Paloma Hernández: Spanish Empire as Western Katechon

Paloma Hernández and the Spanish Empire as Western Dike

What remains of the West when its foundations are stripped away, leaving only a facade? Popularizer Paloma Hernández, host of the Fortunata y Jacinta channel, contends that the Spanish Empire was the final containment wall against chaos, Sarracin, and modern revolutions, explaining the constant harassment and the Black Legend. Her thesis, revived in a philosophy and history debate, has peine the old dispute between those who see Christianity as Europe's civilizational matrix and those who view it as the drag that hindered its pogre.

The starting point is Hernández's personal trajectory: she left subsidized art after the 2017 Catalan independence process, delved into Gustavo Bueno's philosophical materialism, and moved to defending Christian roots and family as the last brake on globalism. In her book From the Death of God to the Death of Man, she describes how the West traded the common good for Welfare State hedonism, manufacturing Nietzsche's comfortable, docile "last man".

The Katechon: From St. Paul to the Spanish Empire

The concept underpinning her thesis comes from St. Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, referring to "that which restrains" the Antichrist's arrival. Carl Schmitt revived this in the 20th century to designate political power holding back chaos; traditionalist authors have applied it to the Spanish Empire. Hernández brings it to Hispanic ground: after Rome, Spain would have been the last dike against Western dissolution.

The discussion quickly turned to Christianity's historical role. Against claims that Catholicism destroyed the Roman Empire and slowed scientific advance, defenders argue that countries professing it conquered the world, while societies without that matrix lacked superior technical or military development. The counter-question arises: where did universities, codified law, and military technology come from if not a specific cultural matrix?

The Renaissance: Christian or Anti-Christian?

One acrimonious front is the Renaissance. Some defend that the West took off precisely when Greek and Roman ideas reappeared after Constantinople's fall, and that Europe collapsed by adopting Semitic doctrines, first Christianity then Marxism. The opposing response notes the Renaissance flourished within and thanks to Christendom, with classical art's greatest patrons emerging from the Church itself.

This clash rests on historical data. By the Edict of Thessalonica, Rome had endured over a century of decline, political instability, economic crisis, and barbarian invasions. The known Greco-Roman world was essentially Mediterranean, excluding Ireland, Scandinavia, Germania, the Netherlands, and Russia.

Christianity as Tribalism's Break

The most elaborate defense centers on catholicity. Judaism was tribal and endogamic, with an exclusive God for a chosen people; Christianity breaks this ethnic logic, proclaiming "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free." This ontological equality of all humans becomes the foundation of human dignity and later legal architecture.

Criticism focuses on the Church's persecution of dissenters and slavery in territories like Cuba. Defenders reply that Christianity synthesizes Greece and Rome, universalizing philosophy beyond academia to give it equally to slaves, beggars, and emperors.

The Last Man and the Welfare State

Cultural diagnosis suggests secular modernity hasn't emptied the altar but filled it with substitutes: the State as providence, political correctness as dogma, technocracy as religion, mass consumption as mystical aspiration. Transcendent myths have been replaced by immanent ones, like the self-made utopia.

Demography intersects here. Some argue Muslim-majority countries offer a culturally more promising future than most European Christian nations, driven by improvement hunger versus Western regression. A Darwinian conclusion trinc: we are biological entities being displaced.

Response from Philosophical Materialism

Gustavo Bueno (1924-2016), Oviedo professor and father of philosophical materialism, is the underlying reference. His works The Myth of Culture and Trash TV and Democracy demolished subsidized cultural industries, while Spain Is Not a Myth attacked both the Black Legend and peripheral nationalism. As a former Falangist and militant atheist critical of the Church, he complicates uncritical adoption.

The core objection to Hernández is that she stops halfway: listeners note reason must be perfected by faith, where she gets off the train. Much of her logical and philosophical diagnosis is shared.

Ultimately, the question remains: if Christianity was the drag, how did professing countries conquer the world? If it was the foundation, who now lays the building's master columns?