The Elastic Nation or When Is A Category Not A Category?
Lynn Williams
Lynn Williams is a lecturer in the Spanish Department of the University of Exeter
Ginlio Mazarini was born, either in Rome or in Pescina, in 1602, the son of a Sicilian subject of Philip IV of Spain. In 1639, he became a naturalised Frenchman, changed his name to Jules Mazarin and rose eventually to occupy the position of Prime Minister of France. Naturally, he was regarded by Louis XIII and Louis XIV as a French subject. However, in 1651 the Paris parliament identified him as a foreigner despite his naturalised status and pleaded with the Monarch to pass a law excluding from the royal councils "tous Estrangers, mesmes les naturalisez"[1]. Meanwhile, Philip IV was more than a little put out by the fact that the son of one of his subjects was forging strong links with France at a time when France and Spain were at war[2].
Now, no one could deny that, in one sense, naturalisation had made Mazarin French. But there was too an inescapable sense in which he remained Italian - whatever that meant at this time - and it was on this that Mazarin's enemies in the Paris parliament chose to focus as they approached the young Louis XIV and his mother with their petition.Their position seems to have been that citizens who are not also nationals should not enjoy full French status and certainly not be allowed to occupy positions in government [3]. In other words, full political rights come not with citizenship but with nationality. Another view on Mazarin's identity and where his loyalty should lie was, as I say, apparently held by Philip IV of Spain [4]. As a Welshman who watched a fellow countryman, Dewi Morris, play rugby for England against Wales in 1993, I can, to some extent, understand Philip's sense of dismay. His reaction to Mazarin's allegiance to France may not have been rational but, in fairness to him, we should remember that loyalty is no less a product of the heart than it is of the mind. The purpose of the Mazarin example, however, is to remind us that there has long been considerable confusion over the precise nature of citizenship and nationality. For the sake of simplicity, I would like to suggest that there are at least two crucial distinctions between these two terms. First, citizenship is rooted in the present and implies that, within a given political community, an individual possesses certain rights and responsibilities which may be abandoned or renounced at any point in time; nationality, on the other hand, is a condition which presupposes a past and is something one cannot escape even though one may change one's political allegiance. Second, citizenship is an objective reality over which there should be little or no disagreement, whereas nationality is infinitely harder to pin down and depends very much on one's perspective. In this sense, nationality is, perhaps, a category with a difference.
Categories are abstractions which include sets of related entities, things which are linked by a common set of characteristics and separated from whatever does not share those same characteristics [5]. Since it is an abstraction, the category cannot be represented by one or other of its members but must be identified by a label which is able to embrace all of its members without coinciding with any of them. Take, for example, the 'dog' category. 'Dog' is the word we use in English to refer to a particular group of animals. It does not identify any specific type of dog but rather overarches all types, as one would expect of a label of this kind. This is how categories function.
The second point about categories is that membership in the group is usually determined from outside. Botanists and not plants, for example, decide whether plants belong to this or that category of plant. The plants are not usually asked, nor do they usually give, their view on the subject. With nationality, things are a little different. The disinterested outsider does his best to take account of the relevant objective criteria like language, territory, common history, religion or whatever and then draws the limits of the nation as he sees it. But it is not simply the perception of the outsider that is important. There is another perspective, namely that of the insider whose perception is influenced not only by objective criteria but also by what is known as national sentiment. Unlike the plant, the insider in this instance normally holds strong views about the category to which he belongs and needs no encouragement to express them. And it goes without saying that his views do not always coincide with those of the outsider.
In this essay, I want to consider two things. Firstly, I want to look at the tendency many of us have to use the member in place of the category or the part instead of the whole. In other words, I want to look at the question of svnecdoche in so far as it refers to categories like nationality and citizenship. Then I want to examine briefly the kind of conflict which often arises in so-called multinational states as a result of discrepant perceptions of the national category within the state.
