE —Spanish Socialist Worker's Party), which not onlyabandoned its peculiar concept of direct action it hadthought compatible with the parliamentary democracy(which it now espoused) but also accepted theprinciples of European social democracy, as distinctfrom "socialism." All this was enormously helpful,indeed indispensable, to the consolidation ofdemocracy in Spain. The major point on which theSocialists refused to change was their neutrality in theCold War. Neutrality vis-à-vis the Soviet Union hadnever been the position of some of the older leaders,such as Indalecio Prieto, but the González group thathad taken over the party in 1973 claimed that the ColdWar had had the effect of prolonging the Francoregime (which to some extent was correct). Todeclare neutrality in the worldwide contest, which inEurope was now a clear-cut struggle betweendemocracy and totalitarianism, seemed strange for aparty insisting on its own democratic credentials.Nevertheless, ambiguity had been a persistent featureof the history of Spanish Socialism, and in this areadrew an official statement of gratitude from the Sovietgovernment, not the sort of congratulations that anewly democratic party would normally want to have.

The U.S. government and some of its westEuropean counterparts became eager to have anewly democratic Spain enter NATO, the chiefpolitical obstacle to which was now the opposition ofthe Socialist Party. To try to overcome this,Washington and its NATO allies organized a meetingwith representatives of the major Spanish parties atDitchley Park (an old residence of the Dukes of

Marlborough) not far from Oxford on the weekend ofMarch 15-17, 1978. On the morning of the first full day,Gen. Alexander Haig, then commander of the NATOforces, arrived by helicopter on the large front lawn toaddress the group. These efforts were unsuccessfulas far as the Socialists were concerned. I was seatedthroughout beside Luis Yáñez, the gynecologist fromSeville who at that moment played a major role in thePSOE leadership. He was affable but noncommittal,and Socialist resistance on this issue would continuefor six more years, until the decisive change in 1984when González conducted his famous volte-face andreferendum on NATO.

For me personally the major Spanish political eventof 1978 was the first congress of the Unión de CentroDemocrático (UCD), held in Madrid in October. Theparty leaders invited three American senators toattend, but the congress took place in the middle ofthe campaigning for the American elections, and noneof the senators could be present. The UCD alsoinvited me, and I became, in effect, the Americanrepresentative. I was seated in the front row in thevisitors' section, beside foreign dignitaries who insome cases had been chiefs of government or headsof state. Margaret Thatcher attended and gave aspeech. Hugh Thomas came with Thatcher'sentourage as advisor and introduced me to her, onlysix months before she was to win her firstparliamentary elections.

I thoroughly enjoyed the congress, and realized thatit would constitute the height of my otherwisenonexistent political career. Unión de CentroDemocrático was the only Spanish politicalorganization with which I have ever felt thoroughly

organization with which I have ever felt thoroughlyidentified, its role in the establishment of Spanishdemocracy being absolutely fundamental, given thelimitations of the Right on the one hand and theconfusions of the Socialists on the other. It neverbecame a tightly structured and fully unified party anddid not always enjoy the best leadership, but for fiveyears its role was crucial, and in the twenty-firstcentury I would dedicate my book The Collapse of theSpanish Republic, 1933-1936 (2005) to Suárez andhis colleagues in recognition of their decisiveaccomplishments, succeeding where the SecondRepublic had failed.

Since the 1970s I had progressively divided mytime more and more between work on Spain and thecomparative analysis of contemporary Europeanhistory. This involved two dimensions: (1) continuationof the work on Portugal, and (2) the study of "genericfascism," the latter involving more activity than theformer. Portuguese history had received a little moreattention in the United States when a number ofHispanists, together with one or two Spanish scholarsteaching in the country, formed the Society forSpanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (SSPHS)in 1969-70. The society would play a major role instimulating and focusing research on Iberian historyfrom that point on, and also in furthering scholarly tiesbetween historians in Spain and the United States,but the attention that it could give to Portugal wouldobviously be limited.

An opportunity to develop a major focus on Portugalsuddenly emerged at the University of Wisconsin inthe spring of 1972, when I found that the university'sWest European Studies Program had a little money

remaining in its budget at the end of the academicyear. I proposed the immediate convening of a smallconference to form a group for the study ofcontemporary Portugal. This was approved, and Iinvited the only five North American colleagues I couldfind who were doing work on contemporary Portugalin history and the social sciences. Thus in June 1972in Madison we formed the International ConferenceGroup on Portugal (ICGP), the first such entityanywhere outside Portugal, with the exception ofliterary studies. Douglas Wheeler of the University ofNew Hampshire became the secretary of theconference group and its indispensable leader formore than three decades. The ICGP would play apioneering role, sponsoring a long series ofconferences, publications, and eventually its ownjournal, the Portuguese Studies Review. Nonetheless,when it held its first full conference at the University ofNew Hampshire in October 1973, six months beforethe outbreak of the Portuguese Revolution, that eventwas not predicted by a single participant. So much forthe capacity for prediction on the part of the socialsciences.

By the 1980s it was observed that the era hadpassed in which foreign Hispanists might play adominant role in the historiography dealing withcontemporary Spain, given the democratization of thecountry and the great expansion of research andpublication by Spanish historians, more interested incontemporary history than in any other period. Thiswas obviously the case, the special role of Hispanistsbeing most relevant amid the particular conditions ofthe 1950s and 1960s.

In normal circumstances, then, does the Hispaniststill have any special function or fill an important role inSpanish historiography? His most significantcontribution probably does not come from being aresearch scholar. That would have been the case onlyduring the dictatorship, when Spanish historiansthemselves could not undertake and publish researchin certain areas. The most important contributionprobably stems from the ability to provide a broadercritical and comparative perspective, something thatSpanish historians themselves have been learning todo only within the past decade or so, and then only toa limited degree. Current Spanish historiography stillhas a profound tendency toward self-absorptionthough, happily, there are some notable exceptions.To that extent, it is important for all countries to haveforeign scholars study, analyze, and write theirhistories, not primarily to add data — although that isoccasionally importantbut above all to provide abroader, sometimes more objective, perspective.Research monographs have been important, but thebroader and more comparative dimension hasprobably been the more significant aspect.

It has been a rare and enjoyable privilege to labor inthe field of the history of Spain for most of the past fiftyyears. The history of Spain is one of the greatest andmost remarkable histories, exactly as Juan Negrínwrote in 1938, and it never ceases to impress oramaze. One of the most extraordinary things aboutworking in the history of Spain is the generally positivereception of the Spanish themselves. Visitors in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries found themmarkedly xenophobic. However that may have been,this was not the case in the twentieth century, with the

possible exception of the first years of the Francoregime, long past by the time that I arrived in Spain.With rare exceptions, I have found the Spanishcourteous and surprisingly welcoming and hospitable.Only a few months ago a journalist asked me torespond to a questionnaire concerning Spanishaffairs and my experience in the country. Among thequestions was one along the lines of "What has beenyour most disagreeable experience in Spain?" Thisrequired some thought on my part: for more than half acentury I have had a certain number of disagreeableexperiences, but they have all seemed so insignificantcompared with the very many positive experiencesthat I had trouble responding to the question.

It has been observed that by the twentieth centurythe Spanish had to a large extent internalized theBlack Legend — another Spanish "first," Spain beingmerely the first of the modern Western countries toundergo a ubiquitous process of massive self-criticism — and had developed a kind of nationalinferiority complex that often made them overlydeferential to the opinions of foreigners. There issome accuracy in this observation, and the tendencydeveloped in Spain long before the rise of politicalcorrectness and multicultural deconstruction late in thetwentieth century.

The other side of the coin is what may be called thesyndrome of the "hysterical Hispanist." Some of theforeign scholars who fall into this category may becharacterized as strongly anti-Spanish and others asunreasonably pro-Spanish. Among the former onemay find the distinguished American historianPrescott and the less well-known American literatureprofessor John A. Crow. I myself have occasionally

professor John A. Crow. I myself have occasionallybeen criticized as being overly sympathetic to theSpanish.

As I explained at the outset, one of my principalgoals when I first came to Spain in 1958 was toattempt to form an objective evaluation of Spanishsociety and history, avoiding the extremes of unfaircriticism — so common among foreigners — or ofromantic patronizing or superficial endorsement,which have also been very common. I leave it to myreaders, who for the most part have been quitegenerous, to judge to what extent I have achieved thisgoal.

Part II

A Reading of the History ofSpain

The Hispanic Peninsula in 800

1Visigoths and Asturians"Spaniards"?

The Iberian Peninsula entered recorded history withthe Roman conquest, after which it became anintegral part of the empire. Language, culture, andeconomic structure all stemmed from Rome, as wellas the name "Hispania," a geographic term for theentire peninsula (which became a distinct "diocese"of the empire after the Diocletian reforms of the fourthcentury).1 Its society passed through each of the majorphases and vicissitudes of the later Roman system,though some of the northern districts were lessthoroughly Romanized than the south and east.

Spain emerged as a kingdom, if not exactly a state,under the Visigoths in the sixth century, though theVisigothic monarchy was slow to establish generalcontrol over the entire peninsula — and even thensomewhat uncertainly in part of the north. Latergenerations would look back to the Visigoths as thefirst leaders of an independent "Spain," but in thetwentieth century historians would challenge so simpleand straightforward an interpretation. By that time theVisigothic kingdom was increasingly interpreted innegative terms of decline, disunity, and generalweakness, an interpretative deconstruction that beganhistoriographically well before the deconstruction ofSpain in general became fashionable.

During the late twentieth century the Anglo-

American historian Peter Brown introduced theconcept of "Late Antiquity" as a relatively distinctperiod of historical transition from the ancient world tothe Middle Ages. This term has been increasinglyaccepted as a way to periodize history between thefourth and seventh centuries. Somewhat similarly, itbecame fashionable during the second half of thetwentieth century to reject the classic understanding ofthe "fall of Rome," replacing this with a newperspective that saw the Germanic kingdoms asevolutionary successor states, which formed a kind offunctional symbiosis with the remains of the Romanworld, not overthrowing it so much as reincorporatingit in a new quasi-synthesis.2

There is no question that in most of the newkingdoms, Germanic rulers tried to cloak themselvesin Roman authority and to maintain much of theexisting structures, but there is also no doubt that areal break occurred during the fifth century.3 The breakwas most complete in Roman Britain, where the oldcivilization almost totally disappeared, but much lessextensive in the peninsulas of Spain and Italy, whereat first more of the old order survived.

The "Grand Narrative" of Spanish history, as it tookfull form in the nineteenth century, defined a nationalidentity and a kind of historical purpose and mission,the origins of which were purportedly laid by theVisigoths and developed more extensively by thekingdom of Asturias. Major aspects of thisinterpretation have varied, most notably betweenliberal nationalists and Catholic traditionalists duringthe nineteenth century, but for some time it constituteda meta-interpretation of the Spanish past. The GrandNarrative first began to be questioned in the mood of

Narrative first began to be questioned in the mood ofpessimism that gripped a part of the thinking of latenineteenth-century Spain, even before 1898.Thoroughly rehabilitated and restored by Franco, itslast great avatar, it began to be yet more decisivelyrejected in the era of democratization and autonomiesthat followed the dictatorship. The political andideological deconstruction of the Spanish nation thatensued provoked an intense debate that has onlyaccelerated in recent years — the most intenseongoing debate in any Western country, equaled orexceeded only by that of Russia in the 1990s (thechief product of which in Russia has been the neo-authoritarian nationalism of Vladimir Putin).

In the 1970s, critics held that the formation ofhistorically continuous Spanish institutions in thekingdom of Asturias during the generationimmediately following the Muslim conquest involved amajor paradox. The most succinct statement of thisposition was made by Abilio Barbero and MarceloVigil in the small study they published in 1974, Sobrelos orígenes sociales de la Reconquista. Thisappeared on the eve of the democratization of Spain,and for that particular theme represented a climax ofthe deconstructive trend of interpretation, which hadbegun in the late nineteenth century. It posited aparadox, not to say contradiction, in the origins of theresistance nucleus of Asturias during the secondquarter of the eighth century.

The paradox was supposed to be twofold. On theone hand, independent Hispano-Christian society firstarose in what was heretofore the least Romanizedand Christianized part of the peninsula, with theexception of the Basque region. On the other hand,

the "neo-Gothic ideal," which emerged as a kind ofpolitical doctrine among the Asturian elite by the endof the ninth century, was held to have had the scantiesthistorical basis in Asturias itself, for the greaterAsturian-Cantabrian region, as putatively one of theleast Romanized districts, was said to havepossessed little or no Visigothic political structure oridentity. It was allegedly the home almost exclusivelyof semiprimitive autochthonous peoples, whosesociety was scarcely more than tribal in structure andwho had had little to do with the Visigothic state at all,having never been effectively conquered or integratedby it.

Though some historians rejected this interpretation,or at least its most extreme version, it commanded awide audience after the death of Franco, fitting nicelythe mood of diversity and pluralism of the years of thedemocratization.4 During that era the Grand Narrativeof Spanish history, which had found its earliest limitedexpression in the Asturias of Alfonso el Casto andreached its height in nineteenth-century Spanishnationalism — both liberal and rightist — and in thedoctrines of the Franco regime, was rejectedpolitically and broadly deconstructedhistoriographically. Moreover, this reinterpretationcould not easily be challenged by new historicalresearch, for the sources on the last years ofVisigothic history are the weakest of the entireVisigothic period, while the principal documentarysources for the history of the kingdom of Asturiasconsist of only three chronicles.

An examination of the roots of the kingdom ofAsturias should begin with the Visigothic monarchy,which preceded it. For nearly a hundred years, the

which preceded it. For nearly a hundred years, thelatter was viewed by most commentators as a semi-incoherent failure, whose sudden downfall merelyreflected its internal social and political divisions andgeneral decadence, so that its ruin became almostinevitable. The achievements and influence of itscultural superstar, San Isidoro of Seville, were seen asa unique exception that otherwise merely proved therule. More recently, however, historians have viewedthis attitude as originating, at least in part, in thecultural pessimism of Spain at the close of thenineteenth century.

For most of the twentieth century, the Visigothicstate was given credit for establishing its sovereigntyover the peninsula and for eventually adoptingCatholic orthodoxy, but for little else. The GrandNarrative had lauded it for building the political andreligious unity of Spain, but the tendency amongtwentieth-century historians was to judge it a decadentfailure in social, cultural, and political terms.Disparagement of the Visigothic era was not new. Ithad been begun as early as the eighth century byFrench Carolingians, the first to propagate the myththat Roman culture had been almost totallysubmerged by "barbarian invasions," introducing theconcept, if not quite the term, of "dark ages"overtaking western Europe after the collapse ofRome.

Research on the Visigoths enjoys a venerabletradition in Spain, and for long it centered on thehistory of law, on the one hand, and of church historyand patristics, on the other. In 1941, two years afterthe Civil War, the young historian Alfonso García Gallopublished a major one-hundred-page article in the first

new number of the Anuario de la Historia delDerecho Español, which challenged traditionalunderstanding of the origins of Visigothic law. Themajor figures in that field, led by Eduardo de Hinojosaand later by Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, hademphasized the centrality of Germanic law, whereasGarcía Gallo argued on the basis of considerableevidence that what was known in western Europe as"Roman vulgar law" was more nearly the basis ofVisigothic law codes.5

The Visigoths had long been recognized as themost Romanized of the Germanic peoples, and —unlike the Franks, Germans, Angles, Saxons,Burgundians, or Lombards — had never replaced theLatin name of their territory with their own. GarcíaGallo's reinterpretation, however, considerablybroadened understanding of the post-Romancharacter of certain Visigothic institutions, and whichto some degree has been substantiated bysubsequent research. Moreover, coming as it didduring the high triumphal phase of early Francoism, itaccorded nicely with the dominant political ideology,which was pleased to alter the origins of theconventional Grand Narrative in a more directlyRoman-Hispanic southwest European, lessGermanic, direction. The fact that the most recentresearch in Germany itself had underscored thepersistence of Roman vulgar law in the variousGermanic kingdoms only gave this greater credibility.At that stage the regime encouraged the friendliest ofrelations with Nazi Germany, but preferred a lessGermanized version of the national Grand Narrative.

A more positive reevaluation of the Visigothic

kingdom took place in the last two decades of thecentury, most notably among foreign scholars. TheBritish Hispanist Roger Collins accused previouscommentators of what he termed "virtually a 'slave-mentality,' induced by a priori acceptance of thenecessary inferiority of Visigothic Spain." 6 Asignificant role has been played by the FrenchHispanist Jacques Fontaine, the leading livingauthority on San Isidoro,7 though one of its firstmanifestations was the international conference on"Visigothic Spain: New Approaches," held atUniversity College, Dublin, in 1975.8 This reevaluationgives the Visigoths credit for "holding together forover a century the largest undivided political unit inseventh-century Europe," for having extended politicalorganization rather more thoroughly across thepeninsula's north than had earlier been thought, forbuilding some degree of politico-administrativestructure, and for having expelled Byzantine invaders.9

It is now increasingly recognized that VisigothicSpain maintained a higher level of learning and culturethan any other large part of western Europe except forItaly, and that the Visigothic clergy was generally thebest-educated to be found in continental westernEurope, however relative such a qualification must be.During the seventh century the Visigothic church wasgenerally recognized in Latin Christendom as theleader in ecclesiastical law, in church discipline, andeven, to some extent, in theology. Its church law,administration, and liturgical forms were widelycopied, the collection of church regulations known asHispana circulating extensively in western Europe.One German scholar has recently called it the mostadvanced example of a church in one of the Germanic

advanced example of a church in one of the Germanickingdoms.10 Moreover, secular Visigothic law waswell developed in comparison with neighboringkingdoms, the seventh-century legal codification ofRecesvinto, known variously as Forum Iudicum andLiber Iudiciorum, and to medieval Castilians as theFuero Juzgo, was the most extensive and relativelysophisticated Western law code of its time, and invarious ways was followed in all the Visigothicsuccessor states — even in Catalonia — for some sixcenturies.11

The Visigothic church and monarchy were the firstto present the ideal of the "Christian monarchy," thusthe true heir of Rome and equal, at least, to theByzantine empire. By the seventh century, the rulerhad become sacralized as more than a mere earthlyruler and was the first Western ruler to receive theroyal unction upon coronation. The close associationbetween church and state that existed from the latesixth century has long been emphasized, and earliergave rise to erroneous judgments by foreign scholarsabout the roots of what they termed "Spanishtheocracy." That relationship was in fact rather morecaesaropapist than theocratic, but there is no doubtthat the church came to have a major role in the lateVisigothic system, in a manner distinct from that of thechurch in any other contemporary state. It did indeedhave an important political and, later, administrativefunction, and the Councils of Toledo involved thechurch in formulating a primitive kind of constitutionallaw, though the latter was often honored only in thebreach. In all, the Visigothic church became virtually anational church, whose connections with Romecontinued to exist but were somewhat limited.

San Isidoro has long been recognized as the greatWestern polymath of his age, and indeed was themost influential Spanish scholar of all time. Hismassive Etymologies were still being laboriouslycopied out by hand seven centuries later. Though nota major theologian, he was the last great patristicfigure of Late Antiquity. Isidoro played a crucialpolitical ideological role, as well, for he was the first todefine fully the terms of the new "Christian monarchy,"an "empire" — meaning a totally independent state —not beholden either to old Rome or to the EasternRoman Empire. In the Isidorean doctrine, theVisigothic monarchy represented a new kind of stateand culture that sought but failed to achieve a sort ofsynthesis of Western Christianity and classical culture,the latter of course subordinated to the former. Hespoke of the new kingdom as the "patria" of "thepeoples of all Hispania," now joined in the united"patria of the Goths," and on one occasion referred tothem as "a chosen people." 12 Jacques Fontaine haslabeled this "the genesis of the Hispano-Gothicideology," resulting in "a kind of cultural nationalism."13 Isidoro's approach differed from that of his quasi-contemporary, Pope Gregory the Great, in that it wasoptimistic, whereas that of Gregory had beeneschatological. Gregory had been relativelysuspicious of profane culture, whereas Isidoro soughtto incorporate it as much as possible, seeking a viamedia between yesterday and today. Fontaine claims,perhaps with a little exaggeration, that he achieved"an original and firm vision of universal history," inwhich the Christian monarchy followed Rome in apositive line of historical development.14 ThisRegnum Gothorum was a precisely defined territory,in fact the first Christian and European state to be

exactly defined geographically. None of itscontemporaries had such definition, either in doctrineor in territory, while in late Visigothic times Hispaniawas sometimes shortened to Spania, and the rulerswere sometimes called reges Spaniae.

One of the most contested points in interpreting lateVisigothic society is the issue of ethnic integration. Itwas long assumed that a basic weakness lay in thecontinuing division between German Visigoths on theone hand, and Hispano-Romans or other nativepopulation on the other. Some non-Spanishspecialists during the past generation have come todiscount this, seeing instead a broad fusion of elites,and perhaps of much of the ordinary population aswell, after the ban on intermarriage ended in the sixthcentury. The Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 referredto the population at large as part of a single gens etpatria, just as the Seventh Council, thirteen years later,spoke of the kingdom as a whole as the gens etpatria Gothorum.15 After this there are no furtherreferences to a distinct "Roman" population. TheGothic language itself ceased to be used, even by thehighest Visigothic elite, though the majority of childrenfor which there is any record, even from more ordinaryfamilies, were given Gothic names.

This newer conclusion does not presume any sort ofhomogenization, much less any strong sense ofharmony in society at large. Not only did the Visigothichigh aristocracy maintain control of power, but by thelate seventh century social tensions seem to havebeen increasing. Slavery persisted, there was morecomplaint than ever about the number of runawayslaves, and severe economic problems heightened

pressures toward forms of enserfinent for part of thefree rural population. Spanish historians, especially,have been impressed by the severity of internalproblems and are more skeptical about the degree ofethnic fusion. This remains an open question, difficultto resolve due to the paucity of evidence. Moreover,by the final generation of the Visigothic era, thetendency of the elite to assume settled territorialstatus seems to have created a growing equivalencewith the native Hispanic elite, oriented toward landand wealth, and the maintenance of a patrimonialstatus, with less and less concern for military service,a factor in the military decline of the monarchy.

Américo Castro titled one brief section of hismagnum opus "The Visigoths were not Spaniards,"and in the fullest sense this is doubtless correct, butthey did create the first political Spain, and at leastbegan the process of forming a specific Spanishsociety, even though that process was far fromcomplete by 700. They presided over a religiousculture that was highly developed for that era, and alsohad begun to form a special kind of ideology and royalidentity, so that at one point in the seventh century theVisigothic monarchy represented as fully developed apolitical and religious model as could be found in theWest. Moreover, the Visigothic form of elite society —the military aristocracy — would remain the dominantelite form of Spain for the next millennium and more,until the nineteenth century.

The great failure of the Visigothic kingdom was notso much military as political; dissidence among elitearistocratic families could rarely be controlled formore than a decade or so at a time. The efforts bychurch leaders and a few others to "constitutionalize"

church leaders and a few others to "constitutionalize"succession to the crown, creating the most elaboratesuccession mechanism of any Christian state at thattime, failed. Consequently the key to the Islamicconquest-part of which was not technically a military"conquest" lay in the conditions of civil war, whichreemerged in 710-11. A century and a half earlier, in554, one Visigothic faction that claimed the thronehad called in Byzantine military assistance, leading tothe Byzantine occupation of the whole southeasternpart of the peninsula for three-quarters of a century,before it was reconquered. The next reconquest wouldtake much longer.

The Arab takeover of Spain was proportionately thefastest and most mysterious of all the extensiveIslamic conquests. Major parts of less-developedNorth Africa resisted for decades before they finallysuccumbed. Later, seeing the fate of the Visigoths,the Merovingian French would resist far morevigorously. There is no doubt that peninsular societyhad been weakened in recent decades by drought,famine, and pestilence, but the key presumably lay inthe suicidal rivalries within the Visigothic elite, onelarge sector of which assumed that after winningsizable booty, the Arabs would merely assist them ingaining power and then depart. Yet, once the king hadbeen defeated and killed and much of the elite totallycompromised, most of the kingdom collapsedpolitically without central resistance, thanks in part tothe swift initiative of the Arab leadership, just as wouldbe the case more than three centuries later within themore centralized, unified, and sophisticated Anglo-Saxon state after defeat in the Battle of Hastings in1066. Earlier protracted North African resistanceagainst the Muslims, like that of the inhabitants of the

peninsula against the Romans centuries earlier, hadbeen partly predicated on complete decentralization.

As indicated earlier, some historians have tendedto view the only successful resistance nucleusemerging in Asturias as something of a spastic knee-jerk reaction by an early medieval remnant of"primitive rebels." This has been called the"indigenous theory" of the origins of the kingdom ofAsturias. Crude tribesmen who had supposedly neverbowed the knee to the Visigoths soon took upresistance against the Muslims, but the only continuitywas local and rather primitive, the people of Asturiasexhibiting no very sophisticated political, social,religious, or ideological features, as summarized inthe work of Barbero and Vigil.

Since publication of Barbero and Vigil's book,northern Spain has been the object of the mostextensive archaeological research that the region hasever known. Beginning with the first major newresearch project initiated in Asturias in 1980, a newgolden age of archaeological investigation opened,soon yielding a rather different picture. Some of theresults have been presented most cogently in theanalytic synthesis published in 2001 by Luis RamónMenéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas sobre elorigen del Reino de Asturias. Recent archaeologicalresearch reveals a greater degree of Romanizationand of economic integration than had earlier beenthought to be the case. Particularly in Asturias, thoughnot so much in Cantabria proper, the structure of muchof society turns out not to have differed so totally ashad frequently been assumed. There is at least someevidence of political integration, as well. Asturias was

one of the several Visigothic duchies, even thoughrather lightly populated and not fully integrated eithersocially or politically. The tentative new conclusion isthat although the Asturias was not so heavilyRomanized as the major areas of the south and east,the region revealed at least somewhat moresophisticated structure and political integration inVisigothic times than had earlier been thought.

This revisionist interpretation finds some evidenceof incorporation of all the north, with the intermittentexception of the Basque territory, in the Visigothicsystem, involving a more complex social structure,greater (even if only partial) Christian identity andsome degree of greater cultural sophistication. Itconcludes that there seem to have been threeVisigothic duchies in the north — roughly Galicia,Asturias, and Cantabria — parts of which, at least,provided the structure for a successful struggleagainst the Muslims. One factor that all agree upon, ofcourse, is the importance of geography, which madethe northern mountains the most remote and difficultterrain for foreign conquerors to deal with. On theopposite side of the Islamic world, mountain rangesalso turned back Arab conquerors. Six centuries later,the Spanish would face a similar problem in theopposite corner of the peninsula, where the conquestof Granada would constitute the longest, slowest,most costly phase of the Reconquest.

Thus the conundrum of the initiation of seriousChristian resistance in the least Christanized part ofthe peninsula is scant problem for the revisionistinterpretation, which finds somewhat more Christianstructure there to begin with. Whatever Christianidentity and practice already existed was quickly

identity and practice already existed was quicklyreinforced by the beginning of the first of a series ofwaves of emigration of Christians from the newMuslim-dominated Al-Andalus (which comprised thegreater part of the peninsula), a process recognizedby all historians, which would continue intermittently forfour centuries, add considerable density to thenorthern population, and probably a good deal moreto its religious identity and intensity. There is evenlimited evidence of the immigration of North AfricanChristians, as well. All this makes it rather lesssurprising that within a generation the resistancenucleus organized itself into a monarchy, that it soondeveloped new contacts with other parts of westernEurope, and that it also developed a firm spirit, atleast among the elites, of orthodox Roman Catholicreligious identity and practice, as this was understoodin the eighth century.

What remains quite controversial is the precise roleand weight of sectors of the old Visigothic elite and ofVisigoths or semi-Visigoths in this process. The old"Germanic thesis" held by historians in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whichposited an unusually heavy concentration of Visigothsin part of what would later be Old Castile prior to theArab conquest, was seriously challenged during theearly twentieth century.

A different approach has been taken by ArmandoBesga Marroquín, who does not argue for anyespecial prior presence of Visigoths in the north, butrather, as is tersely indicated in one of the chronicles,that a significant number soon moved to Asturias toform a resistance nucleus, giving the early kingdom aheavily Gothic character.16 We have no evidence of

what Sánchez Albornoz called the ideology of"neogoticismo" — so fundamental for subsequentSpanish doctrine and the eventual Grand Narrative —before the ninth century, and no historian wouldmaintain that Asturias represented direct continuitywith the old Visigothic order. The kingdom of Asturiaswas a completely new creation, and the exact ethnicbalance among its founders is something that cannever be precisely determined. Nonetheless, thearguments of Besga Marroquín and others whoemphasize direct Visigothic influences in political andreligious affairs, as in culture, cannot be easilydismissed.

Whereas the Visigothic state, with its broadterritorial domain, crumbled, the new kingdom ofAsturias proved remarkably tough, resilient, andultimately successful in almost every respect. Itrepeatedly fought off a much larger, more powerful,and sophisticated Muslim foe and even added newterritory at the expense of the latter. Rather than wiltingunder the contest, it gained population, partly thanksto immigration and an astute repopulation policy. Itcreated a new church structure, reaffirmed its relationswith the broader Latin Christian culture, produced atleast one religious writer read widely in other lands,and created an original style in art and architecture —the "Asturian Pre-Romanesque" — without precedentin the western Europe of that era.17 Its societydeveloped increasing cohesiveness and integrationdespite internal political conflicts, to which might beapplied as working hypothesis the influence of fullerChristianization in breaking down the remnants of clanand tribal structures, and encouraging the role of theexogamic family. Later, as the Andalusi state

weakened in the great fitna (internal conflict) of thelate ninth century, a portion of the Asturian eliteespoused the goal of complete reconquest,something that could hardly have been imagined ageneration or two earlier. Rather than finding the firstcrystallization of such an ambition artificial andpretentious, as was sometimes the tendency intwentieth-century historiography, the revisionistinterpretation finds this a natural consequence ofAsturian culture and institutions, and of thecircumstances of that time.18

Whether the field of "climate history" is of any usehere is difficult to determine. It has rather frequentlybeen observed that Late Antiquity experienced aharsh climate in much of the Mediterranean, withprolonged droughts and other problems. What seemsclear is that the rise of Asturias (and later of Castile)coincided with the five centuries of warmer and morebenign climate in western Europe and the northAtlantic between approximately 800 and 1300. Thismay have made the northern mountainous regions ofthe peninsula more productive and capable ofsustaining a larger population.

The Spanish Grand Narrative tended to reify andexaggerate, as presumably all grand narratives do.While recent research suggests somewhat greaterprecedent within the kingdom of the Visigoths thanhad often thought, the Grand Narrative's emphasis, inits classic form, on Catholic mission, a chosenpeople, and implacable reconquest has always gonebeyond what the historical evidence yields. Thoughone may find roots of what might be termed a"Spanish ideology" in San Isidoro, concepts of

ideology and mission evolved only slowly andintermittently among the elite of Asturias and León.Asturias was made the target of an official "jihadi"assault under the Emir Hisham I in the final years ofthe eighth century, but no official concept of "crusade"as "counter-jihad" developed. The struggle against Al-Andalus was apparently viewed in the firstgenerations as a sort of territorial war, first a strugglefor survival and then a conflict against a usurper whoshould be dispossessed of whatever was possible.Nearly two centuries were required, so far as weknow, to generate the goal of total reconquest, at leastas the official goal of the Asturian leadership, and thenbecause of the internal weakening of the Andalusistate. Nor could such a doctrine be sustained after therevival of Andalusi power a generation later. While Al-Andalus practiced jihad according to pristine Islamicconcepts (which, unlike some twenty-first-centuryvariants, included certain rules of war), the wars ofAsturias and León could be called "religious wars"only in the sense of military conflict by a Christianstate against an Islamic one. These were not acrusade in the later sense of a war officially blessedwith special spiritual endorsement and spiritualrewards directly by the Church itself. They were,however, campaigns increasingly fought with a claimto "legitimacy," to the recovery of lands usurped byforeigners, based on an identity whose roots wererather deeper than some twentieth-century historianshave thought.

2Spain and IslamThe Myth of Al-Andalus

During the late twentieth century, Westernmulticulturalists began to imagine utopias of culturaland ethnic "diversity," as they liked to put it, in whichdistinct cultures and civilizations would coexistharmoniously.1 This ideal became a prominent featureof cultural and educational institutions in westernEurope and, especially, North America.

It was difficult, not to say impossible, to find anhistorical precedent for such a utopia, since all knowncivilizations have insisted on the primacy of their ownculture, but some commentators have thought toidentify such a unique society in medieval Spain. Asearly as the mid-nineteenth century, historians andwriters evoked a mythical paradise in medieval Al-Andalus, which was declared to have achieved aculture of genuine tolerance, compared with which allthe rest of Spanish history might be seen as a decline.A century later Américo Castro gave this a new spinfrom his American exile, in the several successiveversions of his magnum opus imagining a uniquesituation of what he termed "convivencia." Mostrecently such an image of tolerance and cultural cross-fertilization has been eloquently evoked in a work bythe Harvard literature professor María Rosa Menocal,The Ornament of the World (2002).2 The title is takenfrom a comment by an eleventh century German nun,and the product is a sort of novel, written with

considerable charm, consisting of a series of penportraits of leading cultural personalities.

In this idyll, Christians and Muslims quarrel moreamong themselves than they do with each other, whilecooperating with Jews in creating a uniquemulticultural paradise. There is, of course, always aserpent in the Garden of Eden, and in Menocal's caseit takes the form of the fanatical Islamists of the twosuccessive Moroccan empires that invaded theIberian Peninsula in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.The intolerant domination of this hostile andunenlightened Other is perceived as beginning to putan end to the Andalusi utopia, though it is presentedas considerately oppressing enlightened Muslimsmore than anyone else. Menocal's novel, presentedas cultural history, exerted a strong appeal in thecontemporary academy, with its pretensions to themulticultural. This is all the more the case since shenever mentions the centuries of bloody conflictbetween Christians and Muslims, and the word"conquest" or "reconquest" never appears.

Menocal's book is but one of the most concertedexpressions of the "myth of Al-Andalus" that has beenpropagated for a century and a half, acquiringrenewed force in recent years. The Muslim invaders of711 are portrayed as variously entering, incorporating,or colonizing the Iberian Peninsula (as if no one livedthere), replacing a decadent and dreary band of elitistVisigoths — presumably all "dead white males" —who failed to achieve multiculturalism and deserve norespect. The reexamination of Visigothic history thathas been carried on during the past two generationsis conveniently ignored because it might complicatethe introduction of this dream world.

the introduction of this dream world.

The Muslim eruption into the Iberian Peninsula tookplace near the end of the first century of massiveIslamic empire-building. Subsequent phases underother Muslim empires elsewhere would continue for afull millennium, into the seventeenth century.3 In extentthe only equal in world history would be the conquestsof the Mongols six hundred years later, while theduration was without parallel. Unlike the Mongols, theArabs would soon construct a major new civilization,which would impose itself permanently on each of themany lands conquered, Islamized and in most casesArabized, with the sole exception of Spain. Only in theIberian Peninsula was a large territory both conqueredand for the most part culturally and religiouslyIslamized, only to be reconquered and de-Islamizedby a portion of its pre-Muslim inhabitants. This factalone would have made Spain absolutely unique inworld history, if the Spanish had never accomplishedanything else .4

The rapidity of the Muslim conquest of 711-18,despite the limited numbers of the invaders, was dueto the internal division of the Visigoths and theirinability to mount a central or organized resistance,once the monarchy had been decapitated at theoutset. By 718 politico-military control had beenextended, albeit very tenuously, over the entirepeninsula. From there the seemingly inexhaustibleMuslim tide poured into France, establishing a limitedcontrol over its southwestern part, until a major defeatin 732. Even so, new raiding parties continued tocross into France during the next few years, theseattacks coming to an end only because of theoverextension and exhaustion of the invaders.

Military expansion has been a common feature ofmany different states and societies in human history.Islamic civilization was not the first to operate under areligious imperative for military conquest. What isunique, however, is that Islam is the only major worldreligion that categorically requires continuing militaryaction against unbelievers, and its followers havebeen remarkable for the long persistence and, forcenturies, the relative success, of their militaryconquests. In the West, North African Muslims wouldlater conquer Sicily in the ninth century and continueassaults on western Europe into the fourteenthcentury. In the form of large-scale piracy and slaveraiding, attacks would continue for half a millenniummore, into the early nineteenth century. The assaultson eastern Europe began early in the eighth century(at approximately the time of the conquest of Spain)and would be continued by the Ottomans throughoutthe latter Middle Ages and beyond that until the end ofthe seventeenth century, becoming a major factor ineast European underdevelopment.5

The obligation to "exertion" in jihad as militaryconquest of unbelievers was thus a constant feature ofIslamic culture and practice for more than a thousandyears, declining in modern times only as Muslimsocieties became categorically inferior in militaryterms. During the twentieth century the major Muslimpower, Turkey, then turned to genocide against itsChristian minorities. The numerous references in theKoran to the obligation to fight militarily and to kill onbehalf of the faith constitute one of the most strikingdifferences between Christianity and Islam.Mohammed also referred to personal spiritualstruggle as the "greater jihad," and in modern times

this spiritual interpretation has come more to the fore,but the military jihad was at no time forgotten and wasalways periodically revived by activists or politicalleaders, even though the great majority of ordinaryMuslims have never participated in it.6

The new rulers of Al-Andalus would face militarily inthree directions — to the north against ChristianEurope (after the mid-eighth century meaningprimarily the small, weak, new Spanish principalities),internally against all manner of domestic rebels, andlater south and east toward the expansion of theirpower in North Africa and the west Mediterranean.Concern for the internal and southern fronts oftenprovided a military respite to the new Spanish states,which they took advantage of for internal consolidationand the expansion of their own borders. Whenconditions permitted, the jihad was persistentlyinvoked against these remaining Christian territoriesin the peninsula, though trans-Pyrenean assaults wereeventually renounced as impractical. When Andalusiarms were successful, heads of slain Christians wereregularly displayed on the walls of Córdoba, not thesymbol of an especially tolerant society. On the otherhand, after the 720s the Andalusi rulers made littleeffort to conquer completely the Christian resistancein the north, instead occupying new frontier positionsor posting frontier garrisons. The goal of the frequentraids against the north, what was called the sa'ifa (Sp."aceifa"), was rather to weaken the Christian enemyand to bring back slaves and booty.

The initial terms of the Muslims for subjectpopulations tended to be relatively generous, a policyindeed virtually required by the limited numbers of the

Muslims themselves at the beginning of theirconquests. Aristocrats and other landholders whoaccepted Muslim domination without resistance weregenerally confirmed in the control of their properties.Freedom of religion was recognized for Christiansand Jews, and initially the latter enjoyed greateropportunities than under the Visigoths, who hadpersecuted them severely. It has been suggested —though historians do not really know — that theobligations of the peasantry were no greater, andpossibly even lighter, than under the Visigoths. Serfs,for example, were often transformed intosharecroppers, which may have eased their lot. Thesefactors made it easier to accept the initial Islamicdomination; the Visigothic allies of the invaders soonhad to accept complete subordination, even thoughmost continued to hold their original lands, so long asthey obeyed.7

During the course of the eighth century, however, asthe Islamic system was consolidated, its full featureswere introduced into the new realm known as "Al-Andalus." 8 The taxes paid by non-Muslims wereregularized as a land tax and a separate poll tax, andreligious activities were restricted. No new churcheswere allowed to be built, some of the existingchurches were converted into mosques, and bell-ringing and any form of Christian religious activityoutside of churches prohibited. The proselytizing ofMuslims was punishable by death, and any Muslimwho converted was liable to the same penalty. By themiddle of the ninth century, as the Muslim populationincreased, Jews and Christians had to wear specialclothing to indicate their religion. They could not marryMuslim women, could ride only on donkeys, had to

give up their seats whenever a Muslim wanted to sit,and were denied equality in judicial procedures. Theterms of this kind of "discriminatory toleration" slowlygrew more oppressive with each passing generation.

Given the restrictions on and discrimination againstJews and Christians, did any real "convivencia" takeplace in Al-Andalus, beyond mere physicaljuxtaposition? Two kinds of convivencia of a sortmight be found. One was cooperation at the elite levelbetween individual Christians, Jews, and Muslims,who to some extent worked with each other andexchanged information regarding learned texts andscholarly interests. In addition, the Andalusi statefrequently employed Christians in various capacities,just as the late medieval Spanish kingdoms employedJews. There was also considerable economiccontact, trade, and also the hiring of labor. None ofthis, however, in any way blurred the basic caste lines.

In the mixed population of the cities, there was atendency to segregate neighborhoods, but this wassometimes impractical, so that there were sometimesChristian and Muslim households living side by side.We have little or no information as to how thisfunctioned. The households were not equal, becausethe Christians paid much heavier taxes, might notenjoy the same standard of living, and were subject tosignificant discrimination, but at least they werepermitted to survive. Muslim minorities — theMudéjares, as they would be called — incorporatedby the advance of the Spanish kingdoms (mainly inthe thirteenth century) experienced much the samekinds of conditions, once they were part of the inferior,rather than the superior, caste. Friendly relationsbetween individuals and families certainly took place,

between individuals and families certainly took place,particularly in the mixed cities, but those friendlyrelations on the individual level never blurred thedistinct caste lines for Andalusi or Christian society asa whole. For the most part, even in areas wherepopulations were mixed, the castes remained distinct,and there were no systematic efforts to cross castelines either in society or culture, for, with regard toanything beyond limited gestures, such a practicewould have been tabu. Cultural elites, for example,hardly ever studied each other's religion.

Some Spanish historians have wished to see theMuslim Andalusis as to a considerable degree"Hispanized," that is, heavily influenced by theChristian society and culture whose members forapproximately two centuries made up the majority ofthe population of Al-Andalus. There is little evidence ofthis. Since eventually the bulk of the Muslim populationwould be composed of Hispanic converts (the "whiteMoors," whose presence would later astonishEuropean visitors to the peninsula), not the children ofMiddle Eastern or African immigrants, theyundoubtedly maintained certain habits or customs thatwere not the same as those in Egypt or Iraq. But theentire structure of culture and of society andgovernment became heavily "orientalized,"reproducing fundamentally the same structures andmores to be found in the Middle East. Al-Andalus wasnot a "Western" or "European" variant of Islamicsociety in anything other than a geographic sense, butit simply became the westernmost projection ofArabic-speaking Middle Eastern society and culture.The great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun recognizedthat, at least in one sense, the Arabs were the worstoverlords — compared with Romans, Greeks, or

Persians — for they largely obliterated the languagesand cultures of the areas that they conquered, withonly a few exceptions, and to that extent did notmaintain classic empires.

This was reflected not merely in religion and highculture, but at all levels of life from urbanconfigurations and architecture to cuisine, clothing,and social and marriage arrangements. Noteworthywas the typical Muslim subjection of women, totallydifferent from the situation in Hispano-Christiansociety, where women could inherit and to someextent maintain property in their own right, andeventually reign individually as monarch of an entirekingdom. In this regard Islamic civilization constituteda marked regression from the Roman civilization thatit replaced in the south Mediterranean. Late Romanlaw permitted daughters to inherit equally with sonsand present equal testimony in court, whereas Islamiclaw provides women with only a half a share ininheritance and assigns their testimony only half theweight of a man's.

Arab and Berber elites zealously maintained theirnative tribal and clan structures, based on stronglyagnatic and endogamous relationships. The politicalstructure of Al-Andalus represented the typicaldespotism of the Middle East, replete with theequivalent bureaucracy and slave soldiers, without anyparallel in the European kingdoms of that era. Araband other minority non-Hispanic groups alwaysdominated the power structure, even after the breakupof the caliphate in the eleventh century. Descendantsof Muslim converts formed no taifa or independentdynasties, all of whom were led by Arabs, Berbers, orSlavic slave soldiers.9 As Anwar Chejne puts it, Al-

Slavic slave soldiers. As Anwar Chejne puts it, Al-Andalus "was always an integral part of the literaryand cultural mainstream of the East and, as such, wasas Islamic as Syria or Egypt." 10 Historically andculturally, Al-Andalus followed the same chronologicaltrajectory as the Arab civilization of the Middle East,reaching a plateau of acculturation in the ninth andtenth centuries, achieving its maximum culturalsophistication during the eleventh and twelfthcenturies, then experiencing major decline,accompanied by conquest from without, in thethirteenth century.

It must be remembered that during the earlyformative centuries of the Christian kingdoms, fromthe eighth to the thirteenth centuries, the great bulk ofthe independent Christian population did not normallylive in direct contact with Muslims. The "Mozarab"Christians in Al-Andalus were much more affected,however, and by the ninth century were becomingincreasingly Arabized or, if one prefers, "orientalized."Those who found this most repugnant seem to haveemigrated to the north, if conditions permitted. Later,the Muslim, or Mudejar, minority incorporated into theSpanish kingdoms proved more resistant to Christianand Spanish influence, preserving its caste identityand culture to a greater extent than had the Mozarabs,though most of them eventually Hispanicizedlinguistically and lost the use of Arabic.

Eventually most of the native Hispanic populationremaining in Al-Andalus converted to Islam. When didthat take place? The only attempt to estimate this wascarried out by the American historian Richard W.Bulliet, applying a technique that he had earlier usedfor Egypt, Syria, and Persia. Bulliet's rough calculation

was that by 800 only about 8 percent of the nativepopulation had converted, a figure that increased toonly 12.5 percent fifty years later. With the fullcrystallization of Andalusi society and culture duringthe ninth century, the rate of conversion began toaccelerate. By 900 about 25 percent had converted,and 50 percent by 950. By the end of the tenth centurythe figure might have stood at 75 percent, by whichtime the population of Al-Andalus had becomeoverwhelmingly Muslim. Small Christian minoritiesnonetheless remained until at least the twelfth century,until they were finally eliminated altogether by theIslamist empire of the Moroccan Almohads.11

In theory all Muslims form part of the umma, orgeneral Islamic community. In practice, however,Muslim society has been riven by ethnic tensions,which in Al-Andalus were profound, as much or morethan in any other Islamic land. Prior to the eleventhcentury, and even to some extent afterward, the eliteremained Arab and looked down on the Berbers (theother principal group of Muslims of foreign origins)and the native converts, as well as on Christians andJews. Other sectors of society responded with intenseresentment, leading to sporadic revolt and greatviolence, as political division formed alonggeographic and ethnic lines. In theory, Islam, likeChristianity, rejects racial discrimination, but realityrevealed otherwise. The Arabs exhibited a powerfulsense of caste and racial superiority, demeaningracially inferior "sons of white women," even thoughthose same white women were the ones most greatlydesired for Arab harems. Even the Muwalladun (Sp."muladíes"), the native Spanish converts to Islam,were sometimes derided for their white complexions,

compared with the Arab elite. Muslim society featuredwidespread slavery, which like the slavery of theAncient World was multiracial, slaves being drawnfrom every race and ethnic group not Muslim, butblack slaves from Africa normally occupied the lowestposition. Andalusi society remained highlysegmented, not merely among the religions, but interms of the different categories of Muslims — theArab elite divided by lineages, tribes, and districtsfrom the Berbers (and their own internal segments)and the convert majority of native Hispani.

At its height, the high culture of the cities of Al-Andalus rivaled that of the great Muslim centers of theMiddle East. The scholarly and scientific texts ofGreece and Rome had generally been translated intoArabic by the tenth century, but it is a mistake to thinkthat the classic manuscripts (Latin, Greek, Syriac,Persian) were preserved, for "infidel" texts, no matterhow high the quality and originality, were generallydestroyed after being translated into Arabic. The highculture that soon developed in the Islamic world was a"transfer culture," for the lands originally conquered bythe Muslims — Syria, Persia, Egypt, and to somedegree the Visigothic kingdom — all had active andvibrant high cultures. The rise of learning in the Islamicworld was a matter of taking over these foundations,though, unlike the imperialism of Rome and somelater Western imperialisms, Arab imperialism in mostareas steadily erased native languages and largelysuppressed independent native cultures. In toto, Arabculture borrowed much more from Syria, Byzantium,and Persia than Western culture would later borrowfrom it, but in its first mature phase fostered a level oflearning, which, prior to the thirteenth century,

surpassed that of western Europe. By the tenthcentury Muslim scholars were doing advanced work oftheir own in mathematics, astronomy, botany,geography, medicine, and other sciences. For severalcenturies they excelled in historical writing, but therewas very limited development in humanist thought.12

Philosophical study was limited to a comparativelybrief period, for Islam is a religion of orthopraxy andcorrect outward conduct, and discourages broaderspeculation or any extended inquiry into theology orphilosophy, holding that there should be no debate ordissension among believers.13 The most famousMuslim philosophers, the Persian Avicenna and theAndalusi Averroes (Ibn Rushd), primarily wrotecommentaries on Aristotle and other thinkers, failingto develop complete new systems of their own. Suchcommentary ultimately had its main impact onWestern thought, which, unlike that of the Muslims,learned to study contrasting points of view.14 Bycomparison, Averroes had no significant influence onIslamic thought, which rejected his insights. There wasvery little in the way of original Islamic philosophy, forthat was precluded by the literalism of the Koran andthe resultant character of Islamic doctrine.15

By the thirteenth century, the Islamic and Westernworlds were headed in different directions, as themargin of freedom and tolerance in the former shrank.The new Western universities expanded theiractivities, while the intellectual culture of the Islamiclands declined. The rigid, intolerant and anti-intellectual tendencies in Islamic religion and cultureeventually became totally dominant. By about 1100,learning and science in the West showed the firstsigns of approximation in range and quality with that of

signs of approximation in range and quality with that ofthe Islamic world, and by 1300 were pulling ahead.16

Subsequent cultural development in Muslim Persiaand India was primarily artistic in character. The markof a tolerant and creative civilization is to be able todeal with contrary ideas, something that the West wasslowly beginning to do to a limited degree.Differences were becoming equally or more markedin economic organization and in technology, where bythe fourteenth century the West was slowly becomingdominant. In later times, wherever Muslims lived sideby side with other religious communities, whether as amajority or a minority, the latter would almost alwaysshow greater capacity for development andmodernization.

As of the tenth century, the Andalusis excelled inhigh culture, in most of the practical arts, and in mostaspects of esthetics. They had introduced Arabicnumerals, certain advanced agricultural techniques,and a series of new fruits, vegetables, and otherfoods, as well as silk, paper, glass, and new kinds ofceramics. By the eleventh century, on the other hand,Spanish Christians were beginning to excel in militarytechnology and in political development, theirstructures of law, rights, and civic institutions creatingstronger internal solidarity than the ultimately morefragile Muslim despotisms.

The greatest failure of Al-Andalus was political.Generally speaking, there has been little politicaldevelopment in Islamic societies. Since Islamoriginated in the commercially sophisticated MiddleEast, commercial and property law in the sharia wasat first more advanced than that of the West, butcriminal law remained harsh and primitive, as it

stands even in the twenty-first century. The shariaenshrines traditionalism and the status quo,underwriting a tribal and clan structure of MiddleEastern and Andalusi society, which precludedpolitical evolution. The reinforcement of clan and tribalstructures hardened the segmentation of Andalusisociety, in which political loyalty was owed primarily tolineages, not to institutions. Classical Islamic thoughthad little theory of the state or of political developmentand representation. To a greater degree than mostother systems, Islamic states rest on military andpolice power. The theory of Islamic society posits akind of utopia but, as is the norm with utopias, inpractice tends to foster despotisms.

Those who propose a picture of Andalusi societyand institutions as "tolerant" and "convivientes"altogether fail to explain why Andalusi history waswracked by revolts of all kinds — by Berbers, byMuwalladun, sometimes even by the Arab elites.Though the Christian Mozarabs were generally, butnot always, passive, the only sector of this highlydivided and segmented society that did not rebelwere the Jews, the smallest religious minority, totallylacking in military power. The only periods in whichthere were no internal revolts were the reigns of themost strongly despotic rulers, who governed with anabsolutely iron hand and distracted many of theirfollowers by their numerous attacks against theChristian principalities. Throughout the history of Al-Andalus, rebellions of all kinds were repressedvigorously, often with the utmost violence. Cordobanrulers never hesitated to carry out full-scalemassacres of their subjects, without the slightestpretext of judicial procedure. This further explains why,

once the central caliphal state collapsed early in theeleventh century, most of AI-Andalus found it itselfincreasingly defenseless, by comparison with theChristian principalities. Under the decentralized,rights-centered, partially representative institutions ofthe latter, nearly that entire society could be countedon for military service. The Andalusi despotism, bycontrast, tried to disarm Andalusi society, which itfundamentally distrusted, relying on its own centralArab-based tribal units, stiffened by the typicallyIslamic "slave soldiers" and numerous mercenaries.

Spanish Christian rulers also had to quell numerousrebellions, but this was due above all to elitedissidence, not to ethnic segmentation. Theirprincipalities were much more successful in buildingpolities over the long run, with evolving structures oflaw, social rights, and a certain degree of broaderparticipation and representation.

Slavery was a major feature of tolerant,"conviviente" Andalusi society, which maintainedmajor international slave markets in Córdoba andother large cities. Mohammed declared that Muslimscould not be held as slaves but otherwise explicitlyapproved slavery as an institution in Islamic society,the slave population to be made up of the manyprisoners captured in Islamic military conquest andothers purchased on the international market. Thefrequent "aceifas" launched against the Spanishprincipalities were designed to a considerable extentas slave raids.

Slavery in the Islamic world was multiracial, as inancient Rome, non-Muslims from any ethnic or racialgroup being possible victims. A major new feature of

Islamic slavery, however, was development of a large-scale black African slave trade. Black slaves hadbeen found in Rome, but their numbers were very few,whereas the Arabs were the first to make theacquisition of sizable numbers of African slaves amajor activity. The Muslims were also the first tocategorize blacks as uniquely racially inferior andhence more naturally and appropriately enslaved.Arabs were thus not inhibited in seizing slaves fromblack Muslim tribes, as well.17 Whereas slavery largelydied out in western Europe outside Italy, the influenceof the Islamic slave-raiding border helped to sustainthe presence of slavery in the Spanish Christianprincipalities, which imbibed the Muslim attitudetoward black slavery and, by the close of the fifteenthcentury, would position themselves to surpass theMuslims in the African slave trade.18 Conversely, themost positive aspect of Islamic slavery was theencouragement of regular emancipation or thepurchasing of freedom after conversion (even thoughthis was not always observed in practice), so thatmultigenerational slave castes generally did notdevelop, even though slave markets thrived in theMiddle East and Africa well into the twentiethcentury.19

Despite the persistence of military violence for eightcenturies, relations between Spaniards and Andalusiswere extremely complex. The entire period waspunctuated by numerous official truces, though nonelasted for more than a few years. For centuries,Islamic orthodoxy held that there could be no regularpeace between the "House of Islam" and the "Houseof War," that is, the entire non-Islamic world, whichwas to remain under assault until it had been forced to

submit to Islam (the word Islam itself means"submission"). It was soon deemed appropriate,however, to desist from military operations if anadjoining non-Islamic power was willing to pay someform of tribute. In the Iberian Peninsula, wheneverpractical reasons moved the ruler of the Islamic state(Umayyad, Almoravid, or Almohad) to a temporarytruce with one or more of the Christian kingdoms, thecustomary bearing of minor gifts that accompaniedany embassy was interpreted by means of a legalfiction as payment of "tribute," hence rendering thetruce legitimate under Islamic doctrine.

The frontier between the two civilizations washostile and violent, but also highly permeable.20

Spanish Christians developed a kind of familiarity ofboth military and political relations with the Muslimsunknown beyond the Pyrenees. Rules of war oftenthus obtained surprised, even shocked, EuropeanChristians. When the latter helped the Aragonese toseize Barbastro in 1063, they proposed to subject theMuslim inhabitants to violent extortion, rape, slavery,or even death, but were restrained by the Aragonese,who told them that was simply not the way things weredone. Roughly speaking, Spanish Christians seemedto have accepted Koranic rules of warfare, whichallowed for such practices only if a city refused toagree to terms.

In times of truce both Christian and Muslim rulers,as well as opposition factions on both sides, did nothesitate to enter political deals and even cross-culturalalliances. On occasion, Christian rulers sought andobtained Muslim military assistance against eitherinternal rebels or rival princes in other kingdoms, asdid dynastic or aristocratic factions who rebelled

did dynastic or aristocratic factions who rebelledagainst them. Andalusi rulers employed Christianmercenaries in their semiprofessional armed forcesand also made use of Christian rebels against thenorthern kingdoms. By the eleventh century, as theCórdoba caliphate weakened, Muslim rulers or rebelfactions sought and obtained Christian militaryintervention on their own behalf. Although cross-cultural political and military alliance was not the norm,neither was it infrequent, but simply one feature of along and complex relationship that was alwaysultimately adversarial, but part of the time waspeaceful and occasionally might even becomplementary, rarely even intimate.

There was nothing uniquely Spanish about all this,for such practices have existed at times in everyregion in which Christian and Muslim states lived inconditions of at least relative equilibrium. EvenCrusader states in Syria and Palestine sometimesformed such alliances, as much later did Europeangovernments with the Ottoman empire. None of thatmeant that either the Crusaders or the Europeanstates ever modified their primary identity, or wereinvolved in any marked "cultural hybridiry."

To the extent that the medieval Spanishexperienced any genuine convivencia, this did nottake place in Al-Andalus, where Christians completelydisappeared, but in the Reconquest Christiankingdoms from the late eleventh century on. The erafrom the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries hasbeen called the "Mudéjar century," for by then theincorporation of Muslim minorities had reached itsheight, and a certain amount of cultural diffusion tookplace. In the conquered southern cities, Spanish

architecture introduced its distinctive style ofimpressive facades but retained the existing Muslimconfiguration of narrow, winding streets with littlepublic space. Christian architecture was considerablysuperior and had little to learn from that of theMuslims, but Andalusi or Mudéjar architecturaldecoration generally won favor and became acommon Spanish motif during this era. The publicbaths that existed in medieval Spain were probablynot so much a matter of Islamic influence as of theRoman tradition, for at that time they sometimesexisted beyond the Pyrenees as well, beingeliminated throughout Europe by the sixteenth century.

The general trend of the thirteenth to fifteenthcenturies was a slow but increasing assimilation toSpanish Christian culture, though much more on thepart of the Jewish, than the Muslim, minority. TheJewish elite began to aspire to something equivalentto aristocratic status, while even in independentGranada, the last Muslim state, the upper classsometimes donned Christian-style clothing.Conversely, Castilian elites often found it modish toadopt bright-colored Muslim garb.

Ultimately, what took place between Christians andMuslims was a form of coexistence not equivalent toAmérico Castro's convivencia. There were individualconversions, primarily of Jews and Muslims toChristianity, and also a certain number of mixedmarriages (commonly of a Christian man with aMuslim woman), but the kind of cultural assimilationfound among much of the Jewish population did notgenerally extend to Muslims. Technical borrowing inesthetics, economic production, and technology tookplace on both sides, but the Mudéjar minority showed

place on both sides, but the Mudéjar minority showedno signs of general assimilation, even though it seemsto have had a kind of hybrid culture, Islamic in itsfundamentals of religion and thought, marriage andfamily, food and dress, though partially assimilated inits economic life. Bernard Vincent has judged that"Morisco and Christian culture clashed in nearly everyrespect. Their two styles of life were diametricallyopposed. The inner organization of Morisco homesand the way houses were grouped in neighborhoodsin no way resembled the way in which Christians didsuch things." 21 Christians were offended by thesounds of Muslim music and ceremonies, the scent ofthe perfume Muslims used, and the bright color of theirclothing, whose style and tone were so different fromthe more austere Spanish manner. They found equallyoffensive such basic domestic practices as sitting onthe floor to eat without tables, chairs, or benches, andsleeping on the floor in standard oriental style on matsrather than in beds. With the Moriscos, at least, thesegmented culture of Al-Andalus continued into theseventeenth century.

Beginning in the fifteenth century, and even more inthe years that followed, enemies of the Spanishkingdoms denounced Spanish society as racially andculturally bastardized, a mixture of Moors and Jews,hence inherently inferior to the strictly Christiansocieties of other parts of western Europe. By thenineteenth century, as denunciation and propagandabegan to give way to more serious observation, therearose the only slightly more empirical notion of"oriental Spain," the only part of the West that wassomehow also part of the East, because of thesupposedly profound influence of the "Moors." (Thecommon use of the latter term, by Spaniards and

foreigners alike, would presumably have surprisedand offended the Andalusis themselves. It probablyreflected the fact that most foreign Muslims whoentered the peninsula were Moroccan and otherBerbers, not Arabs, and also stemmed from thecontinued massive Moroccan invasions between theeleventh and fourteenth centuries.)

This raises the question — how much and what kindof influence did the Muslims have on Spanish culture,society, and institutions? The influence is oftenconsidered to have been profound, but was it really?The issue was at the crux of the quarrel betweenCastro and Sánchez Albornoz, probably the mostfamous two-man controversy in all Spanishhistoriography.

To begin with, there are approximately fourthousand words in Castilian and other peninsularlanguages that are derived from Arabic (with ratherfewer in Catalan), having to do specifically with suchareas as geography, economic practices, basictechnology, and administration. They are almost allwords for things, rather than for sentiments (althoughthere are a few for the latter, as well), and entered thevocabulary primarily between the thirteenth andsixteenth centuries, as the Spanish occupied nearly allof Al-Andalus and incorporated a sizable Muslimminority.22 The vocabulary of Castilian is, however,quite large, and such words — though among thosefrequently used — amount to a very small percentageof the total. Grammar and syntax remained totallyunaffected. Obviously Arabic had some influence, butwhether this could be considered a profound influenceis more doubtful.

Spanish culture, on the one hand, and the country'sinstitutional theory and practice, on the other, are all ofthe west European type. There is some Islamicinfluence in Spanish literature, but again the degree isquite limited, having to do with certain medieval poeticforms and plotlines. No influence may be found inreligious culture, theology, or church organization andadministration, or in philosophical thought, highculture, or political philosophy and practice. The factthat an occasional term of Arab origin may appear inthe roster of administration positions is a technicality,not an oriental model. Even Spanish diet reveals onlymodest traces of Andalusi or Mudejar influence,rejecting the semivegetarian Andalusi cuisine andmost of its favorite foods, such as couscous, whichhas no place in Spanish diet, which conversely alwaysfeatured pork, like that of other Europeans.

Popular songs and music have no Arab meter, andin fact Spanish music, even of the earlier period, couldnot be played on the typically Muslim instruments. Theoldest of the well-known Spanish, mainly Andalusian,dances originated no earlier than the sixteenthcentury. Similarly the origins of flamenco and cantejondo, the "lerele" style, are modern Andalusian, andtraditional gypsy, a style that first began to emerge inthe Jerez-Cádiz triangle toward the end of theeighteenth century, achieved its full form in Seville andsome of the larger Andalusian cities soon after themiddle of the nineteenth century, from where it soonspread to Madrid. It does have certain oriental roots,but the orient from which part of flamenco stems is themusical culture that the gypsies brought from India, notthe Arab Middle East.

In the late Middle Ages, the principal influence or

In the late Middle Ages, the principal influence orexpression of Muslim culture in Spanish lay in certainareas of esthetics, most especially in the decorativestyle generally called Mudéjar. This lasted forapproximately two centuries as architectural and otherkinds of decoration for buildings whose plan andcharacter, however, were not those of MuslimGranada but of Christian Spain. "Mudejar style"remained a Spanish form that was revived early in thetwentieth century.

Proponents of "romantic Spain" would nonethelessargue that Spanish "psychology" reveals considerableoriental influence. To what precisely would such anobservation refer? Its proponents usually point to suchqualities as rhetoric, emotionality, spontaneity,frequent dissidence, and lack of cooperation, or anyone of a number of other things. Richard Ford, in hisfamous Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845),tried to be more precise than most, pointing to suchqualities as hospitality, gratitude, fear ofcontamination or of the "evil eye," of women sitting onthe floor of churches, and of the "resignation" of theSpanish. Occasional individual traits might benoticed, such as a greater tendency of Spanishwomen to cover their faces, or a special flourish, suchas the contraction "q.s.p.b." (standing for "que suspies besa" — who kisses your feet — a rhetoricalgesture not common in other Western discourse).When totaled up, however, it is rather thin stuff, sincemany of these characteristics might be found in otherEuropean countries in varying degrees. On the otherhand, Spanish essentialists, beginning to some extentin the sixteenth century, have held that Spanishpsychology is in fact a kind of racial constant sincepre-Roman times. Is either contention — the

"orientalist" or the "essentialist" — correct? Is eitherverifiable or an empirical hypothesis capable offalsification? This would seem doubtful, since eachrests on vague but sweeping generalizations thatcannot be empirically verified. Many of the things thatseemed so "different" about the Spanish during thenineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries werethe consequence not of orientalism but of the relativetraditionalism of Spanish society, slower to undergothe changes experienced by the rest of westernEurope. This is not to deny that Spanish society hasits idiosyncrasies, as do all others, but those customsor attitudes that can be determined to have stemmeddirectly from the Muslims are quite limited.

Culturally, the ethnic group that at first benefitedfrom Islamic dominion were the Spanish Jews, whoenjoyed both greater tolerance and greateropportunities than under the Visigoths, so that Al-Andalus witnessed a flowering of Jewish culture. Asearly as the late tenth century, however, intoleranceand oppression began to mount. By the late eleventhcentury, Jewish attitudes were changing from apreference for Muslim rule to an equidistant attitudetoward Christians and Jews, and by the second half ofthe twelfth century had begun to swing toward a pro-Christian orientation, by that point finding greatertolerance and opportunity under Christian rule.23 Fromthat time stemmed the pronounced Hispanization ofpeninsular Jewry.

The frontier conflict with Islam did not end with theconquest of Granada in 1492. Compared with thefifteenth century, the struggles of the first sevendecades of the sixteenth century were equally orsometimes even more intense. The Testament of

sometimes even more intense. The Testament ofIsabel la Católica commended the crusade and thecontinuation of the Reconquest into North Africa to theCastilians, something initiated nearly three centuriesearlier by Fernando III el Santo. The most difficultbattles of the sixteenth century were those fought withthe Turks in the Mediterranean, where the Habsburgforces gained their most famous victory (Lepanto), butalso suffered their worst and most costly defeats,indeed the only notable reverses suffered by Spanisharms during that period. It is calculated that during theearly modern period as many as 150,000 Spaniardswere taken prisoner by Muslim pirates.24 Thehistorical literature is full of accounts of English, Dutch,and French pirates attacking Spanish shipping in theAtlantic, but overall the most costly piracy was thecontinuous Muslim assaults of the sixteenth,seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Through theeighteenth century the Spanish crown retained notonly its Moroccan plazas but also the key city of Oranas well, but the most notable defeat suffered underCarlos III, when the Spanish empire reached itsgreatest geographical extent overseas, was the effortto seize Algiers and put an end to its slave raiding.25

The long confrontation with Islam was in some waysthe major formative factor, as well as the major de-formative factor, in Spanish history. The Muslimconquest of the eastern and southern Mediterraneanwas a world-historical disaster, removing much of theancient Greco-Roman world from the eventual courseof civilization, largely destroying the originallanguages and culture of these regions, and thusconsigning them to an oriental civilization that afterfive centuries became stagnant. It destroyed thepossibility of any organic evolution of the original

Hispano-Visigothic culture, which was, as we haveseen, as advanced as any in western Europe.Spanish society then formed itself around a newmilitant culture that, though remarkably open tointernational influences in the Middle Ages, alsodeveloped aspects of a caste culture, partiallyperipheral to the European core of which it formed apart. The strongly orthodox Catholicism of themedieval Spanish guaranteed their place in the newWestern culture of Latin Christendom, and they wouldnot undergo the fate of other Christian societies to thesouth and east. This frontier culture, however, focusedon military and, later, imperial priorities, failed todevelop fully all the institutions that would becomecommon to the Western core, and the consequenceshelped to set Spanish society on the differential path ittrod during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Spanish society has been criticized for not fullyreciprocating Islamic "tolerance," but that in fact isexactly what it did. The Spanish did not respond to thefanatical intolerance of Almoravids and Almohads inequivalent terms, but throughout the twelfth andthirteenth centuries, and after, maintained thetraditional system of discriminatory toleration. In thatperiod they were more, not less, tolerant than theMuslims, and occasionally even allowed publicprayers from Mudéjar minarets. In Castilian law, oathssworn by members of all three religions at one timehad equal legal value, and in early Castilian law thedeath penalty for killing a Jew was equivalent to thatfor killing a Christian, even though the long-term trendwas for increasing judicial discrimination. It wasprecisely this situation of having maintained thesystem of partial toleration that placed Spanish

society in a historically unparalleled situation, asituation that by the fifteenth century, faced with theEuropean drive toward unified polities combined withthe continued danger from the Islamic frontier, hadbecome a peculiar kind of predicament.

In this regard it is interesting to compare the policyof France during the early modern period. The Frenchcrown at one time formed an official alliance with theOttoman Empire, abetting Muslim piracy against theSpanish and Italians (a policy that in fact went muchfurther than the provision of sanctuary to ETA terroristsin the late twentieth century). Generally sheltered fromIslamic assault, the French were the first Westernsociety to develop a sort of Islamophilia among theintelligentsia, beginning as early as the seventeenthcentury (dissonantly co-existing with the policy of theFrench monarchy to consider itself a kind of heir ofSpain as sword of Catholicism and leader of Europe),leading to a series of admired, uninformed, anduncritical writings during the century that followed.

