Was Iberism a nationalism? Conceptions of Iberism in Portugal
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
SÉRGIO CAMPOS MATOS1
In Portuguese political culture, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1880s,
Iberism was one of the topics that mobilized public debate on the nation — its past, its
present and its future. Taken by many to be a threat to the nation-state, Iberism was at
the centre of a whole reflection on the course of national history, on the ‘character’ of
the Portuguese, and on the resources and challenges that Portugal faced in the second
half of the nineteenth century. In contrast to the case in Spain, Iberism had little public
impact in Portugal, even during its heyday, the period of the Regeneration, being
advanced there mainly by intellectuals, journalists and public officials. But even after
this period it continued to be a uncomfortable topic. It was frequently the subject of
public disagreements, and was made use of in a great variety of political propaganda.
Should Iberism be regarded as a nationalism, as some historians suggest?2 Or
rather as a supra-national aspiration (which does not necessarily contradict the former)?3
I shall underline that nationalism is not only an ideology but also a political movement,
a theory of the state and at times an anthropology of national character.4 The
significance of the term Iberism has undergone great changes over the last two
centuries, taking on different meanings according to the political and doctrinal starting
points of those who have been discussing the matter. However, in the accepted meaning
of the term, Iberism can be defined as seeking the integration of the Peninsular nations
into a broader Iberian-wide political and economic unit, whether its organization be
1
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa. An earlier version of this paper, here expanded, was published in
Portuguese under the title ‘Conceitos de Iberismo em Portugal’, Revista de História das Ideias, 28 (2007),
pp. 169–93.
2
Hipólito de La Torre Gomez, Na encruzilhada da Grande Guerra Portugal–Espanha 1913–1919,
Lisbon, 1980, p. 21. See also José Antonio Rocamora, El nacionalismo ibérico 1792–1936, Valladolid,
1994.
3
Ignacio Chato Gonzalo, Las relaciones entre España y Portugal a través de la diplomacia (1846–1910),
vol. II, Mérida, 2004, p. 326 and p. 331.
4
K. Minogue, Nationalism, London, 1967.
1
unitary or federal, monarchist or Republican. But apart from the political dimension
there is a cultural Iberism, that proposes to bring closer together the very different
Iberian cultures, and an economic Iberism, that sees benefits in stimulating economic
relations between Portugal and Spain. The case for the suppression of customs duties on
cross-border trade between the two countries — a free-trade position — distinguished
the position of some Iberists. And a defence of the alliance between the Peninsular
states went hand in hand with a critical attitude towards the traditional alliance between
Portugal and Britain.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the first industrial revolution was
transforming the landscape of north-eastern Europe. The railways, roads, steamships
and later the telegraph facilitated contact between the continents in a process of
globalization, already long under way. On the other hand, in the 1850s and 1860s the
process of the political unification of Italy and German, and the disappearance of
several political entities based on small geographical territories, gave currency to the
theory of ‘great nations’. The independence of the South American colonies in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century and the difficulties that the Liberal regimes
encountered in the Iberian Peninsula, where the states were weakly established within
societies that, from the point of view of their economic and social structures, still
belonged to the Old Regime, contributed to a sense of crisis which lasted the whole of
the century. It was in this context that Iberist ideas emerged, as a response to a
perceived situation of decline and vulnerability in the face of the great European powers
of the time, Britain and France; they were thus a form of defence, a way of putting
pressure on these European powers, and of reinforcing national independence. It was in
these years (1820–23) that the expression Iberian Union emerged for the first time,
though having a very vague meaning still: on the Portuguese side, radical Liberals
defended the Liberal regime in Spain in the context of a wider, European Liberalism.
Some advocated an alliance between the Peninsular nations, publishing aims that
pointed in the direction of an Iberian federation (though without using the term); this
was the position taken in such journals as Astro da Lusitânia, José Liberato Freire de
Carvalho’s Campeão Português em Lisboa,5 or O Independente.6 As early as 1816
5
Maria de Fátima Sá e Melo Ferreira, ‘Federalismo’, in Diccionário poíitico y social del mundo
iberoamericano. Conceptos políticos en la era de las revoluciones, 1750-1850 (forthcoming). Iberian
federalism would gain a wide currency in Spain and Portugal throughout the nineteenth century. See Mª
2
others, such as Rocha Loureiro, were also suggesting a dynastic union under the
Braganzas. On the Spanish side it referred to a mutual aid pact between Spain and
Portugal.
