If you want to make a Spanish nationalism, at least try to make it look Spanish

Two months ago I published an article here pointing out a curious phenomenon that is occurring among a part of the right.

Part of the right is determined to be the caricature that the left made of it
Pope St. John Paul II: His Words on Patriotism and Nationalism

I pointed out then that a part of the right is determined to be the caricature that the left made of it. According to this caricature, the right is fascist, racist, and xenophobic simply for not sharing the same opinions as the left. I commented then that the problem is that some right-wingers end up assuming this caricature as real, which is certainly a triumph for the left.

It seems things are rapidly deteriorating on that side of the right. The latest trend in that sector is to denigrate the ties between Spain and Latin America, specifically to reject the presence of immigration from other Hispanic countries in our country, even if it is legal. We would be faced with a paradox: many Spaniards emigrated to countries like Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela in years when Spain was experiencing many difficulties. Now some want us to close the doors to countries that then opened their doors to us, and they opened them to such an extent that in Galicia we call Argentina our "fifth province" because of the enormous number of Galicians who emigrated to that great country. In fact, among Argentines, Spaniards are known as "Gallegos" (Galicians) because of this.

On that side of the right, some have already discarded the reasonable distinction between legal and orderly immigration and illegal and disorderly immigration: they reject all immigration outright, often evoking a mythical past in which our country would have been a homogeneous society in every sense, including racial issues. A past based on a pink legend as false as the black legend.

Truth be told, if Spain can boast of anything, it is having had a history in which miscegenation was one of its most striking characteristics. While other European countries approached their presence in America by rejecting any kind of mixing with indigenous people, in Spain's case it was quite the opposite. Furthermore, in that mythical past that some attribute to "our neighborhoods," in Spain, the music of Cuban Antonio Machín and the Mexican group Los Panchos was heard, perhaps risking that in 2025 some might see this as an attempt to adulterate our national essence.

For many years I have been making a distinction between patriotism, that is, the healthy love of one's homeland, and nationalism, an ideology with a tendency to turn that love into hatred of others, as sadly became evident throughout the 20th century in Europe. Of course, we live in a democracy and people are very free to experiment with ideological ideas as they wish, but I would at least dare to suggest one thing: if you want to create a Spanish nationalism, at least try to make it look Spanish. Even an example of nationalism as obvious as the Falange Española understood that it is absurd to create a Spanish nationalism on racist bases. That was one of the main differences between the party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera and the fascisms of other European countries.

What some people are doing ideologically is like taking a Napoleon cognac and slapping a Rioja or Albariño wine label on it. They're taking the molds of French nationalism, German nationalism, or English nationalism and applying them here as if Spanish culture were the same as that of other European countries. I'm not a nationalist; it's a word I hate, especially because I've suffered enough from Galician nationalism in my own country to see its nonsense repeated point by point by an experiment in Spanish nationalism. But if someone calls themselves Spanish and nationalist, at least they shouldn't copy foreign recipes, unless all they want is to make a fool of themselves or, worse, do the left a favor.

---

Photo: Elentir.