Some tendency toward sentimentalization could beseen in Spanish attitudes during the later MiddleAges, particularly in literature, with expressions of"maurofilia" versus "maurofobia" (admiration for vs.dislike of Moorish culture) in the sixteenth century, butthe modern tendency toward idealization originated inthe eighteenth century, with the Enlightenment critiqueof traditional Western Christian society. Such criticismwas itself absolutely unique, with no real equivalent inany prior civilization in human history. Enlightenmentattitudes were themselves profoundly contradictory, apronounced racism co-existing with a proclaimeduniversalism. This marked the beginning of theconcept of the idealized Other in Western culture,

concept of the idealized Other in Western culture,together with that of the Noble Savage, as supposedlyenlightened oriental viewpoints were invoked tocriticize Western institutions, beginning withMontesquieu's Lettres persanes, the Spanishequivalent being Cadalso's Cartas marruecas, thoughCadalso revealed no particular knowledge ofMorocco.

"Eurabian" concepts were later formed by someSpaniards in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Some — not all — of the Spanish Arabists whosework began with Francisco Codera in the nineteenthcentury showed a tendency to idealize Muslims,preferring to call them "Españoles," rather than"andalusíes." This represented an attempted"Hispanization" of a non-Western culture, motivated inpart perhaps to give greater prestige to that field ofstudy. Conversely, in the Arab world from thenineteenth century on there developed a pronouncedidealization of Al-Andalus as a lost paradise, andmost recently Al-Qaeda has announced its recoveryas a major priority.

By the twenty-first century, Al-Andalus has becomeone of the parts of the historically Islamic world thathas been thoroughly studied, if not indeed the mostthoroughly studied of them all. Many texts have beentranslated, and there is a sizable volume of scholarlyliterature, though writing for the broader publicremains deficient. Serafín Fanjul counted 822 bookspublished in Spain between 1970 and 1990 that inwhole or in part were dedicated to Al-Andalus,ranging from folletos to multivolume works, but notincluding an even larger number of articles.26

The weak Spanish imperialism in northwest Africaduring the first half of the twentieth century developedits own distinctive tropes, though in this regard it isimportant to distinguish between what was common tomany European imperialisms and what was specificto Spain. French imperialism in North Africa and theMiddle East often posited a special Frenchrelationship with the Islamic world, for whom Francebore a special role of protection and missioncivilisatrice, yet earlier French contacts had beenmodest compared with those of Spain. The"Moroccanism" that developed among some Spanishimperialists between 1910 and 1945 was distinctive,for its most extreme proponents presented the bizarrenotion that the Spanish and Moroccans were notmerely historically but also socially and culturallyclosely related. The most categorical even insistedthat they were the northern and southern branches ofthe same people, but the Spanish were moreadvanced, which gave them the right and the duty oftutelage over Morocco. Versions of this concept werepart of official diplomatic discourse during 1940-41when Sir Samuel Hoare, the new British ambassadorto Madrid in June 1940, was taken aback, to say theleast, when Col. Juan Beigbeder, the foreign minister,assured him that "Spaniards and Moors are the samepeople." A somewhat different longwinded version ofthis trope by Franco bored Hitler almost to tears atHendaye.27 Spanish claims on Morocco, and thepeculiar terms in which they were often justified,represented an interesting example of the way inwhich romantic myths can be made reality in theimagination of political actors. Ultimately, however, theonly thing particularly Spanish about this was thespecific form of the myth.

The real influence of Islam on Spain was ratherdifferent from the way in which it has usually beenportrayed. The most important consequence was toconfer on Spain a historical role of frontier andperiphery, which was different from what the peninsulahad experienced prior to the eighth century. UnderRome and its Visigothic successors, the peninsulahad been part of the core of late Roman civilization. Inthe new Western civilization of Latin Christendom,which was just emerging at the time that the kingdomof Asturias was being formed, the Spanishprincipalities would at first be more marginal andwould require half a millennium to assume fullparticipation in the core. For centuries a somewhatmarginal and highly militarized periphery, the Spanishprincipalities would for a long time be unable toachieve the full cultural, educational, and economiclevel of the core areas of the West, something thatthey approximated only after a lengthy historicalevolution. This harsh history helped to form and tofertilize the great expansion of energy and creativitythat took place at the end of the Middle Ages, but itwas probably not unrelated to the frustrations thatfollowed.

3Reconquest and CrusadeA "Spanish Ideology"?

The Spanish Reconquest was a process unique inEuropean and in world history. In no other case wasthe greater share of a sizable kingdom conquered byIslam or any other foreign civilization, then not merelysubjected but thoroughly transformed and acculturatedinto the alien civilization. Only centuries later was itfully regained by the remnants of the conqueredkingdom, which not merely conquered the invadersbut reacculturated the entire territory, subjecting andeventually extirpating the invading civilization. In thenearest parallels, found in eastern and in southeasternEurope, the Mongol and Ottoman empires exercisedmilitary and fiscal control over the conquered Christianpeoples but did not inhabit their territories to any largedegree and made no attempt to replace their religionand culture. The eventual throwing off of the Mongoland Ottoman yokes was not complicated by having toconfront a large alien new population and culture in theoriginally conquered territory.1 In no other part of theIslamic world has a significant Muslim society beencompletely replaced by a portion of the previouslyconquered population. The nearest equivalent inwestern Europe was the reconquest of Sicily in theeleventh century, but that differed in being carried outby external forces and involved a much smallerterritory that had been Islamic for scarcely twocenturies.2 As stated in chapter 2, the history of Spainfor this reason would have been absolutely unique

even if the Spanish had never accomplished anythingelse.

The Hispanic Peninsula in 1300

The Reconquest as the defining feature of thehistory of Spain has enjoyed a place of honor in bothversions of the Grand Narrative — the Catholic andthe liberal — that developed during the nineteenthcentury but suffered severely at the hands of thecritical deconstruction of the following era. The mostfamous comment was Ortega's observation thatsomething that went on for eight centuries could notsimply be called a "reconquest," though he failed toexplain convincingly just why that should be the case.Various objections have been advanced: the absenceof documentation for any "reconquest" doctrine orpolicy in the eighth century, the lack of continuing

commitment on the part of Spanish rulers in the laterMiddle Ages, the willingness of the latter on variousoccasions to make alliances with Muslims againstother Christian rulers, and so on. Specific objectionsare often well taken, though some have been laidopen to question by the most recent research, as inthe case of Barbero and Vigil's thesis concerning thelack of acculturation and Christianity in the Cantabriannorth prior to the eighth century (see chap. 1). There isno evidence of a specific "reconquest" policy duringthe first century of Asturian resistance, other than areflexive disposition of the initial Asturian rulers totake advantage of any opportunity or slackening ofMuslim power to extend their frontiers. In its earlystages the first medieval kingdom was so weak thatany grand design was unrealistic. More ambition forreconquest might be found on the part of the Frankishmonarchy when it intervened against the Muslims latein the eighth and early in the ninth centuries. Muslimraiding expeditions had crossed the Pyrenees onnumerous occasions in earlier years, andCharlemagne was logically concerned to roll back theIslamic menace.

Existing documentation makes it clear that when theAsturian monarchy first had the opportunity forsignificant reconquest, it expressed such a design asits long-range goal in the reign of Alfonso III. For someyears internal fragmentation within the Andalusidespotism made it seem as though the latter mightcollapse, but Asturian aspirations were blocked by themassive revival of Cordoban power in the tenthcentury. At varying times each of the Christianprincipalities accepted terms of submission to thecaliphate — technically under Koranic and Sharia

norms the only ones on which peace was possiblewith the non-Muslim "House of War." There were alsomoments in which individual Spanish princestemporarily made common cause with the Muslimsagainst each other, but these were brief interludes. Assoon as Andalusi power weakened, the Spanishexpansion resumed and, after another generation,reassumed the goal of major reconquest.

This was not a static concept but was modified fromgeneration to generation. At times it disappearedalmost altogether, but always returned. The originalgoal had apparently been to reclaim land and winbooty; later, as aims expanded, it was to regain all theterritory seized by the invader and to "restore thechurches of Christ." During the eleventh century, thepolicy was more to establish a complete hegemony,rather than to seize the entire peninsula militarily.More than a century was dedicated to fighting off theinvasions of the two successive new Moroccanempires, after which the main reconquest wascompleted in the thirteenth century. This did notrequire the expulsion of all Muslims, except for most ofthe urban population, but accepted terms ofsubordination equivalent to those for Christians andJews in Al-Andalus. Even then, Muslim assaults didnot end, for there was another major Moroccaninvasion in the fourteenth century. Altogether, theSpanish world was under repeated Muslim assault formore than six hundred years, from 711 to 1340. Aftera partial respite, Muslim attacks resumed in thesixteenth century and did not completely end untilWestern powers finally imposed themselves early inthe nineteenth century.

With the Great Reconquest of the thirteenth century,

With the Great Reconquest of the thirteenth century,the Spanish advance projected itself farther afield,making its first brief incursion into Morocco. The besteducated Spaniards of that era were well aware thatMauritania had once constituted the sixth province ofthe late Roman diocese of Hispania, and that theVisigoths had also held a small territory there. By thatpoint, in the mid-thirteenth century, the Reconquesthad become such a fundamental and widely acceptedideal of the Iberian principalities that even land-lockedNavarre, which played the most limited role in theenterprise, wrote the Reconquest into the firstcodification of its Fuero Antiguo (law code) in 1238.

CrusadeThe Reconquest was not for four centuries a

"crusade," something only institutionalized in LatinChristendom at the close of the eleventh century, but itwas always in part a religious war or, at the very least,as the distinguished medievalist Hispanist JosephO'Callaghan puts it, a "war ... of religiousconfrontation." 3 The earliest statements of thechroniclers declared that the restoration andexpansion of the Christian religion were basic goals,though hardly the only goals. This remained such aconstant factor in Spanish history that VillacañasBerlanga can accurately say that Spain "was alwayson the road to Jerusalem." 4 The objective was notprimarily to convert the Muslims but to regain theterritory they had usurped, to recover a kingdom thathad been lost. The ideal of religious conversionthrough missionary work did not develop originally inSpain but in Rome, and also among religious ordersin Italy and France at the end of the eleventh century,and was relatively slow to be adopted in Spain. It

never received prominence, but as the frontieradvanced, small numbers of Muslims were convertedand incorporated into Spanish society.5

There is a sense in which nearly all wars aredeclared to be "holy wars" — that is, military actionsfor which higher goals and sacred purposes areinvoked, based on a sacralization of patriotic andnational causes, if not on religion itself. To someextent, this phenomenon is observable in varyingdegrees in all societies. The official religious andmilitary Crusade, however, was first codified by thepapacy as a formal institution toward the end of theeleventh century, whence it was received in Spain.The idea of a military crusade as a new kind ofreligious institution had developed over a lengthyperiod from the initial idea of just war to that of"religious war" or "holy war" against non-Christians asa defensive tactic to that of "missionary wars" toextend the frontiers of Christendom, finally crystallizingin the formal ideal of the Crusade for the recovery ofthe Holy Land, violently seized by the Muslims morethan three centuries earlier.6 Justification and goals ofthe Crusade were religious, its practice earningspiritual merit. The official Crusade had specialfeatures, such as a formal vow on the part ofcrusaders, juridical and spiritual recognition by theChurch (which also provided financial support, at leastin part), military struggle to roll back Muslim conquests(primarily recovery of the Holy Land), and the promiseof remission of sins. In recent years it has been falselypresented as gratuitous aggression against peacefulMuslims, but in fact the Crusade was designed forpurposes of reconquest of key Christian territory thathad been seized by warlike Muslims. It did not feature

any plan for a general war of conquest of Muslimterritory as such or against Islamic civilization as awhole, though some such danger might be implicit.7Broader plans would be developed by the crowns ofCastile and Portugal only during the fifteenth century.

The popes actively promoted the Reconquest inSpain, tying it together with the official Crusade,employing in their documents and exhortations to theSpanish such Latin terms as recuperare, liberare,reparare, restaurare, and a variety of others to urgecompletion of reconquest. Spanish crusaders wereprohibited from joining the expeditions to the HolyLand but instead exhorted to concentrate on theReconquest (although a small number of Spanishcombatants did join the Holy Land crusades). Thepapacy was incensed at the interruptions of theReconquest that occurred from time to time,persistently encouraging its resumption.

From the late eleventh century on, the bulls ofcrusade were regularly preached in the peninsula andsoon became a regular part of the Reconquest andbeyond that of the war-making and finance of thepeninsular principalities. Introduction of the Crusadewas but one aspect of the broadening and deepeningof new ideas, institutions, and techniques from Franceand Italy in eleventh-century Spain, ranging from newreligious institutions to economic practices and tobreeding stronger horses to mount new French-styleheavy cavalry. The Reconquest had long beenconsidered a "holy war" of a certain kind, but it was amilitary, political, and economic enterprise that did notearn specific spiritual merit authorized by the Churchuntil the appearance of the Crusade.8 Reception of

this new doctrine was only encouraged by the longstruggle that began at approximately the same timeagainst the new Moroccan invasions, which practicedjihad with a greater intensity than had been the normin Al-Andalus. By the twelfth century the concepts ofcrusade and reconquest became intertwined.Subsequently Castilian texts would regularly refer to"guerra divinal" and "guerra santa" more or lessinterchangeably with the Crusade. Though theSpanish had made no ideological contribution to theidea of the crusade (beside presenting the mainpractical example in the West of persistent warfareagainst Muslims), by the later Middle Ages thepeninsular kingdoms (including Portugal) were theonly parts of Latin Christendom that had completelyinstitutionalized among themselves the idea andpractice of crusade, and had become its principalchampions.9 The Spanish principalities founded moreindividual crusading orders of monk-combatants thanany other land, especially the Castilian orders ofAlcántara, Calatrava, and Santiago, but there wereothers less known. The incorporation of the institutionand ethos of the Crusade did not mean that all rulersand interests were always firmly united behind thisgoal and that conflicts, contradictions, and distractionsdid not frequently develop, nor that Christianmercenaries might not still be found occasionally inMuslim ranks. The "cruzada" tax, provided by theChurch, became a major source of income forSpanish rulers, and though much of the time theproceeds were not devoted to crusading activities,after the twelfth century the principal victories ofcrusading against the Muslims were won in the IberianPeninsula. At the Council of Basel in 1434, Castilianrepresentatives argued that the crown of Castile

merited precedence over that of England because itregularly practiced "la guerra divinal," while the latterdid not. Though the idea of the crusade declinedduring the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, aftercompletion of nearly all the peninsular Reconquest, itwas revived once more by the Catholic Monarchs.

Was There a "Spanish Ideology"?It is not unusual for human societies of all types and

at all stages of development to conceive of a specialrole or category for themselves. Primitive tribes, forexample, often have terms for their own grouptranslated approximately as "the human beings," alloutsiders automatically relegated to a lower level.Even the ancient Hebrews were probably far from thefirst to understand themselves as constituting a"chosen people," for various kinds of "chosen people"concepts have been common in history.10 Sometimessuch concepts are widely shared within the society,though in other cases they do not extend very farbeyond the elite. The sense of the superiority andmission of the Roman empire was widely shared byits citizens. Early on, the Frankish monarchyconceived of itself as the elect of God with a divinemission, while the Mongols of Genghis Khanconsidered themselves the "scourge of God,"destined to conquer the world. In other cases aspecial national destiny is thought to be revealedthrough suffering, as in the case of nineteenth-centuryPolish nationalism, which termed Poland the "Christ ofthe nations" for the dismemberment and suffering itexperienced. Something of the same spirit informedSerbian identity under Turkish domination, conceivedas that of a "heavenly people" whose aspirations were

spiritual and transcendental, though independenceand dominion would eventually be restored to them.11

The most striking case in the modern world has beenthe persistent example of Russian messianism,beginning with the concept originating more than halfa millennium ago of Muscovy as the "Third Rome,"and moving on to PanSlavism and thenCommunism.12 Nikolai Berdiaiev subsumed it underthe rubric of the "Russian idea," while, with regard toGermany, Karl Marx would write of a "Germanideology," in this case referring to cultural ideas.

It seems clear that historically there has been a"Spanish idea," both similar to and different from the"Russian idea," the French concept, and others, thatunderwent an extensive historical evolution andtransformation from the sixth and seventh centuries. Itwas one of the longest "national ideas" in history,stretching in various forms for nearly a millennium anda half. Its last great avatar, for better or worse, wasFrancisco Franco, and with his death it quickly wentinto terminal decline.

In modern nations, national or messianic ideassimply represent a kind of common attitude, sharedeither more or less widely, but usually not a fullydeveloped ideology such as those found in the majormodern political movements nor a specific continuouspolicy shared by all elites. Nor is a national ormessianic idea the same as a specific identity or afully developed major nationalist movement, though itmay help eventually to generate the latter. It reflects apersistent attitude or mentality on the part of certainelites, but may be quite discontinuous and at timesaltogether ignored in favor of other interests, thoughreappearing once more under favorable

reappearing once more under favorablecircumstances. It does not produce a unique kind ofpolitical form, but may be found in varying modes ofexpression in different kinds of polities frommonarchies to republics to dictatorships. Forpurposes of historical analysis, it may be considereda sort of ideal type, an aspiration expressed in avariety of modes or degrees through history,sometimes dominant but frequently recessive.

Origins of the first Spanish idea in the age of SanIsidoro have been discussed in chapter 1. It is likelythat in the seventh century such concepts were sharedonly by very few elites. A more direct line may betraced from the late ninth century in Asturias, duringthe reign of Alfonso III, with the mission of reconquestand restoration of the Gothic patrimony and Christiandominion. Although this seems to have been moredirectly assumed as state policy than had been theearlier idea among the Visigoths, there is again noevidence that it extended beyond a narrow elite. Inlater centuries it would be vigorously resumed, butsometimes not as the highest priority of policy,particularly after the completion of the GreatReconquest of the thirteenth century, though at thatpoint North Africa was first fit within the parameters ofsuch policy.

The sense of mission advanced a step farther in thelate fifteenth century. The general religious revival ofthat era coincided in Spain with completion of thepeninsular reconquest, stimulating a new mood ofmessianism (which, in other forms, extended wellbeyond Spain). This strongly motivated Columbus, forexample, as well as having a vigorous presence at thecourt of Manoel "O Afortunado" in Lisbon, during

whose reign the full Portuguese maritime supremacyor thalassocracy began to be established. TheTestament of Isabel la Católica was explicitconcerning the future responsibilities of the kingdomof Castile. Historians debate and are often skepticalregarding grander motivations among theconquistadores, but mission and extension of the faithwere always mentioned and certainly played a role.

Although the Spanish Habsburg empire in Europewas largely formed through a marriage alliance anddynastic inheritance, the sense of mission to defendand expand Christendom was also strongly felt, and itformed the basis of some of the most extensive andcostly of the military enterprises of the sixteenthcentury. During that era the Castilian Cortes showedlittle enthusiasm for the crown's European wars,urging it to "make peace with Christian kings," butmore readily accepted the struggle against theMuslims in the Mediterranean. Despite all the otherobligations of the Spanish crown, it did more tocombat Turkish expansion, at least down to the timeof Lepanto, than did any other European power. Inrecent years, historians of the reign of Felipe II havetended to downplay the role of religious motivationpreviously imputed to Spanish policy, emphasizingmore the priority of defending dynastic rights andhonor and of reasons of state, "razón de Estado." Thisis a useful corrective, but the concept of the Spanishcrown as the "Monarquía católica" par excellence hadconsiderable importance as well. In the seventeenthcentury, as the burden of empire, dynastic rights,endless wars, and internal social and economicdecline began to wear down Spain, some religiousspokesmen referred to this as a cross that it must

continue to bear as leader of the Counter-Reformationand the chief defender of the Catholic faith. Since thelate fifteenth century, certain religious, political, andcultural figures had developed the concept of theSpanish as God's modern "chosen people,"successor to the ancient Hebrews. In 1629 aNavarrese friar published the Libro de las cincoexcelencias del español, which defined the Spanishvocation in terms of a sort of martyrdom (in someways similar to the later national doctrines of Polesand Serbs). He declared that the role of the Spanishsurpassed that of the Hebrews not simply becausethey were the new modern incarnation of the chosenpeople, but because they had been given a trulyuniversal role to unify all mankind and to convertdistant continents, hastening the Second Coming ofChrist. If the cost of such a universal mission meantgreat suffering and depopulation for Spain, the wealthand population of other countries should not beenvied; rather, "let them envy our depopulation, whichwe suffer in imitation of the work of the Apostles andthe disciples of Christ." 13 Spain's mission was to bethe living imitatio Christi. The majority of Spanishpeople at that time would probably not have agreedwith him, but it would seem that some, at least, did.

The suffering and relative immiseration of themiddle and later decades of the seventeenth centuryhad a chastening effect on such attitudes, whichsubsequently became much more rare. By theeighteenth century the Spanish ideology was indecline, but far from dead. All of Spain's wars duringthe eighteenth century were preached from churchpulpits as veritable crusades against the enemies ofGod. During the era of the French Revolution, Catholic

spokesmen identified Spanish Catholics with thesufferings of the faithful in France, and compared theirsituation to that of the ancient Jews during the age ofthe prophets. The explosion of popular resistance tothe Napoleonic invasion expressed popular patriotismand xenophobia, in which the clergy played a majorrole in articulating Spain's traditional religious valuesand vocation.

By that time, however, the Spanish elite wereturning more and more to political liberalism, whichsoon constructed its own Grand Narrative — one thatdefined Spanish history as the history of liberty, inconsonance with what was becoming known as theWestern tradition. This stressed the history of rights,of the rule of law, and of popular representation, atmost incorporating only selected aspects of thetraditional ideology. Two different versions thenexisted side by side, with the emergence of the "TwoSpains," though conservative liberalism made aconsiderable effort to join together major features ofthe two ideas. The traditional doctrine was revivedand sustained by the Carlists, and then by the Catholicrevival of the second half of the nineteenth century,incomplete though that event was. These two visionscontinued to clash, the liberal idea moving towardradicalism and revolutionism, until the Civil War of1936-39 seemed to decide the issue, as during theReconquest, by force of arms. Franco's victory led tothe neotraditionalist revival of the 1940s and 1950s,whose equivalent was not to be witnessed anywhereelse in the Christian world, so-called nationalCatholicism constituting the final major phase oftraditionalist Spanish Catholicism.

What was unique about Spain was not the

What was unique about Spain was not theexistence of national ideology, but that it continued toexist in related form for well over a millennium, eventhough the emphasis changed fairly significantly overtime. The traditional Spanish idea was not a constantfactor, waxing and waning frequently over thecenturies, but constituted probably the longestsemicontinuous concept of religious identity andmission, of war and empire, to be found anywhere inEurope. The equivalent in France was both moreattenuated and more discontinuous, and its traditionalform largely ended with the French Revolution.

4Spain and the West

Whereas "identity" has become a matter ofcontroversy for Spaniards only comparatively recently,the identity, character, or image of Spain has been apolemical issue outside of Spain for nearly half amillennium. The Black Legend found its earliestexpression in Italy at the close of the fifteenth centuryand would later be cultivated with especial fervor bythe Dutch and the English. Italian detractors liked todenounce the Spanish as a bastard blend of Moorsand Jews, not proper Christians or even Europeans;conversely, the principal northern libelers of theSpanish postulated a hyper-Catholic identity of uniquesadism and malevolence, a few echoes of whichpersist today.

Stereotypes concerning the Spanish shiftedemphasis and content several times between thesixteenth and nineteenth centuries. When the notion of"romantic Spain" developed, it also portrayed theSpanish as extremely different, but now as a uniquelypre-modern people motivated by honor, personalcourage, and an archaic style of life, as distinct frommaterialism and achievement, a semi-"oriental"people strongly configured by North Africa and theMiddle East. Residues of this idea linger down to thepresent.

The only other major European people who havebecome the object of equivalent attitudes are theRussians, for whom identity became a very major

issue again in the 1990s, just as it had become forSpaniards.1 In Russia, however, nationalism has wonout, whereas a unique aspect of modern Spanishculture is the extent to which the Black Legend hasbeen internalized by the Spanish themselves. Since1985 Europe has become a kind of panacea, almostwhat the anthropologists would call a "cargo cult" forSpaniards, and there is no denying that membershipin the European Union has been economicallybeneficial for Spain, at least until the recession of2008.

An underlying feature of such attitudes has had todo with what is often considered to be the non-Western or extra-European identity of the country andits culture. To what extent can this be justified byempirical analysis, as distinct from subjective political,cultural, or ideological projections?

Hispania was clearly a normal and integral part ofthe Roman empire — the "West" (or, more precisely,partial pre-West) of its time. The main parts of RomanHispania, Bética (the south), and the Tarraconensis(the northeast) were among the most Romanized andLatinized parts of the empire, producing severalemperors (while none came from Gaul). Indeed,Hispania played an important role in sustaining the"Latinity" of the empire, or, more precisely, of itswestern half, against the Greek and eastMediterranean identity of the eastern half. TheVisigothic kingdom eventually took shape as the heirof Rome, at least according to its self-conception. Thereligious and cultural identity that it developed as a"Catholic kingdom" was by the seventh centuryproclaimed as the quintessence of Western RomanCatholic orthodoxy. Visigothic Spania maintained a

Catholic orthodoxy. Visigothic Spania maintained acultural life second only to that of Italy and played aleading role in ecclesiastical development, despitethe marked decline of the Roman world from the fifthcentury on.

That decline was not exactly "the first decline of theWest," as Julián Marías puts it, since Rome was onlythe predecessor of Western civilization, but its declinemarked a kind of cultural and civilizational catastrophethat could be only very partially averted in VisigothicSpania. Out of the ashes of the empire (whose endwas never fully accepted for another half millennium)there arose "Europe," as the term eventually came tobe used, in the form of the Germanic kingdoms, whichbegan to shift the weight of affairs more and moredecisively toward the north.2

This became fundamental for the history of theformer Hispania, whose greater world for a millenniumand more had consisted of the Mediterranean, anorientation toward the east (and to a minor degreetoward the south) that from the late fifth century onwould be replaced by an orientation increasinglytoward the north. Visigothic dominion had originallybeen established north of the Pyrenees, and even asLeovigildo centered the new kingdom in thepeninsula, Septimania in southwestern Franceremained part of it. Both politico-military competitionand general relations with the Frankish kingdom werecloser than relations with Italy and Rome.

Visigothic Spania in fact seemed by the seventhcentury to represent the first successful new mergingof the Germanic and the Roman, which was to be thebasis of "Europe" and the subsequent "West." Bycomparison, Italy remained too Roman and France

comparison, Italy remained too Roman and Francetoo Germanic. Italy had perhaps a higher level ofculture but was less unified politically. The Frankishkingdom achieved a higher level of political unity butwas in some respects less advanced culturally andecclesiastically. For a moment, Visigothic Spania wasthe first, most successful "European" or "Western"country of that era.

Despite the success of the Islamic conquest in mostof the peninsula, the invasion was firmly rejected bythe Christian resistance societies in the north, to theextent that J. Marías and others have seen theSpanish as not the most marginally Western of theWest European peoples, but rather as the mostdetermined of the Western societies in beingWestern, Christian, and European. Unlike itscounterparts in France and England, early Spanishsociety had to make a special choice to be Christian,independent and Western, fighting for centuries tosustain and validate that choice. According to thispoint of view, Spain developed not as a typical "intra-European" core society and culture but as a kind of"trans-European" society and culture, rooted in LatinCatholicism and the basic Western institutions, asthey developed, but living on the semiperiphery incontact with Islam, North Africa, and — later —America, developing its own national variant of theWestern culture. Holland is quite different fromHungary, and every European or Western country isEuropean or Western in its own way.3

The dramatic transformation that took place in theIberian Peninsula during the eighth century seems atfirst glance a uniquely Spanish development, but infact it may also be seen as the special and extreme

peninsular expression of broader transformationstaking place in the west European and greaterMediterranean worlds of that time. There is noabsolute agreement among historians regardingexactly when Late Antiquity ended and early Westerncivilization began, but a certain consensus that the keyearly formative period was the eighth and ninthcenturies. Edward Gibbon contended that what hecalled "modern history" began with the formation ofthe Carolingian empire. The eighth century also sawthe renascence of the Byzantine empire following thegrand Arab onslaught, while farther east the Abbasiddynasty established its capital in Baghdad,inaugurating what would become the Islamic goldenage. Charlemagne, who would later be considered"Europae pater," saw himself as continuing andreviving the Roman world, but a series of decisivenew changes occurred in the Western world during theeighth and ninth centuries. From the eighth centurysignificant amounts of new land were being broughtunder cultivation, and by 900 an agriculturaltransformation was under way that eventually wouldmake the northern lands of western Europe moreproductive than the Mediterranean for the first time.The cultural revival of the Carolingian era, building onassistance from Ireland, England, Italy, and also theVisigoths would create the very first phase of the newWestern culture. The first Western empire wasestablished by Charlemagne, creating a new sense ofthe unity of Latin Christendom, while by the end of theninth century Alfred the Great had built the institutionsof Anglo-Saxon monarchy with strong government, thebeginning of a major system of royal law, efficient newadministration, and the use of vernacular language.During the same period, the primacy of Rome was

reestablished in the West, with the full "Latinization" ofthe papacy (excluding Greek candidates). Thefounding of the kingdom of Asturias thus took placeduring a time of important change and innovation inwestern Europe and the broader Mediterranean, sothat the first historically continuous Spanish institutionsroughly coincided with the first phase of the newWestern civilization itself.

The eighth century established the permanentsouthwestern frontier of Western civilization in theIberian Peninsula, for the limits of Islam would markthe boundary of the West, even though Muslimassaults and depredation would continue in one formor another for an entire millennium. They would ceaseonly when the European powers became strongenough not merely to crush the depredation but alsoincreasingly to dominate the Islamic world. As soon asthat domination receded, depredation was resumedin the form of Islamist terrorism. Spain would remainthe direct cynosure of the "polemical dialogue"between Europe and the Islamic world for a thousandyears, a hinge on which Europe depended.

The nascent kingdom of Asturias soon lookedbeyond the Pyrenees to the Frankish monarchy forsupport and was not disappointed, Charlemagneintervening in the peninsula in the latter part of thecentury, ending the Muslim threat to Septimania andsecuring Christian society in the eastern Pyreneesand as far south as Barcelona. The "MarcaHispánica" then developed as the most Europeanpart of the peninsula, the part most closely connectedto French and Italian culture, but this was a matter ofdegree as much as of kind, for in early Catalonia theconscious sense of continuity was as strong as in

conscious sense of continuity was as strong as inAsturias and sometimes emphatically expressed, theearly Catalan elite often calling themselves gothi.

Even the apparent retrocession of Spanish strengthduring the height of the caliphate's power in the tenthcentury — the so-called iron century — paralleledsimilar developments in the same period in otherparts of the West. During the eighth and ninthcenturies the west European world was under assaultfrom Vikings and Danes from the north, Magyars fromthe east and Muslims from the south, as Sicily wasconquered and a Muslim toehold established in southItaly.

New consolidation then began to take place in thecore areas of the West during the second half of thetenth century, crystallization of new institutions andfurther economic development starting only ageneration or two before the balance of power startedto shift decisively in the peninsula. Both the weakeningunder foreign assault and the strengthening near thebeginning of the eleventh century roughly coincidedwith the broader experience of western lands.

The Reconquest also proceeded in parallel withother aspects of Western expansion, both internallyand externally. The eleventh century was generally atime of decisive growth in the West. Beyond theIberian Peninsula the southern Normans carried outthe reconquest of Sicily, and the Genoese republiccleared the Muslims from Sardinia. Islamic navaldominance in the west Mediterranean was broken,making the western states stronger at sea than onland, a process that contributed to the First Crusade.The halt to the Spanish Reconquest imposed by the

Moroccan invasions would then more or less coincidewith the weak assistance provided to CrusaderPalestine and its reconquest by the Muslims late in thetwelfth century. Though subsequent crusades to regainthe Holy Land failed, the Spanish Great Reconquestof the thirteenth century similarly paralleled anothermajor phase of European expansion and of the growthof Christendom in northeast Europe, and of theexpansion of the English monarchy in the northwest.4By that point the general "medieval expansion ofEurope" was under way and would never entirelycease.5 The Spanish Reconquest represented thepeninsular phase of a broad process that wouldeventually prove decisive not merely in the history ofthe West but also in the history of the world.

From the second half of the eighth century, theAsturian leadership was in contact with both Franceand Italy, drawing a small number of specializedcraftsmen from each area. Though initially papalinfluence was not great, Asturias strongly emphasizedits Catholic orthodoxy against both Islam and MozarabChristian accommodationism. During these earlymedieval centuries, all the Spanish Christianprincipalities structured public institutions similar tothose of France and other European kingdoms. Therewas no Spanish "third way" equidistant between Islamand Christianity, and the same may be said forarchitecture, culture, and municipal development.During the course of the medieval centuries, everysingle key western institution would be found in theSpanish principalities, from the typical institution ofmonarchy to feudalism (though not equally in everyprincipality), the structure of aristocracy, seigneurialdomain, the institutionalization and structure of

municipalities, legal organization, and the universities.The Spanish principalities participated in all the majormovements and trends of the era, even helping toinitiate one or two of them, and were leaders inreligious endeavors ranging from major new orders tothe crusades, and in the extension and structure oflegal rights and of the first formal representativeassemblies. Some of these institutions did notbecome as well developed in the peninsula as in themost advanced European states, but much the samemight be said of a number of other regions. From theeleventh century, particularly, there was considerableimmigration from France, as well as a limited amountfrom Italy, and foreign specialists were common,ranging from prelates of the Church to militarycrusaders, from merchants and skilled artisans of alltypes to the architects of cathedrals. MedievalSpanish society was arguably the most open of all thelarge areas in Europe, and very receptive toimmigrants, as well as to foreign elites andspecialists, from whom a good deal more"acculturation" was absorbed than from the Andalusis.This was a normal experience for the majorsemiperipheral lands of western and central Europe.The Normans introduced a good many newcontinental influences into England, helping to"Europeanize" it, and German-speaking people didthe same in Hungary.

The key institution of Latin Christendom, thepapacy, developed a special relationship with theSpanish principalities, as, in a different way, it did withFrance and Germany. This was highly complex,involving the papacy's zeal to promote the SpanishReconquest, the concern of the newer monarchies

(such as Aragon and Portugal) to obtain papalrecognition and support, and the papacy's ownambition to gain special political power within theSpanish principalities, which it tended to see as"crusader states" — ones that should becomepolitically subordinated to it. On the one hand, itpromoted the unity of the Spanish principalities toexpedite the Reconquest, but just as frequently itincited disunity in order to advance its own politicalinfluence.

The Catholic Church was the key institution in thedevelopment of Latin Christendom and hence ofWestern civilization. Not merely did it provide thereligious and moral content of the culture, but itdecisively influenced a broad range of developments.The Church's focus on the person was a basicelement in the formation of Western individualism,even though that was not its original goal. Thedistinction between the spheres or swords of churchand state, and the insistence on the autonomy of theChurch, though not intended to free the state from theChurch, was equally fundamental to the slowly evolvingbut ultimately decisive distinction between church andstate, especially since one church had to deal withsuch a multiplicity of states. Catholic education helpedto found the university system, the rise of Westernrational thought and the medieval origins of modernscience.6 The papacy provided the first example in theWestern world of rational bureaucracy, stimulating thedevelopment of administration and the state. Churchlaw, particularly canon law, demonstrated the ways inwhich different legal principles and approaches mightbe synthesized, and was fundamental to stimulatingthe medieval legal revolution, on which modern

the medieval legal revolution, on which modernWestern law is ultimately based.7 Catholicism alsoencouraged the doctrine of natural rights and of moreresponsible government, as the application of the latermedieval doctrine of the "king's two bodies" promotedgreater respect for law, morality, and the well-being ofthe realm, as distinct from the caesaropapistdespotisms common to earlier history.8 All theseinfluences were felt in Spain, although some aspectswere more attenuated in the peninsula than in certainother parts of western Europe.

To use the language of Immanuel Wallerstein,Spain formed what should be termed "the semi-periphery of the core" of Latin Christendom.9 It was apart of that core but not at its center, and also not aperiphery external to that core. A true periphery partlyextraneous to the core would only develop during theoverseas expansion, primarily in central and southernAmerica, and also to some extent in Russia, where itformed a related yet distinct civilization, based onEastern Orthodoxy rather Roman Catholicism.

Geography, the legacy of Reconquest particularismand also the extraneous political interests of thepapacy, all combined to retard political unityequivalent to that of France or England. Italy andGermany, however, were just as divided as Spain, ifnot more so, while the institutions of Catholic Poland-Lithuania would later prove weak in the extreme,however progressive part of their content may havebeen.10

One feature of the last phase of the Middle Ageswas the growth of ethnic (and to a certain extent ofracial) discrimination in the West during the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries. The two most striking

and fifteenth centuries. The two most strikinginnovations associated with the united monarchy ofthe Catholic Monarchs — the Inquisition and theexpulsion of the Jews — constituted the extremeSpanish version of a broader trend. They representedattempts to remedy existing anomalies of Spanish lifeand achieve a political and religious unityapproximately equal to that of France and England.These two core Western countries had never had aJewish population at all proportionately equivalent tothat of Spain, and both had ended up expelling all theirJews by the beginning of the fourteenth century. Thuswhat made the Spanish monarchy seem so "different"stemmed from the efforts of its leaders to be "thesame."

Spain arrived at the center of European power,politics, culture, and religion in the sixteenth century,for the first time functioning as part of the westEuropean core. While historians nowadaysdistinguish carefully between the activities andpriorities of the Spanish Habsburg crown and those ofSpain proper, the strengths and achievements ofSpain would always remain the key basis of thecrown's power. Not merely was the latter for a centurythe strongest state and military power in westernEurope, but Spain was also a major player in theEuropean economy and for the only time in its historya major influence in European culture, religion, andeven in such things as clothing styles. Moreover, thatinfluence was not exerted on behalf of some exotic"Mozarabic" set of cultural values but was fully withinthe traditional framework of European Catholicismand culture. This influence was not at first carried outmerely in the name of rigid traditionalism, for it alsofeatured an effort to create a more liberal Catholicism

under Carlos V. After that had failed, Spain becamethe single most important force in the CatholicReformation, the most crucial transformation of theChurch for centuries. All these matters have beenextensively studied by historians. The key point is thatSpain's role in the sixteenth and early seventeenthcenturies was not that of a semi-oriental periphery, butwas intrinsic to the core culture of Europe at that time.

The Second Cycle of WesternHistory

At this juncture there began to emerge the greatestparadox, or singularity, of the history of Westerncivilization — the rise of a second cycle of a relatedbut in some respects crucially different cultural erawithin Western civilization itself, what we generally callthe modern era or the modern West, as distinct frommedieval and traditional culture, sometimes termedthe old West. Of all the civilizations in world history, theWest is the only one to have generated two differentcycles of culture, the second bearing novelcharacteristics sometimes profoundly at odds with theformer. The old West was traditionalist, monarchist,and Catholic, not primarily dominated by materialvalues. The modern West has become increasinglyantitraditional, egalitarian, subjectivist, and materialist,and for centuries was largely led by Protestants, eventhough most of the germs of its culture might alreadyhave been found in the old West.

It is not possible to divide simply and neatly the twodifferent epochs of Western culture, since the roots ofthe modern West lie deep in the old West, and thelatter has continued in certain key ways to influence

the former. The role of Spain with regard to the twocultural eras has been the most unique of all the majorEuropean lands, for in no other has the relationship tothe two eras been so sharp and distinct, even thoughSpanish culture participated in both cultural epochs aswell as in the transition between the two. What wasspecial about Spain was that its Golden Age had bythe middle of the seventeenth century achieved thehighest development of most, though not all, majorfeatures of the traditional Western culture to be foundin any land, but it found itself poorly positioned for thetransition to the modern era. The only other country inwhich the culture of the "Old Regime" was more highlydeveloped than that of Spain was the France of LouisXIV, but that in turn had relied on Spanish culture, andconversely also possessed more initial features of thenew modern epoch.11

It would be a mistake, however, to see the Spanishculture and society of the Habsburg era as merelyhigh-level traditionalism bereft of modernizingtendencies. The latter were in fact fairly numerous,though distinctly weaker than in the French society ofthe same period. In the late sixteenth century Spanishsociety generated a high level of urbanization andalso of educational development, with the firstglimmering of mass society and urban mass culture.12

There was an astonishing volume of cultural creativityin literature, the fine arts, religious thought, inphilosophy, and in law.13 Nothing was more potentiallytransitional than Spanish Late Scholastic economictheory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, withits market-oriented calculations on value, price,wages, justice, profits, and banking — in somerespects more sophisticated than what was then

found in the economically more dynamic northEuropean (mainly Protestant) societies.14 In general,however, Spanish culture, despite its multifacetedcreativity during this era, still fit within the traditionalistframework, something perhaps most easilydemonstrated by comparing one of its major newforms, the theater of the Golden Age, with the othermajor theater of the period, in Elizabethan-JacobeanEngland. Both theaters developed significant newtechniques and styles, and examined many differentfacets of human behavior. Spanish drama andtheater, however, never stepped very far beyond theorthodox cultural framework, whereas that of Marlowe,Shakespeare, and their English successors muchmore broadly inhabited a new and uncertain, oftenagnostic, potentially amoralist landscape, definitelynearer the modern sensibility.15

Moreover, as a result of the Reformation and theconflicts that ensued, there took place in Spain apartial cultural withdrawal from Europe, symbolized bythe crown's decree of 1569 forbidding study abroad inmost European universities. Similarly, the Inquisitionplaced boundaries on new thought and inquiry,although it did not block the flourishing of high culture.

The Seventeenth-Century DeclineThe gulf between Spain and "modern Europe" did

not develop as a result of the Muslim conquest, assome essentialists would have it, and was not theinevitable cultural product of any abyss between thefatalistic, abulic "oriental" Spanish and their moreenterprising northern neighbors. It was above all theresult of key structural, political, and more broadly

historical developments of the seventeenth century.The deep variation that developed at that time was nota mere cleavage between a backward, fanaticalSpain and the Protestant world, but rather a gap thatbegan to develop between the more dynamic andenterprising areas of northwestern Europe (mainlyProtestant) and most of the rest of Europe, whetherCatholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox. It was not areligious divide alone, for the Catholic society of theLow Countries was just as well prepared to takeadvantage of new opportunities as their Protestantcounterparts, and the extent to which they were notquite able to do so was due primarily to political andmilitary developments, not directly to religion. Themajority of the features that fueled new enterprise,wealth creation, and discoveries in England andHolland were also present to some extent in Spanishsociety, but to a distinctly lesser degree. They werealso increasingly choked off by the specific policies ofthe Habsburg state, whose priorities were orientedtoward endless dynastic wars and crushing taxes. Thedisastrous effects of these policies were compoundedin Spain by the effects of the plague and even ofclimate change, as the relatively warm climate of mostof the Middle Ages, which had encouraged the growthof the West, had given way to a colder naturalenvironment. The peninsula was struck by a series ofafflictions during the seventeenth centuries, with greatfloods, rains, and droughts, while the Ebro River issaid to have frozen seven times between 1505 and1789. What occurred in Spain was, in general, not sodifferent, mutatis mutandis, from what happened inmost of the rest of Europe, only a minor share ofWestern society participating fully in the precociousearly modernization of the northwestern countries

during that era.

There is no question that a country like England, theleader in modernization, was better positioned thanSpain to develop new forms and techniques incommerce, economics, technology, and politics in theseventeenth century. It was more united in law andinstitutions (though not always in politics), had a moreopen and individualistic society, much greaterentrepreneurial initiative, and more concerted statesupport for new enterprise.16 In Spain — with thepartial exception of Catalonia — status won out overenterprise, and the result of all the negativetendencies that came to fruition by the 1650s and1660s was a profound decline, which affected nearlyall avenues of Spanish life.

During the first part of the Franco regime historiansreacted against the understanding of a "Spanishdecadence" that had largely informed thinking aboutthis phenomenon for the two preceding centuries.They advanced instead the interpretation of"exhaustion," which was certainly true enough,concluding that the grueling and continued effort tomeet the titanic challenges of the seventeenth centuryhad simply worn Spain out. This was clearly the case,but along with the prostration of the third quarter of thecentury there was also a general retrocession innearly all the key features of Spanish activity —absolute and extensive demographic decline, asignificant reduction in economic production, absenceof new initiatives, radical decline in what only recentlyhad been a flourishing cultural activity, and a retreatand a diminution in religious affairs as well. TheSpanish had ceased to innovate in administration andin military and maritime activity, and even their

in military and maritime activity, and even theirreligious thought was becoming primarily defensive.For six generations, since the 1480s, the Spanish hadbeen engaged in a series of massive enterprises, andthat exhaustion began to sink in increasingly followingthe breaking point of 1640, when the Portuguese andCatalans abandoned the project of the Spanishmonarchy. If this was not decadence, it was certainly aremarkable decline.

Some distinctions should be made. Artistic andcultural creativity continued to some extent into the1670s, and, although the Spanish crown could do littlefor the Spanish territories in the Americas, they werestrong enough to fend largely for themselves, whichspeaks well for the accomplishments of the earlierera. Moreover, by the 1680s definite symptoms ofreform and recovery were apparent in Spain,Catalonia at that point initiating the start of the"modern pattern" by which economic growth in thatregion would precede progress in the rest of Spain.

Spanish decadence was not a matter of loss ofcultural and religious values, all of which remainedintact, and there was no danger that the decline wouldproduce a new culture antagonistic to its predecessor,as in some historical declines elsewhere, but therewas a drastic falling away. It also occurred at a timewhen northwestern Europe, including much of France,was advancing more rapidly than ever before. Theresult was the opening of the "modernization gap,"which would bedevil all subsequent Spanishdevelopment until the gap was finally closed aftermore than three hundred years, late in the twentiethcentury. From 1659 to 1985 key aspects of the historyof Spain could be treated under the theme of the

struggle for modernization.

The decline also meant the abandonment of thespecial Spanish project that had begun to form in thelate Middle Ages on the basis of a sort of "Spanishideology" (see chap. 3). The Spanish project intendedto expand the frontiers of Christendom while leadingEurope in the struggle to maintain creative traditionand religious orthodoxy. By the end of the seventeenthcentury both aspects of this project had largely beenabandoned. The goals of Spanish institutions, ratherthan projecting outward into Europe and into unknownterritory, had become primarily defensive. Spanishaffairs would become increasingly divided betweenthe defensive traditionalists and the reformers whosought not only to introduce productive changes ineconomics and institutions but also to encourage thecountry to adopt some of the new doctrines andpractices present in northwestern Europe.

This meant that from the end of the seventeenthcentury the country was becoming more peripheral tothe core of the modern West than had been the caseearlier, but it did not mean that culturally it was in theprocess of becoming an "orientalized" North Africanland not part of Europe or the West. That said, theSpanish drama was played out in most otherEuropean countries, in quite different ways, forexample, in Germany and Ireland, and even more inItaly, Austria, and Poland. The struggle to achieve anew modern framework would nonetheless beespecially difficult and bitter in Spain, more than in anyof the other larger countries issuing from LatinChristendom. Spain had momentarily risen to theheight of European and world power under thetraditionalist Old Regime, with the result that

traditionalist Old Regime, with the result thattraditionalism had become more firmly entrenched insome respects than in almost any other part ofWestern Europe, while the reformist and innovativetendencies were proportionately weaker.

In this struggle, Spanish government applied nearlyall the standard policies of European enlighteneddespotism and of European liberalism, the latter at aprecocious phase of historical development. Some ofthese policies were successful, but many failed inwhole or in part. Reform and innovation would followeach new phase of Western modernization, and, infact, Spanish political innovation by the nineteenthcentury preceded that of most European countries,even those that surpassed it in economic and socialmodernization. Between 1833 and 1923 Spain livedfor more years under parliamentary government thandid one of the great "modernizing mentors," France. In1812, 1820, and even during the 1830s, Spanishliberalism (however premature and sometimes evendestructive) served as an inspiration to many othercountries in Europe and in Latin America. This was initself an extraordinary record. No other country morethoroughly experienced the entire gamut of Europeanpolitical and social practices during the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries. All the modernEuropean trends were present in Spain, sometimes inexaggerated or extreme form, often locked in mortalconflict.

5Identity, Monarchy, Empire

The crisis of identity that overtook the Westernworld in the late twentieth century had a particularlysevere impact on Spain. The long dictatorship ofFranco had stressed unity, centralism, and Spanishnationalism, but its consequence was to discredit thevery idea of Spanish nationalism, and to some extenteven of the Spanish nation, in the succeedinggeneration of democracy, individualism, andhedonism. During the final decades of the century thecountry was filled with more claims for new kinds of"fractional" nationalism — which may variously betermed micro, peripheral, or deconstructive than inany other Western land, the great contrast being thatthere were few spokesmen for a Spanish nationalism.

Many commentators then opined that a single orunited "Spain" had been little more than a figment ofthe imagination, that the country had never been morethan a loose community of regions governed normallyby a monarchy, and later on occasion by artificialdespots in Madrid. This was an extraordinary climateof opinion that could not be equaled in any otherEuropean country, with the alarming exception ofYugoslavia in the 1990s. As deconstructive discoursemounted, it provoked a reaction in a series of worksthat affirmed a common historical identity of thediverse regions of Spain, even prior to the unitedmonarchy, and insisted that from the sixteenth centuryon the country had constituted an increasingly unitednation.1 The internationally famous Historikerstreit —

the controversy among the historians — in Germanywas in some ways surpassed by the broadcontroversies about Spanish history, both with regardto earlier eras and also to the twentieth century.

It seems clear that despite the politicalfragmentation of the peninsula under the impact of theIslamic conquest and the following long struggle, acommon cultural, religious, and juridical heritage fromthe Visigothic era remained. There was some senseof common identity at least among the elites of themedieval Spanish principalities, but the question isthe extent to which this went beyond the religious andthe geographical. The problem was first extensivelyexamined in José Antonio Maravall's El concepto deEspaña en la Edad Media (1950), though somehistorians conclude that he exaggerated theconscious sense of common identity, particularly withregard to political issues.

The philosopher Gustavo Bueno argues that theelites of the Hispano-Christian states thought ofthemselves as forming something analogous to aseparate peninsular political community or "empire,"as something absolutely independent from trans-Pyrenean rulers.2 This was certainly the case amongsome of the elites in certain periods, but probablyposits more of an "ideal type" than an empiricalhistorical description.

There is no question that medieval elites oftenreferred to their principalities as forming part of"España," the term that in its several spellings andversions (Espanha, Espanya, etc.) developed with therise of the new vernaculars. On various occasions themedieval chronicles referred to the Spanish rulers

collectively as reges Hispaniae, but this can be readas a merely geographical reference. Medievalwritings also refer to Spain as a collective entity inother ways, using expressions such as "todaEspaña," which may be found with some frequency inLatin, Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese texts. Thenew word for its inhabitants — "español" and"españoles" — developed during the twelfth century,expanding from Pyrenean Aragon, though theconclusion of some that it was originally a Provençalword from beyond the Pyrenees has not beensubstantiated.3 From that time the term was recordedas the family name of a certain number of individuals,as well. Medieval writing also frequently referred to"las Españas" in the plural, something that wouldcontinue to be found until the eighteenth century; in theMiddle Ages, though, it was common to refer in theplural to any number of European countries, which inmodern times would be known only in the singular.

The sense of community or special relationship thatexisted among some of the elites of the SpanishChristian kingdoms was also reflected in the ambitionof the rulers of Asturias-León-Castile to claim orestablish a broader hegemony over them all.4 Theextent of these claims varied, sometimes beingmerely rhetorical, at other times referring only to thepresent kingdom itself, at still other times morevaguely to the entire peninsula. Alfonso II, with theexpansion of Asturias, was the first to call himselfImperator. Alfonso III later used the title of RexMagnus as ruler of the only true Hispano-Christiankingdom and as claimant to the entire inheritance ofthe Visigoths. After defeating the Muslims at the battleof Simancas in 939, Ramiro II termed himself

Imperator and Rex Magnus. The next step was takenby Sancho el Mayor, who created the concept (thoughnot the full reality) of the regnum Hispaniae, as hetermed himself Rex Dei gratia Hispaniarum andPrinceps diversarum gentium.5 A kingdom, orregnum in medieval parlance, was just a distinctprincipality and not necessarily even a fully sovereignstate. Sancho's usage affirmed a completelyindependent entity, what in traditional parlance wastermed an empire, though he made no specific claimto empire itself. Even before, Alfonso II had introducedthe title of emperor as a means of defining the totalindependence of Asturias among Christian kingdoms,not beholden to the more genuine empire ofCharlemagne, a usage briefly revived by Ramiro IImore than a century later.

Alfonso VI used the titles of both king and emperor— Princeps diversarum gentium and Imperatorsuper omnes Hispaniae nationes. These formulaeimplied recognition of the plurality and diversity ofHispanic states but did not define it. The title ofemperor was used most extensively of all by hisgrandson Alfonso VII, ruler of the self-styled regnum-imperium of León and "emperor of Spain," whereasearlier, during the reigns of Alfonso II and III, the title ofemperor was used in official documents primarily torefer to the kingdom of León itself, and not primarily toits claims over other territories. Invocation of empireby Alfonso VII was not merely a matter of grandiosity,since his primacy was to some degree accepted byother rulers who were temporarily subinfeudated tohim.6 In the traditional usage only an empire could beconsidered totally independent and totally sovereign,and the claim of imperial status for the Hispanic states

was an affirmation of their uniqueness, referring totheir independence and full sovereignty, as an entity orentities not inferior to the claims of the French crownor the Holy Roman Empire in Germany-Italy. Hispanicempire, however, was never fully establishedjuridically, depending for whatever effectiveness itmight have on the temporary power of individualrulers, and hence the tendency to be used morefrequently by chroniclers and by descendants of thekings of León than by these rulers themselves.7Alfonso VII ended by dividing his kingdom among hissons.

A further step was taken with the thirteenth-centuryReconquest, which made of Castile a major Europeanterritorial state. Fernando III termed himself rex inomni Spania and Alfonso el Sabio Imperator totiusHispaniae.

Elements of a common Hispano-Christian identitywere clearly present throughout the Middle Ages, butthey were essentially nonpolitical in nature. Theyinvolved a common continuity with Hispano-Visigothicculture (stronger in some areas than others), includingthe common use of Visigothic law (the Fuero Juzgo),the Visigothic script, and common forms of art andarchitecture. Religion was the most important unifyingfactor, with common use of the Visigothic orMozarabic rite for three centuries.8

The emergence of the separate kingdoms was,however, not due exclusively to geographicdifferences and the Reconquest wars, but also tospecifically political factors as well. The strengtheningof independent Christian societies in the north onlyincreased political particularism. Much the same

increased political particularism. Much the samemight be said of papal influence, which encouragedconcentration on the Reconquest but otherwisestimulated division and rivalry between the Spanishstates to strengthen the papacy's influence in eachone individually. Thus the mounting influence ofEuropean Catholicism had something of a centrifugaleffect, partly because of papal policy and partlybecause it severed the connection with the traditionalcommon Hispanic expression of Catholicism. In theprocess, the most specific common point of reference— the Mozarabic community of Al-Andalus with itstraditional Hispano-Christian culture — haddisappeared with the advance of the Reconquest andthe Moroccan invasions.

The legal/institutional revolution of the High MiddleAges (eleventh through thirteenth centuries) haddiffering effects in various parts of Europe and also inthe peninsula. Ironically, one of the philosophicalinspirations for the new concepts of sovereignty thatdeveloped in the French and Norman states (includingEngland) from about 1100 on was the doctrines ofSan Isidoro, but the new changes did not take root tothe same extent in the peninsula. The medievallegal/political revolution raised the status of a kingdomto that of total independence, subordinate to noexternal empire, for, as the Norman kings of Englandwould subsequently say, "We are an empire." 9 Thenew policy emphasized the power of the king ascomplete head of his realm and of the kingdom as acomplete unit.

It brought a new, more sophisticated concept of law,administration, and responsibilities, with the doctrineof the king's two bodies or natures, both human and

divine, an idea perhaps derived from the distinctionbetween the bishop and his episcopal function in theChurch, and certainly from the theological doctrine ofthe two natures of Christ. This program wouldintroduce the first new European and Christianconcept of government and the state, basing thelegitimacy of royal law not simply on inheritance, will,or power — factors long present in pre-Christianhistory — but on law and legal jurisdiction, and on thecrown's responsibility to establish both justice andpeace under the rule of codified law. This would beadministered by a "modern" rational royalbureaucracy, somewhat modeled on that of theChurch. It declared the king ruler of all the people,denying completely independent privileges to thearistocracy, now enjoined from swearing any politicaloath in opposition to the crown.

During this era none of the Hispanic states formedcompletely closed and internally unified entities,equivalent to the English and Norman states (or, tosome extent, the kingdom of France). They remainedsubject both to royal patrimonialism (which mightdivide the principality) and to centrifugalseigneurialism. Despite the revival of the Visigothicdivine unction in royal consecrations, no sacralizationof Hispanic princes equivalent to that of their northerncounterparts took place, and thus they lacked thesymbolic reinforcement enjoyed by the latter.

By the eleventh century Catalonia became in somerespects the most organized and had the most fullydeveloped legal structure (crowned by the Usatges),as well as the strongest institutional basis for thedevelopment of new law, with its territory fully definedby the beginning of the thirteenth century. Similarly,

by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Similarly,only in Catalan cities would one encounter civicdevelopment somewhat approximating cities in otherparts of Europe.

At the same time, the Catalan elite shared in thecommon sense of the cultural, religious, andgeographical community of the Spanish states. TheCatalans had earlier categorically affirmed their ownneo-Gothicism, and in the immediate aftermath of theMuslim conquest their ancestors may have had astronger sense of identity and continuity withVisigothic institutions than did the Asturians. Thereare many references in the Catalan chronicles to theCatalans being "de Espanya" or "d'Espanya" andoccasionally even declarations of Espanya as the"patria" of the Catalans. By comparison, neo-Gothicism was much later in entering Navarre andAragon. This concept was not merely peninsular inscope, but for the Catalans for some time included theright of sovereignty over Visigothic Septimanianortheast of the Pyrenees.

The Rise of CastileCastile became by far the largest Christian

principality and hence also the most powerful militarily,but did not develop a political, legal, or institutionalstructure of equivalent solidity, at least prior to thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a separatekingdom in the earlier period, León was equally oreven more prone to elite dissidence. The attempt tomaintain a completely independent León ended infailure, due to the absence of internal unity andcoherence, though initially León had enjoyed morejuridical and institutional development than Castile,

and had convened pre-parliaments (concilios) andparliaments (curias/Cortes) before any other inEurope. The disappearance of León as a discreteentity on one level might be considered the first majorSpanish political failure, even though the final unionwith Castile ultimately constituted a step forward.Though it early achieved some of the first forms ofmedieval development, such as local autonomies insome districts and an initial convocation of Cortes,Castile was slow to develop effective institutionsequivalent to those of France and England. Its societywas strongly dominated by aristocraticseigneurialism, like that of most of Europe, but it neverexperienced fully organized feudalism, with the tightlybinding reciprocal relationships between lord andvassals found in France, England, or Aragon-Catalonia. Thus in the first centuries the potentiallystrong monarchy of Castile was effective only whenthere was a strong monarch ruling; in other periods itmight be quite weak. This was the general tendency inall medieval kingdoms, but it was particularlynoticeable in Castile. For several centuries theCastilian aristocracy remained quite independent, atfirst rather more so than that of the Aragoneseprincipalities. Rather than resting on a developed andinstitutionalized juridical basis, as in the bestorganized medieval kingdoms, elite relations inCastile rested on loose pacts or agreements betweencrown and aristocracy, eventually called "costumbrede España," that did not recognize the fully overridingauthority of the crown. The kingdom was based on aloosely defined territory, with only rudimentaryinstitutional structure, and little political orconstitutional sense of the king as "king of theCastilians." Royal power tended to be conceived

primarily as willpower and superior military strength.Compared with a kingdom such as England, royal lawwas much more limited. Thus the semi-autonomouscities and concejos were somewhat stunted in theirdevelopment and, despite the relative freedom ofearly Castilian society, in the long run neverdeveloped the same political status as did citieselsewhere. Autonomous local institutions werestructured especially to expedite local militarystrength, not political or economic development.

The most positive feature of medieval Castilianinstitutions was the limitation of serfdom. Castile hadfewer serfs than most parts of medieval Europe, aconsequence often judged to have been a result of itsmore open status as a frontier region. Despite thegrowing dominance of the aristocracy, Castilianpeasants were thus juridically, at least, freer thanelsewhere, even though probably poorer in economicterms, and may have imbibed the aristocratic ethos toa greater degree than peasants anywhere else inmedieval Europe. One consequence of thisincreasingly aristocratic ethos was the pronouncedtendency toward pride, arrogance, and touchiness —something remarked upon by Catalan writers even inthe Middle Ages. Later, foreign commentators wouldcome to consider these some of the definingcharacteristics of the Spanish in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, constitutive factors, in fact, ofthe Black Legend.

The downside of weak political development inmedieval Castile was that the powerful monarchyfrequently broke down under weak rulers. Civil strifewas distressingly common, and occurred even moreoften than in some other medieval principalities,

often than in some other medieval principalities,sometimes even leading to temporary collaborationby factions, or by the crown, with Muslim potentatesagainst their Castilian rivals.

The "model" European medieval kingdom wasFrance, where by the thirteenth century the crown hadbeen sacralized according to the new doctrines andfulfilled a sacramental role for the mystical body of thekingdom (a concept derived from the Church asmystical body of Christ). The king's function was partlytheocratic, but at the same time limited by law, for hewas in charge of justice and supervised developmentof the legal structure. He had a special role as leaderof the Church and possessed great authority indealing with the papacy. As supreme military leaderand king, he always fulfilled caesarist functions, but tosome degree he governed with parliament and withthe courts and legal system. Thus the crown enjoyed aspecial charisma as leader of France and of theFrench. By comparison the English system wouldbecome yet more united and representative, evenachieving proto-republicanism by the seventeenthcentury, while the crown of Aragon enjoyed the difficultdistinction of ruling over the most complex royalsystem in Europe, but one that in the final medievalcenturies tilted heavily in the direction of a rigid re-feudalization, increasingly weakening royalgovernment.

The reign of Fernando III "el Santo" was one of themost extraordinary in the history of medieval Europe,as the territory comprising the kingdom of Castile-León doubled in size within twenty years. By themiddle of the thirteenth century, there was a sense thatthe reconquest of the peninsula had been essentially

completed, since the main remaining taifa emirate,Granada, was comparatively small and reduced tobeing a vassal of the crown of Castile. The "GreatReconquest," as it is sometimes called, came at aprice, for Castile could not immediately absorb sovast a territory, and the movement of population hadthe effect of weakening the economy, while the Muslimlevel of production could not be sustained in thesouthern territories. The experience was extenuatingand, curiously, did not strengthen the crown politically,although it added greatly to the territory under royaldomain. The crown's authority during this reignderived from crusading, nominally a religious functionand little accompanied by political development. Thecrusader king left, at the time of his death, a relativelydiscontented and autonomous nobility, willing to usethe "costumbre de España" to rebel against thecrown; he had, however, failed to identify the Churchleadership fully with the crown, as in France.

His son Alfonso X, who would be known as "elSabio" (the Wise, or the Learned), was the mostambitious and also by comparison one of the leastsuccessful of all Spanish kings. He sought to equaland even exceed the achievements of his father byextending the crusade to Africa, reestablishing andexpanding the tenuous political hegemony in thepeninsula briefly enjoyed by Alfonso VII, and helping toguarantee the latter by winning election as ruler of theHoly Roman Empire (a candidacy to which he hadonly the most dubious title). He created a systematicnew legal code for Castile, all the while stimulating aremarkable cultural program that would translate anddistill in Castilian the learning and literature of theMuslims and Jews. 10 These were breathtaking

ambitions which could not possibly have all beenrealized at once, and which in fact conflicted with andcontradicted each other.

Don Alfonso has become best known as a dynamiccultural figure, thanks to the work of literatureprofessors. The cultural enterprise of Alfonso X wasuniquely cosmopolitan, but also prized vernacularlanguage more than did any other contemporarymonarchy. It represented a combination of the orientaland occidental, reflecting the unique cultural situationof thirteenth-century Castile.11 It failed altogether todeal with the impressive new achievements of theEuropean universities in philosophy, theology, andjurisprudence, which at that moment were largelybeyond the Castilian ken. In some ways it resembledthe work of San Isidoro in attempting to record acomprehensive approach to knowledge, and in itstypically Western "eccentric" attempt to incorporatethe learning of a different civilization reflected aspecial Castilian focus of what was already coming tobe a characteristic of advanced Western culture.12

The attempted new philosophical-cosmologicalsynthesis could not be achieved, for it lackedobjectivity, rigor, and true political and intellectualsophistication. The main accomplishment was tocomplete a stunning variety of translations of Muslimand Jewish materials and also to produce newwritings in the vernacular, especially much importantwork in history. It produced no completely newknowledge or intellectual analysis to speak of, andfailed to spark any cultural renascence in Castile, butit certainly constituted a unique enterprise. TheEstoria de España was not merely the first vernacularhistory of Spain but also the first attempt at a broader

history of the peninsula, even though its primarypurpose was narrow, presenting Alfonso's version ofthe history of the Asturian-Leonese-Castilianmonarchy as its legitimate ruler.

Everything else about the reign was a disaster,ending finally in the deposition of the king himself. Thecrusading and imperial ambitions were completelyfrustrated, wasted great amounts of money, andsparked much internal discontent. The attempt togenerate systematic new legal statutes for the realmtrampled much of historical law and custom, and wasstrongly resisted. The effort to regulate by law acontrolled commercial economy through what wouldlater be called mercantilist regulations backfiredbadly. Finally the effort to deport a portion of theMudéjar population of the south to make room forCastilian settlers boomeranged even more badly,leading to a formidable Mudéjar revolt that could onlybe put down thanks to extensive assistance fromAragon and Portugal. The attempt to impose a newFuero Real, or code of royal law, taking precedenceover the rights of the cities and the aristocracy, led togeneralized revolt and breakdown of the kingdom, anopportunity seized by the emir of Granada and thesultan of Morocco to invade the south once more, adisaster from which Castile was again saved byassistance from the Aragonese and Portuguese.Royal policies of steeply increased taxation, fixationon politics in Italy and Germany to win the imperialcrown, and a destructive economic program broughtCastile ever closer to ruin and produced a generalagreement to depose its conflictive ruler in 1282. Inreply Alfonso formed an alliance with the Moroccans,producing yet another invasion of the south and

eventually a political compromise in the melancholyfinal years of his reign.

Alfonso was the very opposite of "sabio" in terms ofvision, objectivity, prudence, understanding ofproblems, or astuteness. It would, however, be fair toterm him "el iluminado" or "el alumbrado" (visionary),as Villacañas Berlanga suggests. His politicalapproach was sheer disaster. The famous SietePartidas, more than a system of practical legal reform,was an exposition of Alfonso's politicojuridicalideology, in which the crown was all-powerful andpotentially allcontrolling. There was no understandingof the role and character of a Western city as apotentially autonomous and self-governinguniversitas, and no sense of the kingdom as acorporative or organic entity, with objective laws andself-limiting justice that recognized rights,representation, and autonomy. Alfonso was indeed aunique figure in Spanish and in all of Europeanhistory. He saw himself as endowed with a specialtowering charisma, a sort of messianic genius with theunique ability to establish a new order. In part, at least,by reaching too far he squandered the opportunitiesachieved by Castile through the Great Reconquestand left his kingdom unable to realize its full potential,wracked by internal disputes for the next twocenturies.13 He did, however, set a new norm for ajuridically strengthened monarchy and the potentialexpansion of royal law, and to that extent charted thedirection followed, however uncertainly, by theCastilian crown during the next two centuries, until iteventually developed impressive power.

In his imperial designs Alfonso el Sabio had not

proposed to deprive the other principalities of theirautonomy, for he had clearly recognized in the"Partidas" that the ruler of an empire held only asecond category of rule over imperial domains andcould not rule them directly like a king over his ownkingdom or like the rulers of a republic. Empire wasan hegemony, above all for purposes of externaldefense and a coordination of mutual problems. As itwas, the only Hispanic empire developed during thelate thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was that of thecrown of Aragon in the western Mediterranean, themost complex European system of its time. Given thepolitical failure of Castile, the leading role inpeninsular affairs for the next century or so passed tothe Aragonese rulers.

Pacts of cooperation and marriage alliancesamong the Hispanic states continued, and conflictswere somewhat reduced, but still persisted. WithinCastile, ambitions were expressed from time to timeof making its king "emperor of Spain." The last majorMoroccan invasion was thoroughly smashed in 1340by Alfonso XI, the only strong Castilian ruler of thefourteenth century, and by that time the habit, whichhad hung on for half a millennium, of intermittentlycalling on a Muslim ruler for assistance againstanother Hispanic principality, largely came to an end.The elites of the Hispanic kingdoms, includingPortugal, continued to recognize each other asbelonging to a kind of geographic and evenpoliticocultural community, and they all continued toconsider themselves Spanish, but any effectivepolitical union was lacking except within the politicallysophisticated crown of Aragon.