An ambiguous appellation: from Oliveira Martins to António Sardinha
The terms ibérico and iberismo appeared only very late in Portuguese dictionaries, the
former at the end of the nineteenth century and the latter only in 1913; this was long
after the public debates on the ‘Iberian question’, which in Portugal took place mainly
from the 1850s onwards.7 The name Iberia was used in a agitational way in the middle
of the nineteenth century by the federalist Republican, Henriques Nogueira, and by the
monarchist and unitarist, Sinibaldo Mas, a Catalan Catholic.8 For Henriques Nogueira
the ideal of a people’s Iberia corresponded to a modern Iberism, as opposed to an old
Iberism born of dynastic marriages or of conquest. In contrast to the sort of Iberism that
belonged to the time before the Liberal revolutions, his would be achieved by mutual
consent and would be based on a democratic and contractualist conception of the nation,
a legacy of Enlightenment thought. In this he was in agreement, in the essentials, with
the thinking of Sinibaldo Mas: the union of the Peninsular states could only be made
voluntarily, through the free support of their peoples, and would constitute a step in the
direction of a broader geographical unity, of Europe and all humanity. He thought that
as a great nation Iberia had a general identity of race, territory, religion history and
language. However, Nogueira parted company with the Catalan Iberist in advocating a
type of state that was Republican, federalist and municipalist. In fact, though he
Victoria López-Cordón, El pensamiento político-internacional del federalismo español (1868–1874),
Barcelona, 1975, pp. 171–288.
6
‘Política peninsular entre Portugal e Espanha’, supplement to O Independente, 17 (13 December 1821)
[3].
7
Cf. Maria da Conceição Meireles Pereira, A questão ibérica: imprensa e opinião (1850–1870),
unpublished thesis, Porto, 1995, pp. 236–38 and my own study ‘Iberismo e identidade nacional (1851–
1910)’, Clio, 14/15 (2006), 349–400 (pp. 352–53).
8
José Félix Henriques Nogueira, ‘Estudos sobre a reforma em Portugal’ [1851], Obra completa, ed. org.
by António Carlos Leal da Silva, vol. I, Lisbon, 1976, pp. 161–66 and Sinibaldo de Mas, A Ibéria,
memória em que se provam as vantagens políticas, económicas e sociais da união das duas monarquias
peninsulares em uma só nação, 2nd edn, Lisbon, 1853 [1st Portuguese edn Lisbon 1852].
3
supported the egalitarian ideal, Sinibaldo Mas was a supporter of an Iberian union
through a marriage alliance of the two royal houses, within the framework of a centralist
concept of the state, taken to be the most efficient way of achieving prosperity.9 The
writings of Sinibaldo Mas generated a very fierce debate amongst public opinion, which
lasted until the 1870s.
Iberism and the idea of Iberian union were frequently identified, in a narrow
way, with the interests of Spain, and the old fear that Spain was intending to invade
Portugal frequently gripped public opinion. On a number of occasions rumours spread
that a Spanish invasion was imminent, for example in 1862, and again in 1898, 1904,
and in 1907–08.10 It was an easy way of reinforcing national cohesion, and furthermore
of neutralizing political enemies, by identifying them with an external enemy — the
inveterate old enemy that had to be defeated. The young Antero de Quental and Oliveira
Martins were accused of being Iberists, on account of their contributions to the Revista
Ocidental (1875).11 This journal, run by Jaime Batalha Reis, had the objectives of
cultural modernization and of keeping in touch with contemporary problems in Europe.
It aimed to bring together Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers ‘in a new
intellectual Renaissance in the Peninsula’.12
The two friends came to sympathize with federal Republicanism. Antero made a
very negative diagnosis of the Portuguese situation under the Regeneração (1851–90)
delivering a speech full of images of a decadent and moribund nation. Excited by the
Spanish revolution of 1868, made in the name of the democratic ideal and a federal
Republicanism, he even proclaimed that nationality should be repudiated — since this
was no more than an instrument of the powerful, and a ‘wretched obstacle, relic of the
fearful conflicts of centuries of barbarism’.13
9
See Fernando Catroga, ‘Nacionalismo e ecumenismo. A questão ibérica na segunda metade do século
XIX’, in Cultura, História e Filosofia, vol. IV, Lisbon, 1985, pp. 447–54 and Vítor Neto, As ideias
políticas e sociais de José Félix Henriques Nogueira, Torres Vedras, 2005, pp. 86–93.
10
Cf. I. Chato Gonzalo, op.cit., vol. I, p. 332 and Hipólito de La Torre Gomez, Antagonismo y fractura
peninsular España–Portugal 1910–1919, Madrid, 1983, pp. 128 and 133.
11
A. Teixeira de Vasconcelos, ‘Livros e impressos’, Jornal da Noite, 1266, 1–3 de Março de 1875.
12
‘Prospecto da Revista Ocidental’, Revista da Biblioteca Nacional, 1 (1992), p. 66.
13
Cf. Antero de Quental, ‘Portugal perante a Revolução de Espanha’, Prosas socio-políticas, ed. by Joel
Serrão, Lisbon, no date, pp. 211–42. Antero’s support for the Iberist utopia lasted many years. In a letter
to his German translator, Wilhelm Storck, in 1887, he wrote: ‘it was a great illusion, which, however, I
only relinquished […] under the impact of savage and repeated blows of experience. This is what it takes
4
While defending the need for closer diplomatic and cultural ties with Spain,
Oliveira Martins — contrary to what has often been written — always defended the
political autonomy of Portugal, unequivocally distancing himself from Iberian union.
