Conformation of the andalusian identity from the discourse.
The journal Andalucía during its period of publication
in Seville (1916-1917)

José Luis Moreno-Pérez

jmorenop@us.es 0000-0001-7720-7032

Departamento de Historia Contemporánea. Facultad de Geografía e Historia.

Universidad de Sevilla.C/Doña María de Padilla, S/N. 41004 Sevilla, España.

KEYWORDS

Andalusia

Historical Andalusianism

Regionalism

Political speeches

Written press

INTRODUCTION

During the epilogue of the Restoration (1898-1930), Spain witnessed the emergence of nationalist and regionalist movements. However, there were important differences within these ideological currents, for while some had a clear political, social, and cultural imprint (Basque Country and Catalonia), others presented a vision closer to the identification of cultural traits to subsequently outline a political proposal of a regeneration’s type. This was the case of historical Andalusianism, a movement concerned with Andalusian identity and which claimed the existence of an Andalusian people, culture, and consciousness.

Given the above historical context, the aim of this article is to apply critical discourse analysis (CDA onwards) to the Andalusian political message based on the construction of the Andalusian regional identity differentiated from the rest of Spain, which reached its maximum expression between 1915/19 and 1930. For this purpose, the main source of study is the magazine Andalucía, an outstanding vehicle for the transmission of the Andalusian political ideal during those years. In its pages we can see how different identities are constructed, since as the regionalist identity takes shape, other complementary identities are defined. For example, the Andalusian woman, the Andalusian day labourer or the antagonistic identity to Andalusian regionalism represented in Spanish centralism, often pivoting territorially in Madrid. Therefore, continuing with the cultural work of Bética, Andalucía appeared in June 1916, in a five-year period (1916-1920) characterised by the effervescence of Andalusian publications. However, given its links with the programmatic axis of the Andalusian Centres, this journal was the main exponent of the Andalusian press at this time. It was established as a political journal committed to Andalusian regionalism in the first two decades of the 20th century. Prominent Andalusian intellectuals such Blas Infante, Isidro de las Cajigas, Mario Méndez Bejarano and Alejandro Guichot participated in it, as well as author such as Amantina Cobos de Villalobos and Elena Whishaw.

OBJECTIVES

Having familiarised ourselves with the thematic bibliography and the theoretical paradigm of the linguistic turn outlined in the following section, the main aim of this study is to analyse the discourse shaping the Andalusian identity based on the texts published in Andalucía between 1916 and 1917. To this end, we start from the initial premise that it is possible to appreciate the shaping of other identities intrinsic to Andalusian popular culture, often distorted into stereotypes or cliches which have survived to the present day.

METHODOLOGY

The CDA on Andalusian identity presented here concerns the characteristic methodology used in Contemporary History research, where methodological proposal defined by specific sources concur. This is the case with newspaper sources, understood as the historical press which exhibits as continuous contemporaneity. Based on this theoretical-methodological inference, the starting point of the work consisted of reviewing the state of the question of historical Andalusianism and the Andalusian press during the first decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, a bibliographical survey was carried out using databases containing scientific articles and three works which have proved to be crucial in this task. On the one hand, two studies by Ruiz Romero entitled Repertorio bibliográfico sobre el “andalucismo histórico” (2008) and Inventario bibliográfico sobre Historia de la Comunicación Social en Andalucía (2011). On the other hand, the bibliographic inventory of the journal itself was carried out by Hijano del Río in 1992. Subsequently, was proceeded to consult and tabulate in a database the issues of Andalucía for the period from the publication in Seville (1916-1917), whose issues are catalogued and digitised in the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library of Spain (BNE in Spanish).

Ultimately, the CDA proposed by Van Dijk (1996) was applied to form an analytical sequence that identifies the background and context of Andalucía as a historical framework, the ideological categories of the political message and the linguistic embodiment of the text exemplified in a polarisation (we versus they) expressed implicitly through formal structures of discourse, ideology and meaning. However, due to the nature of the identity analysed, other analytical frameworks (cartoons, images, and vignettes) were applied. This explains the use of graphic elements in the article to describe the different identities detected in the Andalusian discourse.

