SPAIN
SPAIN :
Name of Culture:
Spanish
Alternative Names are:
Los españoles
Orientation:
Identification. The name España is of uncertain origin; from it
derived the Hispania of the roman Empire. Important regions within the modern
nation are the Basque Country (PaÃs Vasco), the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic
area, and Galicia—each of which has its own language and a strong regional
identity. Others are AndalucÃa and the Canary Islands; Aragón; Asturias;
Castile; Extremadura; León; Murcia; and Navarra, whose regional identities are
strong but whose language, if in some places dialectic, is mutually
intelligible with the official Castilian Spanish. The national territory is
divided into fifty provinces, which date from 1833 and are grouped into
seventeen autonomous regions, or comunidades autónomas.
Geography and Locatio. Spain occupies about 85 percent of the Iberian
peninsula, with Portugal on its western border. Other entities in Iberia are the
Principality of Andorra in the Pyrenees and Gibraltar, which is under British
sovereignty and is located on the south coast. The Pyrenees range separates
Spain from France. The Atlantic Ocean washes Spain's north coast, the far
northwest corner adjacent to Portugal, and the far southwestern zone between
the Portuguese border and the Strait of Gibraltar. Spain is separated from
North Africa on the south by the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea,
which also washes Spain's entire east coast. The Balearic Islands lie in the
Mediterranean and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa.
Spain also holds two cities, Ceuta and Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast of
Morocco.
Spain's perimeter is mountainous, the mountains
generally rising from relatively narrow coastal plains. The country's interior,
while transected by various mountain ranges, is high plateau, or meseta, generally
divided into the northern and southern mesetas.
Such general geographic distinctions as north/
south, coastal/interior, mountain/lowland/plateau, and Mediterranean/Atlantic
are overwhelmed by the variety of local geographies that exist within all of
the larger natural and historical regions. Great local diversity flourishes on
Spanish terrain and is part of Spain's essence. The people of hamlets,
villages, towns, and cities—the basic political units of the Spanish
population—and sometimes even neighborhoods ( barrios ) hold
local identities that are rooted not only in differences of local geography and
microclimate but also in perceived cultural differences made concrete in
folklore and symbolic usages. Throughout rural Spain, despite the strength of
localism, there is also a perception of shared culture in rural zones
called comarcas. The comarca is a purely cultural and economic
unit, without political or any other official identity. In what are known as
market communities in other parts of the world, villages or towns in a Spanish
comarca patronize the same markets and fairs, worship at the same regional shrines
in times of shared need (such as drought), wear similar traditional dress,
speak the language similarly, intermarry, and celebrate some of the same
festivals at places commonly regarded as central or important.
The comarca is a community of concrete relationships;
larger regional identities are more easily characterized as imagined but emerge
from a tradition of local difference and acquire some of their strength from
that tradition. A recognition of difference among Spaniards is woven into the
very fabric of Spanish identity; most Spaniards begin any discussion of their
country with a recitation of Spain's diversity, and this is generally a matter
of pride. Spaniards' commitment to Spain's essential
diversity is the benchmark from which any student of things Spanish must depart. It is essential to realize that outsiders can legitimately consider some of Spain's diversity as imagined every bit as much as its unity might be—that is, Spaniards sort their differences with a fine-toothed comb and create measures of local and regional differences which might fail tests of general significance by other measures. The majority of Spaniards endorse the significance of local differences together with an overarching unity, which makes them regard Spain's inhabitants as Spanish despite their variety. This image of variety is itself a shared element of Spanish identity.
diversity is the benchmark from which any student of things Spanish must depart. It is essential to realize that outsiders can legitimately consider some of Spain's diversity as imagined every bit as much as its unity might be—that is, Spaniards sort their differences with a fine-toothed comb and create measures of local and regional differences which might fail tests of general significance by other measures. The majority of Spaniards endorse the significance of local differences together with an overarching unity, which makes them regard Spain's inhabitants as Spanish despite their variety. This image of variety is itself a shared element of Spanish identity.
The populations least likely to feel Spanish are
Catalans and Basques, although these large, complex regional populations are by
no means unanimous in their views. The Basque language is unrelated to any
living language or known extinct ones; this fact is the principal touchstone of
a Basque sense of separateness. Even though many other measures of difference
can be questioned, Basque separatism, where it is endorsed, is fueled by the
experience of political repression in the twentieth century in particular.
There has never been an independent Basque state apart from Spain or France.
Cataluña has had greater autonomy in the past
and had, at different times, as close ties with southwestern France as with
Spain. The Catalan language, like Spanish, is a Romance language, lacking the
mysterious distinction that Basque has. But other measures of difference, in
addition to a separate language, distinguish Cataluña from the rest of Spain.
Among these is Cataluña's deeply commercial and mercantile bent, which has
underlain Catalan economic development and power in both past and present.
Perhaps because of this power, Cataluña has suffered longer from periodic repression
at the hands of the central Castilian state than has any other of modern
Spain's regions; this underlies a separatist movement of note in contemporary
Cataluña.
The state now known as Spanish has long been
dominated by Castile, the region that covers much of the Spanish meseta and the
marriage of whose future queen, Isabel, to Fernando of Aragón in 1469 brought
about the consolidation of powers that underlay the development of modern
Spain. This growing power was soon to be enhanced by the Crown's monopoly
(vis-a-vis other regions and the rest of Europe) on all that accrued from
Christopher Columbus's discovery of the New World, which occurred under Crown
sponsorship.
Madrid, already at the time an ancient Castilian
town, was selected as Spain's capital in 1561, replacing the court's former
home, Valladolid. The motive of this move was Madrid's centrality: it lies at
Spain's geographic center and thus embodies the central power of the Crown and
gives the court geographic centrality in relation to its realm as a whole. At
the plaza known as Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid stand not only
Madrid's legendary symbol—a sculpted bear under a strawberry tree ( madroño )—but
also a signpost pointing in all directions to various of Spain's provincial
capitals, a further statement of Madrid's centrality. The Puerta del Sol is at
kilometer zero for Spain's road system.
Demography of spain. Spain's population of 39,852,651 in early 1999
represented a slight decline from levels earlier in the decade. The population
had increased significantly in every previous decade of the twentieth century,
rising from under nineteen million in 1900. Spain's declining birthrate, which
in 1999 was the lowest in the world, has been the cause of official concern.
The bulk of Spain's population is in the Castilian provinces (including
Madrid), the Andalusian provinces, and the other, smaller regions of
generalized Castilian culture and speech. The Catalan and Valencian provinces
(including the major cities of Barcelona and Valencia), along with the Balearic
Islands, account for about 30 percent of the population, Galicia for about 7
percent, and Basque Country for about 5 percent. These are not numbers of
speakers of the minority languages, however, as the Catalan, Gallego, and
Basque provinces all hold diverse populations and speech communities.
Linguistic Affiliation (Language of spain). The national language of spain is Spanish, or
Castilian Spanish, a Romance language derived from the Latin implanted in
Iberia following the conquest by Rome at the end of the third century B.C.E. Two of the minority languages of the nation—Gallego and
Catalan—are also Romance languages, derived from Latin in their respective
regions just as Castilian Spanish (hereafter "Spanish") was. These
Romance languages supplanted earlier tribal ones which, except for Basque, have
not survived. The Basque language was spoken in Spain prior to the colonization
by Rome and has remained in use into the twenty-first century. It is, as noted
earlier, unique among known languages.
Virtually everyone in the nation today speaks
Spanish, most as a first but some as a second language. The regions with native
non-Spanish languages are also internally the most linguistically diverse of
Spain's regions. In them, people who do not speak Spanish even as a second language
are predictably older and live in remote areas. Most adults with even modest
schooling are trained in Spanish, especially as the official use of the Catalan
and Basque languages has suffered repression by centrist interests as recently
as Francisco Franco's régime (1939–1975), as well as in earlier periods. None
of the regional languages has ever been in official use outside its home region
and their speakers have used Spanish in national-level exchanges and in
wide-scale commerce throughout modern times.
Under the democratic government that followed
Franco's death in 1975, Gallego, Basque, and Catalan have come into official
use in their respective regions and are therefore experiencing a renaissance at
home as well as enhanced recognition in the rest of the nation. Proper names,
place-names, and street names are no longer translated automatically into
Spanish. The unique nature of Basque has always brought personal, family, and
place-names into the general consciousness, but Gallego and Catalan words had
been easily rendered in Spanish and their native versions left unannounced.
