Good afternoon to all who are still connected,
afterwards you will be able to participate in the
debate with the four of us, the three members
of the panel and the plenary speaker.
Therefore, we encourage you, if you cannot stay,
to send us your questions, comments, and suggestions,
and we will forward them to you.
In any case, if they are waiting, they can do it in person.
Well, the last presentation of the day will be given
by Professor Gonzalo Samar, from the University of
Zaragoza, who is a professor of Contemporary History
at that university, one of the greatest specialists
in the history of Spanish history.
Director of the journal Historiography, is.
Among his works, his writing "Ideology in the Spanish Post-War Period" stands out.
Historiography. Contemporary history.
History of the present.
The break with liberal tradition or
everything related to a book that Gonzalo
published, I don't know, three or four
years ago, about the Memoirs of the Transition, eh?
I have to say one thing about Professor Gonzalo.
Did it happen that, besides everything else,
I think he's probably the only specialist left in Spain?
Pure historiography, meaning that
he dedicates all his time to this, huh?
Today he is going to talk to us about Hispanic liberalism in 19th-century
Spanish history.
Whenever you want, professor.
Come in, Samar.
Well, thank you very much. Huh?
I think you can hear me. Mmm.
I did well. Not very well, very well.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Naturally, I want to begin by thanking everyone
for attending, both those in the room and those connected online.
And also for this invitation and at the same time to
congratulate the professors of the Rey Juan Carlos
University and the University of Santiago de Compostela
for the happy idea of ​​incorporating into these conferences
areas related to literature such as philosophy and historiography.
For me it is always a pleasure to talk about this
last subject, especially when I am also given the
opportunity to choose a specific topic to close this day.
Well, in a pioneering and highly valuable book
published almost half a century ago, exactly in 1979,
the Sevillian professor Manuel Moreno Alonso
christened the Spanish historiography of the first
decades of the 19th century, the Isabelline
era, with the term romantic historiography.
It is far from my intention to belittle the presence of
Romanticism in the historical writings of the 19th century.
Because?
A fundamental feature of this cultural movement was the
evocation and insistence on national and regional
identities and histories, as well as themes such as, for
example, customs, folklore, the mysterious, the exotic,
rebellion against tyranny, freedom, and revolutions.
Furthermore, these are themes channeled through a
public use of the past that we can consider modern, right?
However, I intend to prioritize the manifestations
of liberalism and Hispanism, because these, in my
opinion, equally define both what Spanish political
identity was at that time and the foreign perspectives. Mmm.
Therefore, these premises can be seen reflected in the culture,
scholarship, and historical writings of those years.
But these topics will be the focus of my lecture, which
begins by warning that the word Hispanism, which I use
in the title, applied to liberal and romantic historians,
is only an approximation of what was more of a Hispanophilia,
a sympathetic view of Spanish culture, because
Hispanism did not exist then as an academic specialty,
which is more of a 20th-century phenomenon.
And there were many Romantic writers who alluded to sympathy for Spanish culture.
They preferred to use terms like expansion
Spanish nationalist in
different terms from that of Hispanist.
Exactly.
To begin, I must emphasize that Spanish liberal historiography
was a faithful heir to the Enlightenment of the 18th century.
Professor Manuel Moreno Alonso also emphasizes this point.
However, we are talking about a fairly modest official illustration.
But well, it's the same thing placed under the protection of absolute
monarchy and stripped of philosophical and theological controversies.
In reality, the way of writing history and valuing the vestiges of the past
that spread among the authors of the 19th century owed much to the previous
century.
Let us recall, for example, the early role played by the all-powerful
Marquis of Ensenada, who was minister to several monarchs of his
century in introducing the conservation and study of so-called
antiquities in the Royal Academy of History.
A few years after its founding.
His instruction for the recognition of
antiquities in Spain dates exactly from 1752.
Or also how ten years earlier, in 1742, already
retired from his official duties, the Valencian
Gregorio Mayans y Ciscar, published Censura
de historias fabulosas, a writing that he had
left unpublished at his death in 1684.
The jurist and librarian of the Court of Charles II, Nicholas Antonio.
This writing criticized for the first time the myths
about the origins of the history of Spain, contained
in what a century later, in the 19th, the historian José
Godoy Alcántara called the false conditions.
The publication of Nicolás Antonio's unpublished work by Mayans
serves to illustrate how the beginnings of historical criticism were discovered
in Spain.
Because these spurious or false critical accounts
were not only part of the general chronicle
of Spain initiated by Florian de Ocampo.
In the mid-16th century, they were also
present in the first general history of
Spain, which was written half a century
later by the Jesuit Juan de Mariana, a
work that was still famous in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This rejection of false critics and the critical use of
manuscripts, coins, inscriptions or as they were called
at the time, antiquities, is already applied in the work
La España Sagrada, composed by the Augustinian friar
Enrique Flores between 1747 and 1775, which can be
considered the first history of the Spanish Church
written with properly scientific criteria.
But if we refer to the interest in the narrative of the history
of Spain as such, the link between the Enlightenment
and liberal culture is still marked.
It suffices to examine the reception of the article
"Spain" that the French writer Nicolas Mason, of
Morbidity, published in 1782 for the Methodical
Encyclopedia, which, as is known, was an edition, as
he said, of the very work expanded, restructured and
revised of the famous encyclopedia that they began to edit in 1751.
Diderot and Lambert.
This reception can be considered a remarkable example
of the existence of a relatively new interest in the
history of Spain in response to the negative image it had abroad.
This attention was largely fostered as a result
of the reformist spirit that was felt in certain
intellectual circles, academies, economic
societies, universities, social gatherings,
salons of certain aristocrats, and newspapers.
But let's see.
In his article, Nicholas spoke of a decline in the Kingdom of
Spain, which he said had transferred the wealth of the New
World to other hands, and which was attributable to factors
such as—and I quote verbatim—the weakness of the Spanish
government, the Inquisition, the friars, and the lazy pride of its inhabitants.
Nicholas Mason's writing was little echoed by the scientist and naturalist
Antonio José de Cabanillas.
