Castile-Leon, A Mooted Territory: Rhetoric of Space and Time in the Construction of Identities

Abstract

In constructing identities of the present, time (the past that was) as well as space (the territory that should be) is conjured up. Although this manner of operation is not a distinctive feature of identity construction in Spain, it is clearly a strategy employed here in earnest once the political transition to democracy was over. This strategy comprehends two different, opposite rhetoric modes regarding claims of the past: one historical, the other mythical. The first prompts the audience to become again what it once was and to recover what it at the time held. The second calls for a reencounter with that which, supposedly, always defined it as a people, even though this people never fully realized its territorial aspirations in the past or no written evidence exists that it ever held the territory that it now claims as its own. Which is the case in the “Autonomous Community of Castile-Leon”? Stereotypes about Castile (the key component in this Autonomous Community of contemporary Spain) uttered by politicians, analysts and writers make reference to a mooted territory and to a people apparently heedless and ignorant of itself. The author approaches and, in a way, deconstructs these stereotypes, half of them learned, the other half popular. In addition, he attempts to expose other reasons that lie behind such seeming “lack of identity” or “of regional consciousness” that presumably plague Castilians and everything Castilian.