Racism in Spain

Racism in Spain can be traced to any historical era, whereby social, economic and political conflict has efficiently been justified through racial difference, be it in the sense of racism as an ideology or as simple attitudes or behaviors towards those perceived as different.

The difficulty in defining a "Spanish race" has not acted as an obstacle to racist attitudes, yet more common than racism per se have been attitudes linked to racism such as xenophobia or religious hatred.

Historical roots

During the Spanish inquisition, Jews, Arabs, and Berbers were targeted the most. This policy was called Limpieza de sangre (Blood Cleansing). Even if a Jew, Arab, or Berber converted to Christianity, Spanish authorities during that time referred to them as New Christians, which were the target of institutional discrimination and suspicion by the Spanish Inquisition.[1] New Christians of Muslim heritage were referred to as moriscos, meaning Moor-like.[2] Those of Jewish heritage were termed Conversos and those who secretly continued to practice Judaism were referred to as marranos (either from Spanish marrar to err/deviate or from marrano meaning "swine".).[3] After the Reconquista, many Mudéjars (individual Arabs and Berbers, who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity) remained in Spain as practicing Muslims and Sephardic Jews were required to convert to Catholicism or leave the country in 1492. Attitudes towards Moriscos varied in different regions, although they were never the main target of the Inquisition. A few decades after the War of the Alpujarras, during which the Muslim-majority population of Granada rebelled, the King of Spain ordered the Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain, which was implemented successfully in the eastern region of Valencia and less so in the rest of Spain.

The arrival of Scientific Racism

According to Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida, European scientific racism prevalent in the 19th and 20th century can be understood as a doctrine which "affirmed the inherited biological determinism of the moral and intellectual capacities of an individual, and the division of groups of humans into races differentiated by physical traits associated to inmutable, inherited moral and intellectual traits" and which "affirms the superiority of certain races over others, protected by racial purity and ruined through racial mixing", which "leads to the national right of superior races to impose themselves over the inferior". According to Chillida, such an ideology had difficulties in penetrating Spain due to the concept of "casticismo" vert ingrained in Spanish society, whereby Spanish castes where understood, not as races, but as religious lineages, in contraposition to the "Moor" and the "Jew". In the Spanish psyche, the Christian-Jewish dichotomy remained predominant over the more modern and racialized arian-semite dichotomy, developed in northern Europe. Álvarez Chillida (2002), p. 216; 222

Eugenic ideas were slow to enter the country; the First Eugenic Spanish Conferences took place in 1928, and the second ones in 1933. Recasens Siches defended racist stances in those conferences.[4] Jurist Quintiliano Saldaña got to defend a national policy of sterilizations although he gathered a paltry support in the country.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Susan Schroeder, Stafford Poole (2007). Religion in New Spain. University of New Mexico Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-0-8263-3978-2.
  2. ↑ Michael C. Thomsett (2010). The Inquisition: A History. McFarland. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-7864-4409-0.
  3. ↑ Michael Brenner, Jeremiah Riemer (2010). A Short History of the Jews. Princeton University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-691-14351-4.
  4. 1 2 Álvarez Chillida, Gonzalo (2002). El antisemitismo en España: la imagen del judío, 1812-2002. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia. p. 224. ISBN 84-95379-44-9.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.