Is Spain more diverse than Catalonia?
Spain has not always existed, but neither Catalonia nor the Basque Country have always existed either. And that diversity of Spain is also what you find today in Catalonia and the Basque Country...
Is diversity in a country – or nation? – a weakness or an opportunity?
I rule out establishing the origins of Catalonia or the Basque Country or even trying to define what makes them a nation or not.
Because?
Because it's all very opinionable. And if we had an indisputable concept of nation, it would not be the same as that of the Middle Ages.
So what is your book about?
What interests me most is describing the reality in which we live today, which is Spain: what is the historical process that has brought us here.
But is Spain a unit of destiny, a nation, federation, confederation...?
These are perceptions that everyone can have. What is evident is that there is a thing called Spain, which is recognized externally and internally. Therefore, each person's way of defining it can vary greatly.
What is yours?
Spain is the result of a historical process during which there have been many and very different definitions of what it is. Many today try to explain today's Spain from its origins in the Catholic Monarchs or the time of Philip II... and it is a waste of time.
How do you explain it?
Today's Spain has nothing to do with that of Franco's program. One of the things that characterizes the history of Spain is its enormous diversity of cultures, religions, institutions, languages... And it has not been well studied...
Spain, then, is everything but one.
I try to highlight those elements of diversity that have led us to have a country called Spain. And then everyone can call it whatever they want.
Would Spain be an entity?
I always call it country.
Why do peripheral nationalisms find it difficult to accept Spain as a country?
I belong to a generation in which it was absolutely essential that Spain's democracy be linked to the recognition of its diversity as a country. And in the last fifty years, that diversity has not been well explained.
Hasn't it been explained by the interests of Spanish, Basque and Catalan nationalism?
The reality of Spain and its history has been hijacked by conservative thinking, and if you do not share it, they call you, like me, “hug us.”
The consolation would be that if you are not accused of something, you are not saying anything.
Instead of explaining the diversity of Spain these 50 years with an integrative and inclusive perspective, the perspective that was invented in the 19th century has continued to be explained. And, in parallel, narratives of the history of Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Andalusia have emerged...
If we look at electoral results, your integrative story declines.
I have dedicated my life to the study of Al Andalus and the Middle Ages; I am not a politician or an ideologue. I just want to explain that there is another history of Spain that is more interesting and truer than the one that is explained to the public today.
Why is the story that reaches the public a recreation worse than the real thing?
Because these stories look for their own identities in the past: they try to convince people that their own beliefs and values are the same as those that existed in any other time and must be legitimized.
Today, history is not explained but rather reinvented?
Identities are playing too big a role in studying the past.
Define identities.
If you seek to reinforce your identity in the past, you mystify history. There are two types of historians: those who function as astrologers and those who function as astronomers.
Are you an astronomer historian?
You can have a political project in the present, but you cannot look for the answers in the past. We have to generate the answers, and to find them requires a critical vision, not idealized to your liking, of the past.
Are the facts more interesting than the identity reading that is made of them?
The identity reading will always limit you.
Austrians or Bourbons?
The Austrian monarchy maintained the kingdoms that made it up with their institutions, customs, and their own laws...
And didn't that enrich its diversity?
But they transferred that to America, which is nothing more than a kingdom assimilated to Castile.
Did they leave Catalonia without the Americas?
And to Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands; There is talk of a “Spanish” empire, but the viceroyalties of America were only that of Castile.
