Hola. This is Barbara, your news curator of everything remotely Hispanic. In expectation of the Easter holidays, I have assembled three news snippets for you. 1. An interesting book on Spain’s presumed political weaknesses, 2. a fascinating analysis of encounters between Yiddish and Ladino speakers, and 3. a wonderful album of Sephardic tangos.
Spain and its Achilles’ Heels
Pleibéricos is an open and independent initiative to present new publications in the field of Iberian Studies. The initiative was founded and launched by Santiago Fouz Hernández (Durham University) and Esther Gimeno Ugalde (University of Vienna) in June 2020. It was created so that researchers could stay in contact with each other and learn about recent publications during the pandemic. I hope they will maintain the platform because it is very useful since many people interested in Iberian culture studies are spread across many countries.
In one of their March recordings Santiago Fouz talks to Koldo Casla, author of the book Spain and its Achilles’ Heels. The Strong Foundations of a country’s Weaknesses.
For Casla it is key to take into consideration four vulnerabilities of the Spanish state in order to understand the most recent events of the country’s history. These four vulnerabilities are as follows:
There is no consensus about how to deal with the notion of what constitutes a nation within Spain, hence it is not clear of how many nations the Spanish state consists.
There is a silence about what happened in the 20th history so it is uncertain of what are the implications that this history is not told.
The Spanish welfare state has developed comparatively late.
The influence between conservatism and the Catholic church remains huge.
However, Casla uses his analysis to point out several challenges that are crucial to use these presumed vulnerabilities not just as critical talking points, but as productive forces to construct a different and better future. As he mentions in the conversation, some of these challenges are shared with other countries, others only affect Spain. These challenges comprise:
The polarisation of politics,
the role of public investment in tackling inequality,
climate change (Spain is one of the most affected countries),
the role of the monarchy,
the rise of the extreme right, and
the debate about what constitutes a nation
I like his constructive approach and look forward to reading the book. I also enjoyed very much how well prepared the talk was. You can watch the whole conversation between Fouz and Casla on YouTube.
Looking at Yiddish Speakers Through Ladino
Nesi Altaras, a journalist and Sephardic Jew from Istanbul, recently published an interesting blog post on In Geveb. A Journal of Yiddish Studies about the encounters of Yiddish and Ladino speakers.
With the onset of the pogroms of the 19th century Yiddish speakers fled to Ottoman port cities where Ladino-speaking Sephardim were in control of Jewish affairs. On the other hand, Sephardic immigrants to the US found themselves in an inverse position, them being the ones that had to deal with a situation in which the established Jews were Yiddish speakers. As you may expect, both groups often negotiated their relative social positions as settled versus newly arriving Jews.
Altaras has very good examples from the Ladino language to express the power asymmetry between the established Sephardim and the newly arrived Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe. Most of them have a derogatory meaning. He quotes Elias Canetti’s childhood reminiscences from Bulgaria to give an example of how group labels were used to define the in- and out-group.
With naive arrogance, the Sephardim looked down on other Jews; a word always charged with scorn was Todesco, meaning a German or Ashkenazi Jew. It would have been unthinkable to marry a Todesca, a Jewish woman of that background, and among the many families that I heard about or knew as a child in Ruschuk, I cannot recall a single case of such a mixed marriage.
You will find many more examples in this blog post, which I highly recommend. You can also follow Nesi Altaras on Twitter.
Los Pasharos Sefaradis
Los Pasharos Sefardis are a musical group of four people who have been working together since 1978 to promote the Sephardic culture of Turkey. They have published several albums with secular Sephardic songs. Among these, is a surprising specialty: When tango became very popular in Turkey and the Balkans in the 1920s-1930s, Sephardic Jews also fell in love with the dance from Argentina and adapted it to their repertoire and musical heritage. In 2017, the group assembled the first album of Sephardic tangos ever published in the world. The lyrics are all in Ladino. You can listen to the album on Spotify or any other music streaming service.
So, give the album a try during your next «cita con el tango». 💃🏽🕺🏾 And remember:
I think those who say that you can't tango if you are not Argentine are mistaken. Tango was an immigrant music... so it does not have a nationality. Its only passport is feeling. (Carlos Gavito)
On the road again
This is all for today. I will head for Madrid on Friday. I am very happy my husband and I will be hiking some stages on the Via de la Plata (Silver Way), which is that route of the Camino de Santiago that goes through all of Western Spain from Seville up to Santiago de Compostela. It’s actually the longest of all the Spanish «caminos». It is our aim to hike from Seville to Mérida during «Semana Santa», but taking it softly to enjoy the landscape and historical sites. I’ll keep you posted about this «turigrino» experience on my twitter feed @nachrichtenlos (turigrino = blend of turista/tourist and peregrino(pilgrim) and later on in this newsletter. ¡Buen camino!