The history of Spain has traditionally been constructed as a process of Catholic reaffirmation against Al Andalus. The idealization of the peninsular Middle Ages and the generation of ethnocentric myths runs through the entire narrative of national identity, which in recent years has regained new strength with the rise of reactionary Spanishism. This is what the medievalist Alejandro García Sanjuán aims to uncover in his new and clarifying essay Demystifying the Peninsular Middle Ages, where he dismantles the exclusive and adulterated narrative on the birth of Spain.

Why do you intend to demystify the peninsular Middle Ages ?

The Middle Ages have been a particularly idealized period. This trend has a very wide trajectory because in some cases it starts from the Middle Ages with certain characters such as the Cid. In recent times, this trend has increased precisely as a way of counteracting what has traditionally been called the black legend. In other words, that dark period of an era marked by violence, backwardness and darkness, which is completely wrong, because it is a very long period chronologically and with very different stages.

In any case, with the excuse of counteracting this black legend, there has been a certain intensification of the tendency to idealize the medieval period, even in the academic sphere. We could also add the fact that the most radical nationalist or identitarian tendencies have proliferated in recent times, as has happened not only in Spain, but also in other places. All this generates a context that, in my opinion, made it advisable to propose this type of work.

You believe then that the idealization of the Middle Ages is a response to the black legend.

Partly yes. For example, when certain types of perspectives are raised, such as feminist ideas in the Middle Ages, which is a topic that is used quite a bit in this debate. Or when we speak of a broad continuity between the Middle Ages and the present day, not only in terms of identity, but also in terms of institutions. This was already done by the liberals in the 19th century. To counter the criticism that they were promoting foreign ideas, what they did was to anchor liberal ideas in an indigenous medieval tradition. So the liberal state emerged within that context where the idea of an institutional continuity with the Middle Ages was being promoted through the recovery of the medieval liberties lost in the Ancien Régime.

This is also being done again today, even among sectors close to the Catholic Church, since they see the Middle Ages as a period of religious splendor and promote the idea of a European Christian identity with medieval roots. All of this is currently enjoying a certain boom in both the academic and non-academic world.

Why is the Middle Ages a source of foundational myths of the nation?

Because it is a period in which a series of processes are consolidated that come from the end of the Roman Empire with the settlement of Slavic peoples in the eastern part of Europe or Germanic in Nordic and central Europe. And that has generated an identity rhetoric based on these medieval origins of European nations, which is something quite generalized. In our country this has been quite abused, not only in the case of Spanish nationalism, but also of other sub-state identities. It can be the case of Andalusianism with Al Andalus or Valencia with the conquests of King Jaime I. That is to say, it is a phenomenon that has many variables at both national and European level.

In the European context, is the history of Spain different because of the Islamic conquest?

It has always been an element that has marked a certain difference within the medieval European context, although it must be said that the Iberian Peninsula was not the only historical setting where medieval Islamic societies developed in Europe. It also happened from the 14th and 15th centuries onwards, especially in the Balkan area. Therefore, Islam is also a European religion due to the historical tradition of certain areas where medieval Islamic societies have developed, such as Al Andalus or the Balkan communities, where there has been greater historical continuity because they have survived to the present day.

Traditional historiography portrays the Islamic conquest as a catastrophe, contrary to what happened with the Roman or Visigothic conquest. Why?

Because there is a strong anti-Islamic prejudice and stereotyping. The notion of Reconquista has become entrenched in the collective mentality in Spain, not only through historiographic practice, but also through the public uses of history, the educational system and literature itself. This concept has generated the anti-Islamic prejudice of affirming the Spanish identity as a nation forged against Islam. I believe this is the fundamental cause that explains it.

And that is why the Reconquest is labeled as “national liberation” and Pelayo as “liberator of the homeland”.

Exactly. These are ideas that began to be affirmed as early as the end of the Middle Ages and that have a long history as an ethnocentric myth about the origin of the Spanish nation that will be nationalized from the nineteenth century in the context of the consolidation of the liberal state in Spain.

In the book you argue that the Reconquista is not a medieval concept, but a modern one.

The Reconquista is a modern myth about the origins of the Spanish nation. What there is in the Middle Ages is not a national liberation struggle. They are different concepts. What we have is a concept of holy war and the recovery of territory from the Muslims, but without the national component that is associated with the action of Reconquest.

