Examples:
> And yet, after the Reconquest, the once-wealthy region fell into decay. By the early 19th century, it had become so wild and impoverished that Washington Irving was forced to trudge its grueling mountain roads in a mule team convoy with armed guards to protect from highwaymen.
> The remote setting has also seen its share of violence. In 1568, more than seven decades after the Reconquest, the Muslims of Almería joined the so-called Rebellion of the Alpujarras against Christian domination in Spain, creating an outlaw Islamic enclave that held out until it was crushed in 1571.
> Soon after, a mass escape of Republican civilian refugees on the desert highway from Málaga to Almería was strafed remorselessly by Franco’s Nazi-supplied planes, leaving at least 3,000 dead. The city of Almería then became “a vast encampment,”
> Spain’s attempts at reconciliation have ranged from symbolic—a 2022 apology to women executed as witches in Catalonia—to acts that have direct contemporary impact, like the exhumation of victims in mass graves from the Spanish Civil War, offering closure to descendants who want their relatives identified and properly reburied.
> In 2015, there was also an attempt to deal with injustices following the demise of al-Andalus, when the Madrid government apologized for the 1492 Edict of Expulsion aimed at Sephardic Jews and offered Spanish citizenship to their international descendants.
Similarly, some of the examples of bad things the author cited are stretching plausibility to kind of imply that they were a result of Christian rule when they happened in the 19th century in the Spanish Civil War era.
While I don't doubt it, I haven't been able to find anything that actually supports this claim. But considering who it was that actually owned serfs I think we can all agree that this is another reason it's a shame the wrong side won the Spanish Civil War.
> The Pact of Forgetting (Spanish: Pacto del Olvido) is the political decision by both leftist and rightist parties of Spain to avoid confronting directly the legacy of Francoism after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975.[1] The Pact of Forgetting was an attempt to move on from the Civil War and subsequent repression and to concentrate on the future of Spain.[2] In making a smooth transition from autocracy and totalitarianism to democracy, the Pact ensured that there were no prosecutions for persons responsible for human rights violations or similar crimes committed during the Francoist period. On the other hand, Francoist public memorials, such as the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen, fell into disuse for official occasions.[3] Also, the celebration of "Day of Victory" during the Franco era was changed to "Armed Forces Day" so respect was paid to both Nationalist and Republican parties of the Civil War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_of_Forgetting
No wonder Spain still experiences a lot of issues related to fascism, Francoists, Carlists and more, you cannot just pretend like something didn't happen.
Spain was dragged into a political and economic system with no real organic connection to the country. Democracy here has always been a farce. During covid the leftist government enacted some of the most draconian lockdowns in the world, and there was zero pushback from the kind of people who seethe over Franco. Also, the government is many times larger than it ever was during Franco (hence more control), the economy is relatively worse off, and the fertility rate is in a death spiral.
A key part of Fascism is that there is no real division between private and state enterprise, beyond some cosmetic titles. So the proportion is definitely not greater today, whatever measure you define. And if you mean "the total amount", which is even more meaningless, and today it is greater, than that is because Franco's economy was just very underdeveloped.
This is precisely what happened in non-Soviet-occupied Germany. Only the most senior Nazis were severely punished at big trials like Nuremberg. For lesser ranking Nazis, even when they were sentenced to imprisonment, their sentences were generally short or soon commuted.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission focused on the investigation side in order to provide healing, but it sought to avoid prosecuting any but the most trenchant participants in Apartheid – and the country was praised for that. There is certainly a belief that coming down hard on the ancien regime may only prolong civil conflict, so it is hard to see Spain’s way of dealing with Franco’s legacy as beyond the pale.
> Spain still experiences a lot of issues related to fascism
I don’t think this is a fair characterization of contemporary Spanish politics. The political successor of Franco (the falangistas) had dwindled by the 1990s to a handful of elderly folk who were derided by wider society. Today in Spain, the term “fascist” is often applied by people on the left to any ideological opponent on the far-right or even the center-right, but that right-wing opponent’s actual link to Franco or the distinctly early-twentieth-century phenomenon that was Fascism, is doubtful.
> but it sought to avoid prosecuting any but the most trenchant participants in Apartheid
So, not at all what happened in Spain then, as no one got punished at all, everyone was supposed to just collectively forget about it. I wouldn't have a issue with it if it just focused on the "most trenchant participants" but instead nothing was done.
