Last year I discovered two things. The first is that the most eccentric and funniest fans of the singer Taylor Swift call themselves Swifties. They follow her everywhere and meet expressly to dress like her and burn photos of their ex-boyfriends.
The second thing I discovered is that Spanish imperialism has its own speedsters. And there aren’t many of them, but they use the phrase “objectivity of history” so often that it seems legion.
The documentary “Spain, the First Globalization,” released in 2021, is an almost constant parade of rapid-fire shots of Spanish imperialism. Under the guise of describing how the Spanish Empire came to connect all continents, the documentary describes the Spanish Empire as a “great moment of humanity”; It is considered virtuous because its parent company – Spain – was the least punctual of European countries in institutionalizing the expulsion of Jews; or their commitment to miscegenation is praised, whether or not it was obligatory for the locals the Spaniards encountered along the way.
Spain, the first globalization, fills the audiovisual quota of a political-cultural movement against the so-called black legend, according to which Spain was and is always a country of inquisitors, racists and colonizers. María Elvira Roca’s book “Imperiophobia” was the first more or less sophisticated expression against the black legend. Nacho Cano’s musical “Malinche” is a cheesy manifestation. And VOX is its partisan crystallization. Spain has been defamed by Dutch, Latin American, Catalan and English propaganda for centuries. So many brave people came to his aid. And in an amazing exercise of collective intelligence, they decided that these brave Swifties would defend the Spanish Empire in order to effectively counter the accusations of Inquisition, racism and colonization against Spain, the most blatant expression of Inquisition, racism and colonization in the history of Spain.
The film fills the audiovisual quota of a political-cultural movement against the so-called black legend, according to which Spain is and was a country of inquisitors, racists and colonizers.
At the very beginning of the documentary, a historian says that history cannot be judged from the present. I agree. But why do the virtues that the Spanish Empire supposedly had only make sense when viewed from current values? The only way, if at all possible, to say that Spanish imperialism, for all the good it left us, was “a moment of humanity” is with the benefit of hindsight; Only from a certain contemporary awareness against anti-Semitism does it seem a strange achievement to be the country that took the longest to expel the Jews; And only through more or less widespread sympathy for pluralism and cultural diversity does the miscegenation that began 500 years ago achieve moral recognition.
The swifts of the Spanish Empire do not contest the past, but the cultural hegemony of the present. So it is not necessary to judge the history of Spain to make a moral judgment about these funny and eccentric fans. And mine is this: You are a sinister villain. The real barbarity is that there are Spaniards who in 2023 will justify Spanish imperialism because, by current criteria, it appears slightly less cruel than other imperialisms with which it competed. It’s almost as if someone thought of claiming Hitler because, unlike Stalin, he was a vegetarian. It is an argument so repugnant and misleading that it renders Godwin’s helpful law inapplicable.
Historiographical questions that should be secondary political and ethical details become, in the fight against the black legend, the main theme and subject of celebrations financed at least in part by public institutions, as in the case of Spain, the first globalization.
The Swifties of Spanish imperialism usually combine two ideologies. On the one hand, they represent a kind of utilitarianism, according to which the costs and benefits of measures must be calculated. And since what Spanish imperialism has brought to the world is, according to the fast calculator, a clear advantage – as Marcelo Gullo claims when he says in an interview following his recent work “What America Owes Spain to Spain” (2023). that Latin America owes it to bring “unity and its soul” to Spain – then all the cruelty and devastation of the centuries will have been worth it. All of this would be nonsense even if the mathematical operation were correct (which it is not). But the most important thing is that, by the same macabre logic, the Swifties of Spanish imperialism would have to wish that the United States – or China, depending on your taste – would invade Spain tomorrow, destroy everything and in five hundred years we would see the advantage. The problem with assuming that civilization can and should be imposed with blood and fire on those you consider backwards is that there will always be someone who believes you are the new backwards.
At one point in Spain, the first globalization, a philosopher says: “Spain arises and the ancient world collapses, which is not anything.” It refers to the arrival of Columbus in America. It’s a very telling moment of deliberate confusion. Because if something emerged politically and from a European perspective in 1492, it was not Spain, but America. And what does this moment of the documentary reveal? An obsession. Spain. Spain. Spain. The most unimaginable Spanish nationalism is the other ideology that the Swifties represent. The cruel attempt to rehabilitate imperialism can only be understood under the spell of the idea that mine are always better than others just because they are mine.
The powerful of the Spanish Empire are trying to convince us that denial of Catalan or Mexican nationalism is Spanish nationalism. And not. The opposite of Catalan nationalism or Mexican nationalism is anti-nationalism. Also from Spanish.
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