Furthermore, during the last period of his stay in Santa Eufémia, Andalusia (1873–74),
he distanced himself from Republicanism, while also adopting a very critical position
towards the Iberist federalism that he had supported in the late 1860s and early 1870s.14
As for the idea of a federation of Latin nations, so dear to Republicanism in the latter
part of the century, in his view it was no more than a poetic day-dream, since the ethnic
affinities were insufficient to draw their peoples together. Antero would follow him in
this critical attitude.
As the author of the História da Civilização Ibérica, Oliveira Martins had a
considerable influence on the Spanish intelligentsia,15 but in Portugal likewise he left
his mark on the way that Spain was regarded. It should be noted that from the end of the
1860s onwards his understanding of the Portuguese nation’s place in history led him to
highlight its relationship with the Peninsula as a whole — first, in terms of resistance
and opposition to Castilian centralism and, later, as an integral part of his defence of a
Peninsula-wide federalism, and in opposition to the dictatorship of Saldanha and his
unitarist aims.16 Placing national matters within a Peninsular framework broadened the
comparative understanding of the historical experiences of Portugal and Spain, which
were so similar, or even shared. For Oliveira Martins, the concepts of Iberian
civilization and the Peninsular character — which refer to the shared cultural and
mental traits of the Peninsular peoples, in particular ‘religious fervour’ and heroism —
to correct a certain false idealism in society’s affairs!’ Idem, letter to W. Storck dated 14 May 1887, in
Cartas II, ed. by Ana Mª A. Martins, Lisbon, 1989, p. 836.
14
J. P. de Oliveira Martins, Portugal Contemporâneo, 7th edn, Lisbon, 1953 [1st edn 1881], vol. III, pp.
257–59. On this subject see Carlos Maurício, A invenção de Oliveira Martins, Lisbon, 2005, pp. 81–92.
15
See Sérgio Campos Matos, ‘Una perspectiva peninsular y transnacional sobre España y Portugal’,
introduction to J. P. Oliveira Martins, Historia de la Civilización Ibérica, Pamplona, forthcoming.
16
J. P. de Oliveira Martins, Febo Moniz, Lisbon, 1867, Id., ‘Do princípio federativo e sua aplicação à
Península Hispânica’, O Jornal, Lisbon, 1960, pp. 9–42 and Id., ‘Os povos peninsulares e a civilização
moderna’, Política e história, Lisbon, 1957, vol. I, pp. 217–46. But it was in his História da Civilização
Ibérica (1879) that Oliveira Martins opened up a new approach to reading the national history, not at all
usual in those times when history in Portugal was dominated by a historicist mentality and by nationalist
narratives of the past which tended to isolate the national history by defending its supposed
exceptionality.
5
did not hinder the drive to identify national differences. However, the work was
received very warmly by some Spanish intellectuals who saw in it an Iberist purpose.
Oliveira Martins spent four years in Andalusia and undoubtedly knew Hispanic
culture better than any other Portuguese of his time. He was very aware of the affinities
of the Peninsular peoples, in their cultural traditions, collective psychological traits, and
historical identity of interests. A critic of the Anglo–Portuguese alliance, he always
defended a policy of diplomatic and cultural contact with Spain, as a means of defence
against the great powers, especially Britain. He saw such a Peninsular alliance in the
wider context of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking nations contesting Anglo-Saxon
hegemony, as well as a way of resisting the risk of absorption of Portugal by Spain.
Can we say, then, that Oliveira Martins was an Iberist? It is clear that he was not
a supporter of political integration of the two states, but rather of a cultural and
diplomatic union. Nevertheless, it is repeatedly stated, in various quarters, that Martins
was one of the champions of Iberism.17
From the 1890s onwards Iberism lost its influence on the Portuguese side. With
the exception of Iberian federalism, which still had the support of some Republicans,
the idea of Iberian union in a unitarist sense practically disappeared. Clearly the drive
for a Third Portuguese Empire, involving an intensification of economic relations with
the African colonies and the vogue for imperial and colonial ideology which
characterized Portuguese Republicanism, contributed decisively to the decline in
Iberism. Furthermore, the connotation with the old spectres of an amalgamation and
absorption of the Portuguese nation could only lead those who felt attracted to Hispanic
culture to discount the old argument for Iberian union. The hostile public memory of the
dynastic union of 1580–1640 — a dark tale that featured prominently in the campaigns
of the anti-Iberists from the 1850s to the 1870s18 — was still alive and well in the field
of cultural production, particularly in school books. Thus it can be seen that Iberism in
twentieth-century Portugal was limited to a small elite most concerned with a cultural
union with Spain, or with the Peninsular nationalities, particularly with Catalonia and
Galicia.
17
For example, on the back cover of a Spanish edition of the Historia de la civilización iberica (facsimile
edition of the translation by Luciano Taxonera, published in Madrid in 1894), 2nd edn, Málaga, 1993.