At no time did expansionist ambitions come to an

At no time did expansionist ambitions come to anend, with the exception of landlocked Navarre.Granada lay within the Castilian sphere, and duringthose years in which the emirate paid tribute, atraditional relationship continued in which directconquest was often not held to be necessary. Castilenonetheless continued to chip away at Granada'sfrontiers, and the dream of expansion into Africa wasnever forgotten. Alfonso X had conquered theMoroccan coastal city of Salé in 1260, slaughtering itsinhabitants, and in 1402 Enrique III briefly enteredTetuán, while the conquest of the Canaries hadalready begun, if slowly and uncertainly. The ultimategoal in financing the expedition of Columbus was notto discover America — which no one dreamed of —but to outflank Islam and ultimately to hasten theSecond Coming.

The fifteenth century was a time of recovery forCastile and of political, social, and economic declinefor the crown of Aragon, particularly for Catalonia. Thegrowth of the Castilian economy seems to havebecome notable during the second quarter of thecentury, beyond which it continued to climb, whichhelps to account for the sizable amount of impressivenew construction in Castilian cities during the latefifteenth century. The factors involved in the decline ofCatalonia have been well defined by Catalanhistorians, to which was added political and socialconflict. Though the economy eventually stabilized,decisive new growth in Catalonia would not begin untilthe last third of the seventeenth century.

The Aragonese kingdoms had become politicallystatic, dominated by the oligarchies enshrined in theirelaborate constitutional systems, their monarchy

increasingly debilitated and their oppressive socialstructures prone to internal convulsion and conflict. Bythe fifteenth century, in contrast, the Castilianmonarchy had grown politically stronger, developingan increasingly formidable institutional structure thatextended royal administration and royal law, making itfor a time one of the most "modern" of Europeanmonarchies.

The "Hispanic Monarchy"The remarkable marriage of the rulers (later known

as the Catholic Monarchs) finally effected thecombination that could bring together all but one of thepeninsular states under a single dynasty (after theconquest/inheritance of peninsular Navarre in 1512).The observation that an alternative marriage withAfonso V of Portugal would have created a differentdynastic alliance based on a more coherentinstitutional structure/logic that combined Castile andPortugal, instead, is perhaps sensible in the abstractbut overlooks the fact that Afonso V of Portugal wasan aging king who might not have been able togenerate a new dynasty. That the new unitedmonarchy ruled over a diversity of states was in noway unusual, for that was in fact the norm amongEuropean monarchies at that time, and theAragonese monarchy merely had the most complex ofthese structures. Thus, it was the Aragonese modelthat was adopted by the new Spanish monarchy, withthe major difference that it now included a "greatpower" state, Castile.

The international marriage alliance arranged by theunited monarchy enabled it to inherit a European

dynastic empire on the very eve of the age in whichthe conquistadores would carve out a vast Americanterritorial empire. The combination of the twoproduced the most unique imperial structure in worldhistory, consisting of both a discontiguous Europeancontinental empire and the first true world empire, withpossessions in America, North Africa (cities on thecoast of Morocco and Algeria), and later, in thewestern Pacific. The temporary dynastic union withPortugal added to its vast extent and heterogeneity.There has never been a European empire like that ofthe Spanish Habsburgs, for all the other major intra-European empires (Charlemagne, the Holy RomanEmpire, Austria-Hungary, Poland-Lithuania, tsaristRussia, and the Ottomans) consisted of contiguousterritorial domains. Conversely, the first Europeanoceanic empire, that of Portugal, was a coastalthalassocracy that did not include significant territorialcolonies until the development of Brazil. Thecomplexity and geographical discontinuity of theHabsburg European crownlands would always be amajor problem, leading to the severing of the easternand western Habsburg domains after little more than ageneration, a decisive act that merely reduced but didnot resolve the inherent difficulties involved.

In more recent times, the main concern about thepolitical identities of this era has to do not with theempire but with the united monarchy in the peninsula.To European opinion, the Iberian principalities of theunited monarchy simply constituted "Spain," althoughno such single uniform political entity existed. Therewas a united monarchy that functioned as a singlestate for foreign and military policy, but internallygoverned on the basis of the individual autonomy of

the several Hispanic principalities.

Modern Spanish patriots and nationalists forunderstandable reasons like to refer to the "origins ofthe Spanish nation," and so on. Claudio SánchezAlbornoz and other "essentialists" have posited anenduring essence of sociocultural characteristicsamong the native population of the peninsula sincepre-Roman times, though the eminent medievalistrefers to the kingdom of Asturias as the "origin of theSpanish nation," as do some others. What one clearlyhad in Asturias was the beginning of the state thatdirectly evolved in a long historical process, withouttotal interruption, into the modern Spanish state, butthat is a different proposition. More commonly,Spanish patriots have seen the origin of the modernnation in the united monarchy in the late fifteenthcentury.

The modern concept of a nation as a singleinstitutionally unified society with a common languageand history, and common rights and restrictions for allcitizens, either possessing or aspiring to possess anindependent state (or at the very least completeautonomy), is a product of the era of the FrenchRevolution. It is further accepted that the majorEuropean nations all have deep historical roots, andin no case were merely "invented" in the eighteenth ornineteenth centuries, despite the faddish andmisleading language of commentators.14 The onlymajor nation to have developed nationhood as earlyor earlier than France was England, which as theUnited Kingdom of England, Wales, and Scotlandbegan to develop a distinctive highly assertivenationalism in the second half of the eighteenthcentury that transcended the earlier English proto-

century that transcended the earlier English proto-nationalism.15

The case of Holland is interesting, for only Hollandwas developing a society and system that was asmodern as England during the first half of theseventeenth century. Several commentators havesuggested that Holland was becoming the firstmodern nation, which in some respects may havebeen the case, yet Dutch political development,though dynamic and precocious, became arrestedduring the course of the seventeenth century so thatHolland failed to blossom fully at that time into acompletely unified nation.

Prior to the era of the French Revolution, the word"nation" had several different meanings, none of themequivalent to the modern sense. The term obviouslyrefers to the birth origins of an individual or a group,and in earlier times was used to refer variously toindividual regions, ethnic groups, or principalities, orto general language groups or even to broadlyidentifiable areas. Any one of the Hispanic states orregions might be referred to as a nation in thetraditional sense, just as groups of traders from any orall of the peninsular ports might be identified abroadas Spanish or of the Spanish nation, and as allstudents from the peninsula in other Europeanuniversities might be lumped together as the Spanishnation, though their own native languages might vary.Conversely, in Bruges a "Vizcayan nation" wasformed by the late fifteenth century, which included notmerely Vizcayans but traders from other ports ofnorthern Spain. In the traditional usage, "nation"referred essentially to a place or a territory, or evengroups thereof, or to those who spoke a particular

language, but not to a unified political entity. In thistraditional or historical sense, Spain may have beenthe oldest "historical nation" but not at all the firstmodern political nation.

Prophetic and even apocalyptic images were notuncommon in the peninsula, as elsewhere in Europe,during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and theseincluded prophecies of the future unity of all theHispanic states and their special role in history. Afterformation of the united monarchy, the term "nación deEspaña" was used by several Castilian writers and atleast one Aragonese writer,16 but the CatholicMonarchs scarcely ever called themselves "monarchsof Spain," Fernando, for example, referring to the"crown of Spain" on only one public occasion in 1514.In such an event, the crown of Portugal was alwaysquick to complain, because the sense of Spain as anall-peninsular term remained very strong, and wouldremain so into the eighteenth century.17

The most common term for the next two centurieswould therefore be the less direct form "la Monarquíahispánica," the term introduced by Felipe II todistinguish the state later known to historians as"imperial Spain" from the central European Habsburgdomains, which had been split off under the rule of hisAustrian cousins. The plurality and distinct institutionsof the crown's principalities were alwaysacknowledged, and historians would later devise theterm "monarquía compuesta" (compound monarchy)for the totality involved. Nonetheless, specific Spanishterminology would be applied to the crown more andmore, as "crown of Spain" or "de las Españas," eventhough never an official title, while Felipe II sometimes

termed himself Princeps Hispaniorum orHispaniorum et Indorum Rex, which referred to theprincipal domains and base of, but not all thepatrimony of, the monarchy.

There were a multiplicity of legal or constitutionalsystems to be dealt with and a wide variety ofidentities and sensibilities that needed to berespected, even within the peninsula. This raised thequestion not merely of pluralistic internal policy,accommodated through the various administrativecouncils ("Council of Castile," etc.), but also thequestion of the power of the crown itself. Politicaltheory throughout western Europe held that authorityor sovereignty was derived from the generalcommunity, but that the monarchy held "preeminent"power (including the right to make new law) and wasanswerable ultimately to God, although it wasexpected to abide by the established laws of eachprincipality. On various occasions the Castilian Cortesof the fifteenth century had emphasized that God"made kings his vicars on earth," consistent with themedieval doctrine of the sacralization of monarchyand its functions.18 Moreover, during the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries there had developed theconcept of the crown's "poderío absoluto" (absoluteauthority), giving rise to the early modern doctrine of"absolute monarchy," for long exaggerated byhistorians. The united monarchy of Spain rarelyclaimed absolute power, especially during thesixteenth century, and the doctrine referred not toabsolute despotic power but to the hierarchicalsuperiority and independence or indivisibility of royalauthority, which also had the power to make new laws.Even in Castile, the Cortes and the cities continued in

various ways to contest legally the powers andpolicies of the crown. 19 Outside the peninsula, thevariety of principalities and legal systems wasbewildering, but in the Habsburg Italian states, thelargest part of the dynastic empire outside Spain andthe Low Countries, a considerable sense of loyaltyand legitimacy was maintained, and even at the lowpoint under Carlos II there was little susceptibility toFrench political blandishments.

The word patria was employed as flexibly and on asmany different levels as the word "nation." 20 In hisTesoro de la lengua castellana of 1611, Sebastiánde Covarrubias defined the term as "Patria: the landwhere one was born. It is a Latin term, patria.Compatriot, someone from the same place." In theexpansive Siete Partidas, Alfonso X had been the firstEuropean writer to employ the term in the vernacular,without giving it any precise application. As distinctfrom the traditional use of nation, the word "patria" didnot connote simply a fact of origin (however uncertainin application) but also a mutual relationship of dutyand responsibility. The term was most commonly usedfor individual principalities, and even more for localregions and districts, for what would become known incolloquial Castilian as the "patria chica" (littlefatherland).

The writing of history advanced rapidly during thesixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and on alllevels.21 It culminated in the first great history of Spain,Juan de Mariana's Historia general de España (Latin,1592; Castilian, 1601), which would remain thestandard work for two and a half centuries. This wasfollowed during the first half of the seventeenth century

by a series of works by Castilian authors affirmingSpain in the form of the policies of the monarchy andto some extent of the institutions of Castile. Fray Juande Salazar, in his Política española (1619), hailedcommon government of the peninsula for the Spanishas a "chosen people," a not uncommon attitude atcourt and among part of the Castilian elite.

Integrationism culminated in the program of theConde-Duque de Olivares for Felipe IV to govern as"king of Spain," though even this continued to respectthe distinct politico-legal systems. The result wasdismaying to the Conde-Duque, who continued toidentify nation and national in the traditional sense asconcepts limited to the separate principalities, andvariously lamented "Cursed be nations, and a curseon national men!" and "I am not national, which issomething for children," off-cited complaints.22

Although Castile was the main base of the state andalso contained more advocates of a more integratedsystem, Castile itself remained a specific nation inthis traditional sense and a patria in the commonusage, and a strong sense of distinct Castilian identityremained, with its own interests.23

By the early seventeenth century, the term "nation"was being used in the peninsula in at least threedifferent ways. The most common usage referred toindividual kingdoms or principalities. Beyond that for asmall minority stood the "nation of Spain," though,contradictorily, it in turn was held to be made up oflesser nations. A very few even referred to a sort of"monarchist nation" that embraced all nations orprincipalities of the entire western Habsburg dynasty,but that was too complex and tenuous a usage to have

much currency.

Historical works devoted to principalities andsmaller areas proved yet more common, however,with the popularity of the genre known as "corografía,"devoted to local histories. The affirmation of anintegrated all-Spanish policy, which never went veryfar before Olivares, was met in turn by vigorous newaffirmation of the identities and laws and constitutionalsystems of the several principalities, particularly in theBasque provinces and in Catalonia but also in someother regions. Catalan writers and historiansdeveloped their own myth of an absolutely separateand autonomous ethnogenesis during the ninth andtenth centuries.24 If Mariana had set a new standardfor Spanish historical writing, the new regionalisthistories of the sixteenth and seventeenth often wentin a diametrically opposite direction, led particularly bythe Vizcayans, as they elaborated fantasies, which insome cases they knew had no basis in fact.

The Habsburg dynasty has been almost universally,and accurately, criticized for the stubbornness anddestructiveness of its foreign and fiscal policies. Itsdomestic policy, however, was modest in the extreme,compared with the domestic policies of the Frenchand English monarchies, which slowly but steadilyworked to build broader and more united polities. TheSpanish Habsburgs accepted a highly legalistinterpretation of the domestic status quo, which theyrarely tried to change. The kingdom of Castile hadbeen made increasingly responsive to the crown, itsCortes after 1538 the only European parliamentcomposed exclusively of the third estate. It hadrelatively effective fiscal and judicial institutions, aswell as an aristocracy generally trained to cooperate

well as an aristocracy generally trained to cooperatewith the crown. This contrasted sharply with theelaborate but ossified constitutional structures of theAragonese principalities, intensely elitist andoppressive, unwilling to pay any new taxes or evencontribute to the common defense. Felipe IV was amore astute ruler than he has usually been given creditfor; he understood the desirability of achieving equalrights and responsibilities in all the Spanishprincipalities — even though at no time was sosweeping a reform proposed, even by Olivares.25

The separatist conflicts developed by Portugal andCatalonia in 1640 were in neither case united patrioticstruggles, since each also involved an internal civilwar, though the supporters of the separatist policywere stronger in both instances. By the second half ofthe seventeenth century traditionalist particularismwas once more dominant, though the independenceof Portugal and the reconquest of Catalonia began forthe first time to draw the modern dividing line of Spainand Spanish, stopping at the Portuguese frontier butincluding all the rest of the peninsula. Such a definitionwas finally accepted by the Portuguese after the earlyeighteenth century.

EmpireThe Asturian-Castilian crown had intermittently

aspired to "empire" since the end of the ninth century,an empire that was to extend over the entire peninsulaand then, in a further projection of the Reconquest,into North Africa, as well. The crown of Aragon hadcreated a genuine Mediterranean empire thatincluded a degree of indirect hegemony over smallportions of North Africa, though it never pretended to

be more than an extended "composed monarchy."The conquest of Granada revived classic Castilianaspirations that began to be realized through thesubjugation of several sites on the African coast,before the attention of the crown was diverted. Interestin crusading had revived in various parts of Europeafter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but nowhereelse was this so strong as in the Iberian Peninsula, forthe obvious combination of historical, political,geographical, and cultural reasons.

Carlos V realized the old ambition of Alfonso elSabio to be elected head of the central EuropeanHoly Roman Empire, being in as strong a position todo so as that of the Rey Sabio had been weak. TheHoly Roman Empire — which because of its loose,secular, and essentially Germanic structure has beendescribed as "neither holy, nor Roman, nor anempire" — was the classic historic European"empire" supposedly deriving its origins andlegitimacy from Charlemagne and from Rome itself.As a central European entity, however, it representedsomething quite different from the historic ambitionsof the crown of Castile.

Carlos V assumed the imperial title during the firstphase of the Protestant Reformation and sought torestore religious unity and achieve harmony inEurope, tasks totally beyond his reach. Early in hisimperial reign, his advisors posited the goal ofachieving "universal empire," not in the sense thatDon Carlos would achieve direct sovereignty over allEuropean states, but that he would achieve a positionof hegemonic leadership that would guarantee peaceand harmony. This was not to be, but insteadinaugurated the beginning of the modern era of what

inaugurated the beginning of the modern era of whatwould much later be known as the "balance of power,"as other European states allied in opposition to anyone dominant force. By the middle of the century bothSpanish and imperial foreign policy had becomeessentially defensive, but the dynastic possessions ofthe crown, even after the imperial title and the centralEuropean domains had been relinquished, remainedso extensive that attempting to hold the status quomeant endless warfare in Italy, France, the LowCountries, central Europe, and at times againstEngland. Further charges of seeking "universalmonarchy" were hurled against the Spanish crown,after which the target for nearly two centuries would beFrance. Moreover, for most of the sixteenth century,the responsibility of defending the Islamic frontier costas much as the wars in Europe and even more in lossof lives. This stood as a basic Spanish obligation, notshared to the same extent by any other state, a burdenthat eased only after 1585. It was a task that therepresentatives of Castilian taxpayers were willing tobear, while they frequently urged the crown to seekpeace and reduce military obligations in Europe.

Henry Kamen has emphasized the internationalnature of the leadership, administration, financing, andmilitary resources of the far-flung domains of theSpanish monarchy.26 This is to a considerable degreecorrect, for the crown followed not a "Spanish" but adynastic policy that relied considerably on non-Spanish personnel. The absence of Hispanocentrismin this policy sometimes elicited strong protests fromCastilians, but Castile remained its financial andmilitary base and, even though most of the crown'ssoldiers were not Spanish, the Spanish Tercios(infantry battalions) remained the hard core of its

(infantry battalions) remained the hard core of itsarmed forces.27

The American empire, which eventually expandedinto the first true world empire that includedpossessions in the Pacific, raised different problems.Dominion was nominally derived from papalauthorization, which, however, pertained only togeneral sovereignty, not to the ownership of land orthe domination and exploitation of the nativepopulation. This produced modern Europe's firstmoral confrontation with the issues of colonialism andimperialism. Religious and intellectual figures in Spainand Spanish America addressed the resultingdilemmas with honesty, compassion, and intellectualoriginality, resulting in new development of natural lawand innovations in international law as well, but thehumane and pathbreaking definitions by part of thereligious and intellectual elite were never reallyimplemented, and the new empire mostly becamedomination pure and simple.28 Ancient Rome servedas a kind of conceptual model, though not as apractical model, while the conquest of exotic peoplesalso awakened a new consciousness in reflectiveSpaniards, who by the sixteenth century did not findthe origins of Spain in the Visigoths but to anincreasing degree in the native population of thepeninsula who had resisted the Romans, just asIndians resisted Spaniards.29 Similarly, from the verybeginning in the 1580s North American Indiansreminded some Englishmen of the original Britonsand Picts of their own home island.

The overseas empire was never termed such by themonarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,and was technically just the patrimony of the crown of

Castile, though contemporary Europeans consideredall this simply the "Spanish empire." There was nohistorical precedent for this kind of empire, and itsterritories were never called "colonies" prior to theeighteenth century. Rather, they were to some extentconsidered overseas equivalents of the lands won inthe peninsular reconquest, and were made new"reinos" (lit., kingdoms) of the crown of Castile.

The American empire received little attention andnot that much emigration during the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, the crown's main concernbeing reception of the gold and silver (primarily thelatter) that became crucial to its finances. Theestimates are that no more than 300,000 Spaniardswent to America during the entire colonial period,while not all the survivors of the journey remainedthere permanently. These were just enough toestablish the beginning of a new hybrid creole andmestizo society, which, largely left to its own devices,proved impressively loyal and resilient amid the trialsof the seventeenth century.

A surprisingly small number of colonizers thusachieved complete success in laying down the rootsof a unique new society, but in later times itsdevelopment would become increasingly problematic,the very opposite of the success story of NorthAmerica. The differences in many ways were thedifferences between early modern Spain andseventeenth-century England. Indeed, England wasrapidly overtaking Holland as the most modern andinnovative country in Europe, while Spain during theimperial era largely failed in the modernizationstruggle.30 The Spanish empire constituted a totallyunique historical precedent to which the English paid

unique historical precedent to which the English paidconsiderable attention, but the newer "commercialempires" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriespursued different policies and priorities. The empirewas not used as a factor of integration or nation-building within the peninsula, because such a goalsimply did not exist prior to the eighteenth century,leaving the empire primarily the preserve of Castiliansand Basques. Similarly, the priorities of rigid stateregulation of commerce (even though the economywas based on private enterprise) and emphasis onbullion extraction were narrowly conceived andprecluded use of the empire to achieve economicdevelopment at home. When the priorities changed inthe second half of the eighteenth century, the era ofthe empire was nearly over.31

6Spain and Portugal

The capacity of Spain and Portugal to turn theirbacks on each other in modern times has beenextraordinary. Given its size, Portugal has never beenable to ignore Spain to the same extent that the latterignores Portugal, but this difference is only relative. Inearlier centuries, despite difficulty in communications,the Spanish kingdoms always had much more to dowith Portugal, and vice versa, restricted to a largedegree, to their common peninsula. After 1668 theytended more and more to go their separate ways,though with certain notable exceptions, until finallybrought together again not by a peninsular entente butby the European Union in 1985.

The initial paradox is that Portugal was notinstitutionally, culturally, and structurally the mostsingular of the peninsular principalities. Thatdistinction would have to go to Catalonia, which wasconsiderably more different from its counterparts thanwas Portugal. The earlier institutions and culture of thekingdom of Portugal were basically derived fromthose of Galicia and León, and there was noextraordinary innovation in type or character amongthe earliest Portuguese institutions.

Spanish historians have often seen the origins ofPortugal as stemming from a sort of politico-dynasticaccident, and a considerable argument may bedeveloped on behalf of this position. The

establishment of what was to become an independentstate and monarchy by Afonso I Henriques in 1128was a typical political development of that era, asLeón was separated from Castile, Aragon became akingdom, Navarre was associated with Aragon andthen separated from it, and various efforts were madeto establish Galicia as a distinct kingdom. Indeed,Alfonso VII did not view the new Portugueseprincipality as other than a vassal state of Castile, afurther feature of the heterogeneous, "imperial"structure of his monarchy.

The uniqueness of the case of Portugal was not anyprofound difference in the culture and politics of theerstwhile new kingdom compared with these otherexamples, but simply that subsequent historicaldevelopments made possible the full establishmentand consolidation of an independent monarchy, andultimately of a separate country. This was due to theinterplay of politics and history — contingency, ineffect — and not to intrinsic and profound differences.Had the right kind of effective marriage alliance beenmade between the crowns of Castile and Portugal,rather than between Castile and Aragon, the resultantunion would have been at least as logical andeffective as that developed by the heirs of the CatholicMonarchs, if not more so. This is not to deny thatPortugal over several centuries developed a very firmand distinct identity and eventually formed a moreunited separate nation than did Spain, but rather tostress that this was the result of a complex process ofhistorical development. It did not lie in somepredetermined essence at the roots of that process.Numerous efforts have been made by historians ofPortugal to identify and define unique differences in

early history, and even to advance a geographicalargument for Portuguese singularity, but none of theseis especially convincing.1 A unique originalPortuguese "essentialism" prior to the twelfth centuryhas yet to be discovered. This is not to deny thatcertain specific individual traits might be identified innascent Portugal, but only to emphasize that these donot appear to have been any greater than equallyspecific and individual traits, which might have beenfound in the other Hispanic states, as indeed in allsmall medieval principalities.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, León andCastile had failed to develop the levels of political andinstitutional coherence that were being achieved in thesmaller principalities of Catalonia and Aragon, andthe arrogation of independence in the southwesternterritories of the crown of León by Afonso Henriques,a grandson of Alfonso VI, was only one of a series ofcentrifugal political actions in that era. The people ofhis territories mostly spoke their own form ofRomance, different from the vernacular of greaterLeón, but the same was true of the people of Galicia.Moreover, the latter possessed a much older, moredistinctive, and more complex and sophisticatedculture and set of institutions than could be found inthe southwest. About this time Galician became theprincipal vernacular form for "high culture" and poetryin most of the peninsula, and Galicia was more of adistinctly organized entity than were the somewhatamorphous territories of Afonso Henriques. Initially,the lands of the new monarchy were somewhatdivided from the rest of León by mountains, butmountain barriers are common in the peninsula, andjust as present in the case of Galicia. Later, as the

kingdom of Portugal advanced southward, they wouldbe completely absent in the newly reconqueredterritories. The crown of Portugal, like that of Aragon,looked to the papacy for legitimation of itsindependent status. The latter granted this in return forrecognition of papal suzerainty, since Rome'sdiplomacy was as interested in maintaining theinternal political disunity of the peninsula, to furtherpapal influence, as it was conversely, and sometimesa bit contradictorily, to encourage a countervailingmilitary unity against the Muslims. At the same time,the first king of Portugal, like his Aragonesecounterpart, felt compelled to recognize a loose formof homage to his cousin Alfonso VII as Hispanic"emperor," limited though this acknowledgement was.

Of the multiple new marriage alliances amongHispanic rulers between the twelfth and fourteenthcenturies, the only ones to achieve any new enduringunions were the two that reunited Castile and Leónand that created the "composed monarchy" of thegreater crown of Aragon, while conversely Navarrebroke completely free of its temporary associationwith Aragon.

With each passing generation the independentkingdom of Portugal developed an increasing senseof unity and identity, forging effective institutions of itsown, however much they may have formally resembledthose of Castile. As a typical Hispanic frontierkingdom, Portugal had the opportunity to extend itsfrontiers southward, strengthening its crown andproviding an independent sphere of action for its ownelites, thus completing its own reconquest by themiddle of the thirteenth century. This closed itspeninsular frontier and further assisted the distinct

peninsular frontier and further assisted the distinctprocess of ethno-formation that was under way, until aunique and fully structured separate kingdom hadbeen formed no later than the fourteenth century.2Portugal had begun to assume its full historical form,though at that time no European territory constituted amodern nation.

After Portugal successfully asserted itsindependence from Castile in the succession crisis of1383-85, the kingdom soon set forth on its course ofoverseas expansion. Although expansion beyondHispanic home waters had been begun by the crownof Aragon at the end of the thirteenth century, theremarkable growth of overseas Aragonese territoriestook place within the classic Mediterranean world. Thefirst extrapeninsular conquest of the Portuguese —Ceuta in 1415 — established a foothold in NorthAfrica (something that Aragon and Castile had alsobriefly attempted), but this extension of typicalHispanic Reconquest policy was soon expanded intothe program of Atlantic exploration and expansion,which became the unique enterprise of Portugal inworld history.

The Portuguese would later speak of their Atlanticvocation, but this failed to transform domesticPortugal, which in the sixteenth century remainedmuch more like Castile than was, for example,Catalonia. The Portugal of the expansion was asociety of dual elites, the lesser elite of merchants,royal agents, and a portion of the aristocracy favoringoceanic projects, and the opening of enterprisebeyond the Atlantic islands, all the way down theAfrican coast and, eventually, to India itself. The maininterest group of the military aristocracy, however,

remained true to the classic (medieval) crusadingideal, the Reconquest now projected into the Maghrib,aimed at conquering as much territory as possible inMorocco for purposes of booty and the creation ofnew landed domains.

Both enterprises derived inspiration from thefifteenth-century religious revival, which affectedPortugal about as much as Spain, and in the entirepeninsular context (including also Valencia, so that itwas not merely a matter of Castilian and Portuguesespeakers) this assumed a pronounced apocalyptictone, aimed at the crusade and ultimately theliberation of Jerusalem. It was also a major incentivefor the Atlantic voyages. The famous Prince Henrywas not a scientist but saw himself as a crusader;later, the court of King Manoel (who would be called"The Fortunate") lived in a kind of apocalyptic fervor,so that the dispatch of the expedition of Vasco daGama represented not merely an opportunity to cutinto the south Asian spice trade but also an effortstrategically to flank the Islamic world, establish newgeopolitical conditions, help to regain Jerusalem, andexpedite the Second Coming.3 Much the same set ofmotivations as in the case of Columbus.

Until the development of Brazil in the later sixteenthcentury, the original Portuguese empire was not aland empire but what historians have termed a"thalassocracy," that is, an ocean-going empire builtaround the possession of a long string of ports andcoastal fortresses, rather than extensive territories.For most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries itremained a kind of schizophrenic empire, the Afro-Asian thalassocracy having to compete with themilitary crusade and territorial conquest in Morocco.

military crusade and territorial conquest in Morocco.For that matter, the thalassocracy itself was never a"commercial empire" of the kind later developed bythe Dutch and English. Though commerce wasimportant to it, this functioned within the broader"conquistador" ethos of early Portuguese expansionthat emphasized force. By the midsixteenth centurythe cost was becoming greater than the benefits:although some income continued to be earned fromthe south Asian and African spice trade, thePortuguese crown was increasingly hard pressed forresources.

Once the romantic and crusade-minded Sebastiancame of age and assumed power in 1568, the stagewas set for complete domination of policy by thecrusaders, leading to the large-scale invasion ofMorocco ten years later and the dynastic and nationaldisaster of Alcazarquivir.4 During its final generations,crusading was supposed to help achieve apocalypse,and it certainly did for the Portuguese monarchy.There could have been no greater demonstration ofthe ubiquity of the crusade in the general Luso-Hispanic culture. In this the Portuguese proved themost "typically Spanish" of all the peninsularkingdoms. In no other European state was both adynasty extinguished and independence lost as aresult of an aggressive military crusade abroad. InPortugal the "guerra divinal" produced the mostextreme consequences.

The claim of Felipe II to the Portuguese crown wascontested, but no other claimant could boast clearlysuperior legitimacy. Even though temporary militaryoccupation by the troops of the Duque de Albaenforced that claim, the accession of the Spanish ruler

was generally accepted within Portugal. In 1580-81the peninsula was at least reunited for the first timesince 711, even if historians have difficulty definingexactly what kind of union it was.

It has sometimes been said that Portugal acceptedthe leadership of the Spanish crown when that was toits advantage, and rejected it in 1640 when this wasno longer so. There is much to be said for such aninterpretation. Portuguese attitudes were alwayssomewhat divided. This was the case in theindependence conflict of the 1380s, in 1580, and alsoin 1640, as in all these crises sectors of thePortuguese elites supported the Spanish crown. Ingeneral, however, a Spain in decline was no longer auseful associate. Instead of offering support toPortugal, the embattled Spanish monarchy was itselfrequesting assistance. Instead of providing protectionto the Portuguese possessions overseas, Spanishpolicy exposed the Portuguese thalassocracy toendless conflict with the Dutch republic, at thatmoment becoming the most efficient sea power in theworld.

Portugal was able to cut free partly because of itsgeography, which made reconquest less of anabsolute priority for the Spanish crown than wasregaining Catalonia. Extrapeninsular factors helpedas well. English assistance was important in thedecisive phase of the 1660s, when Spain had endedthe war with France and could concentrate dwindlingresources against Portugal. And in the long run, the"second empire" (meaning Brazil, not the originalAfro-Asian thalassocracy) would prove a significantsource of economic strength.

A Change of "National Character"?In the twenty-first century, many of the Portuguese

look back with some amazement at the worldwideaccomplishments of their ancestors. This in turnraises the question as to exactly how much of a breakthe seventeenth century meant in Portuguese affairs,which is just as important as in the case of Spain,although the answers may be somewhat different.Broad generalizations about "national character" aredangerous, but the general impression is that themodern Portuguese have been a prudent, relativelysubdued, and unambitious people, oftencharacterized by the sadness associated withsaudade, melancholic nostalgia. Any suchgeneralization is doubtless exaggerated, but hasbeen advanced by many observers and offers aportrait at considerable odds with what we know of thePortuguese elite during the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies.

Portuguese society and institutions, like those ofany country, eventually came to have its owndistinctive characteristics, medieval Portugal beingeven more agricultural than Castile, which featuredgreater cattle production. Yet in general, Portugueseinstitutions and culture paralleled those of Castile andLeón. The development of the kingdom largelyresembled that of its eastern neighbors, so that theexpansion of Portugal in the fifteenth century did notnecessarily reflect any unique "Atlantic" or"mercantile" society any more than it did a somewhatarchaic, typically Iberian crusade-and-reconquestmentality. The Portuguese did indeed introduce somenew interests and techniques, the subsequent

thalassocracy developing maritime and commercialconcerns of a new kind, but throughout this period thePortuguese elite continued to be dominated by themost traditional of religious, aristocratic, andtraditional values, honored and emphasized to thepoint of self-destruction in 1578.

The Portuguese of the expansion revealed anextraordinary degree of self-confidence, an almostinfinite daring and courage very similar to that ofSpanish conquistadores, and a profound sense thatthey were the most warlike and proficient of all theLatin Christians. They scoffed at any notion of militarydependency, but this had changed by the seventeenthcentury. The Portuguese mentality altered from theoffensive to the defensive, from the audacious to theprudent. Whereas they had fought off the crown ofCastile all by themselves in the fourteenth century, bythe seventeenth century they looked to outsideassistance to a degree unknown before, and by theeighteenth century would, when in trouble, sometimescall upon the English to send a general to organizetheir forces. Portugal would not again expandoverseas until the nineteenth century.

When one talks of "national character" in thisregard, the reference is primarily to the psycho-emotional ethos of the elite sectors. The Portuguesearistocracy never fully recovered from the trauma of1578, which destroyed some of its leading elements.Though the domestic social structure would remainmuch the same for three centuries, the fire and drivewas gone from the old military nobility, which preferredto live off its rents. It might be asked whether thisreflected a subjective change on the part of the elite,or rather an objective adjustment to a world of

or rather an objective adjustment to a world ofincreased competition in which the Portuguese couldinevitably expect to achieve less. The answerprobably is that it reflected a certain amount of both.

It may be objected that the concept "change ofcharacter" creates a caricature. Ordinary Portuguesebehaved much the same before and after 1578. Inboth eras the most typical subject of the Portuguesecrown was a peaceful peasant who worked the land.Moreover, there was never a monolithic Portugal. Thefifteenth-century elite had been sharply divided aboutthe wisdom of crusading in Morocco, and also aboutthe Atlantic voyages. There had always existed moreprudent and practical elite sectors, whose point ofview imposed a more pragmatic and "modern" policyafter 1640. Rather than a change of character, thismight be interpreted as a natural evolution, eventhough crucially precipitated by trauma.

A certain militancy and expansionism was regainedunder modern nationalism in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, and Portugal was much moresuccessful in this regard than was Spain, amassingthe second largest empire of any of the smallerEuropean countries, a situation that greatly stimulatedGerman cupidity on the eve of World War I. Given therelative poverty of modern Portugal, this was aconsiderable achievement, but of course at no timehad the country been wealthy, in comparative terms,and the "third empire" (Angola, Mozambique, andGuinea-Bissau), though noteworthy, did not reflect anoriginality and a daring equivalent to the fifteenthcentury. Portuguese society to some extent lost itsatavistic military ethos without developing the fullstructure and values of a modern society. This also

paralleled the experience of Spain, but in the case ofPortugal the disaster of 1578 and the temporary lossof full sovereignty marked a before and an after.Though later exceeded in character and extent by theradical transformation of Germany after 1945, itconstituted a more marked change than was to befound in the early modern history of any otherEuropean country.

The positive side of the decline in militancy inmodern Portuguese culture has been the absence ofcivil war and prolonged civil violence, except for theconflict of 1832-34. The perpetual instability of the"Primeira República" (1910-26) produced intermittentviolence that was nonetheless low in volume. Even thelong Portuguese dictatorship of 1926-74 wascomparatively gentle, the only one in Europe referredto as "uma catedocracia" (a professorocracy)because of the prominent role of university personnel.

The "Precocity" of PortugalPortugal has never been a particularly modern or

advanced country, and did not hold such status evenat the time of its expansion in 1415. Nevertheless, ithas exhibited certain symptoms of precocity to theextent that it carried out new achievements orintroduced new institutions earlier than did Spain orother parts of southern and eastern Europe, or even,in some cases, northwestern Europe. The"advantages of backwardness," as it is sometimescalled, offer no explanation, for this refers more to thepossibility of making unusually rapid advances bytaking advantage of institutions or policies alreadypioneered by more developed countries.5 The only

advantages that Portugal possessed were a militantethos, a compact geography and privileged strategiclocation.

Among the many Portuguese "firsts" may be found:

1. The first Hispanic kingdom to complete its fullsouthern reconquest;

2. The first western kingdom to initiate majorexpansion in Africa and Asia;

3. Establishment of the first maritime constellationto span much of the globe;

4. Introduction of a new program of administeredmonarchist capitalism, though in the long run thisproved a failure;

5. Beginning the transatlantic slave trade;

6. Initiating the development of the plantationeconomy of the Atlantic islands and of the WesternHemisphere;

7. Carrying out the first peaceful decolonization inthe Western Hemisphere;

8. Becoming the first Iberian country to resolve theliberalism/traditionalism conflict in the nineteenthcentury;

9. Becoming the first Iberian country to stabilizenineteenth-century liberalism;

10. Introducing the first permanent new republic ofthe twentieth century in Europe (1910);

11. Establishing the first new-style twentieth-centuryauthoritarian regime in Europe (1917-18), though itdid not last;

12. Introducing Europe's first corporativeconstitution in 1933;

13. Initiating the first overthrow of an authoritarianregime in southern and eastern Europe during the latetwentieth century (1974).

Some of the internal political achievements orinnovations were no doubt facilitated by the small sizeof the country, and one or two of them possiblyencouraged more by weakness than by strength.Moreover, several of these innovations weredestructive, as has been the case in the history ofmost human societies. In general, however, theyindicate a degree of initiative that has beenovershadowed in foreign perceptions by Portugal'ssocial and economic backwardness. These moreprecocious features of change, however, reveal a notinconsiderable degree of continuing activism, despitethe limitations of the socioeconomic context.

Land of the "Negative Superlative"At the first meeting of the International Conference

Group on Portugal, held at the University of NewHampshire in October 1973, the sociologist HerminioMartins referred to his native country as the land of the"negative superlative." By this he meant that whilesome countries are referred to in terms of positivesuperlatives such as the most, the biggest, and thelike, comparative references to Portugal in modern

times have been in the negative superlative as themost backward, most underdeveloped, poorest, mostilliterate of the west European countries. So long asone is looking at the main part of Europe north andwest of the Balkans, such negative comparisons haveusually been statistically justified.

At no time has Portugal been an economic or atechnological leader (except for certain aspects ofmaritime science in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies) and, from the seventeenth century on, it hasbeen a relatively underdeveloped country that incomparative terms lost rather than gained groundduring the nineteenth century. This is a storysomewhat reminiscent of Spain, save that thecomparative Portuguese statistics in modern timeshave been rather lower than those for Spain as awhole. Only in a few other parts of southern andeastern Europe has economic development beenslower.

During the Middle Ages Portugal experienced therelative economic marginality common to most of theChristian kingdoms in the peninsula, though, as wehave seen, in a time of generally slow economicchange this did not result in a situation of profoundunderdevelopment. In the fifteenth century, Portugal,like Castile, probably ranked not much lower than a"low medium" on the general comparative scale ofwestern economic development. Moreover, itmomentarily took the lead in several specific areas ofmaritime technology and of long-range commercialorganization, though these advantages would not longendure.

A fundamental question in Portuguese history is

why the income generated by the thalassocracy forseveral generations was not used to stimulate positiveeconomic growth. Several factors seem to have beenimportant. One was that the maritime enterprise of the"first empire" was not as profitable as might havebeen thought. Certain voyages and initiatives didreturn a considerable profit, but conversely the overallexpenses were very great, and remained extremelyhigh even as profits declined. Militarization of theprocess in some respects increased rather thandiminished. The Portuguese expansion was notbased on a highly productive hinterland, but movedfairly rapidly from a modest domestic base to a large-scale enterprise without any significant developmentof that domestic base. It may be argued that almost allmajor enterprises spring initially from modest origins.In the Portuguese case, however, no positive balancewas achieved, partly because the motivations andpriorities were not primarily economic in the firstplace. Though Portugal did briefly pioneer certainforms of royal and long-range commercialorganization, it did not constitute a capitalist society tothe extent that Venice and Genoa already had duringthe Middle Ages or that Holland and England wouldbecome in the seventeenth century. Portuguesesociety and priorities remained more traditional, thecrusade eventually trumping commerce, even thoughthe two were supposed to be intertwined. This may beconsidered typically "Luso-Hispanic" but not verymodern. Moreover, the maritime breakthrough did notin the long run provide the country with the kind ofcommercial advantages that briefly appeared to bethe case at the beginning of the sixteenth century.International competition soon increased, whilePortugal did not possess — and proved incapable of

developing — the kind of financial basis andcommercial network to take full advantage of theseopportunities. At least as important was thecontradiction/competition between the crusade ofconquest in Morocco and the long-rangethalassocracy. They had begun as different parts ofthe same enterprise, but the former came toovershadow the latter. Already by the middle of thesixteenth century the crown encountered severefinancial trouble; the twentieth-century historian GarrettMattingly has described João III as "the proprietor of abankrupt wholesale grocery business." 6

In the case of Portugal as in that of Spain, much ofwhatever profit derived from empire was skimmed offby the crown and invested in nonproductive militaryexercises. What little profit entered Portuguesesociety was largely absorbed nonproductively by thearistocracy. Not much was invested in productiveenterprise within the country. The modest extent of thedomestic market made it unpromising, and a relativeabsence of creative economic undertakingsguaranteed that that would continue to be the case.

The "second empire" in Brazil became quiteprofitable by the late seventeenth century, yet it seemsthat very much the same story repeated itself. Thecrown and a small elite prospered, and by the earlyeighteenth century it had become possible toreconstruct the Portuguese navy, at least in part; yetagain the proportion of money invested in stimulatingdomestic enterprise was comparatively slight, eventhough from the late seventeenth century on thePortuguese government was at least cognizant of theproblem. It was not until the repatriation of capital fromBrazil after the latter's independence that empire-

Brazil after the latter's independence that empire-generated capital began to be invested more directlyin domestic activities, and even then much was sunkinto the disamortization of landed estates, though thisalso made possible enough investment in the nationaldebt to maintain to some extent the financial stabilityof the government. Moreover, by the nineteenthcentury it had become necessary to run much fastermerely to stand still and not lose more ground, as faras the international competition was concerned, aproblem equally challenging in the case of Spain.

An aristocrat-dominated traditional social structurewas common in one way or another to nearly all ofEurope, but Portuguese society was unusuallyemphatic in its absence of internal economicenterprise. Given the small market and very limitedpurchasing power, together with the absence ofnatural resources or prior domestic accumulation, thepossibility of becoming a second Belgium was nevera genuine possibility. At the same time, terrain andagricultural conditions meant that it could scarcelybecome a second Denmark.7 A more feasible modelmight have been something like a second seafaringNorway, but for this constituent factors were alsolacking.

A Comparative ContemporaryHistory?

Spanish historians consistently ignore the history ofPortugal as much as they possibly can, with theprimary and laudable exception of Hipólito de la TorreGómez, despite the fact that the history of Portugalmuch more closely parallels that of Spain than doesthe history of any other country. Though the preceding

generalization is undoubtedly correct, the disparity insize of the two countries renders a less useful parallelor heuristic field than might be the case for countriesof more nearly equivalent dimensions. On that level, ofcourse, the appropriate comparison for Spain is withthe contemporary history of Italy, and it is certainly truethat of the larger European countries no two have asmany similarities as do Spain and Italy. The maindifferences in comparability between Spain and Italyhave to do first with politics and second witheconomics. Prior to 1860 Italy was never a unitedcountry, and for nearly four centuries before that timecomparability could be achieved in political terms onlyat a high level of abstraction. Second, the spurt ofindustrialization that Italy experienced in the 1890scontinued for some time, so that by the end of WorldWar I Italy — which in the early nineteenth centuryoverall had a per capita income scarcely superior tothat of Spain — was for the time being at least twentyyears ahead of Spain in economic development andmodernization. Spain did not generally catch up untilthe last years of the twentieth century.

Despite the difference in size, comparability withPortugal is greater in every period and in almost everydimension. After the final separation between 1640and 1668, the two countries continued to follow closelyparallel courses. Their Old Regimes overall wereremarkably similar, prone to the same problems andeven to some extent the same reforms. The loss ofcolonies took place at approximately the same time,though neither lost all their colonies. The relativelypeaceful Portuguese decolonization obeyed thegenerally more moderate and, if not less conflictive,then at least less violent tone of Portuguese affairs

since the mid-seventeenth century. In both countriesthe effects of the French invasion and — to a muchlesser extent — the loss of most of the overseasterritories made possible the imposition of politicalliberalism, which was equally weak and prone toconflict in both countries. Because of Portugal'ssmaller size, relatively stronger leadership, and lack ofregional institutional particularism, it ended theliberalism/traditionalism conflict endemic in earlynineteenth-century liberalism in 1834, long beforeSpain. For somewhat the same reasons, a two-partyliberal "turno" (rotativismo in Portuguese) was largelyachieved two decades before this took place inSpain. The basic problems of weak cultural, social,and economic preparation were present in bothcountries, together with the restrictive, elitist,somewhat artificial character of the liberal regimes.

During the 1850s, when both countries seemedpeacefully embarked on parallel paths, the Iberianfederalist movement enjoyed greater support in bothSpain and Portugal than would be the case later on.8At the time of the abortive Spanish dynastic change in1868-69, some of the more liberal sectors of Spanishpolitics might have preferred to introduce aPortuguese prince, since during the preceding twodecades the Portuguese monarchy was generallyviewed as more sincerely liberal than that of Spain,but a Portuguese candidacy was discouraged inLisbon.

During the central part of the nineteenth century bothcountries struggled with economic development withlimited success, and largely sought to avoid foreigninvolvement, though with certain exceptions and

differences. After 1807 it seemed as though thecenter of the Portuguese-speaking world had beendisplaced to Río de Janeiro, something that neveroccurred in Spain. For approximately a decade the defacto governor of Portugal was a British general, andthe British connection remained fundamental to thecountry's foreign relations. In both countries there wasa certain surge of nationalism and expansionismduring the middle part of the century. In Portugal,though, where certain fundamental political issuesseemed to have been resolved earlier, this took theform of a new concentration on Africa as the "thirdempire," a goal on which Portuguese policy finallybegan to make good with substantial occupation ofAngola and Mozambique by the last years of thecentury. Both countries then in turn experienced theimperial frustrations common to the south Europeanstates during the 1890s. Once more Portugal wasfirst, receiving an "Ultimatum," as the Portuguesealways called it, from its British ally in 1891, whichforever ended dreams of "the rose-colored map" —the goal of a broad empire of Portuguese —controlled territory across south Africa from Angola toMozambique.

What can be called "liberal nationalism" enjoyedsignificant support in both Spain and Portugal duringthe nineteenth century, the difference being that it wasdeveloped more strongly in Portugal. The reaction tothe Ultimatum — "Portugal's 1898" — was alsodifferent. In Spain, as similarly in Italy and even tosome extent France, such an experience produced akind of national soul-searching, but also stimulated a"regenerationism," which mostly functioned within theexisting political system. The result in Portugal was to

stimulate the republican movement, which — generallyunlike republicanism in Spain — developed as astrongly nationalist and even imperialist enterprise.

Since the pace of cultural, social, and economicmodernization was even slower in Portugal, at thebeginning of the twentieth century the working-classmovements were very weak, distinctly more so thaneven in the case of Spain. The pressure from theworker Left was so slight that in this regard Portugalwas more like a Latin American than a Europeancountry, though it was also distinguished from nearlyall Latin American countries by the existence of arelatively stronger middle class and stronger politicalnationalism. In some ways the best comparison inEurope at that time was Greece, which had somewhatsimilar characteristics.

The result was another Portuguese "first" — theeasy overthrow of the monarchy in 1910 and theintroduction of the first new republic in twentieth-century Europe. There were notable differencesbetween Portugal in 1910 and Spain in 1931:Portugal was a much smaller, weaker, and moreunderdeveloped country, but in possession of a largeAfrican empire. Portuguese politics made only apretense of being democratic and were stilldominated by a restrictive nineteenth-century middle-class liberalism, though now radically anticlerical. Theidea that the Portuguese republic introducedtwentieth-century democracy — as did its laterSpanish counterpart — is totally false. ThePortuguese republicans in power restricted theelectoral franchise to literate males, enabling only alarge minority of males to vote, in some respectsnarrowing the suffrage over what existed in the last

narrowing the suffrage over what existed in the lastdecades of the monarchy.

The goal of the dominant faction of Portugueserepublicans was a kind of civic "progressivism" thatwould eliminate conservative influence, especially thatof the Church, so that the denial of the vote to theCatholic peasantry was one of its most fundamentalfeatures. The falsely titled Democratic Party, the mainrepublican group, developed the most formidableelectoral machine seen in the Iberian Peninsula duringthe early twentieth century, and could never bedefeated in normal elections under the restrictedsuffrage, which was never significantly reformed.

The Democrat electoral machine may have beenstable, but the "First Republic" of 1910-26 enjoyed thedismal distinction of being the most unstable regimein Europe. Since this was also a time of considerableinstability in some other countries, such anachievement may be considered another Portuguese"negative superlative." It had little to do with pressurefrom the worker movements, a common source ofinstability elsewhere. Rather, the notorious politicalinstability of the Republic stemmed from middle-classand elite dissidence, faced with a typical nineteenth-century problem — the lack of access to governmentdue to the domination of the Democrats. The history ofthe republic was thus filled not merely with severedissidence but also with armed revolts and attemptedrevolts, so that even historians have difficulty keepingit all straight. Although there was much conflict anddisorder, the total number of victims of violence waslimited, which some would think of as typicallyPortuguese. The limited political mobilization in anondemocratic system and the small size of both the

country and the participating political elitesguaranteed that none of these conflicts metastasizedinto a genuine civil war, something that has happenedonly once in modern Portuguese history.

Dissatisfaction with the narrow system of republicandomination inevitably led to a search for alternatives,and thus to another Portuguese "first" — a new kind ofmoderate authoritarian system in the form of the"República Nova" of Sidónio Pais in 1917-18, whichalso introduced the phenomenon of a new kind ofmass charisma projected by its leader. Though it wassoon overthrown, the República Nova was a harbingerof things to come after the military finally put an end tothe parliamentary republic in 1926. The military coupin Portugal resembled that of Primo de Rivera in1923, not the counterrevolutionary insurrection of1936 in Spain, and, like the former, was initiallysupported by some sectors of liberal opinion. Theleaders of the new military government, like theircontemporary Primo de Rivera, were soonbewildered by the problem of how to operate the statecoherently, or how to begin to build an alternativesystem. In a more underdeveloped, politically onlypartially mobilized, society, however, they never had toface as much pressure as did Primo de Rivera duringhis final months in office and by 1930 had found theman capable of building that alternative, the Coimbraeconomics professor Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar.

In later years Franco and Salazar would often belumped together as twin Iberian dictators, yet thedifference between them and between their tworegimes was very great. Salazar was a professor andan intellectual, not a military man, and throughout thelong history of his regime had to face intermittent

long history of his regime had to face intermittentdissidence from the military, something that scarcelybothered Franco. Salazar's "Estado Novo" (NewState) evolved from the original military dictatorship,which itself had been the result of a virtually bloodlesscoup, so that the politically undermobilized Portugal ofthe era between the wars experienced no traumaeven remotely similar to that of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1933 Salazar introduced another Portuguese"first" — the first new corporative constitution incontemporary Europe. At that time there was muchtalk of corporatism because one statist authoritarianform of it was propagandized by Italian Fascism whilenonstatist economic corporatism had become a semi-official doctrine of the Catholic Church. The EstadoNovo in fact featured a dual system: a corporativeeconomic chamber and economic system flanked bya restrictively elected parliament. It preserved aspectsof the republican system and maintained the nominalseparation of church and state, though in fact theEstado Novo strongly supported Catholicism inalmost every way. It was less repressive than theFranco regime, partly because in Portugal there wasless opposition to repress; Salazar, in fact, never fullyovercame internal dissidence and intermittently had toface political challenges and abortive military revolts.Whereas the initial Franco regime was at least semi-fascist, with a fascist state party, the Estado Novo didnot have a full-fledged state party, its União Nacionalmore nearly resembling the Union Patriótica of Primode Rivera. Salazar drew a sharp distinction betweenthe highly conservative and moderate authoritarianismof his regime and the radical style, doctrines, andpractice of Fascism and National Socialism. Unlikethat of Franco, his government's policy in World War II

was genuinely neutral, tilting toward Great Britain.Indeed, the papacy had some tendency to think of theEstado Novo as the most appropriate "third way"between fascism and Communism, while for years itheld the more radical and bloody Franco regime atarm's length.

Though there was one limited Spanish militaryintervention in Portugal in 1847 to uphold the existingorder, relations between the two countries during thenineteenth century were generally peaceful andcooperative. There was greater tension during the firstdecades of the twentieth century, when the radicalismof the Portuguese Republic aroused the apprehensionof monarchists in Madrid and even prompted AlfonsoXIII, during the summer of 1913, to float inquiries withthe major European states testing the possiblereaction to a Spanish military intervention that wouldrestore the monarchy.9 Later, when both countrieswere governed by rightist military regimes in the late1920s, relations became more harmonious.

After 1931 it was Spain that introduced a left-wingrepublic, the Azaña government demonstrating sharphostility to Salazar and abetting armed efforts of thePortuguese opposition to overthrow him. Once morethe accession to power of more conservative forces inMadrid restored better relations at the close of 1933,only to see those relations deteriorate again with thetriumph of the Popular Front.

By the beginning of the Civil War, Salazarconcluded that his regime could scarcely survive thetriumph of a revolutionary Republic in Spain andaligned it completely with Franco, even thoughPortugal lacked the strength to intervene militarily.

This record of loyal collaboration was not altogetherreciprocated afterward, for the victory of theNacionales, followed by those of Hitler in 1939-40,touched off a powerful current of imperial ambition inMadrid, which, particularly among Falangists, soughtto extend Spanish hegemony over the entirepeninsula. After Franco's meeting with Hitler atHendaye, the Spanish dictator ordered his generalstaff to draw up a plan for a rapid invasion of Portugal,but this ambition, whatever its dimensions, was swiftlyovertaken by events. Would Franco really haveinvaded Portugal? The answer probably is that hewould have done so only under conditions of abroader Axis victory, which would have, at leastindirectly helped to underwrite the enterprise, andsuch a situation never developed.10

Once more a swing in a more moderate direction inMadrid restored fully harmonious relations. OnceFranco had dismissed his Falangist brother-in-law,Ramón Serrano Súñer, the latter's successor asforeign minister, Gen. Francisco Gómez Jordana,made neutrality and cooperation with Portugalcornerstones of his policy, leading to formation in1942 of the "Bloque Ibérico" to maintain peninsularindependence. For the remainder of their long lives,the two dictatorships enjoyed good relations, seekingto reinforce each other. The Salazar regimeendeavored, though without success, to bring Spaininto NATO.11 Conversely, an aged Franco prudentlyresisted pressures for a Spanish military interventionat the time of the Portuguese revolution of 1974.

The Estado Novo had in the interim even managedto survive the demise of Salazar in 1968, becomingone of the few non-Communist authoritarian regimes

one of the few non-Communist authoritarian regimesto outlive its founder. It would also have survived thedemise of Franco as well, at least for a few years, hadnot the colonial war against African liberationmovements exacted a price that by the early 1970scould not be sustained — not because the physicalmeans were lacking, but because the cadres of themilitary in metropolitan Portugal themselves began tolose heart and turn against the war. Consequently theEstado Novo, Europe's longest-lasting non-Communist authoritarian regime (an entire decadeolder than that of Franco) came to an end as all itsEuropean predecessors had — as a result of militaryaction, in this case the military revolution of April 1974— the "revolution of the carnations." In typicalPortuguese fashion, this was a bloodless coup, muchlike the one that had introduced dictatorship in 1926.

The Portuguese revolution remained faithful toPortuguese history in that the overthrow of a restrictiveregime once more failed to introduce genuinedemocracy, just as in 1910. The revolutionary regimeintroduced a new kind of left-wing pretorianism, inwhich the military held the deciding voice. It alsorepresented a new kind of political reaction, whichsome might call "postmodern," as rebellious militaryfor the first time fully identified psychologically withleftist aggressors and antagonists. This resulted inanother peculiar kind of Portuguese "first": the firsttime that the victors in a European military coupattempted to establish a leftist-collectivist regime, aform of Portuguese "socialism," as enshrined in a newconstitution. This outcome seemed much more likethe politics of a Latin American or Afro-Asian countrythan a European one.

Yet Portuguese society was indeed European, notLatin American or African, and the military regimeitself was even less representative than the EstadoNovo had been. Though much of society in poor andagrarian southern Portugal rallied to a PortugueseCommunist Party (miraculously resurrected by themilitary and handed a significant share of power),lower-middle class and Catholic northern Portugalmanifested complete opposition. The military were infact divided, some of them supportive of moregenuine democracy, so that elections were finallypermitted after a year, and that outcome clearly didnot favor the extreme Left. Moderate elements in themilitary came to the fore, and during 1975-76 the newregime moved toward democracy. It remained semi-pretorian, however, and the last vestiges of specialstate and political power for the military were notremoved for a decade. The transition to democracywas thus entirely different in Spain and in Portugal,initially less democratic and much more conflictive inthe case of the latter. This was the only instance in allcontemporary history in which political affairs weremore conflictive in Portugal than in Spain. And eventhen, there was less violence in Portugal, because ofthe virtual absence of terrorism.

Conversely, the political party system normalizedmore rapidly during the 1980s in Portugal, where theabsence of a heritage of civil war or a harshlyrepressive dictatorship was a factor in makingpossible the early emergence of a new center-rightparty, which moved to a position of leadership in amore moderate Portugal more than a decade beforeits counterpart would do so in Spain. DemocraticPortugal has experienced nothing remotely

comparable to the political tensions or the center-periphery conflict of democratic Spain, and in areferendum of 1998 even rejected proposals forfederalization, the government then opting simply forsome degree of decentralization within a unifiedstructure. Thus Portugal has as usual remained lessconflictive than Spain, though also less dynamiceconomically.

7Decline and Recovery

Spain is the only western European country forwhom "decline" became an obsessive theme, first forforeign writers and then for Spanish historians andcommentators. It is sometimes observed that theseventeenth century was a time of crisis and declinefor the greater part of Europe-most of the south andeast, and also much of the center. This is true enough,but the case of Spain has seemed more extensiveand spectacular than those elsewhere, even thoughinternal decline and destruction was probably inproportionate terms equally severe in the case ofGermany, due to the Thirty Years' War. To take adifferent example, the tsardom of Muscovy suffered aprofound political and military crisis early in thecentury, but after some years recovered to becomestronger than ever.

More recently, Henry Kamen has challenged theidea that Spain declined, maintaining that Spain itself(as distinct from the Habsburg empire) had neverrisen very far in the first place. It is certainly correctthat the literature on the "rise of Spain" is smaller thanthat treating the "decline of Spain." Thus beforeconsidering decline, it seems legitimate first to askthe question — to what extent was there a "rise ofSpain"? Skeptics point out that creation of whatforeigners called the "Spanish Habsburg empire" wassimply a product of contingency, a marriage alliancethat yielded extensive dynastic crownlands.

This was obviously the case, yet a closer readingindicates that there was indeed a "rise" of peninsularSpain itself (see chap. 5). From the fifteenth to the latesixteenth century, population increased to about 8.5million and the economy expanded. This madepossible increased military and overseas activity, thetaxes of Castile providing for much of the cost of anenormous military program, as a tiny proportion of thatkingdom's population conquered the largest empire inworld history. This was accompanied by the mostextensive cultural flowering in any European country ofthat era. Thus there is no question that a major "rise ofSpain" indeed took place, and the issue of decline isa fully relevant one, just as most historians havecontended.

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, who became one ofthe first modern historical specialists on theseventeenth century, at first concluded that the declineconstituted a genuine decadence, though with furtherresearch, he retreated from that position. Laternationalist writers and historians insisted that it merelyconstituted a case of natural exhaustion following aprotracted titanic enterprise. The two interpretationsare not mutually exclusive. Virtually all historians agreethat the principal sources of decline were theenormous strains of the endless dynastic wars, after1640 further extended by the two major rebellions inthe peninsula, whose great tax burden exhausted analready deteriorating economy, especially in Castile.The Spanish case was simply the most dramatic andextensive of what would later be called examples of"imperial over-reach" in European history.

Many societies have been ground down by long andcostly wars, but by the middle of the seventeenth

costly wars, but by the middle of the seventeenthcentury Spain seemed to reveal a deeper malaisethan temporary fatigue. While it is true that the countrywould have had to have run faster than it had in thesixteenth century merely in order not to lose groundduring the seventeenth century — a period of greatercompetition and development among the"modernizing" northwest European countries — it wasunable to maintain even the pace of 1600. By thesecond half of the century the society and culture, notjust the economy or the military, showed signs ofdecadence in the stricter sense of the term. Thesociety of 1670-80 was weaker in every respect thanthat of a century earlier.

Population loss was not relative but, for Castile,absolute, dropping by approximately a million peoplebefore beginning to recover in the last part of theseventeenth century. This was the worst period ofepidemic disease in the country's history, except forthe Black Death of the fourteenth century, to whichwere added the effects of war, heavy taxation,economic decline, and extensive malnutrition. Theaccompanying economic decline began in a fewregions as early as the 1580s, but had becomegeneralized by the mid-seventeenth century.Reduction in the Atlantic trade was equally steep, andthe shipment of silver bullion diminished in much thesame proportion. Similarly troublesome was the sharprise in foreign competition, with which an enfeebledSpanish economy could not compete either at homeor in America. Fundamental throughout was theweakness of state policy, unable to cut its losses inforeign wars and unable to protect or stimulatedomestic production, its program being extractive andinflationary, which only made things worse. The

government (and the aristocracy) soaked up availablecapital, which was not spent on new investment butalmost exclusively on consumption, often for goodsproduced abroad. Moreover, the climate alsodeteriorated, with prolonged colder weather andgreater, often destructive, precipitation.

Nearly all societies, of course, undergo longer orshorter periods of economic decline; what wasremarkable about the Spanish economic decline wasthat it continued, with intermittent breaks, for decades,and was accompanied by social and cultural changes,which only accentuated it. Most notable here was theincreasing withdrawal from new activity and creativeenterprise, and the fixation on social status as analternative to work and having to pay taxes. UnderFelipe IV there was a considerable increase in thenumber of new aristocratic titles, and then a muchgreater expansion under Carlos II, during whose reignnearly three hundred new titles of nobility werecreated. Even worse was the fact that the mania for"endonamiento," or being made an aristocrat,consumed much of the middle classes. This was aEuropewide phenomenon during the seventeenthcentury, but its effects were more extensive anddestructive than elsewhere, a manifestation of theSpanish tendency in modern times to carry things toan extreme.

A counterpart was the declining interest in work orachievement. In an interesting study of the number of"achievement images" per thousand words ofrepresentative Spanish literature over a five-hundred-year period, Juan B. Cortés, S.J., found that insamples from the years 1200-1492 the mean was10.74, declining for the years 1492-1610 to 6.07, and

10.74, declining for the years 1492-1610 to 6.07, andfor 1610-1730 to only 2.67. It was not atypical thatFelipe III would give his personal tailor two differentpatents of hidalguía (aristocratic status) but fail to payhim for four years of extended service. This eventuallyhad deleterious effects on what had historically beenperhaps the most important of Spanish professions —the military — as the elite increasingly shunnedmilitary service, while naval crewmen were even morelooked down upon.1

Not merely did urban production decline, but thebasis of the economy, agriculture, shrank both interms of overall output and perhaps for a time in termsof per capita production as well, a result not merely ofexternal pressures but also of internal structuralchanges, which handicapped and discouragedpeasant production. After about 1580 there would beno real growth in agricultural production until thesecond quarter of the eighteenth century.2

The problem was not that the Spanish had neverhad any drive for achievement or completely lackedentrepreneurial skills. All these had existed to someextent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but suchtalents declined significantly. There developed aperverse situation in which the price of urban laborwas high, due to inflation and taxation, yet there wasalso considerable unemployment. Even a seemingpositive, such as the strong Spanish emphasis oncharity, may have had the effect of discouraging work.Foreign merchants, artisans, and entrepreneurs hadplayed a role in Spanish society since the eleventhcentury, if not before, but their presence was muchgreater by the second half of the seventeenth century,when they partly compensated for the atrophy of

Spanish enterprise, the total number of foreignersreaching perhaps 150,000, some of them in middle-class roles, amounting to more than 2 percent of theentire population.

What José Antonio Maravall and others call"baroque society" was a society turning in on itself.Through the reign of Felipe IV surprising amounts ofmoney were spent on ostentation and conspicuousconsumption, but from the 1660s even esthetic culturebegan to atrophy. By that point secular and religiousculture had become largely defensive, and had lostnearly all its creativity. The case of higher educationwas symptomatic. In 1590 there were some twenty-seven thousand students in Spanish universities andother institutes of higher education, for a brief timeproportionately the largest student body in advancedstudies in Europe. However, the dynamics of highereducation belied the notion that this was aprecondition for societal progress, since the Spanishsystem was increasingly oriented toward theattainment and maintenance of status in thebureaucracy and clergy. Then, with acceleratingeconomic decline, the number of students in highereducation also dropped greatly, while curriculastagnated.

Militant Tridentine Catholicism — in which to aconsiderable extent Spain had shown the way — wasfully dominant, but religion also had lost much of itscreative spark by the second half of the seventeenthcentury. The ranks of the clergy swelled, less due tospiritual zeal than to a kind of clericalbureaucratization. Older estimates that the clergyamounted to 3-4 percent of the total population werenonetheless exaggerated; the increase may have

nonetheless exaggerated; the increase may havebeen more like a growth from 1.3 to 2.5 percent of thetotal society, but the most significant factor was thatthe expansion of the clergy accompanied a certaindecline in spiritual creativity. Though the Church inSpain had helped to lead the way in the new reformsof the sixteenth century, by the seventeenth centurytravelers wrote that they found Spanish Catholicism"different" and in some ways more archaic. What theyparticularly noted was the apparent power of themonastic orders, a perceived tendency to mix theprofane and the religious, as well as the emphasis ona kind of religious theatricality and a stress on theextremes.

The cultural accomplishment of the Siglo de Orofrom the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centurywas indeed monumental, concentrated in literature,painting, and religious thought. Of science there wasmuch less, though some new activity was carried on inscience and even in mathematics. The flowering of thearts was due above all to the patronage of the Churchand of a wealthy aristocracy. This became a kind oftransition culture, opening new dimensions fortradition, but without being able to achieve a totalbreakthrough into more modern forms. On one levelDon Quijote can be read as an elegy to an age thatwas passing much more than as a window to a newera. Spanish baroque culture raised the culture oftraditional European civilization to the highest levelthat that culture had ever experienced, but for the mostpart it was not part of the new, more modern culturethat began to develop in seventeenth-century Europe,and by the 1670s its creative spark had largelyexpired.

The distinction can perhaps be seen most clearly inthe difference between the dramatic literature of theSpanish theater and that of Elizabethan-JacobeanEngland. For several generations Spanish drama,headed by Lope de Vega and Calderón, was themost diverse and creative in continental Europe, yet itlacked the full range and depth of its Englishcounterparts.3 Elizabethan theater was much moredaring and innovative in treating morality, personality,and the range of human behavior, and a more directprecursor of modernity, with all its virtues and vices.

Here the vexed issue of Reform and Counter-Reform in religion remains important. The Protestantrevolt destroyed much of traditional religious culture innorthern Europe, and intensified internal and externalconflict. It also stimulated new energies of individualenterprise, political reform, and critical and scientificthinking that opened the way, for better or worse, tomodern culture, politics, and capitalist prosperity. Thepoint is not that much of this could not develop underCatholicism, for indeed the roots of all of it developedin traditional Catholic culture, and, later, CatholicBelgium would modernize and industrialize almost asrapidly as England. In the face of the Reformation,however, Catholic society and culture becameincreasingly reactive and defensive, and were slowerto adapt and adjust, so that from the seventeenthcentury it was the Protestant countries who would leadthe way.4

It must be recognized that the standard view of theSpanish decline — shared in varying degrees by theclassic Black Legend and by many modern Spanishhistorians and Hispanists — is a kind of caricaturethat posits an ideal type and is suggestive only of

that posits an ideal type and is suggestive only offundamental tendencies. Spanish moraliststhemselves began to present what seemed to themnegative features of the "Spanish type" even beforethe close of the sixteenth century. The best recentsummary of this approach has been presented inBartolomé Bennassar, L'homme espagnol: Attitudeset mentalités du XVIe au XIXme siècle (1975), abook about "national character." 5 It revolved aroundsuch issues as the mania for conspicuousconsumption (particularly on clothing and spectacle,not on food, drink, and housing), the attitudes towardwork, social status, and lineage, the exaggeratedstress on honor to the exclusion of morality, and lessand less concern for education and intellectual activity.Such issues would be commented on ad infinitumduring the three centuries that followed. These wereserious problems and not merely inventions of theenemies of Spain, but they do not constitute a fullyaccurate picture of Spanish society in the seventeenthcentury.

