I wrote this comment when I read the article
In this article, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature Abdulrazak Gurnah issued a disqualifying opinion about the presence of Spain in America.
But today I find that the article is no longer on the Internet; I don’t know the reason why it was removed, I hope it was because Mr. Gurnah has recognized the inappropriateness of his words about Spain.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not to repeat the same comment; but now is directed at all those people with an important position and public influence: some pf them with the sole purpose of «passing the buck», that is, tp get their people to look outside for the culprits of the misfortunes they live through, preventing them from understanding that the culprits are precisely those who make them look at the other side; plus those who, without any self-interested intention, simply let themselves be carried away by a very simplistic equation: if Johnny English, Louis Francoise, Noah Nederlanden and Uncle Sam committed the massacres they committed; how can we not think the same about Manolito España?
Something similar was the case of Nobel Prize winner Gurnah, who simply relied on::
1) his bad experience with the English colonization of his country,
2) on how he was ill-treated during his first years living in England and
3) on the words by Mexican president demanding King Felipe VI to ask forgiveness.
Tremendous arguments to be a Nobel Prize winner!!
As you can see, it is simply based on:
1) his bad experience with the English colonization of his country,
2) on how he was ill-treated during his first years living in England and
3) on the words by a Mexican president demanding King Felipe VI to ask forgiveness.
Tremendous arguments to be a Nobel Prize winner!!
Mr. Gurnah and many other people limit themselves to:
1) generalize that all colonisations are the same, and take as a reference the one they have known,
2) they accept whatever they have heard as anti-Spanish legend,
3) and don’t get to distinguish «colonizing» ” from “civilizing.”
The official dictionary of the Academy of the Spanish Language says that very clearly:
Colonize: “1. To form or establish a colony in a country. |2. Establish the residence of its cultivators on a piece of land”.
Civilize “1. Raise the cultural level of less advanced societies. |2. Improve the training and behaviour of people or social groups”.
Being universally known as a Nobel Prize winner, as a scientist, as a writer, even as the president of a nation, etc., implies being very careful with the words, because they travel all over the planet and it’s a mistake to make cheap statements based on personal experiences or feelings or on other people’s gossip; because the butterfly effect ends up being a boomerang that, after causing massive damage, ends up destroying the person who threw the rubbish.
All those people, before making such an insulting statement towards a country that gave itself body and soul to civilizing the American continent in which some were in the Stone Age and others in the Neolithic, should have investigated a little more and would have found the opinions of non-Spaniards praising the work of Spain in America:
Alexander von Humboldt:
“I admire among the inhabitants of these distant places that loyalty, that simplicity, that mixture of authority and affability, kindness and honesty in character and behaviour, which has always been characteristic of the Spanish nation. If the lights are not widespread, much less is immorality. The roads of Europe are more dangerous than those of American Spain, because of the great peace there is. (…) The longer I live in the Spanish colonies, the more I like them. Upon returning to Europe, I will un-Spanishize with great regret. The paternalistic Spanish regime is preferable to the relentless destruction that is taking place in the North in the name of progress.”
Charles F. Lummis:
«Not only were the Spanish the first conquerors of the New World, but also its first civilizers. They built the first cities, the first churches, schools and universities, set up the first printing presses and published the first books; They wrote the first dictionaries, histories and geographies, and brought the first teachers and missionaries. One of the most amazing things about the Spanish is the humanitarian and progressive spirit that from the beginning to the end characterized their institutions.
Some stories have painted this heroic nation as cruel to the Indians; but the truth is that Spain’s conduct in this matter should embarrass us. Spanish legislation regarding Indians everywhere was incomparably more extensive, comprehensive, systematic and humanitarian than that of Great Britain, the Colonies and the United States combined.
The entire American epic of the Conquest of the West is child’s play compared to a single episode of the feats of the Spaniards in America.»
Sverker Arnoldsson:
“The black anti-Spanish legend is the greatest collective hallucination of the West. Historians have been more attentive to anti-Spanish literature and propaganda texts than to documents and data referring to the economy or the organization of public affairs.»
Herbert Eugene Bolton:
«It must be admitted that the success of Spain remains a force which made possible the preservation of the Indians, as opposed to their destruction which was so characteristic of the Anglo-American frontier.»
A well-known Apache chief:
«I’m Jerónimo, (o I was born Apache and Spanish. My native languages were my Apache dialect and the language of Castile. As a small child I was baptized Catholic and went to the King’s school in the Franciscan missions. While we Apaches were Spaniards, we lived in peace and were loyal to the King. The same day we learned that we were no longer Spanish, but Mexican, our problems with the Government began. Benito Juárez, massacred our women and children to usurp our deserts full of valuable minerals. And then he betrayed us, because we were Mexicans and they sold us to the gringos as if we were cattle. The gringos extinct us as an ethnic group and Hispanic nation.»