MAIN RESULTS

Andalucía reveals the existence of different identity realities that allow the definition of “Andalusianism” according to the CDA. Firstly, there is the regionalist identity, defined in the Andalusian discourse since the identification of a territory delimited by geographical characteristics and a shared history. In this sense, a past is recreated which sometimes corresponds to the idealisation of the medieval, starting with Al-Andalus, but also taker the form of the beginning of problems which have had a long history in Andalusia, such as the unequal distribution of land. On the other hand, following the discursive polarisation described by Van Dijk in ingroups and outgroups (we versus they), the Andalusians construct a centralist identity close to the cacique reality of the Restoration system, understood by these authors as corrupt and out of touch with the present time. The Andalusians understand that Andalusia must free itself, not from Spain, but from its poverty, misery and illiteracy, negative elements associated with this centralist and cacique reality. The Restoration is ineffective, and therefore a decisive transformation is required, as can be seen continuously in the Andalusian discourse.

Moreover, within the vindictive component of the discourse, the denunciation of myths and cliches that have long been held about Andalusia, some of which can still be seen today, stands out. From CDA´s point of view, this manifests the use of semantics oriented towards local meanings and implications which denounce the negative view of Andalusians that this movement seeks to reject. This distorted vision responds to the construction of myths and images. The idea of Andalusia as an area linked with “pandereta, folklore and celebration”.

Likewise, given that any discourse which articulates an identity construct simultaneous historical subjects, in the case of Andalusianism, we can see how other identities are constructed from the Andalusian regionalist identity and interrelate with each other by virtue of the Andalusianness´ socio-political denunciation. In this way, two prototypical Andalusian identities are presented. On the one hand, close to the gender identity is the Andalusian woman, since it is understood that, to achieve the fullness of the liberalising process, the emancipation of Andalusian women was previously required. Therefore, from a historical point of view, a message of denunciation of the cliches is elaborated, focusing on Andalusian women and the stereotyped imagen of them. On the other hand, to attract the Andalusian social majority to Infante´s discourse, a class identity is created based on a new dichotomous polarisation, in this case between the day labourer and the Andalusian “señorito”. In Andalusia, the dialectic conformation of two structuring groups of the Andalusian agrarian social reality, the forces of the agricultural economy and the axis of the tension of peasant conflict, is evidenced.

WORK CONCLUSIONS

The CDA applied to Andalucía shows that the Andalusian press itself, like any other regionalist construct of Andalusia, is a cultural artefact which aims to represent a collective identity. This ideological construction exhibits certain characteristic features by means of the operative cultural frameworks which delimit the Andalusian identity in line with and intentionality embodied in all ideological discourse. After the immediate folklorist precedent of Bética and “culturalist Andalusianism”, Andalucía stages the articulation of a message around which the political project of the Andalusian Ideal is shaped. As Van Dijk (1996) define theoretically, all discourse plays a dual function which consists of “executing the underlying ideology and functioning as a means of persuasion”. In this journal, this is evidenced by the polarisation ingroup and outgroup, “we and they”, “haves and have-nots”, regionalists and centralists. In this way, a regionalist discourse is formed which, in contrast to the previous Andalusian period, can at times be considered nationalists in its political imprint.

In short, this work has applied the methodological proposal devised by Van Dijk in 1996 to Andalusian newspaper sources. Thus, the aim is to continue with the studies initiated on the use of the historical press as a documentary corpus. Moreover, this research is incorporated into the renewed historiographical terrain based on the crisis of the Restoration and the emergence of nationalist/regionalist movements. Although these words verify ideas already known about Andalusianism or other political and cultural movements of a similar nature, they certainly also make it possible to discuss this subject from another theoretical perspective with the linguistic turn, thus complementing what has been to offer a different approach to the discourse of recognised authors such as Blas Infante, whose writings laid the foundations of Andalusian identity.