Nepantla: Views from South

Gajic, Tatjana, 1964-
Espana frente a Europa (review)
Nepantla: Views from South - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2003, pp. 403-410

Duke University Press

Tatjana Gajic - Espana frente a Europa (review) - Nepantla: Views from South 4:2 Nepantla: Views from South 4.2 (2003) 403-410 Gustavo Bueno. España frente a Europa. Barcelona: Alba, 2000. 474 pp. The specter that haunts the Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno's latest book is neither communism nor the more recent ghost named by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000, 213) as migration, but, rather, an old social formation appearing in a new guise. That old-new formation is the Spanish nation-state as a materialization, albeit imperfect, of a "historical project of life in common," to evoke José Ortega y Gasset's liberal conception of the nation. Bueno's book is spurred by the objective difficulties in reconciling the inherited idea of the nation as a historical project rooted in the vision of a common future with the present-day challenges to the sovereignty and legitimacy of the Spanish state. These challenges are epitomized by two seemingly opposite movements: European integration and Basque separatism. In this historically sweeping overview of Spain's history, which he classifies as a "philosophy of history," Bueno posits the "Spanish Empire" and "Spain" as really existing historical subjects whose legitimacy is permanently being actualized in the form of a twofold question. The first aspect of the question concerns the historical rationale for the unification of medieval Iberian kingdoms into a single state under the hegemony of the Crown of Castille;...