This is no longer so. There is evidence now—as has long been the case in
Cataluña—that speakers of the regional languages are increasing in number. In
Cataluña, where Catalan is spoken by Catalans up and down the social structure
and in urban and rural areas alike, immigrants and their children become
Catalan speakers, Spanish even falling to second place among the young. In
Basque Country, the easy use of Basque is increasing among Basques themselves
as the language regains status in official use. The same is true in Galicia in
circles whose language of choice might until recently have been Spanish. An
important literary renaissance expectedly accompanies these developments.
In those parts of Spain in which Spanish is the
only language, dialectical patterns can remain significant. As with
monolingualism in Basque, Catalan, or Gallego, deeply dialectic speech varies
with age, formal schooling, and remoteness from major population centers.
However, in some regions—Asturias is one—there has been a revival of
traditional language forms and these are a focus of local pride and historical
consciousness. Asturias, which in pre-modern times covered a wider area of the
Atlantic north than the modern province of Asturias, was a major seat of early
Christian uprising against Islam, which was established in southern Spain in
711 C.E. Events in Asturian history are thus emblematic
of the persistence and reemergence of the Christian Spanish nation; the heir to
the Spanish throne bears the title of Prince of Asturias. The Asturian dialect
belongs to the Old Leonese ( Antiguo Leonés ) dialect area;
this dialect was spoken and written by the kings of the early Christian
kingdoms of the north (Asturias, León, Castile) and is ancestral to modern
Spanish. Thus the Asturian dialect, like the province itself, is emblematic of
the birth of the modern nation.
Symbolism. Spain's different regions, or smaller entities
within them, depict themselves richly through references to local legend and
custom; classical references to places and their character; Christian heroic
tales and events; and the regions' roles in Spain's complex history, especially
during the eight-century presence of Islam. Examples already cited here are the
association of Madrid with a site at which a bear and a strawberry tree were
found together, of Asturias with tales of local Christian resistance early in
the Islamic period, and of Basque country with a pre-Roman language and a
defiant resistance to Rome. Many such images are stable in time; others less so
as new touchstones of identity emerge.
Current symbolism at the national level respects
the mosaic of more local depictions of identity and joins Spain's regions in a
flag that bears the fleurs-de-lis of the Bourbon Crown and the arms or emblems
of the several historical kingdoms that covered the present nation in its
entirety. The colors, yellow and red, of what was to become the national flag
were first adopted in 1785 for their high visibility at sea. The presence of an
eagle, either double- or single-headed, has been historically variable. So has
the legend (under the crowned columns that represent the pillars of Hercules)
based on the older motto nec plus ultra ("nothing
beyond") that now reads plus ultra in recognition of
Spain's discovery of new lands. The presence of a crown symbol, of course, has
been absent in republican periods. The national flag is thus quite recent—it
has only been displayed on public buildings since 1908—and its iconography much
manipulated, as is that on the coins of the realm. Many regional and local
symbols have been more stable in time. This in itself suggests the depth of
localism and regionalism and the seriousness of giving them due weight in symbolizing
the nation as a whole. In some instances the iconography or language of
monarchy and the use of the adjective "royal" ( real )
takes precedence over the term "national." The national anthem is
called the Marcha real, or Royal March, and has no words; at
least one attempt to attach words met with public apathy.
Some of the most compelling and widespread
national symbols and events are those rooted in the religious calendar. The
patron saint of Spain is Santiago, the Apostle Saint James the Greater, with
his shrine at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, the focus of medieval
pilgrimages that connected Christian Spain to the rest of Christian Europe. The
feast of Santiago on 25 July is a national holiday, as is the feast of the
Immaculate Conception, 8 December, which is also Spain's Mother's Day. Other
national holidays include Christmas, New Year's Day, Epiphany, and Easter. The
feast of Saint Joseph, 19 March, is Father's Day. The ancient folk festival of
Midsummer's Eve, 21 June, is conflated with the feast of Saint John (San Juan)
on 24 June and is also the current king's name day. Our Columbus Day, 12
October, is the DÃa de Hispanidad, also a national holiday.
There are also secular figures that transcend
place and have become iconic of Spain as a whole. The most important are the
bull, from the complex of bullfighting traditions across Spain, and the figures
of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, from Miguel de Cervantes's novel of 1605.
These share a place in Spaniards' consciousness along with the Holy Family,
emblems of locality (including locally celebrated saints), and a deep sense of
participation in a history that has set Spain apart from the rest of Europe.
Ethnic relations and History of spain:
Emergence of the Nation. Early unification of Spain's tribal groups
occurred under Roman rule (circa 200 B.C.E. to circa 475 C.E. ) when the Latin ancestral language was implanted, eventually
giving rise to all of the Iberian languages except Basque. Other aspects of
administration, military and legal organization, and sundry cultural and social
processes and institutions derived from the Roman presence. Christianity was
introduced to Spain in Roman times, and the Christianization of the populace
continued into the Visigothic period (475 to 711 C.E. ). Spain's major contacts were Mediterranean (Phoenician, Greek,
Roman, and North African) until the entry of the Visigoths from across the
Pyrenees. The Visigoths were the first foreign power to establish their centers
in the northern rather than the southern half of the peninsula. Visigothic rule
saw the implantation of new forms of local governance, new legal codes, and the
Christianization of the peoples of Spain's mountainous north. A Jewish
population was present in Spain from about 300 B.C.E. , before Roman colonization, and throughout Spain's subsequent
history until the expulsion in 1492 of those Jews who did not choose to convert
to Christianity.
The Visigoths fell to Muslim invasion from North
Africa in 711 C.E. and subsequently took refuge in the far north,
while the south came under Islamic rule, most notably from the caliphate
established at the southern city of Córdoba and ruling from 969 until 1031. The
presence of Islam inspired from the beginning a Christian insurgency from the
northern refuge areas, and this built over the centuries. Much of the northern
meseta was a frontier between Christian kingdoms and the caliphate—or smaller
Muslim kingdoms ( taifas ) after the caliphate's fall.
Christians pushed this frontier increasingly southward until their final
victory over the last Islamic stronghold, Granada, in 1492. During this period,
Christian power was continually consolidated with Castile at its center. Also
in 1492, under the sponsorship of the Catholic Kings, Fernando and Isabel,
Columbus encountered the New World. Thus began the formation of Spain's great
overseas empire at exactly the time at which Christian Spain triumphed over
Islam and expelled unconverted Muslims and Jews from Spanish soil.
Spain has been a committed Roman Catholic nation
throughout modern times. This commitment has informed many of Spain's relations
with other nations. Internally, while the populace is almost wholly Catholic,
there has been much philosophical, social-class, and regional variance over
time regarding the position of the church and clergy. These issues have joined
other secular ones, some regarding succession to the Crown, to produce a
dynamic national political history. Twice the monarchy has given way to a
republic—the first from 1873 to 1875, the second from 1931 to 1936. The Second
Republic was overthrown in 1936 by a military uprising. Following a bloody
civil war, General Francisco Franco, in 1939, established a conservative,
Catholic, and fascist dictatorship that lasted until his death in 1975. Franco
regarded himself as a regent for a future king and selected the grandson of the
last ruler (Alfonso XIII, who left Spain in 1931) as the king to succeed him.
Franco died in 1975 and King Juan Carlos I then gained the helm of a
constitutional monarchy, which took a democratic Spain into the twenty-first
century.
National Identity. Spanish national sentiment and a sense of unity
rest on shared experience and institutions and have been strengthened by
Spain's relative separation from the rest of Europe by the forbidding barrier
of the Pyrenees range. Processes promoting unification were begun under Rome
and the Visigoths, and the Christianization of the populace was particularly
important. Christian identity was strengthened in the centuries of
confrontation with Islam and again with the Spaniards' establishment of
Christianity in the New World. The events of 1492 brought senses of both a
renewed and an emergent nation through the reestablishment of Christian
hegemony on Spanish soil and the achievement of new power in the New World,
which placed Spain in the avant garde of all Europe.
