Comments on “The Construction of Continuity in Post-Franco Spain”
Pablo Jáuregui, SPS Department
This research project can be theoretically framed within the
interdisciplinary field of political symbolism and ritual, i.e. the study of how
collective, emotionally charged symbols and rituals are utilized in political
struggles for power and legitimacy. Specifically, it focuses on what one could
call ‘the politics of national symbolism’ and ‘the politics of national
sentiment’ – or indeed, given its focus on the contested, symbolic
representation of the national past, what one could call ‘the politics of national
history and memory’. The aim of this approach is essentially to analyze how
competing actors mobilize national symbols and ignite national sentiments to
legitimate their political programmes and de-legitimate the programmes
defended by their rivals.
Carsten’s concrete empirical focus is on symbolic representations of the
national past in post-Franco Spain. His objective is to analyze how different
newspapers, from their diverse ideological perspectives, covered ritualized
commemorations of key historical events, in an attempt to show how such
representations were employed to legitimate and de-legitimate different
political outlooks during the transition to democracy. In particular, it proposes
an innovative line of research, by focusing on the concept of continuity, and
its relation to Spanish national identity. The implication of this approach is
that after Franco’s death, the key question in the Spanish public sphere was:
Did Spain’s survival, prosperity, and pride depend on the continuity of the
Francoist legacy, or, on the contrary, was there a need to break with this
system in order to recover basic political freedoms and national self-respect?
At the same time, there was a fundamental fear of violence underlying this
debate. How could democratic reforms be brought about without collapsing
once again into a spiral of bloodshed like the one experienced in the Civil
War?
In recent times, numerous authors in the fields of sociology and social
anthropology have promoted this theoretical approach, by bringing together
the classic insights of Emile Durkheim on the role of symbolism, ritual and
sentiment in the construction of cohesion and solidarity in human societies,
with a more Weberian focus on the power struggles which can underlie the
utilization of symbols and rituals (Cohen 1974, Lukes 1975, Kertzer 1988).
From this theoretical perspective, ‘the nation’ can be seen a contested political
symbol which competing groups struggle over in their struggles for authority
and legitimacy.
Carsten’s focus on the issue of national pride also illustrates how ‘the
nation’ is an emotionally charged symbol. As Norbert Elias (1987: xi-xii)
argued, part of people’s self-love or self-esteem can become attached to the
status of their respective nations, and this can be related not only to the
nation’s political power and its economic prosperity, but also to its ethical
prestige. Following the American sociologist Thomas Scheff (1994), one
could say there is a national ‘pride-shame balance’ in many spheres of
international status-competition, and this may include the sphere of moral
respectability.
The Spanish transition to democracy represents a fascinating case-study in
this field of research. As Carsten’s paper suggests, the transition was a period
of renewal during which the very concept of ‘España’ and national symbols
such as the flag, the King, the Constitution, the concept of ‘Spanish history’
were employed to de-legitimate the Franco dictatorship as a rather shameful
episode of the country’s past, and to legitimate the idea of a new, modern,
‘European’ Spain which could only recover its national pride and self-esteem
in the world by achieving a transition to democracy in a peaceful and
‘civilized’ manner.
The Franco period was characterized by a monopolization of national
symbols and representations of history, which stigmatized all those who
opposed the regime as ‘unpatriotic’. Like all dictators, Franco attempted to
identify the very survival of the Spanish nation, its traditions, its prosperity,
and its pride, with the continuity of his power. From the Francoist perspective,
the political parties of ‘inorganic democracy’ had brought chaos during the
Second Republic, due to what Carsten calls ‘the myth of the ungovernability
of the Spaniards’. In opposition to this disorder, the Franco regime claimed
that it had brought peace and stability to ‘the nation’ after the tragedy of the
Civil War. The Spanish population was thus portrayed as childish and
immature, and therefore in need of el Generalísimo, who was portrayed by the
regime’s propaganda as a benevolent father figure who could discipline them
properly ‘by the grace of God’. Nevertheless, it is important to note that here
one encounters the problem of whether or not Spaniards really believed this
legitimating myth of Francoism. While presumably this idea may have had
some success in propping up the regime, one cannot make the assumption as
strongly as Carsten does in his paper, e.g. on page 2: ‘The Civil War…
became the evidence needed for this theory, which served to convince the
Spanish people that they needed a dictator.’ One must avoid reifying ‘the
Spanish people’ in such a context, for that is exactly what Francoist discourse
did in its efforts to legitimate itself, while in fact his regime’s monopolization
of national symbols effectively alienated many Spaniards who did not share
the franquista ideology from the very concept of ‘España’.