This then resided in Paris in an essay that he published in
French in 1784 with the title of observations of Mr. Abbé
CABA in English on the article of Spain in the new Encyclopedia.
That text
It was a compendium of information on the history of Spanish culture
supplied by some of the most important Spanish scholars and historians of the
time.
It involved English, it had friendship.
The essay found support from the then ambassador in Paris,
the Count of Aranda, and above all from the powerful minister,
the Count of Floridablanca, who ordered it to be translated
into Spanish immediately. A few years earlier, in 1777,
the year of the Declaration of Independence of the 13
Colonies, the publication of William Robertson's history
of America had also garnered the attention of the Academy,
History, and the monarchy itself.
Charles III.
Instead of the.
The translation that the Academy had planned, what it did
was order, compose a history that would result from that
of the Scottish historian and put it in the hands of this
network Real Cosmography, where God is.
It seems that Muñoz never finished this project, but it
was precisely thanks to his interest in these topics that
we have the first project for the creation of a General
Archive of the Indies in Seville in the 1780s.
And a year before even the publication of Nicholas
Mason's article in 1781, the Jesuit Juan Francisco
Masdeu, then based in Rome due to the expulsion of his
Order from the Kingdom of Spain, began in Italian
a critical history of Spain and Spanish culture.
The work was a defense of culture and the monarchy.
For the information of Italian scholars.
But more than spurred on by Mason's article,
he decided to continue it in Spanish in 1783,
the year after publishing it in
Italian, but he did not finish it.
He only wrote the first 11 volumes, which cover events up to the 11th century.
But the work, the work, achieved remarkable fame among later liberal
historians.
But perhaps the most forceful rebuttal to Nicolás
Mason came from the Valencian newspaper Yanes,
Juan Pablo Forner. In 1788, he wrote a text entitled
"Discourses on the way to write and improve the
history of Spain," which would not be published
until 1816 and was later included in his Complete Works.
in 1843.
And in it, a very interesting detail can be observed.
in this essay
Forner criticizes French philosophers for their contempt
for the Spanish and their customs, but at the same time he
recognizes the interest that the ideas about the way of
writing history that came from France had, what Voltaire
called, philosophical history or reasoned history.
And Forner also recognizes that a history of Spain of this
kind is needed, one that goes far beyond the history composed
at the end of the 16th century by Father Maria.
This affectionate-antipathic relationship towards foreign
historiography was a notable feature of liberal historiography,
but it had to adapt to the new political and
cultural circumstances, as we shall see.
First of all, it should be noted that the lost war of independence
of the Spanish Empire, added to the First Carlist War, aroused
a pronounced interest in Spanish culture.
Furthermore, the reign of Ferdinand VII, with the exception
of the Liberal Triennium, caused, as is known, a flight of
intellectuals to France and England, who upon their return
imported literary tastes and themes that were flourishing
in Europe at the time, as well as a pronounced interest in
the past, but to emphasize one detail.
This fascination with the past was not exclusively a Spanish phenomenon;
it occurred in both Europe and America and is closely related not only
to the cultural memory of each of these countries and the taste for the
exotic, but also to the political changes brought about by the era of revolutions.
The story of the Frenchman Augustin Thierry expressed it in 1835
in an enthusiastic quote that said the following: He said the
story will be the hallmark of the 19th century and the war.
His name, like philosophy, gave its name to the 18th century.
In fact, this interest in history had a very notable political
purpose, in accordance with the building of nation-states.
The historian and liberal politician Franco Horizonte,
a very influential figure among Spanish authors, as we
shall see, once wrote, regarding the genre of constitutional
history, that the importance of historical writing was
closely related to the liveliness of politics and that,
far from being a distraction or amusement, it actually
served to ratify political theses, even to promote them,
that is, to establish political forecasts.
Here, allow me a brief digression.
This attention to political history does not mean that
this trend was an invention of the 19th century.
It dates back at least to the second half of the 16th century, with the
so-called caciquismo, which was a current of political thought
that remained in force until well into the 18th century and which
owes its name, as you observe, to the fame acquired from the 16th
century onwards by the writer of ancient Rome, Gaius Cornelius Tacitus.
In Europe, the interveners of capitalism, the
writers Justus Lycius, Hugo Grotius, and Virgil
Malbec, placed special emphasis on aspects such
as the importance of reason of state and the need
to look to the past to instruct the ruler and also
to make human events predictable.
Interest in political history was, in fact, very
notable among 18th-century philosophers.
But they were not satisfied with the premises of pacifism.
To do this, history had to account not only for
the causes and the moral and political principles
behind the great feats and customs of humanity,
but also for the institutions, the economy,
literature, and religion.
Eighteenth-century authors did not deny that writing
history was an art, as it had been postulated since antiquity.
But they also believed it was a science or a manifestation of philosophy.
In the 18th century, seven and philosophy were
interchangeable, which meant that the historian
should not be content with narrating events, but should
also ask about the nature of the progress of those events.
Well, Romanticism certainly reinforced the fondness for stories about the past.
The medieval adventure novels of the Scottish aristocrat
and writer Walter Scott enjoyed, as is well known, great
acceptance in Europe and America, and also enjoyed great
acceptance among historians and those influenced by him.
For example, the French politician and historian
Prosper de Bajante published between 1824 and
1828 a highly acclaimed work entitled History of
the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valor de Vega.
He literally said, "I have tried to give back to history the
interest that the historical novel has taken from it."
History, above all, must be accurate, but it can also be truthful and vibrant.
The work began with a phrase from the famous Roman
rhetorician Marcus Aurelius Quintilian, which
read: "Write 'Go,' not approving."
This is the story.
It is written to narrate, not to prove.
The misunderstanding and displeasure that this sentence provoked
among French historians of the time, who advocated for philosophical history.
It is very significant.
The author himself tried to put an end to this disagreement,
arguing that it was a phrase that could not be generalized
to all historical writings and was useful for all eras.
In Spain, only after the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, did the
intellectual and political climate suitable for the
development of liberal historiography begin to flourish.
We have some previous attempts, also heirs to the
Enlightenment, such as the essay published in
French by the jurist and economist Juan Sempere
Guarino in 1826, entitled Considerations on the
causes of the greatness and decline of the Spanish monarchy.
