Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas is married and is the father of two children (13 and 17)
Is 52 years old and his next project is a history of transnational nationalist movements of Europe
Her favorite book is ‘Ulysses’, James Joyce and his moment in history preferred is the proclamation of the Second Republic (14 April 1931)
In the time it takes to gestate an embryo of the person, he has managed to orchestrate the know of 111 historians of international give birth to a ‘global History of the Spains’ (territories back and forth that at some time formed this country, previous to globalization and viewed from an optical global. ‘The World history of Spain’, which has its precedent editorial in the correlative of France and Italy, are 127 short stories (extension of an article of Sunday), not idiosyncratic, unnoticed even for experts, but that created an international trend, an intersection with the future of the world.
Added the director two ingredients: “A pinch of healthy provocation” and the recognition just the women who ruled the plans of this unit of fate that today is Spain. Does the conclusion, the final picture?, they ask him from their own team, Editorial Destination. “The history of Spain is not a rarity; or, to paraphrase the minister (ineffable Fraga), Spain is not different. As much is peculiar in its expression of universal trends”.
That’s why he, Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas (Orense, 1966), “because it is one of the most prestigious and international of our historians”, are answered by the same publishers. Professor of Contemporary History at Santiago de Compostela, has served in the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and has a phd from the European Institute of Florence, author of a dozen essays and a partner of countless european projects.
What is the History of Spain account from this global perspective that has not been told? What will surprise the reader? It is about illustrating through pecks or milestones, certain facets of the history of the Spains, many unknown, which highlight their deep transfers with the world. We tend to believe that this world interrelation is due to the internet, but there is an globalisation before globalisation; they were agents of the globalization of the phoenicians, the greeks, Alexander the Great, the vikings, the spread of the printing press, gunpowder, the Silk road or Marco Polo bringing pasta from China in the course of that is true to the legend. Is this another way to apprehend the History, when it will replace the lack of analysis, the inventio an unquestioned and the memorization that is required in the schools? Aren’t you the historians responsible for the text books and study plans for our students? The contents do not always decide the historians who do research, but specialists of Pedagogy in some connection with teaching of History. Not always the progress of the investigation are reflected in the texts. And it’s not about telling the kid that 1936 does not exist, we do not intend to establish a new chronology, but yes it is possible to study the impact of the Civil War through the Guernica of Picasso. Or analyze how, in 1932, adopted a law on divorce, something very modern in the european context, instead of memorizing the succession of parties during the Second Republic. We try to make the story accessible to a wider audience.”The Spain of the three cultures is misleading. It has been idealized in front of the black legend of the dark ages catholic”What inventions or desmesuras of the historiography of Spain I would cite you, comparable to that of don Pelayo and the battle of Covadonga? Tarteso, that was not the mythical civilization that we were sold but a place of interaction of cultures iberian and phoenician; or that Trajan was a Spanish emperor; or that the War of Independence against Napoleon faced patriotic spaniards against the French invaders, when it was an international conflict fought in Spain with biases of Civil War, or the recent myth of Atapuerca: why human communities want to have sources so remote? It has been said that the hominids of Burgos slept the siesta and ate tortilla. There are a lot of fakes and half truths, and you can deconstruct many of these myths even though that is not our main leitmotiv. Professor, do conquest or Reconquest? How there was a kingdom goth unique and, as such, is reconquest to the umayyad caliphate or is new, an inventio, in order to legitimize the expulsion of arab? The medievalistas lead time defending that reconquista is a term of the nationalist historiography of hispaniola, which is coded in the NINETEENTH century: the idea that the arabs were not here, that had to expel them and to rebuild a political unity of the peninsula. And no, that was an expansion towards the south, which stopped the county of Portugal in the Algarve and then took him to other worlds; and the crown of Castile, towards the Canary islands and north Africa, who had never belonged to a kingdom godo: the dynamic was very different to the rebuild Hispania.Why he argues that: “the Spain of the three cultures” is misleading? Because it has been idealized as a reactant in front of the black legend of the dark ages catholic. Neither one thing nor the other. Here there was a coexistence of relations of domination, conflict, vassalage and subordination, and also of exchange between the various peninsular kingdoms and their cultures. What was already an open secret among you that the Spanish nobility has mostly home judeoconverso, concealed by false genealogies and exploits of the reconquista that didn’t exist?Yes. It has been shown that there was a cosmetic operation about the origin of the lineages: the powerful had their strategies to get rid of the statutes of cleaning of blood. We could establish a parallelism with the political today falsify your resume. “Tarteso was not the mythical civilization that they sold to us, but a place of interaction of iberians and phoenicians”Another remarkable and also divine, inventio is the death and even the presence of the Apostle saint James in Hispania, when in reality he was martyred in Jerusalem in the year 44. How efficient was the cult of saint james to the crown? Can be set in this delusion the root of the strict alliance of Church and State? The history of the apostle is in itself quite absurd, but has had much success, then does it matter what the truth. Yes it is one of the origins of that alliance throne-altar, which was very typical of the monarchies of the south of Europe at the time. Have