For Franco, to be a good ‘Spaniard’ was to be a good ‘Franquista’, and the
only legitimate sources of national pride were those that were defined by the
‘Franquista’ interpetation of Spanish history. Given the Francoist control of
symbolic media power until the very end of his regime, this was the only
acceptable version of Spanish nationhood which was portrayed in the public
sphere throughout his life-long rule. However, the transition opened up a new
discursive field of contestation illustrated by Carsten’s paper: new visions of
‘Spain’ emerged, and new legitimate ways to be ‘Spanish’ and to understand
‘Spanish history’ were defended in the reform-minded press. Essentially, the
Francoist system and its ideology of history was delegitimated as the only
road to Spanish survival, prosperity, and pride, as new projects for the national
future arose: those that defended the vision of a new, democratic, pluralist,
and ‘Europeanized’ Spain.
One year after Franco’s death, Carsten shows very well how Francoists had
largely lost their monopoly of national symbolism, memories, and sentiments,
through an analysis of the different reactions in the media to this anniversary.
It is very interesting to observe that already at this stage of the transition, El
Alcázar is the only newspaper which passionately maintains the need for
continuity and loyalty to Francoist principles for the good of la patria. All
other papers, to different degrees, defend the need for democratic change. In
Ya and El Pais, for instance, one can see that Franco has already become a
‘threatening other’ of the country’s past, a shameful episode of Spanish
history which has to be overcome through a process of political reform.
According to the discourse of these reformist papers, the way to recover
national pride is through a process of full democratization. This illustrates how
Anna Triandafyllidou’s (2000) concept of ‘threatening others’ and ‘inspiring
others’ can be applied to the symbolic representation of a nation’s past (e.g.
Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco as threatening others of the national past which
Germans, Italians, and Spaniards wish to avoid in the future).
On the question of continuity and change, it is particulary interesting to
observe the role of King Juan Carlos as both a symbolic link with Francoism,
given that he was the dictator’s appointed successor, as well as the symbolic
incarnation of the new Spain – the modern, democratic, ‘European’ Spain.
Juan Carlos ultimately found a relatively widespread legitimacy in the country
by portraying himself as a ‘King of all Spaniards’, in opposition to Franco’s
self-portrayal as the leader of the Civil War’s ‘vencedores’, or victors – the
‘real Spain’ in opposition to the ‘anti-Spain’. Particularly after his intervention
to ‘save democracy’ during the coup of 1981, King Juan Carlos became a
much more inclusive national symbol in Spain than Franco had ever been. Yet
the fact that he was Franco’s appointed successor, and in this sense stood for
continuity, was crucial in making the military establishment ‘swallow’
democracy (and especially the legalization of the Communist ‘red’ Party),
albeit reluctantly.
One criticism I had, however, is that the paper would undoubtedly have
benefited from an initial description of the ritual itself: What exactly happened
during this event? Who attended the commemoration? What slogans were
chanted? What national symbols were used? What conflicts erupted between
supporters and opposers of Franco?
At the same time, when reading the paper I felt that the concept of ‘myth’
was abused somewhat in the analysis of ‘the myth of the ungovernability of
the Spaniards’. Carsten suggests that all the papers drew upon this myth.
However, it is clear that while some, such as El Alcázar, fully maintain it, and
practically suggest that Spanish ‘national character’ is biologically
incompatible with democracy, the reform-minded papers, and particularly El
País, de-mistify this Francoist myth and provide a more sophisticated,
sociological analysis of the conditions that made the success of the Second
Republic very difficult. Hence, I think it can be misleading to use the same
concept of ‘myth’ for all the depictions of the Spanish national past which the
different papers portray, since there is a danger of relativism here.
Nevertheless, perhaps this problem can be avoided if one clarifies from the
beginning exactly the sense in which the concept of ‘myth’ is being employed.
This is, in any case, a fascinating research project which, as Paloma
Aguilar noted during our seminar, fills an important gap in the literature on the
transition, and confronts the ‘taboo’ subject of Spanish nationhood in an
original and ambitious manner. If anything, from my own ‘SPS’ perspective, I
would simply encourage a more explicit engagement with the sociological and
anthropological literature on the subject of political symbolism and ritual,
because in my view this would enrich the empirical analysis of the historical
data.
References
Cohen, Abner (1974). Two Dimensional Man. An Essay on the Anthropology
of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society. London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Elias, Norbert (1987). Involvement and Detachment. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Kertzer, David (1988). Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven and London,
Yale University Press.
Lukes, Steven (1975). ‘Political Ritual and Social Integration’, Sociology, 9,
pp. 289-308.
Scheff, Thomas (1994). ‘Emotions and Ethnic Identity: A Theory of of Ethnic
Nationalism’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of
Identity. Oxford, Blackwell.
Triandafyllidou, Anna (2000). Images of the Other and the Reshaping of
Collective Identities in a ‘United’ Europe. Seminar Paper EUR/24 of the
European Forum, Robert Schuman Centre, EUI.