FORTHCOMING in SPAIN IS (STILL) DIFFERENT, Eds
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FORTHCOMING IN SPAIN IS (STILL) DIFFERENT, eds. Jaume Martí Olivella and Eugenia Afinoguenova, U of Minnesota P: Toppling the Xenolith: The Reconquest of Spain from the Uncanny Other in Iberian Film since World War Two Patricia Hart, Purdue University 1. The Others Ser ibero, ser ibero es una cosa muy seria, soy altivo y soy severo porque he nacido en Iberia. Y al que diga lo contrario Y al que ofenda a mi terruño Lo atravieso atrabilario Con esta daga que empuño Fray Apócrifo de la Cruz1 Long before Ruy Díaz de Vivar drove the Moors from Valencia and returned her fragrant orange groves to an ungrateful Alfonso VI—and long before anyone could suspect that in 1983 Angelino Fons would cast lion-tamer Ángel Cristo as the title character in his 1983 comedy, El Cid Cabreador—Iberian popular culture was often obsessed with monarchic, dictatorial, or hegemonic views of what is “us” and what is “other,” and with good reason! That catch-all category, iberos, was loosely used to name all of those prehistoric people living on the Peninsula before they had been invaded by just about every enterprising group armed with swords or something to sell. Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians on pachyderms, Greeks, Romans, suevos, alanos Vandals, Visigoths, Moors… no wonder the xenos was traditionally a cause for concern! The blunt, politically- and financially-expedient, medieval interest in the so-called “purity” of blood” and antiquity of Christian conversion served to consolidate power, property, and social stratification. 1 Better known as Moncho Alpuente. Turismo y cine Patricia Hart—Purdue—2 It is essential to keep this in mind as we talk about tourism on film, as for milenia, the idea of travel for pleasure was something reserved for a very tiny elite (and their servants). Ordinary Spaniards a hundred years ago may have moved the cows to the summer pasture, or participated in the trashumancia or spent a summer Sunday afternoon near El Jarama or seen the world while on military service, but they did not usually have the luxury of traveling just to relax and look. In most of human history, the chance to experience new cuisine and learn languages came at the cost of invasion, imperialism, and perhaps slavery as well. The modern invention of middle-class tourism has been built, like Cholula in Mexico, on top of deeper structures of expectations regarding the confrontation between Self and Other. For example, Americans contemporaries of Edith Wharton and Henry James went abroad to gain a veneer of sophistication, a collection of affectations, some home decoration and couture tips, and bragging rights. They supposed they would incorporate what was superior about the European Other, and become a superior Self, a sort of über-American. Pilgrims journey to Mecca, Lourdes, or Jim Morrison's grave in Paris because it gives their returning pilgrim Self a spiritual edge over Others in their own group. Ultimately, travel of any kind for humans contains thousands of chances to compare and contrast onesself to others, to judge Self superior to others (as an imperial Roman or a neo-colonial sex tourist to Thailand might) or to try to adapt or assimilate (as exiles, refugees, slaves, or young students on their jounior year abroad may opt or have to do). I use the word "tourist" in the broadest possible sense in this study because doing so yields rich and surprising insight into Spanish film. 2. Santiago Matamoros Slept Here—Maybe “¡Santiago y cierra España!” Spanish battle cry Spain’s patron saint, Santiago (James the Elder), one of the original twelve apostles, may have been an early tourist himself and must certainly be considered the unofficial patron saint of Turismo y cine Patricia Hart—Purdue—3 Spanish Dark Ages tourism, as well as official patron of pilgrims. Christ may have stopped at Éboli2, but according to Iberian legend, James made it all the way to Galicia. The Bible says in Acts that Santiago was beheaded by Herod Agrippa around 44 AD, but late folklore avers that the saint’s followers sent his remains to Iria Flavia (modern-day Padrón) in an unmanned stone boat. There they slept undisturned until the Ninth Century, when miraculous lights revealed their presence. Santiago’s role in Spanish foundational fiction does not end there. In the battle of Clavijo in 834 in which victorious Ramiro I defeated Abderramán II, the king reported that the victory was due to an apparition of the apostle himself, riding a white charger into battle against the Moorish infidels. The miracles attributed to “Santiago Matamoros” quickly converted Santiago de Compostela , home of his bones, into an extremely popular goal for pilgrims. These pious travelers definitely did sleep along the famous route of Santiago throughout the Middle Ages and