Castile and the Plateau: Spain's Essence Debate

Spain's Essence: Castile vs. The Rest

Where lies the essence of Spain? This seemingly innocent question sparks a map war that has lasted 786 days. The initial thesis places the core in the triangle formed by Santiago de Compostela, Pamplona, and Madrid, the land where Christian kingdoms of Gothic descent strengthened and expelled the Jovenlandeses. Everything else —Andalusia, Extremadura, Alentejo, Algarve, La Mancha— is reduced to the category of colonies of this core. Catalonia is not even mentioned: it belongs to another kingdom, Aragon, with its own colonies (Valencia, Balearic Islands) and a Mediterranean culture that, according to this reading, is not Spain.

The proposal has not gone unanswered. The most repeated counterattack points to Castilla y León as the real matrix, with Las Merindades, Álava, and Biscay as the exact point where Castilian and the Kingdom of Castile were born. From there, the discussion branches out: some defend the southern sub-plateau —Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, and Madrid— as Spain without nuances; others claim the Basque-Navarrese substrate as the racial and sarracena prototype of the historical Spaniard; and a third current, more skeptical, directly denies that Spain exists as a subject with an essence.

What is the historical origin of Spain according to the debate?

The origin is situated, according to the majority thesis, in the northern strip: Galicia, Asturias, León, Castile, and the western Pyrenees. From there, Castilian expands, Extremadura, Murcia, and Andalusia are repopulated, and the leap to America occurs. The founding date often cited is the 9th century for Galician and the 13th for Portuguese, the penultimate language to emerge from the Peninsula. The last one, by the way, is not revealed.

Some take the origin further back. One current locates the spirit of freedom of Iberian peoples in the Bagauda revolt of the 5th century and its continuation in the High Middle Ages in Hispania, centered in the western Pyrenees. For this reading, Castile would not be the germ of Spain but of the opposite: municipal liberty, customary law, and the armed people. Spain, as a nation-state, would be an artificial construct of powerful minorities, like the rest.

The clash between both readings is not minor. Some see in Castile the American epic and the seed of the nation; others see in the modern state the instrument that precisely undid what Castile had created.

What role does Madrid play in Spanish identity?

Madrid appears in the debate with double edges. For some, it is the operational essence of Spain: the army, the Civil Guard, ministries, compulsory education system, healthcare. That is, the State functioning. For others, that same centrality is the problem: Madrid represents the power that crushes municipal liberty and local self-government.

The discussion shifts to the capital's role as a driver of uniformity. Some argue that the compulsory education system and central administration have been the main vehicles of national construction, and that this process accelerated after the Constitution of 1812. Before that date, they argue, common people still retained spaces of freedom that were later lost.

The counterargument is immediate: what freedoms existed before 1812? Could you enter a city without paying tolls? Was there academic freedom? Could you divorce? The answer, implicit in the question, is that the idealized past was not precisely a liberal paradise.

Periphery vs. Center: Galicia, Catalonia, Andalusia

Galicia takes one of the first blows: "Not in Galicia," concludes one intervention. The argument is that Galicia looks more to Brittany than to Castile, and that its language and culture have their own development prior to Castilian expansion. Catalonia, directly, falls outside the framework: it is not Spain, it has another culture, Mediterranean, and was part of another kingdom with its own colonies.

Andalusia receives the most ambivalent treatment. For some, it is a Castilian colony; for others, the very essence of Spain. The Roman, Phoenician, and Tartessian substrate is claimed as the real base, with Sarracinic architecture as just another element of the picture, not the main one. Language, accent, and flamenco become identity markers that some defend and others ridicule.

The south also appears in the discussion about the Spanish prototype. One current argues that the historical model was the Basque-Navarrese and Castilian of the north: serious, hardworking, sober, fierce. The Andalusian prototype, festive and indolent, would be a later construction. The reply does not wait long: Basques are not famous for that either, and the essence is in Castilla y León. The exchange of regional stereotypes is constant and not always friendly.

Does a Spanish essence really exist?

The most skeptical current denies the premise. Spain does not exist as a subject with an essence, they argue; it is an artificial construct. From that position, the question itself is tricky: there is no essence to look for because there is no subject that possesses it. Other interventions opt for geographic irony: the essence is in Segarro, Mauritania, the Elda-Las Pedroñeras-Chinchilla triangle, or in Don Benito and Villanueva.

Among those who do believe in the essence, the dispute shifts to the landscape. La Mancha appears as the purest Spain: without nuances, without Moorish accent, without cosmopolitanism, without co-official language. Castilla y León shares that purity but with a northern air that distances it from the ideal. The Mediterranean coast, on the other hand, is claimed as historical Spain for millennia, against what is qualified as typical LOGSE nonsense.

The result is a map that does not close. Each region has its argument, its founding date, and its enemy. The essence of Spain, if it exists, is disputed inch by inch.

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In the end, the most repeated conclusion is that the essence is in every corner of the country, although there are interested parties in erasing it. Which, said like that, clarifies nothing. But it leaves everyone calm. Which is, probably, what it was all about.