18
Note that even Spanish Iberists in the nineteenth century, supporters of a Liberal version of Spanish
history, held very critical views of the Spanish monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
including the Iberian union.
6
The Portuguese First Republic (1910–26) faced a serious economic and social
crisis aggravated by the outbreak of the Great War (1914–18). All through these years
the regime was still seeking legitimacy, but going through a difficult period of
instability, with acute social conflicts and a hardening of the opposition between Church
and State.
On the Spanish side, Iberist proposals for a fusion, a Peninsular federation, or
simply for a closer alliance between the two states (such as the campaign for an ‘Iberian
Concord’ conducted in the pages of El Imparcial, in 1917) were being aired, leading to
public concern at the alleged ‘Spanish peril’. As Hipólito de La Torre Gómez has
accurately observed, the public denunciation of this threat became an instrument for
attacking the monarchists and promoting unity amongst Republicans.19 At the end of
1910 and in the first months of 1911, at the time of the monarchist incursions, the talk
turned once again to military intervention in Portugal. And it is true that various
sections of public opinion in Spain, notably the Carlists and Integralists, but also
conservative Catholics and even the king, Afonso XIII, nursed hopes of an Iberian
union.20 It is understandable, then, that Hispanophobic sentiments in Portugal should be
exploited in nationalist rhetoric, which thrived on presenting Spain as the traditional
external enemy in order to promote internal cohesion. In arguing the conservative
nationalist cause it made sense to invoke the old spectre of the Iberist threat.
In this context, António Sardinha, the traditionalist theoretician of Integralismo
Lusitano, was one of the leading monarchist and conservative intellectuals. At first he
declared himself unequivocally as an anti-Iberist, identifying nineteenth-century Iberism
with democracy and the Masonry.21 From an ideological perspective that was
traditionalist and anti-Liberal, he was reacting at that time against the Iberist designs for
an intervention by Afonso XIII’s Spain into Portuguese politics, and against the revival
in Spain of the questions of Iberian union and a Peninsular federation.
Sardinha himself defined his position very clearly. The theoretician of
Integralismo Lusitano was engaged in justifying the autonomy of Portugal,
19
See Hipólito de La Torre Gómez, Portugal na encruzilhada…, pp. 170 and 185.
20
Id., Antagonismo… pp. 143–48
21
António Sardinha, ‘O território e a raça’, in A questão ibérica, Lisbon, 1916, pp. 28–31.
7
dogmatically invoking differences of race, territory and collective psychology.22
Sardinha dismissed the idea that chance played a part in the formation of Portugal —
erroneously attributing it to Oliveira Martins, although, in fact, it had been circulated by
several Spanish Iberists, such as Fernandez de Los Rios.23 He went so far as to defend
the idea of an anthropologically homogenous Portuguese race, excluding only the
‘foreigner within’, meaning the Liberals, Masons, Jews and Negroes. 24
However, after his exile to Spain (1919–21), Sardinha’s attitude towards that
country altered quite markedly.25 While upholding his position on Iberism (associating
it, as ever, with the Masonry and the Liberal revolution), he did not now disguise his
admiration for Castilian history and culture. Emphasizing the shared historic destiny
and the social and political parallels between Castile and Portugal, he adopted the
concept of Hispanism, so commonly encountered, though in a different sense, in
Spanish cultural history from the late nineteenth century.26 He even came to regard
closer union with Spain as a precondition to Portugal regaining its influence in the
world. The concept of Hispanism corresponded to the idea of new social order shaped
by a Christian spirituality and worldview, within which the Iberian nations would be the
standard-bearers. Hispanism thus constituted a Western paradigm, by taking the Iberian
Peninsula as the essence and leading example of Christian civilization.27
22
Ibidem. ‘Sem raça, nem território, que somos nós? Porque é que vivemos? Não somos mais que um
improviso – somos apenas o erro das circunstâncias’ [Without race or territory, who are we? Why do we
exist? We are no more than a fortuity — we are merely the error of circumstances.]
23
Fernandez de Los Rios, Mi Misión en Portugal, Lisbon, [1877], pp. 136–38.
24
For Sardinha, the ‘estrangeiros do interior’ [foreigners within] included the Liberals, Freemasons and
those who insulted the national past (cf. op.cit., pp. 13–14).
25
Sardinha’s exchanges with Spanish writers were much earlier, going back to 1906. On this topic see
Susana Rocha Relvas, António Sardinha e as suas relações com a Espanha, unpublished thesis, Lisbon,
1998, pp. 94–96.
26
This cult of the Hispanist ideal developed with particular intensity after the Spanish–American War of
1898. See Isidro Sepúlveda, El sueño de Madre Pátria. Hispanoamericanismo y nacionalismo, Madrid,
2005. The historian Rafael Altamira was one of its principal theoreticians. On Hispanism and Hispanicity
see also Juan Carlos Pereira Castañares, ‘España e Iberoamérica: programas, políticas y resultdos (1892–
1992)’, in Portugal, España y América. Pasado y presente de un projecto (s.XIX–XX), co-ord. by Hipólito
de la Torre, Mérida, 1993, pp. 129–66.
