A significant debate in present-day Spain is the level of racism in its population. It is a contention that will mark the immediate course. In light of recurring indignities, one can infer that, in just a short span, this society has changed substantially: the paternalism of fifty years ago has given way to a clamorous indifference towards what is happening beyond the Strait and its reflection in Euro-African coexistence. The dawn of the new century awakened a certain unusual interest in ‘those poor little black people’ who, without quite understanding why, were killing each other in their miserable countries, while the globalised Universe was experiencing its golden age of freedom and prosperity. An ephemeral “solidarity trend” in the end. Today, more perverse mutations are manifesting: xenophobia as the argumentative ideology of political positions, reflecting the undeniable disquiet that runs through the arteries. Cast aside is the self-satisfied chimera that freed the “Iberian race, the enlightener of nations” from Anglo-Saxon racist bias; no sensible person denies the growing animosity – disguised as nationalism – towards people with foreign traits. Any black passer-by in these parts can feel it acutely in the streets, stadiums, and official departments, a categorical refutation of humanist and humanitarian rhetoric. Shameful spectacles such as unprotected minors being tossed about in the administrative tangle are pristine indicators of the stripping away of Human Rights of their Universal character.
It is astonishing, in the face of so much glib discourse, the ignorance of their own History. And their innate ability to evade, dodging responsibilities for their centuries of misdeeds here, there, or elsewhere. In the past, they escaped from racist episodes for very simple reasons: the expulsion of the Jews by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, and the deportation of the 'Moriscos' ordered by Philip III in 1609, turned Spain into a compact, monolithic country: one race, a single culture, an exclusive, exclusionary creed. Rigidity as a distinctive hallmark, a dream of enlightened obscurantists, the genesis of the “Spanish problem”, in the expression of the enlightened, Krausists, and regenerationists. Erratic behaviours of the so-called alternatives are also not appealing. Are inconsistent proclamations, changing every week, acceptable? Hope? Reread Bertolt Brecht: the Jews were not the only victims of intolerance; millions of pure Aryans were too.♦
