Building the Spanish Nation: The Centre-Periphery Dialectic

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Diego Muro & Alejandro Quiroga: Building the Spanish Nation

Building the Spanish Nation:

The Centre-Periphery Dialectic

This paper provides an historical overview of Spain’s nation-building process from the nineteenth century to the presenttime. Using Stein Rokkan’s centre-periphery paradigm, the paperargues that a pervasive feature in contemporary Spanish historyis the dialectical relationship between the Spanish nation andthe peripheral nations of Catalonia and the Basque Country.From this perspective, the Spanish nation-building process isunderstood as one of the main triggering events for theemergence of peripheral nationalisms at the end of thenineteenth century. In the twentieth century, tensions betweenthe core and the periphery help to explain why Spain has a quasi-federal institutional structure. Recent interest in ‘constitutionalpatriotism’ for example, can only be understood in relation toCatalan and Basque initiatives to reform their autonomy status.

The absence of a major work on Spanish nationalism of the nature of LindaColley’s Britons, George Mosse’s The Nationalization of the Masses orEugene Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen, has been a common complaintamong Spanish historians (Álvarez 2001: 19). Although this holds true formuch of the 1970s and 1980s, there has been renewed interest in Spanishnationalism in recent times1. Indeed, increased production in historiographicalliterature has emerged on both the state and nation-building processes inSpain. This renewed interest can be traced back to 1990, when two renownedhistorians, Juan Pablo Fusi and Borja de Riquer, presented their opposingviews in the pages of the journal Historia Social (Borja de Riquer 1990:105-126; Fusi 1990a: 127-134) Even though both historians agreed on theweakness of nineteenth century Spanish state-building process, they differedon the level of resonance of Spanish nationalism vis-à-vis peripheralnationalisms. A first article, by Fusi, argued that it was the failure of the

Diego Muro

King’s College London

Alejandro Quiroga

Royal Holloway University of London

& King’s College London

Abstract

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Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2004

Spanish nationalist project to incorporate the peripheral nationalist elitesthat produced the birth and development of nationalism in various regions inSpain, namely Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia. An opposingview, held by Borja de Riquer, claimed that the reason why the Spanishnationalist project did not succeed was that it did not take into account otherpre-existing forms of identity (de Riquer 1990: 120). Implicit to botharguments is the use of the spatial metaphor of centre-periphery to explainthe relationship between Spanish and peripheral nationalisms.

In political science, the centre-periphery paradigm was developed by SteinRokkan, in his work on the emergence of the European system of nation-states. Rokkan saw the crystallisation of European nation-states as anevolutionary process which started in the High Middle Ages with theestablishment of States, which continued after the French Revolution withthe incorporation of the masses into the polity and ended in the contemporaryperiod with the active participation of these masses. Given the multi-facetednature of the nation-state Rokkan favoured different explanatory variablesaccording to the time period studied: from military and administrative, topolitical, economic or cultural. Moreover, the approach was multi-level andthe above-mentioned panoramic view was complemented by the idea thateach European territory was structured around cleavages and centre-peripherystructures. On the one hand, the centre was defined as a privileged placecontrolling the flow of services, transactions and information within a giventerritory. At the same time, the centre was the location of central institutions,and was the area where territorial identity was symbolised by monumentsand affirmed in public ceremonies (Rokkan 1987: 25). On the other hand,the periphery could take an economic, political or cultural form but its ‘keycharacteristics [were] distance, difference and dependence’ (Rokkan 1999:63). In Rokkan’s approach the dialectic between the centre and peripherywas not one-sided but constantly changing. Thus, the centre-peripheryrelationship was crucial to both actors. Unless they could break completelyfree, peripheries had no alternative but to act in relation to the centre, and todefine themselves in terms of, or in opposition to, it.

This dialectic relationship can be clearly seen in Spain, where importantsectors of the peripheries have refused to be incorporated into the core. TheSpanish nation, like many European nations, has been built from a centre(Castile), which has expanded in an attempt to incorporate and assimilatethe periphery. Nevertheless, contrary to the European trend, in Spain it isdifficult to speak of a progressive centre and a backward periphery (Giner1984: 85). The three regions with strong nationalist movements, Catalonia,the Basque Country and Galicia, differ markedly in geopolitical and geo-

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economic terms and became alternative centres to Castile. This articlefocuses on the two most important peripheral nations, Catalonia and theBasque Country, both economically advanced while politically linked to andculturally differentiated from the dominant Castilian standard.

The aim of this paper is to apply the centre-periphery polarity model to theSpanish case and show the historical dialectic between the different Spanishnationalisms as an essential factor in the Spanish nation-building process.The first section examines the nineteenth-century Spanish liberal projectand the birth of peripheral nationalisms. The second part focuses on the twoalternative currents of Spanish nationalism, the authoritarian and thedemocratic, and their distinct relationship with peripheral nationalisms in thetwentieth century. The final pages analyse the centre-periphery relationshipin the current political system.

I. The Beginning of the Modern Dialectic (19th Century)

The War of Independence (1808-1814) was the milestone in the history ofmodern Spanish national identity. Not only did the struggle against the Frenchtrigger a liberal revolution, but also mobilised important sections of thepopulation in the name of national independence.

