Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Modern Spanish culture
- I Culture
- 1 What does it mean to study modern Spanish culture?
- 2 Spain as Castile
- 3 A cultural mapping of Catalonia
- 4 The Basque Country
- II Culture and history
- III Culture and prose
- IV Culture and poetry
- V Culture and theater
- VI Culture and the arts
- VII Media
- Index
- Series List
2 - Spain as Castile
Nationalism and national identity
from I - Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Modern Spanish culture
- I Culture
- 1 What does it mean to study modern Spanish culture?
- 2 Spain as Castile
- 3 A cultural mapping of Catalonia
- 4 The Basque Country
- II Culture and history
- III Culture and prose
- IV Culture and poetry
- V Culture and theater
- VI Culture and the arts
- VII Media
- Index
- Series List
Summary
A salient characteristic of the European nation-state is its multiple cultural identities which share a socio-political space - laws, economy, values, symbols, and traditions - where the activities of the state endow the population with a corporate sense and the intellectual or éélite create an identity by defining and promoting a nationalist language, or discourse, and a culture which provides images and ideas for ordering ways of thinking and believing. The separate cultural identities co-exist in the overarching nation-state, but they seek local power and cultural parity.
In the case of Spain, toward the end of the nineteenth century the country found itself in transition between a proto-industrial economic structure and industrialization, a transition that brought with it a changing social structure defined by the consolidation of a monied middle class, an emerging organized working class, and the instability of the traditional petit bourgeois. bourgeois. On the other hand, the political structure, characterized by an ineffective administration, a corrupt electoral system, an illiteracy of some 75 percent, and an antiquated educational system, was unable to develop in Spain a capitalist democracy of the level of the rest of Europe. At the same time, the country found itself entangled in colonial wars which it lost - the so-called Disaster of 1898 - leaving the national treasury seriously diminished.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture , pp. 21 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 2
- Cited by