page_title: Hispanidad
section_title: Revival
hierarchical_section_title: Hispanidad / Revival
caption_attribution_description: Portada de la primera edición de "Defensa de la Hispanidad" (1934), de Ramiro de Maeztu.
context_page_description: Hispanidad is an expression with several meanings, loosely alluding to the group of people, countries and communities sharing the Spanish language and displaying a Spanish-related culture. The term traces back to the early modern period but was redefined by Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in 1909. The term "Hispanity" is a term that regards to a multiethnic community of countries of the Spanish Empire.
  According to the philosopher and writer Julían Marías, the Spanish American territories were not only colonies but also extensions of Spain that mixed with the native American peoples, with whom Europeans intermarried, creating a multicultural society.
context_section_description: In the early 20th century, the term was revived, with several new meanings. Its reintroduction is attributed to Unamuno in 1909, who used the term again on 11 March 1910, in an article, La Argentinidad, published in a newspaper in Argentina, La Nación. He compared the term to other similar expressions: argentinidad, americanidad, españolidad and italianidad.
  Unamuno linked the concept to the multiplicity of peoples speaking the Spanish language, which encompassed in turn his idea of La Raza, gave it an egalitarian substrate and questioned the very status of motherland for Spain; he claimed the need of approaching Hispanic American republics in terms of sisterhood (opposing "primacies" and "maternities").
  Further development of the concept had to wait for the 1920s, when a group of intellectuals was influenced by the ideas of ultranationalist French thinker Charles Maurras and rescued the term. As a precedent, the Spanish writer José María Salaverría, who lived in Argentina between 1910 and 1913, would have implicitly the idea of an Hispanic community, comparable to Hispanidad, but the leading status of Spain in the community is however a moot point in his work. The term was used by Spanish priest Zacarías de Vizcarra, who was living in Buenos Aires. He proposed in 1926 that the expression Fiesta de la Raza should be changed to Fiesta de la Hispanidad.
  During the reign of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the Virgin of Guadaloupe was proclaimed "Queen of the Hispanidad" in Spain. In the later years of the decade, vanguard writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero began to elaborate a neo-imperialist narrative of the Hispanidad in La Gaceta Literaria. The doctrine of Hispanidad would also become a core tenet of the reactionary thought in Spain in the coming years.
  During the Second Spanish Republic, Spanish monarchist author Ramiro de Maeztu, who had been the ambassador to Argentina between 1928 and 1930, considered the concept of Hispanidad, motivated by the interests aroused on him by Argentine-related topics, and the meetings between him and the attendants to the courses of Catholic culture as nationalist, Catholic and anti-liberal. Maeztu explained his doctrine of Hispanidad in his work Defensa de la Hispanidad (1934); he thought it was a spiritual world that united Spain and its former colonies by the Spanish language and Catholicism. He attributed the concept to Vizcarra, instead of Unamuno. In the Hispanidad of Maeztu, the Christian and humanist features that would identify Hispanic peoples would replace rationalism, liberalism and democracy, which he called alien to the Hispanic ethos. His work "relentlessly" linked Catholicism and Hispanidad and was highly influential with Argentine nationalists and the Spanish far right, including Francoism. Although declaredly antiracist because of its Catholic origin, the sense of racial egalitarianism in the Maeztu's idea of the Hispanidad was restricted to the scope of heavenly salvation.
  Spanish Primate Isidro Gomá y Tomás issued in Argentina, on 12 October 1934, a Maeztu-inspired manifesto, Apology of the Hispanidad:
  "America is the work of Spain. This work by Spain is essentially of Catholic nature. Hence, there is a relation of equality between Hispanidad and Catholicism, and it is madness any attempt of Hispanidad disowing that relation".
  "América es la obra de España. Esta obra de España lo es esencialmente de catolicismo. Luego hay relación de igualdad entre hispanidad y catolicismo, y es locura todo intento de hispanización que lo repudie."
  — Isidro Gomá, fragment of «Apología de la Hispanidad» (Buenos Aires, 1934), collected in Acción Española (1 November 1934).
  According to Stephen G. H. Roberts, Gomá linked the ideas of Maeztu and the ideology that was developed by the dictatorship of Franco.
caption: Cover of the first edition of Defensa de la Hispanidad (1934), by Ramiro de Maeztu.
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