Ethnic Relations. One legacy of Spain's medieval convivencia (living
together) of Christians, Jews, and Muslims is a universal consciousness of that
history and the presence in folklore, language, and popular thought of images
of Jews and "Moors" and of characteristics and activities imputed to
or associated with them. The notion of cultural difference or ethnicity is
often submerged by facts of religious difference (except in the case of Spanish
Gypsies, who are Catholics). Through most of the twentieth century, Spanish
society (unlike Spain's former colonies in the New World, Africa, and Asia) was
not ethnically diverse, except for the presence of Gypsies, who arrived in
Spain in the fifteenth century. Other non-European presences were relatively
few, except for growing tourism in the last decades of the century, a United
States military presence at a small number of bases in Spain, a modest Latin
American presence, and the beginning of the passage through Spain of North
African workers, especially Moroccans (who by late in the century would become
a labor presence in Spain itself). Small communities of Jews, mostly European
and not necessarily of Sephardic origin, were reestablished in Spain following
World War II, particularly in Madrid and Barcelona. Despite these late
twentieth century trends, Spaniards' most consistent and abiding sense of
difference between themselves and others on their own soil is in regard to
Gypsies, who occupy the same marginal place in Spanish
society to which they are relegated in most European countries.
Urbanism, Architecture, and the Use of Space
Spanish settlements are typically tightly
clustered. The concentration of structures in space lends an urban quality even
to small villages. The Spanish word pueblo, often narrowly
translated as "village," actually refers equally to a populace, a
people, or a populated place, either large or small, so a pueblo can be a
village, a city, or a national populace. Size, once again, is secondary to the
fact of a concentration of people. In most rural areas, dwellings, barns,
storage houses, businesses, schoolhouses, town halls, and churches are close to
one another, with fields, orchards, gardens, woods, meadows, and pastures lying
outside the inhabited center. These latter are "the countryside"
( campo ), but the built center, no matter how large or small,
is a distinct space: the urban center with a populace. Campo and pueblo are
essentially separate kinds of space.
In some areas, human habitation is dispersed in
the countryside; this is not the norm, and many Spaniards express pity for
those who live isolated in the countryside. Dispersed settlement is most
systematically associated with areas of mixed cultivation and cattle breeding,
mostly in humid Spain along the Atlantic north coast. The latifundios (extensive
estates) of the south also see some isolated complexes of dwelling and
out-buildings ( cortijos ), and the Catalan masÃa is
an isolated farmstead outside pueblo limits, but by and large, rural Spain is a
place of multi-family pueblos.
Spain's major cities—Madrid, Barcelona,
Valencia, Seville, and Zaragoza—and the many lesser cities, mostly provincial
capitals, are major attractions for the rural populace. The qualities of urban
life are sought after; in addition, nonagrarian work, market opportunities, and
numerous important services are heavily concentrated in cities.
Dwelling types are varied, and what are
sometimes called regional types are often in reality associated with local
geographies or, within a single zone, with rustic versus more modern styles.
Many parts of rural Spain display dwelling types that are rapidly becoming
archaic and in which people and animals share space in ways that most Spaniards
view with distaste. Most houses that meet with wider approval relegate animals
to well-insulated stables within the dwelling structures, but with separate
entries. Increasingly, however, animals are stalled entirely in outbuildings,
and motor transport and the mechanization of agriculture have, of course,
caused a significant decrease in the number and kinds of animals kept by rural
families.
Houses themselves are usually sturdily built,
often with meter-thick walls to insure stability, insulation, and privacy.
Preferred materials are stone and adobe brick fortified by heavy timbers.
Privacy is crucial because dwellings are closely clustered and often abut, even
if their walls are structurally separate. Southern Spain, in particular, is
home to houses built around off-street patios that may show mostly windowless
walls to the public street. Urban apartment buildings throughout Spain may use
the patio principle to create inner, off-street spaces for such domestic uses
as hanging laundry. Building patios also constitute informal social space for
exchange between neighbors.
Outside of dwellings and within a population
center, most spaces are very public, particularly those areas that are used for
public events. Village, town, and city streets, plazas, and open spaces are common
property and subject to regulation by civic authority. The very public nature
of outdoor space heightens the concern with the separation of domestic from
public space and the maintenance of domestic privacy. Yet family members who
share dwelling space may enjoy less privacy from one another than their
American counterparts: most urban families, in particular, live in fairly
cramped spaces in which the sharing of bedrooms and the multifunctional uses of
common rooms are frequent.
Beyond the homes of rural or middle-class urban
Spaniards, there are palaces, mansions, and monuments of both civil and sacred
architecture that display some distinctions but much similarity to comparable
structures in other parts of Europe. Spain also boasts such unique monuments of
Islamic architecture as the Alhambra in Granada and the great Mosque of
Córdoba; monuments of Roman building such as the aqueduct of Segovia and the
tripartite arch at Medinaceli; and religious architecture of early Christian
through Renaissance times. These—along with prehistoric art and sites—are
important in the array of emblems of local and regional identities.
Food and Economy of Spain:
Food in Daily Life. The traditional Spanish diet is rooted in the
products of an agrarian, pastoral, and horticultural society. Principal staples
are bread (wheat is preferred); legumes (chickpeas, Old and New World beans,
lentils); rice; garden vegetables; cured pork products; lamb and veal (and
beef, in many regions only recently sought after); eggs; barnyard animals (chickens,
rabbits, squabs); locally available wild herbs, game, fish, and shellfish;
saltfish (especially cod and congereel); olives and olive oil; orchard fruits
and nuts; grapes and wine made from grapes; milk of cows, sheep, and/or goats
and cured milk products and dishes (cured cheeses and fresh curd); honey and
Spanish-grown condiments (parsley, thyme, oregano, paprika, saffron, onions,
garlic). Home production of honey is today mostly eclipsed by use of sugarcane
and sugar-beet products, which have been commercialized in a few areas.
Most important among the garden vegetables are
potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cabbages and chard, green peas,
asparagus, artichokes and vegetable thistle ( cardo ),
zucchini squash, and eggplant. Most of these are ubiquitous but some, like
artichokes and asparagus, are also highly commercialized, especially in
conserve. Important orchard fruits besides olives are oranges and lemons,
quinces, figs, cherries, peaches, apricots, plums, pears, apples, almonds, and
walnuts. Of these, oranges, almonds, and quinces, in particular, are
commercialized, as are olives and their oil. The most important vine fruits are
grapes and melons, and in some regions there is caper cultivation. The heavily
commercialized herbs are paprika and saffron, both of which are in heavy use in
Spanish cookery.
The Spanish midday stew, of which every region
has at least one version, is a brothy dish of legumes with potatoes,
condimented with cured pork products and fresh meat(s) in small quantity, and
with greens in season at the side or in the stew. This is known as a cocido or olla (or olla
podrida ) and in some homes is eaten, in one or another version, every
day. On days of abstinence from meat, cocido will be made with saltcod ( bacalao )
or salted congereel ( cóngrio ). In the eastern rice-producing
areas around Valencia and Murcia, the midday meal may instead be one of
the paella family of dishes (rice with vegetables, meat,
poultry, and/or seafood). These rice dishes are eaten everywhere but in some
areas are often reserved for Sundays.
The midday meal ( comida )
around 2:00 P.M. is the day's principal meal, usually taken by
families together at home. This follows a small breakfast ( desayuno )
of coffee or chocolate and bread or other dough products—purchased breakfast
cakes, packaged cookies, or dough fritters ( churros ). Family
members may breakfast at different times. A mid-morning
snack
( almuerzo )—which is a heavy one for
farmers in the fields or physical laborers—may also be taken more individually.
In the late afternoon, between 6:00 and 8:00 P.M. , people may eat a substantial snack ( merienda ) at or away from home—or snack on tapas (appetizers) with a drink at a bar; for some
families the merienda replaces the later supper. When
taken, the supper ( cena ) is a light meal—often of
soup, eggs, fish, or cold meats—and is eaten by families together around
10:00 P.M. This meal pattern is national
except that in the Catalan area main meal hours are earlier, somewhat as in
France (1:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. ).
The family meals, comida and cena, are important
gathering times. Even in congested urban areas, most working people travel home
to the comida and return to work afterwards. Commercial and office hours are
designed around the comida hours: most businesses are closed by 1:00 or
2:00 P.M. and do not reopen for afternoon business until
4:00 or 5:00 P.M. at the earliest, depending upon the
season—winter bringing earlier afternoon hours than summer. Banks and many
offices have no afternoon hours. Food stores, butchers, and fishmongers may
remain open longer in the mornings and not reopen until at least 6:00 (or not
reopen at all) and then remain open until about 9:00 P.M. to accommodate late shoppers. Virtually all commerce is closed by
the family supper hour of 10:00 P.M. , except of course
taverns, bars, and restaurants.
Restaurant dining has become common in the urban
middle, professional, and upper classes, where restaurants have made a few
inroads on the home meals of some families; in general, however, family comida
and cena hours are crucial aspects of family life throughout the nation.
