Translated with a prefatory essay on the author’s work by Walter Starkie, corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
In 1935, Ramon Menéndez Pidal (1869-1968) began to edit his monumental Historia de España (“History of Spain”). This work, made in 42 tomes in 65 volumes, was directed since 1975 by José María Jover Zamora. More than 400 Spanish and foreign authors have collaborated and contributed to this History of Spain.
As an introduction to volume 1, in 1947 Pidal wrote Los españoles en la Historia (The Spaniards in their history: an analysis of Spain’s national characteristics). This title was translated into English with an important change: ‘their history’ instead of ‘the History’. In his original title, Pidal meant ‘the Spaniards in the history of mankind’, which is quite different and more powerful than ‘the Spaniards in their history’.
Published as a separate book, sometimes with the addition of another essay entitled Los españoles en la literatura (The Spaniards in Literature), it was highly successful and was soon translated into several languages.
The translation here was published in London in 1950 by Walter Starkie, with a prefatory essay on Pidal’s work.
The following is a review by Samuel P. Perry, Jr., The Annals of the American Academy, 1951:
This essay is a brief analysis made by Pidal of certain Spanish intangible such as material and moral austerity (pp. 119-137), individualism (pp. 146-176), and the effects upon the individual Spaniard of centralization and regionalism (pp. 177-203). In his treatment of the Spanish individualism Pidal is careful to concentrate his thoughts upon the Spanish sense of justice, equity, and arbitrariness. His historical parallelisms are drawn from past history. This is especially true in the citation of the careful selection by Ferdinand and Isabella of administrative personnel (pp. 157-164). In brief, the choice of simple criteria lends strength to the central thesis that cultural, intellectual, and political unity is dependent upon an understanding of the historical past, as well as of the intangibles of the Spanish national character.
The central thesis is further strengthened in the author’s dispassionate consideration of the two Spains and the influence of foreign cultures upon Spanish intellectualism and the resultant ill-considered domestic intellectual censorship and isolation. Pidal himself feels inclined to reflect: The individual will again win back his right which allow him to disagree, to rectify and invent afresh, for it is to the individual that we owe all the great deeds of history. To suppress those who think differently and crush projects for what our brothers believe to be a better life, is to sin against prudence. And even in questions where one side sees itself in possession of the absolute truth as against the error of the other side, it is not right to smother all manifestations of error (as it is impossible to suppress the side itself), for then we should reach the demoralizing situation of living without any opposition, and there is no worse enemy than not to have one (p. 244).
Pidal’s documentation might have been more ample with cross references to English texts dealing with those periods of Spanish history from which the historical perspective is drawn. It is reasonable to assume that the author did not intend for this book to be considered the last word in analytical studies of national characteristics.
However, the views presented cannot be ignored in the attempt to arrive at any logical conclusion relative to the Spanish political and cultural destiny.
Read The Spaniards in their history, by Ramon Menendez Pidal online