The Disinherited: Exile and the Making of Spanish Culture, 1492-1975

by Henry Kamen

Few would doubt that Spain has for several centuries made a huge contribution to Europe's culture. We all carry in our heads a seductive picture of what Spain stands its music, painting, buildings, and history. But what we do not understand is how much of this was the achievement of a very specific the Spanish in exile. Henry Kamen's The Disinherited is the most significant and enjoyable book on Spain to appear for many years. He creates a picture of a dysfunctional, violent country that, since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, has expelled wave after wave of its citizens in a brutal attempt to create religious and social conformity. Muslims, Jews, Protestants, liberals, Socialists, and Communists were all driven abroad at different times, and consequently what we think of as Spanish culture was substantially their invention—a creative response both to having no home and to the shock of encountering new worlds. With brilliant sympathy, Kamen describes these diverse exiles' travails as they scattered across Europe and Africa, across North and South America, many of them debarred by religion or politics from ever returning to Spain.They engaged in an unending project of fantasy about their old homeland—from the Sephardic communities of Amsterdam to the exiled Granada Muslims in Morocco, from liberal historians inventing the Black Legend of the Inquisition to painters in Paris inventing turreted, sensual Orientalist fantasies about the Alhambra. The twentieth century saw fresh waves of exile—from Picasso to Miró, Dalí to Buñuel, from Casals to Falla to Rodrigo—converting Spain itself into a cultural wasteland but enriching other cultures enormously. The Disinherited is a landmark work of cultural recovery, showing how Spain's history has created a "virtual" culture imagined by people often thousands of miles from home—but whose impact on the world has been incalculable.

Genres: History, Spain, Spanish History, Nonfiction, Spanish Literature, European History

508 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Henry Kamen is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London and an emeritus professor of the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona.

Reviews

[Geoffrey Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since the Catholic Monarchs' conquest of Granada and their expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Spanish rulers have sought to unify their country by driving out dissidents and deviants, thus guaranteeing and protecting the country's backwardness. Kamen tells the stories of many of the most interesting and attractive thinkers, artists, scientists and other innovators forced into exile, whether by the Inquisition or later bursts of intolerance, though he has chosen not to say much about those who most strongly identified with the losing side in the 1936-39 civil war, and almost nothing about the huge numbers driven to leave Spain by poverty and the hopes of a better life in the Americas or elsewhere in Europe; this is a deliberate choice, on the grounds that "political émigrés and economic migration" have both been "well-studied" and thus not in need of further discussion.

"Spain is the only European country to have attempted to consolidate itself over the centuries not through offering shelter but through a policy of exclusion," he states in the preface (p. x). At first glance that may seem to be an exaggeration — France was extremely cruel to its Huguenots, several European countries drove out their Jews even long before the Third Reich's campaign to exterminate them, Protestants were forced to flee from Catholic lands and Catholics from Protestant during the 100 Years War. But Kamen is right that no other country so consistently, and over such a long period, succeeded in excluding so many and so many different types of misfits (religious, intellectual political, etc.).

This book is a collection of vignettes and anecdotes to illustrate the argument, rather than a systematic analysis of a Spanish "policy of exclusion." If the author had attempted that, he would quickly have to admit that there was no single "policy" through the centuries, and in most periods no policy at all — the intellectuals he writes about were in many cases voluntary émigrés or expatriates who left because Spanish backwardness (in education, infrastructure and institutions) did not give them space or support to develop their talents. The great virtuoso violinist Pablo Sarasate, for example, repeatedly returned to perform in Spain but was always disappointed because there was no adequate orchestra to accompany him or knowledgeable audience to receive him.

But beyond the sometimes fascinating stories of individuals, the book does illustrate the force of Spain's resistance to change, and thus incidentally gives us more context to understand the ferocity of reaction against the unprecedented modernizing efforts of the Second Republic, which was finally suppressed by insurgent generals, the continent's most reactionary Catholic church, and their allies. Toward the end of the nearly 40-year dictatorship of Franco, Minister of Tourism Manuel Fraga tried to attract tourists with the slogan "Spain is different." And it was, because under Franco it was western Europe's only theme park of medieval superstitions, primitive technology, and lock-step discipline. Spain has changed, enormously, since the death of Franco, forced to change by its internal contradictions and some very capable and audacious political leaders, and by the changing world. But the forces of repression, the insistence on only one correct dogma, remain strong and are re-emerging in this current economic crisis. Since the November 2011 electoral victory of the conservative Popular Party, closely tied to the financial elite and the Catholic Church hierarchy, those reactionary forces have been given full rein. One of their first victims has been the objectivity and variety of Spain's international-award-winning news reporting on public television and radio. Then, the progressive privatization of the country's excellent public health service, and now a campaign to return control of public education to the church. So the struggle continues.

