The Spirit of the Land. Race, Autochthony, and Character in Spanish Regenerationist Thought

• Department of History

Phd thesis defence by Roberto Antonio Larranaga Dominguez

After the Battle of Sedan, the notion of the decadence of the ‘Latin race,’ which had been publicised during the Second French Empire, became a transnational myth with long-lasting echoes. This idea influenced the fin-de-siècle culture and politics, spawning many local iterations and serving to interpret the nation through an increasingly racialist lens. In Spain, during the Bourbon Restoration (1874-1931), the motif of Latin decadence became intertwined with a deep sense of national crisis, epitomised by the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the subsequent loss of the country’s remaining overseas dominions.

Against this backdrop, the Spanish turn of the century coincided with the emergence of a political-intellectual movement known as ‘regenerationism’ and a related literary phenomenon usually referred to as ‘the Generation of ’98.’ The movement’s main figures produced a body of essays that aimed to address Spain’s ailments and find paths towards modernisation and ‘Europeanisation.’ While regenerationist literature is widely known for its attacks on local caciques and other political issues, it consists first and foremost of an examination of Spain’s past and a reflection on the nation’s essential ‘deep being.’ In their various interpretations of Spanish history, regenerationists often explained national decadence in terms of problems affecting the ‘Spanish race,’ which is the focus of this dissertation. One of my main findings is that, rather than reproducing Latinist tropes, a variety of alternative racial affiliations were used to avoid the narrative of inevitable collective decline. Furthermore, the regeneration of the ‘Spanish race’ was considered to be more about the retrieval and strengthening of the national character than about biological eugenics. My central argument is that autochthony — a deep-rooted original bond between people and territory — is the cornerstone of regenerationist racial thought, both in terms of ethnicity and the simultaneous, mutually dependent efforts to revive race and land.