Even at the trough of the decline, as Ruth MacKayhas recently reminded us, most Spaniards continuedto work normally at their professions.6 She and othershave pointed out that it is a mistake to read the novelLazarillo de Tormes as if it were an empiricalsociological study. Amid the scramble for status andconspicuous consumption, ordinary artisans managedto preserve a different sense of honor of their own,even as it attached to humble work, and sometimes inwritten statements stressed the importance of theircontribution to "la república," not at all in the sense ofa new political system but in the original meaning ofres publica - the common weal. Moreover, thatSpanish society did not merely constitute some sort of

"pathological" Counter-Reformation societycompared with northwest Europe is further indicatedby the recent research on crime by Tomás Mantecón,which shows that, despite the importance of crimeand banditry in the images of Spain in decline, the twolargest cities, Madrid and Seville, seem to haveproduced no more or even slightly less violence thantheir northwest European counterparts, while indicesof violence further declined in the late seventeenth andeighteenth centuries in a manner congruent with thedata from northwestern Europe.7

Some aspects of society and culture may bedescribed in conventional terms as "decadent" by thelater seventeenth century, but if one employs suchterminology it is important to stress that Spanishsociety never experienced the full form of decadencein which it lost faith in or subverted its own values. Thebasic culture, religion, and system of values persistedthroughout the entire seventeenth-century decline andremained fully intact at the time of the transition to thenew dynasty. The main "arbitrista" (reformist) literaturecovered the half-century 1590-1640, when it wasassumed that the ills analyzed could be corrected.From about 1640 the critical literature began to dieaway, perhaps because by that time the decline waspronounced and obvious, and the main question nowseemed to be self-affirmation and self-confidence.During the trough of the decline, Spanish writing aboutSpain remained remarkably positive. Comparisonswith the decline of Rome were almost universallyrejected, though on the grounds that the Spanishmonarchy was more legitimate and less tyrannicalthan Rome, and could not be made subject tocomparison, for there had been none other so

thoroughly dedicated to and identified withCatholicism, so that it would never be merelyabandoned by God.8 Providentialism is of course notthe best basis for political and economic analysis.

Though economic conditions deteriorated greatly,at no time was there any question of a social orpsychological implosion. Not even the humblest sectorof society, whether those labeled as "pobres desolemnidad" or mere beggars, was cowed andcringing, or lost a sense of self-worth. Throughout thecentury foreign visitors continued to complain thatordinary Spaniards violated the class-basedsumptuary laws more than in any other country, andcontinued to dress as they pleased, while the samevisitors also denounced what they called the insolenceand rudeness of the lower classes. Even beggars,when receiving alms, might insist that the almsgiverremove his hat, and also address them as "señor." Tovisitors, of course, this represented a Spanishgrotesquerie, further examples of the dysfunctional. Insome sense that might be the case, but it was notindicative of any decline in social norms.

Finally, Spain must be compared with Europe as awhole, not just with England and Holland. The historianfinds that during the seventeenth century, easternEurope not merely suffered a decline somewhatequivalent to that of Spain but underwent much worsesocial regression with the expansion of serfdom.There was not remotely any equivalent to that inSpain. Military hegemony disappeared forever, butSpanish society itself did not regress so much as didthat of much of eastern Europe. If it began to loseground decisively to the dynamic, modernizingnorthwest, it should be seen as part of a category of

northwest, it should be seen as part of a category ofrelatively stagnant southern Europe during that era, acategory more of declining intermediacy than of theworst regression.

The recovery in fact began in the 1680s, in themidst of the reign of Carlos II "el Hechizado" (CharlesII the Bewitched) and in Catalonia even earlier, duringthe 1660s. Population decline began to level off,though full demographic recovery did not occur untilthe 1720s and 1730s. The reformers who referred tothemselves as "renovatores" were active from thebeginning of the reign of Carlos II.9 The Real y GeneralJunta de Comercio was created in 1679 to stimulatenew enterprise and enjoyed at least a limited success.A small number of noblemen had never ceased toengage in a variety of practical enterprises, and adecree of 1682 specifically authorized theirinvolvement with textile factories so long as they didnot work with their hands.

Eighteenth-Century ReformismThe Bourbon dynasty of the eighteenth century then

undertook the project of reform that its predecessorhad been unable to carry out. There is no questionconcerning the reformist bent of the "Siglo de lasLuces" (Century of the Enlightened), but it probablyamounted to a difference in degree rather than adifference in principle. Reevaluation of the eighteenthcentury began with Richard Herr's The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (1958), but what actuallytook place was more a positive evolution than arevolution.

With the rise of peripheral nationalism in

democratic Spain, much attention has been given tothe unification and centralization of law andinstitutions, as the separate constitutional structures ofthe Corona de Aragón (with the exception of certainlaw codes) were eliminated by the new dynasty.10

This, however, was obviously not the beginning of abroader government of Spain, although it marked amajor step forward toward unification. There has beena tendency, particularly on the part of Catalanhistorians, to exaggerate the degree of change. At thebeginning of his reign, Felipe V had ratified all theparticularist institutions and fueros of the northeasternregions. The elimination of Aragonese institutions wasa result of the subsequent struggle by dominantsectors of the latter against the new dynasty. Only inValencia were all the regional structures abrogatedcompletely, while Mallorca retained most of itsinstitutions. Catalonia and Aragon lost their abusivecriminal law but kept a portion of their legal systems.Save for the loss of criminal jurisdiction, seigneurialdomain remained unaltered. Most notably, the newdynasty failed to unify the Spanish systems of taxationand military recruitment, which remained quitecompartmentalized. Though tax quotas were at firstraised for the former Aragonese principalities, theysubsequently remained flat, and by the end of thecentury these regions were once more payingextremely low taxes, as did the Basques andNavarrese throughout history. Similarly, equal terms ofmilitary recruitment were never instituted, so that theSpanish army of the period was raised almostexclusively in Castile.

Bourbon reformism was always a halfway house.The various Spanish Academies were created and by

1785 there would be a common Spanish flag for thefirst time, while the king of Prussia gave as a gift themusic for what became the "Marcha Real Granadera,"later looked on as Spain's first national anthem. Thesocial and economic effects of the legal, commercial,and fiscal reforms of the new dynasty were beneficial,for they ended certain residues of feudalism and moreoften than not improved the situation of the peasantry.Trade was much freer across the country, andSpanish America was later opened directly to theentire Spanish economy for the first time. Catalonia,which lost most of its separate institutions, was alsothe region to benefit most in economic terms.

The eighteenth century was more a time ofcontinuity than of change, though there was more thana little change. Some transformation took place, but itwas not drastic. The introduction of a new dynasty, theloss of the European dynastic empire, and the changein Spain's international relations opened the country agood deal more than before, and the new leadershipintroduced pronounced government reforms as wellas new ideas. Spanish history had always lived underthe burden of major projects: Reconquest andexpansion, defense and propagation of the faith, theintegrity of the dynastic empire and of Europe. The bigdifference in the eighteenth century, as J. Marías says,was that Spain then became "a project of herself," thebeginning of what much later would be termed"España como problema." 11 For the first time, themaladies of Spain — something that seventeenth-century government had never been willing fully torecognize — became a central issue, sometimes thekey issue, though this approach also implied thatthere was something wrong about the way Spanish

culture, society, and institutions had developed.

Well before the close of the seventeenth century, theprimary foreign stereotype of the Black Legend — theSpaniard as violent and sadistic fiend, a creature ofmoral monstrosity — had given way to Stereotype 2,the Spaniard as proud, pompous, vainglorious, andinvincibly indolent, incapable of working or studying.The second stereotype continued its triumphantadvance through the eighteenth century, reaching itsclimax in the famous denunciation of Spain's total lackof modern accomplishment by Nicolas Masson deMorvillers in the Encyclopédie méthodique of 1782.

That raised the question of Spain's participation inthe Enlightenment, answered in the affirmative by Herrand by Jean Sarrailh.12 The main foreign influenceswere from France and Italy (Carlos III having been kingof Naples for twenty-five years before coming to theSpanish throne). Spanish writers added little to thephilosophy of the Enlightenment, the main Spanishthinkers dedicating themselves in pragmatic termsmore to application than to doctrine. One advantageof this approach was that the Enlightenment in Spainwas much less prone to radicalism and exaggerationthan, for example, in France. Though, as elsewhere, itmay have sometimes gone to excess in stereotypingand rejecting some aspects of traditional society, ingeneral in Spain it made more sense and was morepractical. Spain's leading philosopher of reform, thelong-lived Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, stood as oneof the most reasonable and constructive figures ofCatholic Enlightenment in Europe.13 Major aspects ofthe Enlightenment in Spain seemed almost closer tothe "empirical" Enlightenment in England, Scotland,

and the United States than to the abstract/ radical"ideological" Enlightenment in France, though fromthe 1790s on small sectors of the intelligentsia beganto veer sharply toward the latter, leading to manifoldpathologies in nineteenth and twentieth-centurySpain.14

The "short eighteenth century" was, at least inrelative terms, Spain's most peaceful century, if it isdated from the end of the Succession War in 1714 tothe beginning of the wars of the French Revolution in1793, which effectively put an end to its relativeprogress and prosperity. Peace did not arriveimmediately, for the first years after 1714 weredevoted to further military enterprises to regaindynastic possessions in Italy, but after that militaryaction became infrequent, at least until the reign ofCarlos III. The navy was rebuilt, becoming by the latterpart of the century the third largest in the world. Thearmy was reorganized on the French model, but bycomparison never developed much strength, for muchof the conflict during this era was maritime. During thegreater part of the century, Spain's mostconsequential military action was the assistanceprovided to the North American colonists in the firstmodern "national liberation war." This support wasmore extensive both militarily and financially than hasbeen appreciated, and came at a militarily andpsychologically decisive moment when Great Britaincould not afford to face further enemies, particularlyone with a large fleet.15 The ministers of Carlos IIIwere sufficiently astute to realize that in helping thedynamic North American colonies gainindependence, they ran a major risk of creating aserious competitor for the Spanish world in the

Western Hemisphere, but they could not resist thetemptation to weaken a Britain that only a few yearsearlier had become hegemonic.16

With the expansion into California and a few otherborder areas, the American empire reached itsgreatest extension, and by that time was being treatedas a "Spanish empire" for the first time, all parts of thecountry enjoying equal commercial rights and aconcerted effort being made, also for the first time, toexploit the broader range of the American economyfor Spanish interests. Taxes were rationalized andmade more efficient at home, but also extended morebroadly into America, and certain aspects ofadministration more centralized, provoking in turn anatural reaction that stimulated growth of a kind ofpolitical consciousness in creole society.

Though the Spanish empire was not at all the kindof economic powerhouse that the British empire wasbecoming, the imperial reforms of the ministers ofCarlos III seemed, in some respects, more effectivethan those of his contemporary George III. TheSpanish imperial domains had never beenconsidered "colonies" in the British sense, but neitherhad the American "kingdoms" ever been permittedthe full constitutional systems of the peninsularprincipalities, and were thus easier to deal with thanthe thirteen British colonies, each of which possessedautonomous parliaments. Moreover, an absolutemonarchy in Madrid theoretically ruling over multiple"kingdoms" possessed greater flexibility for maneuverthan did a parliamentary government in London, whichinsisted on its own complete and undividedsovereignty but, as a result, enjoyed increasingly lessroom for compromise.

room for compromise.

Since 1603 Great Britain had had a "compositemonarchy" that bore comparison with the "monarquíacompuesta" of Habsburg Spain (discounting thecontinental Habsburg dynastic domains). After the Actof Union with Scotland in 1707, the "progressive"British system moved to extend the sovereignty of asingle parliament over all these territories. By contrast,in Madrid parliament had been largely reduced to a"Diputación" of the traditional Cortes, and the crownitself was politically and administratively absolute.This, however, gave it power to attempt sweepingreform and redefinition, something that by 1775 wasno longer possible in British North America.

For the first time in Spanish history, by the latereighteenth century "patria" and "nación" began to beused in ways approaching their modern sense, andthe Caroline imperial reforms sought to create whatone minister termed "un solo cuerpo de nación," asingle Spanish-speaking nation spanning the Atlantic.The largest empire in the world was to be replaced bythe largest nation in the world, as for the first time amore comprehensive Spanish administrative systemwas directly introduced into the Americas. A basicproblem that the crown could not resolve, however,was that it proposed a two-tier system, largelyadministered by Spaniards. Creoles received newrights and opportunities, but not fully equivalent ones.Pan-Hispanic representation was to be achievedmerely through the appointment by the senior Spanishadministrators of a handful of Americanrepresentatives to the Diputación de las Cortes inMadrid — the standing committee, which was nearlyall that was left of the traditional Cortes under

eighteenth-century absolutism. This idea was carriedover by Spain's first constitutional liberals in 1810-12and 1820-23, maintaining the notion of an immenseSpanish-speaking nation, but at no time would theliberals be willing to grant equal, as distinct from highlylimited, representation, ultimately dooming the project.The Spanish American revolts of 1780-82 in Peru andNueva Granada (Colombia) were suppressed, but theproblem of American participation and representationwould slowly, but steadily, grow more acute.

For Spanish society it was the mellow autumn of thetraditional culture, a time of reform and relativeenlightenment without drastic transformation.Traditional society remained largely intact, having lostsome of the more pathological characteristics of theseventeenth century. This golden autumn was not avery creative time in high culture and the arts, at leastuntil Goya appeared at the very end, but it was aperiod of a curious fusing of high culture with some ofthat of the lower classes. Popular culture reactedagainst foreign models, producing the firstexpressions of modern "casticismo" (Spanishness) inthe new "majeza" (lower-class elegance) of the urbanlower classes. In time "art" became more "popular,"an indication of a partial change and transformation,as the aristocracy sometimes aped popular styles, afashion unthinkable in the preceding century. Thetheater in Madrid and other cities was the principalmedium that brought these strands together, at leastby the late eighteenth century, and to some extentreflected the rejection of sophisticated"afrancesamiento" (Frenchification) by lower-classmajeza.17 It was the last century of traditional Spanishculture, a time in which Spanish society was generally

calm and to a considerable degree at peace withitself.

This was obviously not a drastically new,transformed, and "modern" society. There were manyreform projects, and considerable growth andexpansion, particularly during the reign of Carlos III,but it still remained a traditional society.18 Many thingsimproved, commerce expanded greatly, industryincreased in Catalonia and several smaller zones,and cities on the periphery became the major newcenters of growth, but this was expansion with onlylimited transformation. As John Lynch said of Spanishagriculture during the eighteenth century, "agriculturegrew but did not develop." 19 Food productionincreased as agriculture expanded into marginal land,becoming more extensive rather than more intensive.Population growth required regular food imports, livingstandards for the ordinary population in Madrid beganto decline once more, and infant mortality apparentlyincreased slightly during the second half of thecentury, indicating that no decisive new breakthroughhad been made. Similarly, "enlightened despotism"did not by any means signify the beginning of a newkind of Anglo-American-style political system. Nearlyall the truly decisive reforms were resolutelyrejected.20 By the 1780s, however, small educatedminorities were calling for much more advanced anddecisive changes.21

Popular cultural change has been much lessstudied than the writings of the elite. By the latter partof the eighteenth century, the rejection of traditionalCastilian elite culture was accompanied by thegrowing acceptance of critical Enlightenment normson the one hand, accompanied on a different level by

on the one hand, accompanied on a different level bythe growing plebeanization of culture and attitudes,which among the common people was becomingxenophobic, emphatic, and shrill. Jesús Torrecilla haspointed out that traditional culture was largelyCastilian and featured seriousness, sobriety,austerity, dark colors, a rather cold realism, andobjectivity, emphasizing certain standards of work welldone, characterized by slowness, reflection, a certainastuteness, and calculation. Hallmarks were gravity,decorum and dignity. This was increasingly replacedby a modern "Andalusian" popular culture thatemphasized rhetoric, bright colors, frivolity, "labullanga jaranera" (merry uproar), cheerfulirresponsibility, and new marginal forms of behaviorand indulgence, a general style trend, some aspectsof which would continue for about one hundred fiftyyears and beyond, into the middle of the twentiethcentury. This would become the culture in evidence of"romantic Spain," forming the third major stereotypeof Spanish culture and character. The keynote was nolonger aristocracy but lower-class majeza. In its ownway this would quickly assume more modern form, asthe traditional "corrida de toros" (bullfighting)crystallized in its classic style, dressing its bullfightersin what would be an unvarying eighteenth-centurycostume (even in the twenty-first century), the firstmodern "plazas de toros" being constructed inAndalucía during the 1770s and quickly movingnorthward. Interestingly, they can be considered thefirst modern mass public sports facilities in anycountry, inaugurating for an archaic spectacle a trendthat would slowly but inexorably accelerate around theworld for more modern sports during the next twocenturies. Other aspects of "popular style" alsocrystallized, the various regional traditional costumes

and popular dances assuming their full form during thesecond half of the eighteenth century. Similarly, at thevery end of the century the new Andalusian musicalstyle known as flamenco would begin to emerge,finally assuming its modern form in the third quarter ofthe nineteenth century. In the shadow of the rationalistEnlightenment, the ingredients of romantic Spain werealready being assembled. Later, much of this wouldbe the delight of tourist and Spaniard alike, though farfrom the tone and quality of the elitist culture of theGolden Age.

Impact of the French RevolutionIn Spain as in France, the Old Regime was

overthrown by the great revolution of the 1790s, inFrance directly and in Spain by the French militaryinvasion that subjugated much of the country andintroduced a Napoleonic regime of radical reform,based on some of the more moderate aspects of therevolution. Whereas the English revolution ofrepublicanism and Puritanism of the 1640s had fewinternational repercussions, the French Revolutionwas a worldhistorical event, because France at thattime was the leading continental European power andbecause French radical ideas led what to some extenthad become an international movement.

The French Revolution had a profound effectabroad, not so much in the creation of radical regimeselsewhere (all of which were overthrown) as instimulating nationalism and also the long-termdiffusion of liberal, as distinct from radical, ideas.Nowhere, however, did the revolutionary andNapoleonic era have so great an impact as in the

Iberian Peninsula. For Spain it produced the greatestupheaval of modern times prior to the Civil War of1936-39.

The reign of Carlos IV exhibited political confusionand weak leadership, slackening the pace of thereformism notable under Carlos III, though, after aninitially sharply conservative reaction to the revolution,some reformism was resumed. Spanish governmentsteadily lost initiative, however, until the royal familyallowed itself to be carried away into French captivity— the Portuguese royal family, by comparison, havingthe perspicacity to flee to Brazil, a far preferableoption.

The result of the French takeover was the SpanishWar of Independence, universally recognized as by farthe broadest and most intense popular and nationalreaction to Napoleonic domination found anywhere inEurope. It gave rise to a great mythology both insideand outside Spain. Within the country it produced themyth of the great national resistance of patriotic self-sacrifice, the "guerrillero" as representative of thetraditional and patriotic people. In western Europe ithelped to establish Stereotype 3 about the Spanish —the vision of "romantic Spain," which partially reversedthe preceding stereotypes. This would achieve fullcanonic formulation by the second quarter of thenineteenth century, holding that when Spaniards tookto violence they were not sadistic monsters butunusually brave and death-defying heroes willing tosacrifice themselves to preserve their independenceand way of life. Rather than being mindless religiousfanatics, Spaniards preserved a spiritual approach tolife and culture that defied the gross materialism of themodern world. Rather than being lazy good-for-

modern world. Rather than being lazy good-for-nothings, the Spanish represented human and socialvalues that they refused to sacrifice on the altar ofindustrialization and profit. Rather than being closedto science and enlightenment, the Spanish sustaineda common popular culture that prized song anddance, expressing an artistic and esthetic vitality lostto bourgeois society beyond the Pyrenees. WhereasStereotype 1 was a product of the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries, and Stereotype 2 a product ofthe late seventeenth century and the Enlightenment,Stereotype 3 would dominate much of the thinkingabout Spain in other western countries during thenineteenth and twentieth centuries — at least until the1970s — though often also mixed with aspects ofStereotypes 1 and 2.

Within Spain itself the myth of the idealistic and self-sacrificing resistance of the Spanish people hasgenerally prevailed on both the Left and the Right,although most recently aspects of it have been calledinto question by historians such as José AlvárezJunco.22 Scholars have usually recognized that part ofthe elite supported the reformism of the monarchy ofJoseph Bonaparte, and that the resistance wasfundamentally divided between majoritariantraditionalists and minoritarian middle and upper-class liberals, the latter better organized and politicallymore active, or at least geographically better situated.In general, however, the clergy were more importantthan political liberals in mobilizing large sectors of thepopulation, who fought for religion and their traditionalway of life more than for any modern concept of"Spain." Most had no perception of the modern ideaof nation, but the liberals certainly did. Localism andregionalism were important in the resistance, as they

have been throughout the history of the country. Insome areas certain aspects of the guerrilla shaded offinto banditry.23 The War of Independence was indeeda titanic struggle but also politically and ideologicallymore complicated than it has often been presented.24

It produced the two new political and military termsthat Spain provided the modern world: guerrilla andliberal.

It marked the beginning of the "two Spains" ofmodern times: one Catholic and traditionalist, theother liberal and anticlerical (though at first also largelyCatholic, in a more moderate sense), which withinanother century would evolve into a division betweenCatholic conservatives and anti-Catholic social andpolitical radicals. It also meant the end of most of theSpanish American empire. Whereas the NorthAmerican colonists won their independence in theface of the dominant new imperial power of thatgeneration, the Spanish Americans faced theopposite — a complete breakdown of Spanishgovernment in the face of foreign invasion andoccupation. At that time the various regions ofSpanish America would never have initiated aprocess of self-government, soon to affirmindependence, had it not been for the vacuum ofpower in Spain. The independence of the LatinAmerican countries would eventually have takenplace, but not so soon or in the same way.

The War of Independence was a remarkabledisaster. For the past century France had beenconsidered a friend and sometimes an ally, only tosubject Spain to a brutal assault. Though the Spanishresisted bravely and ultimately successfully, the costwas enormous. The country had been spared

was enormous. The country had been spareddesperate military conflict for nearly a hundred years,and was hardly prepared — no country would havebeen prepared — for the massive atrocities, suffering,death, and destruction that ensued. A significantaspect often passed over is the enormous amount oflooting of valuables and art treasures by the French,the better part of which was never returned. Of thethree great "lootings of Spain" — that by the Arabs,the French, and the revolutionaries of 1936, this wasarguably the worst. The war cost Spain an entiregeneration of cultural and economic development, sothat in the 1820s it had scarcely regained the level of1800. In proportionate terms, Spain would thus beginthe nineteenth century in worse comparative conditionthan it had the eighteenth century, so that whateverprogress had been made in the "Siglo de las Luces"was seemingly placed in doubt. The war wouldinaugurate a new "long century" (1814-1923) markedby frequent and extensive conflict, both political andmilitary, internal and external, that would continue evenbeyond, until the middle of the twentieth century. Itinitiated an attempt at political modernization andliberalization under some of the worst conditions,which helped to guarantee that it would for long not bevery successful.

8The Problem of SpanishLiberalism

Historic Spanish liberalism has not enjoyed a goodpress, and among Left and Right alike has often beenjudged a failure. Yet it dominated Spanish affairs andgoverned for approximately a century, so that, if afailure, it was certainly a long surviving failure, implyingthat the standard caricature, like so many of thecaricatures and stereotypes in Spanish history, maybe something of an exaggeration.

It would be excessive to say that liberalism trulygoverned Spain between 1810 and 1814, given thechaos of those years, while the second liberal regimeof 1820-23 was overthrown by foreign invasion, albeitin this case a foreign invasion that was accepted bymuch of Spanish opinion. From the death of FernandoVII in 1833 until 1923 some form of liberalismgoverned the country, usually fairly conservative,though occasionally quite radical. By 1923 Spain hadlived under liberal parliamentary government for moreyears than had any other large continental Europeancountry, including France — no mean achievement fora "historical failure."

The liberal breakthrough resulted from the completebreakdown of government as a result of the Frenchinvasion, but this did not mean that the seizure ofleadership by the liberals was the result of aconspiracy by a tiny minority, as some interpretationshave had it. During the second half of the eighteenth

century the slow but steady evolution of Spain'ssociety, culture, and economy had encouraged theemergence of a small middle class and had alsotransformed the attitudes of part of the nobility.Something, at least, of the basis for a more moderneconomy had been laid, even if the general structureremained traditional. The new more liberal andcapitalist interests were not hegemonic, but they wereexpanding, even if politically inarticulated. Mostpotential liberals would probably have been willing tocontinue to accept government by an evolutionaryreformist monarchy, had such a regime continued toexist. In 1809-10, by contrast, they responded to anew vacuum of power, though they themselvescontinued to represent no more than a limited minorityof Spanish society.

The Constitution of 1812 was, in fact, the greatEuropean liberal constitution of the early nineteenthcentury, more judicious and reasonable than anythingfound in revolutionary France, and stood as the mostinfluential charter of liberalism to be found in Europeduring the next two decades. This new "Spanishnational model" inspired liberals in Italy, Germany,Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere, representingan attempt to reconcile the differing ideas of theFrench Enlightenment, the Anglo-Scottish andSpanish Enlightenments, and the Scholastic traditionwith its doctrines of natural law.1 It was a uniqueachievement for its time, offering a broad,semidemocratic but nonetheless "organic" suffrage,taking care not to offend most aspects of traditionalculture. This was a special achievement of the originalSpanish moderate liberal elite, before passions hadbecome inflamed by partisan conflict and the influence

of more radical doctrines.

Though early Spanish liberalism originally hadconsiderable influence in Spanish America, it waslater virtually forgotten by American historiography,which preferred a manichean portrait of "liberal LatinAmerica" versus "absolutist Spain." 2 The Cortes ofCádiz included a tiny minority of representatives fromSpanish America, and its constitution provided fordirect American representation in the future Spanishparliament, even though on a very limited basis.3Neither the Cádiz liberals nor most of the "exaltados"(radicals) of the second liberal regime were willing togrant greater proportionality for a transatlanticHispanic nation, nor the complete equality andfreedom of commerce demanded by SpanishAmericans, so that any prospect of maintaining atransatlantic state proved completely illusory.4

The restoration of absolute monarchy by FernandoVII was in some respects a caricature of the kind ofabsolutism practiced by Carlos III. Most of the"enlightened" aspects of absolutism disappeared, tobe replaced by extremes of authoritarianism andrepression. The Constitution of 1812 offered areasonable basis on which to initiate a moderate andCatholic form of liberalism, but this was neverattempted, first being overthrown by Fernando andthen, in its second incarnation, bypassed by theexaltados, the second generation of radical liberals,who inaugurated what might be subsequently termedthe "exaltado tradition" in Spanish affairs, accordingto which periodically the axis of politics was shifted sofar to the Left as to tip over into armed conflict. By1823 both of the polarities of modern Spanish politicshad been established, and would remain in place for

had been established, and would remain in place forthe next century and a half, until consensus was finallyachieved.

Undoubtedly the introduction of direct liberalism inSpain was somewhat premature, and would neverhave had the strength or opportunity to impose itself atthat time had it not been for the destruction of regulargovernment by the French invasion. In Spain thereexisted a liberal intelligentsia, as well as certainmiddle and upper-class social and economic intereststhat could be mobilized on behalf of liberalism, but anadequate civil society on which to build a liberalsystem did not exist. The result was the emergence ofthe "Spanish contradiction" for much of the periodbetween 1810 and 1939 — the persistent efforts ofsmall liberal or radical elites to introduce "advanced"systems, which lacked an adequate social, cultural, oreconomic base. The Spanish contradiction finallyended in the later years of the Franco regime, when itwas replaced for a time by the "Franco contradiction"— a political system more retrograde and backwardthan the society and culture over which it presided.

Traditionalism was strong in all parts of Europeduring the early nineteenth century. Nowhere didtraditionalism enjoy such militant popular support as inSpain, however, not because traditionalism wasabsolutely that much stronger than elsewhere, butrather because only in Spain had liberalism beenforced on a society and culture that was still sotraditionalist. In most other European states moretraditional monarchies prevailed, in most cases — atleast in the middle of the century — avoidingliberalism and popular mobilization almost altogether.

Carlism has been called the largest, virtually the

Carlism has been called the largest, virtually theonly, political mass movement of nineteenth-centurySpain, which is probably correct. It has often beenseen as a sort of Spanish peculiarity, another Spanishexceptionalism, but, as in the case of other perceivedSpanish exceptionalisms, this has led toexaggeration. Traditionalism existed in nearly allcontinental countries. In France during the 1790s,massive military action and wholesale violence,bordering on genocide, was required to crush Frenchtraditionalism. The difference in Spain was thattraditionalism endured longer, to a minor degreepersisting at least until the mid-twentieth century.

The dimensions of the traditionalist reaction after1833 were due above all to the fact that in Spainliberalism was introduced at an earlier phase of thecountry's overall modernization than was the caseelsewhere, making the Spanish contradictionparticularly acute during the early nineteenth century.The strength of Carlism seems to have beencorrelated especially with two factors: first the force ofreligious and ultraroyalist sentiment, and second thevigor of traditional institutions. Thus Carlism wasweakest in the south, enjoyed intermediate strength inthe north-central part of the country, and was strongestin the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragon, andCatalonia.5

In such conditions, with a weak liberal monarchy, arelatively fragile elite liberalism, and a generallytraditionalist society, civil war was not surprising. Theliberals won not because they would have been ableto carry a national plebiscite, which is doubtful, butbecause of their control of the state and the military,and because of foreign support. Whereas in 1823

foreign intervention had favored the Right (and woulddo so again in 1936-39), foreign assistance duringthe First Carlist War favored the liberals. Most of theupper classes, who might have been thought tosupport traditionalism, in fact backed the liberals,partly because Carlism seemed to a large extent amenacing popular movement of poor peasants, theCarlist bands often showing "hatred of the rich."

The conflict between liberalism and traditionalism,between revolution and counterrevolution, was not amorbid peculiarity of the Spanish but to a greater orlesser degree was characteristic of the politics ofmost of western continental Europe during the sixdecades that followed the Napoleonic wars, roughlythrough the 1870s.6 That there was much less civil warin France, Italy, Austria, or Germany than in Spainduring that period was due primarily to the strength ofthe state in those countries. The German, Austrian,and Italian states simply held liberalism at bay almostaltogether, until limited and nondemocratic forms ofliberalism were finally adopted by the 1870s,somewhat the same as in Spain. France experiencedmore advanced liberalism, only to succumb to amodern form of new authoritarian state from 1851 to1870, and thus counted fewer years underparliamentary government than Spain, with aconvulsive history that had passed through three morerevolutionary experiences by 1871. Spanish liberalismwas in power proportionately longer than theparliamentary forces in any of these countries, but bycomparison could only build a weaker state prone toconvulsion. The frequency of convulsion was due notmerely to that weakness but also to the narrownessand exclusiveness of the dominant liberal elites, the

limited basis of civil society, and the loss of legitimacyin the system. The first sixty years of the new SpanishAmerican republics were equally convulsive, until theirpolitical systems also began to stabilize somewhat bythe 1880s.

Much better for Spain during the first half of thenineteenth century would probably have been a moreadvanced form of the reformist monarchy of Carlos III.It would have spared much conflict, bloodshed, anddestruction, though such an alternative presents aquasi-utopian counterfactual that at no time existed asa genuine possibility. As it was, the reintroduction ofliberalism in 1833-34, like its original eruption in1810, was due to a unique contingency, in this casethe dynastic dispute.

The third phase of liberalism began modestly withthe Royal Statute of 1834, a very limited charter thatsought to reconcile the Old Regime with acircumscribed liberalism, but was overtaken byradicalization within no more than two years, followinga seeming iron law of Spanish politics. In this case,the Wechselwirkung or "reciprocal influences" of civilwar radicalized both Left and Right, heightening theSpanish contradiction. Moreover, the mid-1830s firstrevealed sociopolitical fragmentation as aconsequence of limited modernization, at least inSpain, though the slow pace of that modernizationwould make it possible, most of the time, to hold thefragmentation in check for another century. The nextconstitution (1837) was more liberal but notdemocratic, for even the more "progressive" liberalsfeared democracy, as was almost universally the casein European liberalism at that time. Nearly a decade

would be required before the moderate liberals finallygained control of the situation.7

These struggles and conflicts were only enhancedby the intensity with which much of the Spanish elitelived the Romantic era in European culture. Thoughromantic literature was not as distinguished in Spainas in some other countries, romanticism reflected wellthe Spanish mood in the first half of the nineteenthcentury, a time of heroes and caudillos and dramatic,if often destructive, public events. As J. Marías says,in some ways during that era Spain was the romanticcountry par excellence, one of the reasons why itappealed so greatly to visiting romantics from otherlands. The romantic ethos continued through the1860s, giving way afterward to weariness and a morepragmatic attitude.

During the following generation, Carlism declinedyet maintained much of its base in the northeast. Theadvance of those combined processes generallygrouped under the rubric of "modernization" wouldinevitably weaken traditionalism, yet the pace oftraditionalism's decline was slow, due to severalfactors. One was simply the rhythm of nineteenth-century economic development, which had long leftsome of the basis of traditionalism intact. A secondwas the concentration of the traditionalist base in thenortheast, where it became increasingly identified withthe defense and survival of local and regionalinstitutions, even among certain social sectors thatelsewhere might have come to support liberalism.

Even after Carlism weakened, it could still beresuscitated by radical new challenges, whencombined with the weakening of the political system.

Such a situation developed immediately under theFirst Republic, and later under the Second Republic.Had Spain been able to sustain an orderlyparliamentary evolution, the last two Carlist uprisings(1873, 1936) would presumably not have occurred,dependent as they were not upon opposition toliberalism itself (though that opposition alwaysremained) but upon the breakdown of liberalism.

The First Carlist War was an exhausting anddebilitating struggle, which further retarded Spain'sdevelopment, but the liberals won a complete victory,even though they continued to recognize Basquefueros and Navarrese rights, as well. The internationaland domestic politics of violence in Spain between1808 and 1840 had produced a more decisive andliberal outcome than would have existed had thecountry continued the peaceful evolution of theeighteenth century. The result was a political andsocial rupture that produced a series of weak liberalgovernments. The liberals had won both politically andmilitarily, but lacked the strength to govern withconsensus and to sustain a rapid pace ofdevelopment, even though they forced decisive legal,institutional, social, and economic changes. Thoughleftist critics later charged that the liberals hadcompromised excessively with the aristocracy and theChurch, the liberals dominated so thoroughly inpolitical terms that the main challenges were social,economic, and cultural.8 Under a more traditionalmonarchy willing to confront practical issues,government would have been less liberal but strongerand more unified, and the pace of modernizationpossibly somewhat more rapid, but that is acounterfactual speculation.

The only kind of liberalism that nineteenth-centurySpain could sustain was a highly elitist and restrictiveliberalism, which precluded democratization, but thiswas typical of most parliamentary systems of the mid-nineteenth century. Historical and politicalcommentary in the twentieth century often held that thiswas because of the tyrannical and oppressivecharacter of the "bourgeoisie," or whatever the rulingelites were to be called. Only recently have somehistorians come to realize that the real obstacle wasmore nearly the nature of society and culture, whichcould not generate a broader civil society until wellinto the twentieth century. Moreover, in recent yearshistorians have concluded that Spanish liberalism wasmore genuinely middle class, and less allied to thetraditional aristocracy (which survived as a social andsometimes economic group rather than as a politicalforce) than was in fact the case in most Europeancountries. Bereft of most of the traditional elites aswell as of the ordinary population, Spanish liberalismwas politically dominant but socially restricted, a factthat for some time weakened its stability.

The effects of the great disamortization of Churchand common lands that took place in the middledecades of the century received much criticism for thecountry's limited development. The disamortization,however, did not so much introduce new evils as toratify the new scheme of things that was alreadyemerging. Given the economic weakness of smalllandowners and sharecroppers, the political andeconomic conditions of that age scarcely permittedany other outcome, and agricultural developmentwould not have accelerated had the disamortizationnever taken place. To conceive of a utopian land

reform by censitary or restrictive liberalism is an idleenterprise. One major effect, however, was toconsolidate the new liberal elite politically andeconomically, guaranteeing the collaboration of thelandowners with the liberal system.

As it was, the censitary form of Moderadoliberalism governed the country for most of the eightdecades after 1843, first under the convulsive reign ofIsabel II, and then in a more enlightened, tolerant, andcomprehensive form under the evolutionary andreformist Restoration system initiated in 1875 byAntonio Cánovas del Castillo, arguably Spain'sleading modern parliamentary statesman. Cánovas'sreputation has fluctuated a good deal, like that ofnineteenth-century liberalism in general, but in recentyears more historians have come to recognize hissystem as the civic achievement that it was — onethat provided a generally tolerant framework forreformism and improvement, overcoming the failuresof its predecessors and providing a means of movingmore confidently into the twentieth century.9

The successful compromises of the Restorationwere possible in considerable measure due to thedisillusionment with earlier failures and the multipledisasters of the democratic sexennium of 1868-74.Practical experience is often of great benefit in publicaffairs, and a mood chastened by experience wassomething that the Restoration had in common withthe democratization of the country, which beganalmost exactly a century later.

Spanish NationalismThe concept of the Spanish nation was clearly

The concept of the Spanish nation was clearlyaffirmed for the first time by the Cortes de Cádiz.Nationalism declares the sovereignty of the citizenry,as affirmed in the Constitution of 1812. It alsodeclares the formation of a national community ofequal rights, with all citizens equal before the law. Abasic difference between modern nationalism andtraditional patriotism is that the latter is largelydefensive, while nationalism is proactive, future-oriented, and tends to take the form of a project, or aseries of new claims.

Nineteenth-century Spanish liberalism assumed theproject of affirming and developing the modernSpanish nation. This involved constructing a newliberal interpretation of Spanish history based on themedieval liberties of parliaments, rights, and fueros,with a special place for the failed rebellion of theCastilian Comunidades in 1520-21. It reached itshighest expression in the massive multivolumeHistoria de España of Modesto Lafuente, whichwould continue to be reprinted well into the twentiethcentury. This presented a classic "liberalinterpretation" of Spanish history, focused on thehistorical process of the development of the Spanishnation.10 Such a discourse would subsequently bemodified in a more conservative direction, on the onehand, while radical liberals, on the other hand, wouldlater change it in a more radical direction.

The doctrine of the nation was nevertheless not asfully and firmly developed and accepted in Spain as inFrance or even in Italy, though during the nineteenthcentury it seemed to make impressive progress, asrevealed in the Moroccan war of 1859 and even tosome extent in the final Cuban conflict of 1895-98.

Nonetheless, the twentieth century would demonstratethe fragility of the nineteenth-century unified nation.

During the first half of the nineteenth centuryCatholicism was an obstacle to this process. Religionhad provided one of the most important sources ofSpanish identity throughout history but inevitablypossessed a more universal and trans-Hispanicdimension, whereas to Catholic leaders nationalismseemed a radical and secular doctrine stemming fromthe French Revolution, which to a considerable extentit was. It has often been observed that the clergy werethe most active and effective elite in fomenting armedresistance against the French; their appeal wasreligious, universalist, and also patriotic, but not trulynationalist. Carlists, for example, resisted the projectof a modern Spanish nationalism, which theyassociated with liberalism and revolution, in favor ofmaintaining tradition. Only in the 1850s, with thenation seemingly firmly established, did Catholicwriters and ideologues begin to develop their owninterpretation of the historically Catholic nation,defining a kind of right-wing Catholic nationalism,more in line with the reading of nationalism by manyCatholics in Poland.11 The traditional "Spanishideology" was thus updated to embrace a form ofmodern nationalism, its leading avatar beingMarcelino Menéndez Pelayo and its vision of Spainexpressed in a variety of textbooks.12 Moreover, bythe end of the century, with liberalism more firmlyestablished than ever, Carlism developed its ownproject of building a traditionalist Catholicnationalism.13

The nineteenth-century project of the Spanish nationwas never effectively completed. Slow development of

was never effectively completed. Slow development ofthe national economy and of a national educationsystem were two factors that impeded fullerintegration and the formation of a nationalconsciousness. The absence of universal militaryservice may have been another. Moreover, thetenacious resistance to national uniformity bytraditionalists and regionalists, particularly in theBasque Country and Navarre, proved intimidating to aweak liberal nationalism, which won on the battlefieldbut continued to respect special fiscal privileges thatwould never be overcome. Related to this andperhaps more important was the sense of nationalfailure by the end of the century, combined with theabsence of any foreign threat or major new nationalproject, which might have served as motivating andunifying influences. The consequence was the growthof Catalan, then Basque, nationalism, as well as otherregional movements, so that both in the early and laterparts of the twentieth century the term "nationalism"more often than not would refer to the micronationaland peripheral movements, not to Spanishnationalism, which, despite its victory in the Civil Warof 1936-39, had faded by the last years of the Francoregime, along with all the major western nationalisms,and would subsequently seem almost nonexistent.

War and UnderdevelopmentEven though Spain faced no challenges from other

European countries after the defeat of NapoleonicFrance, the liberal state was involved in militaryoperations on many occasions during the nineteenthcentury. The Spanish army became notorious for itspolitical pretorianism (see chapter 15), but in fact wasnever truly militaristic, despite the fact that it was

involved in significant military campaigns for moreyears than any other European army during thenineteenth century.

Rather than facing international conflicts, underliberalism Spain became the classic land of civil war,beginning with the limited struggle of 1822-23,followed by the insurrection of the Catalan peasantryin 1827 (Guerra dels agraviats), the First Carlist War(1833-40), a minor Carlist revolt in Catalonia between1846 and 1849 (Guerra dels mariners), and theSecond Carlist War (1873-76), to which must beadded the republican cantonalist rebellion of 1873-74and many civil and military "pronunciamientos"(attempted coups d'état) of shorter duration, some ofwhich involved serious armed confrontation. The FirstCarlist War lasted seven years, during which nearly150,000 men died, a very high figure for thepopulation of those years. In addition, there werelarge-scale campaigns to suppress Hispano-American independence movements (which mightalso be considered civil wars), first during the decade1815-25 and later during the Ten Years' War in Cuba(1868-78), followed by the brief "Guerra Chiquita" orLittle War (1879-80) and the disastrous final Cubanwar of 1895-98, climaxed by the conflict with theUnited States.

Spain was the only country for whom the nineteenthcentury began and ended with major internationalconflicts, with France and United States, respectively.During the intervening years occurred a war withMorocco (1859-60), a naval conflict off the westerncoast of South America, and a lesser military conflictwith Morocco in 1894. The two main Cubancampaigns cost the army more than 100,000 deaths,

campaigns cost the army more than 100,000 deaths,and altogether, the Spanish colonial conflicts of thenineteenth century were by far the most costly inhuman and economic terms of those waged by anyEuropean state — at least in comparative terms —ending in absolute failure. The only country that mighteven begin to equal Spain in terms of the number ofcivil conflicts through the early twentieth century wasColombia.

The economic cost of all this was very great. Notmerely did it retard development and modernization,but required that most of the state budget be devotedto the military, which remained backward andcompletely second rate. This also helped to guaranteemiserably inadequate funding for education, arguablythe greatest of the failures of nineteenth-centuryliberalism.

The Failure DebateFor much of the nineteenth century Spanish

nationalism was relatively optimistic. It affirmedSpain's grand national past and looked to moderndevelopment to lift the country to an important place inthe future. Pessimism first began to set in during andafter the sexennium of 1868-74, when the nationseemed almost to dissolve amid major colonial war,civil conflict, and cantonalist insurrection. When all thiswas combined with lagging social, cultural, andeconomic development, the present and future lookeddark. As early as 1876 the novelist Juan Valeraexpressed gratitude for the existence of Turkey,whose abysmal circumstances guaranteed that Spainwould not quite be at the lowest rank of European andMediterranean countries.

The Restoration provided stability and restoredsome degree of competence, but by the 1880s apersistent sense of failure could be perceived in somequarters, for it was obvious that liberalism,modernization, and success had obviously notfollowed together. The "regenerationist" societies didnot begin after 1898, but were foreshadowed by anumber of new groups formed in Castile during the1880s, seeking to regenerate the Castilian economyand strengthen the nation.14

A more adequate perspective on the "failuredebate," replete with empirical data and rigorousanalysis, would be provided by the flowering ofSpanish historiography one hundred years later.Considerable expansion of economic history tookplace during the last part of the twentieth century, andone of the main questions addressed by the newscholars in this field was that of El fracaso de larevolución industrial en España (The Failure of theIndustrial Revolution in Spain), as the title of a well-known earlier book by Jordi Nadal put it.15 The futilityof direct comparison between Spain and Englandbegan to be appreciated. Comparative study of Italy,for example, was more fruitful, but this also revealedshortcomings in Spanish performance, at least by theend of the nineteenth century.16 The historians tendedto single out state protectionism as the mostdeleterious government policy, even though that wasnot always entirely convincing.

The reasons for slow development were numerous,to the extent that the absence of protectivism mightsimply have encouraged an almost exclusiveconcentration on the production of agriculture and raw

materials. The persistent price of war was certainly afactor, to which might be added the litany associatedwith underdevelopment: infertile soil, low agriculturalproductivity, slow formation of capital, inadequatetransportation and finance systems, poorly educatedlabor, and an absence of entrepreneurship. The criticsare nonetheless correct that concentration on theinternal market for industrial growth was inadequatefor rapid advance.

It is important to place Spain's economic record inbroader perspective. Although no majortransformation had taken place during the eighteenthcentury, there had been steady growth, with thebeginning of changes in commerce and productionthat helped provide a basis for later advances. Theexpansion of commerce in all of western Europe,including Spain, had been dramatic during the secondhalf of the eighteenth century, and the most importantpart was the growth of Spanish commerce with otherEuropean countries. Comparatively little of Spain'sdomestic production, as distinct from its commerce,was connected with the American empire, so that theeconomy was affected surprisingly little by the latter'sloss. Trade had remained strong with Europe until1805, and soon began to expand once more after theend of the Napoleonic war.

The fashion once was to regard Spain's economicperformance in the nineteenth century as a completefailure, a wasted opportunity, but it was, in fact, aperiod of fairly constant change and expansion, themain exception being the first third of the century from1805 to 1840. Those years were a time of decisivechange and growth in the more advanced parts of theWestern world, but Spain was held back by the

Western world, but Spain was held back by thedestruction wrought by the French invasion, followedby the country's own internecine struggles. All thisproved a great handicap in the beginning of thedynamic nineteenth century, even though a significantrecovery was soon made.

In general Spanish economic growth moved paripassu with that of Europe, but started at a distinctlylower level than in the more advanced countries, sothat, in an era of rapid growth, it had to run fairly fastnot to lose proportionate ground, and at the close ofthe nineteenth century seemed nearly as far behindthe most advanced countries as in 1800. Thus,despite steady growth, as of 1900 certain statisticsmight be read to make it appear that Spain wasrelatively more backward than it had been a centuryearlier. The Spanish economy would not really beginto make up ground with northwestern Europe until theera of World War I and the 1920s.

The third quarter was generally the most expansivetime of the nineteenth century, the economy growingrapidly in the 1850s and from 1866 to 1873, until thedisaster of the First Republic. In general, the totalgrowth rate, according to Prados de la Escosura,averaged 1.84 percent per year between 1850 and1883, slowing somewhat in the latter part of thecentury. By the 1880s certain conservativecompromises in policy had been made, foreigninvestment dropped, and there was some closure ofthe economy. After 1900, however, the rate increasedonce more to 1.34 percent until 1913, and then to 1.49percent for the years 1913-20, the economy reachingits first phase of modern "take-off" during the 1920s,when it averaged 3.54 percent growth per year.

Another way to put it is that total domestic productiontripled between 1830 and 1910, after which itaccelerated considerably further. Altogether, percapita income nearly doubled during the nineteenthcentury, even though it remained far below that of themost advanced countries. This was in general asteady and creditable performance, which by the1920s was finally achieving rapid growth.

Throughout the nineteenth century economic growthsurpassed the expansion of the population. Foreigntrade grew steadily in volume and also expanded itsplace within the domestic economy, as the changes inthe terms of trade for most of the century favoredSpain, minerals and food exports maintaining theirprice level while the cost of major manufacturedimports proportionately declined. During the middledecades of the century, the liberal regime began tobuild the infrastructure for a modern economy, with thecreation of the rail networks, financial and institutionreforms, and the expansion of mining. The Catalantextile industry gained strength, and minor industrialnuclei also developed elsewhere, sustained growth ofBasque metallurgy beginning after the last Carlist war.In the late nineteenth century, per capita income wasabout the same as that of the united Italy, until thelatter began a takeoff in the 1890s, which Spain wouldnot equal for nearly twenty-five years.

Agriculture expanded more slowly during thenineteenth century, continuing the eighteenth-centurypattern of growing extensively but not intensively. InRoman times the peninsula had been famous for itsproduction of wheat, wine, and olives, and this focushad not substantially changed. Food production roseslightly more than the growth in population, but the

slightly more than the growth in population, but the"first agricultural revolution," which had taken place innorthern Europe and relied on greatly increased usesof fertilizer and new plowing techniques, simply couldnot be applied in the Mediterranean environment. The"second agricultural revolution," emphasizing thebeginning of mechanization and artificial fertilizers,began to appear in Spain only after 1900. During thefirst decades of the twentieth century, modernizationand increased productivity advanced, albeit ratherslowly, only to be interrupted in the 1930s.

An alternative perspective is that, with the primaryexception of the two great international wars, theeconomy had been growing steadily, if slowly, sincethe 1680s. By the late nineteenth century agriculturalproductivity was clearly rising, though also slowly. Thisslow transformation had finally reached a point by theearly years of the twentieth century that two majormodern industrial zones had been consolidated, anda basis had been created for further industrializationand the introduction of more modern technology.Accelerated growth that began to make up ground,starting to close the gap with the advancedeconomies, finally occurred in the early part of the newcentury, climaxing with the prosperity and growth spurtof the 1920s, after which worldwide depression, civilwar, world war, and restrictive state policiescombined to end growth for two decades. The"disaster" of 1898 paradoxically played a role,because it produced a repatriation of capital thathelped fuel domestic expansion, shortage of capitalbeing a prime factor in limiting growth during thenineteenth century.17 During the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries there was a significantincrease in life expectancy, which, according to one

increase in life expectancy, which, according to onecomputation, had reached fifty-one years by 1910.18

This figure, if correct, would indicate that for the firsttime in several centuries a key index of well-being wasbeginning to approach that of the advanced countries.The population had doubled since the late eighteenthcentury, reaching approximating 20 million, with asignificantly higher standard of living, somethingapparent since about the middle of the nineteenthcentury. The liberal regime could not be consideredan economic failure, though neither was it aspectacular success.19

Disaster and RegenerationismSpain's loss of most of its empire partially

paralleled the experiences of Great Britain, France,and Portugal. Like its European counterparts, after1825 Spain had retained a portion of its overseaspossessions (initially more than France, for example).During the rest of the century, the remaining parts,especially Cuba, enjoyed great saliency in Spanishpolicy and in official discourse. Despite the enormousdrain of the Ten Years' War, the Restoration regimecontinued to stress the importance of empire,necessary not so much to Spain's economy, thoughthat was of some significance, as to its self-imageand its place in the world. Cuba held a special placein the nation-building discourse of the period.20

Official policy deemed it to be a direct extension ofSpain itself, with representation in Madrid but hencenot eligible for self-government. This foreshadowedthe policies of France and Portugal in the mid-twentieth century. It constituted the major political errorof Cánovas's career, but one that was relativelycommonplace in the history of European imperialism.

Only Britain, after the experience of 1775-83, learnedto avoid such mistakes in the future, particularly indealing with the English-speaking dominions. Thechange in British policy developed during thenineteenth century and formed the basis for theeventual Commonwealth, which in turn did not fullyemerge until the century that followed.

Even in the late eighteenth century, trade withSpanish America amounted to scarcely more than halfthe country's total foreign trade, and though trade withthe Antilles increased threefold between 1850 and1900, it in fact increased less rapidly than did Spanishcommerce with the rest of the world, declining to only12 percent of the total by 1890. Spanish exports to theAntilles may have increased in volume, but as apercentage of total exports they dropped to 17percent by 1894. By that time Spain provided 35percent of Cuba's total imports, but received only topercent of its exports. The economic importance ofthe imperial market and its resources to Spain waspersistently exaggerated. As it would turn out, much ofthat limited market would be retained by the Spanisheconomy after 1898.

The Restoration system was consistently reformist,and its reformism by 1890, when the regime wasfirmly established, might have included autonomy forCuba, even with the realization that this was likely tolead eventually to independence. Evolution was of thenature of the regime, but four centuries of history,together with the apparent failures of modern times,deprived the leadership of self-confidence in nationalwell-being without the empire, though its loss might,with foresight, have been phased in by degrees. Tohave done so, however, would have gone against the

have done so, however, would have gone against thegrain, not merely of Spanish policy, but of the entireculture of European imperialism at the height of itsexpansion in the late nineteenth century. Britishleaders could reconcile themselves to the almostcomplete autonomy of the English-speakingdominions first because ties remained very close, andsecond because the "new" British empire of thenineteenth century was in no danger and had becomethe grandest in the world. Even Portugal had a largenew empire in Africa, but for Spain remnants of theold empire made up the only empire there was. ForSpanish leaders to have adopted a different policywould have required a kind of superhuman vision,courage, and self-confidence, which they simply didnot possess.

Although the Spanish empire was clearly theweakest of the European empires, with the possibleexception of Portugal's, its destruction at the hands ofthe United States is also correctly seen as merely theSpanish instance in a series of defeats for weaker,less developed Catholic and Orthodox (and alsoMuslim) states, usually at the hands of Protestantcountries. The first example was the defeat of Franceby newly united Germany, touching off a considerablediscussion in France about French failure andinadequacy, which was nonetheless greatly palliatedby the enormous expansion of the French Africanempire during the decades that followed, somethingthat Spain had neither the desire nor the means toemulate or to contest. It would be the vortex of the newFrench imperialism, not any independent Spanishinitiative, that would finally draw Spain into Moroccoduring the years 1906-13.21

The disaster years for the peripheral Europeanstates began with the veto by Britain of furtherPortuguese expansion in southern Africa in 1891,followed by the humiliating defeat of Italian forces by ablack Ethiopian army five years later, which, for thetime being, halted all further Italian expansion. TheGreek irredentist invasion of Thessaly was thoroughlydefeated by Turkey in 1897, while the same year thatwitnessed Spain's defeat saw Britain block furtherFrench expansion in Africa. Nine years after Italy wasdefeated by an African army, the Tsarist Empire wasdefeated by an Asian army and navy. In 1912 theOttoman Empire was almost eliminated from Europealtogether. There is no absolute common denominatorto these experiences, for France retained a giganticempire and was one of the most modern countries inthe world, while the Tsarist Empire remained a greatpower that had simply lost a strategically awkwardwar. All five of the south European countries, however,could see themselves as laggards in modernizationwho either had further lost status or, in the case ofItaly, could not attain it.

It has been observed that there was a much greaterreaction in Spain to the loss of the remnants of empirethan to the loss of most of the original empire in 1825.The reasons for this difference had to do with thegreater increase in literacy and political self-consciousness, together with the expansion of theintelligentsia by the end of the century, and the factthat the defeat occurred at the height of worldwideEuropean imperialism, whereas 1825 had been arelative low-point in general European empire. In fact,"disaster literature" began by the mid-1890s at thelatest, well before the so-called disaster, as an

expression of the mood of self-criticism andregenerationism that had already set in during the lastquarter of the nineteenth century.

What is extraordinary is that the authors of thedisaster literature and the writers of the "Generation ofNinety-Eight" had such a skewed perspective on theircountry. There was great preoccupation with failureand stagnation, partly because of the humiliation inmilitary affairs, when in fact modernization was finallybeginning slowly to accelerate, and for the first timethe country was beginning to improve even incomparison with the more advanced economies."Europeanization" was seen as both a problem and agoal, but at the beginning of the twentieth centurySpain was in closer consonance with western Europethan at any time in the past hundred years or, possibly,the past three centuries. Part of the problem was thatmost of this writing was done by journalists and literarymen with an uncertain relationship to empirical reality.

Regenerationism, in a great variety of guises,became the watchword well into the 1930s, and evenafter. This took three forms: political, socioeconomic,and cultural. Both cultural and socioeconomicregenerationism were quite successful. Building onsome already significant achievements of the latenineteenth century, the writers and artists of what laterwould be known as the Silver Age raised Spanishculture to its highest comparative level since the thirdquarter of the seventeenth century. Economicdevelopment and social transformation continued toaccelerate until 1930. Political regenerationism wasthe least successful.22

The process of political democratization was

difficult throughout central, southern, and easternEurope, and, for that matter, had been enormouslyconflictive in nineteenth-century France. There was noreason to expect that it would be anything other thandifficult in Spain, as well. As in much of southern andeastern Europe, the foundation in terms of literacy andsocial and economic development had not been laidprior to World War I, and in Spain would only beginpartially to emerge during the dramatic transformationof the 1920s. The older restrictive, elitist systemsencountered increasing stress in every Europeancountry either before or immediately after the war,though in almost every case the upheaval led to theintroduction of nominal universal male suffrage, exceptin Portugal. Yet by the 1930s, the new democraticparliamentary systems had given way to authoritarianregimes almost everywhere save Czechoslovakia.Thus it was in no way surprising that Spain andPortugal encountered severe difficulties.

World War I and the Russian revolution initiated ageneration of political and social conflict absolutelywithout precedent in European history, what hassometimes been called the era of international civilwar. The interwar generation presented Spain with agrave political dilemma analogous to that of a centuryearlier, yet more extreme and more complex, due tothe consequences of modernization. In both cases,the old order was clearly inadequate, while sufficientconditions for a new order were not yet at hand. Tocite the words of the Italian Marxist theorist AntonioGramsci, "The old is dying and the new cannot beborn. In the interregnum, a great variety of morbidsymptoms appear." Spain simply had no easy orsimple way out of this predicament. As it was, several

other European countries did even worse.

The Restoration regime had been the mostappropriate for Spain in the late nineteenth century.As David Ringrose has written, "Rather than readingthe topic teleologically, as Spain's failure to be asdemocratic as it should have been, we should viewSpain's combination of parliament, elections, andtraditional patronage as a phase in the evolution ofpolitical culture that appeared all over Europe" (and,indeed, in parts of the United States, as well).23 It wasbased on what Carlos Dardé has fittingly called "theacceptance of the adversary," involving what theItalians called "trasformismo," with continuing reformand the co-optation and inclusion of new adversarialelites.

Reformism began to falter with the failure of theMaura and Canalejas governments between 1909and 1912, after which the system began to fragmentand enter crisis, reaching a low point in 1917 with theimpact of the war and major new social and politicalmobilization.24 Salvador de Madariaga, the Spanishwriter and diplomat, has considered the failure of thediverse reform movements of 1917 the turning point inthe history of the constitutional monarchy.

The old elitist, pre-democratic political parties hadoutlived their usefulness, and were fragmented andineffective, while the final effort to reunify the LiberalParty in 1923 was not very successful.25 Thealternative in 1923 was to encourage greater reformand democratization or to attempt reform differentlyunder an authoritarian government. Choice of thelatter would fail to provide any lasting solution, or toachieve genuine reform, since Spanish society had

long been predominantly liberal, while workers andfarm laborers were becoming increasingly politicallyconscious and leftist.

Spain did not possess all the qualities needed for asuccessful civil society of democracy, yet acounterfactual case can be made thatdemocratization might have stood a better chanceafter 1923 than after 1931.26 Despite the growth of therevolutionary worker movements, in 1923 Spanishcivil society had been trained to live under anevolutionary, reformist constitutional monarchy andmight have responded positively, not withradicalization, to democratic reforms. During thepreceding generation the main republican forces hadtaken increasingly moderate positions, and were inconsiderable measure disposed to cooperate with areformist parliamentary monarchy. As it was, thesequence of events between 1923 and 1931 wasdestructive in the extreme. It must always be kept inmind, however, that democracy failed everywhere incentral, southern, and eastern Europe except forSwitzerland and Czechoslovakia. Modernizationproduces fragmentation, and the fragmentation hadbecome so extreme in Spain that the country was notlikely to have become an exception to the failure ofdemocracy.

If democratization was not possible, thencontinuation of a moderate authoritarian system foranother fifteen years, until the end of 1945, wouldprobably have been the second-best solution. Forexample, the Pilsudski regime in Poland was,compared with other dictatorships, only moderatelyrepressive and would have lasted for some time intothe future had it not been for the sudden German

the future had it not been for the sudden Germaninvasion in 1939. Catholic, internally diverse, and stillin large measure agrarian, Poland was the eastEuropean country most similar to Spain. Yet a"Pilsudski solution" was not possible in Spain, forseveral reasons: Since nationalism was weak inSpain, it could not serve as a unifying, stabilizing forceas in Poland. Second, Primo de Rivera was noPilsudski. Both were moderate, semiliberalauthoritarians, but Primo de Rivera had no realpolitical vision and no idea how to build a viablealternative regime. Franco was more brutal, but alsomore astute. At the end, Primo de Rivera could thinkof no way to prolong his system other than to try tocopy Italian Fascism more directly, something notlikely to work in Spain. Finally, the liberal tradition inSpain was so strong that Spanish opinion, even withinthe military, was simply not willing to tolerateauthoritarian government for very long, despiteunprecedented prosperity, once the initial problemsthat elicited authoritarianism seemed to havedisappeared.

Collapse of the monarchy in 1931 was a graveblow. This was not because of anything magical aboutparliamentary monarchy, for most democracies dowell enough without it. Rather, it was because Spainhad experienced grave problems of stability in thepreceding century and by 1930 was living amid aEuropean political culture that was fragmenting andentering crisis conditions, which would inevitably havegrave repercussions in Spain. For half a century themonarchy had been able to serve as a reasonablysuccessful moderating power, both a symbol and aforce for unity and continuity, qualities whose absencein Spain would soon lead to disaster.

It is a commonplace that Alfonso XIII wasdiscredited by having consented to the dictatorship.Of this there is no question, and here the principalcounterfactual issue would be whether an immediatereturn to general elections within six months of thedownfall of the dictator might have permitted the returnto a functional, reformist, and democratizingparliamentary monarchy. There is no guarantee thatthis would have been the case. The old monarchistparties had virtually disappeared, and their leaderswere terrified of a new leap in the dark. But that leapeventually took place in April 1931, with a disastrouslong-term outcome. In retrospect, new parliamentaryelections in April or May 1930 would have beenpreferable. Even had this initiative failed, it is hard tosee how the eventual outcome would have beenworse.

Finally, what should be history's verdict on thepolitical role of Alfonso XIII?27 Under the constitution of1876, the king's role in the political system had beenreduced, but he remained the crucial arbiter of accessand the rotation between the two established parties.He was accused of interference and arbitrariness,and there were occasional instances of such action,but in general he strove to recognize and cooperatewith the political forces generated by the system. Tothink that the king was personally responsible for thedivision, factionalism, blockage of reform, andgrowing pressure on the system is preposterous. Nordid he conspire with the dictator in 1923 but acceptedthe results of a pronunciamiento that no political ormilitary force seemed willing to contest.28 Eventually,after it became more than clear that the dictator hadlost support, the king asked for his resignation. This is

not to say that the king's actions between September1923 and December 1929 were wise or judicious. Atvarious times he should doubtless have acteddifferently, but it should be recognized that he wascalled upon to deal with an increasingly complex anddifficult situation, and that whatever happened was notprimarily the result of any unique initiative taken or nottaken by the king himself. At the end, he chose tovacate his throne rather than to encourage civilconflict. It was a tragedy that his successors on boththe Left and the Right did not follow his example fiveyears later.

Part III

Dilemmas of ContemporarySpain

Provincial divisions of modern Spain

9A Republic... withoutDemocrats?

Had anyone reading this book been in Madrid orBarcelona on the evening of April 14, 1931, or the dayfollowing, the scenes of jubilation, accompanied bythe general absence of violence, would haveconvinced him that the new Republic was welcomedby the vast majority of Spanish society. A logicalcorollary might be that the latter possessed the civicmaturity and responsibility to enable a twentieth-century democracy to function successfully. But, aseveryone knows, this did not prove to be the case.

There remain certain standard explanations for thefailure of the Republic. For the Left, this stemmed fromthe unremitting hostility of the Right, which refused toaccept "reforms." For the Right, it resulted from theviolence and extremism of the Left, aided and abettedby Moscow, which never intended to practicedemocracy. For more than a few professionalscholars, it stemmed from the civic immaturity andpolarization of Spanish society, influenced by theEuropean conjuncture. In fact, these variousexplanations should not be seen as mutually exclusive,for there are elements of truth in all of them. Thefactors involved will be taken up in the succeedingchapters, but any reexamination of the problems of theRepublic must begin with the republicans themselves.

There is no doubt that by 1931 a large part,probably the majority, of Spanish political opinion

wished to see the inauguration of political democracy,even though such an interest was not shared by atleast a large minority of political opinion. This waspartly the result of the six and a half years of directdictatorship — something never seen before inSpanish affairs — which "inoculated" a sizable part ofpolitical opinion against authoritarian solutions.Another fundamental factor was the revolution of risingexpectations wrought by the transformation of Spanishsociety in the 1920s. During those years the rhythm ofeconomic growth, social and cultural transformation,and expansion of education was the most rapid in allof Spanish history to that time. This resulted in greatlyheightened expectations of change and improvement,both among the lower classes and among much of themiddle classes as well. The experience of theRepublic cannot be understood without keeping inmind this background of rapid and sweepingtransformation. The standard image of "backwardSpain" is not incorrect, for the country remainedunderdeveloped in comparison with northwesternEurope, but it altogether fails to capture the pace ofchange and the sociocultural dynamism at work fromthe late 1920s on. The most important conditioningfactor was not the influence of "underdevelopment" butrather the profound psychological effects of rapidchange and the ways in which the country wasceasing to be merely underdeveloped. All this led togreatly increased expectations, not merely in thepolitical realm but also in social and economic affairs.

A basic problem was that political society had notnaturally evolved through reformism into democraticpractice, but had lost contact with its ownparliamentary traditions — thanks to the hiatus of the

dictatorship. A new democratic republic was beingattempted ab ovo with new leaders and mostly newpolitical organizations, all something of a leap in thedark.

With the exception of the Radical Republican Partyof Alejandro Lerroux, the republican parties of 1931were of comparatively recent creation, as indeedsome of the leaders themselves were recent convertsto republicanism. Several of the key moderate figures,such as Niceto Alcalá-Zamora and Miguel Maura,became republicans only in 1930, and most of theother republican parties had been formed only inrecent years. Moreover, most of the new leaders hadlittle political experience, so the depth of theircommitment to democracy could only bedemonstrated under the new regime.

The first test occurred with the elections of June 28,1931, which were swept by the new republicancoalition. Monarchists and conservatives foundthemselves in disarray, ill-prepared to contest theelections. Even so, the new republican forces weredetermined to dominate, and in cities and provinceswhere the opposition made a serious effort, it washarassed and in some cases shut down altogether.Because of the confusion and disarray of the right, therepublican coalition was bound to win these electionseven under scrupulously democratic conditions, butthe degree of electoral control and harassment of theopposition demonstrated that "republicanism" did notby any means indicate a clear break with the electoralpractices of the monarchist regime.

The new system introduced a series of rapidchanges, and in the early twentieth century change

tended to fragment. The variety of new political partiesand movements was extraordinary, one of the mostvaried and diverse to be found in any country in theworld. These groups represented quite variedagendas, making it difficult to achieve unity behind asingle democratic, parliamentary program, all of whichhas been commented on ad infinitum in the historicalstudies of the period.

A brief tour d'horizon of the political scene revealsthis diversity and how little agreement existed insupport of any specific project. The initial republicancoalition was composed of three distinct elements:the Left republicans, the centrist liberal or moderaterepublicans, and the Socialists. Each had a differentpolitical agenda, which only with the greatest difficultycould be combined and coordinated into a commonand coordinated republicanism.

The group that led the government during the firstbiennium, setting the tempo and much of the agenda,were the Left republicans, at first composed of severaldifferent parties, several of which eventually collapsed,until by 1934 the main Left republican force was theparty of Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left), ledby Manuel Azaña. The only other major and enduringLeft republican group was the Esquerra Catalana(Catalan Left). Though the Left republicans frequentlygestured toward democracy, they were not asinterested in constitutional democracy, free elections,and the rule of law as they were in a new kind ofradically reformist regime. It was this regime of radicalmiddle-class reformism that they referred to as "laRepública" and "el republicanismo," compared withwhich procedural democracy was secondary. In theirconcept, republicanism stood for a vigorously anti-

concept, republicanism stood for a vigorously anti-Catholic program, separating church and state,eliminating Catholic education, and strictly controllingCatholic interests and activities. This was to beaccompanied by other major institutional reformsdealing with education, culture, Catalan autonomy,and the reorganization and subordination of themilitary. In 1933-34 it was broadened to includeextensive intervention in the economy as well, butremained primarily a program of cultural, educational,religious, and institutional reforms oriented toward thesecularized sectors of the middle classes.1

The problem was that this program was neversupported by more than about 20 percent of theelectorate. Even if this figure were slightly increased, itwould be nowhere near a majority, so that Azañaalways recognized that the Left republicans had nohope of maintaining themselves in power without thesupport of the Socialists.

The Socialists, however, accepted the Leftrepublican program only as an initial minimumprogram, their own goal being the construction of aneconomically collectivist socialist regime. TheSocialists were no more than "semiloyal," at best, to ademocratic nonsocialist Republic, so their alliancewith the Left republicans was inevitably limited andcircumstantial. Whenever the development of theRepublic took a path that would not lead to socialism,the Socialists would cease to support the Republic.But since the popular vote of the Socialists also neveramounted to much more than 20 percent — scarcelymore than the Left republicans — it was not clear howa socialist regime could be established by democraticrepublican politics alone.