In the spring of 1808, Napoleon forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate from theSpanish throne, imposed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new Spanishmonarch, and sent troops to occupy Madrid. The French army soonencountered strong opposition. The first popular uprising against the Frenchhappened spontaneously in the Spanish capital when the masses discoveredthat the royal family was forced to stay in France. The events, as recordedin Goya’s renowned paintings 2nd of May and 3rd of May, recall the momentin which the masses were inspired by the national ideal. The example of themadrileños had set up spread throughout the country and the provincesorganised themselves into Juntas (governing committees) which claimed tobe sovereign and to represent ‘the’ people. In addition, a provisional shadowgovernment, the Junta Central (central governing committee), was establishedto coordinate the provincial Juntas and became the supreme authority.

The liberal and national revolutions went hand in hand. By 1810, the provisionalgovernment had taken refuge in Cádiz and convened a National Assembly.The chamber assumed national sovereignty and promulgated, in 1812, thefirst Spanish constitution. This Magna Carta established the ‘Spanish nation’as sovereign and defined Spain as a constitutional and Catholic body. It alsoguaranteed the rights of election and representation in central governmentand municipalities, both in Spain and Spanish America. The War of

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Independence later became a pillar of national myth-making, with the erectionof hundreds of monuments to the ‘martyrs’ and the conversion of May the2nd into a national holiday (Álvarez 1994; Álvarez 1996; Portillo 2000).

An assessment of the War of Independence shows that, at the time, Spainhad a common identity but lacked a fully articulated state. This latter issuewould be tackled by the liberal project, now inseparable from the nationalistone, which pursued the modernisation of the Spanish state. As we shall see,the relative failure of this attempt would give way eventually to the emergenceof peripheral nationalisms at the end of the nineteenth century.

The liberal canon faced great challenges. First, the return of Ferdinand VIIto Spain led to the restoration of the Ancien Régime. Later, the Carlist Warsexemplified the struggle between liberalism and traditionalism. Initially adispute about dynastic rights, it led to three savage civil wars between urbanliberalism and rural traditionalism. Concerning the state structure, thetraditionalist advocated a decentralised Spain, where regions would maintaintheir medieval privileges. Carlist strength lay in the rural East and North ofSpain, especially in the Basque Country and Navarre, where there was strongsupport for the fueros, against liberal centralism and for the traditional RomanCatholic order represented by the religious bigotry of Don Carlos and hiscircle. The wars fastened the traumatic transition of the Basque Provincesto the Modern Era and the definitive abandonment of the Ancien Régime

structures. This is not to say, as nationalist interpretations claim, that theCarlist Wars were one of many ‘national’ struggles for the freedom of theBasque Country. In fact, Carlist support was to be found in many differentrural areas of the Iberian Peninsula – including Castile, Catalonia andAndalusia. In addition, the Basque cities always supported the liberal side:liberal policies, not centralism, were the main targets of the traditionalistsand the Carlist defence of the fueros only became paramount in the secondhalf of the century (Garmendia 1984).

Following the 1833 division into provinces, state-building progressively continuedduring the mid-nineteenth century with the integration of the economy. Afterthe creation of the Stock Exchange (1831) followed the unification of the taxsystem (1845), the formation of the Bank of Spain (1856) and the imposition ofthe Peseta as the national currency (1868). With regard to the monopoly ofviolence, the Civil Guards were created in 1844 and the Penal Code drafted in1848. A mass education system was introduced at secondary and universitylevels between 1845 and 1857. Last but not least, symbolic elements were alsointroduced, for example the adoption of the national flag in 1843. The nationalanthem, though, would only be officially adopted in 1908. The symbols of the

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state had a difficult historical development and were not omnipresent in Spanishsociety. Therefore, their role in the Spanish nation-building process was fairlylimited as strong regional feelings persisted throughout the nineteenth century(Serrano 1999).

In the world of academia, historians recast romantic and mythical stories of theSpanish people, such as the epic defences of Numancia and Sagunto againstthe Romans and Carthaginians, to show the ‘original’ nature of the Spaniard.This historiography was related to a moderated liberal political discourse thatattempted to impose an essentialist and Catholic image of the Spanish nation(Jover 1984). This new discourse maintained a strong identification of Catholicismwith Spanish national identity but differed from the earlier liberal canon elaboratedin Cádiz in its emphasis on Castile’s role in the formation of Spain. This essentialistand unitarian shift of moderated liberalism was in turn to provoke a reactionfrom a section of the Catalan intelligentsia, who defended Catalan culture and aconcept of a non-unitarian liberal Spain.

A political alternative to the moderated canon of Spain came from republicansand left-wing liberals, who defended a federal constitution. Republicannationalism emphasised the unity of the Spanish nation based on the historicallegacy of the Catholic Kings and the Habsburgs and attempted to incorporateregional diversity within a federal state. However, ideological intentions andpolitical realities proved difficult to marry. When republicans came to powerin 1873, the First Republic soon collapsed under the Carlists and conservativemonarchists’ attack. Thus, the federal agenda was never implemented. Despiteits political failure, federalism showed the existence of democratic nationalismready to admit regional political diversity within the same nation-state. Thisalternative route would eventually become reformulated in the twentiethcentury by both the Spanish and the Catalan left.