Synecdoche
In 1527, Cardinal Wolsey led an embassy to meet Francois I of France. During their meeting at Amiens, the French addressed the English in French and made it clear that they thought the English should be able to understand them. The English, on this occasion, took no more kindly to having French forced upon them than they would today and Wolsey exhorted his party to reply in English so that the French were also kept on their toes. He then, apparently, decided to make things just that little bit more difficult for the French and summoned a Welshman, issuing him with the following instruction: "Rice, speak thou Welsh to him [ie Rice's counterpart] and I am well assured that thy Welsh shall be more diffuse to him than his French is to thee"[6].Despite the distinctiveness of the welsh language and Welsh culture, it has been my experience as I have travelled abroad that most foreigners fail to assign to the Welsh an identity which is separate from that of the English. I find this a little exasperating, not because 1- have any antipathy towards the English -who could possibly have anything against the English?-, but simply because 'English' is an inaccurate label to apply to the Welsh. My initial reaction to this sort of confusion was to conclude that it was the result of ignorance among those who had not travelled or were not well-read. However, it very soon became apparent that the tendency to see the Welsh as a peculiar variety of the English was virtually universal. No less an august institution than the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, for example, has as its dictionary entry for GALES: "Natural de Gales. Perteneciente a este pais de Inglaterra" ["Native of Wales. Belonging to this region of England"] [7]. The perception which the outsider has of the label 'English" in this instance represents an example of synecdoche. As the dominant member of the United Kingdom political category, 'England' has come to represent the category.
Now, although I complain about the lack of sensitivity and discrimination which leads many foreigners to get it wrong when they identify me as being English, I have to accept that there is a real difficulty here. Firstly, the word 'British' has a long and complex history. It has been subject to both semantic expansion and contraction over the centuries so that its meaning is not always readily apparent. For example, it has been used in an ethnic sense to refer to the ancient inhabitants of Britain and as a synonym for 'Welsh'; in early instances, it has functioned as a geographical term adopted from Latin; from the time of Henry VIII, it was used frequently to include 'English' and 'Scotch', with 'South Britain' sometimes employed to refer to England and 'North Britain' to refer to Scotland; since the accession of James I, it has been in general use in this sense and, for that reason, during the seventeenth century it was often opposed to 'Irish'; it has been used in an imperial connexion to refer to things pertaining to the British Empire and it has also been used to refer to Brittany [8]. Even today, 'British' does not unambiguously reflect either political status or nationality and is, perhaps, more precisely employed in a geographical sense to refer to Britain and her islands. Secondly, 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' is a bit of a mouthful and although it is certainly possible to derive from it the form 'United Kingdomer', this does not seem to have proven to be sufficiently desirable or necessary. And in any case, such a label could only refer to citizenship and not to nationality. Perception, then, has been made more difficult as a result of semantic expansion and contraction over the centuries and also the problem of overlapping categories: the geographical, political and national categories overlap but do not precisely coincide and that makes it impossible to find a single label which is appropriate to them all. It need hardly surprise us that outsiders, in an attempt to simplify what is a complex picture, should select the dominant member of one of these categories and use it to represent the whole. Dominance would seem to be more important than distinctiveness.
I have to confess that I am guilty of the same error as the compilers of the Spanish Academy dictionary. Synecdoche is a trap many of us are caught in. 'American', like 'British', is a geographical term which refers to the whole of North, Central and South America. Nevertheless, we tend to use it synecdochically in order to refer to the United States. Interestingly enough, among most speakers of Spanish the term 'American' is rarely used in this way. I remember a young Spanish girl once telling me that her boyfriend was americano. It came as quite a surprise to learn some time later that he was not from the United States at all, but from Chile. Roughly half of the American continent is inhabited by speakers of Spanish and, hardly surprisingly, it irritates Spaniards when the word 'American’ is used, not generically, but specifically to refer to the United States. Spaniards, on the other hand, are less discriminating when they come to consider the area north of Mexico. This is English-speaking America and here they are less concerned about accurate use of labels. The term Norteamerica, for example, is often used in Spanish to refer specifically to the United States. Canada seems to have been forgotten. Now, the reason for this oversight is not linguistic. Spanish possesses the term Estados Unidos and the very handy estadounidense, which can function both as a noun and as an adjective. Similarly, the forms United Statesman, United Stateser and United Statesian exist in English. They are there but we feel neither inclined nor obliged to use them.
The discrepant usage of English and Spanish speakers is reflected in the main dictionaries of these languages. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, has the following entry [9]:
American
Over the years there seems to have taken place within the English speaking world a narrowing of focus with regard to what is 'American'. Here again, we are confronted with an example of synecdoche. Here again, dominance has taken priority over distinctiveness: the white American, originally a part of the whole, has come to represent the whole and the original inhabitant, once celled 'American', has been given a new label, namely 'American Indian'.
