Federalismo y tradicionalismo: un desafío a la nación española

En The Myths and Realities of Nation-Building in the Iberian Peninsula, Angel Smith y Clare Mar-Molinero aportan su visión sobre los movimientos nacionalistas y sus contribuciones en España y Portugal, el surgimiento de los nacionalismos periféricos y las distintias identidades nacionales y su desarrollo en España y Portugal.

En primer lugar, destacan el fracaso del proyecto liberal a la hora de crear un Estado-Nación español:

As Alvarez Junco emphasises, in Spain, as throughout the rest of Europe, the nation-state-building process was carried through by liberal politicians who needed to construct new legitimacies following the overthrow of absolutism. Liberal regimes governed in Spain between 1833 and 1923. However, their nationalising policies were a shadow of those pursued by the mayor Western European powers. In the first place, the poverty of the Spanish State, poor communications, the inadequate education system and a restricted cultural market ensured that the construction of a national identity out of a multiplicity of local references was very incomplete. Furthermore, the dominant liberal tradition proved enormously conservative, and its power-base rested on local oligarchs rather than on sections of public opinion. Consequently, it preferred to try to maintain the traditional legitimation provided by the Catholic Church rather tahn resorting to the dangerous game of mobilising the masses behind nationalist goals.¹

Ya desde mediados del siglo XIX podemos observar como se pone en duda este concepto de España centralizada. Por un lado, desde la izquierda, encontramos oposición por parte de liberales:

On the Left, many progressive liberals came to adopt federalism as their creed, and between 1868 and 1873, under the influence of Proudhonian doctrines the first major republican party called itself the Federal Republican Party. Its leading thinker, Francesc Pi i Margall, saw Spain as the nation, but believed that it should be reconstructed on the basis of its 'old provinces', which had retained their individuality and should therefore be given a high degree of autonomy.² These federalists were not, then, nationalists avant la lettre, but in recognising the personality of the regions they could help lay the basis for future particularist and nationalist thought (López Cordón 1975; Trías and Elorza 1975). This was very clear in the case of Catalonia where in the 1880s the ex-federalist, Valentí Almirall, developed a programme in favour of Catalan autonomy (Trías Vejerano 1975; Figueres 1990).


2. Pi stated, 'almost all of them were nations in their day. They still retain their specific physiognomy and some are distinguished from the rest by the particulary and unity of their language, customs and laws' (Pi i Margall 1877, 1936 edn: 274).²

Por otro lado, desde la derecha, encontramos la oposición de conservadores y tradicionalistas:

On the Right, traditionalist and conservative thinkers also criticised liberal centralism, contrasting it with reference to the supposed liberties of 'the peoples' of Spain in the Middel Ages (Mañé y Flaquer 1886), and therefore supported the claim for the restitution of medieval privilegies such as the fueros, and the descentralisation of the state administration.³ The traditionalist, particularist current, which drew on the writings of Le Play and Taine, was especially pronounced in the Basque Country and Catalonia, but was also to be found in Galicia, Valencia and Aragon (Solé Tura 1974: 55-94: Cirujano Marín, et al. 1985: 127; Riquer 1987:78-84). In the Basque Country, where the fueros were not abolished until 1876, they were strongly defended by the tradicionalist-Catholic Carlists and lated by middling landowners (the jauntxos), whose local power they had protected. Jacier Corcuera argues that both these movements tended to foster a 'pre-nationalist' consciousness in sectors of the population because they created an 'us' and 'them' mentality, in which the 'them' could be identified with Castilian liberalism (Corcuera Atienza 1979: 51-8, 180-4).


3. The traditionalist historian, Victor Gebhardt, argued in favour of 'the right which Catalonia, Navarre, the Basque provinces and the other regions of Spain which feel at ease with the remains of their national existence have to live their own lives' (Cirujano Marín et al 1985: 129). In quite similar terms the conservative representative of Catalan industrial interests, Juan Mañé y Flaquer, stated in 1855: 'Spain is a federation of peoples (pueblos, of nationalities, of distinct races, with different traditions, different customs and different languages' (Riquer 1987:78-9).³

En tercer lugar, encontramos una contestación de carácter pan-Ibérico:

At the same time, the republicans also championed the possible future unification of the Iberian peoples in a single confederation. This was supported most enthusiastically by the federalists, and was justified in ethnic and historical terms with the claim that the Iberian Peninsula had constituted a single Iberian race before the Roman invasion (Cirujano Marín, Elorriaga Planes and Pérez Garzón 1985: 87-8)⁴

Por tanto, puede observarse que en España, durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, la visión liberal centralista fue ampliamente cuestionada. A pesar de que el Estado liberal consiguió la lealtad de gran parte de la intelectualidad del siglo XIX en la conceptualización dominante conservadora-liberal de la nación, falló a la hora de intentar lograr el apoyo de las clases subalternas, permitiendo la aparición de ideologíass antagónicas. Además, las diversas memorias históricas y tradiciones abonaron el terreno para la aparición de una producción cultural regional que casaba con dificultad con los mitos de la nación española.

[1] Clare Mar-Molinero, Angel Smith, Nationalism and the Naion in the Iberian Peninsula: Competing and Conflicting Identities (Oxford: Berg, 1996), p.3.
[2] Ibid, p.5.
[3] Ibid, p.6.
[4] Ibid, p.5.

Publicado originalmente en humano sin sentido