Africanist (Spain)

Africanists (Spanish: Africanistas) were the people who encouraged a strong colonial involvement of Spain in Africa, particularly in the early 20th century. Although Spain had been present in African territory for numerous centuries, it was not until the arrival of New Imperialism and the Berlin Conference in 1884 that the colonial power set its interests in African soil. Africanism emerged mainly from the loss of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and various other islands in 1898 as a consequence of the Spanish–American War. Africanists sought to compensate for these losses by consolidating their possessions in Africa. Spain's colonizing Africa was smaller when compared to other European colonizers, even after losing their colonies in the Americas and Pacific, because there was a lack of public support to re-establish themselves as an empire.^[1] Spain's economy recovered quickly after the loss of their colonies during the Spanish-American War, and the general population lost their fervor for maintaining an empire.^[2] Countries like Italy which had started colonizing in the late nineteenth century colonized more than Spain because Italy had much more public support to create an empire.^[3]

Within the army, Africanist officers espoused chiefly a conservative worldview with extreme-right views being common.^[4] The extreme nationalism and anti-democratic views enabled a potential linkage with Fascism.^[5] According to Sebastian Balfour, Africanist practices, intertwined with ideas on the "degeneration" of the Spanish masses, would become a core tenet of the ideology of "crusade" present in the 1936 coup d'etat.^[6]