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading a lot of Spanish writers recently - not, I'm sorry to say, in Spanish: the novelists Javier Cercas and Javier Marias, the poet Luis Cernuda. There's a subtle shared tone I quite like. Hence my curiosity about this book, which I found fascinating. Starting with the Jews in 1492 (preceded a century earlier by pogroms), whoever held power sought to define and unify Spain by expelling whoever didn't fit in. This fetish of purity led to cultural, social, and scientific backwardness, and political weakness. Later authorities, recognizing these facts, found new scapegoats for them who in turn were exiled: Marranos, Moriscos, Jesuits, Liberals, Socialists. From Miguel Servet to Goya to Madariaga and Albeniz and Picasso, the artists and thinkers we associate with Spain didn't live there. (When they did they were often killed, like Lorca and another great poet, Miguel Hernandez.) As an old lefty, I felt Kamen strove too hard to show that the Republicans of 1936 could be as brutal and anti-intellectual as the Fascists. The book could be better edited. But it is well written, reads like a narrative rather than a treatise, will introduce you to some great heroes and greater fools - and holds a timely lesson against national and ethnic "purity."

[Dermo · Rating 2 out of 5]

An immensely tedious read, with numerous repetition of a number of core ideas that the author feels you might have missed the first five times he posits them.
Despite taking great care to remain neutral politically, the author often just can't help making subtle snide remarks about particular figures, and is openly scathing in his description of others.
On the positive side, what kept me reading to the end was the immense amount of interesting biographical information on many personalities (bearing in mind we are reading through the lens of the author,who may not be as unbiased As he would wish) who are referenced in the street names and general cultural memory of my adopted home.
Being a voluntary emigrant myself means that I understood and sympathised with some of the experience and choices made by the characters as narrated by the author, even when that author may be criticising or hostile to the actions and mindset of those he is describing.
In short, I had to fight the author to meet the characters.

[JoséMaría BlancoWhite · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started by being rather sceptic about some historical judgements, specially in regards to the much stressed influence of Islam's centuries of occupation of Spain. Kamen supports the great historian Americo Castro rather than the other great historian Sanchez-Albornoz on this issue, but the latter's interpretation of Spain must not be dismissed on account of this one issue. Whatever the influence the Moors have had on our historical intolerance toward each other, it doesn't say anything good about Islam: on the contrary, the bigger the influence the heavier the sin we inherited from those Hispanic Muslims of yesteryear, I mean, if we count their positive influence on us (art, etc) we must also admit their part of responsibility for making us, Spaniards, as we are: intolerant, arrogant, vain and all the rest that you can guess from the reading of this great book.

Everywhere else the author hits right on the mark, and exposes our hypocritical nature, our Spanish capital sins. Revelatory statements: "Spaniards seem always ... to have accepted little more than the outward forms of the Catholic religion" (p.128). "The image of a fundamentally Catholic Spain was always a fiction". One thing the author forgets to pinpoint is our unending habit to curse everything sacred, our foul-mouths that Sánchez-Albornoz noted so well in his great essay España: Un Enigma Historico deserves a deep analysis, or at least an "honorary" mention. Sánchez mentioned our foul language as a sign of our un-Muslim character. However, I would have interpreted this feature as pointing -paradoxically- more to Muslim influence.

The author cleverly unveils the unending hypocrisy and phoniness of Spanish self-called intellectuals:

"To identify themselves as unique, they adopted specific manners of dress. Azorín put on a monocle and went everywhere carrying a red umbrella; Valle-Inclán let his beard grow down to his waist; Pío Baroja wore a cap and dark overcoat; Maeztu dressed like an English gentleman." (p.234) "Unamuno knew no Greek but was given the chair of Greek at the university of Salamanca..."

The best quote, one which works as an epitaph for Spanish silliness whatever the region they come from, goes: "These poor deluded and amiable creatures, who have no notion of who they themselves are and are therefore incapable of making their own future. If they really get around to knowing who they are and why they are, maybe one day they will be able to assume the reins of their own collective destiny." Américo Castro dixit. How true!

About Buñuel: "His public, however, could never be sure whether his message was to be taken seriously, since behind his realism (or Surrealism, or nihilism, or any other ism) it was difficult to find any sustained set of attitudes or beliefs." Brilliant.