Did Azaña's concept of an exclusively leftist,radically reformist republic therefore make any senseif it was not going to lead to a socialist regime? Azañaseems initially to have believed that full Socialistsupport would be needed for no more than a fewyears, after which a united coalition of middle-classrepublican parties in a radically reformed Spain mighthave the strength to govern. The other main republicanforce, the parties of the moderate liberal democraticcenter, soon refused to maintain the alliance with theSocialists — who did not accept the democraticregime as an ultimate goal — nor did they agree withthe extent or radicalism of the reforms imposed by agovernment led by Left republicans and Socialists. Tomaintain the strictly leftist option, the Left republicanswere thus dependent on the Socialists, whononetheless refused simply to settle for the Leftrepublican program. Though for the moment disunited,Left republicans and Socialists rejected the results ofthe second republican elections of 1933, whichreturned a majority for the moderate republicans andthe Catholic Right. Left Republicans and Socialistsimmediately launched a series of attempts to cancelthe results of the most honest and democraticelections in Spanish history. Much more than thecontest of 1931, the elections of 1933 reflected thecompetition of a fully mobilized electorate, and wouldconstitute the freest and fairest contest known toSpain until 1977.2 If even the Left republicans wouldnot accept the results of democratic elections, thequestion of the future of a democratic republic lay ingrave doubt.

The only large party to support a democraticrepublic tout court were the Radicals, whose share of

the vote was, mutatis mutandis, no greater than that ofthe Left republicans. At one point the Radicals hadsought to form an all-republican government (that is, acoalition of all the republican parties), but the virtualdisappearance of the Left republicans in the newelections made that impossible. The Radicals weretherefore willing to work with the moderate Right, inthis case the new Catholic party, the CEDA(Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas— Spanish Confederation of Autonomous RightistGroups), which had suddenly emerged as the largestparty in Spain; with only about 30 percent of the vote,however, it was far from having a majority.

From June 1933 the key figure in Spanish politicswas not any of the major party leaders but thepresident of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, who,because of the extreme political fragmentation,assumed a dominant role. The Republicanconstitution required that each parliamentarygovernment face a "double responsibility" —responsible not merely to a majority of the Cortes butalso to the approval of the president of the Republic,who had the power to force the resignation of anycabinet of ministers. Alcalá-Zamora used thisprerogative with a vengeance, further destabilizingRepublican politics.

He was a veteran of the Old Regime, a formerleader of one of the more progressive wings of the oldmonarchist Liberal Party. A practicing Catholic,scrupulously honest in his personal affairs, Alcalá-Zamora in theory supported the Republic as a liberaldemocratic system. He opposed both radical anti-Catholic reformism and any form of rightistauthoritarianism, believing that he had a special

authoritarianism, believing that he had a specialresponsibility to "center the Republic," as he put it. Tothat end he constantly interfered in parliamentaryaffairs, making and unmaking governments accordingto his own will, to the extent that he himself becameone of the Republic's chief political problems.

As Alcalá-Zamora saw it, the main problem facingthe Republic was the resurgence of the Right in theform of the CEDA. José María Gil Robles and theother leaders of the CEDA did not proposemonarchist restoration but affirmed drastic reform ofthe constitution and the establishment of a system ofCatholic corporatism. As the chief representative ofthe Catholic middle classes, the CEDA stood for lawand order, and carefully obeyed the law, but despitethis "legalist" posture, Alcalá-Zamora refused to allowthe largest parliamentary party to form a government.First he engineered a minority government of theRadicals, supported by CEDA votes, and — when thelatter finally demanded a share of power, Cedo-Radical coalition governments, always led by theRadicals — which governed from October 1934 toSeptember 1935. The Socialists used the entry ofthree CEDA ministers into the government in 1934 asan excuse to launch a revolutionary insurrection, thefourth revolutionary insurrection in less than threeyears (following three smaller ones by theanarchosyndicalists of the CNT-FAI). From that pointthe country was increasingly polarized between Leftand Right, between revolution and counterrevolution.

Alcalá-Zamora seized the initiative once more inSeptember 1935 and soon thereafter manipulatedcertain corruption charges to discredit the Radicals.He then dissolved parliament prematurely and

unnecessarily, calling new elections for February1936. He suffered from the illusion that hisgovernment could invent a new centrist party toreplace the Radicals, but this attempt at governmentcontrol and coercion failed altogether, leading to avictory of the Left in the new elections. Alcalá-Zamorahad failed completely in his attempt to "center theRepublic."

The only political sector that supported a liberaldemocratic government, with honest elections and fairrules of the game, was the republican center. The onlylarge center party, the Radicals, had expanded rapidlyand then completely lost all cohesion amid thecorruption charges of 1935. Of the large parties, onlythe Radicals believed in "a Republic for allSpaniards," as Lerroux put it, abandoning most oftheir old anticlericalism and rejecting extremechanges either by the right or left. Yet this newlyexpanded Radical Party was a weak coalition ofliberals, pragmatists, and opportunists, sound andconstructive in its basic orientation but novel, rootless,and centrifugal in its membership, too weak internallyto face a major challenge.3 Beyond the Radicals, theother centrist parties were small and weak, with thepartial exception of the Lliga Catalana. PresidentAlcalá-Zamora, who proposed to lead the center anda liberal democratic Republic, undermined both withhis egotism and manipulations, which made genuineparliamentary government impossible.4

The two largest parties of Left and Right, theSocialists and the CEDA, in some respects mirroredeach other as semiloyal parties. The Socialistssupported the Republican government from 1931 to1933, with the stipulation that it must soon move into

1933, with the stipulation that it must soon move intosocialism. The CEDA supported the Republicangovernment during 1933-35, expecting that it wouldlead to drastic constitutional changes and eventually acorporative system. The key difference was that theCEDA rejected violence and followed a strict policy oflegalism (with the possible exception of theadministration of a few electoral districts in Granadaprovince in February 1936).5

The extreme Right (monarchists, Carlists,Falangists) all firmly rejected the Republic but weretoo weak to have any political effect, all theirconspiracies coming to naught. The same might besaid of the revolutionary extreme Left. Down to 1934-35 the anarchosyndicalists of the CNT-FAI,Communists, and the independent CommunistBOC/POUM all sought to overthrow the Republic byviolent revolutionary means, but were too weak toachieve anything, the three anarchist insurrectionsfailing completely.6

The key elements in republican affairs were therepublican parties themselves, even though allcombined they could scarcely have achieved amajority of the vote in fully competitive elections. Theirmutual enmity cast doubt on the future of the regime.From 1934 on, Azaña and the Left republicans choseto ally themselves with the worker revolutionaries,abandoning any pretense of merely supporting aliberal democratic Republic of equal rights for all, infavor of a leftist exclusionary Republic. Due to thedisastrous leadership of Alcalá-Zamora, the centristliberals managed the astonishing feat of self-destruction, so that after February 1936 supporters ofa liberal democratic Republic with equal rights for all

had shrunk to a tiny minority in the Cortes.

10Who Was Responsible?Origins of the Civil War of 1936

Historians can agree that the Spanish Civil Warbegan on the weekend of July 17-20, 1936, when in avariety of poorly coordinated actions various garrisonsand units of the Spanish army rebelled against theRepublican regime. Ever since that time, supportersof the Left have held that the cause and origin of theCivil War are perfectly clear — it was the militaryrevolt. No military revolt, no civil war. In the mostimmediate sense, this is an obvious and logicalargument.

Supporters of the military rebels, however, from thevery beginning argued that this was a grossoversimplification. They contended — and theirsupporters still contend — that the civil breakdownhad already taken place in the unprecedented declineof the rule of law in Spain during the spring and earlysummer of 1936. Some have even contended that theCivil War began initially in October 1934, with therevolutionary insurrection of the Socialists. The militaryrevolt was held to have taken place not against thelegal order, but to restore a legal order and to put anend to widespread civil conflict that long predated July1936.

The contention is also made that the military revoltper se did not necessarily begin a civil war, since itwas intended to be more like a pronunciamiento or

coup d'état. According to this argument, the warbegan not on July 17-18 with the start of the militaryrevolt but on July 19 , when the Left Republicangovernment began to "arm the people," that is, to giveweapons en masse to the leftist worker organizations.This sought to create a second armed force withwhich to combat the insurgent sector of the army,opening the way to widespread civil war. According tothis interpretation, the Republican government, whenfaced with a massive challenge like Alfonso XIII onApril 14, 1931, should also have responded like DonAlfonso — who said he wanted to avoid civil war — byhanding over power. That would certainly have been ameans by which the Republican government couldhave avoided civil war, but the weakness in thisargument, at least by analogy with the collapse of themonarchy, was that in 1931 there were not twopotentially large and polarized forces — Left andRight — as in 1936.

During the course of the Civil War, many differentexplanations of the causes and character of theconflict were presented at home and abroad. The Leftalways preferred to define it as a struggle betweendemocracy and fascism. For the Right, it was acrusade by Christian civilization to overcome godlessrevolution and barbarism. For both sides, it was soontouted as a national liberation war. The Left wasfreeing Spain from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy,the Right was liberating the patria from the clutches ofStalin, the Soviet Union, and internationalCommunism. These in turn became claimsconcerning the causes of the Civil War, which wereoften held to be exogenous, and located in Moscow,Rome, or Berlin.

Altogether, a series of arguments and allegationshave been presented concerning the causes andresponsibilities for the war, which are worthexamining: (1) the argument that civil war began in1934; (2) the "breakdown thesis": the constitutionalRepublic had already ceased to exist; (3) efforts toavert civil war; (4) the "provocation" thesis; (5) theinitial plan of the rebels; (6) the "exogenous" thesis(role of foreign powers); and (7) the contention that thefinal crisis alone was decisive.

The Civil War Began in 1934Revolutionary insurrection was common in Spain

between 1930 and 1934. The Republicans launched amilitary revolt against the monarchy in December1930, and the CNT-FAI, or sectors thereof, launchedthree insurrections against the Republic during 1932-33, while a small band of military rebels did the samein August 1932. The Socialist insurrection of October1934 was by far the most serious and extensive ofthese outbursts, affecting many different provincesand seizing control of much of Asturias. Revolutionwas proclaimed in Asturias, with the execution ofpolitical prisoners, priests, and seminary students,much destruction of property, and large-scale lootingof money. Major military action was required to putdown the insurrection, which in all Spain cost 1,500lives and led to more than 15,000 arrests.1 Toconservatives this was what they had always feared:revolution on the march. It produced intensepolarization and an enormous propaganda campaignduring 1935-36 in which the Left ignored their ownatrocities while accusing the authorities of crimes andexcesses during the repression, which in turn might be

interpreted as a classic case of the perpetratorsblaming the victims.2

The insurrection had many of the features of civilwar, but was this really the beginning of the war of1936-39? That seems quite doubtful, since for sixteenmonths after the insurrection the country wasgoverned by moderate coalition governments thatupheld law and order, followed by democraticelections in February 1936. What would be moreaccurate would be to say that this was the beginningof the rhetoric and propaganda of civil war by Left andRight. During the two years that followed, Spain wasinundated with atrocity stories about Asturias and therepression by both sides, which began to create apsychological climate of civil war in the country. FromOctober 1934 the Left stood for increasingly radical,even revolutionary, changes, and polarization wasgreatly intensified.

Yet there still remained nearly two years, and manygood and reasonable opportunities, to avert the civilwar that eventually erupted.

The "Breakdown" ThesisThe military rebels who began the conflict at first

declared almost unanimously that they were takingviolent action not to overthrow the Republic but to savethe Republic, since the constitution had become adead letter, and law and order had broken down.Certainly the breakdown of law and constitutionalorder that had occurred in Spain was unprecedentedin any modern European country in peacetime.Unpunished violation of the law took place in at leastfourteen areas.

fourteen areas.

1. The electoral victory of the Left was later followedby the greatest strike wave in Spanish history,featuring many labor stoppages, in some caseswithout practical economic goals but rather seekingdirect domination of labor relations and of privateproperty, often accompanied by violence anddestruction of property.

2. Illegal seizures of property, especially in thesouthern provinces, sometimes legalized ex postfacto by the government under the pressure of therevolutionary movements. Manuel Tuñón de Lara hascalculated that, between illegal seizures and theacceleration of the agrarian reform, approximately 5percent of all agrarian property in the country changedhands within five months — not a revolution, but aprecipitous change.3

3. A wave of arson and property destruction,particularly in the south.

4. In addition to the destruction, numerous seizuresof churches and church properties in the south andeast and in some other parts of the country.

5. Closure of Catholic schools, provoking a crisis ineducation, and in a number of localities forciblesuppression of Catholic religious activities as well,accompanied by the expulsion of priests.

6. Broad extension of censorship, with severelimitation of freedom of expression and of assembly.

7. Major economic deterioration, which has neverbeen studied in detail, with a severe stock market

decline, the flight of capital, and in some southernprovinces abandonment of cultivation, since the costsof the harvest would be greater than its market value.Hence several southern Socialist mayors proposedthe "penalty of remaining" for proprietors, rather thanthe penalty of exile.

8. Many hundreds — indeed several thousand —arbitrary political arrests of members of rightistparties.

9. Impunity of criminal action for members ofPopular Front organizations, who were rarelyarrested. Occasionally anarchosyndicalists weredetained, since they were not members of the PopularFront.

10. The politicization of justice through newlegislation and policies, in order to facilitate arbitrarypolitical arrests and prosecution, and to place therightist parties outside the law. In spite of the fourviolent insurrections of leftist parties against theRepublic — which had scant counterpart among therightist parties — none of their members werecharged with illegal action in this regard, since justicehad become completely politicized, in keeping withthe Popular Front program.

11. Forcible dissolution of rightist groups, beginningwith the Falange in March and the Catholic tradeunions in May, and moving toward the CEDA andRenovación Española in July. Illegalizing the rightistorganizations was designed to create a virtualpolitical monopoly for the leftist parties, first achievedin the trade union groups.

12. Falsification of electoral procedures and results,which, according to Alcalá-Zamora, passed throughfour phases. The first was produced by the series ofdisorders in various provinces on February 16-19,which destroyed a certain number of ballots, producedrepeat voting of dubious legality in several locales,and distorted final registration of the votes. Thesecond phase occurred during the run-off electionstwo weeks later, when, in the face of physicalintimidation, the conservative parties withdrew. Thethird phase was the arbitrary and partisan actions ofthe Electoral Comission of the Cortes in the secondhalf of March, almost universally condemned byhistorians, which arbitrarily reassigned a sizablenumber of seats from the Right to the Left. The fourthphase was the extreme coercion exerted in the newCortes elections in Cuenca and Granada at thebeginning of May, with the arbitrary detention ofrightist candidates and activists and severe restrictionof rightist activity, producing completely unilateralelections, taken by the opposition to the governmentas a signal of the end of democratic voting in Spain.4

13. Subversion of the security forces throughreappointment of revolutionary officers and personnelearlier prosecuted for violent and subversive actions.One of these commanded the illegal police squad thatkidnapped Calvo Sotelo. Equally notable was theaddition of special "delegados de policía," normallyactivists of the Socialist and Communist partiesnamed ad hoc as deputy police, though not regularmembers of the security forces. This followed theprecedent of the Hitler government in appointingviolent and subversive SA and SS activists asHilfspolizei in Germany in 1933, and one of these

fired the bullet that killed Calvo Sotelo. It should benoted, however, that this procedure was not followedon a massive and systematic scale, as in Germany.

14. The growth of political violence, although itsextension was very unequal in different parts of thecountry. Some provinces experienced relative calm,while in others there was widespread violence,especially in some of the capital cities. Estimates byresearchers of those killed by political violence withinfive and a half months range from a low of 300 to ahigh of 444.5

Even historians sympathetic to the Left have calledthis a "pre-revolutionary situation," and it was certainlyone that would have elicited a sharp and probablyviolent reaction in any other country. But did this meanthat the constitutional Republic had ceased to exist,as the rebels claimed? A simple yes-or-no answerwould probably be ingenuous, since the situation wascomplicated in the extreme. The Republicangovernment had not become a dictatorship (in whichcase there probably could not have been a majormilitary revolt) but neither did it maintain constitutionalorder. Spain lived under a limited but capricious anddecentralized tyranny of the leftist Republicangovernment and the Popular Front parties, in whichlife continued with relative normalcy in much of thecountry but was severely disturbed in some keydimensions and especially in certain provinces. Spainhad entered a kind of gray zone in which the extent towhich the established law would apply was becomingincreasingly uncertain.

Whereas the worker parties looked to a completelynew revolutionary regime, the government of Manuel

Azaña and Santiago Casares Quiroga planned todevelop an exclusionary all-Left (but not socialist)Republic which would extend radical reform butpreserve most private property. It gambled that ifconcessions were made to the revolutionaries, thelatter would eventually be willing to support such aregime. It also gambled that the forces of the Rightwere weak and would be unable to contest thecapricious tyranny through which the country wouldhave to pass to achieve the new radical Republic. Thegamble was lost.

Efforts to Avert Civil WarFrom October 1934 commentators began to warn

of the danger of civil war. Such a prospect waswelcomed and preached only by the more extremesectors of the revolutionary Left, on the grounds that asuccessful revolution always involved at least a briefcivil war, though in 1935 the Communists changedtheir policy in this regard. The extreme Rightattempted to formulate its own plans for armedinsurrection, which were perhaps not so different fromthose of the revolutionaries, since all groupsenvisioned only a brief period of fighting.

As violence, disorder, and the various forms of pre-revolutionary activity mounted, warnings of civil warbegan to take on a new urgency by May 1936. It wasclear to most rational observers that the danger ofbreakdown or serious civil conflict could only beaverted by a stronger, probably more broadly based,government. There were at least three differentproposals to achieve this.

The first began when Azaña was invested with the

The first began when Azaña was invested with thepowers of the presidency of the Republic on May 10(following the destitution of Alcalá-Zamora). For threemonths he had as prime minister presided over aweak, minority all-Left Republican government andnow would have to authorize a replacement. Theprime candidate was Indalecio Prieto, leader of thesemimoderate sector of the Socialists. Prieto soughtto form a strong majority government of Socialists andLeft Republicans, hopefully with the participation ofother leftist parties as well. He proposed to governvigorously, pressing social and economic reforms,repressing disorder, and purging the military. Such agovernment could probably have averted civil war, butit was vetoed by Largo Caballero and therevolutionary Socialists, who rejected any furtherSocialist participation in a "bourgeois" government.Since a strong majoritarian leftist government wasimpossible, Azaña adopted the alternative of anotherweak minoritarian Left Republican government led byhis crony Casares Quiroga, an uncertainadministration that was capable of many arbitrarydeeds but refused to adopt the measures that couldhave averted civil war.

Soon afterward, at a meeting of the leaders of histiny Left-center National Republican Party on May 25,the eminent jurist Felipe Sánchez-Román presentedhis own proposal to "save the Republic." Azaña was apersonal friend of Sánchez-Román, for whom he feltgreat admiration, but after helping to write much of theoriginal Popular Front program, Sánchez-Román hadwithdrawn from the leftist alliance before the elections,concluding that it was wrong for republicans to allythemselves with violent revolutionaries. He nowproposed a "national republican government" of all the

republican parties, Left and center, with strong powersfrom the presidency to enforce the constitution fullyand strictly, repressing disorder from any source, anddisbanding all the party militias. The Socialists wouldbe allowed to join the government if they endorsed thisprogram. Despite his great respect for Sánchez-Román, Azaña rejected his proposal because it wouldhave required allying with the moderate center andbreaking altogether with Socialist radicalism,disrupting the Popular Front. Azaña continued toreject the moderates and insist on an all-leftist policy,despite the risk of civil war.

The third kind of proposal came from severalcentrist liberals and a few of the most moderatemembers of Azaña's own Izquierda Republicana. Thiscalled for a temporary "national Republicandictatorship," given plenary powers of martial law bythe president, to repress disorder and enforce theconstitution. Its most public presentation was made bythe centrist liberal Miguel Maura, one of the foundersof the Republic, in a series of articles in the Madriddaily El Sol late in June. This too was rejected byAzaña and most of the Left Republicans as excessive,unnecessary, and requiring a complete split with theworker Left, the voting support of the Socialists beingfundamental to Azaña's program.

Once the war had actually begun, Azaña finallyreversed course and accepted Sánchez-Román'sproposal on the night of July 18-19, authorizingformation of a broader all-republican governmentunder Diego Martínez Barrio, who led the mostmoderate of the Popular Front parties. The task ofMartínez Barrio was to reach a new compromise and

preserve law and order. Coming even a single weekearlier, it might have been successful, but after theconflict began, it was too late.

The "Provocation" ThesisIt has sometimes been observed that neither the

Left Republican leaders nor the revolutionarySocialists should have complained about the militaryrevolt, since their policy was based on expecting andwaiting for such a revolt, even trying to provoke it, inorder to take advantage of suppressing it. Such athesis offers a correct reading of the policy of LargoCaballero and the revolutionary Socialists, who hadno program for seizing power directly but were relyingon the spread of pre-revolutionary activity to provoke arevolt, which would destabilize the situation to thepoint where the moderate Left would have to makeway for the revolutionaries to lead the government, ineffect beginning the revolution. This was a correctprediction of exactly what happened, but reflects thepolicy only of the revolutionary wing of the Socialistmovement.

Indalecio Prieto and the semimoderate Socialistsector had no such blithe confidence in provoking andovercoming an armed rebellion, which they preferredto avoid, realizing that such a situation could lead to amajor civil war. Prieto called both for greatermoderation, for law and order, and for a strongerRepublican government that would purge the military.At the same time, however, the prietista Socialiststhemselves could not resist exploiting the weakness ofthe Left Republican government to violate theconstitution and advance the program of the

Socialists, so that in practice it was sometimesdifficult to find much difference between the deeds ofthe followers of Prieto and of Largo Caballero.

The provocation thesis raises complex issues whenapplied to the government of Casares Quiroga.Certainly there is no evidence that any of the LeftRepublican leaders wanted a civil war, and late inJune the Ministry of the Interior even sent a circular toprovincial governors instructing them to avoid actionsthat might provoke the military.

It would seem that Casares Quiroga himself was oftwo minds on this issue. He was determined not to bea mere "Kerensky," a sort of puppet who would endup giving in to the revolutionaries. He was also awarethat a conspiracy existed in the army, and expressedsome confidence that it would never amount to morethan a repetition of the "sanjurjada," that futile rebellionof August 1932. Some of those who spoke withCasares Quiroga got the idea that he even welcomedwhat he believed would be a feeble revolt, calculatingthat its suppression would not be difficult and, ratherthan weakening the state to the point where themoderate left would have to cede powers to therevolutionaries (as Largo Caballero calculated), wouldactually strengthen the government, enabling it tocontrol the revolutionaries more easily. This mayexplain why no stronger measures were taken on July13-14, after the murder of Calvo Sotelo, to conciliatethe opposition or to apprehend those responsible,even though the state security forces had beeninvolved.

The Planning of the Rebels

The military conspiracy began in multiple strands ofconfusion and uncertainty soon after the electoralvictory of the Popular Front. It did not achieve anyfocus until a significant sector of the officerssupporting rebellion began to recognize Brig. Gen.Emilio Mola, commander of the garrison in Pamplona,as the overall leader at the close of April. Mola oncehad a reputation as a moderate liberal, and the planthat he developed for the revolt envisioned replacingthe existing leftist government with an all-militarydirectory, which would supervise the drastic reform ofthe Republic in a rightist direction. This envisaged akind of "Portuguese solution," creating a corporative,more restrictive, and authoritarian republic similar toSalazar's Estado Novo in Portugal.

Developing broad support for the conspiracy wasdifficult, for many key sectors of the military werereluctant to commit themselves. Though themonarchists and the CEDA leaders eventuallypledged support, José Antonio Primo de Rivera onlyfinally committed the Falange at the end of June, whilethe Carlists refused to come on board until July 15.Just before the latter date, an embittered Mola wasprepared to throw in the towel, which would meanaccepting the fact that an effective revolt could not beorganized and possibly having to flee abroad.

The plan for military action also accepted that adirect coup d'état in Madrid would probably not besuccessful. Other units would have to be concentratedagainst the capital, and all this would require a weekor two of military operations. The plan thus conceivedof a "mini"-civil war, but not a long conflict, rathersimilar to the thinking of the revolutionaries.

The "Exogenous" ThesisSoon after the conflict began, both sides began to

develop the idea that the real cause of the conflict layabroad. The rebel Nacionales advanced the thesisthat Soviet policy and the Comintern were to blame,targeting Spain for a Soviet-style revolution by the endof August. This charge was false, and will be dealtwith in chapter 11.

Since Hitler and Mussolini began to provide limitedmilitary assistance to the rebels before the end of July,the Republicans soon charged that the military revolthad been conceived in Rome and Berlin to allow thefascists to take over Spain indirectly. This charge wasequally false, since Berlin had refused to haveanything to do with the conspirators before the revolt.Mussolini had signed an agreement with themonarchists in May 1934 to assist a rightist overthrowof the Republic, but that plan soon fell through andbecame a dead letter. In the spring of 1936 the Italianleader refused to deal any further with Spanishconspirators, judging their activities to be futile.Limited military assistance for the rebels was onlydecided in Berlin and Rome between July 25 and 27,when Hitler and Mussolini — both initially surprised bythe revolt — judged that the rebels were strongenough to be worth supporting. Stalin, in turn, onlydecided to provide military assistance to the Republicin mid-September.

The Final CrisisIn retrospect, it seems clear that the final opportunity

to avoid civil war came after the murder of Calvo

Sotelo on July 13. This magnicide had a traumaticand catalyzing effect on rightist opinion, not merelybecause of the identity of the victim but even morebecause of the identity of the murderers and the wayin which it was done, which seemed to demonstrateeither collusion by the authorities or state securityforces completely out of control. Only then did Franco,for example, firmly commit himself to the revolt.

Had Azaña taken the action on July 13 or 14 that hetook late on the night of the eighteenth, replacing theCasares Quiroga government with a more moderateand conciliatory administration, the conflict might yethave been avoided. According to the Left RepublicanMariano Ansó, Mola even sent an officer to meet withthe minister of the interior to learn if the governmentwas now going to change its policy, but such ameeting was denied.

Azaña was urged by some advisors to dismissCasares Quiroga, but he refused, alleging that anysuch action would be tantamount to an admission ofthe government's guilt. But that was the point exactly atissue. Though the government had not authorized themurder, it was responsible for tolerating and evenencouraging the climate in the security forces thatmade so subversive an action possible, and itsofficials had indeed connived in illegal activities on thenight of July 12-13 (as they had many times before),but not in the murder itself. If this culpability could notbe recognized and rectified, then it was unlikely thatcivil war could be avoided.

The government promised an investigation andpunishment of the authors of the crime, but that wassoon short-circuited. Instead, the government

immediately resumed its customary policy of "blamingthe victim," the only action taken being to closevarious rightist centers and carry out arbitrary arrestsof some two hundred more rightists, as though theyhad been responsible for the killing. The government'stotally counterproductive response — one of the worstimaginable — only intensified polarization andconvinced halfhearted conspirators like Franco thatarmed revolt was the only alternative. The time hadcome when it seemed more dangerous not to rebelthan to rebel.

After the war began, one of the Left's most bittercriticisms of Casares Quiroga concerned his failure topurge the military and eliminate the danger of revolt.Both Azaña and Casares, however, were following ahigh-risk strategy of trying to maintain the unity of allthe Left (except the anarchists) without falling prey tothe revolutionaries. To make this work, it seemedimportant not to weaken the security forces or themilitary, who in a crisis might be needed tocounterbalance the revolutionaries. Casares wasconvinced that any military rebellion would becomparatively weak and isolated, and could becrushed by the government. Similarly, he issued strictorders not to "arm the people," even after the militaryrevolt began, for that probably meant handing powerto the revolutionaries, something that he wasdetermined to avoid.

Azaña at first agreed. Once it became clear by thenight of July 18 that the rebellion was stronger andmore widespread than had been anticipated, he didnot turn to the revolutionaries but authorized themoderate Left Republican leader Martínez Barrio toform a broader and more moderate Left-center

form a broader and more moderate Left-centergovernment and also try to conciliate the military, evenat the cost of certain concessions to them.

This was the best available solution, but was triedseveral days too late. The rebel leaders had pledgednot to retreat once the revolt began, and rejected thecompromise. They believed that Azaña and hiscolleagues could not be trusted and that the MartínezBarrio government would be too weak to cope withthe revolutionaries. Indeed, by the early morning ofJuly 19 there was a vehement demonstration againstthe compromise government led by the Socialists andalso by some of the more radical Left Republicans.Martínez Barrio resigned and almost immediatelyAzaña appointed a new Left Republican governmentthat began to "arm the people." The finalresponsibilities thus were those of Azaña for notchanging policy immediately after July 13, thedetermination of the rebels to accept no compromiseonce the rebellion had begun, and finally theRepublican authorities' decision to "arm the people,"guaranteeing full-scale civil war.6

11Moscow and MadridA Controversial Relationship

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,Franco's brother-in-law and foreign minister, RamónSerrano Súñer, delivered a dramatic speech from thebalcony of the Falangist headquarters in Madrid:"Russia is guilty! Guilty of having caused our CivilWar! Guilty of the death of José Antonio, our founder,and of the deaths of so many comrades and soldiersfallen in that war provoked by Russian Communistaggression! ... The extermination of Russia is anecessity of history and for the future of Europe!" 1This expressed graphically the stance of theMovimiento Nacional and the Franco regime, whoseofficial position was that the Soviet Union and itsComintern had instigated the Civil War, and hadengaged in military aggression against Spain. Thetruth, however, was different and much more complex.

In fact, the Communist International, or Comintern,bore comparatively little responsibility for instigatingthe Civil War. In the final weeks before the conflict itsleaders had sought to discipline and in certain ways tomoderate the revolutionary Left in order to avoid acataclysm, even though they encouraged anaggressive Communist policy in parliament. Morebroadly, Communism had a certain indirectresponsibility only to the extent that the era of theRussian Revolution had opened a generation of"European civil war," launching the menace of

revolution and counterrevolution that would lastthrough the 1940s.

The Partido Comunista de España (PCE —Communist Party of Spain) was founded by twoagents of the Comintern in 1920, with the assistanceof young radicals who had broken away from theSocialist Party. For the next sixteen years it wasdistinguished primarily by its insignificance, failing toestablish a significant base. Until 1935 the policy ofthe Comintern was nonetheless to foment immediaterevolution in almost every country in which there was aCommunist Party, and to move immediately to "formSoviets." In Spain the Second Republic was rejectedas "bourgeois reaction," but the emphasis onimmediate revolution proved entirely fruitless.2

The policy of the Comintern, and therefore of itsunderling the PCE, changed drastically in August1935 with adoption of the tactic of the Popular Front.Communist insistence on immediate violent revolutionhad isolated the movement and led to a variety ofdisasters, above all the triumph of Hitler in Germany.Comintern leaders defined the Popular Front as achange in tactics rather than a change in strategy,abandoning the isolationist insistence on immediaterevolution in favor of forming electoral alliances withother leftist and even liberal democratic parties, not toinstall Communism but rather first to "defeat fascism."They declared that the new tactics would ultimatelyhasten rather than delay revolution.3

In Spain this coincided with the new priority of theLeft Republicans and the semimoderate sector of theSocialists for an all-Left alliance to win the nextelections. Azaña had little desire to include the small

revolutionary parties, however, and it was only at theinsistence of Largo Caballero and the revolutionarySocialists that the Communists, with their smallnumbers, were brought in, although the alliance dideventually adopt the Comintern terminology of"Popular Front," somewhat to the distaste of Azañaand the Left Republicans. It was thanks primarily to theassistance of these new allies that the Communistsgained seventeen seats in the Cortes elections of1936. By this time the PCE was growing rapidly forthe first time, while the revolutionary sector of theSocialists declared their own goal to be what theycalled "bolshevization," though their aim was toabsorb the Communists rather than vice versa.

In the spring of 1936 the leaders of the Cominternencountered a situation in Spain without anyprecedent. For fifteen years, down to 1935, theComintern had preached immediate revolution andhad gone from defeat to defeat, usually in isolation. In1936, after adoption of the electoral alliance of thePopular Front, the Left found itself in power in Spain,and the Communists, though not in the government,were allied with a leftist administration, something thathad never happened before. As Hitler's rearmamentcontinued, Stalin sought to reduce the fear ofCommunist revolution in Europe so as to gain alliesagainst Germany. The first victory of this new tactichad occurred in Spain (even though Spain had notbeen the primary objective), and for the first time alliesof the revolutionary Left were in power in a largeEuropean country. If the latter played their cards right,the new tactic might make it possible to achieve thepreliminary goals of revolution by legal andparliamentary means, a totally unprecedented

situation. Thus the Comintern sent instructions to thePCE between April and July 1936 to work tomoderate the more extreme and violent actions of therevolutionaries, whether anarchist or Socialist.Whereas for fifteen years the Comintern had donevirtually nothing but preach revolutionary civil war, inSpain it sought to avert the civil war that was looming,for the latter could open a Pandora's box that mightruin what was suddenly, for the Comintern, the mostpromising political process in any country in the world.

Nonetheless, the program, propaganda, andactivities of the PCE in Spain during the monthsbefore the Civil War were far from being either"moderate" or "counterrevolutionary," as the extremerevolutionary Left and some historians would laterclaim. Comintern policy directed the PCE tochampion a policy of "legal radicalization," makinguse of the Left's complete domination of parliament togo much farther than the program of Azaña andCasares Quiroga. Communist tactics sought to avoidunnecessary violence and extremist strikes butencouraged widespread legal confiscation ofproperty, strong state censorship, falsification of newelections, and making illegal all the conservative andrightist political organizations, all this in order tocreate a complete monopoly for the Left. Throughsemilegal means this would transform the Spanishsystem into a new all-Left Republic, a "people'srepublic," which would for a time remain semipluralist,but only for leftist groups. In the Comintern scheme ofthings, at some future date the all-Leftist Republic wasto give way to a "Worker-Peasant Government," whichin turn would then create conditions, in the final phaseof a three-step process, for a Communist regime.

That, of course, would lie at some undetermined pointin the future. Whether or not such a scheme wouldever be workable, the Spanish Communists, thanks toComintern tutelage, had the only coherent strategy ofany of the revolutionary movements in Spain, though inimmediate tactics they were not the most extreme.Nothing so clear-cut would be found in the planning (ifone can call it that) of the two large movements, theanarchosyndicalists of the CNT and the revolutionarySocialists.

The Communists concentrated their activity andpropaganda especially in the capital, as Lenin hadearlier done in Russia, and the sight of thousands ofuniformed Socialists and Communists marching inMadrid with banners hailing the Soviet Union — theyoung women chanting the scandalous slogan"Children yes, husbands no!" — gave frightenedconservatives a greatly exaggerated notion of thepower and numbers of the Communists. In April theyhad managed to take control of a merged JuventudesSocialistas Unificadas (JSU — United SocialistYouth) and by the end of June 1936 claimed to have100,000 party members in Spain, but that wasprobably an exaggeration. Even so, if the real figurewas only half that, it was equivalent in proportionateterms to the numbers of the Bolshevik Party in Russiain November 1917. The difference, of course, was thatSpanish society was politically much more diverseand more mobilized than that of Russia.

Comintern leaders in Moscow feared outbreak ofcivil war in Spain, which they thought might comeeither from a military revolt or another prematureanarchist insurrection that would play into the hands ofthe Right. After the military insurrection began, they

the Right. After the military insurrection began, theywere appalled by the violent outbreak of revolution thatfollowed the "arming of the people" in the Republicanzone, and immediately outlined a program thatinsisted on complete unity of the Left, moderation ofthe revolution, and total priority for the military effort,abandoning the multiparty revolutionary militia in favorof a disciplined new "Ejército Popular" (People'sArmy), modeled on the Red Army that had won theRussian civil war of 1918-20.4

Stalin decided on direct military intervention in theSpanish conflict after only two months, in mid-September. He had first to determine whether theSpanish Left was capable of sufficient unity to make arealistic effort at winning, and the formation of an all-Popular Front government under Largo Caballeroapparently convinced him of that. Soviet interventionadvanced incrementally, through a series of steps.Economic assistance was provided by the Soviettrade unions early in August, and formal diplomaticrelations were then established with the Republic forthe first time, Soviet diplomats arriving late in themonth. Next, a small number of Soviet aviators cameas "volunteers" to fly in the Republican air force, andthe decision to send major Soviet military support wasfinally taken in mid-September, the first Soviet armsarriving at the close of the month, with majorshipments arriving before the end of October.

Altogether, Soviet military assistance wassubstantial, amounting to 5,000 trucks, 800warplanes, 330 tanks, and sizable numbers of artillery,machine guns, and rifles. In addition, nearly 250fighter planes were manufactured according to Sovietspecifications in the Republican zone. Conversely, the

number of Soviet military personnel sent to Spain wasvery limited, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000, ofwhom few more than 200 were killed. None of themwere simply soldiers, since all the Soviet personnelconsisted either of airplane or tank crews,technicians, or higher-level advisors. In addition, theSoviet and Comintern network assisted in large-scaleacquisition of arms and other supplies on theinternational market.5

All this was paid for after the Republicangovernment shipped most of the gold reserve of theBank of Spain (fourth largest in the world), amountingto more than $600 million, to Moscow at the close ofOctober 1936. Leaders of the Republican governmentcontended that the Non-Intervention Policy of theWestern powers left them with no major source ofmilitary supply other than the Soviet Union, and thelatter in turn periodically converted varying amounts ofthe Spanish reserve into rubles or other foreignexchange to pay for shipments, until by 1938 itdeclared that the entire gold supply had beenexhausted. During the final year of the war some $200million in credits were extended to the Republicangovernment to cover the last shipments of arms.

In addition, the Comintern organized in the autumnof 1936 the famous "International Brigades" ofvolunteers to assist the Republican army. Most of thevolunteers were Communists, and until September1937 the Brigades were not formally integrated intothe structure of the Republican forces. Though theirnumbers were relatively limited (amounting to no morethan 42,000 men, compared with the more than amillion men mobilized by the Republican forces inSpain), they played an important role in key battles

Spain), they played an important role in key battlesbetween the autumn of 1936 and the summer of 1938.

The Comintern was also extremely active in thepropaganda war, but the Communist line was carefullydifferentiated according to three different levels ofdiscourse. On the international level, it completelydenied the existence of any revolution in Spain,insisting that the struggle was simply one of fascismversus democracy, the Republic merely representingparliamentary democracy, as in "France, England, orthe United States." Within the Republican zone, theCommunist line championed the wartime Republic asthe first European "people's republic," not aCommunist regime, which needed to discipline andchannel the extremism of the anarchists and others. InCatalonia the line was slightly different, as the newPartit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC —United Socialist Party of Catalonia) had to contest thehegemony of the CNT and declared itself the "partitúnic bolxevic revolucionari de Catalunya" (soleBolshevik revolutionary party of Catalonia), the onlyforce capable of leading a victorious revolution,carefully disciplined and channeled.

Within the Soviet Union, no effort was made toconceal the revolutionary character of the Spanishconflict, officially defined as the "Spanish national-revolutionary war." This Soviet definition held that itwas simultaneously a Spanish war of nationalliberation from Germany and Italy, and a revolutionarystruggle of emancipation and dominance for thepopular classes of Spain. This formula subsequentlybecame official in Soviet historiography, and to someextent is repeated in historical accounts in Russian tothis day. It was also officially adopted by the writers

and propagandists of the PCE, who continued toemploy the same formula until the final years of theFranco regime.

During the Civil War, the PCE became a massorganization for the first time, by early 1937 swelling tomore than a quarter million members. More than anyother group, the Communists preached the priority ofmilitary strength and winning the war, and soon gaineda disproportionate number of command positions inthe Ejército Popular, which adopted the Soviet redstar as insignia, the German Communist clenched fistas military salute, and the Soviet system of politicalcommissars to maintain loyalty and morale.

Even before the war began, the Comintern hadspecified that the goal of the Popular Front would be,depending on possibilities, the establishment of anewstyle "people's republic," the first regime of thiskind having been introduced by the Soviets inconquered Mongolia in 1924. The people's republicwas not a Communist regime but an "advancedmiddle-class parliamentary republic" that, in the theoryof the Comintern, would prepare a later transition toCommunism as the conclusion of a three-stepprocess. Communist spokesmen officially designatedthe new revolutionary republic of the war years aspeople's republic in March 1937, but this concept wasnever accepted by the other leftist parties. The type ofeconomic structure appropriate for such a regime, theCommunists said, was not the sweeping revolutionarycollectivism inaugurated by the anarchists and the restof the extreme revolutionary Left in Spain, but the NewEconomic Policy (NEP) established in the SovietUnion in 1921, which stipulated a mixed economybased mostly on private property, with only major

based mostly on private property, with only majorindustry nationalized by the state. According to theCommunists, another priority was to win the lower-middle classes to the support of the Republic,possible only under their policy but not under thepolicy of the extreme revolutionary Left. Communistspokesmen vehemently denied that this involved"counterrevolution," as the latter constantly charged,insisting that only a carefully channeled and limitedrevolution was possible so long as the war lasted.Within the Republican zone, Communists stressedthat a people's republic was completely different froma bourgeois, capitalist republic, since decisivepolitical, military, and economic power was no longerin the hands of the bourgeoisie.6

Communist military and political influenceincreased steadily during the first year of the war, andthen expanded further after Largo Caballero wasreplaced by the Socialist Juan Negrín as primeminister in May 1937. Contrary to what was latercharged by many critics, Negrín had not beenhandpicked by the Communists, but was chosen bythe semimoderate sector of the Socialists (to whichhe belonged) and by Manuel Azaña, president of theRepublic. He was more a pragmatist than arevolutionary but believed strongly in a Socialist Spainthat must at all costs win the war. Negrín seems tohave been convinced that if Franco won the war, Hitlerand Mussolini would take over Spain. He neverbecame a mere stooge or puppet of the Communists,but he cooperated very broadly with them, especiallyin military affairs, because they provided the strongestmilitary support and because he consideredcontinued Soviet assistance indispensable to winningthe war.7 Communist influence reached its height in

1938, achieving a position of partial hegemony inRepublican affairs, but at no time did it completelycontrol the Republican government or army. By thelast months of 1938, this partial hegemony producedever greater resentment among the non-Communistforces, until by the first part of 1939 the Communists,though still powerful, found themselves with few alliesoutside the prime minister and part of the army.

Stalin, in turn, began to lose hope for Republicanvictory, and during the late spring and summer of1938 Soviet diplomats signaled to their counterpartsin Germany and other countries that the Soviet Unionmight be willing to terminate support for the Republicso long as Hitler and Mussolini ended their support forFranco. The Axis leaders, however, were notinterested in such a deal, and Stalin therefore couldfind no "exit strategy" from Spain.

Non-Communist Republicans would later charge formany years that in the end Stalin simply "abandoned"the Republic, while trying to leave the non-Communists stigmatized with responsibility for thedefeat. Available evidence suggests the contrary. Afinal large shipment of Soviet arms began to enterCatalonia in the last days of 1938, though Francooverran the region before the deliveries werecomplete. Hours before the coup d'état against Negrínled by Col. Segismundo Casado in Madrid on March6, the last words from Moscow urged the Communistsand other Republicans to resist to the last. Sovietpolicy only changed in August 1939, when Stalinsigned his pact with Hitler, opening the way for thestart of the Second World War in Europe.

Subsequently one of the few things on which the

spokesmen of the extreme revolutionary left and theFranco regime could agree was that the Communistshad controlled the Negrín government, creating thefirst example of the kind of people's republicsimposed by the Soviets after 1945 on the lands thatthey occupied in eastern Europe. Leading figures ofthe Spanish Communist Party in exile, such asDolores Ibárruri ("Pasionaria"), claimed the samething. Such rare unanimity might be thought evidenceof accuracy in this assertion, but was that really thecase?

In fact, the revolutionary wartime Republic in Spainmight be called a people's republic of sorts, in so faras it was an all-leftist regime from which democraticliberals and conservatives had been excluded, but itwas not the same sort of regime as the onesestablished in eastern Europe. In Republican Spain,Communist influence became partially hegemonic, butit was by no means completely dominant. Importantareas of the government, the armed forces, and theeconomy always lay outside Communist control. Theeast European people's republics languished undertotal Soviet military occupation for many years, andCommunists completely controlled their governments,armed forces, security forces and economies. Thiswent well beyond the situation in Republican Spain.

The Communist influence that existed in Spain wasextensive enough that it aroused mounting resentmentand opposition among the other leftist parties, all themore since by the end of 1938 there seemed littlechance of winning the war. Thus, paradoxically, theSpanish Civil War ended the way it had begun, with arevolt by sectors of the Republican army against theexisting Republican government, alleging that the

existing Republican government, alleging that thelatter had succumbed to Communist domination.

Whereas thousands of Communists around theworld were shocked by the Hitler-Stalin Pact, thisseems to have offended Spanish Communistsconsiderably less, angry as they were with theWestern democracies for having failed to support theanti-Fascists in Spain. For the next two years, Sovietand Comintern policy was oriented against Britainand France, the enemies of Stalin's associate Hitler,who were condemned as capitalist, imperialist, andmilitarist. London and Paris, rather than Berlin andMoscow, were blamed for the war in Europe. Thisabruptly changed in June 1941, when Germanyinvaded the Soviet Union. Spanish Communists werethen instructed to create a broad national front, evenincluding conservatives, against Franco. This provedimpossible, because the other leftist and republicanparties remained hostile to the Communists, to theextent that during the first years after the Civil War, theSpanish Left in general were more anticommunistthan leftist forces in any other Western country. Onlytoward the end of World War II was it possible torebuild a general alliance against Franco in which theCommunists were included.

In general, Stalin and Franco followed curiouslysymmetrical policies during the first half of the worldwar. Each began the war as technically neutral, butboth were strongly tilted toward Berlin, even thoughHitler's relationship with Stalin made Franco nervousand was not approved of in Madrid. What was similarwas that both Stalin and Franco hoped to achieveterritorial expansion in the shadow of Hitler with onlylimited military activities of their own. During 1939-40

Stalin occupied large areas in eastern Europe, in onlyone case with hard fighting, while Franco later hopedto do much the same in northwest Africa andsouthwestern Europe. Hitler's subsequent invasion ofthe Soviet Union generated intense enthusiasm inMadrid, though Franco was careful not to accompanythe dispatch of the Blue Division ("División Azul," afterthe blue shirts of the Falangists' uniform) to theRussian front with an official declaration of war. Stalintook much the same approach. A full Spanish divisionfought for two years against the Red Army (while3,000 Spanish Communists fought with the RedArmy), but Stalin chose not to complicate mattersfurther by officially declaring war on Spain. Given theenormous dimensions of combat on the eastern front,one single Spanish division was not that important.

This did not mean, however, that Stalin intended toignore Franco. During 1936-37 he had paid closeattention to events in Spain and to the Sovietintervention, though subsequently it became less of apriority for him. At Potsdam in 1945 he denouncedfive neutral or non-belligerent governments, which heclaimed had aided Hitler — those of Spain, Turkey,Sweden, Switzerland, and Argentina — and urged theAllies to take action against them. Although theWestern powers rejected military intervention,Spanish Communists initiated a guerrilla war againstthe Franco regime in October 1944, with an invasionfrom France through the Vall d'Aran.Anarchosyndicalists later participated in their ownsmaller insurgency, while the Communists persisted inarmed action until 1952, though after 1949 thisamounted to very little. The attempted insurgency,raising the specter of violent revolution once more,

probably strengthened rather than weakened theSpanish regime, and at no time threatened itsstability.

Stalin's animosity did not lessen during the lateryears of his life. Soviet contingency plans for a majorwar in Europe envisioned a sizable amphibiousinvasion of the Iberian Peninsula, but in fact the Sovietarmed forces probably never had the means for suchan ambitious undertaking. Relations between Madridand Moscow only began slowly to normalize in 1956,three years after Stalin's death, when the Spanishregime was admitted to the United Nations as part ofa broad international compromise. Six years later, themost intense phase of the Cold War came to an end,and relations gradually improved during the 1960s, fulldiplomatic relations being restored after the death ofFranco.

In the 1970s the Spanish Communists, by that timelargely independent of Moscow, moved toward a kindof democratic reformism. They were never able torestore an effective alliance with the Socialists beyondthe municipal level, but the two main leftist parties ofSpain's democratic transition agreed for a number ofyears on a more neutral position in the Cold War andon opposition to joining NATO, reflecting much ofSpanish public opinion, seeking to avoid commitmentin the international affairs of the day. At one point thisbrought Moscow's special commendation of FelipeGonzález and the Socialist policy, but that alsomarked the final phase of the classic Spanish Left, asthe Socialists soon moved toward a more pragmaticstance.

That Spain was undergoing a definitive move

toward the Left-center (and Right-center) wasnonetheless not so clear to the Soviet leadershipduring the very last years of Soviet expansionism.Following the disastrous defeat of Carrillo in thedecisive Spanish elections of 1982, the Sovietgovernment, counseled by its "Iberian specialist,"Vladimir Pertsov, invested more than a little money inSpain in a vain effort to revive an orthodox Soviet-styleCommunist Party.8 This effort was unsuccessful, andby the end of the decade it was the Soviet Union, notcapitalism or democratic Spain, that was collapsing,ending the long political relationship with SpanishCommunism initiated seven decades earlier.

12The Spanish Civil WarLast Episode of World War I orOpening Round of World War II?

During the Civil War the Republicans developed adiscourse that identified Italy and Germany as the realsource of the conflict, which they often called aninternational struggle against fascism. TheNacionales, in turn, called their effort part of aninternational struggle against Communism. In 1938the Negrinista slogan "Resistir es vencer" (To resist isto win) was predicated on continuing the war in Spainuntil it became part of a larger conflict in which Britainand France, once they were at war with Germany,would supposedly help the Republic to achievevictory. As soon as the Second World War began inEurope, Republicans in exile declared that their ownwar had constituted the "opening round," "first shot,"or "prelude" to the greater European war. This laterbecame the theme of several scholarly studies, suchas Patricia van der Esch's Prelude to War: TheInternational Repercussions of the Spanish CivilWar (1951).

Franco, conversely (and much to the disgust ofHitler), officially announced the neutrality of hisgovernment in any broader European war at the timeof the Munich crisis in September 1938. Though heremained close to the Axis dictators and signedagreements with them in the months between theSpanish war and the European conflict, as soon as

the latter began he once more proclaimed Spain'sneutrality. This changed with the imminent fall ofFrance in June 1940, when Franco announced hisregime's status of "non-belligerence," something notrecognized by international law but invented less thana year earlier by Mussolini to indicate a policy in whichhis country would not enter the fighting yet in itssympathies and actions tilted toward Germany. "Non-belligerence" was thus a kind of pre-belligerence.From June 1940 through the spring of 1941, at least,Franco indicated that he was willing to enter the waragainst Great Britain on the side of Germany so longas Hitler guaranteed major economic and militaryassistance, and large territorial concessions — all ofwhich Hitler refused to do. In the meantime, Francoand his associates declared on various publicoccasions, and also in their private conversations withAxis leaders and diplomats, that they considered theSpanish conflict the first part of the greater Europeanwar, which was its continuation. Even though Francostopped saying such things in 1942, for a time heseemed to agree with the Republicans. Was,therefore, their common contention not correct?

In one obvious sense, the answer has to be no. TheSpanish war was a clear-cut revolutionary-counterrevolutionary contest between Left and Right,with the fascist totalitarian powers supporting theRight and the Soviet totalitarian power supporting theLeft. World War II, on the other hand, only began inEurope when a pan-totalitarian entente was formed bythe Nazi-Soviet Pact with the aim of allowing theSoviet Union to conquer a sizable swathe of easternEurope while Germany was left free to conquer asmuch of the rest of the Continent as it could. This was

a complete reversal of the terms of the Spanish war.

The formula might be reversed, with the conclusionthat the Spanish Revolution and the Civil Warconstituted the last of the revolutionary crisesstemming from World War I. Just as the militarycharacteristics and weaponry of the Spanish warsometimes resembled those of World War I as muchas those of World War II, so the Spanish situation hadmore characteristics of a post-World War Irevolutionary crisis than of a domestic crisis of theWorld War II era. Among these characteristics were(1) the complete breakdown of institutions, as distinctfrom the direct coup d'états and legalitarianimpositions of authoritarianism more typical of the eraof World War II; (2) the development of a full-scalerevolutionary/counterrevolutionary civil war, a relativelybroad phenomenon after World War I, but elsewhereunheard of during the 1930s and appearing only inGreece and Yugoslavia during and after World War II;(3) development of a typical post-World War I RedArmy in the form of the Republican People's Army; (4)an extreme exacerbation of nationalism in theNational zone (and in two regions of the Republicanzone), again more typical of World War I and itsaftermath than of World War II; (5) frequent use ofWorld War I-style military matériel and concepts; and(6) the fact that it was not the product of any plan orinitiative by the major powers, and in that senseresembled post-World War I crises more than those ofWorld War II. Similarly, the extreme revolutionary Leftboth inside and outside Spain hailed the Spanishrevolution as the latest and one of the greatest, if notindeed, the greatest, of the revolutionary upsurges ofthe post-World War I era.

It was negotiation of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, ratherthan the Soviet intervention in Spain, that obeyed theSoviet doctrine of promoting and profiting from the"second imperialist war," the Soviet term since themid-1920s for the next great European war, anorientation that long antedated the rise of Hitler.According to this doctrine, the Soviet Union should notdiscourage war among imperialist capitalist powersso long as it could avoid involvement, for war wouldweaken the major capitalist states. The Soviet Unionwas to strengthen itself as much as possible and thenbe prepared to enter the war at the decisive momentto determine its final outcome in order to advanceCommunism. To a degree, that was the way that theSecond World War worked out in the long run, but in1935 Stalin had been so alarmed and frustrated bythe threat of German aggression targeting the SovietUnion that he had turned instead to a policy ofcollective security, which sought cooperation betweenthe Soviet Union and the Western democraciesagainst Nazi Germany, reversing the Soviet position.Intervention in Spain was supposed to complementcollective security, but in fact it failed to do so. Onlyafter the failure of both that policy and of interventionwas Stalin able subsequently to establish through theNazi-Soviet Pact, the terms which were supposed toguide Soviet policy toward the next great Europeanwar.

In September 1939 the Comintern ExecutiveCommittee then dutifully launched the slogan that thenew war between Germany and the Westerndemocracies was an "imperialist war" in whichCommunists should not be involved (though, likeFranco, to some extent they should tilt toward

Germany). The new war would benefit them byhastening the day of revolution. Members of the PCEwere less disturbed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact than werethose in most Communist parties, for the Spanish warleft them with a great sense of bitterness towardBritain and France, which they were now happy toleave to fight Germany alone. The diary of GeorgiDimitrov, the Comintern secretary, for September 7,1939, quotes Stalin as saying to him: "It wouldn't bebad if the position of the wealthier capitalist states(especially England) were undermined at Germany'shands. Hitler, not understanding and not wishing thishimself, is weakening and undermining the capitalistsystem.... We can maneuver, support one sideagainst the other so they can tear each other up all thebetter." With regard to Hitler's first victim, Poland, itwas just another "fascist state," whose destruction byGermany was welcome. "The destruction of this statein the present circumstances would mean one lessbourgeois fascist state! It wouldn't be bad if, as aresult of the crushing of Poland, we extended thesocialist system to new territories and populations." 1Later in the month a Comintern circular went outexplaining that "all efforts to kindle a world revolutionhave so far been unsuccessful. What are the naturalprerequisites of a revolution? A prolonged war, asexpounded in the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.What, therefore, must the attitude of the USSR be tohasten a world revolution? To assist Germany in asufficient degree so that she will begin a war and totake measures to insure that this war will drag on." 2

Meanwhile Franco never formally entered WorldWar II. Some historians have therefore denied theSpanish conflict any significant effect on broader

international affairs. Pierre Renouvin judged itsconsequences to be merely "modest," saying that "itwould be an exaggeration to see in this war a 'preludeto a European war.'" 3 In his Origins of the SecondWorld War (1961), A. J. P. Taylor calculated that theSpanish conflict had no "significant effect" on thegreat powers. The author of The Origins of theSecond World War in Europe (1986), P. M. H. Bell,concluded that the Spanish war was simply "muchoado about nothing" as far as broader events wereconcerned.4

This conclusion, however, is too simple andreductionist. For Hitler, the Spanish war in fact servedseveral purposes, of which the two most importantwere the strategic and the diversionary. He intervenedto avoid the development of a leftist Spanish regimethat would be friendly to France and the Soviet Union,while weakening the strategic position of Italy. Victoryby Franco would neatly reverse that situation,potentially catching France between two fires, whilestrengthening the position of Italy. Equally or moreimportant, the Spanish war served as a majordiversion or distraction, shifting the attention of theWestern powers away from German rearmament andexpansion. Thus by the end of 1936 Hitler wasparticularly concerned that the Spanish war continuefor some time, serving this purpose of diversionthrough 1937 and even into 1938. In addition, it hadthe added advantage of dividing the French internally,and for a while Hitler even hoped that civil war mightbreak out north of the Pyrenees. Finally, it brought Italyand Germany closer together, while worsening Italianrelations with Britain and France.

Of the three dictators, the one most concerned withthe Spanish conflict was not Hitler or Stalin butMussolini. Of the three governments that intervened,only Italy was a Mediterranean power, so that theoutcome in Spain vitally affected its strategic position.Only for Mussolini was victory in the Spanish war anabsolutely vital interest. Thus Italy contributedsignificantly more than Germany to arming andassisting Franco's forces, and invested a much higherproportion of Italy's limited military resources in thisendeavor than did either Germany or the Soviet Unionon opposing sides. This continued to such an extentthat it left Italy in a slightly weakened position militarilyby 1939, even though that probably was not a majorfactor in the continuous military defeats it latersuffered. Moreover, Mussolini's large-scaleintervention began to bind him closer and closer toHitler and generated increasing hostility with Britainand France (all of which benefited Germany more thanItaly).5

After the fall of France, Franco was quite interestedin entering the war on Hitler's side, provided that thelatter was willing to concede the rather steep termsthat Franco wished to exact. Moreover, in the followingyear Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union arousedgreat enthusiasm in Madrid. Whereas Franco hadbeen taken aback by Hitler's destruction of a Catholicauthoritarian regime in Warsaw, which had beensomewhat similar to and also sympathetic to the newSpanish state, Hitler's war seemed to make perfectsense by mid-1941, since the Franco regimeconsidered the Soviet Union its prime enemy. Francoagreed fully with his Republican foes, publiclydeclaring that the broader European war was simply a

continuation of the counterrevolutionary, anti-Sovietstruggle begun by the revolt of the Nacionales inSpain. From June 1940 to October 1943 — that is, forthe greater part of the entire European war — theFranco regime was officially "non-belligerent," not"neutral," with an official tilt toward the Axis.

All of Hitler's major associates during the war inEurope sought to create their own "parallel empires"in the shadow of Hitler's conquests. The first wasStalin, who used the Nazi-Soviet Pact to conquersizable new territories in eastern Europe during 1939-40. Next was Mussolini, who endeavored to wage hisown "guerra parallela" to carve out a great new Italianempire in Africa, the Middle East, and Greece. Hitlerthen awarded Hungary a major expansion of itsterritory in 1940, and Romania sought compensationby conquering the southwest Ukraine as Germany'sally in 1941.

Ironically, Franco sought to emulate Stalin morethan Mussolini or the rulers of Hungary and Romania,for he hoped to achieve significant territorialexpansion with comparatively little fighting, as theSoviet Union had attempted to do in eastern Europe.He nonetheless insisted on stiff terms before Spainwould formally enter the war, requiring massivemilitary and economic assistance, and the cession toSpain of all Morocco, northwest Algeria, and a largechunk of French West Africa. For roughly two years,from August 1940 to the summer of 1942, Hitlersought to obtain Spain's entry into the war, but healways refused to grant Franco's terms, which wouldhave had the effect of alienating the satellite Vichyregime in France, whose cooperation was veryimportant to Germany, both strategically and

important to Germany, both strategically andeconomically. The Spanish Blue Division fought fortwo full years with the Wehrmacht on the eastern front,subsequently generating by far the most extensiveliterature of any division in any army in the entireSecond World War.6 Franco, however, was neverwilling to run the risk of entering the war directly. Fromthe middle of 1942, especially, he grew increasinglyreluctant and apprehensive, though his return toneutrality came much too late to avoid tarring hisregime with the "Axis stigma," leading to internationalostracism for a number of years once the war wasover.7

All the while Stalin had been too Machiavellian forhis own good. By assisting Hitler during his waragainst France and Britain, he facilitated Germany'sstunning victory over France, which then placed Hitlerin a position the following year to launch a devastatingone-front war that came very close to destroying theSoviet Union.

Stalin was saved by Hitler's gratuitous and self-destructive act of joining Japan's assault against theUnited States. By doing so, Hitler encouraged theconditions that enabled the Soviet Union eventually toachieve a complete victory in eastern Europe. Thiscreated a large new Soviet empire of "people'srepublics," which were much more totalitarian thananything that had existed in semipluralist RepublicanSpain of the war years, transforming the Soviet Unioninto a superpower. The war worked out almost as wellfor the USSR as Stalin had ever hoped, even though itwas the most destructive in history, costing the lives ofnearly 30 million Soviet citizens.

In December 1941 an international alliance was

In December 1941 an international alliance wascreated, primarily through the recklessness of Japanand Germany, one that was politically much broaderthan the Popular Front in Spain, since it also includedconservative capitalist society in the United States,Great Britain, and other countries. Did not the Spanishwar foreshadow this development? Not really, for theSpanish Republic represented only the forces of theLeft, whereas the broad alliance of 1941-45 includedthe equivalent of many of the forces on Franco's sideduring the Spanish war. If Hitler had only had to fightthe forces of the Left, he would have won his wardecisively. Neither the European war of 1939-41 northe truly world war of 1941-45 merely replicated theSpanish conflict.

Even though the Spanish war was no mere"prelude" or "opening round" of World War II inEurope, it contributed significantly to the terms inwhich the European war developed. Without directlylinking the Spanish war and World War II, historiansoften advance the argument that the Spanish conflictcontributed significantly to the perceptions andpsychology that precipitated the greater combat. Thusit has not infrequently been contended that thebehavior of Britain and France vis-à-vis the Spanishwar stimulated the false perception by Hitler andMussolini that the Western democracies lacked thewill to fight, and therefore would not respond to muchbolder military actions by the fascist powers. In thisinterpretation, the Spanish war would not be a uniqueprelude but simply the longest in a series of crises inwhich those powers acted aggressively and thedemocracies passively: Ethiopia (1935), theRhineland (1936), Spain (1936-39), Austria (1938),the Sudetenland (1938).

Hitler's policy of using and prolonging the Spanishconflict as a grand international distraction to deflectattention from his own rearmament and expansionwas generally successful. On the one hand, heexploited the complications arising from the Spanishwar as an excuse to avoid any broader understandingwith Britain and France. On the other, he calculatedsuccessfully that the continuation of this war wouldserve to divide France internally and distract it fromfocusing exclusively on Germany during the period(1936-38) when German rearmament had still notproceeded far enough to achieve parity.

The Spanish war also provided immediateincentive for the beginning of the Italo-German ententethat Hitler had always sought. Mussolini becameprimarily committed to the Spanish struggle, whichdeprived Italian policy of freedom of maneuver andtied it increasingly to a Germany that became thedominant partner and exercised the major newinitiatives, all the time progressively burning Italy'sbridges to Britain and France. It was this Italianrealignment that made it possible for Hitler toincorporate Austria as early as March 1938, whilealso making it more feasible for Hitler to move rapidlyagainst Czechoslovakia.

From this perspective it was not that Britain andFrance ignored the Spanish war but indeedsometimes dedicated almost as much attention to itas to Austria and Czechoslovakia. As Willard Frankhas observed, "Even in 1938, the year of Munich,British MPs asked almost half again as manyparliamentary questions about Spain and theMediterranean as about Germany and central

Europe.... The French Chamber of Deputies had tosuspend its deliberations twice in one day for fear of afree-for-all fight over the Spanish question." 8

The Spanish issue significantly divided Franceinternally, while complicating and disorienting broaderpolicy. One result was to bring France to defer moreand more to British decision-making, so that Britishinitiatives became dominant in the alliance of the twodemocracies.

The Italian and German intervention in Spainelicited a Soviet counterintervention that Stalin wouldnot expand sufficiently to achieve Republican victory,partly for fear of the international consequences of toostrong an intervention. For Germany this had thebenefit of intensifying the democracies' suspicion ofand alienation from the revolutionary Soviet Union. Tothe French general staff, this only confirmed itsconviction that the goal of Soviet policy was toprovoke war among the Western powers. The moreStalin intervened in Spain and the more active the roleof the Soviet Union in the Non-Intervention Committee,the less likely was any rapprochement between Parisand Moscow against Berlin. Soviet policy provedcounterproductive, except for the gains in espionagemade by the NKVD. The Soviet Union was moreisolated in April 1939 than in July 1936. Hitler largelyoutsmarted Stalin, as he would do the second timeduring 1939-41, until he made the absurdly fatalmistake of trying to make war on the two largestpowers in the world at the same time.

The outbreak of the European war in no waydepended on the Spanish conflict and wouldundoubtedly have taken place even if there had been

no war in Spain, but the ramifications of the latterhelped to determine the pace and timing of broaderEuropean affairs. Without the complications arisingfrom Spain, the Western democracies might havetaken a stronger stand against Hitler, and conceivablyMussolini might have delayed or even avoided anentente with the latter. Similarly, without thesecomplications and distractions, Hitler would not havebeen able to move as rapidly as he did in 1938.

Yet this scenario can also to some extent bereversed. A Republic without civil war and dominatedexclusively by the Left, functioning as the most leftistregime in western Europe, would also have been acomplicating factor, but not to the same extent as theCivil War was.

Later, after the conclusion of World War II, the mythof the "Spanish national-revolutionary war" wassometimes invoked in the establishment of the newSoviet people's republics in Eastern Europe. It servedas a beacon for the possibilities of revolution in theWest, and Communist veterans of the InternationalBrigades played important roles in the development ofthe new totalitarian regimes, particularly in military andsecurity affairs. This myth achieved specialimportance in the German Democratic Republic,serving as a major reference for a Westernrevolutionary antifascism.9

The counterfactual question may be raised of thehistorical consequences had the Republic somehowwon the Civil War. Such an outcome would notabsolutely have been guaranteed by continuation ofthe war into September 1939, because Frenchstrategy had become so defensive that war with

Germany might rather have dissuaded it from, ratherthan encouraging, any intervention in Spain. Theoutcome might simply have depended on theintrapeninsular balance of power at that time,presumably still quite unfavorable to the Republic.

On the one hand, had the Negrín government wonthe Civil War, it would have been strongly allied withthe Soviet Union, as Negrín had promised Stalin. Buton the other, Republican victory would also haveposed the question of the future of the Republic itself,and that might have lessened dependency on theSoviet Union. Furthermore, the broader European warwould have reduced Soviet assistance, thus limitingCommunist influence. The same confrontation as inMarch 1939, though in a somewhat different form,might then have taken place following a Republicanvictory. A victorious Republic might have beencrippled by its internal contradictions and its severeeconomic problems, which would have been as badas those of the early Franco regime, or even worse. Itspolicy during the European war might have mirroredthat of Franco in reverse: neutrality, though with a tilttoward Hitler's enemies.

Another possibility to be considered is that avictorious leftist Spain would have continued to play arole as a distraction and limitation on French policy.This might so have preoccupied the Westerndemocracies in their concern about the expansion ofSoviet influence that they would even haveacquiesced in Hitler's conquest of Poland as a checkon that influence. That in turn might have hastenedconflict between Hitler and Stalin.10

If, conversely, the European war had proceeded as

it did, would a victorious Hitler and Mussolini in 1940then have felt the need to invade a Republican Spain?This might have been Mussolini's preference, but twoalternative scenarios have to be considered. Hitlermight have preferred to avoid further entanglement,leaving Italy to neutralize Spain, trying to force a leftistRepublic to subordinate its policy to that of the Axis.

Or Hitler might have judged an independent leftistSpain as something intolerable, proceeding to itsdestruction before turning on the Soviet Union. Yet thelatter alternative would have involved Hitler in the"Southern Strategy" urged by his naval commandersin the autumn of 1940, a fuller commitment todeveloping Germany's strategic position in theMediterranean. This would have violated Hitler's ownpriorities, delaying any attack on the Soviet Union, but,if pressed to its ultimate potential, with a Germanconquest of North Africa and the Middle East, thismight have built for Germany a very powerful strategicbase, with incalculable consequences for the future.

Yet another hypothetical scenario might beconstructed in which a Republican Spain might havesurvived the European war as a neutral, though with aforeign policy quite different from that of the Francoregime, even if potentially adopting a "Swedish"policy of accommodating a dominant Germany, justas the Social Democratic government did inStockholm. This would have made reasonablegeopolitical sense in the short term, since it is difficultto define any scenario in which it would have beenpractical for Spain to intervene in the broader warunless directly invaded.

Spain would always have functioned as part of a

peripheral rather than a core strategy by any of thegreat powers, potentially important only to the extentthat its own engagement, or engagement with it byothers, would contribute to much broader designs,and to the extent that its geographical location heldthe key to a larger strategic breakthrough. Its logicalposition in both world wars was neutrality, whateverimportance it had being broadly strategic much morethan narrowly economic or military. Stalin wastemporarily interested in Spain as part of a complex,multidimensioned grand strategy, which turned out tobe too complex and contradictory to carry out.

