Question for spaniards or any one has a degree in spanish studies. I did a report on the non-intervention of countries during the spanish civil war. One of the books said that Spain and Portugal was less european than other countries in europe because of it's separation due to the pyranees and it's tendancy toward violence in the 15th and 16th centuries. I remember My professor in spain saying that the culture of spain is different due the separation of the pyranees which prevented the flow of culture from the rest of europe. I think I might be missing something there, because when my prof from spain here, in the U.S. saw that, she was furious. She started to say are you saying spain is not a part of europe. If you have any information on this please let me know.

Hi... I'm not posting to give an answer coz i have no idea at all! I dont even know what a pyranees is. But this is an interesting question and i'm gonna sit and wait with you on this one.

I'm pretty sure Ignacio( ) will post a long one......

No, I read it yesterday,and got rather furious, but I don't really think that nonsense needs a serious answer. It's like saying the same to UK or Ireland because of the sea, a much bigger obstacle for communication, or Italy with the alps, or Greece, which has a big mountain chain in its centre/north, and so on. It's plain nonsense.

Imagine somebody said the west coast of the USA was a different culture (meaning less cultured or developed) than the East coast because of the Appalaches. :o

Pirynnees is a mountain chain,that runs all along the northern obrder with France.

In fact, the fight with the moors brought thousands of people atracted by its sense of crusade, plus the free lands and tax exemption for life given to the settlers in the border villages. Also, the Road of Santiago brought enormous amounts of pilgrims ho spread their culture, and many times settled here (half of what today is Pamplona was the former "french village"). Plus, we have been invaded (and thus, mixed cultures with) by lots of other european peoples, phoenician and greek settlements, roman invaders, suevians, alans, vandals and goths (these four are germanic peoples), among others.

Catalonia was a French county with Charles the Great and afterwards for decades. The basque kingdom of Navarre spread both sides of the Piryeees, ...

Really, it makes no sense at all!

I found this topic very interesting and I don't get furious at all. But first we should know what is to be less european. Probably they say this for Spain and not for Italy and Greece because the greekroman culture are the roots of the European culture and they're not brave enough to tell it, but I think that when they say less European they're thinking in a centereuropean culture. I don't think that the Pyriness are a reason for it, maybe the fights in the XIVth & XVth centuries (all th fights Spain had in XVIth cent where European wars), but I'ld say that rather the whole history of Spain. As in the following centuries maybe it's also more focused in the relation with America. But there are also a lot of relations with Europe, it's said that Maquiavelo wrote his book thinking in King Fernando el Católico, he married his daughters with Europeans princes, and the first dinasty of the kingdom of Spain was the Austrias Dinasty and they came from Germany and the next one was the Borbon, and they came from France. There are a lot of things to talk about, there are many differences, but I think Spain HAS NOT been isolated from Europe.

If there is a country that is less European than the others, it has to be the United Kingdom...
We drive on the left, we pay in bars at the point of ordering and our electrical system is different to that of the continent.
An old advertsing campaign run by the Spanish tourist board proclaimed 'Spain is different'. I suspect this slogan would apply more to the UK.

Ignacio, I think that you might be misinterpreting what the original writer of the statement "that Spain is less European than the rest of Europe due to the Pyrenees Mountains" actually meant.

It is general knowledge that large physical barriers, whether they are oceans, mountains or deserts, etc, disrupt the flow of communication... well, at least back in the 15th & 16th centuries... (with today´s global and information society, the situation is entirely different) and greatly influenced the development of cultures.

I don´t think that the author meant that Spain and Portugal were less cultured or developed than the rest of Europe, or even that they weren´t part of Europe. I think what the author was trying to say quite simply is that Spain and Portugal evolved and developed differently than the majority of the rest of Europe due to the isolation caused by the Pyrenees way back when. Remember Spain´s tourism line... "Spain is different". :p

My question is a repetition of someone else´s... what exactly is European culture? I´d be hard pressed to say that the French culture is the same as the German culture which is the same as the Greek culture. Each of those countries has their own culture identified by their customs and traditions. I think what the author might have wanted to say is perhaps that the ideology of the Iberian Penninsula and the rest of Europe differed greatly during the 15th & 16th centuries due to the physical separation... and that those differences perhaps still have an influence on today´s Spanish/Iberian culture.

Just as the "Mediterranean countries" are different from the "Baltic countries" or different from the "nordic countries".

Take, for example, the Spanish that is spoken in Spain and the Spanish that is spoken in Latin America. At one point, the languages were the same because it was the Spanish explorers that brought Spanish to Latin America...however, over time the Spanish in Latin America evolved one way and the Spanish in Spain evolved in another. Both being influenced by different factors and now there are differences in vocabulary, pronunciation/accents and even grammar. Just like the English spoken in England and English spoken in the USA. At one point in time, they were the same, however, they differ now (much like the differences in the varieties of Spanish) because of the influence of different cultures and other geopolitical causes.

BTW -- IMHO the western USA does have a different culture than the Eastern USA just as northern Spain has a different culture than southern Spain. Geography does play a large part in economic and cultural development.

Well, Chica, after all, this is another remake of the question commented before in MM's on a sentence by A. Dumas: "Africa begins down the Pirynnees". It's not strange that the spanish teacher was furious, if I felt spanish, I would, and anyway, I am a little, because Iberia includes most of the Basque COuntry.

Mountains difficulted tranfer of ideas or customs, but, as filbert says, seas do even more, and I can't see anybody saying Ireland and the UK are not european.

