The Hemingway Paradigm Is... Hispanomanía (100th entry!)

So every 25 entries or so I take a moment to pause from generating new content for the blog and reflect on why I started it, that is, to do my part to help rupture the "Hemingway paradigm". This is my 100th entry (yay!), so I thought I would focus on a subject a Valencia twitter acquaintance of mine once posed to me, what is it with foreigners (especially Anglophones) and their particular obsession vision of Spain. It's an obsession that a Spanish-British author, Tom Burns Marañón, brilliantly named "Hispanomanía".

Obviously Ernest Hemingway, our blog patron saint, was one notable example of it: an American who came to Spain with a particular kind of Romantic vision of the country, its "authenticity", its "charm". In my 50th entry I traced it back to older roots, with Richard Ford. At some point I also hope to write an entry on "Not Washington Irving's Granada", since his book Tales from the Alhambra is a laugh for all of its vivid, fanciful stereotypes of Spaniards... doubly funny for how many of those stereotypes seem to persevere today. (Just check out my 75th entry on the "impertinente curiouso", for some present-day examples.) If you want to explore the full gamut of literary examples of this Hispanomanía, I recommend you visit the "Books on Spain" blog, Kirsty Hooper's scholarly study of the subject.

Or you can simply run a Google Image search on "Spanish culture":

Grrrr!!! Why does the paella here have red peppers!!!

For comparison (sorry, vanity couldn't resist), try running a Google Image search on "Not Hemingway's Spain":

The main difference seems to be more subdued colors and less bull shit imagery.

One of the things this Valencian twitter friend said to me, which I'm inclined to agree with, is that Burns Marañon's description of Hispanomanía tends to focus too narrowly on the North-South interior axis (Pamplona-Madrid-Andalucía), but ignores the equally important, more contemporary East coast axis (Barcelona-Alicante-Málaga... an axis that somehow skips over Valencia!). Today, it is not just Hemingway/Lorca thrill-seekers who come to Spain, looking for that exotic, mysterious Romantic past, but also the beach bums and hedonists wanting their fun-in-the-sun and that "laid back" culture they associate with the Spanish Mediterranean way of life.

I'm still convinced that one of the best visual documentations of what is "profoundly Spanish",
albeit in a Romanticized, nostalgic vein, was the early 20th-century painting expedition
by (Valencian) painter Joaquín Sorolla, sponsored by the Hispanic Society of America.

Some of Sorolla's most beloved works, at least with Valencian locals,
are his pictures of people (particularly kids) on the seaside beach.

Sorolla's contemporary, the American painter John Singer Sargent, captured perhaps
the best rendition of Hispanophiles' quintessential image of Romantic Spain, the flamenco dancer.

At one point I sat down and started to brainstorm a list of what exactly would Hispanomanía look like in Hemingway's time versus what it would look like today:

Then:  

Bulls, red bandanas, castanets, flamenco dancing, gypsies, frill dresses, dark eyes, dark hair, thick lisp, blood, roast pig, Iberian ham, bullfights, matadors, Pamplona, "Olé", siesta, fiesta, hot-tempered, machista, sherry, red wine, picaresque, the Spanish Civil War, Don Quixote, Cervantes, Madrid, Sevilla, Andalucía, Granada, Ronda, castles, warm weather, sunny, arid landscapes, conquistadors, windmills, the Spanish Inquisition, Catholicism, cathedrals, 1492, civil strife…

Now: 

Beaches, warm weather, Málaga, Ibiza, the "Costas", sangría, nightclubs, economic crisis, corruption, PIGS, soccer, Barcelona, Gaudí, Dalí, Almodóvar, Lorca, Camino de Santiago, the Mediterranean diet, paella, gazpacho, cava, tortilla de patatas, the running of the bulls, Hemingway, la Tomatina, Hispanidad, Semana Santa, study abroad, TEFL, Feria de Abril, German tourists, British tourists…

Some things haven't changed, and would make the list both then and now. Though I think what was once seen to be deeply rooted and deeply "Spanish" (Catholicism, "las dos Españas") has been transformed, with the rise of the consumer(ist) society, and is now consumed (by foreigners and locals alike) in a lighter, more fanciful form (Semana Santa festivals, "el clásico" football rivalries).

I've never heard an Hispanophile go on and on about the Aragón "jota" dance
the way they do about flamenco.

I remember seeing this Sorolla depiction of Valencian life, in the Hispanic Society of America exhibit,
and thinking: "even in paintings the light in Valencia just look brighter than everywhere else".

Perhaps in my 125th or 150th entry I'll list the things about Spain that never seem to make the shortlist but should...

advanced telecommunications engineering, Spain's "brain drain", the Erasmus generation, alternative energy technologies (i.e. wind energy), Moneo, the new Spanish cuisine (Adrià, Arzak...), its nature, nature, nature, high-speed trains, Fallas, Mudéjar ceramics, Valencia, Sorolla, Calatrava, Kukuxumusu, the Democratic transition, the Pyrenees, skiing, immigration, tennis, basketball, almonds, Álex de la Iglesia, graphic arts innovators... etc.

The future image of Hispanomanía?