As a Francophile, Pérez is shown here to be opposed to the
revolution of the years of the War of Independence.
But he also criticizes Nicholas Mason's article.
However, except for his assessment of the war of 1808,
his account of the history of Spain, which goes back to
the Visigoths and reaches its peak during the time of
the Catholic Monarchs, foreshadows what will become
the liberal historical narrative.
Sempere was an early returnee from exile, he returned to
Spain in 1826 and died in 1830 and did not live to witness
the changes that took place after the disappearance of Ferdinand VII.
Let's see.
In 1833 the return of exiled intellectuals began, who, as I
have mentioned, were going to contribute to the culture a
romantic taste for the past and at the same time accentuate
the importance of topics or values ​​that were
then current, such as freedom versus tyranny.
Here we can give the example of how in April 1834
a resounding success premiered in Madrid, as
Mariano José de Larra recounts in one of his most famous articles.
One of the most important works of Spanish Romanticism at that time
was the Venice series by the politician and writer who had recently returned from
exile.
Martínez de la Rosa, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa created
a drama set in the 14th century that precisely evoked
the theme of freedom versus tyranny.
This interest in history can be seen not only in the
arts, but also in poetry at the same time.
For example, and in painting.
Around the middle of the 19th century.
But the same thing happens in the field of public education, in the
field of publishing histories of Spain and accounts of events
considered relevant, as well as with the interest in documents and antiquities.
The main promoters of this historical culture were
fundamentally the so-called public writers, who were
authors who combined politics, journalism, literature,
an interest in history and publishing.
They were writers from the generations
that had lived through the war of 1808.
Some had been born immediately before and others had been born immediately after.
During the reign of Ferdinand VII.
And these are names that at one time had a,
let's say, a very important presence.
I am thinking, for example, of the Count of Toreno,
author in the 1930s of a history of the uprising, war
and Revolution of Spain, which was the first, the first
work on the first history of the War of Independence
that was written, or I am thinking, for example, of
Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel, who wrote a history of Philip II in the
1940s.
Or for example, I'm thinking of Antonio Ferrer del Río, who wrote
The First History of the Communities of Castile
in 1850.
And other authors whom I will cite later.
So they are authors, not professional historians.
Exactly, but they called themselves historians, public writers.
But let's look a little at these conditions in which liberal
historiography flourishes.
In 1837 the new Constitution that succeeded the Royal Statute
of 1834, recognized in its article two the essential freedom
of the press and publication, which is a necessary requirement.
Two years earlier, in 1835, the Scientific Literary Athenaeum
was founded in the capital of the Kingdom, which was actually
a refounding because there had already been an athenaeum during the Liberal
Triennium.
The Ateneo was going to play a relevant role in historical dissemination.
From that moment on and in the following years,
interesting changes took place in the academies.
In 1847, for example, the Academy of History was the subject
of a reform that, among other things, broadened the scope of
its topics and extended them, and I quote verbatim, to the
different aspects of life, civilization and culture of the peoples of Spain.
And in 1856, this Academy, the Academy of History, promoted
in Madrid a school for archivists and librarians, which
is a creation of the School of Arts in Paris.
In the school of scholars.
In Spain it was called the Higher School of Diplomacy.
In this center appears for the first time, for example,
the curriculum of 1857, a table of specialized or
scholarly historical subjects, for example, the
subject of Latin of the Middle Romance times.
We read in Galician, or the subject of Archaeology and Numismatics,
or the subject of History of Spain in the Middle Ages.
Well, but also in 1857, the same date as the founding of
the Higher School of Diplomacy, the Government inaugurated
a new academy in imitation of the neighboring country
of France, which was the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
It included a section dedicated to philosophy and history
in relation to moral and political sciences.
Here, for example, the jurist and economist Manuel
Colmillo dedicated himself to reading aloud the
chapters he was writing of what was the first proper
economic history of Spain, which was his history
of political economy in Spain, published in 1863. Right?
But not only the academies.
Likewise, the public instruction plans of the Elizabethan era
soon became a receptacle of interest in the past and its use.
For example, in the General Study Plan of 1846, the government
introduced high school and university.
The teaching of universal and Spanish history.
A teaching that a decade later, the famous Moyano Law of
Public Instruction ratified and expanded.
So it is no coincidence that in the mid-19th century
the atmosphere was conducive to the preparation
of a history of Spain to replace that of Father
Mariana, published at the end of the 16th century
and with numerous subsequent editions and expansions.
In reality, the story of Father Mariana in the 19th century
continued to enjoy prestige, and was even completed by authors
of the time, such as Cánovas, Antonio del Castillo, who in
addition to being a politician, was a historian with the verb
Chao Fernández, who curiously was a republican author.
But the work itself seemed alien to the canons of the century, and so wrote
the one who was going to undertake the task of replacing it, who was the
historian from Palencia, Modesto Lafuente Samayoa.
Here allow me this paragraph taken from the introduction
to the general history of Spain that the source began to
publish in 1850 in place of Mariana's and which he
continued to write until his death in 1866.
The source wrote.
The following cannot be denied to the wise Jesuit.
He was referring to Mariana and the glory of having been the first Spanish
historian general.
But the merit of having compiled, ordered and reduced to a body of
history the infinite materials that were scattered about and the
honor of having erased the note of neglect that our nation suffered at that
time.
But Mariana could not exempt herself from participating in the dominant ideas of
her century.
The fact that he admitted so many fables and tales, so many vulgar
errors and absurd traditions, some of such a nature that he himself
was forced to make that famous confession of pure ignorance, is
certainly more due to the passage of time than to his own fault. I
transcribe concretely and faithfully, making this fault more
excusable, and greatly compensating for the discretion of the
modern reader if he were to compensate for it with a philosophical
appreciation of the causes of the events, of their influence on the
progress, decline and alterations of the different States of Spain.
But unfortunately, this knowledge
cannot be acquired in Mariana's story.
That this work of the Fountain that I have.
In a very scholarly work, it must be remembered that Fuente was the
first director of the Higher School of Diplomacy.
