Hispanicity

Hispanicity

The Hispanic flag symbolizes the three ships with which Christopher Columbus sailed to America .
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The term Hispanity ( Spanish Hispanidad ) means initially the entirety of the Spanish-speaking world, but also a worldview that can be found in Spain and Ibero-America , according to which the Spanish-speaking world forms a unit.

In terms of the geographical and cultural name, the day of the discovery of America (October 12) is celebrated as Día de la Hispanidad (the day of Hispanicity, including Spanish national holiday ) to this day.

In the political-ideological sense, the concept of Hispanidad experienced its heyday during the first half of the 20th century and especially during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, which enjoyed considerable prestige in Latin America and as a model for a number of South American presidents from Juan Perón to Served dictators like Augusto Pinochet . Rafael de la Vega described the Hispanidad as

"Ideology of the conservatives on this side and the other side of the Atlantic, essentially retrograde-nostalgic, on a spiritual-cultural level exhaustive program of the long obsolete imperialism and colonialism in hollow rhetoric."

- Spain Lexicon, p. 234

This worldview emphasized the fact that to this day the community of the Spanish-speaking countries is far closer and the cultural similarities are far more pronounced than, for example, between the countries of the former French or English colonial empires. They therefore offered a number of clues in order to be understood as a unit.

The idea of ​​Hispanidad was accompanied by a doctrine that glorified Spain about the size, mission and choice of the country, which in Spanish is called la vocación imperial (vocation to the empire).

This concentration on Ibero America also meant a turning away from Europe, which was further strengthened by the so-called leyenda negra ( black legend ). Franco himself indirectly referred to the leyenda negra when he formulated the slogan “Spain is different” (from the rest of Europe).

Spain remained neutral during both world wars (see also History of Spain ); this gave the country a certain special role in Europe.

literature

• Walther L. Bernecker , Hans-Jürgen Fuchs, Bert Hoffmann et al .: Spanien-Lexikon , Verlag CH Beck, 1990, ISBN 3-406-34724-X