27
Paulo Archer de Carvalho, ‘Ao princípio era o verbo: o eterno retorno e os mitos da historiografia
integralista’, Revista de História das Ideias, 18 (1996), pp. 237–40.
8
Nevertheless Sardinha stressed the idea of political dualism in the Peninsula.
That is to say that although, in his view, the spirit of Hispanic Catholicism, including
the nations of Latin America, had a global mission to fulfil, there was a fundamental
difference between unity and unification which it was necessary to preserve, since unity
itself thrived on diversity.28 As an alternative to Iberism (which he reduced to its
unitarist position, thus dismissing federalism), he adopted the concept of peninsularity,
taken as ‘collaboration and understanding’ between the two Peninsular states.
Later on, António Sardinha came to be considered an Iberist.29 But as we saw,
that is not an appropriate designation, particularly for the years prior to 1919, when he
went into self-imposed exile in Spain. Far from seeing Iberia as a whole, Sardinha
reduced Spain to Castile, practically ignoring the other Peninsular nationalities, such as
Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia — a stance that was in fact customary
amongst anti-Iberist nationalists. Nevertheless, in promoting the idea of a Peninsular
alliance, he identified it as being counterposed to the English alliance, which continued
to dominate the concerns of Portuguese foreign policy.
António Sardinha died in 1925, but his theories left traces in Portuguese political
culture late into the twentieth century — see, for example, Rebordão Navarro’s journal,
Bandarra, in the 1950s.30 One should note also a polemic between Franco Nogueira and
his Integralist critics during the final years of the Estado Novo, under Marcelo Caetano,
when it was already clear that the regime was in crisis and isolated internationally. In
1972, Franco Nogueira, a former minister for foreign affairs under Salazar and a
staunch defender of the regime’s overseas policy, did not hesitate to describe Sardinha
as an Iberist, equating Iberism and Peninsularism. Pequito Rebelo and other latter-day
followers of Integralismo Lusitano reacted angrily to this one-sided reading of
Sardinha’s ideas.
What prompted Franco Nogueira to settle scores with Sardinha’s theoretical
heritage was the state of relations between Spain and Portugal on international affairs at
the beginning of the 1970s. Since the 1960s, the upholding of Portugal’s colonial policy
had led to prolonged wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea. However, Portugal
could no longer count on the unconditional support of the Franco regime, which had
28
António Sardinha., ‘Madre Hispânia’, À lareira de Castela, no place, 1943, p. 184.
29
Franco Nogueira, ‘O ‘iberismo’ de António Sardinha’, António Sardinha e o iberismo, Lisbon, 1974,
pp. 16–19. In the same volume Pequito Rebelo criticized this characterization of Sardinha as an Iberist.
30
Cf., for example, ‘A península sem influências’, Bandarra, 7 (July 1953).
9
already resolved its own problems in Africa — albeit ‘by force of circumstances’ —
with a decolonization programme in Guinea (1963–68) and the handover of the Ifini
territory to Morocco (1969).31
At a time of crisis for the Estado Novo, when the great disputes over the Iberian
question were no more than a distant memory, the word Iberism continued to be
employed for political purposes, even amongst the most conservative elements of the
right. This clearly shows to what degree some ideologues of Salazarism still fed on a
fear of Spanish absorption, and a deep-rooted anti-Spanish sentiment. It was a feeling
that was stoked by the Iberist intentions of the leaders of the Second Spanish Republic,
such as Manuel Azaña, and later, in a different sense and context, by the imperialist
designs of he Falangists.32
To suggest that António Sardinha was a supporter of political union with Spain
(as Franco Nogueira was implying) was an obvious misrepresentation of his intentions;
his book, The Peninsular Alliance, had made it clear that Hispanism was not to be
confused with Iberism. Thus one can understand the indignation that the former
minister’s bruising attacks provoked amongst the disciples of Integralism, such as
Pequito Rebelo and Rodrigues Cavalheiro.
Portugal in a Peninsular context: twentieth-century views
Contemporary with Sardinha in the period of the First Republic, António Sérgio,
Teixeira de Pascoaes, Fernando Pessoa, Almada Negreiros and Fidelino de Figueiredo,
amongst other intellectuals, were greatly influenced by Oliveira Martins’ Peninsulawide perspective. All, apart from Almada, took into account the diversity of the Iberian
national cultures, and they were all very aware of the need to locate Portuguese history
and culture within a Peninsular context. However, they adopted very different positions.
31
Hipólito de La Torre Gómez, ‘A Espanha nos sistemas internacionais (séculos XIX–XX)’, in A. J. Telo
and H. de la Torre Gómez, Portugal e Espanha nos sistemas internacionais contemporâneos, Lisbon,
2000, pp. 270–72.
32
See Hipólito de La Torre Gomez, La relación peninsular en la antecâmara de la Guerra Civil de
España (1931–1936), Mérida, no date.