After the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in 1874, Spain returned to aconstitutional monarchy under Alfonso XII, with the Liberal and Conservativeparties taking turns in office. The political system, based on the manipulationof the electoral machine and its centralist policies, certainly encouraged theemergence of regionalist movements. Criticism of the Restoration camefrom Catalan and Basque regionalists and from more forward-lookingSpanish politicians and intellectuals, though for diverse reasons. After theabolition of the fueros in 1876-1877 a political movement emerged in theBasque Provinces to restore the medieval charts and statutes but the militarydefeat of Carlism made the task impossible. With its own language and arevived cultural tradition, Catalan nationalism combined demands for theprotection of Catalan industry and political autonomy. The Regionalist League

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(Lliga Regionalista), founded in 1901 and led by the industrialist FrancescCambó and Catalan nationalism theoretician Enric Prat de la Riba, becamethe dominant force in Catalonia at the turn of the century. Yet, Cambówished to solve the Catalan question ‘within Spain’ – i.e., through legalmeans and in cooperation with Madrid – and proposed a model ofregeneration for the whole of Spain (Balfour 1996: 114).

On the other hand, Basque nationalism advocated not to participate inSpanish institutions and, in fact, proposed independence. This was the goalof the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Sabino Arana, whoadvocated clericalist, anti-liberal and racialist views to emphasise thedifferences between Basques and Spaniards. Arana’s postulations were atraditionalist reaction against social changes brought by industrialisation.He idealised Basque rural society and interpreted the fueros as nationallaws. According to this belief the abolishment of the fueros meant thesuppression of Basque liberties and therefore the Basque people should nolonger be linked to Spain. Nonetheless, the PNV was never as successfulas the Lliga and had to wait the 1910s to get significant electoral support.

The triggering events for the development of peripheral nationalism werethe social changes provoked by the process of industrialisation in Cataloniaand the Basque Country and the Restoration’s process of centralisation.Yet processes of cultural regeneration had preceded them following EuropeanRomantic trends. If we are to follow the periods established by MiroslavHroch in analysing the emergence of nationalist movements, the decadesbetween 1850 and 1890 have to be considered as the initial phase towardsthe rise of peripheral nationalism, the ‘period of scholastic interest’, in whichcultural movements preceded political ones (Hroch 2000: 22-30). InCatalonia, the process of recovery began around the 1850s when the Catalanlanguage, which had been neglected for over 200 years, started to becomewidely used in the public sphere. What came to be known as the Catalan‘Rebirth’ (Renaixença) began as a cultural movement that did not imply arupture with Spain, but later constituted the basis for political nationalism.In the Basque Country romanticism did not have the same impact on Basqueculture. In fact, Euskera, the Basque language, was considered the ‘languageof the stables’ and most of the Basque literary tradition of those years was to bewritten in Castilian (Heiberg 1989). Some efforts to prevent the disappearanceof Euskera were made by cultural associations that promoted Basque literarytraditions in the 1880s with limited success. Nevertheless, since the mid-1870sa new romantic fuerista literature emerged, which clearly paved the way forthe rise of political Basque nationalism in the 1890s.

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The event that marked the end of the Nineteenth century and opened anew relationship between Spanish and peripheral nationalisms was theSpanish-American War. The colonial struggle in Cuba, Puerto Rico and thePhilippines harshly touched on the lives of Spaniards, especially theintellectuals. The loss of the colonies signalled the end of the image ofSpain as a great power and shocked a whole generation. The so-called‘Disaster’ of 1898, which would make Lord Salisbury claim that Spain wasa ‘dying nation’, created a profound crisis of identity. The defeat and loss ofthe empire encouraged centrifugal tendencies in conceptions of nationalidentity and popular support for Basque and Catalan nationalism grew. Withthe end of the colonial enterprise, the ideological ties binding the regions tothe centre, from which that Empire had been run, were put under greatstrain. This was particularly true of Catalonia since the ruling order hadfailed to retain the colonial markets which had absorbed so many of theregion’s exports. The calamity caused by the ‘Disaster’ therefore flowedinto a longer-term crisis generated by modernisation and a whole generationof intellectuals devoted their work to search for the essences of the fatherlandand ultimately ‘regenerate’ the nation (Varela 1999).

Unlike the 1820s, when the independence of Spain’s American mainlandpossessions was considered a civil war among Spaniards, the loss of Cuba,Puerto Rico and the Philippines took place under the gaze of the Spanishpublic and was regarded as a national tragedy. In the political sphere, the‘regenerationist’ movement wanted to solve the ‘national problem’. Theproblem hinged on the apparent incapacity of Spain to jump on the bandwagonof progress and modernity. One of the most influential regenerationists, JoaquínCosta, offered concrete solutions to real problems: an efficient administration,education, modernisation of the economy and an end to political corruption.Proposals for industrialisation and educational reform formed the frameworkfor Spain’s modernisation. In addition, Costa’s most coherent principles,Spain’s relationship with Europe, democratisation and the recognition of aplurality of cultures within Spain, would remain on the agenda all the waythrough the twentieth century.