Hitler's interest in Spain was also strategic, butequally secondary, until the problem of exertinggreater strategic pressure against Great Britainacquired significance in the summer of 1940. Eventhen, it never became such a prime objective that hewas ever willing to meet Franco's price. After that,Hitler grew increasingly disgusted with Franco, whomhe came to view as a cynical and unprincipledopportunist, calling him a "Latin charlatan" who wasshockingly ungrateful for Germany's militaryassistance and hopelessly shortsighted in thinkingthat his regime could possibly survive a Germandefeat. He later opined that "during the civil war, theidealism was not on Franco's side; it was to be foundamong the Reds." Like many other observers, hethought Franco politically incompetent. Hitler believedthat Franco's "reactionary" government wouldinevitably fail, leading to another civil war, and whenthat came, the Führer said, the next time he wouldsupport the Spanish "Reds."

During 1943 both sides asked the same thing of theSpanish government: that it stay out of the war and not

Spanish government: that it stay out of the war and notfavor the other side.11 By 1944, when the Allies hadgained the upper hand, Washington began topressure the Spanish regime more than Berlin everhad. Franco reluctantly made most of the concessionsrequired, but he never went farther than he was forcedto. By the time the war ended, he had formulated anew political strategy that would enable his regime tosurvive, and for some time to prosper, in a postfascistworld.

13Spanish Fascism... aStrange Case?

In 1997, when I published a new history of thefascist movement in Spain, I added to the Spanishedition the subtitle "The Strange Case of SpanishFascism." At the presentation of the book, onejournalist asked, "Why strange?" — a perfectlyreasonable question. In history, of course, every caseis in some sense unique. Moreover, fascistmovements were more "national" and idiosyncratic inalmost every instance than were the different nationalCommunist parties. There was no fascist internationalequivalent to the Comintern, no single internationalcenter and orthodoxy such as that provided by theSoviet Union, no single bible of fascism equivalent tothe writings of Marx and Lenin. The writings ofMussolini and Hitler were less systematic and did notserve the same function.

The Spanish case was "strange" first because itwas one of the latest and weakest of all the nationalfascist movements, for five years even weaker thanfascist movements in north European democracies. Itwas also peculiar in that it achieved power of a verylimited sort as the state party in 1937. This wasunusual, because fascist movements overwhelminglyfailed; the only other fascist movements to reachpower were those of Italy, Germany, and Romania (thelatter briefly in a kind of diarchy with the militarydictator Antonescu in 1940-41).1 Moreover, in a purelyformal sense it retained its limited share of state

power long after the end of the fascist era, until thedeath of Franco. This was totally without precedent,even though the survival of the Falangist movementwas predicated on a long, slow process ofdefascistization — another paradox. It was also theonly fascist movement to undergo ideologicaldefascistization, the original "official" Twenty-SixPoints being replaced by the defascistized Principlesof the Movement (1958), another change withoutprecedent or parallel.

Prior to 1936 Spain was an unlikely candidate forfascism, as was recognized by, for example, thecountry's two leading revolutionary Marxistintellectuals, Luis Araquistain of the Socialists andJoaquín Maurín of the POUM, in publications of 1934and 1935, respectively. Since they represented two ofthe most paranoid sectors of Spanish politics, on theone hand, but were perfectively objective and lucid intheir analysis of the prospects for fascism, on theother, their examination bears some weight, and infact was perfectly accurate.

It is also important to examine the situation in termsof a retrodictive theory of fascism.2 Without repeatingall the details of the retrodictive theory, suffice it to saythat such factors were comparatively weak in Spain.The cultural crisis of the fin de siècle, despite all thediscussion of "the disaster" of 1898, had less impactthan in many other parts of Europe. A strongpreexisting nationalism, one of the key variables, wassimply not present in Spain. As Araquistain andMaurín pointed out, the Great War had impactedSpain less than it had other countries — there wasonly a limited sense of frustrated nationalism, no mass

of returning war veterans, and even at the height of thedepression crisis proportionately fewer unemployed— a noteworthy feature of the normally much-malignedSpanish economy.3

Even the more "fascistogenic" factors that werepresent had little effect in Spain. There was anunconsolidated new democratic system — a primetype of breeding ground for fascism — butnonetheless the political system was already fullymobilized, most political space firmly occupied byestablished forces of the Left and Right, leaving littleroom for a new radicalism. The country experiencedthe twentieth-century crisis of European culture, aswell as the challenge of secularization, but in Spainthe responses to this crisis polarized between thetraditional Left and Right. A major challenge from theLeft encouraged fascism in other countries but had nosuch effect in Spain, where the response was moremoderate and to a large extent defined by religion,until the spring of 1936. Successful fascist movementsrequired flexible and effective, preferably charismatic,leadership, as well as allies at crucial moments, butthese factors were lacking prior to the Civil War. TheLeft was not monolithic, but it was fully mobilized,permitting no "national socialist" defections, and therewas no sense of a failed revolution, as in Germanyand Italy, since the revolutionary Left became strongerand stronger. The middle classes were not assecularized or as nationalist as in central Europe anddid not seek alternative radical politicalrepresentation. Each sector of the middle classes —Left-liberal, centrist liberal, and rightist — heldrelatively firmly to their positions, and there were nomajor defections, as in central Europe. There was no

noteworthy Jewish minority, and no internationalpressures or humiliations that might have elicited abroader patriotic reaction. Though economicproblems were severe, they were correctly notperceived as somehow imposed from abroad.Paradoxically, fascist movements developed primarilyin European countries with parliamentary systemsand, as mass political movements, required freedomto mobilize and develop. From approximately March1936 the political and legal systems of Spain becameprogressively less free, leaving a radical oppositionmovement with no political prospects whatsoever.Finally, successful fascist movements required asufficiently developed or stabilized political systemthat would neutralize the military as rival, but theSpanish system became so skewed and disorderlythat the military suddenly became major actors. Theextreme weakness of nationalist sentiment wasperhaps the greatest limitation of all.

Given the weakness of the liberal center in Spain,the challenge to the Left came not from fascism but, innormal political terms, from the Catholic Right, or, in atime of crisis, from the military. When the hour arrived,these would propose to establish their own alternativesystems that would be more authoritarian, but thiswould not be fascism. The Popular Front generatedmassive propaganda about "fascism," but by thatterm the Left simply meant their political enemies onthe Right, a standard trope in Spanish leftist discoursethat has continued into the twenty-first century, longafter the total demise of fascism. In 1935 arevolutionary Marxist analyst like Maurín admitted thatthe key rightist leader Gil Robles, for example, was nofascist, but in fact "feared fascism."

The Spain of the Second Republic was not amature north European democracy, but neither was itsubject to the strong nationalist pressures generatedin Germany and Italy. In some respects it waspolitically more similar to Austria and to certain east-central European countries. In the former the CatholicRight imposed a relatively moderate anti-Naziauthoritarian system, and in the latter the military ormoderate rightist authoritarian forces predominated.Wherever the latter were in control they simplyexcluded fascists by force, as the Left did in Spain inMarch 1936. The only exception was the diarchyestablished in Romania in September 1940, but thatlasted only a few months.

The Romanian case was the only one evenremotely similar to Spain, the difference being thatunder the diarchy the Legion of the Archangel Michaelheld more power than did the Falange EspañolaTradicionalista (FET) under Franco. That situationtempted the legionnaires to bid for absolute power,prompting a three-day civil war in January 1941 thatended in their defeat and total suppression. In SpainFalangists occasionally talked of something similarbut wisely chose not to follow the Romanian example.

Given the weakness of the movement in Spain,combined with the incipient breakdown of Republicandemocracy, there was not the slightest chance ofachieving power. Communists sometimes attemptedto seize power through insurrection and civil war;fascists very rarely did. Reduced to the Communistmodus operandi, the Falangists had little hope ofsuccess. In Spain, as emphasized in chapter 11, itwas the Communists who, thanks to the Popular

Front, reversed their course, and formed a veryeffective alliance that, for the first time in westernEurope, associated them with a government in power.

The extensive historical commentary on theinsignificant early history of Falangism is focused to alarge degree on its leader and key founder, JoséAntonio Primo de Rivera. I once wrote that JoséAntonio was "everybody's favorite fascist," even onthe part of antifascists. There is almost universaltestimony that on the personal level he was courteous,charming, intelligent, and entirely engaging. In thetumultuous Republican parliament of 1933-36, he mayhave won the popularity contest. No other deputy wasso well liked even by his opponents, and this in thecase of one ideologically dedicated toantiparliamentary politics. Prior to the advent of FelipeGonzález, he was the first political leader known tofriend and foe primarily by his first name. With thepossible exception of the continuing Mussolini cult inItaly, in no other case can such continuing fervor befound on behalf of a national fascist leader in thetwenty-first century.4

His admirers generally claim that he was not agenuine fascist at all but the architect of an attemptedpolitical "third force" cut short by his early death.5There is almost universal testimony that José Antoniodid not have the personal style, manner, ortemperament of a typical fascist leader. He steppedinto politics, at first only temporarily, after the collapseof his father's dictatorship in 1930. His primaryconcern at first was to defend and by some meanscontinue the work of his father, which, as the eldestson, he felt was his particular responsibility, thoughinitial efforts were completely unsuccessful.

initial efforts were completely unsuccessful.

Political ambition began to crystallize at the time ofthe initial crisis of the Republic in 1933. As histhinking evolved, he concluded that only a new kind ofmovement, with a modern social program, wasrequired to achieve such national goals. JoséAntonio's thinking to a large extent anticipated thelater calculations of Franco during 1936-37.

The year 1933 marked the "second wave" in theexpansion of fascism's influence in Europe, withHitler's triumph in Germany. Hitler, however, was onlyin the first stages of building his National Socialregime, while Benito Mussolini enjoyed great prestigeas the senior fascist dictator, given credit for alreadyhaving transformed and modernized Italy and, in theeyes of some, at least, of having made it into a greatpower. At that moment he stood as the supremelysuccessful "regenerator" of a major underdevelopedsouth European country. José Antonio was stronglyand naively attracted to Mussolini and the ItalianFascist example, which seemed to provide ideology,program, and system to triumph where his father hadfailed. Within two more years he would begin to graspboth the dangers of imitation and the limitations ofItalian Fascism, and to strive, without very muchsuccess, to differentiate his Falangist movement.

The initial political and intellectual leader of a fascistenterprise in Spain was not José Antonio but RamiroLedesma Ramos, the young postal functionary whoprovided perhaps the most clear-cut example of theradical political intellectual in early twentieth-centurySpain. Ledesma originally defined nationalsyndicalism, the basic doctrine of Falangism, as wellas coining some of the major Falangist slogans. In

as coining some of the major Falangist slogans. In1933-34 he understood the essence of fascism betterthan José Antonio, but lacked charisma and thecapacity for leadership, though he and his thinkingwere too aggressive to be satisfied with secondplace, leading almost inevitably to the breakdown ofthe relationship between the two and Ledesma'sexpulsion from the movement at the beginning of1935.6

Political rivalry was important in this split, but therole of ideas and political strategy even more central.This had to do with avoiding the imitation of ItalianFascism, adopting a more revolutionary program andstrategy, and forming broader alliances aimed atseizing power. On these points, Ledesma may besaid to have lost the battle but won the war, for afterhis expulsion José Antonio sought to move theFalange to the "left," and to formally disassociate itfrom Italian Fascism, though he was never able toform effective alliances (which had been fundamentalin Mussolini's and Hitler's rise to power). Leaders ofthe Comintern took this last point more to mind thanJosé Antonio, switching a few months later fromrevolutionary isolation (the tactic of Falangism) to themore common fascist tactic of alliance formationwhen they officially adopted the tactic of the PopularFront in August 1935.

José Antonio sought a more independent path forthe Falange, even while arranging a subsidy from theItalian government and appearing informally at ameeting of Mussolini's abortive "fascist international"to explain that the difficulties facing this sort ofmovement were more severe in Spain than in someother countries. If the Falange was becoming

somewhat less "Italian," it became in some ways evenmore generically fascist in 1935, emphasizing a sortof "left-fascist economics" of national syndicalism,though the corporatism of the latter was supposed togive it a partial independence from the state, in termsthat were never convincingly explained. The attemptedde-Italianization led José Antonio to condemn brieflythe idea of the monolithic "corporative state" and of"totalitarianism," but all without the slightest indicationof any kind of political goals and structure that wouldbe other than rigidly authoritarian. His attempt toseparate Falangism from Italian Fascism was nevercompleted, and probably impossible. He was moresuccessful, however, in differentiating both Falangismand "fascism" from what he termed "Hitlerism," whichhe declared to be racist, mystical, and romantic,lacking the clarity of principles and doctrines of ItalianFascism.

José Antonio's attempt to lead what he termed "apoetic movement" led to tactical and ideologicalconfusion. One of the standard descriptions offascism is that it represented an attempt to"estheticize politics," and this was amply reflected inthe Falangist emphasis on "style," but the movementsoon had to face a grimmer reality. A doctrine ofviolence could not be avoided, though never definedwith the theoretical sophistication of the Italians. BothLedesma and Onésimo Redondo, the number threeleader, endorsed violence, while José Antonio heldthat it was worthwhile in a "just cause," for the "patria,"which somewhat paralleled the position of the Left onthat issue. Because his father had been able to ruleas dictator with relatively minimal violence in thequieter 1920s, José Antonio at first naively assumed

that a new authoritarian system could also beimposed with relatively limited violence, but soonfound himself caught up in a spiral of killing that hecould not control.

One thing different about Spain, compared withother western European countries, was the strongemphasis on violence by the revolutionary Left. It wastrue that in Germany and Italy political violence in1918-19 had been initiated by the Left, but in thosecountries they generally rejected violence, which waspracticed only by a minority of the extreme Left andsoon became the preferred tactic of the extremeRight. In Spain, all the principal worker partiespreached and practiced violence, whereas the partiesof the Right, whatever their long-term goals, pursuedlegal tactics. Thus Ledesma would accurately write in1935 that "In Spain the right is apparently fascist, butin many respect antifascist" (italics his), for, thoughnationalist and in varying degrees tending towardauthoritarianism, it eschewed violence and generallyobeyed the law. Conversely, " the left is apparentlyantifascist, but, in many respects, essentially fascist"because of its propensity for violence andrevolutionary authoritarianism.7 This explained why theemergence of a fascist movement in Spain had beenmet by a wave of violence not initiated by theFalangists themselves, but which served only to elicitfurther the strain of violence that was at least partiallyimplicit in José Antonio's "poetic movement." Thisdoes not mean that the Left was to blame forFalangist violence, but simply that leftist violence andFalangist violence soon became locked in a self-reenforcing dialectic that José Antonio, naively, hadnot foreseen.

All fascist-type movements were, however, singular,differentiated by national characteristics even morethan was the case among Communist movements. Inthat of the Falange, revolutionary nationalism wasmediated, often uneasily and contradictorily, by anattempted symbiosis with cultural and religioustraditionalism. The "new man" sought by nearly allrevolutionary movements, fascist or otherwise, was inthe Spanish case less novel and more characterizedby traditional values, a tendency that placedFalangism on a kind of cusp between revolutionaryfascism and national tradition as affirmed by theradical Right. But whereas the Catholic CEDAexpressed its Catholic values by adhering torepublican legality, the partial espousal of Catholicvalues by the violent and revolutionary Falangecreated cognitive dissonance.

José Antonio only added to such ambiguity bydefining the goals of his movement in binary orantinomic terms. He suggested several times that ifkey objectives of firm leadership, national unity,cultural identity, and a dynamic new national economicpolicy were fully assumed by other groups, such aspatriotic Socialists, he would be prepared to retirefrom politics. Immediately after the Popular Frontelections in 1936, he suggested a momentary truce tosee if the new Azaña government might lead to anational political breakthrough. No other party leaderexpressed so binary an approach.

During 1935 José Antonio was seeking a moredistinctly national revolutionary doctrine. Some of hisideas were in flux, and where these might have led inanother ten years cannot be known. Ironically, just as

the Communists were, after fifteen years, abandoningthe tactic of revolutionary insurrectionism in favor ofpolitical alliance, José Antonio and the Falangistleaders began to embrace insurrectionism. This wasa different example of the reverse radicalization towhich Ledesma referred. Through the Popular Front,the Communists were adopting the fascist tactic ofseeking power legally through alliance and elections.José Antonio, unable to form an alliance, was thrownback on the Communist tactic of insurrection on whichthe Comintern had relied for fifteen years, alwayswithout success.

The turn toward revolutionary isolationism proveddisastrous. There was no hope of gaining militarysupport for armed revolt in 1935, and when the CEDAoffered the Falange a realistic electoral alliance in1936 — one seat for José Antonio, all that the party'sscant numbers merited — it was rejected by partyleaders in favor of continued isolationism. Loss of aseat in the Cortes may have proven fatal to JoséAntonio, leaving him to an arrest of dubious legalityand prosecution on a series of (sometimes artificial)charges that kept him in prison until events wereovertaken by the Civil War.

Like most leaders of national fascist parties, JoséAntonio was a failure. He failed either to win manysupporters or gain allies. On their own, fascistmovements managed to seize power in only twocountries, though one of them was potentially the mostpowerful in Europe. Even so, scarcely any otherprincipal national party did so poorly as the Falange inthe elections of 1936, with only 0.7 percent of the vote.Fascist parties did proportionately better in Hollandand Sweden, two consolidated democracies. Young

and Sweden, two consolidated democracies. Youngvolunteers finally began to flock to the party during thenational crisis of the spring of 1936, but fascism inSpain had no alternative to the Communist tactic ofinsurrection and civil war, though in every instancewhere a fascist movement attempted it (Germany1923, Austria 1934, Portugal 1935, Romania 1941), itfailed. Success in any insurrection would depend onthe army, and the cost of this was completesubordination of the movement.

José Antonio tried to bargain with General Mola forpolitical terms, but these were limited to freedom ofaction for propaganda and party organization, not ashare of power, and that only for so long as theFalangists fully committed themselves to the militaryinsurgency. The terms in which the Falangistscooperated with the revolt of July 18 recognized thecomplete political and military leadership, indeeddomination, of the military.

By the time that the Civil War began, José Antoniowas totally marginalized. The scope and ferocity of theconflict genuinely horrified him, for, like the extremistson both sides, he had thought exclusively in terms ofan insurrection that would involve no more than a"mini"-civil war of no more than a week or two. JoséAntonio was not a total fanatic and, faced with thedanger of national self-destruction, preferred nationalreconciliation, even under a democratic republic.Hence his proposal of August 10, 1936, to travel tothe Nationalist zone to try to negotiate a compromise.This would have meant indefinite postponement of hisown political goals, but there is no reason to considerhim insincere. This was another expression of hisradical binary approach, which he had revealed

before. In his final writings in prison before hisexecution, fascism became remote. He could be saidto have entered a post-political phase of thinking, ashe turned toward spiritual perspectives and a kind ofmetahistorical outlook.8

The Civil War nonetheless created a certain "fascistsituation" in the Nationalist zone. Although theFalangists held no state power, they suddenlybecame the largest single political group, expandingnumerically even more rapidly than the Communists inthe Republican zone. They constituted a politicalpresence that could not be ignored — though it couldreadily have been held at arm's length.

Franco chose not to do that, but to take control ofthe movement for his own purposes. In the nextchapter I draw attention to the fact that, so far as canbe determined, he had no such plan at the beginningof the revolt and very probably not as late as October1,1936, when he formally assumed power. He wasresponding to the radicalized conditions of the CivilWar and the "fascist situation" in the Nationalist zone.Once Franco and Serrano Súñer decided to take overthe movement, this was easy to do. The Falange hadalways been weak in leadership, and after theelimination of José Antonio, leadership was weakerthan ever and also seriously divided. The fascistic cultof "The Absent One" made it temporarily impossibleto select a new national chief and news of the death ofJosé Antonio was long suppressed, with no strongand capable replacement available. If the expansionof the Falange and the terms of the Civil War createda "fascist situation," the rigorous new dictatorship inturn foreclosed the possibilities of anything other thanan official state party under Franco, a certainty more

an official state party under Franco, a certainty moreor less recognized by the internally divided Falangistleaders as they sought to negotiate with the Carlists— the only other significant paramilitary forcesupporting the war effort — to achieve some sort ofunity, or at least common understanding. This provedimpossible, however, as a party initiative alone.

By the spring of 1937 Franco was ready to beginthe structuring of an alternative regime, the notion ofthe authoritarian reorganization of the Republic havingbeen abandoned. Yet he took only minimal steps inelaborating a complete new political system so longas the war lasted. The question may be asked: Whatexactly did he intend by the creation of the FalangeEspañola Tradicionalista as state party in April of thatyear?

Some of Franco's partisans would later emphasizethe ad hoc and open-ended aspects of this move,pointing out his willingness to accept members fromall the non-Left parties and his announcement thatformation of the new entity and official adoption of theFalangist Twenty-Six Points were a point of departureand not a final definition of the new regime. Francowas certainly not prepared to construct a completesystem and obviously wanted to keep many of hisoptions open, but he made it abundantly clear that thenew state would be a radically authoritarian regimedrawing considerable inspiration from its fascistallies.

Since the "Reds" normally called their enemiessimply "fascists," was this not then the beginning ofEurope's third fascist regime? The Franco regimehad quickly become a rigid dictatorship and a one-party state, was engaged in a desperate war, and had

party state, was engaged in a desperate war, and hadjust adopted a fascist-type program as its officialideology. This looked very much like a fascist regime,and yet subsequently most historians would tend toagree that it was not strictly fascist per se, though itcertainly underwent major fascist influence andexhibited certain fascist characteristics, so that, asIsmael Saz puts it, if not "fascist" it was at least"fascistized." 9 That may be as good a way of saying itas any.

The veteran "old shirts" of the party accepted thenew arrangement for lack of anything better and stillhoped for the triumph of the "national syndicalistrevolution," but it is doubtful that Franco evenaltogether understood what the latter was supposed tomean. At that time, the FET was only the third fascist-type party in power and, save for the interlude inRomania, there would be no other, except for theIndependent State of Croatia, part of Hitler's imperiumfrom 1941 to 1944. By point of comparison one mightobserve that the only party truly in power was Hitler'sNational Socialists, for Mussolini had invented theterm "totalitarian" without fully carrying out aTotalitarian Party revolution in Italy, though the FascistParty was certainly larger, more important andinfluential than the FET ever was.

Since the rebel regime in Spain had begun as arightist military regime, the Falangists were in factfortunate that Franco had become semi-"fascistized"and decided to incorporate them rather than tosuppress them. Spain was unique in providing theonly instance, aside from Romania, in which a rightistnonfascist regime incorporated a large fascistmovement. In every other case — Salazar (Portugal),

Dollfuss (Austria), Horthy (Hungary), Smetona(Lithuania), King Alexander (Yugoslavia) — the rightistregime eventually suppressed the principal fascistmovement altogether. Nonetheless, it took theFalangists five years and more before they began tounderstand their good fortune. The decisive factor hadsimply been the Civil War, which so radicalized thesituation in Spain.

As it was, there existed a kind of crude peckingorder in the attitude of fascists in various countriestoward each other. Nazis looked down on Fascist Italyas not being truly "revolutionary" in the way Hitler'sGermany was, while both Nazis and Italian Fascistsregarded Franco's Spain as alarmingly "reactionary"and not fully fascist. Spanish Falangists, in turn,looked down on Salazar's Portugal, Vichy France, andother rightist authoritarian systems as "hollow" rightistregimes, lacking positive fascist political content.

The Franco regime, like that of Mussolini, calleditself "totalitarian," though the limitations of the systemwere hinted at by the Franco himself on variousoccasions when he likened it to the united monarchyof the Catholic Monarchs — a monarchy in factseverely limited by multiple legal jurisdictions. Francowas much more "absolute" than so-called absolutemonarchy in Spain (or anywhere else) ever was, buthis concept of the counterrevolution also containedlimits. He obviously had no intention of handing anysignificant degree of power to the party or anyoneelse, but, rather than constructing a truly totalitariansystem, he respected private property and providedlimited recognition to the diverse sectors of theoriginal National Movement of 1936 — what wouldlater be termed the various politico-ideological

later be termed the various politico-ideological"families" of the regime.

Even though in the immediate aftermath of the CivilWar the FET had distinctly more politico-administrative influence than any other "family" exceptthe military, the limitations of this situation quicklybecame evident to some of the most radicalFalangists. Hence the idea that began to developfrom the autumn of 1939 that Franco had betrayed theideals of José Antonio, a conviction that would onlygrow in the future among hard-core Falangists. Thehistory of the FET-Movimiento Nacional wouldbecome the history, among other things, of semi-constant dissidence, even though the dissidence wasof limited importance and always confined to smallminorities.10 It became a permanent feature of themovement, tolerated by Franco because it was notnormally threatening and because the nontotalitariancharacter of the regime did not require completedestruction of all dissidence. The most menacingsingle aspect of the dissidence developed in the firstyear after the Civil War, when some of the ultrasformed a secret junta to plan the possibleassassination of Franco. So far as we know, this juntahad no counterpart in any other fascist movementparticipating in power, but after some months itdecided to cancel its activities. The major problemwas that there was no one to replace Franco, andgiven the special place of the military, combined withthe latter's anti-Falangist attitude, it seemed clear thatthe military would ruthlessly suppress independentviolence by the Falangists, something that the lattergrasped even before the abortive revolt of the IronGuard in Romania in January 1941.

The abortive plans to convert Spain into a majormilitary power, to follow a curiously "Soviet" strategyof intervening in a European war only at the decisivemoment, were a strictly military enterprise. There wasno major input by any part of the party, as in Italy andGermany, and in fact the party's very limitedparamilitary resources were fully terminated by thearmy command in 1941.

Franco had great ambitions by the close of the CivilWar, suffering from a certain megalomaniac vertigo ofvictory, and wanted to keep both his domestic anddiplomatic options open. Leaders of the FET hopedthat the course of events would favor them, and for twoyears after the end of the Civil War that seemed to bethe case. The increasing power and influence of theAxis encouraged further fascistization in Spain and, ifHitler had scored such decisive victories in 1941 as in1940, that indeed might have been the way that itworked out.

The most important leader of the FET was not anyof its secretary generals, but Ramón Serrano Súñer.He has claimed that he sincerely sought to develop asystem that would carry out the doctrine of JoséAntonio and also to develop a firmly structured regimewith a system of law to ratify this outcome. Serranowas the first president of the FET's Junta Politíca, buthe also understood that in Franco's regime the statewas more important than the party, so that his mostimportant roles were first as minister of the interiorand then as foreign minister.

His most important attempt to transform thestructure of the state was the initiative of the JuntaPolítica in the summer of 1940 to prepare a draft for a

new institutional system, though care was taken not toreduce the personal power of Franco. The text of thisLaw for the Organization of the State was composedof five sections: Article 1 echoed the Falangistprogram, declaring the state "a totalitarian instrumentin the service of the integrity of the Fatherland. All itspower and institutions are dedicated to this serviceand are bound by law and by the political and moralprinciples of the National Movement." Twenty of thethirty-seven articles of this project were devoted todefining the authority and structure of a newcorporative Cortes that would be quite similar to theChamber of Fasces and Corporations of the Italianregime. The most controversial aspect was Article 28:"The Junta Política is the supreme political council ofthe regime and the collegial organ of coordinationbetween the state and the Movement." Article 31continued: "The Junta Política must be heard in fullsession on matters that affect the constitutive powerand the Fundamental Laws of the State, oninternational treaties and concordats, on thedeclaration of war and the conclusion of peace. Thecompetence of the Junta Política in those mattersdefined by the statutes of the Movement remainsunaltered." 11

This alarmed non-Falangists because it proposedto give the highest organ of the party a constitutiverole at the highest level of the state structure. EstebanBilbao, one of the few representatives of Carlism inthe government, wrote a letter of protest against the"systematic interference of the party" in the highestorgans of state.12 This was not the first plan or draft fora set of laws for his regime that Franco had received,for more than a year earlier both the regular

monarchists and the Carlists had presented their ownproposals. During those years, however, Francosought to avoid any political structure that might tie hishands, and the project of the Junta Política, like theearlier proposals of the monarchist movements, wassimply filed away.

The initial point of inflection in Spain came early,however, scarcely more than two years after the closeof the Civil War. Throughout the second half of 1940and the initial months of 1941, both Serrano Súñerand the FET hoped and believed that the tide ofevents was carrying the Spanish regime to decisivechanges in international and domestic affairs. Indeed,had Hitler met Franco's demands at Hendaye, that isthe way it might have worked out. As it was, theincreasing complexity of the international situation andthe disastrous decline of the domestic economydissuaded Franco from changes; his main concernwas foreign and military policy more than domesticpolitics. What he found after the fall of France was thatthe FET leaders and militants had become even morerabidly Germanophile than before, and in fact anymajor concessions to them would have had the effectof forcing his hand in foreign policy, as well. Thereforethe high tide of Axis power in 1940-41 did notproduce any decisive fascistization of the Spanishregime, as the Falangists hoped, but encouragedFranco simply to manipulate the status quo, without adecisive internal change one way or another. Asecond key factor was the intense hostility of themilitary, very critical of any further gesture offascistization, not so much for ideological reasons butbecause they considered the Falangists parvenurivals who lacked competence, integrity, or

coherence.

This produced the most serious crisis in the historyof the regime when the Falangist leaders challengedFranco for the first and last time by a sort of "sit-downstrike" that involved the resignation of a number ofparty leaders. Their bitterness was expressed in theletter of resignation that Miguel Primo de Rivera (theonly surviving Primo de Rivera brother), partyprovincial chief of Madrid, sent to Franco on May 1,1941. It insisted that

the politics of Spain differ notably from thethought of the person who inspired all themen of the Falange to ardent service.

... Though it is true that the completefulfillment of the doctrine of José Antoniowould be hard to carry out in the presentcircumstances, ... it is also true that theinstrument created to make that doctrineeffective some day, that is, the PartyFalange Española Tradicionalista y de lasJONS, absolutely lacks the means andminimal possibilities of carrying out itsdifficult mission.13

This was a serious challenge, for in the climate ofthose days Franco could not simply abandon orsuppress the Falangists (even though he had all thepower to do that), nor did he want to, for at that pointhe had no interest in any major alternative model forhis regime. Moreover, this was the first and onlydomestic political crisis in the history of the regime

that Franco could not initially control, his first responseonly seeming to increase the opposition. Nonetheless,in the final phase his maneuvering was masterful,reorganizing political appointments in such a way asto keep the military under control and gain thecooperation of a new set of Falangist leaders such asJosé Luis de Arrese, who, though they maintained theparty's fascist orientation, accepted the inevitability ofits permanent marriage to Franco. When this wassoon followed by the elimination of the syndical bossGerardo Salvador Merino, some of the most radicaland fully Naziphile had been eliminated, and the partywas on its way to final domestication, though thiswould always depend on the outcome of foreignaffairs.

What the Falangist dissidents had sought at thebeginning of the crisis was a "compact," primarilyFalangist, government, and the only figure who couldhave led it would probably have been Serrano Súñer.The latter has declared in his memoirs that, with thefinal outcome, he realized that Franco had managedto divide the Falangists more than ever and to triumphin every respect. As Serrano put it, "The importantthing about these developments was that I hadceased to be the mediator between the Chief of Stateand the authentic leaders of the Falange.... From thatmoment the FET de las JONS was above all the partyof Franco. After the crisis of May 1941 the Falangistswho had fought by my side lost faith in our politicalenterprise." 14 This, however, may be an exaggerationmade on the basis of hindsight, for the groupassociated with Serrano may not have fully graspedthe extent of their defeat for some time. In fact,Serrano still hoped to retain indirect leadership of the

FET, restricting the new secretary general to technicaladministration, while he remained political leader.Probably neither he nor Franco initially grasped thedegree of enmity and rivalry felt by Arrese, but thelatter proved more adroit than Serrano anticipated.Franco found that Arrese suited him just fine, andwithin a few months gave his approval to the newsecretary general's full control of the party. Only thendid Serrano understand the extent of his defeat.

Moreover, Arrese also sought the role of maximalinterpreter of the orthodox doctrine of José Antonio.He had his own intellectual and ideologicalpretensions, beginning with the book on the Falangistprogram that he had written in 1936, which waspublished only after the war. Originally he had soughtto emphasize the social program of Falangism, but inhis era as secretary general he also stressed moreand more its Catholic identity and the neotraditionalistroots of the doctrine of José Antonio. Whereas for thelatter neotraditionalism was above all a matter ofculture and religion, combined in political matters withat least a limited anticlericalism, it achieved evergreater prominence in the FET of Arrese.

Meanwhile Serrano Súñer — rather like JoséAntonio before him — failed to develop significantallies, ultimately relying too much on his personalrelationship with Franco. After May 1941 he no longereven had the support of most of the Falange, forArrese and the new party leaders strongly resentedhim and moved to undercut his power, somethingwhich Franco did not oppose. Moreover, Serrano'spolitical personality and deportment were very nearlythe opposite of those of José Antonio. Whereas thelatter succeeded in charming many of his enemies,

latter succeeded in charming many of his enemies,the overweening arrogance of Serrano, as leadingminister and brother-in-law of the dictator, made him"the most hated man in Spain," as the Germanambassador accurately described him in reports toBerlin.

During his final year as foreign minister, Serranobecame increasingly frustrated. He saw clearly thatthe more structured and more fascist regime of whichhe hoped to be a special leader (possibly the keyleader) was not emerging in Spain, and that Francohad once more frozen the domestic political situation,as he had done so successfully during the Civil War.As Serrano said to the representatives of Hitler andMussolini, only Spain's entry into the war would breakopen the domestic situation and produce decisivechanges in the regime. As much as he wished for boththese alternatives to come to pass, most of the timehe had to agree with Franco that currentcircumstances simply made entry into the warimpossible. At times he toyed with the idea ofresigning to take up the post of ambassador in Rome,by far the most comfortable place for him outside ofSpain, indeed leaving the post vacant for a while,probably for that eventuality.

The ensuing political crisis of August-September1942 was not as important as that of the precedingyear. Stemming from unresolved domestic conflicts, itcompleted the rebalancing that Franco had begun in1941. In neither case, however, were Franco's newpolitical appointments intended to be part of anyprocess of defascistization. Even in September 1942he was not ready for that, but maintained the posturethat he had assumed in 1937 of leading a one-party

state that contained multiple political strands, whilecontinuing to hold in abeyance any final resolution ofthe regime structure. In 1942 Franco still held firmly tothe "fascistized" model, even though, for theaforementioned reasons, he remained reluctant tocreate a fully fascist regime. Thus he continuedthroughout 1942 to believe that the fascist-style one-party state would remain dominant in most of Europe,and he showed no interest in any alternative model.

The first indication of a change in perspective cameat the very end of 1942, when apparently heabandoned the idea that Germany could win a clear-cut victory in the war and therefore that conditionscould ever favor Spain's participation. Even during thefirst half of 1943, however, this did not lead toabandonment of the "fascistized" model, for theregime then hoped to encourage an arbitratedsettlement that would still leave Germany the mostimportant continental power, even if not fully victorious,and therefore ensure the continuation of the Axis statemodel.

The second and more decisive point of inflectioncame in July-August 1943, with the downfall ofMussolini. This created panic reactions within theFET, though at first Franco maintained his customarycomplacency and imperturbability. Within a month,however, he had assimilated the political andinternational implications, which augured a growingdominance of the Anglo-Saxon powers both in theAtlantic and in at least western Europe, and probablya new postwar power balance not at all favorable tothe fascist political model.

Thus a process of defastiscization began in August

1943, above all cosmetic but also implying certainpolitical changes, as well. The propaganda line beganto change, though Spanish news reporting wouldalways remain relatively favorable to the Reich downto the end of the war. The ideological line of the FETalso began to change. No more was heard of "thetotalitarian state," and a completely new emphasiswas placed on "humanism," with appropriatequotations from José Antonio. All the more fascisticpoints and phrases from the Twenty-Six Points wouldhenceforth be passed over, with the limited exceptionof a few special party occasions. The new position, asFranco himself put it to the Allied ambassadors, wasthat the FET was not merely a fascist party but noteven a political party at all. Rather, it was simply a sortof agency for social reforms, such as syndicalorganization and welfare. This was an unprecedenteddefascistization for a fascist-type party participating inpower.

All this further added to the cognitive dissonanceunder which the FET operated. There had alwaysbeen considerable contradiction in Falangism, evenmore than in most fascist movements, because of theattempt to incorporate Catholicism culturally andspiritually. This had become more accentuated in1937, though downplayed among Falangiststhemselves between 1939 and 1941. The cognitivedissonance began to ease with the beginning ofdefascistization, which meant the increasing victory oftraditionalist Catholicism in the regime's doctrines,and the progressive relinquishing of those fascistfeatures that most clashed with it.

The FET was further downgraded when Francoundertook the metamorphosis of the regime in 1945,

undertook the metamorphosis of the regime in 1945,beginning its conversion into a Catholic andcorporative monarchy. The party was left without asecretary general for several years, and SerranoSúñer, accepting the political obliteration of fascism,wrote privately to Franco that the party should simplybe disbanded.

Franco, however, had no such intention. The FET,now known formally as the Movimiento Nacional,would continue to the end of the regime, setting arecord for longevity for this kind of movement in officialinstitutions. The only competitor would be Salazar'sUnião Nacional; the latter was a more limitedorganization, in some ways more similar to Primo deRivera's Unión Patriótica. Efforts at politicalmobilization declined sharply, however, and by 1958,when I first arrived in Madrid, the Movimiento hadbecome an object of derision among many Spanishyoung people. Therefore, in the postfascist era, whydid Franco not take the advice of his brother-in-lawand dissolve the party?

The fundamental reason would seem to be that heconsidered a weak, artificial, and limited state partybetter than no state party at all. Franco was foreverconcerned to avoid the "error Primo de Rivera" and tomaintain a system with institutions, structure, andsome sort of doctrine. The Movimiento provided abasic cadre of supporters for institutional structureand civic mobilization, however narrow, and Francojudged that the regime would be gravely weakenedwithout it. The Movimiento enjoyed a comeback ofsorts between 1948 and 1957, regaining a regularsecretary general and briefly holding slightly greaterprominence. When, however, during his second tour

as secretary, Arrese attempted to "constitutionalize"the Movimiento by codifying for it a special andpermanent tutelary role in the state, Franco found thathis own hands were tied by the evolution of hisregime. The Church leaders protested most directly,and Franco canceled the project. The newgovernment of 1957 moved in a different direction,introducing the Principles of the Movement, whichcompleted ideological defascistization. The lastspecial moment of the party veterans had passed,and the Movimiento subsequently played a role evenmore exclusively bureaucratic, finally being officiallyabolished in 1977, two years after the death ofFranco.

With the greater freedom of the last years of theregime, there would occasionally appear a book witha title such as ¿Por qué no fue posible la Falange?The answer was that circumstances simply did notpermit a more influential or powerful party. Althoughthe Falange never governed, it survived in one form oranother much longer than any other fascist-type partyand, as I suggested earlier, the second characteristicpartly depended on the first. It should be kept in mindthat fascist-type parties have generally been extremelyunsuccessful organizations. Of the very many thathave existed, only two really came to power.

Though several "fascistogenic" factors existed inSpain during the 1930s, most of the factors thatencouraged fascism elsewhere were lacking.Ultimately, it was the weakness of Falangism thatbecame its strength, such as that was, the radicalenvironment of civil war giving it a momentum it couldnot have acquired in peacetime. Subsequently, its

hope for greater influence lay not so much with Francoas with Hitler, whose decline and fall eliminated anysuch possibility.

14Francisco FrancoFascist Monster or Savior of theFatherland?

For nearly forty years Francisco Franco was, forbetter or worse, the most dominant figure to haveappeared in the history of Spain. None of the kings ofearlier centuries wielded proportionately as muchpower or so drastically changed the course of thecountry. Every preceding ruler operated to a greateror lesser degree within established laws andtraditions, while Franco led a victoriouscounterrevolution that, to a much greater extent,established its own rules. During his lifetime he wasthe most successful counterrevolutionary of thetwentieth century and, in terms of the positivetransformation of his country, the most successfuldictator.

He has been the most extravagantly praised andthe most scathingly condemned figure in all Spanishhistory. No other has garnered such extremes of boththe positive and negative. In recent years, during theera of political correctness, Franco has received littlebut continued vilification. Of all the figures in Spanishhistory, in some respects he is the most difficult toevaluate.1

As in the case of many others, Franco's orientationin life was strongly influenced by his familybackground, which included a history of two centuries

of service in the Spanish navy. Franco sought to followin the same tradition, but restrictions in the navalacademy left him the sole alternative of the MilitaryAcademy in Toledo, certainly a fateful change, for acareer as naval officer would have been entirelydifferent. His immediate family background was not ahappy one, for his father (who reached the rank ofadmiral in naval administration) was politically radical,personally libertine, and anti-Catholic, the exactopposite of Franco's pious, dutiful, and conservativemother. After his father abandoned the familyaltogether to live with a mistress in Madrid, the youngFranco identified thoroughly with his mother and hervalues, a moral and psychological formation intrinsicto the development of his mature identity.

As a very young and undersized youth, Franco wasonly an average student in the academy, but he tookadvantage of combat service in Morocco, beginningin 1912, to exhibit uncommon courage and leadershipability. Most of his experience was gained ascommander of elite units, first of Moroccan Regulatesand then of the newly founded Legion. In theProtectorate Franco was a combat leader off and onfor twelve years, from 1914 to 1926, and this wasfundamental to his personal and professionaldevelopment. The Moroccan years taught himcourage, stoicism, and endurance, the importance offirm, determined leadership and discipline, the art ofcommand, and the role of prudence and soundorganization. He developed strength of character,combined with a certain impassivity and a sometimespronounced harshness. This was a colonialcampaign, so that he gained no very sophisticatedknowledge of modern warfare, but on the other hand

he obtained much practical experience, as well as astellar reputation. Franco won five merit citations andrapid promotion, also suffering one life-threateningbattle wound; in 1926 he became the youngestpeacetime brigadier, so far as is known, in anyEuropean army. Ever afterward, he would personallyacknowledge the importance of the Moroccan years inhis personal formation and destiny.2

From the very beginning he started to gain areputation for austerity and self-discipline, and firmlyeschewed the standard vices of young officers —women, liquor, gambling. He had a personallyromantic streak, but women played little — usually no— part in his early years, until he finally marriedCarmen Polo, a very young woman of good family inOviedo, in 1923. Though it had taken a long time, hischoice of wives was as well calculated as his militarymoves, for he enjoyed a long, happy, and harmoniousmarriage, and the stability of his personal life wasprobably not unrelated to the increasingly dominantpublic role that he played. Moreover, his peacetimeassignments in Madrid and in Zaragoza (where hewas the first director of the new General MilitaryAcademy) gave him entree to the social elite andprovided a new veneer of sophistication, limitedthough it may have been, to his personality.

A seeming paradox is that prior to 1936 he had notbeen a prototypical Spanish "political general." This isnot to say that he had no political attitudes or values,though much later, after the numerous zigzags of hisregime, it would become common to view him as acynical opportunist who sought only to perpetuate hisown power.

In fact, Franco's basic political attitudes and valuesseem to have changed little during the course of hislong life. He was trained in military values and, morethan merely a patriot, was a strong nationalist (asduring his early years, the military probably figured asthe only significant group of Spanish nationalists). Hisfundamental convictions were monarchist, and alsobasically authoritarian and hierarchical, opposed toparliamentary democracy, even though in 1931 heunderstood the need to accept the "evolution of thetimes." Franco was a traditionalist Roman Catholic —much more so than many in the military hierarchy —and believed in a traditionalist Catholic culture. Hisviews on economics in considerable measurestemmed from those attitudes. Like most Spanishactivists of his time, he was a "regenerationist" andlooked to modern economic development, which hethought should be guided by a statist and nationalist,authoritarian policy, though these economic ideasmay not have crystallized until the Civil War. He wasalso an imperialist who believed in a kind of nationalmission, once oriented toward the new world but in thetwentieth century toward Morocco and northwestAfrica. This last was the only basic part of his politicalcredo that he had to abandon during his later years,which coincided with European decolonization.

Always suspicious of political liberalism, by theearly 1930s he became convinced that Freemasonrywas the driving subversive force in liberal politics, andthat the consequence of its subversion of institutionswas to open the door to Communism. Despite hisparanoia concerning Masonry, however, Franco wasnot given to the kind of knee-jerk reactions typical ofthe Right radical minority in the army command, but in

practical affairs demonstrated a more calm andpragmatic assessment.

Though he initially opposed what he saw as Primode Rivera's "abandonismo" in Morocco, he became asupporter of the latter's dictatorship, a source ofpolitical inspiration and an alternative to the perceivedweakness and fragmentation of parliamentarydemocracy. Yet he tried to be a political realist anddid not by any overt act oppose the advent of theSecond Republic. He judged Sanjurjo's revolt in 1932to be ill advised and hopeless, and had nothing to dowith it, coldly observing afterward that "GeneralSanjurjo has gained the right to die" — a typicallymordant Franco commentary. His discipline andprudence were rewarded after the first big spin of theRepublican political wheel, gaining him majorpromotion to major general once the center-Rightassumed power. He was called in to coordinaterepression of the Socialist revolutionary insurrection of1934 and then made chief of the general staff thefollowing year. It was characteristic of Franco that hebecame identified with the center and the moderateRight (much more the latter than the former), andrefused to be involved in any of the conspiracies of themonarchist radical Right or the Falangists. Whenurged to take the initiative in military intervention assoon as it became clear that the Popular Front waswinning the elections of February 1936, he refused toaccept any responsibility, observing accurately thatthe military commanders were profoundly divided andcould not assume responsibility on their own. Insteadhe urged the government to use its own authority andtook personal initiative in trying to activate the decreeof martial law that President Alcalá-Zamora gave the

prime minister. Since the latter refused to use thedecree, Franco's initiative was quickly canceled.

Pío Moa's observation that prior to the Civil WarFranco obeyed Republican legality more thoroughlythan did Manuel Azaña is correct. Azaña wasassociated with a military insurrection in December1930, sought to nullify arbitrarily and illegally the mosthonest and democratic elections in Spanish history inNovember 1933, maneuvered for months to thwart themajority of a democratically elected parliament andthen attempt to carry off an ambivalent "legalpronunciamiento," was ambiguously associated withrevolutionary insurrection in 1934, and subsequently,as prime minister and president, endorsed the latterwhile presiding over massive violations ofconstitutional law in 1936. Compared with such arecord, Franco had merely tried to expedite apresidential decree in February 1936, which the primeminister refused to put in effect.

By that point Franco had gained the strongestreputation of any figure in the military hierarchy. Hewas not the most intelligent or best educated, themost imaginative or the most popular, but he waswidely recognized as the one who most combined allthe qualities of an outstanding commander in terms ofexperience, personal courage, discretion,determination, professional skill, and the singularquality to command. This was also apparent to themost perceptive leftist leaders, such as IndalecioPrieto, or Manuel Azaña, who privately labeled him"the only one to fear" among the Spanish generals.

He was soon in touch with the military conspirators,but played only a marginal role, refusing to commit

himself firmly to armed revolt. He viewed this as adesperate undertaking not likely to work, probablyprone to do more harm than good, and something tobe attempted only as a last resort. In this he reflectedthe views of the majority of army officers. As late asthe latter part of April 1936, he did not view theRepublican system as immediately in danger ofcollapse and sought to play a new political role byelection to the Cortes on the CEDA ticket in thespecial elections in Cuenca. Ironically, this drewvehement objection from José Antonio Primo deRivera, who had been added to the rightist list in theprovince. At that point José Antonio was disgustedwith the military, and he protested that the appearanceof Franco gave a "militarist" and "reactionary" look tothe rightist list. More pragmatically, he pointed out thatthe Spanish parliament placed a premium on rhetoricand rapid debate, in which Franco might not beexpected to do well. Prudently, the general finallyagreed to withdraw. Two months later he wrote toCasares Quiroga that the army was not disloyal(which, technically, at that moment was more or lesscorrect), urging him to strengthen bonds with themilitary and affirm national unity. Amid the multipleuncertainties of the moment, this was not a dishonestpresentation of his opinion.

By the spring of 1936 Franco clearly saw himself asdestined for some new role of leadership, though hewould have been hard put to define what exactly thatmight be. He spent more time reading works oncontemporary politics and economics, and afterassuming his new command in the Canaries began totake regular English lessons. But as late as July 12,again like most of the military, he still refused to

commit himself to armed revolt, which he continued toinsist was premature and might be counterproductive.The core conspirators around Mola were disgustedwith Franco, deriding him as "Miss Canarias" for his"coquetry." The killing of Calvo Sotelo on the night ofJuly 12-13 had much the same traumatic impact onFranco as it did on a great deal of moderate andconservative opinion. In effect, he joined the revoltwhen he judged that it had become more dangerousnot to rebel than to rebel.

The political plan of the revolt had been devised byGen. Emilio Mola, organizer of the conspiracy. Itenvisaged a "Portuguese solution" — that is, notrestoration of the monarchy or inauguration of afascist regime but the establishment of a rightist,corporative, more authoritarian republic rather likeSalazar's "Estado Novo" in Portugal. This was thesolution that divided the military least, since only aminority of them were monarchist, and some of the topgenerals in the revolt (Cabanellas, Goded, Queipo deLlano) had been noted Republicans. There is noreason to think this did not accord with Franco's ownthinking, for that was the sort of solution for which hehad been striving in his collaboration with the CEDA.The initial announcements and proclamations by themilitary commanders were virtually unanimous on thispoint.

Nonetheless, as Clausewitz observed, thedynamics of war create a Wechselwirkung, a processof reciprocal interaction (and sometimes of mutualradicalization) on both sides, leading to drasticallynew situations and decisions. This immediately tookplace during the Spanish war, as the Republican

government empowered the only full-scale violentworker revolution in the history of western Europe,while the military rebels quickly moved to more andmore extreme positions and practices.

Naming a commander in chief late in Septemberwas an important step by the rebel leaders, for hadthey not done so they probably would not have won thewar. Once it was decided to name a generalissimo,Franco was the inevitable choice. Some of hiscolleagues were not happy with this outcome, for hewas more respected than popular and there wassome apprehension about his penchant fordomination, but they accepted the fact that there waslittle alternative. Monarchists played key roles, thoughit was not due to their initiative alone, and Francoundertook no formal political obligations to them.

His political thinking underwent considerablechange and also radicalization, as it began to movefrom a Portuguese model to an Italian model ofregime, with some degree of fascistization. The factthat key military support came from Rome and Berlinwas no doubt a factor in the equation: his evolvingpolicy was strictly sui generis and one that Francoproposed to control on his own terms. So long as theCivil War lasted, he did not see his way clear to the fullconstruction of a new system, which was postponed tothe postwar period. Franco's achievement was toachieve total wartime political unity, and the stateparty was an important aspect of that process,accepted (but not exactly supported) by the otherpolitical forces. Beyond that, Franco simply banned allpolitical activity for the duration of the conflict. This,especially when contrasted with the internecine strifein the Republican zone, was an important factor in his

in the Republican zone, was an important factor in hisvictory.3

Franco had carefully positioned himself militarily(and also to some extent politically) on the eve of theCivil War by bargaining for command of the elitecombat forces in Morocco. So far as we know, he hadno difficulty in obtaining this, for he was not too faraway in the Canaries and, in strictly professionalterms, had been the obvious choice. Due to the partialfailure of the rebellion, the units in Morocco (eventhough their effective numbers were fewer than30,000) became indispensable to the success of theinsurgency, all the more since this would provide thebase for recruiting more than 60,000 additionalMoroccan volunteers of high combat value. Added tothis was Franco's success in attracting the attention ofHitler and Mussolini and gaining significantassistance from them.

Despite the complete victory that he gained,Franco's leadership in the Civil War would laterbecome increasingly controversial among historians.He has frequently been accused of timidity and lack ofimagination in military operations, and there is truth insuch accusations, although they are sometimesexaggerated.4 The first major criticism concerned thedelay in reaching Madrid, including the priority ofswinging west to secure the Portuguese frontier andthen to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo beforeattempting a frontal assault on Madrid from thesouthwest. For the most part, Franco had soundreasons for his decisions. The direct route to Madridwas only slightly shorter, while he lacked the effectivesto advance directly without securing his flanks.Assuring logistical support through Portugal was of

considerable importance, while the rebels were underso much military pressure elsewhere (including, butnot limited to, the fronts of Oviedo, Aragon, Córdoba,and Granada) that Franco had to divert small but vitalunits to avert the danger of collapse on other fronts.Seizing Madrid might have been of little value if theRepublicans had scored key victories elsewhere,though Franco might have been better advised toapproach Madrid downhill from the north than uphillfrom the southwest.

Combat tactics during the Spanish war weregenerally unimaginative on both sides. It could hardlyhave been very different in the case of two improvisedmass armies. Only in the breakthrough in Aragonduring the early spring of 1938 was a battle ofmovement achieved, but that was also due to atemporary Republican collapse.

Franco's strategy has also been seriouslyquestioned during the late spring and summer of1938, when first he elected not to seize directly aweakly defended Catalonia and then, later, to respondto the Republican Ebro offensive with a set-piececounteroffensive that moved painfully slowly by directassault over the hills southwest of the Ebro. In thecase of Catalonia, international factors may haveplayed a role. This was the only point at which thereseemed to be some danger of French intervention,while Hitler also discouraged the invasion ofCatalonia at that time, with the cynical goal ofprolonging the Spanish war as an internationaldiversion that would distract attention from his owninitiatives. There is, however, no conclusive evidenceregarding the basis for Franco's decisions.

The battle of the Ebro revealed Franco at his mostunimaginative. His judgment that destruction of theRepublican forces would give him a decisiveadvantage in the remainder of the war was correct,but the superiority of his own army in open offensivewarfare offered him the opportunity for a flankingoffensive that might have trapped the Republicanarmy west of the river. This he apparently neverconsidered.

Franco was not a brilliant strategist, but he was acompetent commander who won his war, always thebottom line. It is said that amateurs do strategy, whileprofessionals do logistics, and Franco did logisticswell. He had to organize an effective mass army,sustain its morale, and lead it to victory, all the whilemaintaining political unity, an adequate economicbase, and the continued military assistance of Italyand Germany, while preserving his own independenceand freedom of action. All these things heaccomplished in the most successfulcounterrevolutionary struggle of the twentieth century.5

The worst stain on Franco's record is therepression. This is not to be excused by saying thatthe Republicans did much the same, or that it wassimilar to other repressions inrevolutionary/counterrevolutionary civil wars. Boththese points are correct, but the repression remainsatrocious and indefensible. Moreover, Franco tookabout two months longer during the war to moderate itthan did the Republicans, and held greater centralcontrol.

Much the same can be said of the postwarrepression. Military tribunals handed down

approximately 50,000 death sentences during theimmediate postwar period. Though many werecommuted, as many as 30,000 were apparentlycarried out. It will not do to say, as sometimes hasbeen done, that many of those executed hadthemselves been guilty of atrocious crimes during theRed Terror. This was doubtless true, but a largeproportion were condemned for politicalresponsibilities, not criminal atrocities.

Franco evidently first developed the sense that hewas destined to play some higher role as the politicalcrisis developed between 1934 and 1936. Heaccepted his election as Generalísimo as an action ofdivine providence, a conviction deepened by theeventual victory, which he considered proof that thehand of God lay upon him, that he had been called bythe Almighty to be absolute ruler of Spain. This maybe dismissed by critics as hysteria or megalomania,but it would remain his conviction ever after: hence thesense of self-confidence and self-righteousness thathe would display. This did not mean that Francobelieved that he was a magician with a crystal ball, forhe had always to calculate each political and strategicmove as astutely as he was able, but it produced asense of absolute legitimacy from which he neverwavered. By the end of the Civil War, this convictionhad reached a level of overweening presumption,producing the sense that Franco would be the authorof a completely new era in the history of Spain. Initially,this stimulated megalomaniac ambitions of makingthe country a great military power with a major Africanempire, but it was not long before the harsh realities ofthe European war abroad and a desperatelystruggling economy at home began, step by step, to

cut these ambitions down to size.

Hardly had the Civil War ended than the Europeanwar began. If the great myth of the Left incontemporary Spanish affairs is that the wartimerepublic was a democracy, the great myth of the Right,or at least of the franquistas, is that Franco was notreally on Hitler's side during the war. This is alsofalse.

The terms of the Civil War inevitably orientedFranco toward the Axis powers. He had signedspecial agreements with them during the final phaseof the Spanish conflict, and already had an agreementwith Hitler to tilt Spanish policy toward Germany (whiletechnically remaining neutral) even before the invasionof Poland. Thus the months down to June 1940 werenot a time of genuine neutrality, for collaboration withGermany had already begun, while the long period ofnon-belligerence that followed marked a clear tilttoward Germany (copying Mussolini's policy of 1939-40), initially intended as a phase of pre-belligerence.

Javier Tusell and others have contended that thedecision that Spain not enter the Second World Warwas made by Hitler and not by Franco, and there issome truth to this contention. Franco wanted verymuch to enter the war between June 1940 and April1941, but only on his own terms. From about the endof July Hitler also began to seek Spain's entry, butsoon concluded that he could not meet Franco's terms— all of Morocco, large parts of French northwestAfrica, and massive economic and militaryassistance. Franco's position, as he wrote to SerranoSúñer in the autumn of 1940, was that "Spain cannotenter just for fun [por gusto]," but must receive firm and

enter just for fun [por gusto]," but must receive firm andextensive assistance and compensation.6

No other government not in the war engaged insuch extensive collaboration with the Axis, eventhough much of this collaboration was entirely orpartially covert. This did not mean, however, thatMadrid followed an absolutely clear-cut policy. It wasalso necessary at least temporarily to play a doublegame and to placate Britain and the United States,whose fleets controlled the Atlantic and on whom thesurvival of the Spanish economy depended,producing the element of ambiguity that alwayscharacterized Madrid's official policy. Then, as the warbecame more complicated, what at one time wasconceived as a short-term necessity became a long-term policy. Franco generally agreed with Hitler andthe German diplomats when they told him that hisregime could never survive a military defeat ofGermany. He sought to avoid any such outcome to thewar, and in 1943 attempted to arrange a compromisepeace, an effort that failed completely and did not gainthe slightest cooperation from Hitler. As late as thebeginning of 1944, Franco and some of his chiefassociates could not imagine that the Third Reichwould be totally defeated. Rather, they hoped that itwould still survive the war as a power, while theydemonstrated to Hitler that Spain was Germany's lastmajor friend, and so would be positioned to enjoyGerman support once the war ended. Only in thesummer of 1944 did Franco accept the fact thatGermany would be totally defeated, and by that timehe simply had to hope that the pledges from Britainand the United States not to intervene militarily inSpain were valid. Indeed they were, though bothLondon and Washington hoped that Franco would

soon disappear or be overthrown.

In 1945 Franco was almost universally denouncedas "the last surviving fascist dictator," and would neverentirely escape "the Axis stigma." 7 Nonetheless,most scholars conclude that the Spanish regime wasnot intrinsically fascist, though it included aspects offascism.

One of Franco's fundamental goals was not torepeat "el error Primo de Rivera" of leading a "hollow"or Latin American-style dictatorship without seriouspolitical content. Hence the partial adoption of theItalian model in 1937, though Franco made it clearthat this was not an attempt merely to imitateMussolini or anyone else but to create a new kind ofSpanish system. He left it open-ended so long as theCivil War lasted, and the uncertainties of World War IIthen further extended the interregnum process. Theevents of 1941 nonetheless demonstrated that heintended to keep the Falange firmly under control andnot permit the development of a true party-regime.Movement toward establishment of a corporativeCortes during 1942-43 was not much of a change inone direction or another, however, and to some extentwas consistent with an Italian model.

More significant was the beginning ofdefascistization that began in August 1943, onemonth after the fall of Mussolini. By then it wasbecoming clear that whether or not Germany would betotally defeated, the war would not be followed by thepolitical triumph of fascism as such, and the Spanishregime began to trim its sails. Along with this thegoals of major militarization, so strong in 1939-41,had been abandoned and also those of imperial

expansion. Even so, Franco generally moved slowly,so that the metamorphosis of the regime — into acorporative and ultra-Catholic system that by 1947would be nominally converted to monarchy — was notin place until the middle of 1945, very nearly but notquite too late.

The regime survived, for several reasons. One wasthe political metamorphosis that Franco carried out,and another the implacable determination of theCaudillo himself, impassive amid the internationalostracism of 1945-48. At the end of the greatest warin history, the only major power willing to promotesome sort of direct intervention in Spain was theSoviet Union, but fortunately for Franco, Moscow wastoo far away. The opposition remained divided anddid not present a convincing alternative in 1945,seeming to many to offer only the revival of the CivilWar. The polarization of the 1930s paralyzed thepossibility of the development of democracy in Spainfor an entire generation, and even a leftist critic ofFranco such as Gerald Brenan concluded that thecountry would have to remain under authoritarian rulefor some time, until it had outgrown the conflicts of thepast.

The second phase of franquismo, from 1945 to1959, was unique in contemporary politico-culturalhistory not in downplaying fascism, which wasinevitable, but in striving to complete thecounterrevolution begun in 1936 and to sustain theonly national neotraditionalist religious revival seen onsuch a scale in the Western world in the twentiethcentury — the only national Christian equivalent,however temporary, to the revival of Islamicfundamentalism in the Muslim world. Despite the

fundamentalism in the Muslim world. Despite thetriumph of the counterrevolution, Spain nonethelessremained essentially a modern Western — that is,secularizing — country — and the forces ofsecularization quickly began to win out again after1960.

In its final fifteen years the Spain of Franco endedwith the most sustained burst of economicdevelopment and social prosperity in the country'shistory. To Franco's many critics, his only relationshipto this was "dumb luck" — he happened to remain asdictator during a great phase of European prosperityto which his ministers managed to connect theSpanish economy. It is certainly true that Franco didnot understand modern development economics, butnot so true that his leadership had nothing to do withrapid growth. From the beginning, he had made itclear that he intended to endow Spain with modernindustry and technology, and thus achieve prosperity,but he believed that this could best be accomplishedthrough a statist, autarchist program of "militaryeconomics." That model proved disastrous in theearly 1940s, although it functioned to a certain extentduring the 1950s, by the end of which it was totallyexhausted. Franco was sufficiently realistic, unlikemany Communist and other dictators, to accept thealternatives prescribed by his ministers. He did notunderstand these alternatives and was in factskeptical of them, but to his credit and to the well-being of Spain, he did not reject them.

It has been observed that the changes andachievements in Spain under Franco can be dividedinto three categories: (1) those that Francodeliberately set out to bring about; (2) those that

resulted from his policies as unintended effects; and(3) those that he opposed but could not prevent,though it may be artificial to try to separate unintendedconsequences between categories 2 and 3. The longduration of the dictatorship and the depoliticization ofSpanish society were fundamental goals andachievements, which also made it possible totranscend the era of civil war. Economicmodernization and prosperity were also fundamentalgoals, though Franco's own economic ideas wouldhave been totally inadequate for the process.

Restoration of the monarchy was also Franco'splan, though the political decisions subsequentlymade by Juan Carlos fall into category 2 ofunintended consequences. Similarly a certaininstitutionalization and depoliticization of the militarywas a goal, though Franco would probably not haveexpected this to go so far as acquiescence of themilitary in the dismantling of his regime. Equally,Franco intended to create an institutionalized system,which to some extent was achieved, yet he wouldnever have intended that its institutions be used aslegal mechanism to carry out a new model oftransition and democratization, which is whathappened. The "Spanish model" then to some extentbecame the standard for peaceful transition anddemocratization in Latin America, eastern Europe,and elsewhere. The regime eventually made a majoreffort to expand Spanish education on every level, andin the long run accomplished much more than any ofits predecessors. The unintended consequence,however, was a better informed and more critical-minded society that preferred to embrace politicalchange. What the regime indirectly accomplished was

to prepare Spanish society to make good use of theopportunity for democracy, though that was never itsintention.

What Franco never wanted at all were the profoundcultural and religious changes that accompaniedeconomic modernization and social transformation.He seems to have had the idea that economicdevelopment could be combined with traditionalistculture, but that was impossible. Franco desired acertain social transformation to create larger middle-class sectors in Spanish society, but he was appalledat the social, cultural, and religious consequences. Tohim, the most incomprehensible change was thesecularization of culture and society in the 1960s and1970s, which seemed to deny everything that theregime stood for.

The question is sometimes raised of Franco'splace among the major dictators of the twentiethcentury. He did not wield either the power or theradical program of a Hitler or a Stalin, nor did hefollow the intrinsically fascist priorities of a Mussolini.Similarly, he cannot be compared in equivalent termswith his longtime peninsular neighbor, Dr. António deOliveira Salazar. Salazar was a university professor,an intellectual, and a fine literary stylist. Moreconservative than Franco, he also directed a moremoderate regime, which he firmly and clearlyendowed with a corporative constitution in 1933,remaining faithful to that model, even though itinvolved a partial compromise with limited residues ofliberalism. Salazar never enjoyed undisputeddomination of the Portuguese military, whichfrequently conspired against him, but his genuinewartime neutrality and rejection of the fascist model

wartime neutrality and rejection of the fascist modelmade his regime much more internationallyacceptable, at least until the final African wars.

Javier Tusell has suggested that in some waysFranco can be usefully compared with the Yugoslavdictator Tito. At first glance it would seemcounterintuitive to compare Franco with a Communist,yet there are notable similarities and contrasts. LikeFranco, Tito led a one-party state that won power in abloody civil war, one that Tito concluded with amassive repression which, in proportion to thepopulation, may have claimed three times as manyvictims as that of Franco. Spain was not a newinvention like Yugoslavia: both countries faced severeproblems of internal unity. Both dictators alsoimposed political metamorphoses a few years apart,though of differing types. While Franco had to movebeyond a semifascist model, Tito had eventually toabandon Leninist orthodoxy and try to develop a moreliberal and reformist mode of Communism. Both foundnew sources of support during the Cold War, thoughTito officially followed a neutralist policy. Bothdictators were harshly condemned by the SovietUnion, which encouraged the overthrow of Franco andmade a number of attempts to assassinate Tito. Bothdictators enjoyed a kind of international rehabilitation,though as a rightist dictator Franco never enjoyed theadulation that the Western political leadership andintelligentsia tended to lavish on Tito, primarily forideological reasons. Both dictators ruled for very longperiods, and both presided over a long period ofeconomic development and modernization, though inthis regard Franco more fully abandoned his initialideological rigidity and enjoyed greater success.Franco left Spain at a higher level of development in

every respect. Both political systems imploded afterthe death of the dictator, but Spain underwent apeaceful transition to democracy, and Yugoslaviaonce more collapsed into civil war.

Near the final phase of his regime, Franco declaredpublicly that he was leaving everything "tied and well-tied." Did he really relieve that? There is everyindication that he was shrewd enough to appreciatethat some things would have to change after his death,yet he apparently believed that the fundamentalessence of the regime could survive him. According tothe testimony of Adolfo Suárez, shortly before hisdeath Franco inquired whether the MovimientoNacional could in some form endure. Suárez repliedthat it could not, responding affirmatively when theaged Caudillo asked if Spain then had "an inevitablydemocratic future." At the very end of his life, Francomay have intuited fairly clearly what Juan Carlos waslikely to do, but by that point he was far too weak andexhausted, near death's door, to contemplate anyfurther alternative.

Franco's death marked the end of a very longhistorical epoch, the era of the "Spanish ideology" ofthe unity, continuity, Catholic identity, and mission of atraditional culture and set of institutions whose rootslay in the eighth century or earlier. This long epoch ofone-and-a-quarter millennia had perhaps the broadestchronological span of any national-ideologicalcomplex in Europe, even though it underwentinnumerable variations and metamorphoses duringthose centuries. With Franco it was laid to rest,presumably forever. He was the last great historicalfigure of Spanish traditionalism, who soughtunsuccessfully to combine modernization and

unsuccessfully to combine modernization andtradition. After his death, Spain entered anotherhistorical era and, with more than a little anguish,sought a new identity.

15In the Shadow of theMilitary

In the twenty-first century the Spanish army weakenssteadily both as a national institution and also as acombat force, to the extent that one wonders if anylonger it can be considered as either of these. Fromthis vantage point it is instructive to survey the roleplayed by the military during the era of modernizationin the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Spanisharmy probably passed more years engaged in someform of combat during the nineteenth century than didany other European army of that period; most of thisactivity was dedicated to civil war or colonialcampaigns, with major international conflict only at thebeginning and end of the century. What seemed mostprominent was not its military but its political role, tothe extent that the army appeared to be one of themajor problems in Spain.

Before turning to the army as a military institution, itis important to consider the reason for its politicalprominence, greater than in Portugal or Greece, muchgreater than in Italy, comparable in the nineteenthcentury only to Latin American countries. Was this a"thesis" or an "antithesis"? That is, was the politicalinitiative of the military due to a primary desire by themilitary itself for political domination, or was it anantithetical response to the weakness of politicalinstitutions, a response to the failure of the politicians?Any careful examination of the history of the military inmodern Spain is likely to conclude that the political

hypertrophy of the military stemmed from theweakness of political institutions, rather than from thedreams of the military to dominate the country, thoughsometimes the former did indeed lead to the latter.1

The problem in Spain was what political scientistscall "pretorianism" — that is, the politicalpredominance of the military, rather than "militarism"— the hypertrophy of the armed forces as militaryinstitutions, or their widespread employment in militaryactivity. Militarily, the modern Spanish army has beena weak institution, and the only plan for "militarism"was the one attempted by the Franco regime in 1939-40 and then soon abandoned, above all for financialreasons. The modern Spanish army stems from themilitary reforms of the eighteenth-century Bourbondynasty that organized the army on the Frenchregimental model and also introduced the internalcaptaincies-general, though it never managed torestore the military potency that had been enjoyeddown to the mid-seventeenth century. After the firsthalf of the reign of Felipe V, rulers of the new dynastywere not given to military adventures, with the partialexception of Carlos III. The military were employedrelatively rarely, and then, with a few exceptions,usually did not earn distinction. During the War ofIndependence much of the regular army disappeared,to be replaced by guerrillero bands, paradoxically notinfrequently led, certainly often inspired, by priests.

