Monografico_4_EN_Doxa_31_The_notion_of_homeland

[Spain is not an invention; it is not a historical artifice; it is a reality forged by history (…) but Spain is there and we must end the euphemism of designating it with the term Spanish State. (…) Spain is a diverse reality, but it is a reality and it is everyone’s task to ensure that even its own symbols are recognized as such” (cited in De Santiago, 1992: 199)].

In the same vein, Peces Barba –former member of Parliament of the socialist party and father of the Constitution– gave a similar opinion in an article published in El País in 2011 when he contrasted true patriotism, “the one that should adorn good citizens”, with stale and old-fashioned patriotism:

[The rancid and sentimental patriotism linked to thought of conservative and reactionary Spanish parties must be discarded, as well as the selective patriotism of a fragment of the State, such as that defended in Catalonia and the Basque Country by radical nationalists, who do not accept the idea of a founding and integrative Spain].

The distinction rests on the concepts proposed by Staub (1997): blind patriotism and constructive patriotism. The first is characterized by an unconditional support for the homeland and a superficial loyalty to the symbols of the nation; the second, on the other hand, emerges when there is a critical conscience and an identity feeling of belonging to a group that must be taken care of. In either case, the nation is conceived as an imagined community, in which the majority of the individuals do not know each other and never will, but in which they feel encompassed in the same collective project (Anderson, 1993). Blind patriotism, however, is more chauvinistic, it consists of an irrational exaltation of the symbols of the country and, in this sense, it comes closer to the traditional position of nationalism (Olloqui, 2016). Constructive patriotism, on the other hand, moves away from this idea, conceptualizing the community as an association of individuals whose rights and freedoms must be safeguarded (Huddy and Khatib, 2007).

In Spain, the attempt to articulate a constructive patriotism corresponds to Unidos Podemos. This party has tried to link the defense of the homeland with that of social rights and the welfare state. This strategy has produced a turn within the Spanish political tradition, where the semantic field was associated with the conservative discourse.

According to the analysis by Franzé (2017), the attempt to appropriate the notion of homeland appears already in 2014. The first stages of Podemos on the political scene (2014-2015) were characterized by a challenge to the political system inherited from the Constitution of 1978, associated with the oligarchies, the dictatorship, and a retrograde vision of the country. Emphasis was also placed on the dichotomy between higher and lower classes, and on the existence of a political and economic class –“la casta (the caste)”– that lives idly at the expense of the working class.

This discourse is toned down around 2015; the target of their criticism was no longer the 1978 constitutional text, but rather the neoliberal system that threatens social rights (Franzé, 2017: 231). Although the discourse that Unidos Podemos promotes is no longer so drastic, the defense of the homeland and the attempt to articulate an up-down axis are still present in their parliamentary journey at least during the first two years (2016-2017). Patriots are those who defend the social rights of the people; the unpatriotic, those who steal and are corrupt, those who privatize public services.

This paper is based on the hypothesis that the term homeland and its derivatives (patriot, patriotism, unpatriotic) have played a fundamental role in Podemos´ discourse during the period 2016-2017. The objective is to define for what purpose