Well, it is considered the quintessential liberal story.
And this reference that the source makes to the philosophical
history that we have read, characteristically illustrates the
way in which liberal historians understood the writing of history in the
Elizabethan years.
Well, in some circles this way of writing history was
known as "writing history towards the horizon." Indeed,
the most important politician of the French monarchy,
or royalist-on-the-horizon, was also one of the best-known
historians of those decades in his country and abroad,
because he was the one who specifically introduced the
expression "history of civilization."
And it was,
As is known, he was one of the promoters of the Bourbon
restoration in France and of the charter granted in
1814 of the so-called government of the just mean in
the 1820s, when this just mean project failed in France.
In addition to contributing to the most prominent liberal
newspapers in his country, he perhaps became one
of the most renowned historians in 1828.
Specifically, he published a course on modern history,
entitled History of Civilization in Europe, which was
the result of his classes at the Sorbonne.
This essay achieved remarkable resonance
in Spain and also in other countries.
Specifically, in Spain it was translated
and had three editions between 1839 and 1860.
This course on modern history is very important because it
reclaims the genre of philosophical history from the previous
century, but at the same time it departs from a way of writing
history characteristic of German authors, who had been giving
priority to ideas and reflection on the destinies of humanity.
And Guizot says in his work.
I will be very careful not to fall into pure philosophy.
I will be very careful not to establish any rational principle and
then deduce it from the nature of civilization as a consequence,
for there would be too many risks of error in this method.
Furthermore, Guizot believed that each country had played a
specific role throughout the centuries as a repository of
civilization, which encouraged the study of national history.
Logically, he was not referring to a country that did not consider
itself part of or heir to Western Christian civilization, and he
also maintained that France had been and was the beacon of European civilization.
Well, in Spain the story of the horizon soon had imitators.
In 1840 and 1841.
The writer Eugenio de Tapia published a history of Spanish
civilization from the Arabs to the present time, in which he
focused on literary history, which he considered the basis
of the history of Spanish civilization. At the same time, in
the same year, the writer Fermín Gonzalo Morón also taught a
course at the Ateneo de Madrid entitled History of the Civilization of Spain.
Here his idea of ​​civilization went further than Tapia's and
extended to material progress, technical and scientific
advances, and what he called moral progress.
The course of Fermín Gonzalo Morón.
He also called on the Government to introduce reforms in
education to improve, as he said, the deplorable state of historiography
Spanish. The.
However, it must be said that this impulse to write a new
history of Spain did not only come from foreign ways of
writing history, but also from ways of valuing Spanish culture itself.
Modesto Lafuente himself confesses in his general history
of Spain when he explains that the work served as an incentive for him.
He says it was a story of Spain
from the earliest times.
Written by the journalist and historian the Spanish and chard
Romeu, which served as an incentive for him.
Romeu's work was a work, a work published in 1839
and immediately translated into Spanish.
Thus, the source writes the following: In the introduction to the first
volume of his history he says: The work of a foreign historian
came into my hands, in whose preface I read these words.
As for Spain, unfortunately there are no Spanish names to mention.
Spain lacks a national history.
The historical genius has not yet developed in that great and
unfortunate people who march with so many anguishes towards their generation.
I confess that these words, Lafuente adds, ended up crushing my
feelings of patriotic love and my resolve to rehearse.
If I could fill even a part of that
lamentable void in our literature.
But Romeu's story does not have the sour tone of the
encyclopedia article published by Nicolas Mason.
57 years earlier,
In the prologue to the Spanish edition, now by Romeu, the
editor praises, for example, and I quote verbatim,
his philosophical criteria and style.
He explains that we believed we could perform an eminent service to
the Spanish nation by translating such a valuable work into Castilian Spanish.
Again, as can be seen here, the mixed feelings typical
of Spanish liberal historiography regarding
histories written by foreign authors are evident and have much to do with it.
As I say, the interest in Spanish culture that is
awakened abroad due to the war of independence, exile and romanticism.
Hispanism, if we accept this word to speak of
the first half of the 19th century in its origins,
is in reality simply a current of sympathy for
Spanish culture and history.
If you look at it, you get a picture of a picturesque country of
contrasts, a mixture of different cultures, which would have
been capable of building an empire and defeating Napoleon.
But at the same time, in a way, he had also been able to ruin himself.
These chiaroscuro effects can be perfectly observed
in the circumstances and work of a series of pioneering
North American authors, Spanish nationalists,
as they called themselves, who are more recently
known by scholars as the Boston Circle.
Well, I'm referring specifically to George
Washington Irving and William Prescott.
These are writers who left Europe and ended up in
Spain, or who heard about Spanish culture
and decided to write about its history.
During the years of the reign of Ferdinand VII and the Isabelline
period, its influence became part of the literary culture.
Ignore that he was the first.
He embarked on a journey through Europe and crossed
Spain between the spring and autumn of 1818, visiting
Girona, Zaragoza, Madrid and Andalusia, with travel
diaries of Spain that have recently been published, or
republished in Spanish, in which he portrays numerous
customs and talks about culture and institutions.
Upon his return to the United States, he was offered a
professorship at Harvard University to teach French and Spanish.
And years later, in 1849, Taylor would publish a
history of Spanish literature, which is the
first well-documented one available.
It predates Pelayo's and would be translated
ten years earlier or ten years later by the
Spanish historian Pascual Gallegos.
Washington Irving, for his part, lived in Europe, in Great
Britain, mainly from 1815 onwards and for more than a decade.
His contact with Spanish culture came from the United States ambassador to
Spain during the reign of Ferdinand VII.
Alexander Everett, who informed him of the publication
in 1825 of a collection of documents relating to
Christopher Columbus by the historian, so very marine
and learned Martín Fernández de Navarrete.
And Everett proposed a translation to Washington Irving.
But Irving decided to publish.
In contrast, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher
Columbus in 1828
and that it is a work in which the discoverer is praised for his
adventurous spirit, for his heroic character.
But it does not appear to be associated with Spanish identity.
This, curiously, is the image of Christopher Columbus
that has been disseminated in American culture ever since.