> Today in Spain, the term “fascist” is often applied by people on the left to any ideological opponent on the far-right or even the center-right, but that right-wing opponent’s actual link to Franco or the distinctly early-twentieth-century phenomenon that was Fascism, is doubtful.
I'm not sure if you visited Spain recently, but there is definitely young francoists and falangists all around Spain, openly promoting fascism and trying to protect whatever legacy Franco still has in the country. It's not a handful of elderly folks as you think.
At the time, any reforms had to please the Franco supporters, or a coup was feared. This is why the Constitution is ambiguous in many points: Spanish is aconfessional but with special historical weight for Catholicism, the amount of independence of different regions, etc.).
I think it is easier to understand after 2 facts:
1. The dictatorship lasted from 1939 until 1975.
2. Franco designated what would be the next King as his successor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Carlos_I). Keep in mind Spain was a republic before Franco's coup and civil war. This king, instead of becoming the new dictator, was installed back with the monarchy.
Even if we were to accept invasion of Iberia by the Umayyad Caliphate of Arabia in 711 as an exercise in colonisation, the Caliphate collapsed by 750, and Muslim rule in Iberia was succeeded by a complex succession of mostly local rule by the united Emirate or Caliphate of Cordova, or broken into smaller Taifas, and fluctuating levels of control by Berber dynasties which also controlled parts of North Africa—but notably would sometimes seat their court in Seville or Cordova.
Was that colonisation? If it was, it's hard to argue that the similar political and territorial changes taking place in the Christian kingdoms, counties, and principalities of Northern Spain, often by descendants of the Visigothic invaders, were not also acts of colonisation. Another example would be the Marca Hispanica, established by Charlemagne, and direct predecessor of the County of Barcelona and hence the Principality of Catalonia, a realm of the Crown of Aragon which is a constituent part of modern Spain.
Spanish mediæval history is a constant shuffle of rulers and territorial changes, which can neither be ascribed to the oversimplified idea of the Christian Reconquista (=Reconquest) nor can it be regarded as an example of colonisation in the modern sense. Regarding this complexity, consider that the Coat of Arms of Spain [0], in its many historical variations, explicitly references the Crown of Castile (Kingdoms of Leon and Castile), the Crown of Aragon, the Kingdom of Navarre, and the Kingdom of Granada. The first two entities were united by dynastic union, and the latter two were taken by conquest. To what extent was the conquest of Muslim Granada a decolonisation event, and not the conquest of Christian Navarre?
Finally, regarding Andalusia being the poorest part of the country [2] and its history with serfdom, this is more due to the repopulation carried out by the Kingdom of Castile after the (re?)conquest of territories from Muslim rulers. Much land was granted to Christian noble families and feudal lordships were established as reward to them, to a greater extent than had happened in the North of Spain in the earlier period. In fact, the effect of repopulation and land awards as recompense can be seen to a certain extent in the map of municipalities of Spain [1]. Notice that the Northern Meseta, mostly modern Castilla y León (Northwest square of inland) is much more granular than the bottom half, including the Southern Meseta, mostly Castilla-La-Mancha and Extremadura (inland area below north-south midline of Spain just north of Andalusia), Andalusia and Murcia. That is the case even though the Northern and Southern Mesetas are not significantly different in terms of climate and geography. Their only differences is how the Southern one was more systematically repopulated by the Crown of Castile, as was the rest of Southern Spain.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Spain
[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipio_(Espa%C3%B1a)#/media...
#/media/Archivo:Spain_municipalities.png){kind=link}
[2] There were of course many later contributing factors, including the effect of the Spanish Empire, the effect of 19th century protectionist economic policies, as well as the whole 20th century. Here I'm only focusing on the how the late mediæval period had its effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spanish_autonomous_com...
Before the rapid economic growth Spain saw in the 1980s, it was most likely even poorer and less developed.
There is still a North-South divide in Spain with Communities Madrid northwards sharing economic and developmental indicators with Western European countries like France or Germany, while Southern Spain shares developmental and economic indicators closer to Portugal, Sicily, or other southern and Eastern European regions. The same issue plagues Southern Italy as well.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...