II. Spanish Nationalism vs. Peripheral

Nationalisms (20th Century)

During the first two decades of the Twentieth century, the confrontationbetween Spanish nationalism and peripheral nationalisms increased.Ideologically, Spanish nationalism incorporated Hispanoamericanismo inits discourse, a doctrine which highlighted the civilising mission of Spain inAmerica and claimed a spiritual leading role for the madre patria in its

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relation with the former colonies. Hispanoamericanismo stressed theSpanish imperial past and Castilian as the common language to reaffirmSpanish identity against peripheral nationalism.

Notwithstanding the difficulties found by various Spanish governments, amodern nation-state began to emerge during the Restoration (1875-1923).In these years mass communication expanded, a system of national educationdeveloped, urbanisation proceeded, the transport system was extendedanda national market was consolidated. As Fusi has pointed out, around 1920,‘the emergence of a common Spanish nationality was clearly completed’(Fusi 1990: 36, 37). Politically, the idea of the nation promoted by theestablishment was essentially liberal, Catholic, and unitarian, yet it alsoreserved a key constitutional role for the crown and army. Accompanyingthis political nationalism, a Spanish cultural nationalism emerged as an artefactin the service of political life and was spread in institutions such as theAteneo de Madrid, the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the Centro

de Estudios Históricos. Liberal historians, intellectuals, and artistsemphasised the preponderance of Castile in shaping the Spanish nation andinterpreted the psychology of the people – the ‘national spirit’ – ascharacterised by individualism, democratic in nature and spiritual, as opposedto materialistic (Fox 1999).

The Lliga Regionalista sought to modernise Spain via a decentralised andmore democratic state-framework in which Catalonia was to have a bi-national and bilingual system. In 1914 moderate regionalist demands werepartially fulfilled with the formation of the Mancomunitat – an organ ofadministrative self-government for Catalonia. Still, the creation of this bodywas far from enough to ease tensions. In the years after the Great Warboth Basque and Catalan nationalisms split into moderates and radicals. InCatalonia new republican and left-wing nationalist groups challenged thehegemony of the moderate Lliga and openly appealed for independence. Inthe Basque case a division within the nationalists was also to be foundbetween those orthodox defenders of the separatist postulates of SabinoArana and a moderate group willing to incorporate, ‘nationalise’ in theirown terms, larger sectors of Basque society and participate in Spanishinstitutions. In the years following World War I, peripheral nationalismsshowed for the first time the will to act politically united and in 1923 a TripleAlliance was signed among Catalan, Basque, and Galician nationalists toforce reform of the Spanish state.

The development of peripheral nationalisms certainly encouraged theemergence of a new authoritarian, anti-liberal, Catholic, and centralist

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Spanish nationalism fostered by different right-wing political tendencies,such as the National-Catholic Association of Propagandists, reactionarymembers of the Conservative Party, the Church and large sectors of thearmy. All these groups as well as the King supported the Captain Generalof Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera when he ousted the liberal regime inSeptember 1923 via a military coup, on grounds of the ‘separatist threat’,the inefficient parliamentary system and the actions of organised labour. Inclaiming that the army did not represent any political group and was simplydefending the sacred values of the nation, the military became both thesymbol and the pillar of national unity under Primo (Romero 1996). Followingauthoritarian currents rising at the time in Europe, especially the fascistexample, Primo and his ideologues attempted to build a new corporatiststate, created an official party, the Patriotic Union, and postulated an ultra-catholic canon of Spain – later known during Francoism as National –Catholicism. Primo’s policies towards peripheral nationalism were basedon the repression of political parties and institutions. Accompanyingrepressions, the new regime imposed a nationalist and religious educationas a way to foster patriotic feelings, regenerate the ‘Spanish race’ – conceivedin cultural terms – and solve the ‘regionalist question’ (Quiroga 2004).

But governmental repression had opposite effects to what it pursued. Indeed,it led to the reinforcement of peripheral nationalist tendencies in the 1920s.In the Basque Country nationalists devoted themselves to cultural work andthe reunification of the PNV. In Catalonia the different nationalist factionsalso came together in their struggle against the dictatorship while republicanCatalan tendencies gained mass support. More importantly, the authoritarianregime enabled the alignment of Spanish republicans and socialists withleft-wing Catalan nationalists in their demands of a democratic republic.Thus democracy became identified with republicanism and with home rulefor peripheral nations.

The advent of the Second Republic opened the door to the conception of adecentralised state as a solution for the regionalist question. The views ofliberal and republican intellectuals, such as José Ortega y Gasset and ManuelAzaña, dominated the political discourse on the subject. The Constitution of1931, drafted by a coalition of bourgeois democrats, liberal intellectuals andsocialists, proposed the creation of an ‘integral’ state as an alternative toboth the unitarian and the federal state (Holguín 2002). It defined Spanishunity in historical, linguistic and cultural terms, but also acknowledged theexistence of particular cultures and contemplated home-rule statutes for thoseareas where nationalist sentiments were strong, seeking their accommodationwithin the structure of the Spanish state.