In the 19th century, this book by Irving
went through 175 editions in English,
so its influence was, shall we say, absolute. Right?
However, it must be said that Irving was a profound
Hispanic philoso 1829 and it was a trip to Spain, where
he met in Cádiz the Adlers, the merchant family to which
the writer of My Love of a Man belonged, who, as is known,
signed with the pseudonym of Fernán Caballero and
was the characteristic estate.
In short, for his romantic works, the last of the three
writers, William Prescott, also visited Europe, but he never set foot in Spain.
His contact with Spanish culture came from a signor whom he met in Paris.
In 1839.
Prescott began his publications on Spain with a history
of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic
Monarchs, which was translated into Spanish in 1845, and
continued those works with others dedicated to the Spanish Empire.
In short, Prescott's vision of
Spain was very important; it earned
him sympathy, but also a lot of criticism.
A recent author, a Hispanist named Richard Kegan,
has coined the term "The EH Paradigm" because he
considers that Prescott's way of valuing the
Spanish empire is precisely a guarantor vision
that Prescott himself contrasts with the rise
of the United States in the 19th century, which
has marked all of North American Hispanism.
I am referring to American historians in the 19th and part of the 20th century.
To contrast the rise of the United States with the decline of the Spanish Empire.
Okay, uh.
I end this lecture by underlining the
thesis I have tried to show throughout
it, that Spain in the 1919s, like other
countries, experienced an unusual interest in the past.
This was made possible by an audience of notable middle classes
and intellectuals who needed to know the history of Spain in
order to organize political life, constitutional Spain and
participate in the cultural currents of the time.
This phenomenon, which has a clear heritage from the Enlightenment of the
previous
century, always moved between admiration for the ways of writing.
History of foreigners and the need to develop one's
own history in accordance with the times.
And all of this under the influence of the foreign view
of Spain, which was not an unconditional view, eh?
The sympathies and criticisms from
Hispanists were therefore of great help.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much, Professor Samar.
Well, let's proceed with the debate that may arise.
If anyone has any questions or comments.
Uh. I wanted to thank Professor Matta for his.
For her presentation.
And I wanted to ask you two things.
First of all, uh.
How are Muslims portrayed in this work, if the topics of the
Middle Ages, eh of the 19th century, for example, continue,
if there are mentions of the Reconquista and then how much
does the work of Manuel Fernández de González influence
the historiographical portrait of Cervantes?
That is, if you have seen that this passes from
literature to the collective memory about Cervantes
or is even reproduced in this way in other cultural,
literary or historiographical productions and that is very good.
Okay, I'll give two approximate answers to the two questions.
I think the first one is indeed one.
It's a rather stereotypical view of Muslims.
I said "Moors" earlier in my lecture because that's more
or less the vocabulary of the time, right? Well, there was a quote there.
There was a quote I haven't read about the Cervantes Society,
but I'm not going to waste my time looking for it now, where it
does talk about their fiery character, how passions and love
affairs dominate all these Muslim characters, etc., and so
on, that they are very extreme in their reactions, etc. And
adding a little to what it says, not much, but they try to
describe their clothing a little from a physical point of view.
Is there any brief descriptive note there?
So I would say that it is a fairly traditional image.
But what is most striking about this novel,
the short novel and the corresponding part of
the longer novel is that, uh, women play a fundamental role, uh?
Doing the king of Algiers, Asana, Asana,
Gad, Arnaut, Mamí, etc. That is, the
women who are usually Christian or even
Jewish like Abigail, have the ability
to subjugate those characters, right?
Who in theory had the command in Plaza El
Rey de Argel, Arnaut, Mami, etc., etc.
So, well, I don't know if that's enough to
answer whether I can say the exact influence
of Fernández and González on other authors.
What I can say is that this vision conveyed by the novels
of Fernández and González is in context.
It's in the same vein, in the same tone, in the same discourse, let's say.
Are we talking about the 1970s, where this vision of
Cervantes exists not only in narrative but also in dramatic works, right?
A rather heroic Cervantes.
Lepanto is always there.
Obviously, right?
A Cervantes too.
Although today Cervantine critics and biographers are
qualifying this notion of Cervantes' extreme poverty.
Well, he earned his living not only with commissions,
yes, with his position as a tax collector, let's
say, but also with the purchase and sale contracts
that he signed, etc. and so on. Here we get an image
of a disillusioned Cervantes in his later years,
not a Cervantes who triumphed with the Quixote
of 1605, but there are his enemies throwing
barbs at him, etc., etc.
And that is more or less the image conveyed by other
historical fictions that recreate the life of Cervantes.
Either the life of Cervantes in its entirety or some aspect of it.
If there are narratives, dramatic works.
Well, the title of The Captive of Algiers, The Captives of Algiers, isn't
very original, is it?
The one-armed man of Lepanto is also a bit of a cliché, isn't he?
And they all follow that line of heroism of leading
the escape attempts and, upon failing, saying
that he was solely responsible, etc., etc., right?
And let's not forget that we are in that time, the 60s and
70s, when that canonization is taking place.
Canonization in a double sense of the word, right?
From becoming the quintessential canonical author
of the Spanish language and Spanish literature and
canonization, both in the sense of presenting
quasi-geographical portraits of Cervantes.
I don't know if Fernández González has any
influence, or rather, let me put it this way.
I was in this atmosphere, this, this vision.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Professor Mata.
Any further considerations? Any questions?
Uh, I had one.
A question.
Yes, yes, go ahead.
They hear perfectly.
And it was not in relation to the problem of
Fernández González's novels in the 20th century.
I wanted to comment, I think, because I find it quite an
interesting topic that the case of the captives of Algiers is not unique, eh?
I mean, for example, I have members here who are starting to open one of Fernández
y González's most famous works in a 20th-century edition, and in this
edition,
for example, it says that the novel at the end continues in another one called
The Bastard of Castile, huh?
I don't have the one about the bastard of Castile here, but I know which one it is.
I've read both of them and what they really do is take the same
novel within Sanabria and divide it into two parts, right?
The thing is that half of it changes the title, for example, El
Cid Campeador is also a novel that has been quite reworked.