Restaurants in urban areas date only from the mid-nineteenth century: the Swiss
restaurateur opened his eponymous Lhardy in Madrid in 1839. Other kinds of establishments—taverns,
houses specializing in specific kinds of drinks (such as chocolate), and inns
( fondas ) offering meals to travelers are of course much
older. But urban restaurants offering meals to those who could eat at home
instead represented a new kind of social activity to those who could afford the
price. Into the 1970s, Spaniards who ate in restaurants did so mostly in
families and mostly to eat together, at leisure and in public, and not to try
new foods. Menus were mostly of Spanish dishes from the same inventory home
cooks also produced.
Spain's principal national dishes and foodstuffs
are the various cocidos and the paella family of dishes,
stuffed peppers, the tortilla española or Spanish omelette (a
thick cake of eggs and sliced potatoes), and cured hams and sausages. A dish
like gazpacho is most closely associated with AndalucÃa and is usually seasonal
but today has national recognition, even though most of its varieties are
little known outside their home zones. Tomato gazpacho is one of the Spanish
dishes that has an international presence, as do paellas and
mountain ( serrano ) hams.
Spain's contemporary version of the ancient
refreshments barley-water (French orgeat ) or almond-water is
made from the tuber chufa and is called horchata. This
beverage is produced mostly for Spanish consumption. Another beverage, sherry
wine, which is produced around the southern town of Jerez de la Frontera, has
international fame. And it was Spaniards who first introduced Europeans to
drinking chocolate. Chocolate parlors, like coffee-houses and wine cellars, are
public gathering places that purvey and attract customers to drink specific
beverages. In the apple country of the north, especially in Asturias, sidrerÃas, or
cider lagers, are important gathering places. Their product, hard cider, is
also bottled and exported to other regions and abroad. Wine, however, is the
most common accompaniment to meals in most of the nation, and beer is drunk
mostly before or between meals.
A number of desserts and sweets have a national
presence, principally a group of milk desserts of the flan or caramel custard
family. Cheese figures strongly as a dessert and is often served with quince
paste. Almond or almond-paste confections made with honey and egg whites ( turrón, almond
nougat or brittle) and marzipan ( mazapán ) are eaten
everywhere during the Christmas season and are shipped across the nation and
abroad from eastern almond-growing centers around Alicante (especially the town
of Jijona).
Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. Eating and drinking together are Spaniards'
principal ways of spending time together, either at everyday leisure moments,
weekly on Sundays, or on special occasions. Special occasions include both
general religious feast days such as Easter and Christmas and such family
celebrations as birthdays, personal saints' days, baptisms, First Communions,
and weddings. Many of these involve invited guests, and in small villages there
may be at least token food offerings to the whole populace. Food is the
principal currency of social exchange. Everywhere people with enough leisure
form groups whose main purpose is the periodic enjoyment together of food and/
or drink. These sociable groups of friends are called cuadrillas,
peñas, or by other terms, and their number is by no means confined to
the well-known men's eating societies of Basque Country.
The contents of special meals vary. Some feature
dishes from the daily inventory at their most elaborate and numerous, with the
most select ingredients. Some respond to the Church's required abstentions
(principally from meat) on particular days such as Christmas Eve and during
Lent. Salt cod and eel are especially important in meatless dishes. Some purely
secular festivals of rural families accompany the execution of major tasks: the
sheepshearing, the pig slaughter, or the threshing of the grain harvest. In
some regions, a funeral meal follows a burial; this is hosted by the family of
the deceased for their kin and other invited guests. This (meatless) meal is in
most places a thing of the past, and the Church has discouraged funeral
banquets, but it was an important tradition in the north, in Basque, and in
other regions.
Basic Economy. Spain has been a heavily agrarian, pastoral, and
mercantile nation. As of the middle of the twentieth century the nation was
principally rural. Today, industry is more highly developed, and Spain is a
member of the European Economic Community and participates substantially in the
global economy. Farmers' voluntary reorganization of the land base and the
mechanization of agriculture (both accomplished with government assistance)
have combined to modernize farming in much of the nation; these developments
have in turn promoted migration from rural areas into Spain's cities, which grew
significantly in the twentieth century. With the development of industry
following World War II, cities offer industrial and other blue- and
white-collar employment to the descendants of farm families.
The Spanish countryside as a whole has been
largely self-sufficient. Local production varies greatly, even within regions,
so regional and inter-regional markets are important vehicles of exchange, as
has been a long tradition of interregional peddling by rural groups who came to
specialize in purveying goods of different kinds away from their homes.
Property and Land tenure. The chief factors that differentiate Spanish
property and land tenure regimes are estate size and their partibility or
impartibility.
Much of the southern half of Spain, roughly
south of the River Tajo, is characterized by latifundios, or
large estates, on which a single owner employs farm laborers who have little or
no property of their own. Large estates date at least from Roman times and have
given rise to a significant separation of social classes: one class consisting
of the relatively leisured latifundio owners and the other class comprising the
landless agrarian laborers who work for them, usually on short-term contracts,
and live most of the time in the fairly large centers known as agro-towns. In
the north, by contrast, properties are small ( minifundios )
and are lived on—usually in pueblo communities—and worked principally by the
families of their owners or secondarily by families who live on and work the
estates on long-term leases.
The north of Spain, dominated by minifundios, is
crosscut by a difference in inheritance laws whereby in some areas estates are
impartible and in others are divisible among heirs. Most of the nation is
governed by Castilian law, which fosters the division of the bulk of an estate
among all heirs, male and female, with a general (though variable) stress on
equality of shares. There is a deep tradition in the northeast, however,
whereby estates are passed undivided to a single heir (not everywhere or always
necessarily a male or the firstborn), while other heirs receive only some
settlement at marriage or have to remain single in order to stay on the
familial property. This tradition characterizes the entire Pyrenean region,
both Basque and Catalan, and adjacent zones of Cataluña, Navarra, and Aragón.
The passage of estates undivided down the generations is a touchstone of
cultural identity where it is practiced (just as estate division is deeply
valued elsewhere), and as part of a separate and ancient legal system, the
protection of impartibility has been central to these regions' contentions with
Castile over the centuries. Spanish civil law recognizes stem-family succession
in the regions where it is traditional through codified exceptions to the Castilian
law followed in the rest of the nation. Nonetheless, the tradition of estate
impartibility along the linguistic distinctions of the Basque and Catalan
regions have long combined with other issues to make the political union of
these two regions with the rest of Spain the most fragile seam in the national
fabric.
Commercial Activities. Among Spain's traditional export products are
olive oil, canned artichokes and asparagus, conserved fish (sardines,
anchovies, tuna, saltcod), oranges (including the bitter or "Seville"
oranges used in marmalade), wines (including sherry), paprika made from peppers
in various regions, almonds, saffron, and cured pork products. Cured serrano ham
and the paprika-and-garlic sausage called chorizo have
particular renown in Europe.
Historically, Spain held a world monopoly on
merino sheep and their wool; Spain's wool and textile production (including
cotton) is still important, as is that of lumber, cork, and the age-old work of
shipbuilding. There is coal mining in the north, especially in the region of
Asturias, and metal and other mineral extraction in different regions. The
Canary Islands' production of tobacco and bananas is important, as is that of
esparto grass on the eastern meseta for the manufacture of traditional footgear
and other items. Even though Spain no longer participates in Atlantic cod
fishery, Spain's fisheries are nonetheless important for both national
consumption and for export, and canneries are present in coastal areas. There
is increasingly rapid transport of seafood to the nation's interior to satisfy
Spaniards' high demand for quality fresh fish and shellfish.
Leather and leather goods have longstanding and
continuing importance, as do furniture and paper manufacture. Several different
regions supply both utilitarian and decorative ceramics and ceramic tiles,
along with art ceramics; others supply traditional cloth handiwork, both lace
and embroidery, while others are known for specific metal crafts—such as the
knife manufacture associated with Albacete and the decorative damascene work on
metal for which Toledo is famed.
Major Industries. Spain's heavy industry has developed since the
end of the Civil War, with investments by Germany and Italy, and after the
middle of the twentieth century with investments by the United States. The
basis for these developments is old, however: iron mining and arms and
munitions manufacture have been important for centuries, principally in the
north. Spain's arms and munitions production is still important today, along with
the manufacture of agricultural machinery, automobiles, and other kinds of
equipment. Most industry is concentrated around major cities in the north and
east—Bilbao, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, and Zaragoza. These industries have
attracted migrants from the largely agrarian south, where there are sharp
inequalities in land ownership not characteristic of the north, while other
landless southerners have made systematic labor migrations into industrial
areas of Europe—France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland.