The Diccionario de la RealAcademia de la Lengua Espanola has the following entries: [10]
Americano/a
(1 ) Natural de America
[American] [Native of America](2) Perteneciente a esta parse del mundo
[Belonging to this part of the world](3) En regiones de active emigraci6n, indiano, que vuelve rico de America
[In regions where emigration is intense, a Spaniard who returns from America having made his fortune]
Norteamericano/a
(1) Natural de un pais de la America del Norte, y especialmente de los Estados Unidos de ella
[North American] [Native of a country of North America, especially of the United States](2) Perteneciente a la America del Norte
[Belonging to North America]
Sudamericano/a
- Natural de la America del Sur
[South American] [Native of South America]- Perteneciente a esta parse de America
[Belonging to this part of America]
If we compare the English-speaking world with the Spanish-speaking world, we discover that each has rather a different focus when it comes to the Americas. The English-speaking world uses the term 'American' specifically (to refer to the United States) and the terms 'North American' and' South/Latin/ Spanish American' generically (to refer to the northern and southern halves of the American continent); the Spanish-speaking world uses the term americano generically (to refer to the American continent), the term sudamericano generically (to refer to the southern half of the continent) but increasingly employs the term norteamericano specifically (to refer to the United States). The reason for such discrepancies has to do not with the distinctiveness or lack of distinctiveness of the different members of the categories, but with dominance and also with a need to simplify what is a complex reality where there is no vested interest in maintaining differences. Failure to make distinctions of the type described here is not, I believe, due to a deliberate attempt to obliterate internal differences within the categories. For that we must look at the next case-study.
National Identity and State Identity
The legend on coins minted in Franco Spain reads: "Espana: una, grande y fibre" ["Spain: one, great and free"]. The desire to unite and unify Spain was not new. Steps had been taken in this direction by the Catholic Kings, the Count-Duke of Olivares, Philip V and the liberals of the nineteenth century. There is, of course, a difference between uniting and unifying a country. So far as I know, few Catalans and Basques over the centuries have opposed Spanish unity. Many of them, however, have fiercely resisted unification. In other words, many of them have objected to the dismantling of their institutions, the abolition of their laws and the proscription of their language. The main objection of the Catalans seems to be that a united Spain did not bring with it a Spanish way of doing things. Instead, Catalans had imposed upon them Castilian laws, Castilian institutions and, to a large extent, the Castilian language. This in fact was precisely the advice given to Philip IV by Olivares:
TengaVM por el negocio mas importante de su Monarquia el hacerse rey de Espana. Quiero decir, senor, que no se contente VM con ser rey de Portugal, de Aragon, de Valencia, Conde de Barcelona, sino gue trabaje y piense con consejo maduro y secreto, por reducir estos reinos de que se compone Espana al estilo y leyes de Castilla sin ninguna diferencia [11].
[For Your Majesty the most important business of State is to become King of Spain. I mean, Sire, that you should not be content to be King of Portugal, of Aragon, of Valencia and Count of Barcelona but you should direct all your work and thought, with the most experienced and secret advice, to reduce these realms which make up Spain to the same order and legal system as Castile.]
The attempt to implement this advice gave rise in 1640 to the Catalan revolt and, to some extent, the rebellion of Portugal, the latter eventually breaking completely away from the rest of Spain.
On the basis of the usual objective criteria like language, common history and culture, territory etc., Catalans have always thought of themselves as a separate people and, perhaps not unreasonably, they have argued that this entitles them to govern their own affairs or, at the very least, not to be governed by those who are different from themselves in so many ways. In 1886,Valenti Almirall, one of the founding fathers of the Catalan movement, published a book entitled Lo catalanisme in which he described in great detail the Castilian and Catalan characters and attempted to show that they were incompatible and would never be happy bedfellows as long as the one tried to control the other [12].