The "military problem" of modern Spain thenemerged at the same time as the "praetorianproblem," and indeed to some extent the formerpreceded the latter. The army emerged from theNapoleonic wars deficient in organization and

leadership, incorporating into the officer corps someof the leaders of the guerrilleros, lacking adequatefinancial support or logistical base. It was not giventhe resources to deal effectively with theindependence movement in the Americas, repressionof which seeming a doomed enterprise in any event,nor did many of the military have much stomach for it,though fighting went on intermittently for a decade.

The first modern pretorian act of the military was theforcible restoration of Fernando VII as absolutemonarch, abrogating the Constitution of 1812.2 Afterthe War of Independence the country was severelydivided politically, with a new liberal government,which did not entirely correspond to the culture andstructure of society, making conflict inevitable andinviting military arbitration. Nonetheless, liberalismwas the new direction of Spanish affairs and slowlygrew stronger with each passing decade, thoughwithout the ability to establish clear dominance or togovern with stability. Therefore, despite thereactionary character of the coup of 1814, for the nextseventy years, from 1815 to approximately 1885,most acts of political intervention by the military wouldbe carried out on behalf of the more liberal orprogressive forces, in an effort to give the latter thedecisive strength which in fact they lacked.3 Aspecifically Spanish phenomenon was the role of the"ayacuchos," officers who were veterans of thecolonial campaigns in South America, the monikertaken from the site of their final climactic defeat.Anticipating the much later experience of someFrench and Portuguese officers, the ayacuchos wereinfluenced by their former enemies and came to forma core of liberal activists within the military.

Military discipline was largely reestablished afterthe French intervention of 1823, when absolutemonarchy was restored the second time, but the long-term military problem would be revealed by the FirstCarlist War and its aftermath. Since the new liberalregime held control of state institutions, the greatmajority of army officers rallied to liberalism, yet thearmy proved inefficient at civil war. After finally winningvictory, the army was not restored to its properdimensions, above all because of the permanentincorporation of thousands of officers commissionedduring the civil war, as well as a certain number ofCarlist officers, according to the generous terms thatended the First Carlist War. Sheer hypertrophy of theofficer corps would remain one of the major problemsfor an entire century, down to the time of the Azañareforms of 1931-32, and would partially reemergeunder Franco, as well.

The Isabeline regime (1833-68) constituted theheart of the "era of pronunciamientos," though tosome extent this would continue until the fullstabilization of the Restoration system in the 1880s.The new liberal regime had largely eliminatednonliberal political elites through civil war, but it wasweakly established socially and also internallyfragmented, unable to create much of what politicalscientists call a "civil society." An inexperienced,inept, and fearful young queen was unable to actcoherently as a moderating force, despite the powerplaced in her hands, and access was routinely deniedto competing liberal groups. In a nonfunctional liberalsystem, the pronunciamiento, in its several forms,moderated access to power. Though most armyofficers were not strong liberals, the effect of military

intervention was to move the political system in amore and more liberal direction, climaxing in thedisastrous sexennium of 1868-74. This was asobering experience and marked the end ofsuccessful pronunciamientos on behalf of greaterliberalization. The two successful interventions of1874 each moved the situation in a more conservativedirection, the second restoring the Bourbons andmarking the beginning of the more stable systemdirected by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.4

There was never any question of militarydictatorship in the Latin American or twentieth-centuryAfro-Asian style. The political generals of the eraoperated within the general framework of the politicalsystem, usually as armed representatives of regularpolitical parties or forces. When a general led thegovernment, he did so as the nominal leader of aparliamentary group. There was no question of acomplete military supersession of the regular politicalsystem. The only occasions in which a general servedas quasi-head of state occurring in the regency ofEspartero in 1841-43, during the minority of Isabel II,and the brief leadership of Serrano as head of the"unitary republic" in 1874. In each case a generalpresided over formally constitutional andparliamentary regimes.

If during the six decades between 1815 and 1874the military had often moved politics to the Left, thefollowing six decades (1874-1934) were not so mucha time of movement toward the Right as towardgreater political balance, punctuated by the temporaryrightist swing of Primo de Rivera in the 1920s. Only in1936 did the military move decisively to the Right. Acase can be made that in fact their political attitudes

case can be made that in fact their political attitudesand values never really changed that much during thisentire era. Rather, the political context changedenormously, while the political stance of most of themilitary remained little altered. That is, army officersas a whole were never for the most part politicalradicals. During the early nineteenth century thepolitically active sector moved toward moderateliberalism. Once the country went beyond that during1868-74, political intervention pulled back in theopposite direction. After Primo de Rivera hadtemporarily moved government to a moderate form ofrightist authoritarianism — at that pointunprecedented in contemporary Spanish history —the politically active sector of the military once moresought to move back to liberalism. The new republicwas widely accepted by the military in 1931 not as anygateway to revolution, which at that point it hardlyseemed to be, but as a new national community ofliberal democracy, which it turned out not to be.

Throughout this period, however, most army officerswere not involved in politics. Had that been the case,the army would have ceased to exist as a militaryinstitution. The lead was normally taken by individualsenior commanders, maintaining a certainhierarchical function. Sometimes the initiative wasseized by more junior officers: in one case in 1866 bysergeants in the Madrid garrison. These more"subversive" junior revolts, reversing the militaryhierarchy, almost always failed.

Naval commanders rarely participated. The navalofficer corps remained more aristocratic than itslargely mesocratic counterpart in the army, and usuallykept aloof from politics, a partial exception taking

place in 1868. Later, the newly formed Spanish airforce of the early twentieth century was too small toplay a political role, and when several air force officerssought to play a major role in the Republican revolt ofDecember 1930, they failed completely.5

Throughout these decades the military weresteadily involved in civil wars and colonial wars,though after 1814 they were spared majorinternational conflict except for a few months in 1898.Generally, the military record of the Spanish army inthese conflicts was not distinguished. Semicontinuouscombat experience did not serve to forge a moreefficient fighting machine, the practical effect beingvirtually the opposite. The army was proportionatelyalways underfunded, underequipped, inadequatelyprepared and commanded, but overofficered. Formore than a century a disproportionate amount of themilitary budget simply went to pay officers' salaries,although those salaries were low. This stemmedabove all from poor leadership; the fact that the armyadministration enjoyed considerable autonomy wasno guarantee of concentration on professionalexcellence, but just the contrary. Routinebureaucratization accompanied frequent conflict —the Spanish army had, therefore, the worst of bothworlds. By 1895 the army command feared to assignofficers routinely to combat in Cuba and asked forvolunteers. Comparatively few presented themselves,so that many of the junior combat officers in the finalCaribbean conflict consisted of sergeants frompeninsular garrisons who had been promoted toofficer rank after volunteering for service in Cuba.

The military were imbued with a strong sense ofpatriotism, which during the second half of the

patriotism, which during the second half of thenineteenth century, in keeping with general Europeantrends, turned increasingly into a more militant andaggressive nationalism. It is probably no exaggerationto say that in the 1890s the nearest thing to a coherentgroup of Spanish nationalists would be found in themilitary, or at least sectors of the military, yet, in amanner once more typical of their Spanishcontemporaries, the military were themselves not at allunited. A large part of the officer corps consisted ofroutine bureaucratic careerists, but a defensive andnationalist reaction was fueled by the general feelingafter 1898 that the army and navy were unfairly singledout as bearing sole responsibility for "the disaster." 6

There was an element of paradox in this, insofar asthe army itself had not served as a force for nationaleducation and integration to the same extent thatmilitary institutions in France and Germany hadachieved such goals during the preceding century. InSpain, the dominance of pretorianism over not merelymilitarism but simply any efficient attention to thedevelopment of military institutions had meant a feeblydeveloped army that was unable to effect the universalmilitary service introduced in certain other countries.The practice of what was called "redención ametálico," as well as other measures, exempted mostof the middle and upper classes, producing what wasgenerally a class-based army that could not serve asan inclusive school for patriotism and national pride.Added to a grossly deficient system of primaryeducation, it was a further limitation on thedevelopment of a more self-conscious civil or nationalsociety.

During the early twentieth century the military,

partially removed from politics by the stability of theRestoration system, began to resume a political rolethrough the Law of Military Jurisdictions (1906) andthe movement of the Juntas Militares, whichcommenced in 1916. The Juntas Militaresrepresented first the bureaucratization and second theindiscipline of the military, aiming at a kind of politicalsyndicalization of officers, partly in opposition to thenew combat elite of "africanistas," like Franco, whofought in the Moroccan campaigns. They marked areturn to politicization, if not full-scale pretorianism, asthe country's political life expanded and became moreconflictive.7

On the other hand, the militarism of the World War Iera largely passed Spain by, as most of the fighting inthe Protectorate was shelved for the duration of theEuropean conflict. No significant expansion orimprovement of the Spanish military took place,leaving it proportionately even more backward andantiquated than before. Renewal of the effort to pacifythe Spanish zone in Morocco led to a humiliatingdefeat in 1921, which placed in jeopardy the future ofthe Protectorate and also helped to destabilize thepolitical system. The initiative of Primo de Rivera in1923 could have been the last of the great nineteenth-century liberal pronunciamientos, had the dictatorremained faithful to his initial declaration. As it was, hereflected hesitantly and uncertainly some of the newauthoritarian alternatives of the era, governing at firstthrough the Directorio Militar of 1923-25. Beyond that,he could not resolve the issue of reform, failingultimately to transcend liberalism, and failing also tocarry most of the military with him in his confused,abortive search for a long-term authoritarian

abortive search for a long-term authoritarianalternative.8

The whole experience was chastening for themilitary. For the time being it cured them of politicalambitions, predisposing them to accept theinauguration of the democratic republic. The newregime faced many problems, but until the final crisisthe military was not one of them. The Azaña reforms of1931-33 tried to reorder military institutions, but theirmajor achievement was at great cost to reduce thesize of the officer corps by about forty percent. Thearmy was in general neither transformed norsignificantly improved. No more than a tiny handful ofofficers supported the attempted revolt against theRepublican government by Gen. José Sanjurjo, theweakest of all the six armed rebellions of 1930-34, theother five all being carried out by the Left. When asmall group of conspirators tried to rally support for acoup at the time of the Popular Front elections inFebruary 1936, they quickly had to give up, for lack ofsupport.9

Most army officers were opposed to the Left, butfew wanted to be involved in armed revolt. There wasa very small leftist minority and a larger rightistminority, but the bulk sought to avoid having to play apolitical role; hence the difficulty of organizing therebellion of July 18, 1936. Subsequently, the Azaña-Casares Quiroga administration would be almostuniversally criticized for its failure to repress andpurge the military, but in fact the government'scalculation would probably have been proven justifiedhad it not been for the kidnapping and murder ofCalvo Sotelo, followed by the almost incredibleinadequacy of the government's own response.

The Left Republican leaders perceived correctlythat most of the military were not inclined to rebel.They undertook a lengthy series of measures toreassign or to remove altogether from command thesenior officers suspected of strong rightistsympathies, though these efforts turned out to beinadequate. They also calculated that too rigorous anattempt to purge or to restrict the military might serveas a boomerang, stimulating greater opposition thanalready existed. A second consideration was thedetermination of Casares Quiroga not to play the "roleof Kerensky" that had been openly assigned to him bysome of the theorists of the revolutionary Left. Shouldit come to that, a reasonably strong and intact armymight be needed to repress another effort atrevolutionary insurrection by anarchists or Socialists.Yet a third factor was the conviction that thoseelements in the military strongly opposed to thegovernment were so few and weak that theyconstituted a paper tiger. Thus what wouldpresumably be no more than a feeble effort atrebellion should not necessarily be completelydiscouraged, but might even be desirable. It wouldpresumably be easy to repress, and rapid victory bythe government would strengthen it both against theRight and also against the revolutionary Left. Only afew days before July 18, these calculations wereperhaps not so far wrong as they have alwaysseemed in retrospect. Had the governmentmaintained a greater semblance of constitutionalorder, they might have worked out as planned. Neitherthe government nor most of the military were eager toinstitute conflict. As leading revolutionaries such asFriedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky had pointed out,even the most aggressive and radical forces prefer to

pretend to act defensively in response to an initiativefrom their adversaries, and this was very broadly thecase with quite diverse sectors, politically andmilitarily, in the Spain of 1936.

The paradox of the military rebellion that began theCivil War is that it was probably more eagerly desiredby its opponents than any other military revolt inSpanish history. The Casares Quiroga governmentdid not seek deliberately to provoke an armedrebellion, but neither did it make a major effort toavoid one, calculating that the results would quicklyredound to its benefit. As Santos Juliá has explained,military revolt also formed the basis of the calculationsof the Caballeristas, the most important single sectorof the revolutionary Left.10 Having no plans of their ownto seize power directly, they calculated that the effectof a revolt would be so threatening and destabilizingthat a weak Left Republican government would haveno alternative but to hand power peacefully to theSocialists. By analogy with Russia in 1917, CasaresQuiroga would play the role of Kerensky, and theSpanish military the role of the Russian GeneralKornilov. The calculation of Casares Quiroga faileddisastrously, though that of the Caballeristas provedpartially correct, as Azaña elected on July 19 to "armthe people" (something to which Casares Quirogaand the most moderate Left Republicans were firmlyopposed) and then finally appointed an all-PopularFront government led by Largo Caballero onSeptember 4. The ultimate weakness of bothcalculations, of course, was the complete failure toenvision the potential strength of the revolt.

In the first edition of his Spain: 1808-1939,

Raymond Carr followed the customary language inreferring to the "generals' revolt" of July 18. In fact,exactly as the government calculated, most of thegenerals did not revolt. Though the insurrection wouldbe led by a small group of generals, what gave therebellion strength was the strong support provided byjunior and middle-rank officers in approximately halfthe garrisons of Spain. The younger officersresponded much more radically and with greatercommitment, which was indispensable to the partialsuccess of the revolt. There was concern that theordinary recruits, who rarely were volunteers butnormally draftees, often from leftist worker milieu,might not obey orders. In fact, the efforts byCommunists and anarchists to subvert the militarypolitically largely failed. There were, of course,individual desertions, but the great majority of recruitsobeyed orders as long as they were resolutely led,even though they did not necessarily exhibit militaryenthusiasm or efficiency.11

The Civil War transformed the majority of officerspolitically. Whereas most were moderate and largelyapolitical conservatives in 1936, those who joined therevolt quickly came to form a new cohort. Thecommanders and officers of the Nationalist Army of1939 were strongly committed to their victoriousmovement and its regime, and also to a strongly right-wing and authoritarian ideology. Few of them hadbecome converts to fascism, but they saw themselvesas the genuine elite of a new nationalist system. Theleaders of the military under the new dictatorship weremore politically and ideologically mobilized than mostof their predecessors. The new regime had begun in1936-38 as a military dictatorship, the only complete

military dictatorship in Spanish history, occupying boththe role of chief of state and of the government ingeneral. Though Franco insisted on complete militarydiscipline and subordination to his personal commandand formed a regular nonmilitary government inJanuary 1938, the military saw the new system, notincorrectly, as a military-led regime, at least in its firstphases. Military members of the Spanish "victorydelegation" that visited Rome in May 1939 explainedto their Italian Fascist hosts that the differencebetween the Mussolini and Franco regimes was thatthe role played by the Fascist Party in the former wasplayed by the military in the latter.

Franco never planned a military government butintended to use senior officers in key roles, trustingsome of them more than he did Falangists. The initialscheme of Franco's government in 1939-41 was notpretorianism — that is, giving the military anycorporate political role — but simply to make specialuse of senior officers in important posts and also tomake it the most militaristic regime in Spanish history.During the first year of peace, plans were drawn up fora gigantic construction program that would build anenormous navy and a 5,000-plane air force. This wasso preposterous compared with the gravedeficiencies of the postwar Spanish economy thatwithin little more than a year, the plans were totallyshelved. Rather than developing great new armedforces, the Franco regime soon reverted to the militarynorm of modern Spain: an army of poorly traineddraftees led by a numerically bloated but technicallydeficient officer corps, provided with limited third-rateequipment. As the German consul in Tetuán reportedto Berlin concerning the sizable Spanish forces in the

Moroccan Protectorate: "One cannot describe theSpanish military organization here in bad enoughterms." 12

This reality did not prevent the regime's leaders andsome of its generals from developing delusions ofgrandeur. Immediately after the fall of France therewas enthusiasm for Spain's entry into the war, thoughamong most of the military commanders this quicklydwindled, once the country's disastrous economicsituation became even clearer by the end of 1940. It isa moot point exactly what role was played by theprogram initiated by the British government in thesummer of that year of paying large bribes to morethan thirty senior commanders to use their influence tomaintain Spain's neutrality, an issue that cannot beresolved for lack of full documentation.13

Franco's use and control of the military wasgenerally astute. Especially during the 1940s and1950s he employed many senior officers (generallycolonels and generals) in a wide variety of key stateand administrative positions, more of which were heldby the military than by the Falange during that period.Military men, such as Franco's childhood friend JuanAntonio Suanzes and others, in the economicinstitutions, particularly the Instituto Nacional deIndustria (INI — National Institute of Industry),implemented Franco's program of autarchy, whichshould be considered at first more a program ofmilitary economics than of fascist economics.14

Franco was careful to see to it, however, that they heldoffices as individuals, not as institutionalrepresentatives of the military. The armed forces wereallowed no independent corporate power. An officer ingovernment served as an appointee of Franco, not as

government served as an appointee of Franco, not asa representative of the military themselves. In 1939Franco separated the air force from the army andnavy for the first time, beginning a practice ofappointing three separate military ministers (army,navy, and air force) to his governments, averting anydangerous concentration of power.

Although they found little reason to quarrel withFranco's foreign policy, the military were keenlydissatisfied with the domestic situation in the firstpostwar years. In one sense, they became Spain'smost important antifascists, for they bitterly resentedthe prominence of Serrano Súñer and the Falangeduring 1939-42, helping to produce the only twoserious government crises of Franco's regime in May1941 and again in August-September 1942. In eachcase Franco was careful not to award a clear-cutvictory to the military, for he still considered theFalange important to his regime, and he did not wishto see the military become so powerful that they coulddictate to him. Serrano was eliminated in 1942, but bythat time this suited Franco as well. The nearest thingto a replacement for Serrano was Captain (laterAdmiral) Luis Carrero Blanco, much more discreetthan Serrano. Moreover, as a naval officer, CarreroBlanco was not involved in the personal rivalries of theleading generals, who found him relatively colorlessand not a menacing or challenging figure. As it was,Carrero Blanco became the most influential navalofficer in modern Spanish government.15

Altogether there was more political discontent withFranco inside the Spanish regime during the first halfof World War II than at any point during his long tenureas military dictator. All the different "families" of the

regime expressed fairly strong criticism (though fromdiverse viewpoints), but none was in a position to actagainst Franco, not even the military. Leadinggenerals criticized many aspects of policy, includingthe place given to the Falange and not excluding thepersonal decisions of Franco himself, but they wereinternally disunited and the leading personalities wereastutely handled by Franco. The most dangerous oneswere pro-Nazi generals like Juan Yagüe and AgustínMuñoz Grandes. Franco left Yagüe without activeassignment and in internal exile for two years, andafter Muñoz Grandes returned from leading the BlueDivision on the Russian front, Franco personally kepthim directly under his own thumb and without anydirect command, until the danger that he mightconspire on behalf of Hitler had passed.

Few of the Spanish generals were that strongly pro-Nazi, so that the only political alternative which beganto gain any support was restoration of the monarchy inthe person of Don Juan, the pretender to the throne.By 1942 this even began to gain the approval of someof the pro-Nazis, but conversely few of the generalswere such committed monarchists that they werewilling to stand up to Franco, the main exceptionbeing the air force general Alfredo Kindelán. AntonioAranda, who seems to have been the leadingindividual recipient of British bribes, and several othergenerals were active in discussions with Britishdiplomats, sometimes referring to a shadowy "junta ofgenerals" that was about to take action. In fact, nosuch junta existed. As Javier Tusell has written, "Thegenerals did not conspire, but only talked ofconspiring." 16

Franco reached a point of potential crisis with his

Franco reached a point of potential crisis with hismilitary hierarchy on only one occasion, early inSeptember 1943. Italy had just been knocked out ofthe war six weeks earlier, and the Allies had clearlygained the upper hand on every front. For the first timethe future of the regime was directly placed in doubt,and on that occasion most of the lieutenant generalssigned a very respectful letter to Franco asking if hedid not think that circumstances had reached the pointat which it was desirable to restore the monarchy.They swore complete loyalty and discipline during anytransition.17

Franco, however, intended only to trim his policyand had already determined that in no circumstancewould he ever step down voluntarily. He spoke with thelieutenant generals — but never with more than one ortwo at any one time — explaining that the situationwas much too delicate for any change and that DonJuan would be incapable of dealing with such criticalcircumstances. Several of the lieutenant generalsquickly withdrew their support from the initiative, whileFranco promoted a number of his "incondicionales"(loyalists) from major general to lieutenant general,until he was certain that a majority of the top militaryhierarchy had become totally reliable once more.Subsequently he also incorporated hundreds offormer "provisional officers" from the Civil War —more diehard franquistas than many of the ordinaryofficers — to regular or higher officer rank, furtherstrengthening the political complexion of his officercorps.

What most effectively rallied the military aroundFranco was the beginning of the guerrilla insurgency,led by the Communists and later by anarchists, in

October 1944. This threatened direct revival of theCivil War and the violent overthrow of the regime bythe revolutionary Left. The armed forces completelyclosed ranks, and maintained firm support of theregime during the period of international ostracismthat followed the end of World War II.

The regime assumed its more permanent form inthe years following 1945, and by this time Franco hadtotally abandoned his fantasy of turning Spain into amodern military power. In fact, he settled for theopposite — a weak, third-rate army designed topolice and garrison the country rather than to fightexternal enemies. The army settled into a ratherstultified routine and continued to exhibit some of theworst features of its predecessors in the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries — a bureaucratic massof draftees led by a bloated, not very professionalofficer corps, which trained little and possessedantiquated equipment. Indeed, proportionate to othermodern forces the Spanish army in the years 1945 to1953 was the very opposite of what the regime hadearlier planned, and by international standards hadbecome weaker than in 1898, thoroughly failing tokeep pace with military modernization.

The senior military command adjusted to thissituation quite comfortably. For junior and middle-rankofficers, on the other hand, pay was low andpromotion very slow. Indeed, because of the excessnumber of officers, promotion during the 1950s and1960s was slower than in almost any other Westernarmy. Amid the scarcity of the 1940s, officers hadaccess through military commissaries to goods eitherunavailable or very expensive on the civilian markets.As the economy improved in the 1950s, this relative

As the economy improved in the 1950s, this relativeadvantage was lost: while officers' salaries increasedlittle in real terms, new barracks and housing werefinally being built.

The pacts signed with the United States in 1953provided the first significant foreign militaryassistance since the Civil War. American arms givenSpain were always older weapons that had alreadyseen use, but they were far more advanced thananything in the Spanish arsenal. It was finally possibleto begin to retire the Civil War-vintage planes(including captured Soviet aircraft) in favor of the firstjet planes, even though the latter were of a designalready abandoned by the American air force. Moreadvanced facilities and military cooperation withWashington made it possible to develop a new goal,"professionalization," in place of the politicizedgarrison-army of the recent past. During the next twodecades the most able younger sectors of the officercorps devoted themselves increasingly to this task,encouraged by the "Barroso reforms" undertaken inthe army while Gen. Antonio Barroso was ministerbetween 1957 and 1962.18

After 1943 the military never again presented theslightest political challenge to Franco. By about 1960nearly all the top Civil War-era generals had retired,and the new commanders were even less likely thantheir predecessors to cause trouble. During thedramatic economic development of the 1960s, little ofthe new funding that became available was spent onthe military, whose share of the national budgetdeclined more and more, until it was proportionatelyless than in many west European democracies. Bythat point, for the first time in Spanish history, the state

was spending more on education than on the armedforces.

The officers as a whole remained conservative, withincreasing interest in professionalization, but duringthe last years of the regime three different sectorscould be identified in politico-professional terms. Onthe Right were the "blue generals," ultra-rightistgenerals handpicked by Franco to hold most of thetop commands and dedicated to maintaining thepresent system. On the Left was a small number ofliberal or leftist officers who hoped to see the armedforces support modernization. Though not truly radicalor subversive, a small group who had formed a "UniónMilitar Democrática" was expelled from the officercorps in 1975 and not reincorporated for many years.In between was a group of moderates whoemphasized professionalization and keeping themilitary out of politics, while the country's politicalevolution proceeded. They were representedespecially by Lt. Gen. Manuel Díez-Alegría, chief ofthe supreme general staff, and his principal assistant,Gen. Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado.

It was in these circumstances that only a few monthsprior to the death of Franco, the leaders of theSpanish Communist Party and their partners in theJunta Democrática arranged a public hearing in thechambers of the U.S. Congress. Its purpose was to airpublicly the need for strong American pressure on theSpanish military to discourage them from interfering inthe democratization process that would be undertakenafter Franco's death. On that occasion, I couldexpress some confidence that this would not benecessary because the conditions that had elicitedmilitary intervention in the past probably would not

military intervention in the past probably would notsucceed in the future. The military had not interferedwith a democratic transition in 1931-32, which wassupported by society and enjoyed relatively coherentleadership. There was a good likelihood that boththese factors — strong social support and solidleadership — would prevail during the prospectivenew democratization, which would also be likely tomaintain legal continuity and to uphold law and order.Military interference in the past had always respondedto situations of fragmentation, paralysis, or crisis,which would less likely be repeated in the immediatefuture. No one could guarantee that capableleadership and stability would predominate, but itseemed a reasonably sound calculated risk toassume that they might, and so it turned out.

The military command in 1976-78 remainedfranquista, but Franco himself had trained hisgenerals to keep out of politics, and they followed hisfinal request that they transfer their loyalty to King JuanCarlos.19 Despite its legalization of the Communistparty, the transition government proceeded "de la leya la ley" (from the law to the law), maintaining legalcontinuity and law and order, and thus enjoyedoverwhelming popular support.

There was only one point at which there was dangerof military intervention, immediately following thecollapse of Adolfo Suárez's government in February1981, the only major crisis of political leadershipduring the transition. Even then, the goal ofintervention was not to restore the Franco regime orinstall a Greek-style military dictatorship, but toprovide a military leader for an all-party nationalgovernment, one that would not technically rupture

parliamentary legality but would significantly reorientnational policy. This was not planned as a coup d'état,but as an updated semi or pseudo-legalitarian versionof a nineteenth-century pronunciamiento. Even this,however, never happened, because of the crown'sstartled and resolute reaction to the crude assault onthe parliamentary chamber by the Civil Guard units ofLt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina on February 23, 1981,a poorly planned tactical maneuver that seemed out ofcontrol.20 Not only was the action completely quashedbut, in the subsequent prosecution of key ringleaders,the civil government intervened with the militarytribunals to exact longer terms of imprisonment.

The abortive pronunciamiento had the effect ofmoderating government policy during the year or twothat followed, but it proved to be the swan song of thepolitical influence of the military. The "longgovernment" of the Socialists that followed (1982-96),enjoying an absolute majority in its first years,provided the strong and stable administration toinstitute a progressive change of policy, which wassimply extended by the Aznar government in powerfrom 1996 to 2004.21 The "blue generals" were soonretired, and the army was focused on professionalreform, integration with NATO and, later, internationalpeacekeeping.22 Conversion to an all-volunteer forcewas part of a process of relentless reduction in sizethat was not really compensated for by improvedtraining and weaponry. In a stable democracy, thepretorian role of the military came to a complete end,but the Spanish army has been unable to recapture agenuine military role either, and in comparison withother countries has declined even further in strength. Itis to be hoped that in the future Spain has no need to

call on its army for defense from foreign foes,because even less than in the recent past has it thestrength for such a mission.

16Controversies over Historyin Contemporary Spain

A common complaint about contemporary Westernsociety is that it suffers from amnesia and has littleknowledge of, or interest in, history. Growing addictionto the Internet atomizes reading, so that information isobtained in snippets or packets without sustainedstudy or broader understanding, and without criteriaconcerning accuracy or reliability. This results in vastamounts of information, much more so than in anypreceding era, yet without many standards,organization, or sustained comprehension. Thus theyoung spend untold hours seated before computerscreens, but do not read books. It is alleged that theylearn less than preceding generations, compared withtheir level of formal education. They do not study butmerely "retrieve" bits and pieces of information.1

Is such criticism accurate? To some degree thiswould seem to be the case, and as far as history isconcerned, it is absolutely clear that the greatexpansion of formal education has not beenaccompanied by an equivalent expansion of theknowledge of history. A culture informed by the mostintense narcissism and materialism in human historyis oriented toward instant gratification and thus losestouch with its own cultural tradition.

There is another side to the story, insofar as therehas never been so much scholarly research on historyas at the present time, and never have so many books

of history been written, purchased, and, presumably,read. This is due, however, in large part to the growthin population and in the economy, and the expansionof the university systems, which creates a larger basefor specialized activities. In addition, it is sometimesargued that historical thinking or historicalconsciousness has become more common, at leastamong much of the intellectually informed minority ofthe population, than ever before.2 Moreover, in theUnited States and several other countries, there aremany skilled scholars and writers of history who arenot university professors. They concentrate on the kindof big topics and themes of broader interest thatacademic historians usually spurn, and as a resultoften sell large numbers of books. Military history,especially, seems to flourish in all countries, eventhough political prejudice largely bans it from theuniversities.

All these signs of interest in history exist but do soamid increasing intellectual and cultural fragmentation,and are characteristic simply of certain minorities,with little or no effect on the population at large. Thisproduces a seeming paradox: on the one hand, aminority studies and reads history more than everbefore, while the great majority — despite universalliteracy and basic education — has little or noawareness of history, which recedes more and morein the educational curriculum.

Moreover, among historians the study of history hasbeen greatly broadened on the one hand, while on theother it has been weakened by politicization,contemporary cultural trends, and trivialization.Dominant among the latter are the ideology of politicalcorrectness, totally hegemonic by the 1990s, and the

correctness, totally hegemonic by the 1990s, and theconsequences of postmodernist theory, two differentbut mutually reinforcing trends. The effect is drasticdeconstruction of previously dominant paradigms,replaced by a contradictory combination of newpolitical dogmas that coexist with radical subjectivism.In the universities, this has almost completelyeliminated certain fields, such as military history, andresulted in a major de-emphasis on political history,though this is somewhat less notable in Spain. Majorthemes are replaced by comparatively minorconsiderations, which emphasize small groups,deviants, and cultural oddities. Most studies arerequired to fit somewhere within the new sacred trinityof race, class, and gender — the new "culturalMarxism." Research that does not conform to thesecriteria is increasingly eliminated from the universities,where hiring practices in the humanities and socialsciences have become blatantly discriminatory.

New cultural and political trends often take a littlelonger to arrive in Spain, but by the twenty-first centurythey have become increasingly characteristic of newhistorical work in Spain, as well. The great expansionof the university system has indeed resulted in muchmore research and writing than ever before,producing historical knowledge and significantpublications in almost every field, but as stated earlier,the study of history in Spain is constrained by theprovincialization and trivialization of history on the onehand, and the weaknesses of the university system onthe other.

Production of significant historical work in the pastgeneration has been limited by a massive emphasison local and regional history. This field can be as

significant a field as most others, but in Spain mattershave been carried to the point of political and culturalhysteria, producing a massive disproportion ofattention, stimulated by the quasi-federalization of thecountry and the increasingly large amounts of moneyspent by local and regional governments on culturalaffairs. Young scholars know that if they concentrateon such themes, publication is virtually guaranteed,irrespective of how petty or trivial the work may be.

Spanish universities for the most part follow thesetrends, because of the localist and endogamiccharacter of most of the new universities themselves.What might be called a "national market" in researchand hiring is comparatively weak. Most of theuniversities play to local audiences and are heavilynepotistic in their personnel practices. The failure torecruit professors on a broader basis is a majorlimitation, as is the lack of emphasis on achievementin their professional evaluation. These sametendencies, together with a decided politicization ofthe universities, currently exist in almost every country,though provincialization and endogamy are especiallypronounced in Spain.

What is most notable about the treatment of historyin Spain in the twenty-first century is not the almostinevitable presence of certain common contemporarytrends, but the degree of controversy that exists in twokey areas. The first is the effort to deconstruct acommon national history of Spain, replacing it with anew focus on the regions, which in turn has produceda reaction that stresses a common national historyand identity.3 The second focuses on the Civil Warand the Franco regime, particularly those issuesassociated with the repression carried out by the

associated with the repression carried out by thelatter, and has been especially promoted in terms ofwhat is called "la memoria histórica." Since the firstproblematic has already been treated to some extentin several of the early chapters of this book, I shall notgo back over that ground but devote the remainder ofthis concluding chapter to the controversy, morepolitical than historiographical, associated with"memoria histórica."

Spain is far from unique in having suffered a severetrauma in its history during the twentieth century. Thesame thing may be said of most — though not quite all— the countries of Europe, and of a good many othersin other continents. In such circumstances it becomesall the more difficult to achieve the kind of detachmentand objectivity that is the goal of the professionalscholar.

Following World War II these experiences not onlystimulated an enormous amount of new historicalstudy but also a concern with "historical justice," asettling of accounts with past history. This stemmedfrom two factors. One was the greater elaboration,sophistication, and democratization of juridicalpractices, which had become more extensive thanever before, and the other the severity of the traumasinflicted by the military conquests, occupations, civilwars, and dictatorships of the era. People hadsometimes been subjected to equivalent, or evengreater, affliction, in other historical periods, but thelevels of consciousness and meliorism had increasedby the mid-twentieth century, and the expectations andstandards of justice were higher than in times past.Moreover, the new phenomenon of totalitarianism andthe mega-atrocity of the Nazi Holocaust seemed to

raise organized political criminality to a much higherlevel. When such concerns had first arisen after WorldWar II, postmodernist theory had not yet appeared toexplain that all perception is subjective and thatobjective standards in complex human situations donot exist. Finally, it was argued that prosecution of thenew legal category (but common historicalphenomenon) of "war crimes" and the punishment ofthose responsible for dictatorship and mass murderwas a necessary part of civic reeducation in order fordemocracy to flourish in the future and to avoid thesituation that had developed following World War I.4

The best example of contemporary historical justicehas been the prosecution of Nazi war crimes and theserious efforts made by the citizens of the WestGerman Federal Republic to come to terms withGermany's horrendous recent past. If the politicalprocesses of de-Nazification were not completelyeffective, nonetheless the development of WestGerman democracy — together with ongoing effortsat objective historical study, serious education,prosecution of perpetrators, and efforts tocompensate the victims — was generally successfuland has made Germany the most commendableexample of what the Germans callVergangenheitsbewdltigung, coming to terms with thepast. This process was not instantaneous and had itsown ups and downs, while before the end of thetwentieth century a countermovement had begun to"normalize" that history. On the scholarly level, thistook the form of the relatively well-knownHistorikerstreit — the controversy among thehistorians — while more broadly there has been moreand more of a tendency of Germans to see their

forebears of the Nazi era as victims, as well,particularly of mass bombing from the West andmonstrous Soviet atrocities from the East. Theexistence of a society composed both of manyheinous perpetrators and of numerous victims isprobably not without precedent. Of course there weremany different Germans — many were majorperpetrators, while others were indeed victims, eitherof their rulers or of the rulers' foes. By comparison,defascistization in Italy was half-hearted, producingonly a limited number of prosecutions and then, afteronly about three years and on the initiative of aCommunist minister of justice, came to a completeend.5 In the countries occupied by the Soviet Union,defascistization was to a large extent a matter ofpunishing those whom the Soviets considered theirprincipal enemies. Fascists or ex-fascists deemeduseful to the Soviets were not punished and even, in afew instances, rewarded.

World War II ended in much of Europe amid scenesof apocalyptic disaster. The democratization of Spainand Portugal took place under very differentconditions, amid the greatest prosperity and well-being in the history of the two countries. ThePortuguese dictatorship was overthrown by force ofarms and more than a year of political conflict ensued,together with a series of political arrests (at first, morethan under the dictatorship) and certain gestures ofpunishment for notables and activists of the precedingregime. This transition was nonetheless typicallyPortuguese in the very limited amount of violence thatoccurred. The political process soon developed into agenuine parliamentary democracy, and theprosecution of notables of the Old Regime quickly

prosecution of notables of the Old Regime quicklycame to an end.6

The circumstances and character of the democratictransition in Spain, by contrast, were unique. If theSpanish disaster of revolutionary civil war amidrelatively normal peacetime conditions during the1930s had been unprecedented, so were the terms ofthe Spanish democratization. Prior to that time, allinstitutionalized modern European authoritarianregimes that had existed for as long as a decade ormore only lost power as a result of external war.7 TheSpanish Transition presented the first example of ademocratization from the inside out, in which the lawsand institutions of the authoritarian regime were usedto carry out a complete transformation into ademocracy. At a press conference in 1974 (shortlybefore the death of Franco), the historian Ricardo dela Cierva, then the reformist director general ofpopular culture, was asked by Spanish reporters if anysuch case had ever existed, and La Ciervaconfessed, rightly enough, that he was not aware ofany.

During the Transition the country moved legally andrelatively peacefully from dictatorship to parliamentarydemocracy. None of the regularly organized politicalparties engaged in violence, although the Basqueterrorist organization ETA, the extreme Left, and also,occasionally, the extreme Right, did so. Violence wastotally extrasystemic, unlike the situation under theSecond Republic, when major systemic forces, suchas the Socialists, and then finally much of the army,engaged in it. By 1975 the anarchosyndicalistmovement, once the source of much violence, hadsimply been eliminated by modernization.

Thus Spain continued to be different, but now in acompletely positive way. In earlier generations thecountry had differed both because of a lingeringtraditionalism, on the one hand, and because ofpersistent efforts — from 1810 to 1931 — to introduceadvanced new modern political systems for which thecountry's social and cultural structure was not fullyprepared. An effective synergy was achieved for thefirst time after 1975.

This created a new "Spanish model" of democratictransition, not the courageous but futile models of1808-14 and 1820 (which also had been widely andalmost always unsuccessfully emulated elsewhere),but an eminently productive pattern that became ineffect the new model for world democratic transition. Itwas emulated in Latin American countries and also innearly all the Communist countries of Eastern Europeand in central and northern Asia, though — dependingon the cultural heritage and/or level of development ofthese countries — some of them failed to becomefunctioning democracies, moving into a different kindof twenty-first-century authoritarianism. Everywhere,except in Yugoslavia and Romania, somethingequivalent to the Spanish model was pursued, in mostcases achieving democratic success.

One requirement of the Spanish model wasrejection of the politics of vengeance, which meanteschewing any political or judicial quest for "historicaljustice." At the time, this was fully accepted by all themajor political actors, with the partial exception of theBasque Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), stillanchored in archaic habits. The Left was just as eagerto embrace this policy as the Right; standard rhetoric

and posturing notwithstanding, the democraticcredentials of the Spanish Left were also dubious,and they were eager to start with a clean slate. Aconscious decision was made to eschew any newattempt at historical justice, for there was generalawareness that this had been carried out in avindictive fashion by the Republic in 1931-32, andlater with much greater brutality by the Franco regime.Leaders of the Transition appreciated the fact thatanother such effort could hardly be made withimpartiality, and almost undoubtedly would do moreharm than good.

Generally speaking, this feature of the Spanishmodel was also followed in other countries. Very littleeffort was made to indict or prosecute the personnelof the preceding authoritarian regimes during thecourse of the democratizations of the 1980s and1990s. The Czechs introduced a process of"lustration," as they called it, to deal with some of themajor wrongdoers of the past, especially thoseassociated with human rights abuses, but ultimatelythe Czechs made little use of it. In Germany there wasmore of an effort to purge Communist personnel fromthe East German universities, but little else. In the newBaltic republics and in central Asia, the successorregimes were primarily filled with ethnic nationals inplace of Russians, but criminal indictments were fewand far between. Only in time did Chile and Argentinafinally initiate a process of prosecuting a small numberof major figures of the preceding regimes. Generally,energetic pursuit of "historical justice" was not a policyof the newly democratic and/or postcommunistregimes.

Another feature of the Spanish Transition was great

Another feature of the Spanish Transition was greatattention to recent history, featuring all manner of newpublicity and research, with much new scholarlypublication and even more journalism. The amount ofattention in Spain, however, would seem to haveexceeded that found in some of the other cases.Partly this was simply due to the fact that Spain was alarger country than many, its broader marketsupporting a great volume and variety of publicationsand other publicity. This is one aspect in which therewas some analogy with Russia, for in Russia, too,during the first relatively freer, if chaotic, years underYeltsin, a great deal of new critical publication aboutrecent history occurred. At the opposite extremewould be found some of the Asian successor states,particularly Mongolia, where there seems to havebeen less interest in investigating the recent past.

One difference between the Spanish case andmany of the new democratic systems was that at first,not as much developed in the way of fabrication ofnew national myths in Spain to gloss over or explainaway the negative aspects of the recent past. Inpostfascist Italy and in France, after the fall of theVichy regime, there quickly developed hegemonicnew myths of the national "resistance" to Fascism andNazism, which greatly distorted historical reality,considerably exaggerating the extent of the resistanceand glossing over the widespread complicity with thepreceding authoritarian regimes. In many countries,myths of national victimhood abounded. TheAustrians, the majority of whom had been relativelyenthusiastic in their complicity with Nazism,developed a new national historical image of Austriaas simply the "first victim" of Hitler, fostering a new cultof national self-esteem. In newly democratic Japan,

there was a considerable tendency to overlook themassive atrocities of the preceding military regimeand portray the Japanese as little more than theinnocent victims of atomic warfare. Of thepostcommunist countries, Russia has arguably beenthe site of the most fanatical nationalism and renewedself-delusion, as various forms of victim theoriesabounded. Similarly, in the successors to some of theEast European Soviet satellites the emphasis wasalmost exclusively on the undeniable victimization ofthese countries by the Soviets, but this wasemphasized to preclude full consideration of their ownpast during the World War II era, of the roles of theirown native dictatorships, and in some cases ofextensive complicity by some of their citizens in theHolocaust. In several instances there were publictributes and memorials to members of the Waffen SSor its collaborators, or even of a major war criminallike Marshal Antonescu of Romania. Nothing hasbeen carried to this kind of extreme in Spain.

At the same time, sectors of Spanish political lifehave promoted myths and interpretations of their own,in some of the regions equivalent to those in othercountries. Surviving franquistas, though not great innumber, have continued to promote their vision ofFranco as national savior and as administrator of abenign modernizing system. Similarly, the camouflageof Republican politics initiated during the Civil Waritself became part of the permanent self-image of theLeft with its mythic and routinely falsified invocationsof Republican "democracy," combined with theglossing over of the revolution. Catalanists, particularlythe Left-leaning Catalanists, have preserved theirequally distorted myth of "Catalanist democracy."

Basque nationalists arguably live in the greatestdenial of all, with their delirious myths of Basquehistory and their portrayal of Basques as perpetualvictims, ignoring the historical reality that what tookplace in the area (which they term the greater Basquecountry) was in reality a civil war among Basques.They equally ignore the persistent efforts of the PNVto betray the Republican cause during the war itselfand its continuing attempts during the followingdecade to intrigue with all and sundry among theforeign powers to bring about the partition of Spain.

Among some of these sectors there have also beenlimits to their own partisan view of the past. Mostapologists for the Franco regime do not deny that itspolicies of repression were originally extreme. Themore serious Socialist historians also recognize theconsiderable deviations from democratic practice thattook place among the Socialists of the 1930s. It wasalso typically Spanish that there was no totallyhegemonic point of view about these matters, at leastuntil the rise of political correctness ideology at theclose of the twentieth century.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that thesuccess of the Transition led to what might be calledthe cult or myth of the Transition, which tended to raiseit to very grand dimensions indeed. The Transitionwas not always quite as smooth and fully consensualas it has been made out to have been. It had morerough spots and a certain number of failures, despitean impressive level of success. And, with the passageof time, as would probably be inevitable in thecontemporary age, it came to be challenged by acountermyth, by a new sort of "Black Legend of theTransition," purveyed primarily by the extreme Left.

Transition," purveyed primarily by the extreme Left.According to the countermyth, the Transition consistedin large measure of a sinister manipulation by formerfranquistas, seeking a means of getting the entire OldRegime off the hook. Weak leftist elites collaboratedin appeasement and, in order to obtain a transition toa new democratic system, agreed to a "pact ofsilence," wherein all the crimes of Francoism wouldbe completely ignored and go unpunished. Again,according to the countermyth, Spain therefore couldnever be completely "democratic" until all residues ofFrancoism had been purged, including the institutionof monarchy itself.8

What is particularly sinister about the countermythinvoking the so-called Second Transition is itssimilarity to the "myth of the Republic," sedulouslypropagated by Azaña and the leftist Republicansduring the 1930s. They have in common absoluteindifference — indeed, aversion to — real democracyin so far as the latter consists of free and fairdemocratic elections, responsible parliamentarygovernment, and a constitutional state, or what hasbeen succinctly summarized as "fixed electoral rulesand uncertain electoral outcomes."

One might theorize at some length about thetendency of the modern mind, at least for the pastcentury or so, to generate ever more severe forms ofparanoia, which may be considered a relativelynatural phenomenon in an atomized and increasinglysubjective culture. One of the great achievements ofthe Transition was its success in overcoming themodern tendency toward paranoia, at least for ageneration or so.

"Pact of silence" is simply a propaganda slogan.

"Pact of silence" is simply a propaganda slogan.No such thing ever existed. The very oppositecharacterized the Transition, which was grounded in akeen awareness of the failures of the past and adetermination to avoid them. Indeed, as PalomaAguilar has written, "few processes of political changehave drawn such inspiration from the memory of thepast, and from the lessons associated with it, as theSpanish case." 9 It is impossible to find anotherinstance anywhere in which such awareness was anygreater. What was agreed upon was not "silence" butthe understanding that historical conflicts would beconsigned to the labors of the historians andjournalists, and that politicians would not make use ofthem in their parties' mutual competition, which woulddirect itself to present and future problems.10 Duringthe Transition historians and journalists were active inthe extreme, flooding the country with new accounts ofthe years of civil war and Francoism, which did not inany way disguise the most atrocious aspects. After anumber of years there began to appear a series ofdetailed scholarly studies, such as those by JosepMaría Solé Sabaté, Joan Villarroya, Vicent GabardaCebellán, Francisco Alía Miranda, and others, whichfor the first time began to place the investigation of therepressions on a precise scholarly footing.11 All thiswas the very opposite of any "forgetting," and wasmuch more careful and exact than the subsequentagitation about "la memoria histórica."

The consensus that rejected politicization of thehistory of civil war and dictatorship was generallymaintained by all the major parties until 1993, whenthe Socialists were in danger of losing the nationalelections for the first time in more than a decade. Theprime minister, Felipe González, then made a major

point of warning that a vote for the conservativePartido Popular would run a major risk of restoringsome of the grimmer aspects of franquismo. This wasthe equivalent of what in the United States in thedecades after the American Civil War was called"waving the bloody shirt." In major elections theRepublican Party, which in the American case had ledthe victors, would regularly "wave the bloody shirt,"reminding its voters of the price paid in the Civil Warand alleging that a vote for the rival Democrats wouldmean the return of the former "slave power." This wassometimes helpful to the Republicans but not always,and in Spain it did the Socialists less and less good in1996 and 2000. There was briefly a point, after thecomplete failure of the Socialists two years earlier, atwhich José María Aznar declared in 2002 that the useof the recent past for partisan purposes had beenburied.

This was premature, for once the genie was out ofthe bottle it became an increasingly common featureof Spanish politics. The normally sober Jordi Pujol,president of the Catalan government, had earliermade politicized references to the Spanish Civil War,and finally even the Partido Popular would dosomething of the same in the face of the new leftistagenda of Zapatero after 2004. For the Left, it simplybecame a standard tactic.

A new phase began in the first years of thetwentieth century with the rise of the agitationconcerning "la memoria histórica." This did not stemfrom a single movement but represented a variety ofdistinct constituencies, many motivated by politicalends, others concerned for history and archaeology.The most serious sector has been represented by

The most serious sector has been represented byEmilio Silva and the Asociación Para laRecuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH —Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory),which began to excavate its first unmarked commongrave in 2000. Concern to identify, excavate, andproperly bury previously unrecognized victims of theCivil War and post-Civil War repressions — or for thatmatter unidentified military casualties of the Civil Waritself — is an important and laudable initiative, andone that should merit public support. Other groupswent beyond that, demanding special politicalcommemoration and formal recognition that leftistswho had been executed had died "for democracy,"and calling for further specific condemnation ofFranco and his regime and, by implication, all thosewho fought against the Left in the Civil War. This wasaccompanied by shrill and hysterical denunciations ofthe Francoist repression, with the implication that wasthe only one, even exaggerating its character andextent. A very harsh and brutal policy was made toseem even worse, the equivalent of Nazi Germany orthe most atrocious Communist regimes. Vagueconcepts of "memoria histórica" were thrown about,as though they were equivalent to the data ofprofessional historical research. The result was asemisystematic attempt to rewrite and to falsify, andalso sometimes to use that effort as a tactical weaponagainst the Partido Popular, the clumsiness withwhich the latter dealt with such issues only adding tothe problem.

Thus it is important to distinguish between thedifferent groups who have advocated "la memoriahistorica," and to keep separate the valid andlaudatory efforts to recognize the often innocent

victims of repression from the extensive attempts togenerate political propaganda and falsify history.When the Socialist government of José LuisRodríguez Zapatero was formed in 2004, it embraced"la memoria histórica" as part of its new leftistinitiatives, but the terms of the final legislationapproved in October-December 2007 weresomewhat more moderate, as we shall see.

The term itself is unfortunate, constituting anoxymoron, a fundamental contradiction in terms,something that in strict logic cannot exist. Memory isstrictly individual and is subjective and very frequentlyfallacious. Even people of good faith are constantlyremembering details quite at variance with what infact happened. Memory does not define or fullyexplain past events but simply provides one version orinterpretation of the latter. History, on the other hand,is neither individual nor subjective, but requires theobjective and professional empirical investigation ofdocuments and other data and artifacts. It is a supra-individual process of the society of scholars, whodebate and contrast results that strive to be asimpersonal and objective as possible.

There is a field of study called "historical memory"or "collective memory," but it is quite different fromhistory and is merely a small part of the dataexamined by historical inquiry. During the past severalgenerations a methodology concerning "collectivememory" has developed within historical study,investigating attitudes, concepts, or opinions aboutthe past, which are formed in various ways byactivists, politicians, publicists, artists, writers, andsometimes also by society at large. In most casesthese are not true collective "memories" in the sense

these are not true collective "memories" in the sensethat a majority of those who hold them haveparticipated in or experienced the events to whichthey refer, but rather are the product of political, social,or cultural minorities that in various ways havepropagated, diffused, or imposed their views withgreater or lesser degrees of success. The foundingtheorists of this field, Maurice Halbwachs and PierreNora, have recognized this, but they argue that thestudy of "collective memory" is important because it isone of the artifacts that constitutes the historicalrecord, influencing politics, society, and culture, andas such forms part of the data to be examined byhistory. It does not reveal history itself but is simplyone part of the data that historians study.

The founding work was Halbwachs's Les cadressociaux de la mémoire, published in 1925, butcollective memory only emerged as a significant fieldin the latter part of the twentieth century. This was oneaspect of the broadening and diversification of theobjects and subfields of historical study that tookplace from the 1970s on, and has led to thedevelopment of a number of new specialized journals,such as Pasado y memoria, published by theUniversity of Alicante. The first major work in this fieldto appear in Spain was Paloma Aguilar's Memoria yolvido de la Guerra Civil Española (1996), whichremains the principal study of that theme as collectivememory and is not to be confused with a considerablenumber of other works that record individual oralhistory data.

Specialists in the field have noted the particularproblems and abuses that may appear. EnriqueGavilán has spoken of what he calls "the impossibility

of and need for historical memory." He drawsattention to the fact that in his final work, La mémoirecollective (1950):

Halbwachs drew attention to the verbalexcess implied by the expression historicalmemory. Collective memory is nothistorical but in fact anti-historical. Tounderstand something in historical terms isto be aware of its complexity, to remain atsufficient distance to be able to seedifferent perspectives, to grasp theambiguities in the behavior of differentactors, including their moral ambiguity.Conversely, collective memory simplifies,denies the passage of time, eternalizes,essentializes. Collective memorycharacteristically pretends to express aneternal or essential truth about a collectiveprocess.

Moreover, Halbwachs maintained thatcollective memory functions in the oppositeway from what maybe supposed bycommon sense, for collective memory isnot so much the result of the action of thepast on the present, as we might tend tothink, but of the present on the past. In otherwords, collective memory is less adiscovery than a creation.

Therefore, if one accepts the ideas ofHalbwachs, the expression historicalmemory should be used with care. Nor is

the idea of recovery of collective orhistorical memory defensible, since oneshould speak rather of the construction ofmemory... The present plays a muchgreater role in configuring the memory ofthe past than is generally recognized.12

Similarly, in an essay published in History andTheory, Wulf Kansteiner speaks of the differencebetween those whom he calls "the makers of memory"and "the consumers of memory," and of the"abundance of initiatives of failed collective memoryon one side and of the few cases of successfulconstruction of collective memory on the other." Heconcludes that there is inadequate study of what heterms "the problem of reception" of collective memory,for "collective memory is not history" but rather "is asmuch a result of conscious manipulation and ofunconscious absorption and is always mediated." 13

He points out that the Israeli scholars Noa Gedi andYigal Elam have concluded that collective or historicalmemory consists of what these two specialists call"myths." 14

The philosopher Gustavo Bueno is yet more critical,insisting that in Spain all this merely amounts to apolitical maneuver, what he calls "the invention, on thepart of the Left, of the concept of "historical memory"15. He points out that the dean of recent memorystudies, Pierre Nora, distinguished between history,whose research seeks objectivity, and memory, whichis a subjective construction. 16 Bueno insists thathistorical memory can never be more than a social,cultural, or political artifact. He defines the concept of"common historical memory" as "a metaphysical

idea" that "proposes for us ... an abstract subject(Society, or Humanity, a sort of divinity that preserveseverything and maintains it in the present) capable ofpreserving in its breast the totality of the past whichpresent mortals need to discover." 17

Yet a different enterprise is that of "oral history,"which became a subdiscipline of history in the latetwentieth century. Gavilán stresses that in thisparticular field "the work of historians does notpresume the accuracy of memory. On the contrary, itis fully cognizant of the inevitable deficiencies ofmemory. Historians know that memory not merelydeforms the understanding of what has occurred, butin fact does so inevitably. There can be no otherpossibility... The goal is not the past, but the present."18

In the objective task of excavations in funeraryarchaeology, we find that the contemporary Europeanchampions are not the Spaniards of the ARMH, whohave sometimes done meritorious work but haveexcavated only a limited number of remains, but are infact the Russians of the late twentieth century or theSlovenes in 2009. The country that mostsystematically ignored the existence of mass commongraves of the dead, stemming from both the Stalinistexecutions and World War II, was the Soviet Union,some of whose Spanish coreligionists have been veryactive in the agitation about the "pact of silence" and"historical memory." Since the remains of many of themillions of Soviet war dead had never beenrecovered, even from the battles on Russian soil,during the 1970s and 1980s thousands of Russianvolunteers devoted their spare time on weekends tothe recovery of the remains of many thousands of

the recovery of the remains of many thousands ofsoldiers.19 By comparison, Spanish agitators haveshown very limited initiative. In Slovenia, a mass sitewas opened in 2009, which apparently contains theremains of literally thousands of victims of the massexecutions carried out by Yugoslav Communists in1945. The common graves uncovered in Spain inrecent years are modest by comparison.

Moreover, the most elaborate use of a collectivememory of the Spanish Civil War was probably notanything seen in Spain from the successors of eitherside, but rather the cult of the antifascist, revolutionarySpanish Civil War, which flourished in CommunistEast Germany (DDR). An important segment of theoriginal DDR leadership had fought in the InternationalBrigades (where their goal certainly had not beendemocracy for Spain) and, hand in hand with therevelation in the Soviet Union of the crimes of Stalin,the myth of the Soviet revolution was to some extentreplaced by the myth of the revolution and antifasciststruggle in Spain as a kind of founding myth of theEast German regime. Needless to say there was nopretense that the Spanish Republic was a Western-style liberal democracy. The decline of the collectivememory myth of the Spanish war during the 1980scoincided with the more general decline of the EastGerman regime.20

The rise of the agitation concerning historicalmemory at the beginning of the twenty-first century hasstemmed from three sources. One is the passing ofgenerations and of time, not unassociated with thegreat development of archaeological research sincethe 1980s. The serious research aspect of historicalmemory has developed with historical distance, and

with the growth of means to accomplish the work.Passage of time does not mean that there is nopolitical dimension to this activity, but it has certainlymeant less interference from countervailing politicalconsiderations.

The second factor is the shift in politics itself, withthe increasing strength of the Partido Popular during1996-2004, and the need to associate leftist politicalagitation with a different kind of argument. The firstand second factors are interconnected, for, with thepassage of time, most of the older generation of leftistleaders of the Transition has passed from the scene.These were the ones who seriously "remembered" theCivil War, not in the sense that they had participatedin it but rather that they had been keenly aware of itsrealities and dangers, and were agreed not to usehistory for partisan purposes. The completeconsolidation of democracy and the passage of timealso meant that any remaining compensatoryinfluences, such as potential pressure from themilitary, had completely disappeared.

The third factor was the change in ideology on theLeft. The Left's doctrine shifted fairly rapidly during thelate twentieth century, from the various radicalisms ofthe 1960s and early 1970s to the social democracyand "Eurocommunism" embraced by the late 1970s.The new orientation lasted for the better part of twodecades, but by the 1990s was giving way to thecommon new ideology of the Left in the Westernworld, the only major modern ideology that does nothave a generally agreed name. Its most technical titleis political correctness, but in Spain it has often simplybeen called "el buenismo" (lit. "goodism"), "elpensamiento dominante" (the dominant thought), or

pensamiento dominante" (the dominant thought), or"el pensamiento único" (uniform thought). Even morethan other radical leftist doctrines of modern times,political correctness categorically rejects the past andtraditional values, fetishizing cultural revolution ratherthan socioeconomic revolution, in this respectdiffering sometimes categorically from classicalMarxism.21 Rejection of the past is central, as is theemphasis on victims and victimization and the searchfor special categories of people to be affirmed and,conversely, to be stigmatized. "Victimism" isparticularly important to this contemporary ideology,since, like its immediate predecessors, it tends tobecome a secular religion or religion substitute, andthus must find means of dealing with fundamentalquestions of human guilt. This is accomplished byprojecting that guilt onto selected scapegoats, nearlyall of whom are dead white males, led in Spain byFrancisco Franco. The definition and identification ofvictims and victimizers assumes a vital culticsignificance, as victims fill the roles held by heroes intraditional culture, achieving a kind of salvific status.22

It is characteristic that in Spain such matters arerarely debated but most commonly simply asserted.This tends to be the case whether in the controversyover national identities or over the Civil War and post-Civil War repressions. When scholarly congressesare convened, they are normally organized by oneside, which stacks the program with thoserepresenting its point of view, and the opposing sidedoes the same. The partial exceptions have been afew congresses dealing with nationalism and identity,as well as occasional rarities, such as the "curso deverano" (summer course) held at the University ofBurgos in the summer of 2005.

A hopeful sign was that the final version of the "Leyde la memoria histórica," as it is commonly butincorrectly called,23 that was finally passed by theZapatero government, was more moderate than theearlier announcements of 2004-6. As a result of awide variety of criticisms, ranging from those ofspokesmen of the Partido Popular to professionalhistorians (including a few of the most prestigiousSocialist scholars), the term "memoria histórica"virtually disappeared, being replaced by the term"memoria democrática," which the law proposed tofoster. Strictly speaking, "memoria democrática"would have to refer to the Transition, since there wasnever any full democracy in Spain before 1977, withthe partial exception, perhaps, of the Lerroux-Sampergovernments of 1933-34, against which the Socialistsrose in insurrection. Presumably, however, this wasnot precisely the intention of the leftist legislatorsresponsible for passing such legislation. The lawrecognizes that "it is not the task of the legislator toimplant a specific collective memory" but thencontradicts itself by directing the government to carryout "public policies directed toward knowledge of ourhistory and the development of democratic memory,"so that "within the space of a year after this law takeseffect, the government will establish an institutionalframework to stimulate public policies for theconservation and development of democraticmemory."

The principal objective of the law is to denounce"the radically unjust nature of all the condemnations,penalties, and any other form of personal violencecarried out for political or ideological reasons orreligious belief, during the Civil War, as well as those

suffered for the same reasons during thedictatorship," and to prepare the way forsupplementary measures of compensation andrehabilitation. The term "memoria histórica" appearsonly in the announcement of the establishment of the"Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica yArchivo General de la Guerra Civil" (DocumentaryCenter for Historical Memory and General Archive ofthe Civil War).24 The ultimate test of the law will bedetermined by how fairly the supplementary measuresare applied to all categories of victims.

The controversies about history in contemporarySpain will not be resolved any time soon, for they arenot fueled by antiquarian or scholarly interests but bypolitical passions. The normal path to resolvingcontroversies about history lies through expandedresearch and keener analysis, but achievements ofhistorical scholarship are likely to have limited effect.

The only other country where equivalent controversyhas taken place is not Germany, but Russia during the1990s, where the main controversy was not just aboutthe atrocities of Sovietism but about national historyand identity more broadly. In Russia the debate haslargely come to an end under Vladimir Putin, with theprojection of a myth of the nation that dwells onpositive aspects of the Russian past, withoutaltogether denying the atrocities committed bytotalitarianism. This has been encouraged both by thebroad authoritarian powers of the Putin governmentand by its economic prosperity. An equally importantfactor is that Russian culture and society preservecertain characteristics of their own, distinct fromWestern culture, and are little affected by politicalcorrectness. This is true to such an extent that at least

correctness. This is true to such an extent that at leasta very large minority of Russians by the early twenty-first century once more embraced Stalin as a nationalhero. Needless to say, Russia again provides anexample of the road not to follow, and there is littledanger that Spain will follow such a path.

The Spanish problem is, rather, to provide nationalcoherence for whatever path is followed, and torecognize the ambiguity and complexity of its history.The two major historical controversies — that over thenation, and the second about the Civil War andFrancoism, which are not unrelated — have noimmediate resolution, since the divides are not merelyhistoriographical but even more political, and willpersist for some time.

NotesIntroduction

1. The classic account of west European reactionsto Spain in the early modern period is J. N. Hillgarth,The Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: The Formation of aMyth (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2000).

2. J. Tazmir, Szlachta i konkwistadorzy (Warsaw,1969).

3. J. Lelewel, Parallèle historique entre l'Espagneet la Pologne an XVI, XVII, XVIIIe siècles (Paris,1836). This thesis has been updated and revised byM. Malowist, "Europe de l'Est et les Pays Ibériques:Analogie et Contrastes," in the University ofBarcelona's Homenaje a Jaime Vicens Vives(Barcelona, 1965), 1:85-93.

4. For a general guide, perhaps the best place tobegin is R. Núñez Florencio, Sol y sangre: La imagende España en el mundo (Madrid, 2001).

5. The classic definition is that of Julián Juderías,La Leyenda Negra: Estudios acerca del concepto deEspaña en el extranjero (Barcelona, 1912; repr.,Salamanca, 1997). L. Español Bouché, Leyendasnegras: Vida y obra de Julián Juderías (1877-1918):La leyenda negra antiamericana (Valladolid, 2007),presents an interesting account of Juderías andcompares the anti-Spanish legend with the anti-American legend of more recent times. Furtherelaboration may be found in R. García Cárcel, La

Leyenda Negra: Historia y opinión (Barcelona,1997); W. S. Maltby, Black Legend in England: TheDevelopment of Anti-Spanish Sentiment, 1558-1660(Durham, N.C., 1971); M. Molina Martínez, LaLeyenda Negra (Madrid, 1991); P. W. Powell, Tree ofHate: Propaganda and Prejudice Affecting UnitedStatus Relations with the Hispanic World (Berkeley,1971); and D. Ramos, Genocidio y conquista: Viejosmitos que siguen en pie (Madrid, 1998). J. Pérez, LaLeyenda Negra (Madrid, 2009), presents an excellentoverview.

6. On the formation of these images, see E.Fernández Herr, Les origines de l'Espagneromantique: Les récits de voyage (1755-1823)(Paris, 1973); L.F. Hoffman, Romantique Espagne:l'Image de l'Espagne en France entre 1800 et 1850(Paris, 1961); L. Félix Fernández, La España deMérimée (Málaga, 1990); E. Echevarría Pereda, Laimagen de España en Francia: Viajeras francesasdecimonónicas (Málaga, 1994); M. Bernal Rodríguez,La Andalucía de los libros de viajes del siglo XIX(Seville, 1985); A. González Troyano, La desventurade Carmen: Una divagación sobre Andalucía(Madrid, 1991); B. Cantizano Márquez, Estudio deltópico de Carmen en los viajeros británicos del sigloXIX (Granada, 1999); D. Howarth, The Invention ofSpain: Cultural Relations between Britain and Spain,1770-1870 (Manchester, 2007), and the excellentsummary in T. Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song (NewHaven, Conn., 1994), III — 25. A classic, if morbid,phrase was Maurice Barres's Du sang, de la voluptéet de la mort, though the product was a generallyuninteresting book that did not live up to its title and

eventually appeared in Spanish as Sangre,voluptuosidad y muerte, not in Spain but in BuenosAires in 1922.

7. After 1961 the government abandoned theslogan and generally promoted a more "serious"image. See S. D. Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship:Europe's Peaceful Invasion of Franco's Spain (NewYork, 2006), 148-53.

8. William D. Phillips Jr. has pointed to thepresence of such attitudes (and ignorance) in thethree books most widely read in the United States oncontemporary and general Spanish history: G.Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of theSocial and Political Background of the Civil War(New York, 1944; repr., Cambridge, 1990); J. A.Crow, Spain: The Root and the Flower; AnInterpretation of Spain and the Spanish People(Berkeley, 2005); and H. Thomas, The Spanish CivilWar (New York, 1961; rev. ed., London, 2003). SeeW. D. Phillips, "La otra cara de la moneda: La imagende España en los Estados Unidos," in J. M. deBernardo Ares, ed., El hispanismoanglonorteamericano: Aportaciones, problemas yperspectivas sobre Historia, Arte y LiteraturaEspañolas (siglos XVI-XVIII) (Córdoba, 2001), 161-76.

9. Hillgarth, Mirror of Spain, 544.

The Formation of a Hispanist

1. R. Kagan, Spain in America: The Origins ofHispanism in the United States (Urbana, 2002), 1-2.

2. In addition to the work by Kagan, see the oldersummaries by M. Romera-Navarro, El hispanismo enNorteamérica (Madrid, 1917), and F. S. Stimson,Orígenes del hispanismo norteamericano (MexicoCity, 1961).

3. T. E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence ofthe United States: An Intrinsic Gift (Albuquerque,2002), is an important new work that shows thatSpanish policy was active on more fronts than it hasbeen given credit for and had more effect on the warthan has generally been thought. The Spanishintervention was a logical extension of the pro-French,anti-British policy of that era, though the more astuteSpanish observers and analysts pointed out thepotential "boomerang effect" of fostering a strong newindependent, English-speaking power in NorthAmerica. See L. T. Cummins, Spanish Observers andthe American Revolution, 1775-1783 (Baton Rouge,1991).

4. W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign ofFerdinand and Isabella (1837), A History of theConquest of Mexico (1843), A History of theConquest of Peru (1847), and History of the Reign ofPhilip the Second of Spain (1855). For a briefsummary of Prescott's work in Spanish, see M.González-Arnao Conde-Luque, "William H. Prescott:Historiador de España y de las Indias," Historia 16,10.117 (January 1986): 99-106.

5. Kagan, Spain in America, 10. See also Kagan'sarticle, "Prescott's Paradigm: American HistoricalScholarship and the Decline of Spain," AmericanHistorical Review 101.2 (1996): 423-46.

Historical Review 101.2 (1996): 423-46.

6. S. T. Wallis, Glimpses of Spain (1849) andSpain: Her Institutions, Politics and Public Men(1853).

7. See the remarks of Kagan on Wallis in hisarticles "Un país gobernado por los curas:Reflexiones en torno a la imagen de España enEstados Unidos a comienzos del siglo XIX," in J.Martínez Millán and C. Reyero, eds., El siglo deCarlos Vy Felipe II: La construcción de los mitos enel siglo XIX (Madrid, 2000),1:419-36, and "Laimagen de España en el mundoanglonorteamericano: Reflexiones sobre su evoluciónhistórica," in J. M. de Bernardo Ares, ed., Elhispanismo anglonorteamericano: Aportaciones,problemas y perspectivas sobre Historia, ArteyLiteratura Españolas (siglos XVI-XVIII) (Córdoba,2001), 1:141-47.

