Some battles are constantly re-fought. In this elegantly written, carefully researched, and timely book, Diana Arbaiza's interpretation of the cultural dynamics of Hispanism at a time of intense political polarization offers some important new insights into similar struggles elsewhere across place and time. Although much has been written about Hispanism, both as a literary movement and as a political force in the decades leading up to the Spanish Civil War, Arbaiza reminds us that it also promoted a nationalist economic agenda that was rooted in the same anxieties. Even in its own time, it was clear that the political agenda of literary and cultural Hispanists was to create a “discourse of imperial nostalgia,” but Arbaiza clearly documents what should have been more obvious all along—that part of that nostalgia was for a colonial-style, extractive, resource-based, closed commercial trade network (3). In other words, Hispanism was not just seeking to recreate an idealized cultural past—it was intent on reconstructing the material one as well.
Arbaiza identifies peninsular Hispanism as “an overlooked site of Spanish thought on global capitalism and Spain's marginal role within it” (3). She characterizes it as neo-imperialist, which certainly implies something more aggressive than mere nostalgia. Arbaiza argues that Hispanist politicians and cultural arbiters wanted to strengthen national unity and raise Spain's international status by returning to a centuries-old line of Spanish economic thought; the Spanish economy should be based on preferential commercial exchange with its former colonies in America.
As a cultural and literary movement, Hispanism sought to overcome the humiliating loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898 by valorizing the Spanish people as an ethnic (or even racial) group that was inherently superior because of its humane, anti-materialistic nature. As the industrializing countries of the North Atlantic dismissed Spaniards as backward, corrupt, and lethargic, Hispanist writers and policymakers in Spain itself tried to recreate an insular global commercial network by appealing to a sense of a shared past, culture, and language.
Chapter 1 explores the origin, evolution, and eventual subversion of the idea that Hispanic people were lazy, anti-mercantile, and “inept in economic activities,” most often asserted in contraposition to Anglo-Saxon people (23). Arbaiza centers this economic argument as a key component of Hispanism: Hispanists recast themselves as being idealistic and altruistic—not motivated by base material instincts—rather than as lacking an entrepreneurial or industrial talent. This required a specifically Hispanic critique of capitalism itself. Chapter 2 follows this line of argument with a detailed case study of the “virtuous identitarian trait” of peninsular Hispanism, deeply rooted in values of honor and chivalry from the Spanish Golden Age (25).
Chapter 3 outlines the holistic integration between the economic and cultural goals of Hispanism, with particular emphasis on the work of Rafael Altamira, a progressive Hispanist historian and polymath who “understood the Spanish character as a moral bastion against the excesses of capitalism” (116) and who advocated for pan-Hispanic cultural and economic partnerships.
Chapter 4 focuses on Ramiro de Maeztu, whose transformation from socialism to falangism makes him a paradigmatic figure of the Generation of ‘98. Arbaiza argues that underneath his better-known political arc lies an equally significant reconfiguration of his understanding of the ideal economy. Maeztu tried to define a third way between capitalism and communism and ended up advocating for an anti-modernist, Catholic-inflected Hispanism that blunted the worst effects of both. Finally, in Chapter 5, Arbaiza moves her site of analysis from individuals and writers to regional commercial interests, specifically the reforms attempted in Catalonia (Barcelona) and Biscay (Bilbao). She makes the important point that commercial Hispanism meant different things in different parts of the country. For example, port cities with long histories of mercantile exchange with Spanish America were animated by a more “commercial Hispanism,” namely a desire to recreate an economic rapprochement with Spanish America that was based on trade, not just a sort of spiritually elevated claim to superior arts, literature, and culture (189).
Diana Arbaiza has written a powerful, thought-provoking book that reminds readers that Hispanism was much more than an aesthetic and literary movement that helped to bring respectability to reactionary political forces: it also offered a powerful economic critique of modern industrial capitalism. As she writes, “The very cultural identity and values Hispanism presented as a source of transatlantic unity worked against the commercial interests many Hispanists saw as the linchpin of Spain's future progress” (15). The insightful discussion of the connections between Hispanists’ cultural and economic anxieties and the subsequent rise of a strain of reactionary political authoritarianism is an important addition to the scholarship of this movement, and it could be repurposed to help us understand similar dynamics that have emerged in the twenty-first century.
