Abstract: This paper is concerned with one of the most constant features of intellectual history, the quest by Spaniards for the meaning of the history of Spain, and with the way this quest and history itself have been influenced, oversimplified, and distorted by the power of certain myths. I should make clear that while I am not concerned here with non-Spanish views of history, this is not because I believe that the Black Legend of Spain, which has dominated so much foreign thinking about that country since the sixteenth century, is any less powerful (or less harmful) than what one might baptize as the White Legend or legends, the subject with which I am concerned. It seems useful to begin with the debate on the nature of history in which the main protagonists were the late Americo Castro and Claudio Sainchez-Albornoz, a debate which represents in our own time the perpetually recurring anxiety to explain the past of Spain -an anxiety I cannot see prevailing to the same extent in other Western European countries such as France or even Germany. The fact that in Spain -to adapt a medieval phrase las cafias se han vuelto lanzas, academic arguments have often turned into street battles in which the of the past become the Liberals of the nineteenth century or the Communists of the present, itself tells us a good deal about the passions which historical debates can arouse. The debate I mentioned began over thirty years ago with the publication, in 1948, of Castro's Spain in Its History: Christians, Moors and Jews. SanchezAlbornoz's massive rejoinder, Spain, An Historical Enigma, appeared in 1956. Both works have reappeared in revised versions and different languages (though only Castro's work has been properly translated into English) and many other authors have joined in the fray on both sides.' It is not my purpose to discuss in detail the rival interpretations of history provided by Castro and Sainchez-Albornoz, but rather to point to the way the debate illustrates the power of established myths. A historian remarked some decades ago, Spanish history is somewhat in love with myths
Publication Year: 1985
Publication Date: 1985-02-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 69
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