Citizenship and self-representation in the public letters sent to General Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923-1930
Citation:
GOW, RICHARD, Citizenship and self-representation in the public letters sent to General Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923-1930, Trinity College Dublin.School of Lang, Lit. & Cultural Studies.HISPANIC STUDIES, 2018Download Item:
Richard Gow Thesis Final.pdf (PDF) 2.650Mb
Abstract:
The six-year dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) was a crucial episode in Spain?s twentieth-century history. Amid the post-war crisis of Spanish liberalism, which saw new sections of the population demand greater political representation, Primo de Rivera seized control of the government and promised to overcome parliamentary paralysis, labour unrest, the perceived threat of separatism and a never-ending colonial war in Morocco, thereby ?regenerating? the Spanish nation.
Recent scholarship has shown that the political programme implemented by the regime aimed to achieve the controlled entry of the masses into public life by indoctrinating them in a highly authoritarian national identity. The concept of citizenship, a vehicle that codifies political identities, occupied a central position in this new nationalist discourse. Accordingly, the regime sought to educate the population in its interpretation of civic virtue and, ultimately, to create a ?new citizen.?
Although our understanding of the dictatorship has been greatly enhanced in the last two decades, most studies have employed a rigidly top-down approach which denies the people who lived through the regime agency and knowledge of their circumstance. This thesis responds to these limitations by exploring the regime?s attempts to mould the ?new citizen? from below. It draws upon a considerable corpus of previously undiscovered letters of denunciation and petition that were sent by ordinary Spanish people to the state authorities during the dictatorship, and examines how the population made representations to and interacted with the Primo de Rivera administration. It also offers the first ever systematic analysis of the practice denunciation during the regime and compares this to other cases, both in Spain and Europe.
Over six chapters, this thesis explores the realities of citizenship during a dictatorial ?state of exception.? It makes a valuable original contribution to the subject by showing that denunciation was not typically anonymous as was widely believed. Furthermore, it shows that the language of national ?regeneration? promoted by the regime could be appropriated by letter-writers and turned against it. Referring to the second category of letter examined in this thesis, petition, not only was this tolerated by the regime, it became an important channel for public opinion, even as the dictatorship imposed strict press censorship and restricted the freedoms of speech, gathering and association. Indeed, much of this was highly critical of the government. This ensured the survival of a participatory political culture in Spain, which would re-emerge in full in the 1930s. Moreover, by engaging in claims-making processes with the authorities, ordinary Spaniards were able to challenge and alter the form that this new type of citizenship would take. Although the regime?s programme would end in failure, the battle over the nature of Spanish citizenship would continue for much of the twentieth century. Ordinary people would remain at the heart of this.
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Grant Number
Irish Research Council (IRC)
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/rgowDescription:
APPROVED
Author: GOW, RICHARD
Advisor:
Bayo Belenguer, SusanaPublisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Lang, Lit. & Cultural Studies. Discipline of Hispanic StudiesType of material:
ThesisCollections:
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Full text availableKeywords:
Spain, Spanish, Citizenship, History, Letters, Letter-writing, DictatorshipLicences: