Berkley Center

In my first letter for the Junior Year Abroad Network, I spoke of the “two Spains” divided along ideological lines: the left and the right. Besides being overtly simplistic, the characterization fails to identify the many “Spains” marked by their geographical and cultural differences. Spain is composed of 17 autonomous communities that, while lacking the type of political independence their title seems to imply, possess to varying degrees distinct cultural traits. The communities located at Spain’s geographical extremities—notably Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country, among others—each have their own language, a “Spanish” (for each is still a language indigenous to the Iberian peninsula) quite different from the official language of castellano, or Castilian. The autonomous community that holds greatest interest for me (and merits discussion in this letter) is Andalusia, the country’s southernmost region which contains the famous cities of Seville, Cordoba, Malaga, and Granada.

Many know that the year 1492 marked not only Columbus’' first voyage to the Americas but also the conquest of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain, by Castilian forces. Every year on January 2 a military parade marches through the streets of Granada to commemorate the Castilian victory. Andalucistas, or Andalusian nationalists, mark it as a day of mourning.

During the Reconquista, the Moriscos, or descendants of Muslims who had migrated to southern Spain via northern Africa, were not always expelled on the basis of their professed faith. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of Moriscos who had been Catholics for generations were expelled by the invading Christian forces (some were even priests and nuns). And the basis for their expulsion? They had had a Muslim great-grandmother. These Moriscos typically fled to Morocco, where they found assimilation difficult due to the region’'s alien religion (Islam) and unfamiliar cultural practices, as well as the anti-Moroccan prejudice with which many Moriscos had been raised. Ironically, some of the displaced ended up in Moroccan jails for preaching Christianity.

Today Andalusians remain a people apart no matter where they go. In Spain they are noted for their distinctly “Arab” features and dress, and in North Africa they stand out as unequivocally “European”, indistinguishable from other Spaniards. When one considers the profound sense of displacement felt by Andalusians, it’'s not surprising that their flag, marked with a green-white-green stripe pattern, was taken from the “losers” of the Reconquista: the Muslims.

Though the Andalusian community is composed of both Muslims and Christians, its strong identification with Islam has on occasion tempted others to exploit the relationship for their own religio-political goals. While visiting a mosque in Cordoba which had been used as a church and was handed back to the Muslims, ‘Ali al-Kattani, an Islamist functionary from Saudi Arabia, declared that one day Muslims would again rule over all of Andalusia. Naturally, the statement provoked a strong reaction from many Spaniards, some of whom scrawled anti-Muslim messages on the walls of public buildings: Jésus sí, ¡moros no! (Jesus yes, Moors no).

In 1971, a group of Andalucistas founded the Socialist Alliance of Andalusia, a nationalist party that was both socialist and democratic, and that drew on the spiritual mores of Islam and Christianity in equal measure while opposing the strains of fanaticism in each. In this sense the party, which is now titled the Andalusian Party, represents (at least on the surface) an honest attempt to reconcile the region’'s two historically conflicting forces in the name of nationalism. However, despite the party’'s efforts, it is unlikely Andalusia will achieve the degree of political autonomy enjoyed by Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country anytime soon. In 2006 the Andalusian government proposed a reformed version of Andalusia’'s Statute of Autonomy. Though it approved many of the changes submitted, the Spanish Parliament changed the document’'s definition of Andalusia as a “nation” to that of a “nationality”. Unlike the Catalans, the Andalusians failed to gain recognition as a nation; also unlike the Catalans, Andalusians speak Castilian, the official language of united Spain. In the case of Spain, it seems language trumps cultural or religious distinctiveness in the definition of nationhood.