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Peripheral nationalisms came together once again during the republicanyears and formed the political association Galeuzca. In September 1932the Catalan home-rule statute was approved and the Catalan governmentwas created. Nonetheless, the pursuit for political autonomy in the BasqueCountry proved more problematic. Insufficient social support for the PNVmade Basque nationalists turn to the Carlists in order to gain the necessaryvotes to propose home rule. The Carlists defended the fueros and a similartheocratic view of politics to the PNV but refused to support Basque homerule. Hence, from 1934 onwards Basque nationalists turned to the SpanishSocialist Workers Party (PSOE), which had a stronghold in the industrialarea of Vizcaya and the statute was finally approved in October 1936.However, it was already too late. On July 18 that year, a military rebellionagainst the Republic led to civil war, and the statute was never fullyimplemented.

The Civil War was not a fight between Spanish nationalism and peripheralnationalism, but there is no doubt that the rebels saw the development ofhome-rule statutes as a direct threat for the unity of Spain. Francoism imposeda military, proto-fascist and ultramontane canon of Spain: National-Catholicism. In fact, this Spanish nationalism had had very little popularsupport during the Second Republic, belonging to the marginal extreme rightparties. Yet, as in the 1920s, it appealed to significant sectors of the armyand the Church (Saz 2003). Francoism built a state in which the organicconcept of the nation determined its autarkic economic policies and thecreation of a corporatist structure to harmonise capital and labour. The idealof national regeneration also included the extermination of the ‘Anti-Spain’, amythological figure which lumped together liberals, democrats, republicans, leftistsand peripheral nationalists – portrayed as ‘cancer’ for the nation (Richards1998). Consonant with its totalitarian aspirations, Franco’s regime systematicallyrepressed those political opponents who challenged National-Catholicism.

Franco abolished both Basque and Catalan home-rule statutes and frameda new state based on legal, administrative and territorial centralisation.Moreover, the dictatorship steadily applied policies of cultural assimilation:Spanish was declared the only official language and particular signs of regionalidentities (e.g. flags and anthems) were banned and persecuted. As it hadbeen the case during Primo’s regime, repression brought together the diversetendencies within Catalan nationalism, which in turn aligned once again withthe Spanish left in their fight against the dictatorship. In addition, during the1960s and early 1970s political opposition to Francoism was accompaniedby a Catalan cultural revival in literature, art and music, which emphasisedCatalan identity as national and gained mass support.

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If the Catalan struggle against Francoism was essentially peaceful this wasnot the case in the Basque Country. In the late 1950s and 1960s the radicalfaction of Basque nationalism incorporated the Marxist rhetoric of ThirdWorld liberation movements and opted for a violent solution in its confrontationwith Francoism. In 1959 Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Countryand Freedom) was founded and from 1968 a war of ‘national liberation’ wascarried out. The emergence of ETA led to fierce repression from the Francoregime, which, in turn, invigorated popular Basque consciousness in whatcame to be known as the action-repression-action spiral and served as aunifying factor among the anti-Francoist resistance.

Thus the same dialectical pattern as at the beginning of the century is to beobserved in the period of the Second Republic and Francoism. The politicalachievements of peripheral nationalisms brought a dictatorial reaction froma Spanish nationalism characterised by its centralism, militarism andauthoritarianism, which attempted to suppress Catalan and Basquenationalisms via political and cultural repression. This repression, in turn,fostered peripheral nationalisms, which gained broader popular support andallied with the Spanish left and liberals in their opposition against thedictatorship. As such, by the time of Franco’s death in November 1975, theidea of a democratic Spain had once again became associated withdecentralisation and home rule for Catalonia and the Basque Country.

III. Democracy and the Reformulation

of the Dialectic (1975-2004)

By the time political parties were legalised in 1976-1977, Francoism’s failureto solve the question of peripheral nationalism via a centralist and authoritarianstate had became obvious. In the late 1970s peripheral nationalist partiesgained mass support in Catalonia and the Basque Country and there was anupsurge in support for political autonomy, as a reaction to the authoritarianSpanish nationalism imposed during the previous four decades. From 1976onwards it was clear for both Spanish and peripheral nationalist parties thatthe state would have to rest on two pillars: parliamentary democracy andregional autonomy. The latter would be one of the central features of post-Franco reforms when historic regions would gain power, resources andresponsibility in a new state framework.

