IBERIAN PENINSULA: Modern Geopolitical and Linguistic Regions
Contemporary Profile: Spain 21st Century
Geoposition: Southwestern Europe; Meditteranean/Atlantic Region
Significance of geoposition:
Geopolitical: Contemporary Iberia
Georegional/Geolingusitc: Contemporary Spain
Political-cultural regions: The state administrative regions of modern Spain are based on much older patterns of local political organizations or "kingdoms" as they were known which in turn represented unique linguistic, historical, institutional, and cultural groups throughout the peninsula. Today the peninsula is easily divided into these major linguistic/cultural groupings. Below is a map that shows this diversity as it relates to other Latin based languages in Europe.
The Basques represent a different linguistic/cultural grouping which is considered by some experts as not an Indoeuropean language, as are most languages in Europe. The closest language to Basque would be Finnish. Other studies have indicated that the Basques represent, genetically-speaking, one of the oldest if not the oldest human population in Europe. Like the other Iberian groups in modern times, the Basques also had their kingdoms, independent of the Castilian/Leonese center that was to dominate Spanish statecraft after 1492.
In contemporary Spain the linguistic identity is tied closely to local or regional identity or with what is known as the patria chica (little fatherland). Rather than considering themselves Spanish first, Iberians tend to identify themselves by their regional homeland. The following cartoon illustrates this view:
(trans.: And if they force me to chose? I chose to be Alaves)
The patria chica concept is based on actual, historical-ethnic-lingustic groups that were organized into kingdoms during the middle ages in Spain. But such kingdoms in Spain until the early 20th century werenot only defined linguistically and culturally, but also politically and legally through a body of legal codes known as fueros or, to use a modern concept, constitutions. These bodies of laws are which defined the kingdom, its hierarchy of power, its concept of citizenship, and were based on the cultural-historical traditions of the inhabitants of the given region. Below is an example of a 13th-14th Catalan (NW quadrant of the peninsula) constitution and next to that a medieval Catalan- Aragonese parliament or cortes.
Such kingdoms had their own economic systems, institutional setups, and military structures, which meant they were in fact "nations" which interacted with other kingsdoms in trade, war, etc. An example of this in the Iberian peninsula is the Catalan-Aragonese Kingdom which in many respects was much more powerful in terms of its presence in the Europe than the Castilian-Leonese Kingdom. Below is an example of the extent of Catalan power in the Mediterranean. In some ways one can consider Catalan-Aragon Kingdom to be in fact an Empire.
Origins and Identity: The Emergence of the 16th Century Spanish Empire
The Spain of the 13th-15th centuries is not, in many ways, the Spain of the 20th-21st century. There are clearly still vital links between these two periods in that modern Spain's political organization into a democratic federation made up of regional autonomous states is based on these older schemes of cultural-institutional and linguistic identity and in the contemporary problems with Basque separatism as a movement that seeks to reassert this older system as a basis for a separate Basque national state, but the concept of kingdoms has for all intents and purposes given way to the idea of the modern nation state. Having said this, what is missing in this discussion is another critical element in the development of Iberian identity, and that is the concept of empire. Spanish national identity had for most of the peninsula's history been molded not by a unified, centralized state, but by a balance between the ideal of independent kingsdoms and empire. To understand this one needs to look at the trajectory of Iberian development since prehistoric time, the role of origins.........
