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The Rise of Euroskepticism: Europe and Its Critics in Spanish Culture

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The Rise of Euroskepticism: Europe and Its Critics in Spanish Culture THE RISE OF Euroskepticism EUROPE & ITS CRITICS IN SPANISH CULTURE Luis Martín-Estudillo Te Rise of Euroskepticism THE RISE OF Euroskepticism EUROPE AND ITS CRITICS IN SPANISH CULTURE Luis Martín-Estudillo Vanderbilt University Press Nashville © 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee 37235 First published 2018 Tis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on fle LC control number 2017017088 LC classifcation number HC240.25.S7 M37 2017 Dewey classifcation number 341.242/20946—dc23 LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2017017088 ISBN 978-0-8265-2194-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8265-2196-5 (ebook) Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, fndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. https://www.neh.gov To Emi, without skepticism Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: A Cultural Poetics of Spanish Euroskepticism 1 PART ONE Europe on the Horizon 25 1 Te Location of Dissent: Spanish Exiles and the European Cataclysm 27 2 Sense and Sensuousness: Approaching Europe under Franco’s Dictatorship 57 PART TWO Examining the Union from Within 89 3 Unanimity in Question 91 4 On the Move in a Static Europe 127 5 Te Great Recession and the Surge of Euroskepticism: A Pigs’ Tale 173 Epilogue: A Plea for Creative Euroskepticism 197 Notes 201 References 217 Index 233 Acknowledgments Te preliminary writing of this book began as the inaugural Woodyard Lec- ture at the University of Kansas. Portions were also presented as lectures at Dartmouth College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Univer- sity of Valencia. I thank my hosts at these institutions, especially Jonathan Mayhew, Jorge Pérez, Katarzyna Beilin, Antonio Gmez L-Quiones, and Jenaro Talens, for facilitating those occasions and for the rewarding conver- sations that followed them. Te National Endowment for the Humanities gave me fundamental sup- port in the form of two fellowships to research and write this book. I remain most thankful to this outstanding agency. May it be allowed to continue carrying out its important mission untouched by sectarian politicians. Ann Knudson ofered expert assistance in preparing the applications for those fellowships. At the University of Iowa I have been fortunate to beneft from the trust of an institution which still believes in the value of the arts and humani- ties. In the case of this specifc project, that conviction materialized most clearly in the support that I received from the Ofce of the Vice President for Research’s AHI program and in a Dean’s Scholar award from the Col- lege of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My period at the University’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies would have been less fruitful were it not for the wise advice of its director, Teresa Mangum, and of another outstanding resident, Steven Ungar. Although writing is a solitary endeavor, it can also elicit new friend- ships or become the perfect excuse to revisit old ones. Many colleagues and friends gave me hints and feedback throughout the research process, including Juan Albarrán, Luis Bagué, Elena Delgado, Estrella de Diego, William Egginton, Denise Filios, John Gillingham, J. Ramón González, ix x The Rise of Euroskepticism Noemí de Haro, Germán Labrador, Alfredo Laso, Antonio Martínez Sar- rión, Antonio Méndez Rubio, Kathleen Newman, Marijose Olaziregi, Jesús Rodríguez, Juan Carlos Rueda Lafond, Frank Salomon, Alexander Somek, Nicholas Spadaccini, Eduardo Subirats, and Javier Zamora Bonilla. I alone remain responsible for not heeding all their suggestions. I have also enjoyed the generosity of Mercedes Cebrián, Antonio Coli- nas, Juan Mayorga, Jordi Puntí, Andrés Rábago, Santiago Sierra, and Carlos Spottorno, who authored some of the work that I study in this book and permitted its reproduction. I would like to single out Valeriano López, who kindly gave permission to use one of his pieces as a cover image. Te students in a doctoral seminar that I taught on the European ideal in Spanish culture challenged my assumptions and ofered insightful input; my gratitude goes especially to Patricia Gonzalo, Alba Lara, and Martín López-Vega. Michael Ames, at Vanderbilt University Press, was an attentive editor who showed great faith in this project. Te Press also chose anonymous reviewers whose sagacious comments made me rethink some aspects of the book. I thank all these expert readers. Andrea Rosenberg carefully revised the manuscript, as did, later, Emilio Martín and Ana M. Rodríguez, so lovingly. Perhaps in ways un- beknownst to them, my father and mother taught me, respectively, about Europeanness and tenacity. My family graciously endured the absences (and absent-mindedness) that this project caused. Tey and our friends in Iowa City and Spain (Helena and Víctor Brown-Rodríguez, Txus Martín, Alba Crespo, Luz Esther Martín, Vicente Pérez, Mònica Fuertes, Luis Mu- ñoz, Garth Greenwell, Horacio Castellanos-Moya, Mercedes Niño-Murcia, Paula Kempchinsky . .) may have an inkling of how they contributed to my eforts, sometimes simply by ofering mind-cleansing distraction—yet they probably do not know how much I appreciate their love and support. I fnished this book on the tenth birthday of my son, Emi; it is dedicated to him. Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one? Te Rise of Euroskepticism Introduction A Cultural Poetics of Spanish Euroskepticism Undreaming Europe Artists and intellectuals’ sustained scrutiny of the ever-evolving idea of Eu- rope helped pave the way for the widespread protests against the European Union (EU) and its policies that have surged since the beginning of the so-called Great Recession in 2008. Consciously or not, they took part in a tradition of Euroskepticism, a term coined in the mid-1980s as a result of British debates regarding the United Kingdom’s involvement in the process of European market integration, which at the time was encountering sig- nifcant resistance from the left-wing Labour Party.1 When the word began to be adopted on the continent shortly thereafter, its meaning expanded. As Cécile Leconte points out, it became “a ‘catch-all’ synonym for any form of opposition or reluctance toward the EU” (4). Currently, the term refers to an intricate phenomenon that plays a role in the public life of dozens of nations. Nevertheless, because Euroskepticism is still mostly associated with the discourse of organized politics, its literary and artistic expressions have gone largely unnoticed. If, following Jacques Rancière, we understand aesthetic acts as “confgurations of experience that create new modes of sense perception and induce novel forms of political subjectivity” (Politics 9), it is clear that these works deserve our close attention, as they can ofer nuanced and engaging perspectives on the emotions generated by a uni- fed Europe. Teir authors are important “in-between fgures”— men and women who, as Jan-Werner Mller contends, are not political thinkers or leaders yet have a signifcant part in the creation, discussion, and destruc- tion of political entities.2 Some of the fundamentals of that criticism can be traced back to the period of the conficts that shattered the continent in the frst half of the twentieth century. It was in the aftermath of World War II that the creators of 1 2 The Rise of Euroskepticism the entity currently known as the European Union found the defnitive mo- mentum to realize what had been an essentially utopian project for a num- ber of thinkers at least since Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s and Immanuel Kant’s federalist proposals: a new social and political arrangement that would bring lasting peace and welfare to the region.3 Teir ideas were the basis of the organization that Robert Schuman, one of the founders of what would later become the Union, announced in 1949 as “the fulfllment of a dream that has haunted the people of Europe for ten centuries.”4 In the decades to follow, that dream was progressively made a reality that fostered a peaceful and productive relationship among an increasing number of nations, which as a consequence experienced unprecedented stability and growth.5 At the same time, that bold vision generated a plurality of intrigu- ing counterpoints, most of which have been eclipsed. Teir proponents struggled to articulate the deeper causes and consequences of the conficts that produced the defnite push for “an ever closer union” of the European nations, as well as to question the principles that guided this process (in- cluding its economic orientation or the self-perception of the EU as the moral compass of the world) and the efects of its policies within and be- yond European territory. As the Union grew larger in number of member nations and institutional architecture, its allure waned for a vast portion of the citizenry. Te optimism generated in the project’s frst decades had turned into indiference for most by the turn of the century. With the on- set of the post-2007 Great Recession, authorized voices in countries that were seen as the experiment’s most solid defenders began to claim that Schuman’s dream had become a nightmare, especially in “peripheral” Eu- rope (a telling term). Te “dream-turned-nightmare” metaphor is used, for instance, by Italian economist and essayist Luigi Zingales and by Spanish author and flmmaker Vicente Molina Foix. While they work from diferent ends of the political spectrum, both lament the role that “Europe” has had, either by action or by omission, in the social and economic havoc wreaked in their respective countries.6 Zingales and Molina Foix are just two of the numerous public intellectu- als who have contributed recently to the discourse of Euroskepticism, an array of critical attitudes and arguments that have developed within the region in reaction to integrative pan-European or pro-Europeanization initiatives.
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