The 1978 Constitutional settlement was a compromise between very diversepolitical forces and attempted to create a political solution to the nationalquestion in Spain. The Constitution tried to reconcile the centre-peripherytension throughout the text. Article 2 advocates ‘the indissoluble unity ofthe Spanish nation’ while it recognises and ‘guarantees the right to autonomy

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of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed’. Regarding thelanguage, Castilian (or Spanish) is declared the ‘official language of thestate’ but ‘other Spanish languages shall be official in their respectiveAutonomous Communities’ (Article 3). The word ‘nation’ is howeverreserved for the Spanish as a whole while Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia– and to a lesser extent Andalusia and Valencia – are considered‘nationalities’. Another difference is established between ‘nationalities’ andregions granting the former a more ‘direct route’ to autonomy. However,the criteria were not rigid: Andalusia took the ‘direct route’, while otherregions tried to become nationalities later through actions taken by theirown parliaments. Under this arrangement, those regions which had in thepast voted through referendum in favour of autonomy would be permittedto proceed by a relatively simple process towards full autonomy. The regionsqualified to apply for autonomy via this route were Catalonia, the BasqueCountry and Galicia. Regions with a marked personality like Andalusia tookan ‘exceptional route’ (Article 151.1) but the majority of statutes of autonomywere granted via the ‘slow route’ (Article 143). Essentially, once the statutehad been approved it took five years for the regions to accede to full autonomy.The latter route was followed by the majority of regions in Spain, bringing thenumber of autonomies up to 17.

The 1978 Constitution differs from the 1931 one in that the latter mainlywanted to deal with Catalan nationalism and did not attempt a deeptransformation of the state territorial frame. The 1978 text, in contrast, dealswith Catalan, Basque, and Galician ethno-national differences whileattempting to restructure Spain into a quasi-federal state. A ‘State ofAutonomies’ (Estado de las Autonomías), as it was called, replaced thecentralised structure of the Francoist state. The Constitution and theprolongation of its principles in the 1981 Organic Law on the Harmonizationof the Autonomy Process (LOAPA – Ley Orgánica de Armonización del

Proceso Autonómico) did allow all regions to have their institutions of self-government – parliament, president, high court of justice, etc. The decisionoverlapped national and regional identities so that today up to 50 % of Spaniardsidentify themselves equally with their region and Spain, 26 % consider the regionor Spain more important than the other and, only 14 % believe their autonomouscommunity is a nation (Moral 1998: 39; Morata 2001: 152).

The Constitution, ratified by 88.5 percent of valid votes, had a differentresonance in the periphery. Since the 1970s, in both Catalonia and theBasque Country, nationalist movements remained divided into right- andleft-wing, as had been the case in the 1930s. In Catalonia, both branchesopted for pragmatic participation in the building of the new democratic

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Spanish State while pro-independence campaigners stood as a minority.The normalisation of Catalonia was straightforward since the autonomousCatalan government, the Generalitat, was reinstated in 1977 and its presidentin exile, Josep Tarradellas, approved of the existing political system. Anopposition to the Constitutional arrangements did not crystallise, let alonepolitical violence. The case of the Basque Country was very different. PNVkept an ambiguous position between autonomy and independence whilemost of the nationalist radical left advocated for a total rupture with Spain.In the 1978 constitutional referendum the PNV recommended its electorateto abstain. Nevertheless, it supported the Basque statute of autonomy derivedfrom the Spanish Magna Carta.

During the early 1980s the legitimacy of the newly established democracywas put into question. In 1981 a Coup d’Etat led by army officers tried, andfailed, to restore a unitarian and authoritarian regime. The reason behind thisattempt was a perceived decline of Spain and a magnification of threats tothe unity of the patria, such as peripheral nationalisms and more specificallyETA’s political violence, which frequently targeted army and police officers.Another serious threat for the new democracy came from the state apparatus.Both the socialists and the previous centre-right government of Unión de

Centro Democrático (UCD) confronted ETA by state-funding paramilitarieswho killed alleged members of the organisation.

Despite these threats to Spanish democracy, the 1980s brought theconsolidation of the new constitutional order. First, the PSOE took overfrom the UCD in the 1982 elections and managed to stay in power for 14years. The charismatic figure of Felipe González imposed a social-democraticprogramme on his party, which had as its main goals the economicmodernisation of Spain, the introduction of a welfare system and accessionto the Economic European Community (EEC). Second, the progressiveimplementation of the statutes of autonomy showed the viability of adecentralised state while the political power of conservative peripheralnationalists in Catalonia and the Basque Country were strengthened (Alcántara& Martínez 1998).

Spain became a full member of the EEC in 1986, the same date on whichthe Single European Act (SEA) came into force. The entrance of Spain intothe European Community acknowledged political changes since Francoism,when Spain had applied for the first time. Spain was no longer regarded asa backward-looking and authoritarian state but a modern, secular andEuropean democracy. In a sense the inclusion of Spain in the Europeanintegration process has to be seen as the culmination of a long project of

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Europeanisation of a country defended by liberal and democratic Spanishnationalists ever since the crisis of 1898.