The original novel was titled Cid, Rodrigo de Vivar and consisted of two
volumes of 700 pages.
However, the 20th-century edition is
only 238 pages long and omits a lot of passages.
Others I rework into other phrases, I also change them to make it much shorter.
So I'm not sure to what extent The Captives of Algiers is a lost
novel by Francis González that was rescued in the 20th century
or simply a reworking of the second half of The Prince of
Wits, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
I think that's it, that it's a reworking of the second half, but because in the
context of the 20th century, texts were hardly respected; sometimes they earned
the title.
I have another one here, which is the Oath of Santa Gadea.
This novel, The Loves of Alfonso, is really this.
The thing is, the title was changed and the content was also changed to make it
much shorter, right?
I don't know to what extent, uh, this novel about the future of
Algiers can respond to this trend of reworking, adjusting and
generating second parts where there are none, or if we might actually be facing a
lost text.
Because that interests me a lot. If that were the case.
But if it's part of the trend, well, we'll have a different comment.
I don't know, huh?
What do you think about that?
In that sense, what you've told me is very interesting.
I had been thinking of asking you if you had any information about this novel.
Well, time has passed me by, and well, it'll come up in the debate, eh?
Ferreras' catalogue in the 1979 edition and in the revamped
2010 edition mentions the infamous area of ​​Castilla la
la Tura with an error, the oath of Santa Gadea, the lord of
Ariza, the return of Don Juan, the bastard of the castle,
the bell of Huesca, the captives of Algiers and the count
of Villamediana as works published by Editorial Tesoro
or Ediciones Siglo 20, for which we do not have the
corresponding text from the time of Fernández and González.
Look at what you said.
Mmm, it leads me to something I thought about the other day as a hypothesis
but that I didn't put in my presentation, and thinking about the possibility,
otherwise, I would have been the editor of the 20th century.
I don't know if that's what you meant, and yes, the novel changes
completely when it's extracted, summarized, etc. You didn't mention
it in my presentation, but it crossed my mind that that possibility might exist.
So I can't answer that just because, but.
But on the other hand, we have an argument that could weigh against
it, and that is that with the One-Armed Man of Lepanto, which is
1/1 of which this is the second continuation, there is indeed a
standalone novel, doesn't that mean anything, right?
So, well, maybe I'm talking about a hypothetical 19th-century
edition of this text by Fernández de González, which didn't
exist, which didn't exist as a book or which might
have existed as a serial in some newspaper.
And no, no, that publication has not been emptied and we don't have the data.
No, I can't, I can't be more nuanced
or more precise, huh?
We have to read the text in this 1954 edition.
No? It is also possible that the first half of The Prince of Wits
was reissued under the title The One-Armed Man of Lepanto, a
title already used by another novel by Fernando González.
But, hey, it happens very often.
For example, what you mentioned earlier about La Campana de Huesca is actually
another novel by Fernando González entitled Obispo, Casado y Rey.
The thing is, there's a novel by Cánovas del Castillo called The Bell of Huesca.
Then, with some title, the famous one would change his title.
That may be the key, that what was actually published by Editorial Tesoro as
the Manco de Lepanto is the first half of the Prince of Wits.
What we would have to see is the text of "de para".
I need to continue delving deeper into the comparison of short novels with the.
With the long, but.
But hey, it's just a hypothesis that crossed my mind the other day, right?
Maybe I'm looking for a ghost and it was an editorial practice
not from the 19th century, but from the mid-20th century.
It would be very interesting, it would be very interesting,
well, to be able to say something more concrete about this. Wouldn't it?
What is clear is that not even the bibliography you provide.
You think?
I borrow the NIN, which is Ferreras, etc. The databases,
the National Library, the collective catalog of
Spanish bibliographic heritage, etc. Nowhere does
a record appear for a 19th-century edition of a
book that is The Captives of Algiers.
And that's all I can say for sure.
Thank you both very much.
The teacher passes Mar.
I don't know if you have any questions.
Yes, yes, well. Mmm.
I wanted to make a comment, huh? Mmm.
Because, somewhat in connection with what has been said
about the reconquest, the treatment of the reconquest was the following.
And that's because, uh,
uh, in the 19th century the.
Indeed, the term Reconquista is a term created in the 19th century.
although uh uh.
The idea itself dates back to the story of Juan de
Mariana, but I wanted to say that in the 19th century,
the authors, the scholars of the 19th century,
had a great interest in Arab culture. Mhm.
And in fact, at the Academy of History, a school called the
School of Analysts was created, which was founded by... By...
One of the great Spanish explorers was Pascual Gaitán.
The school mainly took shape in the last decades of the 19th century,
which was when Cánovas del Castillo reorganized it.
But this interest in Arab culture dates back to the 18th century
and already, for example, the director of the Academy of
History, one of the first, but Rodríguez de Campomanes,
minister of Charles III, was very interested in Arab culture and then, mmm.
In the histories of Spain, references to the importance of Arab
culture in the Middle Ages appear continuously.
On the contrary, on the contrary.
Uh. Contrast this with the idea of ​​the
Reconquista, which is a political category. Mhm.
So, that double situation arises somewhat.
On the one hand, praise for Arab culture and on the other
hand, the idea that the Moors, in quotation marks, as they
were called in the 19th century, were a kind of invading foreigners.
The two things can coexist.
Yes, Professor Huertas, I simply
wanted to bring up an anecdote about
the debate that Professor Mata and
Javier Muñoz were having.
And it's that, uh, when I was listening
to them I was realizing that back when I
was 15, when I was working on El Cid, in
'19 and '20, the appearance of
the supernatural a little bit.
One of my first jobs when I was an intern and ignorant,
uh, I was reading The Fury of the Oath of Santa Gadea
and recently I was revisiting the character of Elvira,
no longer, not so young but just as ignorant
I didn't read the
The loves of the Wise King and I hadn't realized they were
the same, the same work, of course, from reading one to
the other time had passed, and you're not handling both
at the same time and now reflecting or taking advantage
of the reflections of these two colleagues, well, one
realizes that one had lost that notion, but I think it's
very interesting precisely because of what we were
talking about this morning, about everything that
remains to be done in the historical novel of the 19th
century, about everything that remains to be reviewed
and that it seems like a novel that has been left, that has
been left aside, let's be honest, that sometimes it's
hard, it's hard, it's thankless to read Fernández
González, Ortega, to read those long novels, endless serials and so on.
