“Long Live Spain and Hispanoamericanism!” The Spanish Diaspora and the Promotion of Hispanism in Spain and the United States

In January 1918, Madrid’s daily El Sol published a letter from Spain’s renowned philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal. In it, he took issue with the newspaper using the heading “América latina” for the news section on Spain’s former colonies. Instead, he suggested “América española” or “hispana,” and pointed to the existence in the United States of the Hispanic Society of America. Menéndez Pidal must have been pleased to learn, only weeks later, of the publication in the United States of two new journals whose titles captured his views: Hispania and the Hispanic American Historical Review. In both cases the choice of name and their initial success were the result, in great measure, of the support of a prominent Spaniard and long-time resident in the United States: Juan C. Cebrián.

This paper examines the role that Cebrián and other Spaniards in the United States and Spain played in establishing the networks of Hispanism that made these initiatives posible. The debates over language were at the core of discussions over Spain’s imperial past and Spanish national identity in the aftermath of the Spanish-Cuban-American war. The discourse of Hispanism offered a positive reinterpretation of this past. America’s hispanophilia and the accomplishments of the United States could be cast as evidence of Spain’s successful “civilizing mission.” Hispanism also allowed Spanish immigrants to forge a Spanish-American ethnic identity based on complementarity. The Spanish translation of Charles Lummis’s The Spanish Pioneers, also funded by Cebrián, illustrates this theme. The study of Hispanism sheds light on the fluidity of transnational spaces, and the interplay of migration, empire, nationalism, and ethnic identity. The longevity of its publications encourages us to reflect on the legacy of a movement whose contributions to the study and teaching of the languages and histories of the Americas are still relevant today.