Is the foreignization of Al Andalus the great ethnocentric myth of the Spanish nation?

It has been a consequence of all this because although in Al Andalus there is a very important indigenous demographic and social base, the influence of foreign ideas, in this case Arabic and Islamic, played a preponderant role. Hence, it has been considered as something alien to the local, autochthonous or national tradition, if you will.

And is it a current myth?

Yes. Quite a lot. Above all, in relation to this idea of an exclusively Christian European identity where Islam is excluded and these essentialist narratives are promoted, whose function is precisely to legitimize these exclusionary readings of the past and also of the present.

Was the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs an ethnic cleansing operation from 1492 onwards?

Some specialists in the Moorish historical process use these kinds of concepts and ideas. And they affirm the existence of a process of elimination of communities that in the case of Valencia, as in the Kingdom of Granada, were deeply rooted in the territory and were progressively subdued. First, there is an attempt at forced acculturation and then another attempt at elimination. This concept has been used at the academic level.

Why did this process of elimination of cultural religious diversity occur with the Catholic Monarchs and not with other previous Christian kings who were also conquerors of the Andalusian space?

Because it is a trend that is booming in the Europe of that period and is usually associated with the establishment of the modern state and greater social homogenization. In other words, ethnic and religious diversity was treated differently. In barely 30 years, this diversity was completely eliminated in the Iberian Peninsula, which had a fairly extensive medieval tradition, both in the case of the Mudejar communities of the various Christian kingdoms and the Christian and Jewish communities of Al Andalus. All that disappeared after 1492 in just 30 years.

El arabist Simonet called the liberals of the 19th century XIX as “modern Saracens” and the Mozarabs as “modern Saracens”.abes as “Spaniards subjugated by the Morisma”.

The Arabism of the 19th century has a liberal tendency that will try to nationalize Al Andalus with the concept of “Muslim Spain”. Another trend represented by Simonet is more traditionalist, where Al Andalus is foreignized. Hence his glorification of the Mozarabs as the “authentic Spaniards” and his denigration of the Islamic conquest and Umayyad rule in the Iberian Peninsula. The Arabism of the 19th century had these two tendencies.

The Arabism of that time is an Islamophobic and Arabophobic Arabism.

To a certain extent, yes. Both in the case of “Muslim Spain”, which emphasizes the local to the detriment of the Arab and Islamic, and the more traditionalist tendency, which denigrates Arab-Islamic society. In both cases there is a certain Islamophobic component that is associated with the nationalist atmosphere characteristic of the historiography of that time. This is not exceptional. It is something generalized. The nineteenth-century historiography is all nationalist. There is no non-nationalist historiography at that time. Therefore, the framework conditions all approaches and perspectives.

In other words, nineteenth-century liberalism also buys the ethnocentric narrative of national myths.

To a certain extent, yes. Although the really predominant trend in Arabism was Muslim Spain, which is the Spanishization of Al Andalus, where there is also a quite marked anti-Semitic and Islamophobic component.

Parallel to the foreignization of Al Andalus, its nationalization took place. Are they two sides of the same ethnocentric narrative?

Partly yes. Muslim Spain is the attempt of Arabists to have their place under the sun in the academic world of the time. His subject of study could not consist of studying the enemies of the nation. Therefore, this concept also arises partly as a way for Arabists to normalize themselves within the academic framework of the time. And then, on the other hand, there is also an artistic and patrimonial component, because the architectural traces of Al Andalus are also nationalized and become a source of national pride.

And how does Francoism reconcile the national Catholic idea of being Spanish with the fraternal discourse on Islam and Muslim Spain?

These two tendencies converged in Franco’s regime. He was very versatile ideologically in that sense and took advantage of an ideological transversality that came from before. The Reconquista, for example, is a concept with a strong liberal projection, but also strongly promoted by the more traditional sectors and those related to the Catholic Church. Franco’s regime made a political and ideological use of the idea of Muslim Spain to justify the presence of the Rifian fighters in Franco’s troops, as well as, of course, of the Reconquest and the Crusade.

What has done more damage to history: the black legend or the pink legend?

I think both. What happens is that perhaps more attention has been paid to the black legend than to the pink legend. And that was the intention in conceiving this essay: to try to argue that not only the black legend is harmful to historical knowledge, but also the opposite tendency.

Aristoteles Moreno