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(RE)CASTING THE SPANISH NATION: THE “OTHERING” OF EMILIO BUALE

2011; Routledge; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14636204.2011.607350

1469-9818

Stuart D. Green,

Spanish Culture and Identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. I date the beginning of the recession to 2008, as do Reher and Requena (289). According to the Padrón Municipal Continuo, the number of empadronados born outside Spain on 1 January 1998 was 1,173,767. On 1 January 2008, this figure was 6,044,528 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística “Padrón Municipal”). Since then, the migrant flow into Spain has slowed, and a number of immigrants have returned to their country of origin. 2. Official statistics reveal an uninterrupted and significant increase in GDP and net income (both nationally and per capita) in Spain in the decade prior to the current crisis (Instituto Nacional de Estadística “Cuentas Económicas”). 3. See the comments by the cast of Los negros (a translation of Jean Genet's Les Nègres), which premiered at the Teatros del Canal on 26 January 2011 (Hernández). 4. In its lateral perspective, this article builds upon and opens up the burgeoning field of research into how Spanish cinema and theatre engages with the question of ethnic diversity. Currently, the literature on this subject matter consists of close readings of individual productions or comparative analyses of works that explore a certain aspect of the phenomenon of immigration. A number of books and articles have appeared in recent years on ethnic diversity and immigration in Spanish film, most notably Isabel Santaolalla's Los otros. Less has been written on how these matters have been rendered on stage, principally because fewer contemporary plays tackle or allude to them. Marco Kunz has written on the two best-known plays on the subject of immigration, Ignacio del Moral's La mirada del hombre oscuro and Jerónimo López Mozo's Ahlán. Nothing has been published to date on how fictional television series in Spain deal with these matters. 5. As Smith notes, these shared features cannot strictly be labelled national, as is assumed by those theories which maintain that nations have always existed (perennialism) or that they are timeless organic entities (primordialism). The symbolic nature of such beliefs, he claims, differentiates his theory from those of the primordialists (Nationalism and Modernism 192). 6. Smith also acknowledges the existence of a third “plural” model of nation, exemplified by the USA, in which immigrants comprise the vast majority of its population (Nationalism and Modernism 194). 7. Drawing on the Foucauldian theory of biopolitics, Francisco Váquez García (117) argues that the expulsion of the moriscos was more the result of a debate concerning matters of repopulation and state security (in which the latter won) than a racist policy implemented as part of a drive towards ethnic homogeneity. 8. I do not consider here the ethnicization which underlies most of Spain's peripheral nationalisms since this follows what Smith (Nationalism and Modernism 204) sees as a linguistic/cultural ethnic base, as opposed to a racial one. It would be interesting to determine the extent to which “internal” and “external” racial ethnicization coincide in the only exception to this state of affairs in Spain, that of Basque nationalism. For an impassioned examination of the “internal” contradictions in the constitutional discourse on the Spanish nation, see Bastide Freixedo. 9. Olga López Cotín is somewhat more cautious in her statement that “en él [Ombasi] se proyectan la desconfianza, el miedo, la resistencia y el odio a incorporar su diferencia” (155). 10. This moment is not found in Ignacio del Moral's La mirada del hombre oscuro, the play on which Bwana was based. 11. Significantly, La mirada del hombre oscuro includes a scene in which Ombasi dreams that he speaks with the corpse of his dead friend (Moral 39–42). In this conversation (in Spanish), Ombasi demonstrates a cautious optimism in the face of the difficulties that await him in Spain. 12. It is the morisco characters who first convey the notion of an implicitly white Spain in the play in the lyrics of one of the songs they perform in secret at the beginning of the play (Calderón de la Barca 1. 20–9). Mendoza refuses to marry Clara in order not to taint his blood, which he claims is pure on account of his family's origins in the mountains of Asturias and Cantabria, those regions of Spain where the Moorish presence in the peninsula was not (or least) felt (1. 828–30). 13. For further information about passing, see Flesler (7–9). 14. I prefer this translation of the title “L'expérience vécue du Noir” to “The Fact of Blackness” by which it is most widely known. 15. I have Elena Iglesias at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, to thank for locating these photographs and for looking, albeit to no avail, for further documentation concerning this production. 16. This casting of nation by directors and producers results in a perpetual “performance of nation” that bears a close resemblance to the constant “kind of becoming or activity” that Judith Butler (143) identifies in the performative construction of gender identities. 17. In a future article, I plan to examine how characters and actors from North Africa have been cast. Such a study will provide a nuanced description of whom Eduardo Vasco includes in (and excludes from) the national mindset he sees manifested in Golden Age theatre. 18. Of this dynamic, Bhabha (213) writes that “the political unity of the nation consists in a continual displacement of the anxiety of its irremediably plural modern space”. As regards the legal structures concerning immigration in Spain, Teun van Dijk argues: “[t]he Ley de Extranjería [8/2000] and the government policies of the PP on irregular immigration are prime examples of this spirit of keeping Arab, Asian, African, and Latin-American foreigners out” (21). That this continues to be so under the PSOE government is exemplified by the case of the municipal judge in Getafe, against whom Latin Americans filed a complaint that he unfairly prevented them from acquiring Spanish nationality, at the time this article was being written (Pérez-Lanzac 28). 19. Buale also played the roles of the Ottoman Sultan, Tebandro and Celio in a production of El cuerdo loco with the company Teatro de Tránsito on 24 June 2008 in Olmedo. However, this appears to have been a single performance given that Alex García played these roles in the premiere at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro prior to this performance and on the subsequent tour. I have therefore not considered this production in my study of Buale's career. 20. It could be said that non-traditional casting exemplifies the representation of nation from what Bhabha calls the “Third Space”, that space in which meaning is produced, where “the subject of a proposition […] and the subject of enunciation” (53) coincide. In this case, these two subjects would be the original play text and its staging respectively. 21. The only alternative would appear to be the defeatist strategy of choosing not to perform the roles they are offered. Indeed, Buale left the CNTC after the three productions analysed. 22. In the episode of Cazadores de hombres in which Buale appears, policewoman Julia (Judith Diakhate) is still presented principally as a victim of discrimination: she is warned by Ignacio that she will be required to work still harder than other overburdened colleagues “porque eres mujer y encima negra” (direct transcript from Episode 1). 23. I am indebted to Isaac Vidrjakou Burgos for his generosity in sending me a copy of this document. 24. Mohamed El Hafi kindly gave me information about this association at the symposium “El inmigrante en el teatro” held at the Teatro de la Abadía, Madrid, on 26 October 2010. The association's website (www.3ae.es), however, appears to be no longer active.