The most far-reaching development in Spain's
economy since the 1950s has been in the multifaceted tourist industry. The
number of tourists who visit Spain each year is roughly equal to Spain's
resident population. Much of the influx is seasonal, between March and October,
but the winter season is important in a number of areas—for winter sports in
mountain zones and for the warmth of the southern coasts and the Balearic and
Canary Islands. The hotel, restaurant, and other service sectors related to
tourism constitute Spain's most significant industry, and it is one whose
effects are felt in every corner of the nation. This has to do not only with
the actual presence of tourists and the opening of areas of touristic interest,
but also with expanded markets for Spanish products abroad as well as at home.
A growing international acquaintance with Spanish foodways has enhanced the
demand for certain Spanish foodstuffs and wines. Spanish leather goods,
ceramics, and other crafts have a heightened and increasingly global market.
Additionally, the consciousness of touristic interest even in remote regions
(and not always with the help of professional promoters) has broadened local
people's awareness of the interest in their own cultural heritage.
Consequently, a variety of festivals and local products now enjoy expanded
markets that often make real differences in local economies. The market for
Spain's local and regional folk culture is not dependent just on international
tourism; internal tourism, once reserved for the wealthy, is now promoted by
television and the growth of automobile
travel
since the 1960s and has added Spaniards to the mass of foreign tourists
spending their vacation money in Spain.
Trade. Spain is a member of the European Economic Community (Common Market) and has its heaviest trading relationship there, especially with Britain, and with the United States, Japan and the Ibero-American nations with which Spain also has deep historical ties and some trade relationships which date from the period of her New World empire. Among Spain's major exports are leather and textile goods; the commercialized foodstuffs named earlier; items of stone, ceramic, and tile; metals; and various kinds of manufactured equipment. Probably Spain's most significant dependence on outside sources is for crude oil, and energy costs are high for Spanish consumers.
Trade. Spain is a member of the European Economic Community (Common Market) and has its heaviest trading relationship there, especially with Britain, and with the United States, Japan and the Ibero-American nations with which Spain also has deep historical ties and some trade relationships which date from the period of her New World empire. Among Spain's major exports are leather and textile goods; the commercialized foodstuffs named earlier; items of stone, ceramic, and tile; metals; and various kinds of manufactured equipment. Probably Spain's most significant dependence on outside sources is for crude oil, and energy costs are high for Spanish consumers.
Division of Labor. Once a predominantly agrarian and commercial
nation, Spain was transformed during the twentieth century into a modern,
industrial member of the global economic community. With land reform and
mechanization, the agrarian sector has shrunk and the commercial, industrial,
and service sectors of the economy have grown in size, significance, and global
interconnection. Because the tourist industry is Spain's greatest and this
rests on various forms of services, the service sector of the economy has seen
particular growth since the 1950s.
Social Stratification:
Classes and Castes. The apex of Spain's social pyramid is occupied
by the royal family, followed by the titled nobility and aristocratic families.
The Franco régime maintained a conservative appearance in this respect, even in
the absence of a royal family (for which Franco substituted his own). But
through history, Spaniards have been critical of their rulers. The anonymous
medieval poet said of the soldier-hero El Cid, (Ruy DÃaz de Vivar), "God,
what a good vassal! If only he had a good lord!" and the populations of
large territories in the north known in the Middle Ages as behetrÃas had
the right to shift their collective allegiance from one lord to another if the
first was found wanting.
In today's modern and democratic Spain, the
circles around the royal family, titled nobility, and old aristocrats are ever
widened by individuals who are endowed with social standing by virtue of
achievements in business, public life, or cultural activity. Wealth, including
new wealth, and family connections to contemporary forms of power count for a
great deal, but so do older concepts of family eminence. Spain's middle class
has burgeoned, its development having not suffered under Franco, and because
the disdain for commercial activity that marked the ancien
regime, and made nobles who kept their titles refrain from manual
labor and most kinds of commerce, is long gone. Many heirs to noble titles
choose not to pay the cost of claiming and maintaining them, but this does not
deny them social esteem. Many titled nobles make their livings in middle-class
professions without loss of social esteem. The bases on which Spaniards accord
esteem have expanded enormously since the demise of the feudal regime in the
mid-nineteenth century. Entrepreneurial and professional success are admired,
as are new and old money, rags-to-riches success, and descent from and
connection to eminent families.
Spain's class system is marked by modern
Euro-American models of success; upward mobility is possible for most
aspirants. Education through at least the lowest levels of university training
are today a principal vehicle of mobility, and Spain's national system of
public universities expanded greatly to accommodate demand in the last third of
the twentieth century. After family eminence combined with some level of inherited
wealth, education is increasingly the sine qua non of social advancement. The
models of social success that are emulated are various, but all involve the
trappings of material comfort and leisure as well as styles that are urbane and
sometimes have global referents rather than simply Spanish ones. While Spain
has a landed gentry—particularly in the southern latifundio regions where
landlords are leisured employers rather than farmers themselves—the gentry
itself values urbanity; increasingly these families have removed themselves to
the urban settings of provincial or national capitals.
The wide base of the social pyramid is composed,
as in western societies generally, of manual laborers, rural or urban workers
in the lower echelons of the service sector, and petty tradesmen. The
rural-urban difference is important here. Self-employed farming has always been
an honored trade (others that do not involve food production were once seen as
more dubious), but rusticity is not highly valued. Therefore, Spanish farmers,
along with country tradesmen, share the disadvantage of having a rustic rather
than an urbane image; urbanity must be gained with some effort (through
education and emulative self-styling) if one is to move upward in society from
rural beginnings.
At the margins of Spanish society are
individuals and groups whose trades involve itinerancy, proximity to animals,
and the lack of a fixed base in a pueblo community. Chief in this category are
Spain's Roma or Gypsies (though some settle permanently) and other groups who
are not necessarily of foreign origin but who shun the values Spaniards cherish
and follow more of the model that contemporary Spaniards associate with
Gypsies.
Symbols of Social Stratification. The outward signs of social differences are
embodied in the degrees to which people can display their material worth
through their homes (especially fashionable addresses) and furnishings, dress,
jewelry and other possessions, fashionable forms of leisure, and the degrees to
which their behavior reflects education, urbane sophistication, and travel. A
Spanish family's ability to take a month's vacation is famously important as a
sign of economic well-being and social status. Comfortable, even luxurious,
modes of travel—not necessarily by one's own automobile—also enhance people's
social images.
Political Life:
Government. Spain is a parliamentary monarchy with a
bicameral legislature. The current king, Juan Carlos I (the grandson of Alfonso
XIII, who was displaced by the Second Republic) is the first monarch to reign
following the Franco period. His succession (rather than that of his father,
Juan de Borbón) was determined by Franco: Juan Carlos ascended to the throne in
1975 following Franco's death. In 1978 the constitution that would govern Spain
in its new era took effect. While organizing a parliamentary democracy, it also
holds the king inviolable at the pinnacle of Spain's distribution of powers. In
1981 the king helped to maintain the constitution in force in the face of an
attempted right-wing coup; this promoted the continuance of orderly governance
under the constitution despite other kinds of disruptions—separatist terrorism
in the Basque and Catalan areas and a variety of political scandals involving
government corruption. Spain has repeatedly seen orderly elections and changes
of government and ruling party. The head of state, the prime minister, is a
member of the majority party in a multiparty system. The years under the
constitutional regime have brought Spain into the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and the European Community—and therefore, politically and
economically closer to Europe—as well as into ever wider circles of global
involvement.
The major change that has come about in Spain's
political organization under the modern
constitution is the
creation of seventeen "autonomous regions" into which the fifty
provinces are distributed. Each of the autonomous regions has its own regional
government, budget, and ministries; these replicate those at the national
level. Some provinces are now separated from or grouped differently from their
groupings in the historical kingdoms of traditional reference and so regional
identities are in many cases being newly forged. This process has its only
parallel in modern times in the original formation of the provinces themselves
in 1833.
Leadership and Political Officials. Leadership is a personal achievement but can be
aided by family connections. In Spain's multiparty system, shifts in party
governance tend to bring about changes in officialdom at deeper levels in
official entities and agencies than occur in the United States; that is, party
membership is a correlate of government employment at deeper levels and in a
greater number of spheres in Spain than in the United States. Spain's political
culture in the post-Franco period, however, is still developing.
