Uses of a Myth: al-Andalus

In the last two decades, the Spanish press treatment of the Muslim world reflects a change of tone from unsympathetic to enthusiastic, although the information is still marred by confusion and ignorance. This change of attitude has occurred in other Western countries as well, and it is due in part to immigration trends, control over oil resources, and the relativism of official discourses towards the Third World. In the case of Spain, however, there is an additional internal element at play: the mass-media reinvention of a mythical alAndalus as a tolerant and pluralistic society. This idealized interpretation of seven centuries of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is fraught with ignorance and distortion of the historical record but is not new. The mystification of al-Andalus has its precedent in romantic accounts that saw in “Muslim Spain” a differential fact that reinforced the exotic image of the country. It can be attributed also to the strategy to “hispanicize” al-Andalus employed by Arabists and historians to make the subject matter appealing to unsympathetic Spanish audiences conditioned by the myth of the Reconquest. Intended or not, the manipulation of the myth of al-Andalus as a historical fact has ideological and political implications that demand an objective and balanced consideration. This article is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol33/iss2/3 Uses of a Myth: al-Andalus Serafin Fanjul Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Translated by Margarita Pillado) A review of the Spanish press of the eighties, especially in the early part of the decade, reveals an evident confusion with the meaning of concepts such as “Arab” or “Islam” motivated by ignorance and distrust, if not by ill-will. Rather than criticize the journalists and the print media, I simply want to call attention to the existence of such confusion. I focus on the printed press because it is easier to obtain and analyze than radio, television broadcasts, or the digital press, which was non-existent at the time. Broadly speaking, the attitude towards all things Arab was unsympathetic and cautious. The Left still remembered “Franco’s Moors” and the Caudillo’s “traditional friendship” towards the Arab World. The Right, on the other hand, continued to exploit with various degrees of conviction the image of the medieval Moors of the Reconquest—the cruel and cunning raiders vanquished by the Catholic Monarchs—independently of the appropriateness or fairness of that image. Even average citizens, more preoccupied with some of the domestic problems that Adolfo Suarez, Jose Calvo Sotelo, and Felipe Gonzalez appeared incapable of solving—terrorism, economic crisis, unemployment, the first stirrings of a breakdown of national unity—cautiously voiced their concern at NATO’s denial of protection to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla (F. Suarez de Oca 10), or at the “invasion” of Arab money that was buying real estate, health centers, and even the will of some powerful players in the Costa del Sol (Rosa Hernandez 9). Papers also reported the occasional news about some city officials’ budding outbursts of “racism”—carefully printed between quotation marks—such as the incident involving the mayoress of Boadilla 1 Fanjul: Uses of a Myth: al-Andalus Published by New Prairie Press 228 STT el hostigamiento, captura y a veces asesinato de nuestros pescadores; las amenazas continuas de Hassan con relacion a Ceuta y Melilla; la invencion argelina del problema de Canarias y su grotesca internacionalizacion; o – por no prolongar demasiado la lista – el eficaz entrenamiento de los terroristas de ETA en campos militares situados en Argelia, Libia, Libano y Yemen del Sur. ... El mundo arabe es una realidad cultural y religiosa, pero tambien una gran ficcion politica que se esfumaria el mismo dia que desapareciera el conflicto con los 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 33, Iss. 2 [2009], Art. 3 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol33/iss2/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1700