Spanish nationalism

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The creation of the tradition of the political community of Spaniards as common destiny over other communities has been argued to trace back to the Cortes of Cádiz.^[1] From 1812 on, revisiting the previous history of Spain, Spanish liberalism tended to take for granted the national conscience and the Spanish nation.^[2]

A by-product of 19th-century Spanish nationalist thinking is the concept of Reconquista, which holds the power of propelling the weaponized notion of Spain being a nation shaped against Islam.^[3] The strong interface of nationalism with colonialism is another feature of 19th-century nation building in Spain, with the defence of slavery and colonialism in Cuba being often able to reconcile tensions between mainland elites of Catalonia and Madrid throughout the period.^[4]

During the first half of 20th century (notably during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the dictatorship of Franco), a new brand of Spanish nationalism with a marked military flavour and an authoritarian stance (as well as promoting policies favouring the Spanish language against the other languages in the country) as a means of modernizing the country was developed by Spanish conservatives, fusing regenerationist principles with traditional Spanish nationalism.^[5] The authoritarian national ideal resumed during the Francoist dictatorship, in the form of National-Catholicism,^[5] which was in turn complemented by the myth of Hispanidad.^[6] Identified with Francoism, positive affirmation of Spanish nationalism was delegitimised after the death of the dictator in 1975.^[7]

A distinct manifestation of Spanish nationalism in modern Spanish politics is the interchange of attacks with competing regional nationalisms.^[8] Initially present after the end of Francoism in a rather diffuse and reactive form, the Spanish nationalist discourse has been often self-branded as "constitutional patriotism" since the 1980s.^[9] Often ignored as in the case of other State nationalisms,^[10] its alleged "non-existence" has been a commonplace espoused by prominent figures in the public sphere as well as the mass-media in the country.^[11]

A central scholarly debate pertaining to the construction of the contemporary Spanish national identity revolves around the assessment of the effective reach of nationalising mechanisms, most specifically vis-à-vis the axiom of 19th-century weak nationalization, supported, for example, by José Álvarez Junco.^[12]

Spanish nationalism is a justification of the centralist Spanish state, according to Borja de Riquer. In this sense, it is the historical result of well-known political-ideological-economic interests,^{[weasel words]} in the minds of some pressure groups, among which he mentions many elites of the "Hispanic peoples".^[13]