The most local representative of national
government is the secretario local, or civil recorder, in each
municipality. Municipalities might cover one or more villages, depending on local
geography, and there is a recent trend toward consolidation. Every locality as
well has its municipal head of government, its alcalde (mayor),
or—where a village has become a dependency of a larger seat in the
municipality—an alcalde pedáneo (dependent mayor). Alcaldes are
local residents who are elected locally while the secretarios are
government appointees who have undergone training and passed civil service
examinations. The secretario is the local recorder of property transactions and
keeper of the population rolls that feed the nation's decennial census.
Social Problems and Control. Spain's justice system serves citizens from
local levels, with justices of the peace and district courts, through the level
of the nation's Supreme Court (and a separate Supreme Court for constitutional
interpretations). The system is governed by civil and criminal law codes.
Every Spanish locality is served by one or
another police force. Urban areas have municipal police forces, while rural
areas and small pueblos are covered by the Guardia Civil, or
Civil Guard. The Civil Guard, which is a national police corps, also handles
the policing of highway and other transit systems and deals with national
security, smuggling and customs, national boundary security, and terrorism.
Informal social controls are powerful forces in
Spanish communities of all sizes. In tightly clustered villages, residents are
always under their neighbors' observation, and potential criticism is a strong
deterrent against culturally defined misconduct and the failure to adhere to
expected standards. Many village communities rarely if ever activate the
official systems of justice and law enforcement; gossip and censure within the
community, and surveillance of all by all, are often sufficient. This is true
even in urban neighborhoods (though not in entire large towns and cities)
because Spaniards are socialized to observe and comment upon one another and to
establish neighborly consciousness and relationships wherever they live. The
anonymity of an American high-rise community, for example, is relatively
foreign to Spain. But it is also true that larger Spanish populations resort to
their police forces frequently and, today, are additionally plagued by the
increased street crime and burglary that characterize modern times in much of
the world.
Military Activity. Spain's armed forces—trained for land, sea, and
air—are today engaged primarily in peacetime duties and internationally in such
peacekeeping forces as those of the United Nations and in NATO actions.
Spain entered the twentieth century having lost
its colonies in the New World and the Pacific in the Spanish-American War or,
as it is known in Spain, the War of 1898. Troubles in Morocco and deep unrest
at home engaged the military from 1909 into the 1920s. Spain did not enter
World War I. The Civil War raged from 1936 to 1939. Exhausted and depleted,
Spain did not enter World War II, although its Blue Division ( División
Azul ) joined Hitler's campaign in Russia. The remainder of the
twentieth century has seen years of recovery, rebuilding, the maintenance by
Franco of a strong military presence at home, and—after his death—of the
increasing internationalization of Spain's involvements and cooperation,
military and otherwise, with the rest of western Europe.
Military officers have enjoyed high social
status in Spain and, indeed, are usually drawn from the higher social classes,
while the countryside and lower classes give their men to service when drafted.
In many places, men who reach draft age together form recognized social groups
in their hometowns. At the end of the twentieth century, although young men are
still subject to the draft, military service is open to women as well, and the
armed forces are becoming increasingly voluntary. Spain's final draft lottery
was held in the year 2000.
Social Welfare and Change Programs
Most of Spain's programs of social welfare,
service, and development are in the hands of the state—including agencies of
the regional governments—and of the Roman Catholic Church. Church and state are
separate today, but Catholicism is the religion of the great majority. The
Church itself—and Catholic agencies—have a weighty presence in organizing
social welfare and in sponsoring hospitals, schools, and aid projects of all
sorts. Local, national, and international secular agencies are active as well,
but none covers the spectrum of activities covered by the Church and the
religious orders. The state offers social security, extensive health care, and
disability benefits to most Spaniards. Actual ministration to the sick and
disadvantaged, however, often falls to Church agencies or institutions staffed
by religious personnel.
Nongovernmental Organizations and Other
Associations
The importance of the Catholic Church in the
spectrum of nongovernmental associations is great, both at parish levels and
above. A hallmark of Spanish social organization in purely secular as well as
in religious matters, however, is the formation of small groups on the basis of
shared locality and/or other interests—sometimes in a guildlike manner—to pool
resources, extend mutual aid, complete large tasks, or simply to share
sociability. When based on shared locality, these groups are found from small
villages to neighborhoods of large cities; nonlocal groups are based on common
occupations or other shared experiences and interests. They offer intimacy
beyond the family and join individuals within or between neighborhoods and
localities. The spectrum of secular groups of this kind is extended—but by no
means dominated—by such religious groups as saints' confraternities, other
kinds of brotherhoods, and voluntary church-based associations dedicated to a
variety of social as well as devotional ends. In addition, large-scale
regional, national, and international organizations have an increasing
importance in Spanish society in the field of nongovernmental associations, an
area that was once more completely dominated by Church-related organizations.
Gender Roles and Statuses:
Division of Labor by Gender. The sexual division of labor varies by region
and social class. In rural areas with a plow culture, men do most of the
agricultural tasks, and
women garden and keep house. In areas such as the humid north coast, where one
finds a greater emphasis on animal husbandry and horticulture, both sexes
garden and tend cattle, sheep, and goats. Professional herding (i.e., for
hire), however, normally falls to men, and in regions of sheep—rather than
cattle—herding, men do most of the herding. Women perform men's tasks when
necessary but are least likely to drive a plow or tractor. Men do women's tasks
when necessary—and many men like to cook—but are least likely to do mending
and, above all, laundry. Married men and women run their domestic economies and
raise their children in partnership. It is traditional throughout Spain,
however, that men and women pursue leisure separately, particularly in public
places, where they gather with friends and neighbors of like sex and the same
general age. The kinds of groups that enjoy leisure together form early in
life.
The separation of the sexes in leisure
establishes the pattern on which the division of labor is enacted among the
elite. Where economic circumstances permit, men and women lead more separate
lives than occurs among the peasantry, and then the traditional divisions of
male from female tasks are less often breached. In public life, men more often
pursue politics, and women maintain the family's religious observance and spend
more time in child rearing and household management than men do. Where they
have hired household help, the servants are likely women, and these are an old
part of the nation's female work force, which is now expanding in new
directions. The traditional ideal of a sexual division of labor is best
achieved by the leisured classes, whom peasants emulate when they can. Domestic
servants have always played a vital role in communicating élite models to the
peasantry and working classes.
The Relative Status of Women and Men. Spanish women under Castilian law inherit property
equally with their brothers. They may also manage and dispose of it freely.
This independence of control was traditionally relinquished to the husband upon
marriage, but unmarried women or widows could wield the power of their
properties independently. Today spouses are absolutely equal under the law.
Royal and noble women succeed to family titles
if they have no brothers. In some areas of Spain, a woman may be heir to the
family estate, but if she is not and instead marries an heir, she lives under
the roof and rule of her husband and his parents. Nonetheless, women do not
change their birth surnames at marriage in any part of Spain and can have
public identities quite separate from those of their husbands.
Women were traditionally homemakers. Today they
are found throughout the business, professional, and political worlds. In rural
and working-class families, too, married women now often work outside the home
and so experience both the independence and the frustrations of working women
in countries where the female workforce emerged earlier. Spanish couples began
controlling their family size long ago, and Spain now permits divorce, so more
Spanish women are finding new kinds of freedom from their traditional roles as
wives and mothers of large families. There seem to be relatively few barriers
to their advancement in most kinds of work. Despite women's traditional
association with home-making, Spaniards have long accepted the independence of
women and the prominence of some of them (including their queens and noble
women). Women's present emergence in the workforce, in the professions, and in
government occurred in Spain without a marked feminist rebellion.
Marriage, Family, and Kinship:
Marriage. Spaniards today marry for mutual attraction and
shun the idea of arranged marriages. Class consciousness and material
self-interest, however, lead people to socialize and marry largely within their
own social classes or to aim for a match with a spouse who is better off.
Traditionally, access to property was an important concern for farmers, with
well-being often counting for more than love. But marriage ties traditionally
could not be broken and long courtships helped couples find compatibility
before they took their marriage vows. Marriage is a partnership, although
different input is expected of the two sexes, and the rearing of a family is
regarded as central to it. Remarriage for widowed individuals beyond
childbearing age was traditionally greeted with community ribaldry, since a
sexual relationship was being entered into without the end of family-building.
These views and customs are becoming archaic. Divorce is now permitted;
liaisons outside of marriage are increasingly common and accepted; and the
economics of marriage for most people are freed from the ties to landed
property that obtained when Spain was more heavily rural and agrarian.