10
Let us take the case of Fernando Pessoa, who wrote a series of very interesting
political texts on Iberia and Iberism, not published until 1980.33 Pessoa took up Martins’
concept of an Iberian civilization, along with the idea that Portugal was a ‘profoundly
cosmopolitan’ nation — a view to be found also in Teófilo Braga and António Sérgio
— as distinct from the nationalism of Spain. He argued for a spiritual unity with Spain,
which he called ibericidade [Iberianness], through a Peninsula-wide federation. He also
supported an idea in fashion amongst Catalan Iberists such as Ribera y Rovira, Joan
Maragall and others, in the early part of the twentieth century, to the effect that there
existed within the Peninsula three major nationalities, namely Catalonia, Castile, and
Portugal/Galicia.34 In 1935, already into the period of the Estado Novo, Almada
Negreiros too took up the subject of Iberian civilization, while rejecting Iberian union
from the outset. Fidelino de Figueiredo, for his part, had long been inspired by the ideas
of a Peninsular spirit, of an Iberian civilization, and of a Peninsular patriotism. During
his exile in Spain (1928–29) he worked on his writings on the place of the Peninsular
peoples and the relationship between Portugal and Spain, following in the footsteps of
Martins’ História da civilização ibérica, in a cosmopolitan framework.35 As an admirer
of Spanish culture (like his luminary, Oliveira Martins) Fidelino de Figueiredo was a
supporter of a Hispanism that did not disregard the political dualism of the Peninsula.
Obviously he was opposed to an Iberian political union.
In Republican and Socialist circles too this fascination with Spain was evident
— we may recall the case of Jaime Cortesão, who developed good relations with Iberist
Spanish Republicans. Also quite common amongst the Portuguese Republican elite was
a rhetoric of brotherhood between Portugal and Spain, the latter being seen as a sister
nation, bearing in mind the affinities of ‘race’, landscape, climate and customs.36 An
example of this was the speech given by António José de Almeida on 1 December
33
Some of his texts were published in Ultimatum e páginas de sociologia política , intro. and org. by Joel
Serrão, texts selected by Mª Isabel Rocheta and Paula Morão, Lisbon, 1980, pp. 159–95 and more
recently in a Catalan edition, Escrits sobre Catunya i Ibéria, ed. by Victor Matínez-Gil, Barcelona, 2007.
34
On this subject see Victor Martínez-Gil, El naixement de l’iberisme catalanista, Barcelona, 1997.
35
Id., Através da Espanha literária (1928), Rio de Janeiro, 1951, pp. 8–14.
36
Cf. Homenagem da Academia Bracarense aos heróis de 1640 no 1º de Dezembro de 1894, Braga,
1894, p. i and p. iii.
11
1921.37 The contrary was the case with Fran Paxeco, a follower of Teófilo Braga, whose
lengthy work, significantly entitled Portugal não é ibérico [Portugal is not Iberian],
tried to emphasize the geographical, ethnic and historical differences between the two
nations. However, the national and international context in which it was published, on
the eve of the Estado Novo, was already quite different.
The conservative nationalism of the Estado Novo, rooted in a triumphalist vision
of the national history, defined itself largely in opposition to Spain (equated with
Castile), taken either implicitly or explicitly to be the great historic adversary. The
known Iberist aims of some leaders of the Second Spanish Republic (notably Manuel
Azaña), who had good relations with Portuguese Republicans fighting the military
dictatorship in their country and supported their struggle, provoked Hispanophobia in
Portugal in 1935 and 1936, especially after the victory of the Popular Front in February
of the latter year. Iberism was now identified with revolution, Communism, and Soviet
interests. At a time when the political and cultural panorama in Europe was already
dominated by totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, and when there was a sharpening of
social and political conflicts, it is not surprising that ethnic and exclusivist nationalisms
should reassert themselves with renewed strength. The Historical Society for
Independence (formerly the 1st December Commission, renamed in 1927), a nationalist
pressure group that promoted anti-Iberist and Hispanophobic sentiments, then gained
very significant support from sections of the intellectual and political elite of the time.
Between 1929 and 1940, amongst a total of 210 members the Society claimed many
supporters from the liberal professions (around 22%), the military (16%) and the civil
service (17%). Amongst them we find writers such as Teixeira de Pascoaes, Mário
Beirão, Manuel Múrias and Hernâni Cidade, political figures such as Pedro Teotónio
Pereira and Rolão Preto, and soldiers such as Humberto Delgado.38
The Friendship and Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 — the so-called Iberian Pact,
confirmed by Salazar and Franco in Seville, in 1942 — did not in essence change that
position of rejecting a common identity. It was limited to establishing a wartime
diplomatic agreement that did not, as far as Portugal was concerned, change her
essentially defensive outlook. Economic and cultural ties between the two countries
37
Cf. A. Ramos da Costa, História da Sociedade Histórica da Independência de Portugal, Lisbon, 1940,
pp. 182–83.