Although he was careful to use the word 'ration' to refer to Spaniards rather than Catalans, Almirall made it quite clear that the latter form a distinct people. The Catalan character, he argued, is particularista, by which he meant that it sees and is tolerant of differences: Catalans have a tendency to see the trees rather than the woods, to see the member rather than the category and, therefore, to be federalist rather than centralist in their view of government; the Castilian character, on the other hand, is generalitzador, by which he meant that it does not see and is not tolerant of differences: Castilians have a tendency to see the woods rather than the trees, the category rather than the member and, therefore, are prone to absorb and assimilate as they have throughout history. The Castilian view of government is centralist rather than federalist. Clearly, if Almirall was correct, the liberal state of the nineteenth century was not the best political structure for Spain and one could perhaps expect some kind of reaction against it from the regions.
In 1906,Enric Prat de la Riba published La nacionalitat catalana [13]. Whereas Almirall had spoken of the Catalan people and Catalan regionalism, Prat spoke of the Catalan nation and Catalan nationalism. Both men had similar political objectives, namely the self-government of Catalonia within a federalist Spain/lberia so that Catalan laws, institutions and the Catalan language might once again flourish. Prat, however, had argued that nation and state should be co-extensive and it was, therefore, essential for him to demonstrate that Spain was in fact not a nation but a multinational state. Catalonia, on the other hand, was a nation and so had the right to govern itself. Drawing on the ideas of German thinkers of the eighteenth century, Prat identified as the ingredients of nationality common territory, race, language, law, art and, last but not least, a collective soul. Once a nationality has been formed, he said, it is indestructible. Language and law may be lost but the spirit of the people survives to await the day when it can once again manifest its true character [14].
The last one hundred years or so in Spain have been characterised by tremendous tension between the centre and the periphery. Madrid has consistently tried to legitimise political centralisation on the grounds that Spain is a nation. But being unable to use objective criteria to make its case, it has emphasised the 'spiritual unity' of the people and equated this with nationality [15].'Nation' and 'nationality', then, are terms which have been appropriated by both sides, by Madrid to justify its hegemony over the regions and by the regions to argue for self-determination.
To some extent Catalan aspirations for home-rule were realised in the 1930s. Following the collapse of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the Second Spanish Republic was ushered in and a new Spanish Constitution was passed which made provision for Catalonia to receive its own Regional Statute of Autonomy. Almost immediately Catalan laws and institutions were revived and the Catalan language was proclaimed as co-official with Castilian within the principality. In 1936, statutes of autonomy were also granted to the Basque Country and to Galicia but, unfortunately, this coincided with the outbreak of civil war. The end of the war in 1939 brought with it a return to highly centralised government, with General Franco doing everything in his power to obliterate regional differences. He banned regional languages, abolished regional laws, dismantled regional institutions and even outlawed things as inoffensive as the sardana, a Catalan regional dance. In view of such a policy, the significance of"Espana: una, grande y fibre" would seem to be abundantly clear. Franco was evidently committed to achieving what Olivares had not been able to achieve, namely the castilianisation of Spain.
For almost forty years, Franco strove hard to stamp out regional identities. Repression, however, seemed only to harden resistance and it soon became apparent that he was not going to be able to impose his will on the regions indefinitely. It was from the periphery that opposition to his regime mainly came and, gradually, the Catalan and Basque movements came to be seen as spearheading the struggle for democratic reform and this began to secure for them considerable popular support. In November 1975, General Franco died and his successor, King Juan Carlos I, decided that democracy was the only way forward. In 1978, a new constitution was approved by the Cortes [Spanish Parliament] which stipulated that sovereignty lay with the Spanish people, that government in Spain should be by constitutional monarchy and that, as under the Second Republic, the regions of Spain should be granted Statutes of Autonomy.