These ideas of modernisation and Europeanisation have been essential inthe reformulation of a new Spanish nationalism, so badly de-legitimised after40 years of Francoism. The Spanish left, which had attacked the idea of theSpanish nation-state on Marxist grounds as a part of its struggle againstFrancoism, broke its historical alliance with peripheral nationalisms duringthe democratic transition (de Blas 1994). During the 1980s and 1990s bothsocialists and communists slowly ‘rediscovered’ the historical legacy ofSpanish liberal-democrat nationalism in the figures of intellectuals andpoliticians like José Ortega y Gasset and Manuel Azaña. Although approachesto the territorial organization of the state ranged from federalism to theimprovement of the current State of the Autonomies, the left continuallyemphasised the idea of solidarity among the regions and defended its loyaltyto the 1978 Constitution as main points in its discourse. From this perspective,Spain is a ‘nation of nations’ in which different cultures and languages canlive together relying on the same Constitution (Núñez 1999: 149-151).

Following a very different political transformation, the Spanish right endedup defending a similar national pattern during the 1990s. The Spanishconservative party (PP, Partido Popular), which had inherited the Francoisttradition of the Alianza Popular (AP), ‘re-invented’ itself to present amoderate programme of liberal Spanish nationalism. From its initial oppositionto the development of statutes of autonomy in the early 1980s, theconservative party turnedto full acceptance of the 1978 Constitution and itsdefence as the only possible political frame for Spain. The right partially setaside its providential view of the nation inherited from National Catholicism,recovered the intellectual heritage of the regenerationists of the first thirdof the Twentieth century and presented Spain as a modern European andmulticultural nation2. According to this view, Spain would be the only nationwithin the Spanish state, an opposing view to those who conceive Spain asa mere state and Catalonia and the Basque Country as the real nationsintegrated in it.

In the last decade it is possible to detect in the policies of the PP a renovatedSpanish nationalism, which has re-endorsed the legacy of early Twentiethcentury liberal-democratic nationalism and describes itself as modern, civic,plural and constitutional, challenging the ‘ethnic’ peripheral nationalisms ofCatalonia and the Basque Country. This nationalism claimed to be analogousto Jürgen Habermas’ concept of ‘constitutional patriotism’, combining theidea of Spain as a multicultural nation with a more existentialist version of

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Spain as a unique cultural community underlying the political one. ThisSpanish nationalism endowed itself with certain symbols and policies attachedto its idea of the Spanish nation. The concept of the Crown as the historicalunifying element in the history of Spain, the defence of the Castilian languagein Catalonia and the Basque Country – where Castilian is seen to bemarginalised – and the vindication of a common curriculum in History andSocial Science for the whole of Spain, were just some examples of thesemanifestations of Spanish nationalism (Pérez 2002). A special mention shouldbe made here of King Juan Carlos I, who has become a symbol ofdemocracy since he publicly defended the constitutional order against themilitary coup in 1981. The Monarchy is today the most respected institutionand critiques of the King’s political role are almost non-existent3.

Nevertheless, the most important factor in the consolidation of constitutionalpatriotism in the 1990s was ETA’s political violence. The Basque armedgroup maintained the same political discourse since Francoism and failed torecognise the changes occurring within Spain since 1975 and targetedpoliticians, teachers and journalists – especially those linked to the PSOEand PP. These attacks led, in the late 1990s, to an important social mobilisationagainst terrorism both in the Basque Country and the rest of Spain, whichcontributed to reinforcing the democratic aspect of Spanish national identity.According to opinion polls, Spaniards considered terrorism as the mainproblem of the country, above other important issues such as unemploymentand immigration4. Spanish conservatives and socialists sought to channelthis social contempt for political violence. In December 2000, the anti-terrorist pact signed by PP and PSOE emphasised the 1978 Constitutionand the Basque Statute of Autonomy as the political frame in which theterrorist question had to be solved, and presented ETA as the greatest enemyfor Spanish democracy. Thus the historical tendency of portraying allperipheral nationalisms as the adversaries of the Spanish nation was broken.

Peripheral nationalisms within a democracy also show lines of continuityand rupture in their historical dialectical relationship with Spanish nationalism.Nationalist parties were hegemonic in Catalonia and the Basque Country butin several occasions they needed the support of Spanish conservatives andsocialists to govern in Barcelona and Vitoria. Peripheral nationalismscontinued to deny the existence of a Spanish nation and considered Spainas a mere state in which diverse nations gather voluntarily. This view ofSpain as a multinational state, which acknowledged the possibility ofseparation of the peripheral nations from the state, was defended by Catalan,Basque, and Galician nationalisms in the ‘Declaration of Barcelona’ (1998).The pact reprised the tradition of association that peripheral nationalisms had

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showed during the Restoration and the Second Republic with the Triple Allianceand Galeuzca and sought a transformation of the current territorial structure ofthe state that could recognise the ‘national’ character of these regions.

This common peripheral nationalist front was, however, weak due to thedifferences between Basque and Catalan nationalisms. First, Catalannationalism considered how institutional changes could be implemented viaan open interpretation of the 1978 Constitution and a reform of the statuteof autonomy, whilst the Basque Nationalist Party remained defiant towardsthe Magna Carta and proposed a project of free association with Spain.Second, Catalan nationalists consistently opposed ETA. In contrast, the PNVformally condemned violence but simultaneously signed a political agreementwith ETA’s political party (Batasuna) in 1998 advocating Basque self-determination. Like with Spanish nationalism, the question of ETA remaineda key one in the peripheral nationalist field, but unlike the former, violencewas a source of division.

