Castelao's Absent Presence in Post-Civil War Galician Nationalism

Abstract

The discourse of Galician nationalism inherited from the nineteenth-century Rexurdimento was embedded in Volksgeist-related imaginative figurations that were essentialist in character and which contained and projected a consciousness of the transcendent. Within the twentieth-century ‘Xeración Nós’, this discourse remained resilient in the work of Vicente Risco, Ramón Otero Pedrayo, and, in the post-Civil War period, in Ramón Piñeiro. It was counterpointed by Castelao in Sempre en Galiza, where the emphasis is upon a politically engaged conception of povo in which the dominant rhetoric is one of heroic resistance to external oppression, consonant with Castelao's own experience of political defeat and enforced exile. In a context in which transcendent rhetoric is a self-apportioned entailment of the Franco regime, Castelao's politicized discourse provides inspiration for a fundamental reorientation of Galician nationalism evidenced in the ‘longa noite’ of Celso Emilio Ferreiro and its metaphorisation of elemental suffering.

Keywords:

• Galician nationalism
• Rexurdimento
• Castelao
• ‘Xeración Nós’

Notes

 1. Raymond Williams, Culture, London, 1989, pp. 10–14.

 2. Rosalía de Castro, Cantares Gallegos, Ricardo Carballo Calero, ed., Madrid, Cátedra, 1979, pp. 39–43 (p. 40).

 3. De Castro, Cantares Gallegos, p. 39.

 4. Ramón Otero Pedrayo, Romantismo, saudade, sentimento da raza e da terra en Pastor Díaz, Rosalía de Castro e Pondal, Santiago de Compostela, 1931, pp. 75 and 94.

 5. Otero Pedrayo, Romantismo, saudade, sentimento da raza e da terra, pp. 106 and 109.

 6. See Vicente Risco, Teoría do nazonalismo galego, in Obra completa, Vol. I, ed. Francisco Bobillo, Madrid, 1981, p. 57.

 7. Ramón Piñeiro, ‘A poesía de Luis Pimentel’, Olladas no futuro, Vigo, Galaxia, 1974, pp. 14–17 (p. 14).

 8. Piñeiro, ‘A evolución do celtismo galego’, Olladas no futuro, pp. 51–55 (p. 51).

 9. Piñeiro, ‘Carta a Leonor e Francisco Cunha de Leão’, Olladas no futuro, pp. 118–41 (p. 122).

10. Piñeiro, Olladas no futuro, pp. 51–52.

11. Piñeiro, Olladas no futuro, p. 120.

12. Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, second edition, Buenos Aires, Edición ‘As Burgas’, 1961; facsimile edition, Santiago de Compostela, Librería Couceiro, 1986, p. 447.

13. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 38.

14. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 27.

15. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 27.

16. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, pp. 35 and 66. I have elsewhere analyzed this fundamental difference of approach in fixing upon quite programmatic differentiation between Otero and Risco's use of available cultural icons and Castelao's insistence upon political imperatives: see my article ‘Icons and Imperatives in the Construction of Galician Identity: the “Xeración Nós”’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 36.3 (2000), pp. 296–309.

17. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 45.

18. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 53.

19. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, pp. 68 and 89.

20. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 133.

21. Castelao, Sempre en Galiza, p. 72.

22. Eduardo Pondal, Queixumes dos pinos, Xavier Senín, ed., Vigo, Galaxia, 1985, p. 24.

23. Pondal, Queixumes dos pinos, p. 23.

24. Ramón Cabanillas, ‘Na morte de Castelao’, in Longa noite: poetas da guerra e da postguerra. Os continuadores, Santiago de Compostela, Xunta de Galicia, 1986, p. 1.

25. Piñeiro, ‘Castelao’, Olladas no futuro, pp. 17–18.

26. Celso Emilio Ferreiro, Longa noite de pedra, ed. Gonzalo Navaza, Vigo, Xerais, 1990, pp. 51–52. Navaza describes the appearance of Celso Emilio's Collection as a moment of ‘convulsiva viraxe’ (p. 15).

27. See my article ‘“Na praia de Rianxo”: la simbología galleguista como protesta cultural’, in Voces subversivas: Poesía bajo el régimen (1939–1975), Trevor J. Dadson and Derek W. Flitter, eds, Birmingham, Department of Hispanic Studies, 2000, pp. 75–89.