It's not always easy, but it's true that it's good, huh?
In this textual transmission, the work of an editor
has been done, that is, there is still much to uncover
and much to investigate, and well, I celebrate that
an archivist like Javier is doing it and the good
work of Professor Mata, whose studies of the
historical novel are known by all, cited by all,
and references in the studies on the subject, well,
may he continue working with that novel and not lose
continuity in a field that I believe deserves it.
It's worth it.
Thank you so much.
I usually say, to keep things a bit anecdotal, right?
My literary taste was ruined by the height of the
years 91, 92, 93, reading all these novels by
Ortega, Parreño, Fernández and González.
Although there are some worthwhile titles, indeed.
But when I studied the Spanish romantic historical
novel, mmm, I align myself with the criticism that says
that more than an importance in terms of its literary
quality, all these hundreds of titles, which Javier
has also said very well, I think that it is not
the only novelistic trend of the 19th century.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, to give an example.
There are other trends, but this is the most important one.
That's also clear.
Did these historical novels revive the novel genre in Spain?
No? And many.
Either a couple or three generations of Spaniards got
used to, or got used to again, reading novels.
Not with these titles?
Hmm. More than its importance in terms of literary
quality, we can always salvage titles.
The Lord of Bembibre, El Doncel, etc., eh?
The importance is sociological, I believe.
I'm not the one saying it, it's just the critics, obviously, and whenever
I talk to students about 19th-century historical novels I like to
remind them of something that I think José F. said.
Montesinos.
José Fernández Montesinos, who is At that
moment a mechanism occurs that did not exist.
No, because the country's historical political circumstances didn't allow it.
Right?
Well, there are people who want to read historical novels, there are
publishers who publish those historical novels, and as they sell and are
successful, the writers continue writing historical novels, and that
circle, that circuit, that little mechanism is created: someone writes,
someone publishes, someone reads, someone else reads, someone else
continues writing, someone else continues reading, someone else continues
publishing, and that mechanism, which didn't exist before, is in some way
the responsibility of these authors who generally imitate Walter Scott.
No, because writing in the style of Walter Scott practically
becomes a guarantee of publishing success.
In those. In those decades.
Yes, well thank you very much, professor.
Professor Mata.
Well, I can't resist asking Professor
Pasa Mar about something too.
I think, well, it's a bit of a blow.
I hope I don't break any glass, okay?
My question is taking advantage of your knowledge and the fact that you are a
great role model.
Undoubtedly in the studies on historiography.
If the historical novel mmm romantic or romantic
in romanticism speaking of what I was saying about
caciquismo which I understand by mmm well, within
my ignorance, that could disappear or could be
greatly mitigated with the enlightenment in the 18th century.
In some ways, the romantic historical novel could reconcile
the demand for positivist truth with, uh, with that need
for myth, for drama, for psychology, somewhat seeing those
possible continuities that exist of currents that, well,
we have always studied that perhaps are born in a specific
year, then disappear, but I think that is something that
has also become evident in this first one.
In these first sessions of the conference, there
are many continuities, and well, there are.
Well, I don't know if that's perhaps a purely theoretical,
reflective exercise, but I'm throwing that stone out there.
And... And
Well, uh?
Caciquismo is fundamentally a political
doctrine, a political doctrine that, uh, that
fundamentally exalts the State and raises the
need to study, let's say, the State historically.
In reality, tacticism was nothing more than the application of Machiavelli's
doctrine.
Hmm. Let's say because of the Inquisition's condemnation, huh?
It could not be quoted and therefore the tacit was cited.
So, basically it's a political doctrine, huh?
So, uh, uh, let's say, like.
The thing is that, as a political doctrine, the Enlightenment
proposes new political theories, new political theories, in
short, especially the theory of the social contract, the
discourse on the social contract and on this kind of thing.
So we are somewhat in the realm of political history theory.
Now, on the subject of whether I was raising
the issue of historical truth, I would
like to recall something that Professor
Mata said, which is that many novels are
quite well documented.
I mean, huh?
Authors who write novels usually do their research
because many of them are multifaceted, that is,
they are what I call public writers, that is, literary figures.
They wrote about history, they were involved in politics, they were very
interested in scholarship, therefore, the search for documents, although
they did not dedicate themselves directly to that, but they did appreciate it very
much.
So this type of author, uh, is somewhat representative
of what 19th-century culture is and therefore, uh, uh, the.
The novel, although logically it is a literary
exercise of, uh, of theatricalization, uh,
but it clearly has a component of
historical documentation.
Many of them did not.
So that explains why they go from historical study to novel writing, huh?
Hmm.
And why, for example, the figure of Walter Scott?
Well, it influences everyone, including historians, even
though they considered Walter to be a novelist.
They were very clear about that.
But for example, here it is very clear even Leopold Rank himself,
who is supposed to be the quintessential historian of the 19th
century, the most accurate and academic historian he had,
was influenced, as he himself said, by Walter Scott.
Therefore, I don't know if he has answered the question.
Yes, yes, I must answer it.
Thank you so much.
I believe that indeed, for novelists there is a component,
there has to be a background of truth.
And then comes, from there comes the
liberalization of the episodes. Mhm.
Therefore, these types of works must indeed be valued in
the context of their time and cannot be valued as if they were, eh.
They must be seen in relation to erudition and the culture of fame. A
historical
analysis of all these types of novels must be undertaken, because otherwise,
it is not understood why they are written or what they are written for.
Neither he nor to whom they are addressed.
They are aimed at an audience of notables from educated classes.
They are not aimed at the popular classes, normally, uh, they are
aimed, well, at what was the liberal culture of that time.
It's the culture, let's say, of one based on a
series of cultural platforms that were being
created and that only mhm could access.
Well, those, those educated people who could normally
study for a high school diploma, mhm, mhm.
And from there, the university.