This book is a great read, and one of the things which makes it great is that it doesn't go bowing to any cultural figures, it tells things as they are ("al pan pan, y al vino vino"). It portrays a nation always divided against itself, as the great painting by Goya of the two Spaniards beating each other with clubs, this is to me the most representative image of the Spanish soul. I look at it and say, yes, that's us. It's the story of our exiles since 1492 (should have started earlier), exiles due to religious and political intolerance. The victims are all the elite of Spanish society: the rich, the cultured... The author admits there are many more exiles that the book doesn't cover; they too need a book. And it ends with the Franco era. We've had about 30 years of democracy and relative economic progress, but we are at it again, and no mention is made of it. If the author is really honest he should deal with our present times in the same way he dealt with our past.

One thing that left in me a sour feeling was that the author doesn't dare to explain the sad facts by anything but simple intolerance, motivated by religious or political interests. But those are not reasons why, those are rather symptoms of a real spiritual cancer, a cancer deserving another kind of book. Fernando Díaz-Plaja in his great essay on Spain's capital sins El Español y Los Siete Pecados Capitales says it well: "the blasphemer -and in Spain there are many- is deep down a believer. How can you grossly insult what does not exist?" Unfortunately, demons are also believers.

[Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Henry Kamen book. And like the previous book I read("Empire. How Spain became a World Power") I found Kamen's style repetitive and a bit disjointed, as if every biography or piece of information had to be assembled together by a new exposition of his thesis. But because he does have a thesis, it is interesting to see him fit the pieces, even when there are exceptions to the rule, and there are many.

More often than other nations, Spain has resorted to purging certain groups from its territory through exile and rejection. Sometimes said exile was an interior one, within Spain but in seclusion . Also very often, scientists, artists and thinkers opted for abandoning Spain voluntarily in order to follow a calling that simply was not supported by Spain's circumstances. The forced expulsions did never go unquestioned but created an image of Spain at constant loggerheads with itself. Starting with the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the book follows with the expulsion of the Muslims in the 1500's, and later moves on to the troubles experienced by Reformists and Protestants of all ilk. As the winds of History kept changing, it was the turn of the Jesuits, the Carlists, the Liberals, the Nationalists, the Republicans, etc..

The book follows a loosely chronological order but its chapters refer to the different groups affected.
The main thesis of the book unfolds by both acknowledging and sometimes discarding common misconceptions held by many and, more often than not , by Spaniards themselves about Spain's history of conflict and struggle. For example, the idea that intellectual elites in exile represented the true nature of the nation more than those who remained. On the other side, those who stayed put had the very rooted tendency to affirm the country needed nothing from outside.

Spaniards abroad took two attitudes, either they remained as exiles for life, in a transitory state until they could finally return, or they embraced the outside world and became better for it, even what the outside world started to embrace as Spain's most interesting aspects.

I mentioned before the author likes to challenge some long held ideas. One of these ideas is in regards to the damage these expulsions caused. Spain's own culture has been to a great degree defined by the countrymen (mostly men) that had to live abroad. Their exile was neither an unmitigated disaster nor it advanced Spain's standing in any way. Many Spaniards ended up becoming figures of reference in all things Spanish by virtue of their exposure to other cultures. Moreover, they became the ones that could open the windows to ideas and currents in a country that tended to disregard anything new or foreign. The author introduces a series of sympathetic biographies in every chapter to illustrate the fate of the exiles while highlighting their achievements and failures. From the writings of Luis Vives, to the music of Albéniz to Picasso's "Guernica", Buñuel's films or Severo Ochoa's medical discoveries, a lot of Spain's culture was created outside its confines and often remained there before entering the national consciousness, if at all.

Another often repeated ideas is that the expulsion of the Jews had a great negative economic impact in Spain. It is assumed the impact was due to the sudden loss of important funding from the only people who were allowed to manage money a.k.a the "rich" Jews. That wasn't the case or not completely. Most Jews were not rich and most of the ones that had substantial interests converted, some even became exemplar Christians. The real impact was the loss of a professional class. The convert Jews like Luis Vives and Franciso de Rojas went on to create masterpieces of Spanish literature while uncomfortably calling Spain their homeland.

The expulsion of the Moors was a more thorough affair. So much so that Spaniards practically erased their extensive Arabic past letting gems like the Alhambra and other monuments to rot in sad neglect or building right over them. Their expulsion was not as acceptable to many as it is often portrayed. Not until the nineteenth century,did the waves of Orientalism that swept Europe - initiated by the Napoleonic invasions of Egypt- allowed for a certain exorcism of the Islamic past and made Spain become aware of the treasures left behind. While Orientalism never quite became as fashionable In Spain for obvious reasons, it was a moment when other nations started to seek inspiration in Spain's past instead of just dismissing it all wholesale as backward and ragged.

