Orientalizing Southern Europe?: Spain Through the Eyes of Foreign Travelers

This essay explores the role that eighteenth-century travellers assigned to Spain in the imaginary geography of European civilization, looking at the origins of the Romantic orientalizing stereotypes. If the full incorporation of Spain within the geographical and imaginary frontiers of the European world was still quite evident, and its imperial role acknowledged, its symbolic conversion (among other South-European countries, but even more so) into a somewhat exotic “Other” of north-west Europe would be accomplished in the nineteenth century, with lasting effects even today. The eighteenth century represents a particularly interest transition period of conflicting representations of Spain, which have to be understood within the broader contexts of Enlightenment political and philosophical reflection on cultural differences, and of the building of national and European identities.