Is Spain more diverse than Catalonia?
Spain has not always existed, but neither have Catalonia or the Basque Country always existed. And this diversity of Spain is also what you find in Catalonia or the Basque Country…
Is diversity in a country – or nation? – weakness or opportunity?
I refuse to try to establish the origins of Catalonia or the Basque Country or to define at least what makes them a nation or not.
Because?
Because everything is very opinionated. And if we had an indisputable concept of nation, it would not be the same today as it was in the Middle Ages.
So, what is his book about?
What interests me the most is describing the reality we live in today, which is Spain: what is this historical process that has brought us here.
But is Spain a unit of destiny, a nation, a federation…?
These are perceptions that everyone can have. What is clear is that there is something called Spain, which is recognized externally and internally. Then, the way you define it can vary greatly.
What is yours?
Spain is the result of a historical process during which there have been many and very different definitions of what it is. Many try to explain today’s Spain from its origins in the Catholic Monarchs or in the time of Felipe II… and it is a waste of time.
How do you explain it?
Today’s Spain has nothing to do with that of Franco’s program. One of the things that characterizes the history of Spain is its enormous diversity of cultures, religions, institutions, languages… and it has not been well studied…
Spain, then, is anything but one.
I try to highlight these elements of diversity that have led us to have a country called Spain. And after each one tells him as he likes.
Would Spain be a nation?
I always call it country.
Why do peripheral nationalisms find it difficult to accept Spain as a country?
I belong to a generation in which it was absolutely essential that Spain’s democracy be linked to the recognition of its diversity as a country. And in the last 50 years this diversity has not been well explained.
Has it not been explained in the interests of Spanish, Basque and Catalan nationalisms?
The reality of Spain and its history has been hijacked by a conservative way of thinking, and if you don’t share it, it says, like me, “abracamoros”.
The consolation would be that if you are not called something, you are not saying anything.
Instead of explaining the diversity of Spain these fifty years with an integrative and inclusive perspective, it has continued to explain the one invented in the 19th century. And, in parallel, the narratives of the history of Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia…
If we look at the electoral results, the integrative story that you defend falls away.
I have dedicated my life to the study of Al-Andalus and the Middle Ages; I am not a politician or an ideologue. I just want to explain that there is another story of Spain that is more interesting and truer than the one that is told to the public.
Why is the story that reaches the public a recreation worse than the real thing?
Because these stories look for their own identities in the past: they try to convince people that their own beliefs and values ??are the same as they existed in any other era and that they need to be legitimized.
Today history is not told but reinvented?
Identities are playing too big a role in studying the past.
Define identities.
If you seek to reinforce your identity in the past, you mystify history. There are two types of historians: those who work as astrologers and those who work as astronomers.
Are you an astronomer historian?
You can have a political project in the present, but you cannot look for the answers in the past. The answers must be generated by us, and to find them a critical view, not idealized to your liking, of the past is required.
Are the facts more interesting than the identity reading that is made of them?
Identity reading will always limit you.
Austria or Bourbon?
The Austrian monarchy maintained the kingdoms that made it up with their own institutions, customs, laws…
And didn’t that enrich its diversity?
But they transfer this to America, which is nothing more than a kingdom assimilated to Castile.
Did they leave Catalonia without the Americas?
And in Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands; there is talk of the “Spanish” empire, but the viceroyalties of America were only from Castile.