Domestic Unit. Most Spaniards live in nuclear-family households
of parents and unmarried children, and this is widely held as ideal. A Spanish
saying goes "casado casa quiere " ("a married
person wants a house"). Older couples or unmarried adults tend to live on
their own.
Two kinds of household formations produce stem
families. Where estates are impartible, the married heir lives and raises his
children on the parental estate and expects his heir to do likewise. In areas
where estates are divided, an adult heir may nonetheless stay on with his or
her parents on their house site. This is often the youngest child, who agrees
to stay on in the aging parents' household, but such arrangements are not
necessarily replicated generation after generation. Where two generations of
married adults co-reside, it is often on impartible farms, and many heirs
forsake farming these days in order to live independently and earn a salaried
living in urban comfort. The acknowledged strains between co-resident married
couples suggest that indeed casado casa quiere, and demographers find the
stem-family régime to be waning. This does not mean that the philosophy of
estate impartibility is any weaker, however, in areas where it is traditional.
Inheritance. In addition to land, rural estates include
houses and outbuildings; animals; farm machinery; household goods, utensils,
and tools; larder contents; furniture and clothing; jewelry; and cash. Nonfarm
estates might include fewer types of property. Where estates go to a single
heir, this usually includes animals, equipment, house and outbuildings, and
most furnishings—the things that are essential for the farm effort. Some
amounts of other types of property, especially liquid cash, can be separated
and go to noninheriting children. This kind of settlement with nonheirs is
ordinary when a young heir takes over an estate at his parents' death.
Sometimes—in any part of Spain—parents make premortem donations to their heirs,
dividing estates according to custom and either keeping enough for their own
maintenance or contracting for maintenance with the heirs. Maintenance is less
a question in stem family households in which aging parents continue to live.
Where there are multiple heirs, as in most of Spain, the majority of an estate
is divided equally among them. This may involve lots containing very different
types of property—some with more land and animals, others with more cash or
other goods—all items are assigned a cash value so that lots are of equal value
even if their contents differ. In other local traditions, every kind of item,
including a house, is divided equally. Castilian law allows for the free
disposition of a portion of estates: some families use this to benefit disabled
children, for example, but regions differ (as do families) as to how willing
people are to dispense with the equal division of the entire estate. Some are
meticulous about equal shares down to the last cent.
Kin Groups. All Spaniards, including Basques, reckon kinship
in effectively the same way: bilaterally and using an Eskimo-type
terminology—the same as most Europeans and Americans. Basques, however, have a
concept of the kindred that joins certain relatives (including some in-laws)
beyond the nuclear or extended family for particular purposes, notably funerary
observances. This notion of the kindred is lacking elsewhere in Spain, where
kinship relations beyond the household are nonetheless supremely important in
social life.
Family ( familia ) and
relatives ( parientes ) are defined broadly (without
genealogical limits) and inclusively (embracing in-laws as well as blood
relatives) to create a large pool of relations beyond the limits of any single
household or locality. Within this pool, people socialize as much by choice as
by obligation, and obligations to relatives beyond the nuclear family are more
moral than legal ones. Although this field of relations is at best loosely
structured and relations between kinsmen from different households must be
viewed as voluntary, kinship networks are extraordinarily important in
Spaniards' lives and serve as vital connectors in many realms, influencing such
choices as those of residence, occupation, migration, and even marriage.
Despite diminishing family size, the Spanish family as an instituted set of
relationships remains extremely strong.
Socialization:
Infant Care. Infants are breast- or bottle fed and weaned on
cereal pap and other soft or mashed solid foods. Neither feeding patterns nor
weaning and toilet training are rigid. Infants are treated with affection and
good humor and scoldings are often accompanied by kisses. The threat of social
shame is a tool in teaching desirable conduct, but adults do not actually shame
children in public. Teasing and taunting are not normal parts of adults'
exchange with children. men and women alike hold and shower affection on babies,
although in the urban middle classes fathers may—or once did—treat their
growing children more formally than their mothers do.
Infants of both sexes are carefully, even
ornately, dressed. Sometimes strangers can detect their sex only by the
presence of earrings on girl babies, whose ears are usually pierced in their
first weeks of life. As they become toddlers, babies' clothes come to reflect
their sex, as boys wear short pants and girls wear dresses. Toddlers of both
sexes may sleep together at home and in public form mixed play groups. Their
play becomes separate as they reach the ages of five or six, and they are also
likely then to sleep in separate rooms or with older siblings of the same sex.
At this stage, sex-appropriate behavior models are presented to them.
Child Rearing and Education. The birth of children is seen as the chief
purpose of marriage. Children of both sexes are valued and raised with
affection, even adoration, by parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and
older siblings. Children are expected to be loving in return; a modicum of
obedience is expected, but displays of obstinacy or temper are not sternly
punished. Upbringing is not rigid, but as they grow children are expected to
understand the constraints upon the adults around them and to learn respect and
helpfulness as they approach the age at which they begin school (six).
Children's environments are intensely social, not usually enhanced by large
numbers of toys or children's furniture. Children are expected to take their pleasures
(and also learn) from inclusion in the adult world, where they are involved in
and witness to interactions from their earliest days. They are almost
constantly surrounded by others and often also sleep as infants with their
parents and later with older siblings. Parents may depend on schoolteachers for
discipline and use teachers' judgments—or those of priests—as part of their own
approach to child training once children are of school age. Most Spaniards see
schooling as crucial to their children's life chances, particularly if they are
to leave traditional rural occupations as most do. The urban working classes,
like most rural food producers, place high value on basic literacy and on
schooling beyond the obligatory age of fourteen to ensure entry into the world
of employed or self-employed modern Spaniards.
Higher Education. For most Spaniards, vocational and academic
secondary schooling is crucial, but they also hope to send their children to
college if not for higher degrees as well. The professions are much admired, as
is knowledge in general. Most of Spain's university system is public and
governed in accord with nationwide regulations; it is heavily enrolled and was
vastly expanded in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Etiquette
Basic norms of civility and propriety, such as
definitions of accepted levels of dress or undress, are comparable to the rest
of Europe and the West in general. A crucial aspect of spoken exchange in
Spanish is selective use of the formal you ( usted, pl. ustedes )
or the familiar tú (pl. vosotros ). The
formal form was once used by the young to their seniors even in the family but
this is now uncommon. Outside of the family, the formal is used in situations
of social distance and inequality, including age inequalities, and it is often
used reciprocally by both parties as a sign of respect for social distance
rather than a mark of one party's superiority. There is some regional and
social-class variance in patterns of formal versus familiar address and the
ease or rapidity with which people who are no longer strangers shift to the
familiar tú.
Table etiquette for most occasions is informal
by many European standards. People who eat together do so with relative
intimacy and unpretension. Even in many restaurants, but especially at home,
diners share certain kinds of dishes from a common platter: certain appetizers,
salads, and traditionally paella. Verbal etiquette—to say to
others "que aproveche " ("may it benefit
you")—is reserved for people who are not sharing food at the same table:
it is an etiquette of separation rather than inclusion. Eaters may say to an
outsider "Si le guste" ("would you like
some?"), to which the response
is "que aproveche," but this exchange does
not occur when the outsider is expected to join the table. Instead, in the
latter case, the outsider would simply be told, "come and eat."
Religion
Religious Beliefs. Spain has been a profoundly Catholic country for
centuries, and Catholicism was the official religion for most of recent history
until after the death of Franco. Church and state were separated briefly under
both the First and Second Republics, but their lasting separation did not begin
until the 1978 constitution took effect. Even though their numbers have grown,
non-Catholics in Spain today probably number less than 2 percent of the
populace. Under Franco, regulations concerning the practice of other religions
relegated them to near invisibility even while they were not outlawed. Today
non-Catholics practice openly.
Although the vast majority of Spaniards are
Catholics, there is great variance in the degree to which baptized Spaniards
are observant and in the style of their devotions. The economic and political
powers of the Church have promoted deep anticlericalism among many believing Catholics,
often setting regions, smaller localities, or households, as well as different
social classes, against one another. The differing politics of Spanish
Catholicism give different sectors of the population different profiles even
when basic religiosity itself is not at issue. The complex Catholic tradition
admits private forms of devotion along with the more public and collective
forms, so that even small populations see and tolerate some internal diversity
in religious practice.
There are also nonbelievers. The current
environment encourages a freer expression of nonbelief than has been usual
except briefly in the last centuries, and some young parents do not baptize
their children. This is not necessarily very common; the number of baptisms
performed in Spain has shown some decline, but so has the birthrate.
