Alejandro Quiroga

Spanish nationalism: Ethnic or civic?

In recent years, it has been a common complaint among scholars to acknowledge the lack of research on Spanish nationalism. This article addresses the gap by giving an historical overview of ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ Spanish nationalist discourses during the last two centuries. It is argued here that Spanish nationalism is not a unified ideology but it has, at least, two varieties. During the 19th-century, both a ‘liberal’ and a ‘conservative-traditionalist’ nationalist discourse were formulated and these competed against each other for hegemony within the Spanish market of ideas. In the 20th-century, these two discourses continued to be present and became backbones of different political regimes. However, after the emergence of the Basque and Catalan nationalist movements, Spanish nationalists unified as a counter-force to these regional sources of identity. In fact, one can see 20th-century Spanish nationalism as a dialectical struggle between the centre and the periphery.

Spanish Fury: Football and National Identities under Franco:

This article explores the Franco dictatorships utilization of football for nationalist indoctrination. It focuses on the Francoist appropriation of Spanish football victories and the promotion of a collective identity that portrayed Spaniards as ferocious, passionate and quixotic. The paper challenges the traditional view that Francoists sought to obliterate regional identities after the Spanish Civil War. As in the case of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Francoism cultivated certain types of regional identities via sports, seeking to introduce an element of populism and grassroots activism into the dictatorship. Football was also used by the anti-Francoist opposition to foster counter-hegemonic national identities. This article analyses how Spanish democrats, Catalan regionalists and Basque nationalists found in football a suitable means to build alternative identities. The conclusions show that whereas the political nationalism fostered by the Franco regime had little impact on Spaniards, the cultural features and stereotypes associated with the Spanish nation were adopted by different sectors of society.

Review: Basque Nationalism and the Politics of the Past: The Death of the Tribe: New Studies on the Basque Country

On 14 February 1996, a member of ETA entered Francisco Tomás y Valiente’s office at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and shot the Professor of Law three times. A former president of the Spanish Constitutional Court, Tomás y Valiente was preparing an exam for his students. He died almost immediately. In some ways, his assassination was a turning point in recent Spanish history. The day after the killing, hundreds of students at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid demonstrated against ETA. They had their hands painted white, in a symbolic gesture contrasting with the ‘blood-stained’ hands of the terrorists, and chanted ¡basta ya! (‘enough!’). The gesture and the motto soon caught the popular imagination. In the days that followed the killing, a million people marched against ETA in Madrid and thousands did the same in Valencia. White hands became a symbol of anti-terrorist protests across Spain. Crucially, demonstrations did not take place in the Basque Country, where ETA’s violence had created a culture of fear among the population since the transition to democracy in the second half of the 1970s. As ETA has continued to target scholars, journalists, teachers and public officers who do not support nationalist postulates, many of them have been forced to leave the Basque Country and others have been assigned bodyguards. These direct threats to academics have not discouraged scholars when it comes to studying the origins and development of the so-called ‘Basque conflict’. In recent european history quarterly 

Spanish football and social change: sociological investigations

Walter Vargas, etc.), the author sees Argentine soccer fiction in a much more optimistic light than, for example, the one offered by sociologist and soccer scholar Pablo Alabarces in Héroes, machos y patriotas (2014) for whom Fontanarrosa’s work had practically closed down this subgenre, placing the literary bar at almost unreachable heights. Nevertheless, Scher and Alabarces coincide in one key aspect: soccer and sports in general can be as good a pre-text as any other in order to create timeless literature. To conclude, despite its non-academic format and, sometimes, excessively laudatory tone, Contar el juego is a useful and necessary work for soccer and sport scholars as it contributes to reflect and provide visibility to a peripheral area of Argentine literature as well as to highlight the place and importance of sport as a valuable literary theme and/or element in this context. Furthermore, its rigorous research helps unearth colourful anecdotes and little known facts about the lives and works of these authors at the same time creating an impressive index of sport literary references in the Argentine context. Finally, Scher’s book confirms once again the centrality of sports as cultural phenomena and as such, its significance in the daily construction of people’s lives, works, identities and communities.

Narratives of success and portraits of misery: Football, national identities, and economic crisis in Spain (2008–2012)

ABSTRACT This article explores the propagation of national narratives through football in both the Spanish and the European media in the period 2008–2012. The Spanish national teams victories in the 2008 and 2012 Euros and the 2010 World Cup resulted in the consolidation of a domestic “narrative of success” that depicted Spain as a flourishing, modern European country. Yet as the economic crisis increased, Spanish governments, mass media, and corporations promoted this narrative of success as a “compensation mechanism,” aiming at making up for the countrys dire financial situation. In the European media, the initially benign portrait of Spaniards was gradually transformed into a new representation that depicted Iberians as slackers and scroungers of European Union funds. The article shows the re-emergence of derogatory stereotypes as a manner of making Spaniards scapegoats for the economic crisis, while reinforcing nationalist narratives among Europeans.