To sum up, the implementation of the constitutional system in the last 25years has consolidated a democratic political culture and paved the way forthe redefinition of Spanish and peripheral nationalisms. Moreover, newchallenges in the twenty-first century, already latent during the 1990s, arelikely to change the centre-periphery dialectical relationship further. Thenew role of the nation-state in a global world, the transformation of theEuropean Union, the impact of non-European immigration in Spain and therelationships between the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America arecontemporary issues that will lead to the re-shaping of the political discourseof both Spanish and peripheral nationalisms and, therefore, to thereformulation of the very nature of their relationship.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that the dialectical relationship between the centreand the periphery is a pervasive feature of Spanish history. The responsesfrom the centre to demands from peripheral nations have varied dependingon historical circumstances. On some occasions they have been authoritarianand have pursued the elimination of alternative forms of identity whereas inothers they have sought institutional accommodation. In any case, Spanishnationalists have always sought to make congruent the territorial boundariesof the state and nation. However, the means by which the state has attemptedto homogenise the peripheries have varied. As Stein Rokkan suggested, theemergence of nation-states was a complex process that owed much towarfare but also to the internationalisation of markets, the institutionalisationof cultural practices and the rise of the scientific-bureaucratic society.

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Similarly, no single independent variable can explain the construction of theSpanish nation. What can be observed is the gradual introduction ofinstitutional engineering as a means of solving ethno-nationalist conflict.

The paper also argued that, during the Nineteenth century, the Spanish liberalstate did not manage to fully incorporate the peripheral elites into a politicalsystem and the processes of ‘nationalisation of the masses’ and centralisationwere slowed down. Spanish liberal nationalism gradually turned morecentralist and pro-Castilian and peripheral nationalisms emerged both inCatalonia and the Basque Country. In Catalonia, first romanticism and laterthe need of the bourgeoisie to have greater leverage in Madrid to implementprotectionist policies gave political strength to Catalan nationalism. In theBasque Country, it was Carlism, the defence of the fueros and the reactionaryresponse to Castilian immigration that boosted the nationalist project. Duringthe twentieth century, Spain tried to accommodate those nationalisms into aconstitutional arrangement. The quasi-federal state, which resulted fromthe 1978 Constitution, has seen increasing demands for more autonomyfrom Catalonia and the Basque Country continuing to highlight the centre-periphery tension. The democratic process has led to peripheral nationalistsgoverning with Spanish parties in Madrid, Barcelona and Vitoria and to thetransformation of both Spanish and peripheral nationalisms.

The changing nature of modern Spanish nationalism can be seen in itsacceptance of the different cultural and national groups within Spain and inits self-portrayal as an example of ‘civic’ nationalism – in clear opposition tothe ‘ethnic’ peripheries. Spanish nationalists have skilfully learned to playthe institutional game with the periphery and disguise themselves within thestate, setting themselves as examples of ‘constitutional patriotism’. Furtherresearch in this area will have to face the changing nature of the Spanishstate in a global world and its relations to new challenges already affectingthe nature of modern nationalisms, such as the relationship of Spain with theEuropean Union and immigration. In all cases, the centre-periphery dialecticand the historically changing nature of national identities are likely to playan exceptional role in understanding Spanish nationalism.

Notes

1 Some pioneering studies in the 1970s and 1980s were those of Juan José Linz 1973;Martin Blinkhorn 1980; Andrés de Blas 1989; Eduardo González Calleja and Fredes LimónNevado 1988; José María Jover 1984; and Paloma Cirujano Marín, Teresa Elorriaga Planesand Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón 1985. Among recent works on Spanish nationalism see, forexample, Varela 1999; Álvarez 2001; Pérez et al. 2002 and Holguín 2002.2 For these views see the works of the conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, 1994and 1995.

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3 The Spanish Penal Code punishes mocks, calumnies and injuries against the Crown andthe use of the King’s image to damage royal prestige (Articles 490 and 491). The media isvery careful with the treatment of the royal family and it is guided by a self-imposed codeof conduct.4 According to the opinion poll conducted by the United Nations in June 2001 terrorismwas society’s main problem for 67% of Spaniards. Immigration was also considered as aproblematic issue by 21% of the population, in sharp contrast with the polls in 1996,which showed only 2% of Spaniards worried about immigration. El Pais, Madrid, 29 June2001.

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Diego Muro is Lecturer in European Studies at King’sCollege London. He holds a PhD from the LondonSchool of Economics and Political Science (LSE) andhas recently co-authored a chapter with Mary Kaldorfor Global Civil Society 2003. His research interestsinclude Basque and Spanish nationalism, political ex-tremism and EU politics.

Alejandro Quiroga is a visiting lecturer in SpanishHistory at Royal Holloway University of London andKing’s College London. He has recently completedhis PhD at the London School of Economics and Po-litical Science (LSE). He has published articles on Span-ish and Argentinian nationalism and Latin Americanhistory. His research interests include European andLatin American nationalism, conservative politicalthought and history of ideas.

Building the Spanish Nation: The Centre-Periphery Dialectic

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