Spain, the Nation that doesn’t Exist

Abstract

The difficult question, that has not been answered by the 19th Century in Spain, and that has arrived at a deadlock until today (despite the blood shedding of our fellow countrymen in the Civil War) is the following: whether Spain is a nation in the liberal sense, i. e. a sovereign community, with a representative political system and a form of governmental autonomy, sustained by the will of its members, which are protected by a common law that concerns them, even if they were not directly responsible for its formulation; or whether, on the contrary, it is rather a nationality in the old Greek sense, almost similar to a City (polis): a living organism, a process, grown and dead within the slow historical formation of a people linked to a territory, with a common language and traditions, with shared customs.