Spain is African, even from the prehistoric ages. The Iberian is like the men of the Atlas; like them, he is brown and dolicocephalous. The Kabyle douar and the Spanish village present remarkable analogies. An early geological change separates, by a narrow strait, two similar countries; two successive invasions spread an infusion of African blood throughout the Peninsula. Phoenicians and Carthaginians found colonies in maritime Spain; in 711 seven thousand Berbers establish themselves in the south; and the invasion of the Almohades in 1145 still further unites Iberians and Africans. During the long centuries of conflict between Christians and Arabs the two races intermingle under the cultivated tolerance of the Khalifs. The Gothic kings seek the aid of Arab chieftains in their quarrels; the Cid is a condottiere who fights alternately in the Mussulman and Christian armies, serving, with his troop of heroes, under the highest bidder. The Spanish monarchs in turn intervene in the quarrels of the Khalifs, and Alfonso VI., in 1185, allies himself with the Moorish king of Seville in order to conquer Toledo. The Arabs study under the masters of the Spanish capitals, while the Spaniards study Arabic, and are initiated into Oriental science. The language still preserves traces of the commerce between the two races. The Arabs, sceptical and refined, overlords already enervated by the grace and luxury of Andalusia, rule without fanaticism; they leave the vanquished their religion and their usages, their laws, authorities, and judges; they free such Christian slaves as are converted to Islam. The Mozarabs, Christians who live in the Mussulman States, without renouncing their faith and customs, pave the way for the fusion of the hostile races. In spite of a continual warfare, under the indifferent and alien rule of the Arab both victors and vanquished become subject, as did the first Gothic kings, to the national influence. It seems as though the gradual action of a common life were about to reconstitute the primitive type of man who once peopled Iberia from the Pyrenees to the Atlas.
The originality of Spain, contrasting, in her development, with the Indo-European nations, comes from Africa, from the atavism of the Iberians, from the long domination of the Moors, and from the Semitic Orient.
The anarchy of the tribe persists; the clergy are all-powerful, as are the African marabouts. To the feudal nobility and the European parliament the Peninsula opposes the Councils; to the struggles between Pope and Emperor, the Oriental fusion of religion and the monarchy, the Inquisition, and the omnipotence of the clergy; to the Reformation, the coalition of Catholics with Protestants, and the league of the princes of Christendom with the Sultan, a fanatical Christianity which realises the ideal of national unity by expelling Jews and Moors, and burning sorcerers and heretics in the crackling flames of autodafés. When Spain enters upon her decadence her ancient characteristics—individualism, the municipal spirit, and the democratic fervour—disappear, and the African and Semitic influences predominate. Under the theocracy the nation of conquerors degenerates; at Villalar the monarchy conquers the free cities and the arrogant nobility. The clergy reign in school and palace; as in the East, they form a superior caste. Rogues and ruffians—the picaros—succeed to the heroes and adventurers of the days of old; an Oriental parasitism invades the Peninsula, and legions of arrogant beggars people the highways of Castile. It is the final crisis of heroic Quixotism. The Moors are revenged for their defeat, imposing their African fanaticism on an impoverished Peninsula. New Spains across the ocean rise against the decadent mother-country. Exhausted with creating new nations, the conquering race sinks into repose, and a score of democracies prepare to enjoy its moral heritage.
[[1]] Of the Portuguese conquerors we may say that in their individualism and their love of adventure they resembled the Spaniards. Their fanaticism was certainly less bitter, perhaps because they had not been forced to struggle against the enemies of their faith.
[[2]] See Joaquín Costa, Concepto del Derecho en la Poesia española (Estudios jurídicos y politicos, Madrid 1884)
[[3]] Altamira, Historia de España y de la Civilizatión española, vol. i. p. 229 et seq.
[[4]] En torno al Casticismo, Madrid, 1902, p. 115.