Rid of Muslims and Jews, the Inquisition, found a new raison d'etre during the Reformation. The Inquisition was not more cruel or efficient than other religious persecutions that took place in England or France. It did however last too long. Long enough to become an easy propaganda tool for those who thought of Spain as backwater of intolerance. It was also a State sponsored institution albeit one very poorly funded. For many intellectuals, the Inquisition became the cause of everything and anything that was wrong. The author plausibly argues that Spaniards themselves were to blame. The author points out that the notion of an inherently Catholic Spain is also an oversimplification. In the XVI century, Spaniards were illiterate and saw the Church as a way of life more than as a belief system. Heresy never had the roots to grow as wildly as in other places. And yet, a few "heretics" sought their religious leanings outside the strict confines of Catholicism. It is notable the figure of Miguel Servet among others, credited with discovering pulmonary circulation even though most of his writings were about spiritual matters. He ended up burnt in Switzerland, not by Catholics, but by Calvin.

After the Succession war, with the arrival of the new Bourbon dynasty, there seemed to be an opportunity for an opening to new ideas. Spain became a lot more dependent on France. But absolutism took a hold as a reaction to the French Revolution and instead of an opening, Spain endured the nineteenth century in isolation and violence. It was fascinating to juxtapose figures like Alessandro Malaspina, the Italian explorer that saw his amazing survey of the Spanish domains, or the painter Goya against the backdrop of a backwards society.

With the loss of the last remnants of the Empire (Cuba and the Phillippines) in 1898, Spanish intellectuals started questioning the very meaning of Spain and its place in the world. The author has a very interesting take on the elite thinkers of this period. In short, he thinks they took themselves a bit too seriously as guardians of the nation's soul. This is a time were Cervantes and "Don Quijote" become the national Bible. It is a time of reflection but also of division. Castile becomes a focal point for much pondering and writing. A series of tragic military adventures in Africa start to turn the public opinion against the monarchy. After the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the exile of king Alfonso XIII, Spain tries its hands at a Republic. The government proves ineffective to fully represent the people's true opinion's and a Civil War ensues when a military rebellion takes place in Southern Spain. The Civil war was also a time of death and exile. Kamen lists very relevant personality that either left or stayed or left and returned. It is a staggering list. But his point is made more clear here than anywhere else. Finding their voice ever more reduced in the countries they now called home, they held the hope of being summoned back as the wise men of Spain. When this happened years later, Spain had changed and received them warmly but without any interest in their work. After all, they were holding a candle for a world that had vanished. Those who fared better where the scientists and writers and artists that made the world their new home.

[Francisco De Aldana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full of bias, orientalist stereotypes and ignorance of Spain.

[Tim Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Kamen is a solid historian. This book, while long and sometimes overly drawn out, wins points for thoroughness and following the theme from beginning to end. Spain, unlike other European nations was hellbent on exporting its people, not as explorers of new lands, etc., but wholesale expulsion and periodic very specific expulsion of everybody who somehow pissed off the crown, the church, or other powers that be. Russia, in a similar vein, exported its "undesirables" to Siberia, but Siberia was just far-off Russia. Spain, in contrast, didn't even care where they went as long as they went. Since my own ancestors were part of this habitual expulsion of people, I took a personal interest in the book. All in all, a good read. You might ask, why I started it in 2014 and it took 5 years to read. Fair question. I started it without knowing what I know now and returned to it this year and read it through on round 2.

[Andrewh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tour de force of cultural and socio-political history, premised on the notion of Spanish culture having been driven by exiles - slightly contrived but it works very effectively as a framework for examining Spain's odd history, characterised by expulsions, revolutions and counter-revolutions. The early chapters, on Jews, Muslims and Protestants, were for me the most interesting, as I have read about the civil war era elsewhere many times, and nothing much is added to that well-trodden path, except insofar as Kamen makes reference to many obscure writers and artists that I had never heard of. Kamen is hugely erudite and writes very well, so this is highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of this endlessly fascinating 'country'. Much better than the analogous Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes too.

[William Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the historical facts that are so succinctly described in the book.My interest held throughout the 446 pages of the story.Excellent bibliography and end notes. should be read by everyone interested in true spanish history.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but they could have skipped a lot of the detailed examples and been more general.

[Ana María · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting topic but weighed down by a patchwork of facts that are not always well woven into arguments - best chapter is on searching for a national identity.