On Friday, 27 March, Prof. Joseba Gabilondo (Michigan State Univ.) and SPPO's own Ph.D. student Aintzane Cabañes-Martínez, offered their most recent research on contemporary Basque problems and perspectives in Spain.  Prior to the two presentations, Prof. Gabilondo offered a screening of the recent box office record-breaking film, Ocho apellidos vascos [Spanish Affair] as a point of departure for his discussion of contemporary Spanish nationalisms and Basque culture.  

 

This film, he claims, offers the latest iteration of the "foundational fiction" story of Spain as a modern nation-state, a take on the Carmen figure first proposed by Merimee.  Its seemingly happy ending does not actually offer the possibility of a strong future, a perennial problem that Spain has faced for centuries, rather its ending hints at a future that will consist in a series of inversions, which ultimately culminate in Spain never fully being able to realize itself as a nation that has worked through old wounds and swept social problems under the rug.  One glimpse of this we can see in current political unrest, especially the movement "Podemos" and the social movements popularly known as "11-M" [11 May] and the even the origins of the global "Occupy."  All from the basis of the image of the Basque in the film, Prof. Gabilondo analyzed the current state of Spain's image as a "nation made of nationalitites," to quote the Spanish constitution.

 

Continuing to critically view the image of the Basque in the national imaginary, Aintzane Cabañes-Martínez presented her analysis of the documentary film Asesinato en febrero [Assassination in February], which was shown on national television two days before the 2004 parliamentary elections, ones that were already hotly contested due to the Madrid train bombings a few days prior.  Her close reading of the film’s components demonstrates how the filmmakers juxtapose images and dialogue to promote a culture of fear in society, writ large.  This decision, she argued, by Spain's state-owned television station, RTVE, to broadcast the film was a move to reinforce the Basque connection to the bombings (the then-government's accused agents of it), without specifically naming the Basque group, ETA.  

 

This mini-symposium brought an enlightening discussion of the role of Basques and Basque Country in the Spanish national imaginary, and how Spain is confronting its own political composition as well as political structure in the early 21st Century.