38
Vasco Azinheiro, A Sociedade Histórica da Independência de Portugal, Lisbon, 2008 [unpublished
paper]. The source used was the Sociedade Histórica da Independência, 3 vols (list of members), no date.
12
remained weak for decades; even in 1971, exports to Portugal represented no more than
2.7 per cent of the Spanish total — despite this being three times the corresponding
figure for Portugal.39 However, we should not overlook the importance of smuggling,
always very active between the border populations, meaning that some goods imported
via the ports of Lisbon and Porto were re-exported across the land border to Spain, and
vice-versa.40 Even so, the land border still constituted a profound gulf between the two
countries — a situation that only changed substantially with the accession of the
Peninsular nations to the EC, in 1986.
After the 25 Abril 1974 Revolution
In the final year of Salazar’s own rule (1968), Vitorino Magalhães Godinho published a
series of articles in which he developed a comparative analysis of demographic
evolution (with special attention to urbanization) and the obstacles to economic
development in both Spain and Portugal.41 In so doing he revisited the outlook of
Oliveira Martins, that Portuguese problems were only intelligible when placed in a
Peninsular perspective — while not neglecting other European countries. Very few
authors took this approach in those final years of the Estado Novo, when, as we have
seen, the epithet ‘Iberist’ was still anathema.
An example from after the revolution of 25 April 1974 is the literary review
Nova (1975–76), edited by Herberto Helder, which promoted an appreciation of the
connections between the Portuguese and Castilian languages in order to demonstrate a
‘cultural tie’ between Portugal, Brazil, the former Portuguese colonies, Spain and
Spanish-speaking America. Other examples are the spiritual and emotional
pronouncements by Miguel Torga, in many passages of his poetical and prose writing,
39
Eloy Fernandez Clemente, ‘Problemas y ritmos de la modernización económica peninsular en el siglo
XX’, in Portugal y España Contemporaneos, ed. by H. de la Torre Gómez, Ayer, 37 (2000), pp. 204 and
213–214.
40
David Justino, A formação do espaço económico nacional 1810–1913, Lisbon, no date, vol. I, pp. 213–
17. In 1854, overland exports to Spain did not exceed 8% of total exports from Portugal.
41
Articles published in the Diário de Lisboa, from December 1967 to July 1970, later collected in
Estrutura da antiga sociedade portuguesa, Lisbon, 1971. Magalhães Godinho had already adopted this
perspective in O socialismo e o futuro da península, Lisbon, 1970, pp. 135–47.
13
most notably his Diário;42 or, after Portugal’s accession to the EC, an essay by Natália
Correia which highlights, in a poetic style, the historical and cultural affinities between
Portugal and Castile, while ignoring the other Iberian nationalities. 43
Since the integration of Portugal and Spain into the European Community, in
1986, the term Iberism has gained new meanings, less concerned with the nationalist
political disputes of the nineteenth century — the much-disputed Iberian Question.
However, in April 2006, the Portuguese Minister of Public Works, speaking in Santiago
de Compostela on policies for transport and communications between the two countries,
admitted that on these issues he was a convinced Iberist44 — a view for which he was
promptly and harshly criticized by the opposition parties, from the extreme right to the
left, in the press, on television and on the Internet. This incident shows that the old
Hispanophobic spectres are still alive amongst the intellectual and political elites in
Portugal.
But much has changed in the way that the Portuguese see Spain, and there are
clear proofs that this is the case. In the media today, allusions to the ‘Iberian market’
pass without comment, as did a reference in a recent meeting of Iberian and Latin
American writers (Correntes da Escrita, held in Póvoa de Varzim in 2006) to a literary
‘greater Iberia’, even. Contacts between the two countries — in finance and commerce,
in transport, communication and tourism, as well as cultural and scientific matters —
have intensified astonishingly.45 To take foreign trade, while in 1960 no more 1 per cent
of Portuguese exports were going to Spain, as against 0.9 per cent of Spanish exports
going to Portugal, in 2000 the figures had reached 19.3 per cent and 23.4 per cent
respectively.46 No less significant are the relative figures for financial movements
between the two countries. Between 1990 and 2001, Spain applied 23.2 per cent of its
direct investments to Portugal, while in the same period Portugal’s direct investment
42
Cf., for example, Miguel Torga, Diário XV, Coimbra, 1990, p.133.
43
Natália Correia, Somos todos hispanos, Lisbon, 1988.
44
‘Las infraestruturas del Noroeste Peninsular. Un politico portugués que se declara “iberista confeso”’,
Faro de Vigo, 27 April 2006.
45
See Sérgio Nunes, ‘O comércio intra-ibérico:1967–2000’ and Francisco Mendes, ‘Indicadores
económicos de Portugal e Espanha’, Janus 2003. Anuário de relações exteriores, Lisbon, 2002, pp. 20–
23.
46
Francisco Mendes, ‘Indicadores económicos de Portugal e Espanha’, Janus 2003. Anuário de relações
exteriores, Lisbon, 2002, pp. 22.
