Iberianism and Crisis: Spain and Portugal at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Robert Patrick Newcomb (review)

In the volatile decades following the Peninsular War (1807–14), the idea of a politically unified Iberian Peninsula developed into a small yet vibrant intellectual current in Spain and Portugal that, for different reasons, appealed to liberals and monarchists alike. As both countries grappled with self-determination, at times descending into civil war over dynastic succession and at others attempting—but ultimately failing—to establish permanent democratic governance, the idea of Iberian unification continued to gain modest support. The publication in 1852 of La Iberia: Memoria sobre las ventajas de la unión de Portugal y España, by Sinibaldo de Mas i Sanz, infused energy into the cause, and even after the seemingly real prospect of unification dissipated with the failure of the first Spanish Republic (1873–74), the idea never completely faded away. It reemerged in Spain during the Second Republic (1931–39), and it inspired the formation of the transnational political party, Íber, in 2016.

Iberianism and Crisis: Spain and Portugal at the Turn of the Twentieth Century examines the nineteenth and twentieth-century luminaries of Portuguese and Spanish letters who subscribed to the idea of a shared Iberian cultural identity and/or envisioned the creation of a single Iberian nation. The central figure around which the study revolves is Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins (1845–94), whose thought on Iberianism would later echo in the work of Antero de Quental (1842–91), Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936), Joan Maragall (1860–1911) and Salvador de Madariaga (1886–1978). It proceeds from the premise that Iberianism held the attention of these authors and stimulated their critical imagination more than what is usually recognized in the scholarship. Other prominent individuals whose voices figure into the cacophony of perspectives mapped in the study include Emilia Pardo Bazan, Joaquín Costa, Francesc Pi i Margall, Enric Prat de la Riba, Eça de Queirós, and Manuel Curros Enríquez.

Iberianism and Crisis is divided into seven chapters (counting the conclusion) and covers a period of just over one hundred years, with a concentration on the fin de siècle (1868–1910). Chapter 1 (“Iberianism in a Time of Crisis”) begins with a short introduction that establishes the variegated conceptualizations of Iberianism in circulation toward the mid-nineteenth century, continues with a discussion of the way that nineteenth-century Iberianists tended to frame Iberianism as a solution to a perceived national crisis, and culminates with a preview of the remaining chapters. Chapter 2 (“Antero de Quental, Iberista: A Portuguese Iberianist, the Geração de 70, and the Sexenio Democrático in Spain”) examines several works by Quental written across a span of nearly three decades, arguing that he was a committed Iberianist and not someone whose work merely exhibits an Iberianist phase. Chapter 3 (“‘A Ribbon of Silver’: Representations of the Portuguese-Galician Border at the Fin de Siècle”) discusses the Galician Rexurdimento and the Iberian symbolism that poets invested in the image of the Minho River separating Galicia and Portugal. The chapter then focuses on how Oliveira Martins, Pardo Bazán, and Unamuno perceived the Luso-Hispanic cultural topography of Galicia and how their unique understandings complemented contemporary Iberianist discourses. Chapter 4 (“Miguel de Unamuno: A Peninsula of Flesh and Bone”) untangles Unamuno’s dialectical framing of Iberian cultures using a recurring image from Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (1913)—that of el hombre de carne y hueso—and from there argues that Unamuno channels the Iberianist visions of Quental and Oliveira Martins. Chapter 5 (“Joan Maragall: Iberian Hymns from Catalonia”) sheds light on Maragall’s Iberianism as a prelude to examining his epistolary correspondence with Unamuno and contrasting their Iberianist leanings. The chapter also situates Maragall as a dynamic thinker who simultaneously cultivated a Spanish, Catalan, and Iberian self-identity. Chapter 6 (“The Iberianist Legacy: Salvador de Madariaga Reads Oliveira Martins”) brings into...