“Brief history of Spain”, a story against hatred, without nostalgia or mystification

The history of Spain is a subject in constant renewal and permanent controversy. There Brief history of Spain by Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón (Catarata), recently published, synthesizes, in a gentle and rigorous manner, the advances of recent years, while demonstrating the uselessness of controversies which have nothing to do with our past. It rejects, first of all, the Byzantine debate on the essence or being of Spain, established in the perspective of regeneration in 1998, and which continues to mark a large part of the essays on the natural character, structure and government of our country. In its place, part of a global history of its territories and its people, long before they could feel Spanish. And this is one of his main achievements, which manages to explain how he was born, as well as many other feelings and possessions of his time, but not of our time. The distinct identities that nationalisms project between the past and the present do not coincide with this examination of the successive societies that have populated the Iberian Peninsula since prehistory. Showing it coherently, without gaps or weakening, is another of the successes of this interpretive, narrative and concise work, which has above all a didactic aim.

It is not necessary for him to appropriate or tear away the idea of Spain, born and consolidated in a context marked by affirmation, but also of crisis of the European model of nation-state. If we wish, on the contrary, to explain the processes that have marked people’s lives through the different stages of time in recent days, emphasizing precisely the changing nature of history. Nor should we renounce conventional chronology, nor military, cultural or political events, which are the least recognized. However, this does not mean that difficulties or conflicts disappear, nor do social, economic and other inequalities.

Throughout the book, the shifting shadows of inequality appear, in which old forms, like slavery, have given way to other new ones.

Throughout the book, the shifting shadows of inequality appear, in which old forms, like slavery, have given way to other new ones. But it does not collapse into the conditions of life, nor into the currents of thought, nor into all that I could be and what I have not been. It is, like all history, a succession of deep-rooted conflicts, a struggle for power. But above all it is a choral story composed of an astonishing number of themes such as memory, time, space, movement, countryside, cities, borders, revolutions, the State, communications, energy, work, elites, knowledge, art and others. religion. The domain of this thematic and temporal amplitude marks, without a doubt, what differentiates it.

Many Spanish histories consist of a sum of stories, largely dependent on other earlier national histories. They limited themselves, as is still the case in most school and study manuals, to updating the data and, above all, to delaying the timeline without altering the traditional narrative. The logic here is the opposite, which essentially offers everything the general public wants to know but can’t find on the Internet: a coherent explanation of their own past, plus a list of numbers and names combined with opinions, errors and historical manipulations. Offering a look at the past without nostalgia or mystification is not at all easy in the era of bulos, but it is our obligation as historians. It is just as much about reading the common past, without obstacles or particular sections, at an uneven pace and without manifest destinies, without hearsay and without academic formalisms that fill thousands of pages with indescribable and closed language.

The author offers a vision of all the closed compartments in which the areas of specialization and the axes of university research have transformed over the last decades.

This Brief history of Spain It offers a vision of all the closed compartments into which the fields of specialization and the axes of university research have transformed over the last decades. A work designed to be read from start to finish, but which can also serve as a reference work thanks to the analytical index. The originality he poses is found in the arguments and interpretations he puts forward, as well as in the variety of themes he addresses. History, ultimately, must arouse interest and critical capacity, but it must not limit itself to judging the past, because as Montesquieu said and reminds us about this book: “the truth at one moment is an error at another”.