Mixed feelings: Identities and nationalisations in Catalonia and the Basque country (1980–2015)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the processes of nationalisation in Catalonia and the Basque Country in the period 1980–2015. It focuses on the competing narratives that Spanish, Catalan and Basque nationalists disseminated and the different ‘spheres of nationalisation’ through which individuals acquired their identities. The study combines the historical analysis of national narratives with survey data to examine the production and reproduction of identities. The research shows the limits of both state-led and sub-state-led nationalisations and underscores the importance of changing historical contexts in determining the social impact of national narratives.

Football and Identities in Catalonia

On 10 July 2010, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Barcelona behind the slogan ‘We are a nation’. The demonstration was supported by all Catalan parties, with the exception of the conservative People’s Party and the anti-Catalanist Ciutadans, and was reported as the biggest in the history of Catalonia.2 The protest was conceived as a response to the Spanish Constitutional Court, which had published a review of the region’s revised statute of autonomy denying Catalonia was a nation in its own right. The day after the demonstration, Spain won the Football World Cup for the first time. Thousands of Catalans celebrated the triumphs of the selecciόn in Barcelona. The streets of the Catalan capital were taken by a tide of young supporters in red T-shirts waving Spanish constitutional flags and proudly chanting ‘I am Spanish, Spanish, Spanish’.3

Football and Identities in the Basque Country

When Inaxio Kortabarria addressed his fellow Real Sociedad players anxiety filled the dressing room. It was 5 December 1976 and Real Sociedad de San Sebastian were about to play a league match against Basque arch-rivals, Athletic de Bilbao. On this occasion, however, tension was not due to regional footballing rivalries but to a flag. The Real Sociedad captain told his colleagues that midfielder Josean de la Hoz Uranga had smuggled an ikurrina (Basque flag) hidden in his kit bag into the stadium. Kortabarria intended to propose to Athletic’s captain, Jose Angel Iribar, that they walk out onto Atocha stadium holding the banned Basque flag. The gesture, Real Sociedad’s captain argued, would contribute to the legalisation of an emblem that had remained proscribed since the end of the Spanish Civil War. Following a brief discussion, the Real Sociedad players backed the action and Kortabarria informed Iribar of the decision. The Athletic goalkeeper then consulted his players, who in turn supported the action. Minutes later both captains walked onto the pitch with the ikurrina. The fans were astonished, some cried with joy, others clapped. The police did not act and allowed the players’ public display.2 The next month, the Spanish government legalised the ikurrina.

From Patriotic Bulimia to Nationalist Obesity (2001–2012)

On 8 June 2012 the eyes of world were on Spain. Following weeks of market turmoil, mass media all over the planet reported that the Spanish economy was on the brink of collapse. The financial storm was so bad that it threatened the existence of the European monetary union. European Union leaders raced to put measures in place and pressured Spanish officials to seek aid. The next day, the Spanish Minister of the Exchequer, Luis de Guindos, announced that Spain had asked euro-region governments for a bailout of €100 billion to rescue its crippled banking sector. Spain became the biggest euro economy to seek international aid.1 Speaking for the first time since the rescue of the banks was agreed, at a press conference on 10 June, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, tried to present the financial bailout as a victory for his country. To the astonishment of journalists, Rajoy also declared that he had to cut the conference short because he was travelling to Gdansk to watch Spain’s first game in the Poland and Ukraine Euro 2012. Questioned about the appropriateness of the football trip, at a time when Spain was going through one of the most precarious economic moments in its history, the PM was unapologetic. He said that the ‘situation had been resolved’ and that the national team ‘deserved’ his visit.2 Rajoy only lamented that he could not be in Paris at the same time to watch Rafael Nadal win Roland Garros.3

Conclusion: Don Quixote Scavenges for Food

On 24 September 2012, The New York Times published a report entitled ‘Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal’. The piece was accompanied by a front-page picture of a man, incidentally in a Barca T-shirt, searching a dumpster. ‘So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution,’ reported Suzanne Daily.2 The article painted a grim, although accurate, picture of Spain, a country with a 25 per cent unemployment rate, 22 per cent house-holds living in poverty and over a million hungry people forced to use soup kitchens and forage the day’s refuse for food. The New York Times linked Spain’s dire straits to the austerity measures imposed to meet budget targets that had resulted in ‘cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink’. Making life much harder for those on the edge, the central government had raised value-added tax by three percentage points, while the regional governments were ‘chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families’.3 The timing of the publication was also telling, as on the same day that Suzanne Daily’s report came out, King Juan Carlos I paid a visit to the New York Times headquarters. Somewhat ironically, the goal of the royal visit was to promote the Spain Brand (Marca Espana) and to explain to American journalists the real situation in the Iberian country.