The state of the Spanish State

Un­chang­ing na­tion

Casla is rightly in­sis­tent that the idea of the na­tion was a 19th-cen­tury in­ven­tion and scorns the Fran­coist claim, echoed by right-wingers since, from José María Aznar to San­ti­ago Abas­cal, that Spain has been a sin­gle, great and Catholic na­tion since 1492 and even, in some over­heated minds, since Roman times. He ex­plains how real his­tory in­volved “re­li­gious di­ver­sity, un­likely al­liances and mer­ce­nar­ies on all sides”, but the in­vented past pre­sents Spain as a “his­tor­i­cally im­mutable re­al­ity” (p.31).

On this Achilles’ heel, Casla sees no so­lu­tion: he be­lieves that Span­ish na­tion­al­ists and the mi­nor­ity na­tions will just have to in­habit the same state while being more tol­er­ant on both sides. It is a rather weak con­clu­sion to his sharp analy­sis of the pro­pa­ganda use of the re­sis­tance to the Ro­mans of Nu­man­cia in the sec­ond cen­tury BC; or of the mayor of Móstoles de­clar­ing war on Napoleon in 1808; or of how “Re­con­quista”, used to de­scribe the ex­pul­sion of the alien Moors, is a sta­ple of PP and Vox elec­tion speeches. Casla does not coun­te­nance in­de­pen­dence as a more fea­si­ble so­lu­tion than ’tol­er­ance’.

I would take issue with him on one im­por­tant point: he sees the rise of Span­ish na­tion­al­ism in the 19th cen­tury as a ’mourn­ful and hurt’ re­sponse to Basque and Cata­lan na­tion­alisms (p. 30). Surely it is the re­verse, cer­tainly in the case of Cat­alo­nia, whose na­tion­al­ism took off in the 1830s as a re­sponse to cen­turies of suf­fo­cat­ing pres­sure by the State, most dra­mat­i­cally by Oli­vares in 1640-1641 and Fe­lipe V in 1714. This said, his sum­mary of the re­cent Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence move­ment is clear and use­ful (pp.40-51).

No wel­fare

The sec­ond Achilles’ heel is Franco’s legacy. Casla is char­i­ta­ble with the agree­ments of the 1970s Tran­si­tion, be­liev­ing that they should now be rene­go­ti­ated, but in the real cir­cum­stances of the time were about as good as could have been at­tained. The 1977 Amnesty Law was a false step in that it par­doned the dic­ta­tor­ship’s tor­tur­ers, not just their vic­tims. The ’Pact of Si­lence’ (not ’of For­get­ting’, he ar­gues, for no-one for­got) en­dan­gers democ­racy be­cause it re­duces aware­ness of past crimes. He high­lights the de­fi­cien­cies of the 2007 Ley de Memo­ria Histórica. He sum­marises neatly (pp.89-91) how the dic­ta­tor Pinochet’s 1998 ar­rest in Lon­don in­spired a new gen­er­a­tion of Spaniards to tackle un­re­solved is­sues rooted in their own dic­ta­tor­ship.

Casla’s third Achilles’ heel is the lack of a Wel­fare State. While in Eu­rope wel­fare pro­vi­sion im­proved in the 30 years of grow­ing pros­per­ity after 1945, in Spain Franco ruled. Then, in the new democ­racy, the ad­vent of neo-lib­er­al­ism left no time and space to de­velop a full-blown Wel­fare State. It is an en­tic­ing gen­eral ar­gu­ment, but miss­ing from the ac­count is that Fe­lipe González could have done a whole lot more in his years of ab­solute ma­jori­ties in the 1980s. The de­struc­tion of jobs under the ban­ner of mod­erni­sa­tion was not in­evitable, but a po­lit­i­cal choice. Casla also analy­ses the hous­ing cri­sis, based on the pas­sion of all gov­ern­ments since the 1950s to en­cour­age home own­er­ship. Though pre­sented as a route to work­ing-class pros­per­ity, re­cent years have shown that it leads to mass home­less­ness.

The Catholic Church’s no­to­ri­ous al­liance with Franco and sev­eral cen­turies of sup­port­ing the most re­ac­tionary pol­i­tics are also ex­plained. Even this most in­tractable Achilles’ heel can change, Casla be­lieves. He points to the Basque Church that op­posed Franco, the worker-priests of the 1960s and Car­di­nal Tarancón’s op­po­si­tion to the dic­ta­tor­ship in the 1970s. How­ever, as he him­self in­ti­mates, in re­cent years a weak­ened Church hi­er­ar­chy is again vo­cif­er­ously in­ter­ven­ing in pol­i­tics, demon­strat­ing in the streets against abor­tion, LGBT+ rights or gay mar­riage.

Re­mark­ably, given his sober analy­sis of Spain’s ills, Casla is op­ti­mistic, ar­gu­ing in his final chap­ter that ’Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties Need Not Be Weak­nesses’. Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments’ re­fusal to do any­thing se­ri­ous to com­bat cli­mate change, the mass poverty he him­self charts or the rise of fas­cism, along with the crises of le­git­i­macy af­fect­ing the ju­di­ciary, monar­chy, po­lit­i­cal par­ties etc., make it hard to share his op­ti­mism. Spain and Its Achilles’ Heels of­fers no so­lu­tions apart from un­likely tol­er­ance and hope (the last, so they say, to be lost), but it is an acute and en­ter­tain­ing in­tro­duc­tion to the Span­ish State and its struc­tural weak­nesses.