All Spaniards of whatever faith live in a
Catholic environment—a landscape filled with shrines and churches; an artistic
heritage rich in religious reference; language and customs in which folklore
and religious lore converge; chiefly secular festivals that are enacted on a
religious calendar; and a national history accurately construed as the defense
of Christianity, with the Catholic Church a central presence from century to
century. Students of Spain, visitors, and practitioners of other faiths must
all understand this Catholic environment if they are to understand Spanish
national culture.
Religious Practitioners. In an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the
religious practitioners are members of the Church hierarchy, the ordinary
clergy, and members of the monastic orders (both monks and nuns). The monastic
orders are very important in sponsoring institutions of primary and secondary
education. The clergy, of course, serve the entire population beginning at
parish level. The hierarchy of religious officialdom has its pinnacle in the
Vatican and the office of Pope. The clergy and officialdom of minority
religions—Jewish, Muslim, various Protestant denominations, and others—are also
present to openly serve their adherents. They are, however, very few in number.
Rituals and Holy Places. Spanish pueblos, from hamlets to large cities,
and many neighborhoods within population centers, all have patron saints each
of whose days occasions a public festival, or fiesta. These fiestas punctuate
the year and, along with weddings, comprised the principal events of
traditional social life, especially in rural areas. Fiestas are both religious
and secular in nature and usually involve feasting on both public and household
levels as well as the celebration of masses. Some populations sponsor
bullfights or other public entertainments on major fiestas. Shrines, which are
associated with miracles, are often located outside of population centers and
are visited (as are churches) by individual devotés or by large groups on the
days associated with the holy figures to whom they are dedicated. Collective
pilgrimages to shrines in the countryside on their special days are
called romerÃas and typically involve picnicking as well as
masses and prayer.
Shrines, from caves or country huts to elaborate
structures, and churches, from village parish churches to cathedrals, are the
holy places of Spanish Catholicism. Their fiestas are scattered through the
year and do not involve the nation or necessarily even a whole town or region.
Overarching Church fiestas that engage the whole populace are such official
Church holidays as Easter, Christmas, or Corpus Cristi, for a few examples, and
the day of Santiago (the Apostle Saint James the Greater), the national patron,
on 25 July. These national religious holidays are celebrated by formal masses
but also with varied local traditions throughout the nation. Catholic masses
themselves are largely universal rituals not subject to significant local
variance.
Medicine and Health Care:
Spaniards are covered by a national health care
system which today serves virtually the entire population. Folklorists and
ethnographers have studied a wealth of folk beliefs regarding causes and cures
of illness, but it is rare that people in any corner of the nation forego their
free medical coverage to depend solely on folk cures or curers. The use of
herbal remedies and knowledgeable but medically untrained midwives or
bonesetters may persist, but only alongside the widespread patronage of
pharmacies and medical practitioners. Scholars of folk medical systems and
beliefs can find rich material in Spain, but this in no way marks Spaniards as
primitive users unaware of the benefits of mainstream modern medicine.
Secular Celebrations:
Many of Spain's major festivals have a dual
quality whereby essentially secular festivals are enacted at times that have
religious meaning as well. Every day of the year is associated with one or more
saints or holy meanings in the Catholic calendar, yet some of the events that
take place on specified religious holidays have a distinctly secular
quality—bullfights on fiesta days; the king's official birthday
(a national holiday) on
24 June, the Feast of San Juan (Saint John); village business accounting
meetings held after mass on designated days. Spain's most secular national
holiday is 12 October, the celebration of Hispanidad, or the
Hispanization of the New World following Columbus's landfall on that day in
1492. But true to form, many Spaniards also celebrate the very popular Virgin
of El Pilar on 12 October, either because they are named for her, live around
Zaragoza (of which she is patroness), or belong to a guild or other group (such
as the Civil Guard) of which she is the designated patroness.
The Arts and Humanities:
Support for the Arts. Spain's artistic production has recovered
rapidly from the stultifying Franco years when many artists, writers, and
musicians worked in exile. There is enormous public interest in works of art
and architecture (where Antoni GaudÃ's name must be listed), in Spain's art
museums, as well as in its architectural monuments of various periods and in
its important archeological sites, widely visited by Spaniards along with
foreign tourists. Madrid and Barcelona both count among Europe's stellar museum
cities. The arts receive both government and private support; major artists are
treated as celebrities, and the humanities and fine arts are all firmly
instituted in universities and professional academies, along with a multitude
of local, regional, and national museums.
Literature. Spanish writers from the Middle Ages to the
present have contributed to the inventory of literary masterpieces of the West.
Cervantes's (1547–1616) Don Quixote; the works of Lope de Vega
Carpio (1562–1635) and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681); the poetry and
plays of Federico GarcÃa Lorca (1898–1936); and the works of five Nobel
laureates in literature are but a few from different periods. There are early
monuments of vernacular literature from the Middle Ages, as well, that
enlighten the study of medieval Europe as a whole.
Graphic Arts. Spain's graphic artists are also world renowned
and also span centuries—El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos; 1541–1614), Diego
de Velázquez (1599–1660), Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), JoaquÃn Sorolla
(1863–1923), Joan Miró (1893–1983), Salvador Dalà (1904–1989), and Pablo
Picasso (1881–1973), among many others, can be studied in museums and
universities anywhere. Contemporary painters and sculptors have an avid
following in Spain and elsewhere.
The decorative arts also form a rich part of
Spain's national heritage and are well displayed in museums in Spain and
elsewhere. Ceramic tile, other ceramic forms, lace work, weavings, embroidery,
and other craft art often form the chief adornments in Spanish homes, are part
of the traditional trousseau (personal possessions of a bride), and are the
treasures passed down the generations. More than painting and sculpture, these
are forms to which even humble Spaniards have intense attachments and whose
style and motifs often serve as emblems of national or regional identity.
Performance Arts. The flamenco idiom of song,
dance, and musical accompaniment is generally seen as uniquely Spanish and,
while appreciated everywhere, is most closely associated with AndalucÃa. The
elevation of the classical guitar to wide recognition as a concert instrument
in the twentieth century is also closely identified with Spain and with Spanish
composers and performers (for example, JoaquÃn Rodrigo [1901–1999] and Andrés
Segovia [1893?–1987] respectively). Spanish composers generally—such as Enrique
Granados (1867–1916), Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909), and Manuel de Falla
(1876–1946)—have brought the Spanish folk musical idiom onto world concert
stages. Appreciation of Spanish light opera, the zarzuela , is
more dependent on Spanish-language competence. Nevertheless, the zarzuela has
recognition beyond the Spanish-speaking world, especially through the person of
such a performer as Plácido Domingo (1941–).
Spain has had an active film industry since the
1890s. The great popularity in Spain of the film medium has made it a vehicle
of social and political commentary and, therefore, opened it to the censorship
under which film production has labored in some periods. Movie makers worked
under restrictive censureship during different periods between about 1913 and
1978, and therefore some Spaniards produced their films clandestinely or
outside of Spain. LuÃs Buñuel is one example who gained international renown.
Others, like LuÃs GarcÃa Berlanga managed to gain wide recognition with films
made in Spain. Contemporary Spanish directors whose names are familiar to
Americans are Carlos Saura and Pedro Almodóvar. Almodóvar won the 1999 Oscar
for best foreign film for his "All About My Mother." Spaniards are
avid movie-goers and the history of their film industry has been the subject of
serious study by cultural analysts.
The State of the Physical and Social Sciences:
The physical sciences, along with the
engineering sciences, have all long been instituted in the Spanish educational
system. Some of the social sciences as they are instituted in the United States
are younger in Spain. Social-cultural anthropology is one of these, dating from
the 1960s, although ethnography, folklore, archaeology, philology, and physical
anthropology are older, and there are national, regional, and local museums
dedicated to these topics as well. Today, such younger fields as cultural
anthropology and psychology are thriving and are taught throughout the
university system. Sociologists are importantly engaged in the self-study of
Spain as well as the study of other societies.
Spanish researchers are in active and increasing
exchange with their counterparts around the world. Professional journals
abound. The most important establishment that publishes books and journals,
funds research, and employs scholars in research positions across the entire
span of academic disciplines, including the humanities, is the Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones CientÃficas (the Higher Council for Scientific Research),
founded in 1939. The Consejo has its seat in Madrid but its various sections
and institutes sponsor research and publication of books and journals in and
about the various regions and provinces and on a wide range of topics.
In all fields of scientific endeavor, funding is
from both governmental and private sources, and also from Spain's major banks,
but with an emphasis on the governmental.
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—S USAN T AX F REEMAN
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