14
[IDE] in Spain made up 13.4 per cent of its own total.47 In 2000, there were more than
3000 Spanish businesses operating in Portugal, while Portuguese businesses in Spain
exceeded 400.48 These statistics demonstrate a progressive integration of the Peninsular
economies, although they also allow an insight into underlying tensions that are far
from having vanished.
In fact, fears of a loss of sovereignty caused by strong investment by Spanish
banks and businesses in Portugal increased in the 1990s and the years following.49 An
opinion poll published in 2006 by the weekly Sol revealed that around 28 per cent of
Portuguese were in favour of political union with Spain for economic reasons. Another
poll as showed that around 46 per cent of Spaniards would welcome union with
Portugal.
Despite the re-emergence here and there of the old fears of assimilation into
Spain (forgetting that Spain itself is a complex of very different nationalities and
cultures), a new concept of Iberism has emerged, based on a cultural dimension. There
are even those who use the term post-Iberism to acknowledge the very impossibility of
advancing with the Iberism of the past.50
To conclude, it is worth returning to our initial question: was Iberism a form of
nationalism? There is no doubt that in the nineteenth century it aspired to be that. It
encompassed differing political doctrines, unitarist and federalist, and tried (albeit
unsuccessfully) to form itself into a social and political movement. It attempted to rally
public opinion through public meetings, and through the press and pamphlets — in a
word, through political propaganda. From the close of the nineteenth century the rise of
Republican nationalism and its project for a Third Portuguese Empire contributed
decisively to the eclipsing of support for federalist Iberism. The occasional outbreaks of
Iberist sentiments in Spain during the First Portuguese Republic and, later on, in the
ranks of the Spanish Falange, served only to stimulate Portuguese nationalism —
47
48
Id., Idem, p.23.
Sebastián Royo and Paul Christopher Manuel, ‘Introdução’, Portugal, Espanha e a integração
Europeia. Um balanço (org. by S. Royo), Lisbon, 2005, p. 43.
49
António José Teixeira, ‘Iberismo’, Diário de Notícias, 2 October 2006 and Carolina Martin and Pedro
Corro, ‘La Iberia deseada...’, Tiempo de Hoy (www.tiempodehoy.com), 16 October 2006.
50
Various authors have called attention to the utopian dimension to Iberism, visible, for example, in a
certain nostalgia for a lost grandeur.
15
whether Liberal nationalism, or the conservative and exclusive nationalism of the
Estado Novo.
Over the course of the twentieth century the Iberist ideal weakened, retreating to
the cultural and spiritual level. Certainly a current with a long political heritage did
survive in Portugal, advocating an external alliance with Spain, as an alternative to the
alliance with Britain. However, we believe it would be wrong to identify this position
with that of the Iberists of the nineteenth century, whether unitarist or federalist, who
were all, in one way or another, supporters of a political integration of the Peninsular
territories. We can say, then, that cultural Iberism in the twentieth century did not
constitute a nationalism since it was not associated with a political movement, nor did it
deeply affect public opinion. It is true that it manifested itself through a powerful
interest in Iberian culture, especially for Castilian and Catalan literature. But it did not
concern itself with defining a political doctrine of the state, nor did it lead to the
formation of political movements or associations endowed with any significant
influence in society. One might say that it dealt with a utopia, in the etymological sense
of the word (ou tópos, a place that does not exist), reflecting a nostalgia for lost
greatness which remained alive in the parent nations of the first modern empires,
Portugal and Spain, into the twentieth century, in the time of the dictatorships of Salazar
and Franco. It is not surprising, then, that the Iberists, with their critical and
disenchanted view of their own times in the Peninsular nations, should project their
hopes into the future. Latino Coelho believed that Iberia would be become the Russia of
the West. And one of the most distinguished Catalan Iberists from the beginning of the
twentieth century, Ribera y Rovira, would say that ‘there is a great Spain for the
future’.51 But the existence of two states (one of which contained, from the 1970s
onwards, regions exercising considerable political autonomy), and their depiction on the
maps of the Iberian Peninsula in two colours, continued to perplex Spanish intellectuals
of the time.
Whether we are looking at the past or the present, then, it is helpful to
distinguish the following four positions in relation to the two Peninsular nations: a)
political Iberism, i.e. a plan for political union, which as we have seen can take various
forms; b) cultural Iberism, i.e. the desire to promote cultural and scientific relations; c)
51
I. Ribera y Rovira La integridad de la pátria. Cataluña ante el espírito de Castilla, Barcelona, 1907, p.
15.
16
economic Iberism, i.e. the desire for a greater integration of the economies of the two
countries; and d) diplomatic Iberism, i.e. the desire for greater diplomatic convergence
and cooperation of the Iberian nations in a European and global context. This is a
necessary, if not sufficient, requirement in order to avoid the risk of oversimplification,
or even of allowing ideological concepts to intrude into a field which, even today,
generates controversy.
17