The granting of autonomy to the regions did not mean that Madrid had revised significantly its position with regard to the national status of the Catalans or the Basques. In fact, in Spain today the question of nationality is perhaps more vexed than ever. There are two main reasons for this. First, the last hundred years or so have seen considerable industrial growth in Catalonia and this has attracted an enormous number of immigrants from the rest of Spain, with most of them settling in the Barcelona area. It has been estimated that between 1960-1970 alone well over 600,000 people relocated to Catalonia from other parts of the country'[16]. Clearly, it proved impossible for all of the immigrants to be fully assimilated to Catalan ways. In the 1930s, a measure of success was achieved largely because, under the Second Republic, Catalonia controlled its own affairs and the Catalan language enjoyed of ficial status within the Principality. But during the Franco years, not only did the number of immigrants arriving in Catalonia increase dramatically but there was no official Catalan culture to which the newcomers might be assimilated. Because of the scale of immigration, some Catalan intellectuals began to rethink their position on the question of Catalan nationality. What did it mean to be Catalan now that there were people living in the Principality who, despite not having Catalan forefathers, in many instances had adopted Catalan ways and assumed a Catalan identity? The explanations of what it meant to be Catalan offered by Almirall and Prat de la Riba no longer seemed adequate and a variety of new definitions was, therefore, proposed:
1. Es catala qui viu i treballa a Catalunya i a mes a mes vol ser catala (Carbonell) [He who lives and works in Catalonia and moreover wishes to be Catalan is Catalan]
2. Son catalans tots els que hen nascut a Catalunya i tots els que, havens deixat de viure a Catalunya i havens perdut el veinatge civil, no obstant manifestin la seva voluntat de continuer acollits a Catalunya; i per ultim, els no catalans que adquireixen aqui el veinatge civil (Lopez Rod6)
[All those born in Catalonia and all those who no longer live in Catalonia and have therefore lost their political status as residents but nevertheless clearly express their desire to remain attached to Catalonia are Calalans;faally, non Catalans who acquire political status as residents of Catalonia are Catalans]
3. Hi ha una definicio 'natural': es catala el que ha nascut a Catalunya...; hi ha un catala 'social' que es el que ha nascut a Catalunya, o viu a Catalunya encara que no hi hagi nascut, pero sent la realitat catalana...; hi ha el catala'laboral' que es el que, tot i que es d'origen no catala, s'integra a traves de l'empresa on treballa; hi ha el catala ‘politic'que te consciencia que el seu abast quant a participacio politica es Catalunya (Gonzalez Casanova)
[There is a 'natural' definition: he who is born in Catalonia is Catalan; there is also the 'social' Catalan, namely the person who is born in Catalonia or lives in Catalonia without having been born there but identifies with Catalonia; there is the Catalan in the 'labour' sense who despite not being Catalan by birth is integrated into Catalonia through the companyfor which he works; there is the 'political' Catalanfor whom Catalonia is the focus of his political activity]
4. Catala es el que ho vol ser, no es un problema de raca, ni d'etnia, ni de res (Termes) [17]
[He who wishes to be Catalan is Catalan. It is not a question of race, of ethnicity or anything]
Suddenly, being Catalan seemed to have more to do with political status and/or allegiance to Catalonia than with ancestry, language or culture. The trouble with this is that it means that being Catalan is no longer qualitatively different from being Spanish and it also opens the way for a distinction to be drawn between Old Catalans and New Catalans,just as there were cristianos viejos [Old Christians] and cristianos nuevos [New Christians] in the Spain of the sixteenth century.Vandellos recognised back in 1935 the danger posed by the immigrants and argued vehemently that even in the event that all of them were fully integrated into Catalan society and identified themselves as Catalans,"aquella Catalunya no fore de cap manera la continuadora de la nostra historia" [that Catalonia could never be the continuer of our history] [18]. In other words, true Catalan nationality would have been lost.
The second reason why the question of nationality in Spain is perhaps even more vexed today than it was at the turn of the century has to do with semantics. The politicians who drafted the Spanish Constitution of 1978 were faced with the difficult problem of producing a document which somehow managed to defuse the longstanding tension between the centre and the periphery. In essence, the problem lay in safeguarding the unity of Spain whilst also satisfying the main demands of the regions. Provision was made in the document for all regions to be able to administer their own affairs but more than this was required if everybody was to be kept reasonably happy. It seems to have been acknowledged that a blanket solution for all regions would probably not satisfy those like the Catalans who had traditionally claimed special status as a distinct and separate people. In the event, the politicians opted for a cosmetic solution and looked to language for a way out of their dilemma. Article 2 of the Constitution epitomises the workings of the political mind in so far as it represents, in part, nothing more than a linguistic compromise:
La Constitucion se fundamenta en la indisoluble unidad de la Nacion espanola, patria comun e indivisible de todos los espanoles, y reconoce y garantiza el derecho a la autonomia de las nacionalidades y regiones que la integran y la solidaridad entre sodas ellas.[19][The Constitution is founded on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the indivisible homeland which is common to all Spaniards. It recognises and guarantees to the 'nationalities' and regions which make up the homeland the right of self- determination and mutual solidarity.]