a saint was to have a global faro, and a few got something similar to this way that part of Sweden and arrives Compostela. Let me point to your very laudable tendency to ponder the work silenced and queens consortit is, as that of doña Urraca, self-proclaimed “queen of all Hispania” to face nothing less than this covenant with the Church and its great comandateur the archbishop Gelmírez. What we might think of it as the first great woman of power? Is one of the most fundamental and yes it was the first in Hispania, but he had a certain invisibility in history. There were others before, such as the perverse Lydia of I, Claudius, but the subsequent historiography, he believed the version of the historians: he was a woman, ergo weaker sex ergo he was only able to rule through evil arts, because it had no trial and had not been able to deliver justice as a king is a male. The king Alfonso X the Wise was wise and intellectual, by the political instability which, you maintain, has given rise historically to the periods of more dynamic cultural, as well as what was the Golden Century during the decline of Philip II. Do you a trend that has since died, unfortunately? Symptom of the crisis today is not as strong. We live in a time of ambiguity, the old didn’t just die or the new birth; perhaps for this reason there is given a flourish of culture. What maybe the idea of finis Europae arrives within 10 years? We don’t know. For the moment we can not draw a parallel between the rise of the populism of the extreme right and the situation between the wars, when the fascisms mobilized millions of people. At their Tables Alfonsíes, that even inspired Copernicus and Galileo, put you in the cradle of the Renaissance. Why, then, is attributed to Italy?, what of new your proverbial marketing? In part it was so, but it is also due to the density of creative of Italy, favoured by the competition between their city-states. The treaty of Alfonso X was a clear precedent of the Renaissance, which is not to say that there has been a direct line of descent, but rather something isolated. “What exists in Spain is a problem of acceptance of the legitimacy of the national symbols,”why is not mentioned in History books the origin bastard of the Catholic Kings? Because there was no interest in highlight…. For practical purposes we would say: and what more gives if the nobles are invented? Well, at least how it is not paradoxical in the case of these kings? Yes, it is, but we think that in Europe all the royal houses did, the Tudor, Stuart… Towards the second half of the EIGHTEENTH century, the Church stands as a brake on modernity and the development of liberal ideas and enlightened. This “nationalism castizo”, so called, is the first nationalism to Spanish? No, it is a protonacionalismo, because modern nationalism was born only when there is to invent new links of legitimacy for the political community, and this happens when there is no longer the king or the religion ceases to be a vehicle of cohesion is fundamental. It is with liberalism after the French Revolution, when set in opposition to the Old Regime, that the holder of sovereignty is the nation, or the whole of the citizens living in a territory. And in Spain is born with the Constitution of Cadiz.. What Will be today the moment the nationalism he give up this “purity” and provides matter-of-factly: I am Spanish? The nationalism is in essence a concept neutral: political doctrine that asserts that a given territory is a nation, holder of sovereignty and the subject of rights political collective; that is to say, that is self-determined. But in Spain, identifies nationalism as “something other”. What exists in Spain is a problem of acceptance of the legitimacy of the national symbols. The nations have an enormous capacity to mobilize emotions, are all about emotions, because if you take away the thrill lost its appeal as a political product; that’s why politicians take out flags, symbols, signs, martyrs, etc, But you will live better the next day that the selection to win a world cup? “A good part of the problems of EU governance have to do with the idea diffused that Europe is in decline,”Definitely not. The Encyclopedia coins the backward obscurantist of our country, and the low contribution of Spain to Europe; a contrast to the european modernity that creeps up into the TWENTIETH century. Isn’t that the same idea of superiority that Europe has to try to legitimise their savage colonialism of Africa? Is the itching of cultural superiority of Europe of the Lights, which was marking borders with the rest of the world and that has a meaning very clear, the concept of “civilization”. For Illustration French Africa began in the Pyrenees and the east of the continent was not civilized. At the end of the NINETEENTH century, with the crisis of the empires of the iberian and Italian, lord Salisbury, british prime minister, argues that there are peoples who are leading the progress, anglo-germanic and France, and that latinos will happen to be the outcasts because they deviate from the canon of european civilization by its moorish influence. It produces a traslatio imperii and the hegemony passed from the south to the north, spread over Africa by violence. When did you leave the West, Europe in particular, this vision colonial with respect to the rest of the planet? I think that a good part of the current problems of EU governance, loss of illusion in the project and return to the borders and nation-states as a defensive barrier in front of the other and the guarantee of protection of their welfare state, have to do with the diffuse but present that Europe is in decline. There is a great uncertainty in the face of the future, and the Europe in the first ruling, then produced and then inspired, it is not even inspired. One last: there is a lot of similarity politically deliberate between now and the conflict of the Spanish State Catalonia in the SEVENTEENTH and NINETEENTH centuries, the Tragic Week of 1909, or the exile of Macià in the 27. But why just emphasize the accountability of 1714, the Catalan considers his touchstone? Running away from dates and stereotypical topics such as this consider that the Succession War is a war between Catalonia and Spain, when it was a struggle dynastic by the power, and when also among the catalans, there were supporters of the Bourbons. But do not confuse the reader: our intention has not been to deconstruct all the myths possible, but to make a proposal historical proactive.
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