Martin-Estudillo - The Rise of Euroskepticism Europe and Its Critics in Spanish Culture

The Rise of Euroskepticism

THE RISE OF EUROSKEPTICISM

EUROPE AND ITS CRITICS IN SPANISH CULTURE

Luis Martn-Estudillo

Vanderbilt University Press

Nashville

2018 by Vanderbilt University Press

Nashville, Tennessee 37235

All rights reserved

First printing 2018

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

LC control number 2017017088

LC classification number HC240.25.S7 M37 2017

Dewey classification number 341.242/20946dc23

LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2017017088

ISBN 978-0-8265-2194-1 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8265-2196-5 (ebook)

To Emi, without skepticism

Contents

Acknowledgments

The preliminary writing of this book began as the inaugural Woodyard Lecture at the University of Kansas. Portions were also presented as lectures at Dartmouth College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Valencia. I thank my hosts at these institutions, especially Jonathan Mayhew, Jorge Prez, Katarzyna Beilin, Antonio Gmez L-Quiones, and Jenaro Talens, for facilitating those occasions and for the rewarding conversations that followed them.

The National Endowment for the Humanities gave me fundamental support in the form of two fellowships to research and write this book. I remain most thankful to this outstanding agency. May it be allowed to continue carrying out its important mission untouched by sectarian politicians. Ann Knudson offered expert assistance in preparing the applications for those fellowships.

At the University of Iowa I have been fortunate to benefit from the trust of an institution which still believes in the value of the arts and humanities. In the case of this specific project, that conviction materialized most clearly in the support that I received from the Office of the Vice President for Researchs AHI program and in a Deans Scholar award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My period at the Universitys Obermann Center for Advanced Studies would have been less fruitful were it not for the wise advice of its director, Teresa Mangum, and of another outstanding resident, Steven Ungar.

Although writing is a solitary endeavor, it can also elicit new friendships or become the perfect excuse to revisit old ones. Many colleagues and friends gave me hints and feedback throughout the research process, including Juan Albarrn, Luis Bagu, Elena Delgado, Estrella de Diego, William Egginton, Denise Filios, John Gillingham, J. Ramn Gonzlez, Noem de Haro, Germn Labrador, Alfredo Laso, Antonio Martnez Sarrin, Antonio Mndez Rubio, Kathleen Newman, Marijose Olaziregi, Jess Rodrguez, Juan Carlos Rueda Laffond, Frank Salomon, Alexander Somek, Nicholas Spadaccini, Eduardo Subirats, and Javier Zamora Bonilla. I alone remain responsible for not heeding all their suggestions.

I have also enjoyed the generosity of Mercedes Cebrin, Antonio Colinas, Juan Mayorga, Jordi Punt, Andrs Rbago, Santiago Sierra, and Carlos Spottorno, who authored some of the work that I study in this book and permitted its reproduction. I would like to single out Valeriano Lpez, who kindly gave permission to use one of his pieces as a cover image.

The students in a doctoral seminar that I taught on the European ideal in Spanish culture challenged my assumptions and offered insightful input; my gratitude goes especially to Patricia Gonzalo, Alba Lara, and Martn Lpez-Vega.

Michael Ames, at Vanderbilt University Press, was an attentive editor who showed great faith in this project. The Press also chose anonymous reviewers whose sagacious comments made me rethink some aspects of the book. I thank all these expert readers.

Andrea Rosenberg carefully revised the manuscript, as did, later, Emilio Martn and Ana M. Rodrguez, so lovingly. Perhaps in ways unbeknownst to them, my father and mother taught me, respectively, about Europeanness and tenacity. My family graciously endured the absences (and absent-mindedness) that this project caused. They and our friends in Iowa City and Spain (Helena and Vctor Brown-Rodrguez, Txus Martn, Alba Crespo, Luz Esther Martn, Vicente Prez, Mnica Fuertes, Luis Muoz, Garth Greenwell, Horacio Castellanos-Moya, Mercedes Nio-Murcia, Paula Kempchinsky... ) may have an inkling of how they contributed to my efforts, sometimes simply by offering mind-cleansing distractionyet they probably do not know how much I appreciate their love and support.

I finished this book on the tenth birthday of my son, Emi; it is dedicated to him. Oh, whatll you do now, my darling young one?

The Rise of Euroskepticism

INTRODUCTION

A Cultural Poetics of Spanish Euroskepticism

Undreaming Europe

Artists and intellectuals sustained scrutiny of the ever-evolving idea of Europe helped pave the way for the widespread protests against the European Union (EU) and its policies that have surged since the beginning of the so-called Great Recession in 2008. Consciously or not, they took part in a tradition of Euroskepticism, a term coined in the mid-1980s as a result of British debates regarding the United Kingdoms involvement in the process of European market integration, which at the time was encountering significant resistance from the left-wing Labour Party.

Some of the fundamentals of that criticism can be traced back to the period of the conflicts that shattered the continent in the first half of the twentieth century. It was in the aftermath of World War II that the creators of

At the same time, that bold vision generated a plurality of intriguing counterpoints, most of which have been eclipsed. Their proponents struggled to articulate the deeper causes and consequences of the conflicts that produced the definite push for an ever closer union of the European nations, as well as to question the principles that guided this process (including its economic orientation or the self-perception of the EU as the moral compass of the world) and the effects of its policies within and beyond European territory. As the Union grew larger in number of member nations and institutional architecture, its allure waned for a vast portion of the citizenry. The optimism generated in the projects first decades had turned into indifference for most by the turn of the century. With the onset of the post-2007 Great Recession, authorized voices in countries that were seen as the experiments most solid defenders began to claim that Schumans dream had become a nightmare, especially in peripheral Europe (a telling term). The dream-turned-nightmare metaphor is used, for instance, by Italian economist and essayist Luigi Zingales and by Spanish author and filmmaker Vicente Molina Foix. While they work from different ends of the political spectrum, both lament the role that Europe has had, either by action or by omission, in the social and economic havoc wreaked in their respective countries.

Zingales and Molina Foix are just two of the numerous public intellectuals who have contributed recently to the discourse of Euroskepticism, an array of critical attitudes and arguments that have developed within the region in reaction to integrative pan-European or pro-Europeanization initiatives. Understanding it calls for a close look at its roots and demands analyses that go beyond the activities of traditional political actors and institutions. The history of Euroskepticism precedes that of the EU, which is but the latest institutional embodiment of those enterprises. As I see

I am reluctant to formulate one more Euro- label to refer to those who criticize the EU in a constructive manner. Notwithstanding the important differences among them, I continue to refer to their ideas with the umbrella term Euroskepticism due to the words widespread usage. As it has lost most of the specific denotative power it may have once had, I seize on its semantic ambiguity to address critiques of several notions of Europe generated within that region, positions whose aims range from the desecration of the integration project to its enhancement. So, while the word in question remains convenient for identifying an amalgam of related works, it is of little value as an analytic tool, since it obliterates all differences within the array of positions that it is commonly used to designate. Euroskepticism is not a cohesive project. Thus, only a critical close reading of texts that are (or could be) labeled Euroskeptic can determine what is actually meant when they are thus characterized.