“Hemos sido libres, lo somos y lo seremos”: Spain as eternal utopia in the nationalist speech of Manuel Fernández y González

Abstract

This paper tries to analyse the nationalist discourse by Manuel Fernández y González, the most prolific novelist of the Spanish XIX century, and also one of the best playwrights of the second half of that century, whose impact on the popular culture of that time justifies that his ideology deserves to be studied. The excursuses of his novels are the main source we have used, because in them he directly exposes his political opinions. In order to do this, we have selected two texts in which he inserts very revealing digressions, La honra y el trabajo (1867) and Cid Rodrigo de Vivar (1875). Attention has been paid to the logical fallacies that they used there, but we have also considerate the context in which these works were published as popular literature, and also the nationalist prejudices that prevailed at that time, and that gave rise to that type of ideas. From all of this, we have been able to infer that this writer notably disseminated among the working classes a discourse that assumed Spain as an eternal utopia where freedom would always exist thanks to an alleged rebellious character attributed to spaniards.