Enshrined in the Constitution and, therefore, inviolable is the statement that Spaniards form a nation. They all belong to the same patria and this patria is indivisible. But within the nacion or patria we find rather different kinds of building-blocks, which together make up the whole. These are the nacionalidades and the regiones. In other words, what we have is a complex structure with different levels of status apparently being assigned to each of the constituent parts. At the top of the structure, we have the nacion or Spain. Next come the nacionalidades like Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia. There then follow the regiones like La Rioja and Murcia and, finally, we have those communities like Castilla-La Mancha which seem to claim no special separate identity at all [20].
What is interesting is the way in which the meaning of the word nacionalidad has been manipulated. In this context, it seems to represent something in between the nation and the region. In other words, it refers to a well-defined territory which has its own very distinctive personality. This is confirmed in article 6 of the Statute of Autonomy for Castilla-Leon where nacionalidad clearly signifies a territory of this kind:
Los castellano-leoneses residentes en otras nacionalidades o regiones de Espana tendran el reconocimiento de su origen castellano-leones [21].
[Those Castilian-Leonese who are resident in other 'nationalities' or regions of Spain will have their Castilian-Leonese origins recognised]
Now, the meaning of nacionalidad here is completely different from its meaning in article 11 of the Constitution which reads:
1. La nacionalidad espanola se adquiere, se conserve y se pierce de acuerdo con lo establecido por la fey.
[Spanish nationality is acquired, retained and lost in accordance with what is laid down in the law.]2. Ningun espanol de origen podra ser privado de su nacionalidad [22].
[No Spaniard by birth can be deprived of his nationality.]
In this article, nacionalidad seems to equate with citizenship. Such flexibility in the meaning of nacionalidad is, perhaps, in character with the elasticity of the concept.
To sum up, then, changes in the composition of Catalan society in recent history have persuaded some Catalan intellectuals to redefine Catalan nationality. In doing so, they have emptied it of its original content with the result that the criteria for determining who is or is not Catalan are now no different from those which determine who is or is not Spanish. In addition, Madrid has consistently claimed nationhood for Spain so that although Catalans have traditionally viewed Castilians as outsiders or members of a different national category, the latter have seen themselves in another light. For most of these, the national category was Spain and this made them insiders rather than outsiders. When General Franco died, Madrid was finally forced to take account of Catalan separateness but it was also committed to Spanish unity. The solution -and it is difficult to determine the real motive behind it- was to grant nacionalidad status, in the new sense of the word, not to Catalans but to Catalonia. It remains to be seen whether or not Spaniards generally will accept the compromise.
Conclusion
Most of us have several identities. Alongside our personal identity, we carry national, political, geographical and racial identities. Some people are unfortunate enough to have no political identity (eg refugees) whilst others have no clear national or racial identity (eg the children of mixed marriages). Despite the bad publicity it has received, identity, including national identity, is important and it is not surprising to me that those like the Catalans who feel themselves to be very different from their neighbours should struggle to defend it when it is threatened. Do nations exist? Well, that depends on how one defines them and on whether or not they are recognised as such. To what extent does the Catalan nation exist if no one except Catalans acknowledges it? It may be a reality to them but a myth to the rest of us. It is, then, largely a question of perception and, perhaps, even of faith. It is also a question of compromise. Things are usually more complex on the inside than they appear to be on the outside. But if we endlessly go on looking for diversity, we end up with the individual and lose sight of the community and the need to work for the common good. If, on the other hand, we insist on uniformity and become intolerant of diversity - and it is quite clear that those in power find diversity difficult to cope with freedom all but disappears. The world would surely be a better place if we all acquired something of the flexibility and elasticity that characterise the concept of nationhood.
