ABSTRACT
“…son españoles … los que no pueden ser otra cosa.” This assertion has generally been attributed to the late nineteenth-century Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. He probably coined this sarcastic phrase as a frustrated response to the contemporary, stagnating debates over definitions of Spanish nationality and citizenship, when a new constitution was being drafted in 1876. The Prime Minister’s phrase sets up a structural quandary that conditions Spanish citizenship as, on the one hand, an already given, but on the other, as dependent upon its relation to all other foreign, as well as national or regional entities. In this regard, the phrase serves us well for an exploration of how a growing Spanish state arts administration, and laws controlling the circulation and display of art objects, reveal the tensions over definitions of a Spanish nationality in relation to international competitive markets. State-funded exhibition spaces, collecting practices, and their related criticism, were also central to the process of constituting national identities, even while critics and administrators argued over Spain’s pluralistic fabric. This chapter examines the criticism and administrative practices that helped define art objects or artists as “Spanish,” at the cost of, and in relation to, “anything” else.