to a lesser extent, up to our day, bringing money, language, customs, and ideas along with them. The saint who inspired the war cry “¡Santiago y cierra España!” was, paradoxically, one of the strongest influences in opening the newly-imagined proto-nation to outsiders. But Santiago’s transition from preacher of the gospel of love into crusader against Islam—lavishly illustrated over the centuries in sculpture, painting, and stained glass in which the saint is often simultaneously chopping an arm or head off one infidel while his charger crushes the skull of another—clearly sends a message that is, to say the least, mixed. Juan Goytisolo put it bluntly. “La transmutación pasmosa del pacífico pescador del lago Tiberíades en un jinete experto y aguerrido, cortacabezas insigne, respondía como es obvio, a la necesidad de las Iglesias” (11). 2 According to Italian folksayings, novelist Carlo Levi, and director Francesco Rosi. Turismo y cine Patricia Hart—Purdue—4 Added to this in the Spanish popular imaginary are numerous other literary versions of anti- islamism, like Cervantes’ bitter five year experience as a POW of the Turks in North Africa, recounted in Los baños de Argel.3 Great men had spoken out on the moro, and tolerance was rarely part of the discussion before such careful modern scholars as Julio Caro Baroja and Américo Castro. Later novelists Gil Albert and Juan Goytisolo reconfigured the Caliphate of Córdoba as a golden age of tolerance in Spain’s past.4 They concur that this reality had been erased by the crude racism of the Reconquest and then whitewashed by forty years of Francoist historical revisionism. Even as unlikely a source as Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, last president of the Republic in exile, as late as 1975, continued to support a thesis manipulated by fascist Spain and the most reactionary sector of the church: Temo que otra gran tronada histórica pueda mañana poner en peligro la civilización occidental, como lo estuvo por obra del Islam en los siglos VII y VIII...La cultura europea fue salvada por Don Pelayo en Covadonga...¿Dónde se iniciará la nueva reconquista que salve al cabo las esencias de la civilización nieta de aquella por la que, con el nombre de Dios en los labios, peleó el vencedor del Islam en Europa? (11) When the senseless murder of Encarnación López by a mentally ill North African man touched off an explosion of racist violence in El Ejido in early February of 2000, Antonio Burgos said on Onda Cero Radio: 3 Also El trato de Argel, and “el cautivo” intercalated in the Quijote. La gran sultana and El amante liberal have usually been considered apart from the more “realistic” North African work, although recent critics like Ottmar Hegyi argue in favor of looking at all the Islamic-themed works together, and not assuming that the latter are simple fantasies. Francisco Nieva’s adaptation of Baños in the Teatro María Guerrero in 1979 put the play into post-Franco prominence. This, in addition to his anti-semitism, makes some consider him xenophobic, but I think such a view is both anachronistc, and also ignores the fact that Cervantes was also pretty pittiless in his depiction of Spaniards of all varieties and professions, urban and rural. 4Juan Goytisolo, who made his home mainly in Marrakesh, Morocco since the 60s, wrote his best-known reinterpretation of history in La reivindicación del conde don Julián, 1970, But many other books of his touched his interest in islamic themes and history, including Crónicas sarracinas, Makbara, En los reinos de taifas, Las virtudes del pájaro solitario, La cuarentena, Estambul otomano, Argelia en el vendaval, El bosque de las letras, El sitio de los sitios, and De la Ceca a la Meca. Turismo y cine Patricia Hart—Purdue—5 Arde Almería . [y] los plásticos de los invernaderos… [y] las chabolas de los marroquíes en El Ejido. Como si Santiago Matamoros se hubiera vuelto a montar en su caballo blanco en una nueva batalla de Clavijo retransmitida en directo por los telediarios. Spanish popular film was slow to recognize the racist content of their myth of nationhood, possibly because the Reconquest was so successful at expelling or extinguishing the Other. One early silent film, El negro que tenía el alma blanca, directed by Benito Perojo in 1926, starred Concha Piquer as Emma, a star who torments her black dance partner Pedro, knowing he was in love with her. The movie was remade twice more with the same title, in 1934 by Perojo himself, and in 1951 by Hugo del Carril, who also starred, now with the anglicized name “Peter.” But these three films are anomalous. Immigration and racism are topics that began to be explored in Spanish film more as the post-Franco Spain became more diverse, and following a somewhat predictable trajectory. When North and Sub-Saharan African immigrants to Spain became common, they began to appear in films.