In fact, uh, university was considered the continuation
of high school and therefore the arrival at culture.
Thank you so much.
Professor Mata has his hand raised very briefly, following Professor
Pau Samar's intervention, I was reminded of a novel like Doña Isabel
de Solís, by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, where precisely, the
entire novelistic apparatus is surrounded by notes, appendices,
etc. It would be like the extreme of erudition, wouldn't it?
And it would have to be studied.
Obviously, each author, or even within each author, may have
different levels of historical documentation, and so on.
Well, there are historical novels, there are historical
adventure novels, to use Ferreras' terminology.
Hmm, you can't put everything in the same bag, can you?
Those hundreds of titles that accumulate, to say something,
among 1,830,870, when Pérez Galdós begins to write.
Well, mmm, that needs some clarification.
Well, that's what we're trying to do, isn't it?
Study each author, study each work.
Nothing more than that.
Thank you very much, Carlos.
Any further questions?
Shall we close?
I don't know if I have time to say one last, last thing.
So, Javier, that's in relation to Scott's influence in Spain, huh?
Well, precisely what my latest publication does is question that
traditional
discourse that he is the most influential author in the novel of those years, huh?
Not because there weren't novels influenced by Scott, because there were,
but because I think that the most interesting novels of that whole period
from 1830 onwards are precisely those that deviated the most from Scott,
which are probably the least recognized by your critics of that style who,
those who deviated from Scott, directly rejected him, as in the case of Rafael de
Salamanca.
There are quite a few, there are quite a few, and they are not few.
The only thing is that traditional historiographical narratives within the
history of literature
have generally privileged the authors who were indeed influenced by Scott, who were
certainly the
majority, but the fact that they were the majority does not mean that they are the
most interesting.
I think that if we are governed by criteria of literary quality, of literary
interest, there is a whole literature yet to be discovered in the field of
novels that was done practically outside of Scott, even in the field of the
historical novel, starting with Ramiro Conde de Lucena de Salamanca, in
whose prologue Scott's style was rejected because the author did not like it.
And well, continuing through Castellanos de Losada and many others, until we
get to Fernández González himself, who is nothing like Scott's
style, practically in the version I wanted to give you.
The fact that it's mentioned doesn't negate the fact that there are a lot of
novels that are
early imitations of Scott, but there are also just as many that are not.
Thank you very much, Javier.
Very brief.
Finally, just one point, a couple of comments.
Professor Mata, you say that these 19th-century works,
these novels, must be valued in relation to the history
known at the time, the history that exists there, and that
this must be valued. But it is often difficult, isn't it?
Does that mean we also need to thoroughly study the historical moment, the
present, and how everything we've been doing here is going? Right?
The philosophical aspect, the historical aspect—that
requires a very high level of educational sophistication. Right?
Uh. And on the other hand, you say that many times it is necessary to
remember that these authors are historical novelists.
Sure, they are historical novelists, but often that
fiction, or that fictionalized novel, or that fictionalized
history tells us more about history than what
the historians themselves tell us.
And regarding the teacher.
Mario, in relation to what they were also talking about regarding caciquismo,
etc., I think that we also have to situate ourselves many times, we are
continually
exceptionalizing the history of Spain with concepts like caciquismo.
Caciquismo is nothing other than, as the professor has
said, a matter of political power, etc., totally
compatible with other forms of caciquismo. In other
places it is called political clientelism, and it
has always manifested itself in a certain way.
And on the other hand, I would like to ask the professor two
very brief questions. Let's move on to the first one.
Are there any?
Do you know of any women who were historians in the 19th century?
And a second question, huh?
In your opinion, as a specialist, who is the first fully-fledged historian?
that.
Huh? Do you think it could be in the 19th century, that
is, the first fully-fledged historian of historiography?
Spanish.
And finally, that delay in Spanish historiography
in the construction of histories of Spain, or I don't
know, of the History of Spain, in the professionalization of history.
It's true, it's not true.
Despite everything you've pointed out, nothing more, thank you.
Well, uh, uh, women. I don't know, I
don't know any women historians.
Okay, uh, uh.
Well, we also must not take into account that on the platforms, let's say
at the Ateneo, the Academy of History, the Academy of Moral
and Political Sciences, in short, there were women.
So I say, mmm, I don't think there was one.
As for the hmmm question of who was, if there was
one, the first one installed in full.
Hmm, I think that, uh, the historians,
uh, let's say, uh, from the end of
the 19th century are historians, uh?
Much more so if they abandon philosophical history, huh?
For a more positivist type of history,
even more based on documentation, huh?
And less concerned with, shall we say, more general issues. Hmm.
So it depends on what we understand by a full historian; we couldn't
say that he bothered Fuente, who was the first author to write the
first general history of Spain in the 19th century, the most important one.
He was a consummate historian. Mhm.
But we could also say that authors from the
late 19th century mmm mmm were and.
And one detail must be taken into account, which is that the
professionalization
of historiography begins precisely at the end of the 19th century in Spain.
As for whether there was a setback or progress in
the 19th century, uh, let's say, uh, it all depends
on the origins of the Enlightenment, right? French
historiography was indeed ahead because it was a
historiography that was from a much more, much more
open, much richer Enlightenment, uh?
And I believe it is the only historiography that was ahead of the
Spanish one.
The others were more or less quite similar because they were
all national histories, national episodes, studies of
episodes of national events, and a scholarship that was
forming the heritage, the cultural heritage of each country.
Therefore, I do not see that in the 19th century there were major
differences between one historiography and another.
Quite a few appeared.
When the changes and differences occur,
it is from the end of the 19th
century and the 20th century.
In my opinion.
Well, for today I think it's been about
two morning sessions in the afternoon.
It certainly has been. Very interesting indeed.
I believe there has been room for reflection, which is always a
fundamental component of this type of conference and is something
that undoubtedly adds value, as has all the participation that has taken place.
We greatly appreciate the physical and
online presence of the participants,
speakers and attendees, and also
through the broadcast on RJ TV.
And well, we invite you to the opening
conference tomorrow at 9:00 and simply,
thank you and wish you a good afternoon.
Thank you very much. Thank you.