Besides, as I said before, many countries are "isolated" by mountains in Europe, and thay belong to that specific cultural tree. And I say cultural tree, because the greek culture was adopted by romans in many ways, and the romans spread it troughout their empire, mainly europe. Then they were invaded by barbarians, who became educated on that very culture. And in the XII or XIV centuries the cultured people still spoke latin, and studied the classic greek authors. In Britain, at the beginning of the century, we are told many of the best schools taught latin, greek, and the Classics.

We cannot say that Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and Ireland are not Europe, simply because they are almost half of europe and, Greece and Rome, the basis of the culture all of we europeans share, beginning by the former, old concept of democracy, a word that the Greek invented. The values we shared for centuries come form those roots. It was the barbarian germanic and celtic tribes of what today are France, Germany, Scandinavia, precisely who became civilized with the mediterranean countries' culture.

If these countries are "other Europe"; I am very glad to belong to that one.

Also, mountains are a difficulty to spread culture, but they are not impossible to overcome.

As I said above, it did not stop 1.000.000 goths to cross and stablish themselves in Spain, or the roman to conquer it, or the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who crossed the country (more than any other, by the way) in the middle age, to gain forgival for sins, and so on.

Probably (the North of) Spain is the country with a most heterogeneal and intense population and culture flux in Europe at that time! So, that sentence can't be more wrong (if not even badly intentioned).

As for the tendency for violence of the Spanish and Portugueses, let me laugh. Ha, ha, ha. Just take a look at the European History and you'll see a couple of wars , bloodsheds, conquers, religious turmoils, and so on. We were exactly as savage as everybody else, how wouldn't we if we were fighting or allying with the same countries all the time although in different sides each time? If one was savage, the other had to be jus as much!

Chica , I think that you are right. Ignacio it is not meant to be offensive. I can understand your anger, many times northern Europe has been pitted against southern Europe. In the U.S. when many immigrants came to the u.s. in the late 1800's early 1900's there was a classification of who was "white" enough. Those who were excluded were from southern europe or hungarian.
Later on as the U.s. canged , they were reclassified as white. For those of you who live in the U.S. this was a series on pbs.

Anyway, here is the book It is called Non-intervention in the spanish civil war 1936-1939 An International affair by William E.Watters.

I quote"In seeking a precedent for foreign interference in the affairs of the nations of the Iberian Peninsula, we do not have to go back very far in history. In earlier times the nations called it, not interventionor non interventionor non intervention, but interference or non-interference;in the 20th century it was (and is) intervention. Which term is used make little difference, because both refer to the uninvited interposition of one country in the affairs of another.

From the Cultural point of view, The Pyranees are the highest mountains in Europe. Through the centuries they have served as a rather effective barrier to cultural exchange between the people of the iberian Peninsula and the rest of europe. The result has been that the people of spain have usually reacted in domestic disputes in a different (and possibly more violent) manner than the people of Northern Europe. During the fifteenth,sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, most of europe was governed by monarchs who seldom would refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of another nation if they thought they could profit from such a venture."
There it is. My professor in spain said europe begins in the Pyranees. What does this term mean?
I just want to get to the bottom of this.

This just proves how disunited Europe really is...it never has been and never will be. Napolean, Hitler and Stalin all tried but failed.

There are too many distinct groups with distinct cultures for Europe to blend. Although several countries share similar culture and language i.e. Germany & Austria, France & Belgium, Scandinavia, Spain & Portugal. And.....let's not forget about Eastern Europe, because many people tend to forget that there's a whole other part of Europe beyond Austria!

Regarding American opinion of Southern Europeans, it's true that earlier in the 20th Century they were regarded as less white. The Italians were pictured being dark and more ethnic looking than other Europeans and when Walt Disney was looking for kids for the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950's they were looking for an ethnic looking kid, so they hired Annette Funicello because she was dark...but not dark enough to pass for white in 1950's America.

MATADOR writes: Until the latter part of the 15th Century Spain was under Moorish occupation. In the 16th Century, Spain was a great Colonial Power, making conquests and colonizing much of the 'New World.'

Spain's "tendency toward violence" occurred centuries earlier and was entirely provoked by Roland's Army and what it did to the people of Pamplona. Charlemagne's son, Roland's army was wiped out by the 'Saracens' (actually people of Navarre) avenging the 'Rape of Pamplona' by Roland's army. This was made quite famous by the epic Chanson de Roland.

After that, the French distanced themselves from Spain. They had suffered a humiliating defeat that would be remembered for centuries. Much of Europe followed suit because they valued their relationship with France more highly than that with Iberia. This was more the reason for Spain's isolation than the Pyrenees.

Spain's culture, music and art flourished and its natural geographical barrier, the Pyrenees mountains may have helped by isolating it from a Europe in which countries were constantly at war with one another.

I had always heard Alexandre Dumas' quote as "Europe ends at the Pyrenees." But that's just a matter of semantics. The Spanish royalty intermarried, first with the Austrias (i.e., Carlos I of Spain was Carlos V of Austria) and then with the Borbones. What we call 'Old Madrid' is actually Madrid de los Austrias. This was occurring even during the years (centuries) when France turned its back on its neighbor to the south.

I think your Professor in Spain was wrong! Even during the Moorish occupation, the Reconquista and the subsequent Spanish Inquisition, Spain's culture was far ahead of that of much of the rest of Europe.

Emphatically not! Who is European? The French, the Germans, the Italians or Czechs or Poles or Norweigans? That's not what you would call an homogeneous lot.

These opinions are simply those of an American who does his best to understand Spanish history and culture. If my 'take' is wrong, I apologize; but that's the way I see it.