Extract

Juan Sisinio PÉREZ

Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

When discussing memory and National identity, Spain offers us an archetype of identity and memory in a state of continuous unrest. In the certificate of its birth as a State-Nation, in the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, deep contradictions were already lurking beneath that flat definition which read “the Spanish Nation is the union of all Spaniards from both hemispheres”, because before two decades had passed, the greater hemisphere of those referred to by the liberal legislator had separated from this constituting Nation. Moreover, nowadays we conclusively know that the 1978 Constitution remains open to new kinds of State and identity organizations which are currently sheltering in its midst.1 This means that in the State’s two centuries of life, the implementation of the principle of territorial and citizen representation and the specification of identity have always been complex and problematic. ← 111 | 112 →

Therefore, to establish the contours of a coordinated reflection on Hispanic identities in the mainland, it seems appropriate to raise certain initial considerations. Above all, that the Nation is not so much a natural reality as a symbolic representation which objectively exists in the consciousness of individuals, and for this reason it is not enough to dismantle the historical artificiality of its process of creation because, beyond its ideological nature, we find the social acceptance of this identity. In this state of affairs, and since identity is based on memory, we must not forget that...