Javier Fernández Sebastián

The Notion of Modernity in 19th-Century Spain An Example of Conceptual History

This article has two main aims. First, it provides a brief account of the terms modernidad (modernity) and modernismo (modernism) in the Spanish context from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Second, it seeks to illustrate the way in which conceptual history is being approached in a Spanish context. It draws upon the collaborative efforts of a group of over 30 scholars who have sought to explore the political lexicon of 19th-century Spain. The article deploys the analytical categories and methodological tools associated with the followers of Begriffsgeschichte and of the Cambridge school. Our conclusion is that an examination of these two terms reveals that the emphasis upon Spanish singularity has been exaggerated and that, despite the historical backwardness of the country, Spain played an outstanding role in the creation of the language of modernity and postmodernity.

A Distorting Mirror: The Sixteenth Century in the Historical Imagination of the First Hispanic Liberals

Summary Both Iberian and Spanish American liberals in the early decades of the nineteenth century based their political stances upon a particular vision of Spanish history. This vision, nourished by the stereotypes of the so-called ‘black legend’, correspond to an extremely gloomy picture of the main events and processes that had been taking place in the Hispanic monarchy since the late fifteenth century, such as the discovery and conquest of America and the outcome of the Comunidades of Castile war. This essay shows how those first Hispanic liberals, many of whom spent several years in exile, hoping to make sense of that period of uncertainty and revolutionary crisis, sought inspiration in the philosophies of history which were beginning to spread from Northern Europe regarding the decisive role of Protestantism in the origins of modernity. In endorsing such a derogatory vision of the history of their own countries, which included an evaluation of Catholicism as a retrograde factor, those liberal writers and politicians bequeathed to their descendants an interpretative framework that would prove to be very long lasting. In fact, much of the political and intellectual historiography on the Iberian world would be conditioned for a long time by a paradigm which described its past as an anomaly in the Euroamerican context, and assumed the subordinate and peripheral position of the region, portrayed as a kind of ‘interior Orient’—that is, as an aberration of Western civilisation.SummaryBoth Iberian and Spanish American liberals in the early decades of the nineteenth century based their political stances upon a particular vision of Spanish history. This vision, nourished by the stereotypes of the so-called ‘black legend’, correspond to an extremely gloomy picture of the main events and processes that had been taking place in the Hispanic monarchy since the late fifteenth century, such as the discovery and conquest of America and the outcome of the Comunidades of Castile war. This essay shows how those first Hispanic liberals, many of whom spent several years in exile, hoping to make sense of that period of uncertainty and revolutionary crisis, sought inspiration in the philosophies of history which were beginning to spread from Northern Europe regarding the decisive role of Protestantism in the origins of modernity. In endorsing such a derogatory vision of the history of their own countries, which included an evaluation of Catholicism as a retrograde factor, those liberal writers ...

The notion of ‘ideology’ in the ideological struggles of 20th-century Spain

The aim of the article is to provide an outline of the debates regarding the concept of ideology which took place in Spain throughout the 20th century. Beyond the arguments common to all Europe, some peculiarities of these debates in the peninsular context stem from the fact that Spanish society had to confront such traumatic collective experiences as the civil war 1936–1939 and the long dictatorship which followed. After Francos death and the transition to democracy, the polemic uses of the word ideology—a term which in most cases tends to have negative connotations—occur in a very different context, in which the alleged decline of ideologies and the generalised discredit of these structures of thought have proved strangely compatible with the calls from certain sectors of the left for a new ideological rearmament and even with renewed academic interest in the study of political ideologies.The aim of the article is to provide an outline of the debates regarding the concept of ideology which took place in Spain throughout the 20th century. Beyond the arguments common to all Europe, some peculiarities of these debates in the peninsular context stem from the fact that Spanish society had to confront such traumatic collective experiences as the civil war 1936–1939 and the long dictatorship which followed. After Francos death and the transition to democracy, the polemic uses of the word ideology—a term which in most cases tends to have negative connotations—occur in a very different context, in which the alleged decline of ideologies and the generalised discredit of these structures of thought have proved strangely compatible with the calls from certain sectors of the left for a new ideological rearmament and even with renewed academic interest in the study of political ideologies.

The Notion of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Spain: An Example of Conceptual History

This article has two main aims. First, it provides a brief account of the terms modernidad (modernity) and modernismo (modernism) in the Spanish context from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Second, it seeks to illustrate the way in which conceptual history is being approached in a Spanish context. It draws upon the collaborative efforts of a group of over 30 scholars who have sought to explore the political lexicon of 19th-century Spain. The article deploys the analytical categories and methodological tools associated with the followers of Begriffsgeschichte and of the Cambridge school. Our conclusion is that an examination of these two terms reveals that the emphasis upon Spanish singularity has been exaggerated and that, despite the historical backwardness of the country, Spain played an outstanding role in the creation of the language of modernity and postmodernity. key words: Cambridge school, conceptual history, Jose Ortega y Gasset, modernity, 19th-century Spain The aim of this article is twofold. First, it attempts to give a brief account of the semantic evolution of the terms modernidad (modernity) and modernismo (modernism) in the Spanish context from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. But, second, we would like this article to be seen as an illustration of our particular way of approaching the study of conceptual history. In fact,