8. For the interaction of American artists with Spainduring this period, see M. E. Boone, Vistas deEspaña: American Views of Art and Life in Spain,1860-1914 (New Haven, Conn., 2007).

9. Phillips, "La otra cara de la moneda," 1:61-76.

10. España Libre continued its biweekly publicationfor many years, concluding its labors only in 1977,when it declared that because of the newdemocratization under Juan Carlos, Spain had oncemore become "libre."

11. Maurín's second surname was Julià, and hispersonal language in Catalonia was Catalan, although

most of his writing and his addresses to workers werein Spanish. He hoped to attract peripheral nationalismto the revolution, and therefore when I published mybook on early Basque nationalism in 1974, the yearafter his death, it seemed fitting to dedicate it to hismemory. For fear of the lingering censorship in Spain,however, this had to be abbreviated in the Spanishedition to "A la memoria de J. M. J."

12. Archivo de la Fundación Nacional FranciscoFranco, 69:23336. The report is mistaken that I hadsucceeded in interviewing Aranda, who alwaysavoided contact with me. The error probably stemmedfrom a police observer who noted an effort of mine tocall on Aranda in his home on the calle Alfonso XII (Mythanks to Félix Morales, Secretario General of theFundación, for this document.)

13. S. G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945(Madison, 1995), is co-dedicated also to my dearfriend and senior colleague, George Mosse, eminentin the study of fascism as in much else; Linz is alsorecognized in my later full treatment of Falangism,Fascism in Spain, 1923-1977 (Madison, 1999).

14. For an account of this enterprise from Martínez'spoint of view, see A. Forment, José Martínez: Laepopeya de Ruedo Ibérico (Barcelona, 2000).

15. S. G. Payne, "Jaime Vicens Vives and theWriting of Spanish History," Journal of ModernHistory 34.2 (June 1962): 119-34.

16. Gabriel Jackson, the first chairman of theHistory Department at UC-San Diego (La Jolla),arranged the purchase of this collection. My UCLA

colleague John Galbraith had become the first regularchancellor of the newly expanded San Diego campus,and since I knew that he was looking for a chairman tostart the History Department, I recommendedJackson, who was seeking to move to a majoruniversity and so briefly served as departmentchairman when he moved to La Jolla in 1966.

17. S. G. Payne, "Il nazionalismo basco tra destra esinistra," Rivista Storica Italiana 85.4 (1973): 984-1043.

18. S. G. Payne, Basque Nationalism (Reno,1975).

19. Sebastián Auger was a wealthy Catalanbusinessman who aspired to play a role in bothcultural affairs and public life. Soon after the death ofFranco, however, he fled the country as the result of afinancial scandal.

20. S. G. Payne, El nacionalismo vasco: De susorígenes a la ETA (Barcelona, 1974), the subtitlebeing considerably inflated. It appeared in English asBasque Nationalism.

21. S. G. Payne, "In the Twilight of the Franco Era,"Foreign Affairs 49.2 (January 1971): 342-54.

22. The proceedings of this seminar werepublished in S. Chavkin, J. Sangster, and W. Susman,eds., Spain: Implications for United States ForeignPolicy (Stamford, Conn., 1976).

23. As soon as Suárez was appointed, NationalPublic Radio in Washington telephoned me at my

vacation site near Yellowstone National Park toinquire about the prospects of Spain's new primeminister. In fact, at that time I knew very little aboutSuárez but told them that he was a reasonablyexperienced political figure who enjoyed theconfidence of the king and would have a good chanceto succeed in democratizing the system. Part of thiswas more a guess or a conjecture, but it turned out tobe the right thing to say.

1. Visigoths and Asturians

1. "Hispania' was apparently derived from aPhoenician word referring either to "land of rabbits" or"land of metals."

2. A good statement of this interpretation for theorigins of Visigothic Spain is J. Arce, Bárbaros yromanos en España (400-507A.D.) (Madrid, 2005).

3. This is the burden of B. Ward-Perkins, The Fallof Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005).

4. See the references in M. González Jiménez,"¿Re-conquista? Un estado de la cuestión," in E.Benito Ruano, ed., Tópicos y realidades de la EdadMedia (Madrid, 2000), 155-78.

5. A. García Gallo, "Nacionalidad y territorialidaddel derecho en la epoca visigoda," Anuario de laHistoria del Derecho Español 13 (1936-41): 168-264.

6. R. Collins, Law, Culture and Regionalism inEarly Medieval Spain (Hampshire, 1992), 204-5.

7. See especially J. Fontaine, Isidoro de Sevilla:Génesis y originalidad de la cultura hispánica entiempos de los visigodos (Madrid, 2002) and Cultureet spiritualité en Espagne du IVe an Vile siècle(London, 1986).

8. E. James, ed., Visigothic Spain: NewApproaches (Oxford, 1980).

9. P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom:Triumph and Diversity, A. D. 200-1000 (Oxford,2003), 366; A. Besga Marroquín, Consideracionessobre la situación política de los pueblos del nortede España durante la época visigoda del Reino deToledo (Bilbao, 1983); L. R. Menéndez Bueyes,Reflexiones críticas sobre el origen del Reino deAsturias (Salamanca, 2001).

10. B. Schimmelpfennig, Das Papsttum: Von derAntike his zur Renaissance (Darmstadt, 1996), citedin J. L. Villacañas Berlanga, La formación de losreinos hispánicos (Madrid, 2006), 126.

11. Cf. J. Fontaine and C. Pellistrandi, L'Europehéritère de l'Espagne visigothique (Madrid, 1992).The origin of early medieval popular assemblies,found in various forms in northern Spain and alsothroughout most of western Europe, is a different,more problematic issue. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz,like many historians who write in English, tends toattribute this to Germanic influences. See C. SánchezAlbornoz, España, un enigma histórico (BuenosAires, 1971), 1:134-39. Some Spanish historianswould disagree.

12. Fontaine, Isidoro de Sevilla, 284.

13. Fontaine, Culture et spiritualité 38.

14. Ibid., 37.

15. R. Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409-711 (Oxford,2004), 244.

16. A. Besga Marroquín, Orígenes hispanogodosdel Reino de Asturias (Oviedo, 2000).

17. See, for example, A. Bonet Correa, Arte pre-románico asturiano (Barcelona, 1987) and V. NietoAlcalde, Arte prerrománico asturiano (Salinas, 1989).

18. A judicious recent summary maybe found in thesplendidly illustrated synthesis by J. I. Ruiz de la PeñaSolar, La monarquía asturiana (Oviedo, 2001).Perhaps the most assiduous advocate of the newinterpretation has been Besga Marroquín, who haspublished several more widely read articles in thepopular history magazine Historia 16, in addition tothe books cited earlier. The classic account is C.Sánchez Albornoz, El Reino de Asturias: Orígenesde la nación Española (Oviedo, 2001), and, for arecent popularized version, see J. J. Esparza, La granaventura del Reino de Asturias: Así empezó laReconquista (Madrid, 2009).

2. Spain and Islam

1. These multiculturalists, however, also expectedall those participating in "diversity" to have the samepolitical principles, derived from the late modern,politically correct West.

2. M. R. Menocal, The Ornament of the World: HowMuslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture ofTolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston, 2002).

3. E. Karsh, Islamic Imperialism. A History (NewHaven, Conn., 2006), presents a good brief accountof Muslim military expansionism across the centuries,while P. Fregosi, Jihad in the West: MuslimConquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries(Amherst, N.Y., 1998), is broader yet.

4. The literature concerning Spain and the Islamicworld is enormous. P. Damián Cano, Al Andalus: ElIslam y los pueblos ibéricos (Madrid, 2004), offers agood short survey, while the long conflict, with specialattention to the Reconquest and the twentieth century,is narrated in C. Vidal Manzanares, España frente alIslam: De Mahoma a Ben Laden (Madrid, 2004).

5. I. V. Gaiduk, The Great Confrontation: Europeand Islam through the Centuries (Chicago, 2003),presents a broad survey that includes eastern Europe.

6. See M.Bonner,Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrinesand Practice (Princeton, N.J., 2006).

7. R. Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710-797 (Oxford, 1989), is the second volume of themultivolume Blackwell's History of Spain edited byJohn Lynch and effectively summarizes and analyzesthe data available at the time of writing, though newstudies continue to appear.

8. "Al-Andalus" means, approximately, "the West,"

although the etymology is not clear.

9. On the complete predominance of oriental cultureand forms, see P. Guichard, Al-Andalus: Estructuraantropológica de una sociedad islámica enOccidente (Barcelona, 1976). The key study of theinitial phase is P. Chalmeta, Invasión e islamización:La sumisión de Hispania y la formación de al-Andalus (Jaén, 2003). T. F. Glick, Islamic andChristian Spain in the Early Middle Ages:Comparative Perspectives on Social and CulturalFormation (Princeton, N.J., 1979), is also useful.Guichard's De la expansión arabe a la Reconquista:Esplendor y fragilidad de Al-Andalus (Granada,2002), presents one of the best general portraits of AI-Andalus.

10. A. G. Chejne, Muslim Spain: Its History andCulture (Minneapolis, 1974), iv.

11. It should be remembered that a subjectChristian population, much of it also speaking a formof vernacular Latin or early Romance, survived in thenorthern Maghrib during the same time period as thatof the Mozarabs of Al-Andalus. Although its territoryhad begun to shrink and decline as early as the fourthcentury, much of the Romanized area of the northernMaghrib had been firmly Christian in religion (evenmore so than some parts of Roman western Europe)and at times in close contact with Visigothic Hispania.Under Muslim domination it suffered the samepressures and fate as the Mozarabs, and alsosuccumbed to the Almohads by the twelfth century.

12. On the initial achievements of Islamic culture

and the place of Islamic society in history, see M. G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of lslam: Conscience andHistory in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago,1974), and Rethinking World History: Essays onEurope, Islam and World History (Cambridge, 1993).

13. J. Van Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology(Cambridge, Mass., 2006), is a good introduction.

14. Though for centuries San Isidoro was probablyread by proportionately more people, Juan Verner hasobserved that in his influence on Western philosophyAverroes was the most influential thinker born in theIberian Peninsula, even if he was not "Spanish" butMuslim.

15. Though there is no doubt that Averroes waswidely read, in recent years there has been a growingtendency to question the importance of Muslim culturalinfluence on Western thought and development, andeven to question the significance of its role intransmitting ancient texts. See S. Gouguenheim,Aristóteles y el Islam: Las raíces griegas de laEuropa cristiana (Madrid, 2009).

16. According to one study, cited in J. Verner, ElIslam y Europa (Barcelona, 1982), 71, of the majorMuslim writers and scientists studied in westernEurope during the fifteenth century, eight had beenborn in the eleventh and eight in the twelfth centuries,but only two in the thirteenth and one in the fourteenthcenturies, by which time Muslim intellectual culturewas fading.

17. A brief treatment of black slavery in Al-Andalusand elsewhere in the Islamic world may be found in R.

and elsewhere in the Islamic world may be found in R.Segal, Islam's Black Slaves: The Other BlackDiaspora (New York, 2001).

18. J. H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of AmericanRacist Thought," William and Mary Quarterly 54.1(January 1997): 143-65, calls attention, in myjudgment correctly, to the importance of the influenceand example of Islam in the early development ofslavery among the Spanish and Portuguese.

19. B. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the MiddleEast:: An Historical Inquiry (Oxford, 1992).

20. J. Rodríguez Molina, La vida de moros ycristianos en la frontera (Alcalá la Real, 2007).

21. B. Vincent, "La cultura morisca," Historia 16 18(October 1977): 78-95. The standard work onreligious differences is L. Cardaillac, Moriscos ycristianos: Un enfrentamiento polémico (1492-1640)(Madrid, 1979).

22. E. K. Neuvonen, Los arabismos del Españolen el siglo XIII (Helsinki, 1941), found that only one-half of 1 percent of the total vocabulary of literaryCastilian in the thirteenth century stemmed fromArabic, but this does not account for additionalArabisms in local vocabularies, or the addition offurther Arabisms in the later Middle Ages.

23. See E. Alfonso, "La construcción de laidentidad judía en al-Andalus en la Edad Media," ElOlivo 23.49 (1999): 5-24.

24. The fate of the enormous number of Spaniards

and other west Europeans seized and enslavedduring the early modern period — amounting in toto topossibly as many as a million people — is treated inR. C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters:White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the BarbaryCoast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (New York, 2003). On theSpanish experience, see E. G. Friedman, SpanishCaptives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age(Madison, 1983), and J. Martínez Torres, Prisionerosde los infieles: Vida y rescate de los cautivoscristianos en el mediterráneo musulmán (siglos xvi-xvii) (Barcelona, 2007). The most famous prisonerwas Cervantes, whose captivity in Algiers has beenrecounted recently by M. A. Garcés, Cervantes inAlgiers: A Captive's Tale (Nashville, 2002). Thisexperience was formative in the career of the greatwriter, and he referred to it frequently, in quite negativeterms, though it did not prejudice him againstMuslims, as evidenced by references in his classicnovel. For that matter, one of his conceits was thatDon Quijote had been translated from the work of"Cide Hamete Benengeli, historiador arábigo." And inthe Middle Ages, the Arabs had produced greathistorians, more than — for example — greatscientists.

25. A. Torrecillas Velasco, Dos civilizaciones enconflicto: España en el África musulmana: Historiade una guerra de 400 años (1497-1927) (Valladolid,2006), 345-90, and, more broadly, M. Arribas Palau,Las relaciones hispano magrebíes en el siglo XVIII(Madrid, 2007).

26. S. Fanjul, Al-Andalus contra España: La forjadel mito (Madrid, 2000), 86. See also his La quimera

de al-Andalus (Madrid, 2004).

27. For these and further examples, see chaps. fivethrough eight of S. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain,Germany and World War II (New Haven, Conn.,2008).

3. Reconquest and Crusade

1. Significant Muslim populations did develop inBosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, and in parts ofBulgaria.

2. In the east Mediterranean during that era, theByzantines had succeeded in reconquering Anatolia(which had never been fully occupied and had not inthat period been Islamized), holding it for twocenturies before losing it to a new Muslim onslaught.

3. J. O'Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade inMedieval Spain (Philadelphia, 2003), 7.

4. J. L. Villacañas Berlanga, La formación de losreinos hispánicos (Madrid, 2006), 29.

5. The relationship between conversion andcrusading is treated in B. Z. Kedar, Crusade andMission: European Approaches toward the Muslims(Princeton, N.J., 1984).

6. Whereas in earlier generations the Arabs hadusually tolerated Christian pilgrims, the Seljuk Turks,the most recent conquerors of the region, greetedChristian visitors with violence. Hence the immediatemotivation for the Crusade.

7. The best new history of the Crusades is C.Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades(Cambridge, Mass., 2007).

8. The Aragonese conquest of Barbastro, with thehelp of French forces, in 1063 is sometimesconsidered the immediate precursor of the formalcrusade, which is something of an exaggeration, but itdid serve as an example to the papacy in developingthe concept. Similarly, the occupation of Toledo in1085, the first direct occupation of a full taifa state(and precipitated especially by internal developmentsin Toledo), was considered a "holy war" but certainlynot a crusade, being in fact a kind of transactionbetween its inhabitants and the crown of Castile.

9. Given the relative weakness of Spanishhistoriography in analytic synthesis, for a very longtime there was no single survey of the Reconquest inone volume, the first book so titled being D. Lomax,The Reconquest of Spain (London, 1978), still a veryuseful summary and guide. J. Valdeón Baruque, LaReconquista: El concepto de España: Unidad ydiversidad (Madrid, 2006), also presents a summary,but the best brief discussions are the works by Lomaxand O'Callaghan. There is considerable literature onthe idea of the crusade in Western Christendom. Themost recent, and probably the best, study of itsbackground and process of conceptualization is J.Flori, La guerra santa: La formación de la idea decruzada en el Occidente cristiano (Madrid, 2003). J.T. Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western andIslamic Traditions (University Park, Pa., 2001), seeksto compare crusade and jihad. The specific meaningand use of the institution of the crusade in Spain was

first brought to the attention of historians in J. GoñiGaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada enEspaña (Vitoria, 1958).

10. The best guide is A. D. Smith, ChosenPeoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity(Oxford, 2003). Smith virtually ignores Spain, though itmight have provided one of his better cases.

11. B. Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth toGenocide (New York, 1999).

12. There is an extensive literature on this. See N.Berdyaev, The Russian Idea (New York, 1948; repr.,Westport, Conn., 1979); P. J. S. Duncan, RussianMessianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communismand After (London, 2000); and T. McDaniel, TheAgony of the Russian Idea (Princeton, N.J., 1996).

13. Quoted in A. A. Sicroff, Les controverses desstatuts de "pureté de sang" en Espagne du XVeauXVle siècles (Paris, 1960), 291-94.

4. Spain and the West

1. For example, M. S. Anderson, Britain'sDiscovery of Russia 1553-1885 (London, 1958), and,more broadly, L. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe:The Map of Civilization on the Mind of theEnlightenment (Palo Alto, 1994).

2. Early Western civilization had no name of its ownfor itself. "Europe" existed as a strictly geographicalterm, and the Crónica Mozárabe of 754 referred to theFrankish forces that turned back the Muslims as

"europeenses," but this was not broadly used at thattime. The world of Latin Christendom did, of course,develop a cultural self-consciousness, and by theeleventh century employed the concept of"Christianitas," or Christendom. Europe as a generalterm for the political and cultural world of the Westbecame increasingly common in the sixteenth century,and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment stressed theidea of European civilization. The contemporaryusage of the West and Western civilization developedduring the nineteenth century. See K. Wilson and J.van der Dussen, eds., The History of the Idea ofEurope (London, 1993); A. Pagden, ed., The Idea ofEurope: From Antiquity to the European Union(Washington, D. C., 2002); and B. Geremek, TheCommon Roots of Europe (Cambridge, Mass.,1996).

3. J. Marías, España inteligible: Razón histórica delas Españas (Madrid, 1985). J. Pérez (La LeyendaNegra) and others have made much the same point.

4. The Anglo-Norman monarchy justified the partialconquest of Ireland as "extending Christendom."

5. For broad accounts, see J. R. S. Phillips, TheMedieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford, 1988), andR. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest,Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350(Princeton, N.J., 1993).

6. There is an abundant literature on this topic. SeeR. C. Dales, The Scientific Achievement of theMiddle Ages (Philadelphia, 1973); L. White, Jr.,Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, 1978);

and D. C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of WesternScience: The European Scientific Tradition inPhilosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context,600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago, 1992).

7. H. J. Berman, The Interaction of Law andReligion (Nashville, 1974); Law and Revolution: TheFormation of the Western Legal Tradition(Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Faith and Order: TheReconciliation of Law and Religion (Atlanta, 1993).

8. B. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studieson Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law,1150-1625 (Grand Rapids, 1997).

9. For a brief application of this concept to modernsouthern Europe, see I. Wallerstein, "The Relevanceof the Concept of Semiperiphery to Southern Europe,"in G. Arrighi, ed., Semiperipheral Development: ThePolitics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century(London, 1985), 31-39.

10. The leading historian of Poland in a Westernlanguage is Norman Davies. See his God'sPlayground: A History of Poland , 2 vols. (Oxford,1981), and Heart of Europe: A Short History ofPoland (New York, 1986).

11. As Oswald Spengler put it, "The WesternCulture of maturity was through-and-through a Frenchoutgrowth of the Spanish." The Decline of the West(New York, 1980), 1:150.

12. Change, new conflict, and the threat of the"subversive" in this largely traditionalist society are

emphasized, perhaps excessively, in J. A. Maravall,The Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a HistoricalStructure (Minneapolis, 1986).

13. J. B. Scott, The Spanish Origin of lnternationalLaw (Washington, D.C., 1928).

14. The best analysis and summary will be found inA. A. Chafuen, Christians for Freedom: LateScholastic Economics (San Francisco, 1986). Seealso M. Grice-Hutchinson, The School of Salamanca:Readings in Spanish Monetary Theory, 1544-1605(Oxford, 1962).

15. L. J. Hutton, The Christian Essence of SpanishLiterature: An Historical Study (Lewiston, N.Y., 1988),stresses the essential orthodoxy of classic Spanishliterature. This is fundamentally correct, though therewere an infinite variety of nuances; cf. R. Ornstein,The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison,Wis., 1965).

16. There is, of course, an extensive literature onEnglish exceptionalism, such as the works of A.Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism:The Family, Property, and Social Transition (Oxford,1978) and The Culture of Capitalism (Oxford, 1987).On some of the origins, see F. Borkenau, End andBeginning: On the Generations of Cultures and theOrigins of the West (New York, 1981).

5. Identity, Monarchy, Empire

1. The Real Academia de la Historia publishedEspaña: Reflexiones sobre el ser de España

(Madrid, 1997) and España como nación (Madrid,2000), as well as V. Palacio Atard, ed., De Hispaniaa España: El nombre y el concepto a través de lossiglos (Madrid, 2005). One of the most cogentaccounts was L. González Antón, España y lasEspañas: Nacionalismos y falsificación en lahistoria, rev. ed. (Madrid, 2007). Other notable titles inthis debate are M. Hernández Sánchez-Barba,España: Historia de una nación (Madrid, 1995); J. M.Otero Novas, Defensa de la Nación Española(Madrid, 1998); G. Bueno, España no es un mito:Claves para una defensa razonada (Madrid, 2005);and J. P. Fusi's eminently sensible España: Laevolución de la identidad nacional (Madrid, 2000). Asomewhat different perspective may be found in J.Tusell, España, una angustia nacional (Madrid,1999).

2. G. Bueno, España frente a Europa (Barcelona,1999).

3. In some of the first documents it was alsorendered as "espagnon," arguably a more typicallyAragonese or Pyrenean form. J. A. Maravall, "Sobreel origen de 'español,'" Estudios de historia delpensamiento español (Madrid, 1999),1:7-23.

4. Alfonso el Batallador, king of Aragon in the earlytwelfth century, frequently used the title Rex etImperator Hispaniae, but only in connection with hisclaim to be king of León.

5. In medieval usage, "prince" was a common titlefor a ruler, sometimes equivalent to king, sometimesused in principalities that did not claim the full status of

"kingdom."

6. A. Sánchez Candeiras, El regnum-imperiumleonés hasta 1137 (Madrid, 1951).

7. A classic discussion is R. Menéndez Pidal, ElImperio hispánico y los Cinco Reinos (Madrid,1950), though many historians would not entirelyagree with this formulation today. A. García Gallo,Curso de historia del Derecho español (Madrid,1950), insists that all this has been greatlyexaggerated, and that there never really was amedieval Spanish empire. This last point is certainlycorrect, but there nevertheless existed a medievaldiscourse of empire and emperor in Asturias-León-Castile. For a recent interpretation of medievalempire in the peninsula, see G. Bueno, España frentea Europa (Barcelona, 1999).

8. For a reading by the Hispanists, see R. Collins,Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000(New York, 1983), and B. F. Reilly, The MedievalSpains (Cambridge, 1993).

9. They also, of course, asserted sovereignty overWales, Scotland, and Ireland.

10. Alfonso's attitudes and policies regarding theother religions have recently been examined in H.Salvador Martínez, La convivencia en la España delsiglo XIII: Perspectivas alfonsíes (Madrid, 2006).

11. For a highly favorable reading, see F. MárquezVillanueva, El concepto cultural alfonsí (Barcelona,2004).

12. Cf. R. Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory ofWestern Civilization (South Bend, Ind., 2004).

13. In my judgment, the best study of the cultural,intellectual, and political ambitions of Alfonso el Sabiowill be found in J. L. Villacañas Berlanga, Laformación de los reinos hispánicos (Madrid, 2006),591-702. For a full biography, more favorable to theking, see H. Salvador Martínez, Alfonso X, el Sabio:Una biografía (Madrid, 2003).

14. See P. J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: TheMedieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, N.J., 2001);C. Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths andSymbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France(Berkeley, 1991); and the studies reviewed in D. Bell,"Recent Works on Early Modern French NationalIdentity," Journal of Modern History 68.1 (March1996): 84-113.

15. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992); F. Welsh, The FourNations: A History of the United Kingdom (NewHaven, Conn., 2,003); R. Coils, Identity of England(Oxford, 2002).

16. Maravall, El concepto de España, 488.

17. So far as I am aware, the last major occasionon which the Portuguese crown contested theterminology of "crown of Spain" or "monarchy ofSpain" for the rulers in Madrid was at the time of thePeace of Utrecht in 1714.

18. H. Kamen, Philip of Spain (London, 1997), 227.

19. See C. Jago, "Habsburg Absolutism and theCortes of Castile," American Historical Review, 86.2(April, 1981): 307-26; R. Mackay, The Limits of RoyalAuthority: Resistance and Obedience inSeventeenth-Century Castile (Cambridge, 1999); J.B. Owens, "By My Absolute Royal Authority": Justiceand the Castilian Commonwealth at the Beginning ofthe First Global Age (Rochester, N.Y., 2006); and,more broadly, N. Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism:Change and Continuity in Early Modern EuropeanMonarchy (London, 1992).

20. For the broader European usage, much thesame as in Spain, see R. von Friedeburg, 'Patria' und'Patrioten' vor dem Patriotismus: Pflichten, Rechte,Glauben and die Rekonfigurierung europaischerGemeinwesen im 17. Jahrhundert. (Wolfenbüttel,2004).

21. See R. García Cárcel, ed., La construcción delas Historias de España (Madrid, 2004).

22. Quoted in the excellent brief study by X. GilPujol, "Un rey, una fe, muchas naciones: Patria ynación en la España de los siglos XVI-XVII," in A.Álvarez-Ossorio Alvarino and B. J. García García,eds., La Monarquía de las naciones: Patria, nación ynaturaleza en la Monarquía de España (Madrid,2004), 39-76.

23. I. A. A. Thompson, "Castile, Spain and theMonarchy: The Political Community from patrianatural to patria nacional," in R. L. Kagan and G.Parker, eds., Spain, Europe, and the Atlantic World:

Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott (Cambridge,1995),125-59.

24. J. A. Pelayo and A. S. Tarrés, "Los orígenes delEstado moderno español: Ideas, hombres yestructuras," in A. Floristán, ed., Historia de Españaen la edad moderna (Barcelona, 2004), 221-43; J.Villanueva, Política y discurso histórico en la Españadel siglo XVII: Las polemicas sobre los orígenesmedievales de Cataluña (Alicante, 2004).

25. R. A. Stradling, Philip IV and the Governmentof Spain, 1621-1665 (Cambridge, 1988).

26. H. Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became aWorld Power, 1492-1763 (New York, 2003).

27. For an attractive and careful new description,see F. Martínez Laínez and J. M. Sánchez de Toca,Tercios de España: La infantería legendaria (Madrid,2006).

28. See the classic works of J. H. Parry, TheSpanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century(Cambridge, 1940); S. Zavala, The PoliticalPhilosophy of the Conquest ofAmerica (Mexico,1953); and L. Hanke, The Spanish Struggle forJustice in the Conquest of America (Boston, 1965);the more recent studies by A. Pagden, The Fall ofNatural Man: The American Indian and the Originsof Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1986),Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination(New Haven, Conn., 1990), European Encounterswith the New World: From Renaissance toRomanticism (New Haven, Conn., 1993),

Uncertainties of Empire (Aldershot, 1994), and Lordsof All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain,Britain, and France c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven,Conn., 1995); as well as D. Armitage, ed., Theories ofEmpire, 1450-1800 (Aldershot, 1998), and J.Muldoon, The Americas in the Spanish World Order:The Justification for Conquest in the SeventeenthCentury (Philadelphia, 1994). Cf. D. Armitage, TheIdeological Origins of the British Empire(Cambridge, 2000).

29. D. A. Lupher, Romans in a New World:Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century SpanishAmerica (Ann Arbor, 2003).

30. The best comparison of the two major Americanempires is J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World:Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (NewHaven, Conn., 2006). Cf. C. Véliz, The New World ofthe Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English andSpanish America (Berkeley, 1994).

31. These problems receive extended analysis inthe new study of A. M. Bernal, España, proyectoinacabado: Costes/beneficios del Imperio (Madrid,2005).

6. Spain and Portugal

1. E.g., D. Stanislawski, The Individuality ofPortugal: A Study in Historical-Political Geography(Austin, 1959).

2. Probably the best account is J. Mattoso,Identificaçao de um país: Ensaio sobre as origens

de Portugal 1096-1325, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1985).

3. L. F. Thomaz, "L'Idée impériale manueline," in J.Aubin, ed., La Découverte, le Portugal et l'Europe(Paris, 1990), 35-103.

4. L. Valensi, Fables de la mémoire: La glorieusebataille des trois rois (Paris, 1992).

5. A somewhat different situation, however, isreflected by the achievements enumerated anddescribed by S. G. Marks, How Russia Shaped theModern World: From Art to AntiSemitism, Ballet toBolshevism (Princeton, N.J., 2003). The case ofRussia has to do with a country that was a greatpower from the eighteenth century on, whosepopulation explosion in the nineteenth centurygenerated a large intelligentsia that produced manynew ideas and innovations — quite the opposite froma very small and (after the sixteenth century) weakcountry like Portugal. Moreover, much of the influenceof the Russian achievements was destructive, and thiswas true of the Portuguese innovations to aconsiderably lesser degree.

6. Garrett Mattingly, in lectures of his course "TheExpansion of Europe" at Columbia in the 1950s.

7. Cf. J. Reis, 0 atraso económico português1850-1930 (Lisbon, 1993).

8. J. A. Rocamora, El nacionalismo ibérico 1792-1936 (Valladolid, 1994).

9. H. de la Torre Gómez, El imperio del Rey:Alfonso XIII, Portugal y los ingleses (1907-1916)

(Mérida, 2002).

10. See S. Payne, Franco and Hitler (New Haven,Conn., 2008), for a more extensive treatment.

11. A. J. Telo, Portugal e a NATO: 0 reencontro datradição atlântica (Lisbon, 1996).

7. Decline and Recovery

1. This position had accordingly negativeconsequences for the numbers and morale of navalcrewmen, according to D. Goodman, Spanish NavalPower, 1589-1665: Reconstruction and Defeat(Cambridge, 1997).

2. Enrique Llopis Agelán, in I. A. A. Thompson andB. Yun Casalilla, The Castilian Crisis of theSeventeenth Century: New Perspectives on theEconomic and Social History of Seventeenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1994). The broadesttreatment of the decline in one volume is A.Domínguez Ortiz et al., "La crisis del siglo XVII," in R.Menéndez Pidal and J. M. Jover, eds., Historia deEspaña, vol. 23 (Madrid, 1989).

3. As Sir Raymond Carr has observed, it was"curiously indifferent to personal character and itsdevelopment. The drama of the Golden Age is strongon plots, but the dramatis personae are stock typesand little more." New York Review of Books,November 20, 1986.

4. In some ways Scotland became an even betterexample than England. See A. Herman, How theScots Invented the Modern World (New York, 2001).

Scots Invented the Modern World (New York, 2001).

5. The English edition is titled The SpanishCharacter: Attitudes and Mentalities from theSixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley,1979). To this might be added B. Bennassar, L.Domergue, J.P. Dedieu, and J. Pérez, "Lasresistencias mentales," in Bennassar's Orígenes delatraso económico español (Barcelona, 1985), 124-51.

6. R. MacKay, "Lazy, Improvident People": Mythand Reality in the Writing of Spanish History (Ithaca,N.Y., 2006).

7. T. A. Mantecón, "The Patterns of Violence inEarly Modern Spain," Journal of the HistoricalSociety 7.2 (June 2007): 229-64.

8. Cf.M. E. Lépori de Pithod, La imagen deEspaña en el siglo XVII: Percepción y decadencia(Mendoza, Argentina, 1998).

9. See A. Mestre Sanchos, Apología y crítica deEspaña en el siglo XVIII (Madrid, 2003).

10. One of the most recent treatments is R. GarcíaCárcel, Felipe V y los Españoles: Una visiónperiférica del problema de España (Barcelona,2002). See also J. Mercader i Riba, Felip V iCatalunya (Barcelona, 1968).

11. J. Marías, España inteligible, chap. 21.

12. J. Sarrailh, L'Espagne éclairée de la secondemoitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1954)

13. The reformist criticism of Feijóo did not go asfar, however, as the "Reform Catholicism" advocatedby a minority in France and Austria. See D. Sorkin,The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews,and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton,N.J., 2008), 215-309.

14. For a clear differentiation, see G. Himmelfarb,The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, andAmerican Enlightenments (New York, 2004).

15. The basic new study is T. E. Chávez, Spain andthe Independence of the United States: An IntrinsicGift (Albuquerque, 2002). For a broadercontextualization, see the new collective work byGonzalo Anes de Castrillón, ed., La Ilustraciónespañola en la independencia de Estados Unidos(Madrid, 2007).

16. L. T. Cummins, Spanish Observers and theAmerican Revolution, 1775-1783 (Baton Rouge,1991).

17. Here it might be pointed out that eighteenth-century French writers produced the first glimmeringsof "Hispanism," producing the principal new historiesof Spain during that era, though this would not emergeas a scholarly field until the next century.

18. The best evocation of the new trends of thatgeneration, even though somewhat idealized andexaggerated, is still J. Marías, La España posible entiempo de Carlos III (Madrid, 1963).

19. J. Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808 (Oxford,

1989), 208.

20. This is the thesis of F. Sánchez-Blanco, ElAbsolutismo y las Luces en el reinado de Carlos III(Madrid, 2002).

21. F. Sánchez-Blanco, ed., La Ilustracióngoyesca: La cultura en España durante el reinadode Carlos IV (1788-1808) (Madrid, 2007).

22. J. Álvarez Junco, "La invención de la Guerra dela Independencia," Studia Histórica-HistoriaContemporánea 12 (1994): 75-99.

23. C. Esdaile, España contra Napoleón:Guerrillas, bandoleros y el mito del pueblo en armas(1808-1814) (Barcelona, 2006).

24. The bicentenary in 2008 produced a greatvolume of new historical literature, as major historicalanniversaries do in Spain. J. P. Fusi and F. CalvoSerraller, Por la independencia: La crisis de 1808 ysus consecuencias (Madrid, 2008), presents themost elegant summary and analysis. Two of the bestmilitary accounts are A. Moliner Prada, ed., La Guerrade la Independencia en España (1808-1814)(Barcelona, 2007), and E. de Diego, España, elinfierno de Napoleón (Madrid, 2008).

8. The Problem of Spanish Liberalism

1. This is the term used by M. Mugnaini, "Cult of theNation, Religion of Liberty or Reason of State? Spainin Italian Foreign Policy (1846-1868)," in J. G.Beramendi et al., eds., Nationalism in Europe Past

and Present (Santiago de Campostela, 1994), 1:665-76.

2. C. A. Hale, "The Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Politics in Spanish America: A Case for theHistory of Ideas," Latin American Research Review8.2 (Summer 1973): 53-73

3. M.-L. Rieu-Millán, Los diputados americanos enlas Cortes de Cádiz (Madrid, 1990); D. MartínezTorrón, Los liberales románticos españoles ante ladescolonización americana (Madrid, 1992); M.Chust, La cuestión nacional americana en lasCortes de Cádiz (Valencia, 1999); P. Cruz Villalón etal., Los orígenes del constitucionalismo liberal enEspaña e Iberoamérica: Un estudio comparado(Seville, 1994); P. Pascual Martínez, La unión conEspaña, exigencia de los diputados americanos enlas Cortes de Cádiz (Madrid, 2001).

4. T. E. Anna, Spain and the Loss of Latin America(Lincoln, Neb., 1983); M. P Costeloe, Response toRevolution: Imperial Spain and the SpanishAmerican Revolutions, 1810- 1840 (Cambridge,1986).

5. The bibliography treating Carlism is veryextensive. Among general accounts, A. M. MoralRonca l, Las guerras carlistas (Madrid, 2006),emphasizes military history, while J. Canal, Elcarlismo: Dos siglos de contrarrevolución enEspaña (Madrid, 2000), deals more with political andsocial aspects. The best history of the first and mostimportant Carlist war is A. Bullón de Mendoza, Laprimera guerra carlista (Madrid, 1992).

6. This is the argument of J. V. Serrâo and A. Bullónde Mendoza, eds., La contrarrevolución legitimista(1688-1876) (Madrid, 1995), and of Jordi Canal in hisarticle "Guerra civil y contrarrevolución en la Europadel sur en el siglo XIX: Reflexiones a partir del casoespañol," in J. Canal i Morell, ed., Las guerras civilesen la España contemporánea (Madrid, 2005), 23-47.

7. I. Burdiel, La política de los notables:Moderados y avanzados durante el régimen delEstatuto Real (Valencia, 1987); I. Castells, La utopíainsurreccional del liberalismo (Barcelona, 1989); M.C. Romeo, Entre el orden y la revolución: Laformación de la burguesía liberal en la crisis de lamonarquía absoluta (Alicante, 1993).

8. This follows the argument of J. Varela Ortega,"La España política de fin de siglo," Revista deOccidente (1998): 43-77, and I. Burdiel, "Myths ofFailure, Myths of Success: New Perspectives onNineteenth-Century Spanish Liberalism," Journal ofModern History 70 (December 1998): 892-912.

9. For a good introduction to Cánovas and his work,see A. Bullón de Mendoza and L. E. Togores, eds.,Cánovas y su época, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1999).

10. The fundamental study is J. Álvarez Junco,Mater Dolorosa: La idea de España en el siglo XIX(Madrid, 200,). See also P. Cirujano Marín et al.,Historiografía y nacionalismo español (1834-1868)(Madrid, 1985); I. Fox, La invención de España:Nacionalismo liberal e identidad nacional (Madrid,1997); and J. P. Fusi, España: La evolución de la

identidad nacional (Madrid, 2000), 163-96.

11. J. Álvarez Junco, "La difícil nacionalización dela derecha española en la primera mitad del sigloXIX," Hispania 61.3 (2001): 831-58.

12. Recent controversies have elicited a newanthology of Menéndez Pelayo's writings, under thetitle of La historia de España (Madrid, 2007). Seealso C. Boyd, Historia Patria: Politics, History, andNational Identity in Spain, 1875-1975 (Princeton,N.J., 1997).

13. This is the thesis of M. K. Flynn, Ideology,Mobilization, and the Nation: The Rise of the Irish,Basque and Carlist Nationalist Movements in theNineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (London,2000).

14. Something of this perspective maybe found in J.P. Fusi and A. Niño, eds., Antes del "desastre" :Orígenes y antecedentes de la crisis del 98(Madrid,1996), and J. Andrés-Gallego, Un 98 distinto:Restauración, desastre, regeneracionismo (Madrid,1998), and, to a lesser degree, in J. Pan-Montojo, ed.,Más se perdió en Cuba: España, 1898 y la crisis defin de siglo (Madrid, 1998), and in Los 98 ibéricos yel mar, vol. 2, La cultura en la península ibérica(Madrid, 1998).

15. J. Nadal, El fracaso de la revolución industrialen España, 1814-1913. The cluster of books towardthe end of the century included P. Martín Aceña and L.Prados de la Escosura, eds., La nueva historiaeconómica de España (Madrid, 1985); Prados de la

E s c o s ura , Comercio exterior y crecimientoeconómico en España, 1826-1913: Tendencias alargo plazo (Madrid, 1982), De imperio a nación:Crecimiento y atraso económico en España (1780-1930) (Madrid, 1988), and El progreso económicode España (1850-2000) (Bilbao, 2003); J. Nadal etal., eds., La economía Española en el siglo XX: Unaperspectiva histórica (Barcelona, 1987); N. Sánchez-Albornoz, ed., The Economic Modernization ofSpain, 1830 -1930 (New York, 1987); A. Carreras,Industrialización Española: Estudios de historiacuantitativa (Madrid, 1990); G. Tortella, El desarrollode la España contemporánea: Historia económicade los siglos XIX y XX (Madrid, 1994); G. Anes, ed.,Historia económica de España: Siglos XIX y XX(Barcelona,1999), J. L. García Delgado and J. C.Jiménez, Un siglo de España: La economía (Madrid,1999); and J. M. Martínez Carrión, ed., El nivel devida en la España rural, siglos XVIII-XX (Salamanca,2002).

16. L. Prados de la Escosura and V. Zamagni,eds., El desarrollo económico en la Europa del Sur:España e Italia en perspectiva histórica (Madrid,1992).

17. Cf. J. Maluquer de Motes, España en la crisisde 1898: De la Gran Depresión a la modernizacióneconómica del siglo XX (Barcelona, 1999).

18. J. Nadal, La población Española (siglos XVI-XX) (Barcelona, 1984), 211.

19. For a broader discussion, see D. Ringrose,Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle," 1700-1900

Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish Miracle," 1700-1900(Cambridge, 1996), which is the best analytical re-examination of the economy of the nineteenth century,and, for a more general discussion of the period that"normalizes" Spanish historical evolution, see J. P.Fusi and J. Palafox, España, 1808-1996:El desafíode la modernidad (Madrid, 1997).

20. This has been best brought out in the work of C.Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery: Spain,Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874 (Pittsburgh,1999), and "'La España Ultramarina': Colonialism andNation-building in Nineteenth-century Spain,"European History Quarterly 34.2 (2004): 191-214.The best treatment of the nineteenth-century empire ina single volume is J. M. Fradera, Colonias paradespués de un imperio (Barcelona, 2005).

21. Despite the revival of interest in Africa after theMoroccan war of 1859-60, Spain's leaders generallyavoided becoming very deeply involved. M. C.Lecuyer and C. Serrano, La Guerre d'Afrique et sesrepercussions en Espagne: Idéologies etcolonialisme en Espagne 1859-1904 (Paris, 1976),and E. Martín Corrales, Marruecos y el colonialismoespañol (1852-1912) (Barcelona, 2002).

22. See V. L. Salavert Fabiani, ed., Elregeneracionismo en España: Política, educación,ciencia y sociedad (Valencia, 2007).

23. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the "SpanishMiracle." 357.

24. It has been characteristic of Spanish historiansto focus on the crisis of 1917 primarily as a domestic

phenomenon. The first study to place this fully withinthe international context and multiple influences ofWorld War I is F. J. Romero Salvadó, Spain, 1914-1918: Between War and Revolution (London, 1999).See also the extensive study by G. Meaker, "A CivilWar of Words," in H. A. Schmitt, ed., Neutral EuropeBetween War and Revolution, 1917-1923(Charlottesville, N.C., 1988), 37-114.

25. This is illustrated particularly in the work of myformer student Thomas G. Trice, Spanish Liberalismin Crisis: A Study of the Liberal Party during Spain'sParliamentary Collapse, 1913-1923 (New York,1991).

26. See the counterfactual discussion by F. del ReyReguillo, " ¿Qué habría sucedido si Alfonso XIIIhubiera rechazado el golpe de Primo de Rivera en1923?" in N. Townson, ed., Historia virtual deEspaña (1870-2004): ¿Qué hubiera pasado si ... ?(Madrid, 2004), 93-137.

27. The principal studies are J. Tusell and G. GarcíaQueipo de Llano, Alfonso XIII: El rey polémico(Madrid, 2001), and C. Seco Serrano, La España deAlfonso XIII: El Estado. La política. Los movimientossociales (Madrid, 2002). A. Osorio and G. Cardona,Alfonso XIII (Barcelona, 2005), presents both sides,while J. Moreno Luzón, ed., Alfonso XIII: Un políticoen el trono (Madrid, 2003), and R. Borras Betriu, Elrey perjuro: Don Alfonso XIII y la caída de laMonarquía (Barcelona, 1997), are more critical.

28. J. Tusell, Radiografía de un golpe de Estado:El ascenso al poder del general Primo de Rivera

(Madrid, 1987), remains the key analysis.

9. A Republic . . . without Democrats?

1. J. Avilés Farré, La izquierda burguesa en la IIRepública (Madrid, 1985), remains the principalstudy. The most extensive biography of Azaña is S.Juliá, Vida y tiempo de Manuel Azaña (1880-1940)(Madrid, 2008).

2. R. Villa García, La modernización de España:Las elecciones nacionales de 1933 (forthcoming),presents the definitive study.

3. The Radicals have been studied by O. RuizManjón, El Partido Republicano Radical, 1908-1936(Madrid, 1976), and N. Townson, The Crisis ofDemocracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under theSecond Republic, 1931-1936 (Brighton, 2000).

4. The only full study of the Republican president isA. Alcalá Galve, Alcalá-Zamora y la agonía de laRepública (Seville, 2002).

5. R. A. H. Robinson, The Origins of Franco'sSpain: The Right, the Republic, and Revolution,1931-1936 (Pittsburgh, 1970), is still the best accountof the CEDA.

6. The principal historian of Spanish anarchism isJulián Casanova, author of Anarchism, the Republicand Civil War in Spain: 1931-1939 (London, 2004),Anarquismo y violencia política en la España delsiglo XX (Zaragoza, 2007), and other works. See alsoJ. Brademas, Anarquismo y revolución en España

(1930-1937) (Barcelona, 1974), and J. PaniaguaFuentes, La larga marcha hacia la anarquía:Pensamiento y acción del movimiento libertario(Madrid, 2008).

10. Who Was Responsible?

1. There is a vast literature on the revolutionaryinsurrection of October 1934. The most extensivetreatment of events in Asturias is P. I. Taibo II,Asturias 1934, 2 vols. (Gijón, 1984), favorable to theinsurrectionists. See, more broadly, P. Moa, Losorígenes de la Guerra Civil española (Madrid, 1999)and 1934: Comienza la Guerra Civil: El PSOE y laEzquerra emprenden las armas (Madrid, 2004); F.Aguado Sánchez, La revolución de octubre de 1934(Madrid, 1972); B. Díaz Nosty, La comuna asturiana(Madrid, 1974); A. del Rosal, 1934: El movimientorevolucionario de octubre (Madrid, 1983); and, for theanalysis of Socialist policy, see J. Avilés Farré, "Lossocialistas y la insurrección de octubre de 1934," inAvilés Farré, ed., "Violencia y política en España,1875-1936," Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, series 5:Historia Contemporánea, no. 20 (2008): 129-57.

2. B. D. Bunk, Ghosts of Passion: Martyrdom,Gender, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War(Durham, N. C., 2007), treats the propagandacampaigns, their images and influence.

3. M. Tuñón de Lara, Tres claves de la SegundaRepública (Madrid, 1985), 194-95.

4. R. Villa García, "The Failure of ElectoralModernization: The Elections of May 1936 in

Granada," Journal of Contemporary History 44.3 July2009): 401-29.

5. R. Cibrián, "Violencia política y crisisdemocrática: España en 1936," Revista de EstudiosPolíticos 6 (November-December 1978): 81-115,presents the low calculation, and J. Blázquez Miguel,"Conflictividad en la España del Frente Popular(febrero-julio de 1936)," Historia 16, 328 (August2003): 76-86, the higher conclusion.

For broader discussion of the role and character ofpolitical violence under the Republic, see F. del ReyReguillo, "Reflexiones sobre la violencia política en laII República Española," in M. Gutiérrez Sánchez andD. Palacios Cerezales, eds., Conflicto político,democracia y dictadura: Portugal y España en ladécada de 1930 (Madrid, 2007), 19-97; G. Ranzato,"El peso de la violencia en los orígenes de la GuerraCivil de 1936-1939," in Avilés Farré, "Violenciapolítica en España, 1875-1936," 159-82; and themost thorough statistical study, J. Blázquez Miguel,España turbulenta: Alteraciones, violencia y sangredurante la II República (Madrid, 2009).

6. For source references concerning the events ofJuly 1936, see S. G. Payne, The Collapse oftheSpanish Republic, 1933-1936: Origins ofthe CivilWar (New Haven, Conn., 2006), 302-38.

11. Moscow and Madrid

1. These words have been reprinted various times,most recently in X. Moreno Juliá, La Division Azul:Sangre española en Rusia (Barcelona, 2004), 75.

Many years later, Serrano would express regret forsuch rhetorical excess.

2. A. Elorza and M. Bizcarrondo, Queridoscamaradas: La Internacional Comunista y España,1919-1939 (Barcelona, 1999), 19-208; J. AvilésFarré, La fe que vino de Rusia: La revoluciónbolcheviquey los españoles (1917-1931) (Madrid,1999); P. Pagés, Historia del Partido Comunista deEspaña: Desde su fundación en abril de 1920 hastael final de la dictadura de Primo de Rivera, enero de1930 (Barcelona, 1978); R. Cruz, El PartidoComunista en la Segunda República (Madrid,1987).

3. For references and further discussion, see S. G.Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union,and Communism (New Haven, Conn., 2004), 22-37.

4. Somewhat ironically, "People's Army" was thename of the abortive antiCommunist militaryorganization that "Komuch," the short-lived regime ofthe left-liberals of the Russian Constituent Assembly,attempted to form in the Ural region in 1918.

5. Y. Rybalkin, Stalin y España (Madrid, 2007); D.Kowalsky, La Unión Soviética y la guerra civilespañola: Una revisión crítica (Barcelona, 2003),195-341.

6. On Soviet policy and Communist politicalactivities during the war, see, in addition to my SovietUnion, Communism and the Spanish Civil War, R.Radosh, M. Habeck, and G. Sevostianov, eds., SpainBetrayed: the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War

(New Haven, Conn., 2001); F. Schauff, La victoriafrustrada: La Unión Soviética, la InternacionalComunista y la guerra civil española (Barcelona,2008); and the four highly detailed polemics by AngelViñas: La soledad de la República: El abandono delas democracias y el viraje hacia la Unión Soviética(Barcelona, 2006), El escudo de la República: El orode España, la apuesta soviética y los hechos demayo de 1937 (Barcelona, 2007), El honor de laRepública: Entre el acoso fascista, la hostilidadbritánica y la política de Stalin (Barcelona, 2009),and El desplome de la República (Barcelona, 2009).

7. The principal biography is E. Moradiellos, DonJuan Negrín (Barcelona, 2006), but see also G.Jackson, Juan Negrín: Médico socialista y jefe delGobierno de la II República Española (Barcelona,2008).

8. The Comintern had been dissolved in 1943 toencourage the perception of the Soviet Union as ananti-imperialist power. Its functions, however, weretaken over by the new International Department of theSoviet Communist Party's central committee. Duringthe last epoch of the Soviet regime, the InternationalDepartment, which employed Pertsov, was headed bythe prominent functionary Boris Ponomaryov.

12. The Spanish Civil War

1. Quoted in N. S. Lebedeva and M. M. Narinski,eds., Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina (Moscow,1998), 1:10-11.

2. Quoted in A. C. Brown and C. B. MacDonald, On

a Field of Red: The Communist International and theComing of World War II (New York, 1981), 508.

3. P. Renouvin, Histoire des relationsinternationales (Paris, 1965), 8:112.

4. These references are drawn from the excellentarticle by W. C. Frank Jr., "The Spanish Civil War andthe Coming of the Second World War," InternationalHistory Review 9.3 (August 1987): 368-409.

5. Mussolini's policy toward Spain is treated in G.Palomares Lerma, Mussolini y Primo de Rivera:Política exterior de dos dictadores (Madrid, 1989); I.Saz Campos, Mussolini contra la II República:Hostilidad, conspiraciones, Intervención (1931-1936) (Valencia, 1986); J. F. Coverdale, ItalianIntervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton, N.J.,1975); M. Heiberg, Emperadores del Mediterráneo:Franco, Mussolini y la guerra civil española(Barcelona, 2003); X. Tusell and G. G. Queipo deLlano, Franco y Mussolini: La política españoladurante la segunda guerra mundial (Barcelona,1985); and, within the broader setting of Mussolini'spolicy, in R. Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of theSecond World War, 1933-1940 (Houndmills, 2003).

6. For a guide to the early literature, see W. Haupt,"Die 'Blaue Division' in der Literatur,"Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 4 (April 1959),and C. Caballero and R. Ibáñez, Escritores en lastrincheras: La División Azul en sus libros,publicaciones periódicas y filmografía (1941-1988)(Madrid, 1989). Publications continue to proliferate.

7. For the relations between Franco and Hitler, seeR. H. Whealey, Hitler and Spain: The Nazi Role inthe Spanish Civil War (Lexington, Ky., 1989); Payne,Franco and Hitler; D. W. Pike, Franco and the AxisStigma (New York, 2008); X. Moreno Juliá, Hitler yFranco: Diplomacia en tiempos de guerra (1936-2945) (Barcelona, 2007); and M. Ros Agudo, Laguerra secreta de Franco (1939-1945) (Barcelona,2002), and La gran tentación: Franco, el Imperiocolonial y los planes de intervención en la SegundaGuerra Mundial (Barcelona, 2007). The best generalaccount of Spanish diplomacy is still J. Tusell, Franco,España y la II Guerra Mundial: Entre el Eje y laneutralidad (Madrid, 1995)

For accounts favorable to Franco, see L. SuárezFernández, España, Franco y la Segunda GuerraMundial desde 1939 hasta 1945 (Madrid, 1997), andP. Moa, Años de hierro: España en la posguerra1939-1945 (Madrid, 2007).

8. Frank, "The Spanish Civil War and the Coming ofthe Second World War."

9. J. McLellan, Antifascism and Memory in EastGermany: Remembering the International Brigades(Oxford, 2004); A. Krammer, "The Cult of the SpanishCivil War in East Germany," Journal of ContemporaryHistory 39.4 (October 2004): 531-60.

10. For a somewhat different speculationconcerning the consequences of a Republican victory,see I. Saz, "La victoria de la República en la GuerraCivil y la Europa de 1939," in J. M. Thomàs, ed., Lahistoria de España que no pudo ser (Barcelona,

2007), 83-106.

11. E. Sáenz-Francés, Entre la Antorcha y laEsvástica: Franco en la encrucijada de la SegundaGuerra Mundial (Madrid, 2009), concentrates on theevents of 1942-43.

13. Spanish Fascism . . . a Strange Case?

1. In addition there was a fascist government inHungary from December 1944 to the end of the war,and another in Croatia in the form of the IndependentState of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1944. Thesegovernments, however, did not achieve power bythemselves but were imposed by Hitler. On the NDH,see the special issue of Totalitarian Movements andPolitical Religions 7.4 (December 2006), edited bySabrina Ramet.

2. Payne, A History of Fascism, 487-95. Aretrodictive theory is an attempt to postulate theconditions that were required in a certain historicalera for a certain kind of development to have takenplace, in other words, what would have beennecessary to have made a positive prediction in thepast.

3. Araquistain's remarks appeared in his article inthe New York journal Foreign Affairs in April 1934,and those of Maurín approximately a year later in hisb o o k Hacia la segunda revolución (Barcelona,1935).

4. This sentiment is most dramatically expressed bythe outpouring of activities and new publications of"Plataforma 2003," an association funded by Primo

de Rivera's admirers to commemorate the centenaryof his birth, with all funds raised from their ownpockets.

The two best books on José Antonio are J. GilPecharromán, José Antonio Primo de Rivera:Retrato de un visionario (Madrid, 1996), the bestcritical scholarly account; and A. Imatz, José Antonio:Entre odio y amor (Madrid, 2006), also very wellinformed and more favorable to its subject. For a pro-and-con approach, see E. Aguinaga and S. G. Payne,José Antonio Primo de Rivera (Barcelona, 2003).

5. The best argument is presented in Imatz, JoséAntonio. In this regard, the definition of fascism isfundamental. Except in the case of the Italian NationalFascist Party and a few extremely insignificantorganizations that formally proclaimed themselves"fascist," the term was not officially adopted by otherparties of similar characteristics. As used by scholarsand historians, the term does not refer to a singleunified or reified entity but is employed as a genericpolitical reference in the same way as socialist,communist, and other broadly employed adjectives.The concept of generic fascism is used as a heuristicdevice to refer to an ideal type or construct in thesocial sciences that groups together a series ofpolitical movements, primarily found in interwarEurope, possessing key common characteristics.Among these are authoritarian political structure andgoals, charismatic leadership, extreme nationalism,zeal for imperial expansion, the militarization ofpolitics, creation of a "new man" based on a radicalnew culture of vitalism and dynamism,antimaterialism, idealization of violence and

militarization, and the development of an authoritariannational economic structure, whether nationalsocialism or corporatism. I have treated this at somelength in my books Fascism: Comparison andDefinition (Madison, 1980) and A History of Fascism,and will not repeat the discussion here. Nearly allthese basic components of fascism are found in thedoctrines of José Antonio.

6. The best studies are those of F. Gallego: RamiroLedesma Ramos y el fascismo Español (Madrid,2005) and the long study in the volume that hecoedited with F. Morente, Fascismo en España(Madrid, 2005). L. Casali, Società di massa, giovani,rivoluzione: Il fascismo di Ramiro Ledesma Ramos(Turin, 2002), is also recommendable. The Obrascompletas of Ledesma were published in fourvolumes in 2004.

7. R. Ledesma Ramos, ¿Fascismo en España?(Madrid, 1935), 21-22.

8. M. Primo de Rivera, ed., Papeles póstumos deJosé Antonio (Barcelona, 1996).

9. I. Saz, Fascismo y franquismo (Valencia, 2004).

10. Falangist dissidence would also generate itsown historiography after the end of the regime.

11. The text is from L. López Rodó, La largamarcha hacia la monarquía (Barcelona, 1978), 30-31.

12. Cited in López Rodó, Política y desarrollo

(Madrid, 1970),18-19.

13. Fundacion Nacional Francisco Franco,Documentos inéditos del régimen del GeneralísimoFranco (Madrid, 1994), 2:143-44.

14. R. Serrano Súñer, La historia como fue:Memorias (Barcelona, 1977), 198.

14. Francisco Franco

1. The bibliography is, of course, very great. Thebest one is P. Preston, Franco: A Biography (London,1993), and the most thorough pro-Franco treatment isR. de la Cierva, Franco: La historia (Madrid, 2000).

2. The best treatment of Franco's early years is B.Bennassar, Franco: Enfance et adolescence (Paris,1999).

3. The best analysis of Franco's political leadershipduring the Civil War is J. Tusell, Franco en la GuerraCivil (Barcelona, 1992).

4. J. A. Vaca de Osma, La larga guerra deFrancisco Franco (Madrid, 1991); C. Blanco Escoli,La incompetencia militar de Franco (Barcelona,1999); J. Semprún, El genio militar de Franco(Madrid, 2000). The best evaluation, however, is J.Blázquez Miguel, Auténtico Franco: Trayectoriamilitar, 1907-1939 (Madrid, 2009).

5. M. Seidman, The Victorious Counterrevolution(Madison, 2011), is the first complete study ofFranco's eminently successful mobilization ofdomestic resources.

6. Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco,Documentos inéditos Para la historia delGeneralísimo Franco, 2:1, 380-81.

7. This is best rendered in D. W. Pike, Franco andthe Axis Stigma (New York, 2008).

15. In the Shadow of the Military

1. The leading one-volume account is C. SecoSerrano, Militarismo y civilismo en la Españacontemporánea (Madrid, 1984), which updated myearlier Politics and the Military in Modern Spain(Stanford, 1967).

2. The role of the military in the first part of the reignof Fernando VII is examined in R. L. Blanco Valdés,Rey, Cortes y fuerza armada en los orígenes de laEspaña liberal, 1808-1823 (Madrid, 1988).

3. For a brief listing of all these and later initiatives,see J. Busquets, Pronunciamientos y golpes deEstado en España (Barcelona, 1982).

4. For the later nineteenth century, see D. R.Headrick, Ejército y política en España (1866-1898)(Madrid, 1981).

5. Prior to the Civil War of 1936 there was noseparate air force, aerial units being formed as thearmy air force and the naval air force.

6. R. Núñez Florencio, Militarismo y antimilitarismoen España (1888-1906) (Madrid, 1990).

7. For this era, see C. P. Boyd, Praetorian Politicsin Liberal Spain (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979).

8. C. Navajas Zubeldia, Ejército, Estado ysociedad en España (1923-1930) (Logroño,1991).

9. M. Aguilar Olivencia, El Ejército Españoldurante la Segunda República (Madrid, 1986).

10. S. Juliá, " ¿Qué habría pasado si IndalecioPrieto hubiera aceptado la presidencia del Gobiernoen mayo de 1936? " in N. Townson, ed., Historiavirtual de España (1874-2004) ¿Que hubiera pasadosi ... ? (Madrid, 2004), 175-200.

11. On the military conspiracy and the insurgencythat began the Civil War, see J. M. Martínez Bande,Los años críticos: República, conspiración yalzamiento (Madrid, 2007), 189-451.

12. Quoted in N. Goda, Tomorrow the World: Hitler,Northwest Africa, and the Path toward America(College Station, Tex., 1998), 59.

13. D. Smyth, "Les chevaliers de Saint-Georges:La Grande Bretagne et la corruption des générauxespagnols," Guerres Mondiales 162 (1991): 29-54;see also D. Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill: Menof Secrets (London, 1999), 78-110.

14. E. San Román, Ejército e industria: Elnacimiento de INI (Barcelona, 1999).

15. J. Tusell and G. G. Queipo de Llano, Carrero:La eminencia gris del régimen de Franco (Madrid,

1993).

16. J. Tusell, Franco, España y la II GuerraMundial: Entre el Eje y la neutralidad (Madrid,1995), 309.

17. Eugenio Vegas Latapié first provided me withthe text of this document in 1963.

18. J. A. Olmeda Gómez, Las fuerzas armadas enel Estado franquista: Participación política, infuenciapresupuestaria y profesionalización, 1939-1975(Madrid, 1988), treats the institutional functioning ofthe military under the regime.

19. C. Fernández, Los militares en la transiciónpolítica (Barcelona, 1982), treats the role of themilitary during the first five years of the Transition.

20. The literature on the "23-F" is very extensive.See especially J. Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID(Barcelona, 2oo1), and A. Martínez Inglés, 23-F: Elgolpe que nunca existió (Madrid, 2001).

21. J. M. Comas and L. Mandeville, Les militaireset le pouvoir dons l'Espagne contemporaine deFranco à Felipe González (Toulouse, 1986).

22. I. Martínez Inglés, El Ejército Español: Depoder fáctico a "ONG humanitaria" (Arrigorriaga,2004), presents a critical survey of these changes.

16. Controversies over History in ContemporarySpain

1. M. Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the

Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans andJeopardizes Our Future (New York, 2008), presents asustained critique as applied to the United States,home of the digital revolution.

2. For a discussion of this, see J. Lukacs, At theEnd of an Age (New Haven, Conn., 2002), 45-83.

3. The best single account that summarizes thisbroad politico-historiographical controversy is S.Balfour and A. Quiroga, España reinventada: Nacióne identidad desde la Transición (Barcelona, 2007)."To reinvent" is, of course, a standard cliché ofpostmodernist theory.

4. There is a very extensive literature dealing withthe processes that subsequently ensued. The mostrecent set of studies, which contains full bibliographicreferences, is A. M. Khazanov and S. G. Payne, eds.,"Perpetrators, Accomplices and Victims in Twentiethand Twenty-First Century Narratives and Politics," aspecial double issue of Totalitarian Movements andPolitical Religions 9.2-3 (June-September 2008).This volume is also published in book form byRoutledge: Perpetrators, Accomplices and Victims inTwentieth-century Politics: Reckoning with the Past(2009).

5. L. La Rovere, L'ereditá del fascismo: Gliintellettuali i giovani e la transizione al post-fascismo, 1943-1948 (Torino, 2008).

6. See A. Costa Pinto, "The Legacy of theAuthoritarian Past in Portugal's Democratisation,1974-6," in Khazanov and Payne, Perpetrators,

Accomplices and Victims, 265-89, and "PoliticalPurges and State Crisis in Portugal's Transition toDemocracy, 1975-76," Journal of ContemporaryHistory 43.2 (April 2008): 305-32.

7. There were of course a number of short-term andnoninstitutionalized authoritarian regimes during theearly twentieth century that simply collapsed or wereleveraged from power by political means, but all thesehad been in power for less than a decade.

8. The best discussion of the Transition and ofthese ideas as they relate to the history of the CivilWar and the Transition is G. Ranzato, El pasado debronce: La herencia de la Guerra Civil en la EspañaDemocrática (Barcelona, 2007).

9. P. Aguilar, Políticas de la memoria y memoriasde la política: El caso Español en perspectivacomparada (Madrid, 2008), 70.

10. These points have been made by some of thecountry's leading figures in contemporary history, suchas S. Juliá, "Echar al olvido: Memoria y amnistía en latransición," Claves de Razón Práctica 159 (2003):14-24; and the late J. Tusell, "La historia y laTransición," Clío: Journal of Literature, History, andthe History of Philosophy (November 2002): 18.

11. J. M. Solé Sabaté, La repressió franquista aCatalunya (1938-1953) (Barcelona, 1985); J. M. SoléSabaté and J. Villarroya i Font, La repressió a lareraguarda de Catalunya (1936' 1939), 2 vols.(Barcelona, 1989-90); V. Gabarda Cebellán, Elsafusellaments al País Valencià (1938-1956)

(Valencia, 1993), and La represión en la retaguardiarepublicana: País Valenciano, 1936-1939 (Valencia,1996); F. Alía Miranda, La guerra civil enretaguardia: Conflicto y revolucion en la provincia deCiudad Real, 1936-1939 (Ciudad Real, 1994).

12. E. Silva et al., eds., La memoria de losolvidados: Un debate sobre el silencio de larepresión franquista (Valladolid, 2004), 55-65.

13. W. Kansteiner, "Finding Meaning in Memory: AMethodological Critique of Collective MemoryStudies," History and Theory 41 (May 2002): 179-97.

14. N. Gedi and Y. Elam, "Collective Memory —What is It?" History and Memory 8 (1996): 30-50.

15. G. Bueno, El mito de la izquierda (Barcelona,2002), 283.

16. This distinction is treated more broadly in P.Nora, Realms of Memory: The Construction of theFrench Past, ed. L. C. Kritzman (New York, 1996-98),1:xv-xxiv, 3, as cited in S. J. Stern, RememberingPinochets Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998(Durham, N.C., 2004), 9.

17. Bueno, El mito de la izquierda, 285.

18. Silva et al., La memoria de los olvidados.

19. See the account in N. Tumarkin, The Living andthe Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World WarII in Russia (New York, 1994).

20. A. Krammer, "The Cult of the Spanish Civil War

in East Germany," Journal of Contemporary History39.4 (October 2004): 531-60, and, more extensively,J. McLellan, AntiFascism and Memory in EastGermany: Remembering the International Brigades(New York, 2005).

21. The best analysis in Spanish is J. Trillo-Figueroa, La ideología invisible: El pensamiento dela nueva izquierda radical (Madrid, 2005).

22. C. Eliacheff and D. Soulez Larivière, El tiempode las víctimas (Madrid, 2009).

23. The precise, if prolix, name of this legislation is"Law to recognize and extend rights and to establishmeasures to assist those who suffered persecution orviolence during the Civil War and the dictatorship." Itis of course impossible to implement such a measurefully, since a sizable proportion of the populationunderwent some manner of persecution, directly orindirectly and in one zone or the other, during the CivilWar, and similarly especially during the first years ofthe dictatorship, and to a lesser degree afterward,added to which is the fact that the great majority ofpeople in these categories are dead.

24. The preceding quotations are drawn fromAgui lar, Políticas de la memoria, 86-89, whichprovides an excellent discussion of the law and, moreimportantly, offers by far the most thorough andobjective study of the several phases of collectivememory and attitudes and policies toward the pastsince 1939. Several key aspects are treated in S.Juliá, ed., Memoria de la guerra y del franquismo(Madrid, 2006).

Table of ContentsList of MapsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Image of SpainPart I The Formation of a HispanistPart II A Reading of the History of Spain1 Visigoths and Asturians: "Spaniards"?2 Spain and Islam: The Myth of Al-Andalus3 Reconquest and Crusade: A "Spanish Ideology"?4 Spain and the West5 Identity, Monarchy, Empire6 Spain and Portugal7 Decline and Recovery8 The Problem of Spanish LiberalismPart III Dilemmas of Contemporary History9 Republic ... without Democrats?10 Who Was Responsible? Origins of the Civil War of

193611 Moscow and Madrid: A Controversial Relationship12 The Spanish Civil War: Last Episode of World War

I or Opening Round of World War II?13 Spanish Fascism a Strange Case?14 Francisco Franco: Fascist Monster or Savior of the

Fatherland?15 In the Shadow of the Military16 Controversies over History in Contemporary SpainNotes

Table of ContentsList of MapsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Image of SpainPart I The Formation of a HispanistPart II A Reading of the History of Spain1 Visigoths and Asturians: "Spaniards"?2 Spain and Islam: The Myth of Al-Andalus3 Reconquest and Crusade: A "Spanish Ideology"?4 Spain and the West5 Identity, Monarchy, Empire6 Spain and Portugal7 Decline and Recovery8 The Problem of Spanish LiberalismPart III Dilemmas of Contemporary History9 Republic ... without Democrats?10 Who Was Responsible? Origins of the Civil War of

193611 Moscow and Madrid: A Controversial Relationship12 The Spanish Civil War: Last Episode of World War

I or Opening Round of World War II?13 Spanish Fascism a Strange Case?14 Francisco Franco: Fascist Monster or Savior of the

Fatherland?15 In the Shadow of the Military16 Controversies over History in Contemporary SpainNotes