[Citizen Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or Manuel Andrés López Obrador) and citizen Claudia Sheinbaum; before demanding that Spain apologize for something it didn’t do, apologize with the Apaches for what you did with them and then demand the United States to apologize for stealing half of the territory that you inherited from Spain]
Alfonso Borrego:
A direct descendant of the Apache chief Jerónimo, presides over an association that vindicates the creative action of Spain compared to the predatory action of Anglo-Americans and even Mexican governments.
Erasmus Darwin (doctor, naturalist, physiologist and philosopher, paternal grandfather of Charles Darwin):
“In my travels through the vast Spanish empire I have been amazed at how the Spanish treat the Indians as their peers, even forming mestizo families; and by creating hospitals and universities for them, I have met indigenous mayors and bishops and even soldiers, which results in the social peace, well-being and general happiness that we would like for ourselves in the territories that we are taking away from them with so much effort.
It seems that the mists of London cloud our hearts and minds, while the clarity of sunny Spain makes you see and hear God better. Honourable Members [English Parliament] you should consider the policy of depopulation and extermination since clearly Spanish faith and intelligence are building, not like us an empire of death, but a civilized society that will finally prevail as if by divine mandate. Spain is the wise Greece, the imperial Rome, England is the Turkish corsair.”
President John F. Kennedy:
“I have always thought that one of the great omissions of Americans in this country, with regard to their past, has been the complete ignorance of Spanish influence, exploration and development through throughout the 16th century in the south-eastern United States, which constitutes a formidable history. Unfortunately, too many Americans think that America was discovered in 1620 and forget the formidable adventure that took place during the 16th and early 17th centuries in the southern and south-eastern United States.”
Walter Whitman:
«We Americans still have much to learn from our past. Until now, dazzled by New England writers and teachers, we have tacitly abandoned ourselves to the idea that only the British Isles gave rise to the United States, essentially forming a second England, which is a huge mistake.
For the complex American identity of the future, it will be the Hispanic character that provides its most necessary aspects. No legacy exhibits a greater historical burden, nor is it comparable with its religiosity and loyalty, or with its patriotism, courage, decorum, seriousness and honour.»
President Theodore Roosevelt:
“The Catholic Faith inspired that splendid flowering of the time of the Catholic Monarchs, of intellectual and moral energies more exuberant than those of the virgin forests of this America; of those seasoned fruits of the Spanish golden century; She created the Hispanic character, robust and virile, noble and generous, serious and brave to the point of recklessness; the chivalrous feelings of that powerful race of heroes, wise men, saints and warriors, who seem legendary to us today; of those indomitable hearts, of those iron wills, of those noble and commoner adventurers, who with poor wooden ships, ran to bend the earth and widen the space, spherically limiting the Globe and completing the planet and opening, across the Atlantic, new heavens and new earths.
Their faith moved that Spanish race, which has done what no other people has done: discover a world and offer it to God, who granted it to them. It was a Spanish friar, Father Las Casas, who inspired the Laws of the Indies, so paternal, so that the Spaniards, with the transfusion of their blood, their life and their Faith, would implant on our soil a civilization very different from that of other conquering peoples, more humanitarian than that which kills and enslaves races, as the French and the English have done, and we ourselves have done with the Indians in North America.”
Edgar Sanderson:
“The honour of giving America to the world, the consequent aggrandizement of Spain, which occurred from now on with new territorial contributions at the cost of a secular exploration unsurpassed by any other nation in any region and which together constitutes the most marvellous series of brave feats recorded in history, aroused in the long run the animosity of most of the European nations and no means were spared to counteract the greatness of the glorious people who, carried by their intrepidity to the other side of the “Dark Sea”… had found and was colonizing a new World. Such anti-Spanish colonial legend has not been able, however, to resist the brilliance of truth provided by new and dispassionate investigations, which has illuminated and continues to clarify the background of gross ignorance and sometimes bad faith that existed, not just in low-quality penmen, but in historians of universal renown.»
It is a shame that after 150,000 years of homo-sapiens’ existence, egocentrism, tribalism, envy and the inability to be grateful still reign.
Spain recognises and appreciates the beneficial actions of many non-Spaniards; but it is incredible how many humans are incapable of recognising and being grateful for the immense positive change that Spain brought to humanity from those extremely risky journeys and demonstrating that it is possible to live with beings of other races, beliefs and customs, creating a new people, physically beautiful and honest in their relationships… until they fell into the hands of non-Spaniards.
Pablo J.Luis Molinero 