NOTES:
1 'Arrest de Nosseigneurs de Parlement', Paris, 6 February 1651: Archivo General de Simancas, Estado Flandes 2077 (not foliated). Although he was apparently fluent in Spanish and Italian, it is well known that Mazarin was never completely at ease in the French language and this obviously made it all the more difficultfor him to be accepted as a fully-fledged Frenchman. (return)
2 For reference to Philip IV's dismay over Mazarin's links with France see: Comte de SaintAulaire, Mazarin (Paris, 1946) p.25; 'Carta del Rey a Don Francisco de Melo, Madrid, 16 de enero de 1643': Archivo General de Simancas, Estado Flandes 2250 (not foliated). (return)
3 No attempt will be made in this essay to differentiate between the terms 'citizen' and 'subject'.(return)
4 If Mazarin was born in Rome, it seems probable that the Pope would also have had something to say on the matter of Mazarin's identity. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any reference to this.(return)
5 In order to keep things simple, I propose to use the term 'category' rather loosely. I see nothing to be gained here from distinguishing between 'class', 'order', family', 'genus' and 'species'. In other words, I do not wish to get into the question of subcategories. Neither do I wish to imply that categories show no internal differences. Clearly, the fact that members of the same category share the same basic characteristics does not mean that they are identical in every respect.(return)
6 Joycelyne G. Russell, Diplomats at Work: Three Renaissance Studies (Stroud/ Wolseboro Falls, 1992) p.39. (return)
7 Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola (19th ed, 1970), s.v. GALES.(return)
8 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1979), s.v. BRITAIN, BRITISH. The material included in these entries was preparedfor publication in June 1888.(return)
9 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. AMERICAM The material included in this entry was prepared for publication in January 1884.(return)
10 Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola, s.v. AMERICANO, NORTEAMERICANO, SUDAMERICANO(return)
11 Quoted inJosep Melid, Informe sobre la lengua catalana (Madrid, 1970) p.265.(return)
12 ValentlAlmirall, Lo catalanisme (Barcelona, 1979) pp.30-67. First edition published in Barcelona in 1886.(return)
13 Enric Prat de la Riba, La nacionalidad catalana. Translation and introduction by Antonio Royo Villanova (Barcelona, 1 982).(return)
14 La nacionalidad catalana, pp.93-109.(return)
15 For more information on this, the reader may consult,for example, Manuel Garcia Morente, Idea de la hispanidad (Madrid, 1961).(return)
16 Salvador Giner, The Social Structure of Catalonia (Sheffield, 1980) p.46. The population of Catalonia in 1975 was just over 5.5 million inhabitants (p.41) with nearly half that of the Barcelona area being of non-Catalan origin (p.46).(return)
17 Quoted in Rafael Sala, 'Sobre la normalizacion linguistica en Cataluna'. Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies, 4, 2, (1991) p.20. For a more expanded treatment of the same subject, see Francesc Mercade, Cataluna: intelectuales politicos y cuestion nacional (Barcelona, 1982). It is worth noting that not all Catalansfeel the same way about their identity. In an article entitled 'Cataluna, en Glasgow' published in El Pais on the 13 February, 1983, the Catalan writer, Montserrat Roig, declared emphatically that "mientras los catalane sf sabemos cual es nuestra identidad - aunque algo maltrecha, la pobre-, los espanoles no" [Whereas we Catalans are certain of our identity -even though the poor thing is somewhat battered, Spaniards are clearly not certain of theirs](p 9)(return)
18 Rafael Sala, 'Sobre la normalizacion lingulstica', p.20.(return)
19 Constitucion Espanola aprobada por las Cortes el 31 de octubre de 1978, art.2 (I have used the edition preparedfor the national referendum held on 6 December, 1978, and primed by Hauser y Menct S.A.).(return)
20 Enrique Tierno Galvan and Antoni Rovira, La Espana autonomica (Barcelona, 1985). This text contains all the regional statutes approved by the Spanish parliament since 1978. Each statute tends to include some reference to the status of the relevant community as a nacionalidad or a region historica. Some invoke the additional or alternative status of reino [kingdom] or principado [principality] or pais [country] and article I of the Basque statute uses the term nacionalidad to refer to the Basque people rather than the Basque Country (p.24). Clearly, the picture presented by the different regional statutes is not quite so neat as that given in article 2 of the Constitution of 1978. The statutefor Castilla-La Mancha claims no special historical identityfor this autonomous community (return)
21 Tierno Galvan and Rovira, La Espana autonomica, p.559.(return)
22 Constitucion Espanola, art. 11.(return)