No one expects the Spanish enlightenment: free thinking in closed society

One of my favourite phrases of all time – a phrase that constantly re-invites its own relevance - isn’t even a quote: it’s the name of a piece of art. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, or, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, is the name of an etching by Spanish Enlightenment artist Francisco Goya (granted, most people have heard of this bloke). What I love about the name is that, while its intended interpretation is entirely valuable - that when we cease to keep a watchful eye on our society, citizens corrupt themselves and breed ignorance - translating sueño as ‘dream’ instead of ‘sleep’ can lend an entirely new interpretation.

While the “dream of reason” was not the intentional concept Goya aimed to describe, it is an excellent metaphor to describe how the Enlightenment ideas espoused by Goya and his peers in Spain & across the world could eventually be used to derail human flourishing instead of working in its favour; that the glorification of reason would limit discussion by curtailing any idea seen as unreasonable through the narrow lens of the 18^th century.

It was exactly this glorification that provoked post-modern philosophy and critical theory, to which the flurry of the Alt-Right was a response. Today, postmodernism is criticised for its failure to align with established ideas and constantly push for some kind of deconstruction; those on the Alt-Right see this as a total rejection of liberal society at large. The dream of reason produces monsters indeed.

That’s interesting and all, but why is the Spanish Enlightenment never spoken about, and hardly taught? Why is Goya, the artist extraordinaire, the only ilustrado anyone’s heard of? Even calling him such is a push; we don’t consider Byron much of an Enlightenment thinker, but then we already have Bacon, Burke, Locke and Hume to count on beyond the Bay of Biscay. A dissection of the thinkers that defined the Spanish Enlightenment might explain their obscurity. I’ll cover three of them here.

Pablo de Olavide

Referred to by Voltaire as “the Spaniard who knows how to think”, Pablo Antonio José de Olavide y Jáuregui was just another Enlightenment legend like all the rest. He was born in Lima in 1725 but spent most of his adult life in Andalusia, Spain. His friendship with the French Lumieres led to an illustrious, bourgeois career translating Enlightenment ideas into Spanish. He also spent some time working for the Spanish government as an advisor, leading to Olavide’s most prestigious position, which also happens to be his most interesting: an effort in unorthodox colonisation.

During the Enlightenment, Spain’s urban geography radically different from today. The coasts were underpopulated, and the most populous urban areas were all on the meseta central, the central plain of Spain, and origin of the famous English tongue twister. Burgos, Segovia, Toledo… cities in the Tablelands had dominated Spanish history for centuries, and the tourist traps on the costas were yet to change things for good. But the Spanish population was thinly spread and full of holes, so the King of Spain sent Pablo de Olavide, the Peruvian immigrant, to do something pleasingly ironic: help him colonise Spain.

The hills of the Sierra Morena, north of Seville, were to be populated in order to spread the Spanish population more widely and turn the feudal society away from dense but distant cities. The secondary goal was to provide good lives for those living in impoverished parts of Central Europe. Olavide was instrumental. The hills were his, but the government still wasn’t keen on him.

The problem was, this being the 18^th century, Olavide was extremely persecuted for sharing the Lumieres’ belief that religious freedom was generally a good thing. Spanish exile, compared to the French alternative, was more forceful, and heavily tied to Catholic principles; Olavide was forced to spend two hours in a convent with only holy books to read for barely threatening the Church’s integrity. Naturally, once he got off that gig he decided to flee to France and wile away the time with Voltaire’s lot.

Olavide returned to Spain in the closing days of the 18^th century, becoming a prolific author. He retired in Baeza, a sleepy city in the very foothills he helped colonise 30 years earlier. He set a benchmark for Latin American scholars, but more impressively, he fought the Inquisition and won. Which is to say, he didn’t die immediately after they caught him, probably because he was – like most Enlightenment figures – overwhelmingly upper-middle class.

Jovellanos

This man wrote one of the most important footnotes to The Wealth of Nations. Born in Asturias in 1744, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos took plenty of inspiration from his homeland, a province of steep hillsides, mining towns, and precious coves. Asturias was one of the first parts of Spain to industrialise; much like Northern England, coal in the hills provoked large-scale urban development. Jovellanos used this to establish early economic theories, most notably his Informe en el expediente de ley agraria.

Jovellanos’ proposals might seem obvious: he just wanted a free market for agricultural land. The thing is, he wanted it in a country that was (and to some extent, still is) severely undeveloped in terms of farming. The meseta is so dry and hot that livestock grazing and hardy crops are among the only opportunities Spaniards get to grow things. Equally, the aforementioned disparate population makes it harder to establish farming communities out in the badlands.

Jovellanos was revolutionary because he recognised that the only way to galvanise the potential of Spain – beyond the exploitation of its American holdings – was to utilise the land of the whole country, instead of focusing on the coastal ribbons: cities like Seville or A Coruna, increasingly enriched by foreign trade and removed from the traditional lives of those in the Spanish interior. Naturally, the best way to do this was to get the most out of the land. Unfortunately, once more the issue comes back to the Catholic Church, who owned vast quantities of land in Spain which was neither efficiently managed nor responsibly run.

Jovellanos’ suggestions took time to take root in Spain, but they quickly became commonplace in Mexico, creating a much fairer land economy. Meanwhile, in latter-day Spain, the ideas pioneered by Jovellanos have led to the creation of one of the most potent growing areas for olives, citrus fruits, and tomatoes in Europe. Spanish Olives used to be a cheap cop-out. Now, they sit amongst the best.

Feijoo

This one, whose name makes him sound distinctly Japanese, is considered one of the foremost Spanish Enlightenment thinkers for one very simple reason; he exposed some of the superstitions of the Catholic Church as total phooey. Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (pronounced fay-xho) was indicted into a Benedictine monastery at the age of twelve, in the early days of the Enlightenment. This was only 1678 and Spain was still a place where a) putting clothes on incorrectly b) folding a napkin wrong after use and c) touching your left bollock* were all thought to generate bad luck. Actually, I tell a lie; all these omens still exist today, just to give you an idea of how mad it must have been back then.

*Ok, this one is specific to Argentina, but probably got going in Iberia

Some real pre-Feijoo superstitions (mostly Roman in origin):

- Bees are somehow intimately connected to God’s will

- Eagles do thunder and lightning (=> all meteorology is pointless)

- Ringing a bell near pregnant women is a bad idea for some reason

- In 100% of cases, owls provoke some sort of nondescript “disaster”

Suffice to say, a combination of Enlightenment vibes and absolute nonsense made Feijoo largely anti-superstition, given that it appears to run largely against the reason-focused considerations of the period. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call Feijoo a precursor to Hume; many of his texts delved into the idea of persuasion, debate and experience in developing opinions. While, much like Jovellanos, Feijoo’s work may be uninspiring, context is everything: the Church of which he had been an integral part was inherently prohibitive in creating even a smidgeon of liberal society. Feijoo’s attempt to simultaneously debunk the bunk and underscore the beginnings of dialectics were incredibly valuable in the Spanish context.

The one scrap of history shared by all three ilustrados I’ve mentioned here is thus: they all involve some sort of run-in with the Catholic Church. This is in no way a criticism of latter-day Catholicism, nor does it mark out something entirely unique to Spain; most members of the French Enlightenment were usually outspoken on both deism and anti-clericalism. The difference in Spain was that the Church was far more powerful than in almost any other post-Reformation European state, barring the Papal States or any other remaining theocracy.

The ilustrados seem unremarkable to the English or the French because they were working from a much lower bar, not just culturally but politically and economically. If it’s any indication, Feudal Spain as a concept didn’t die until roughly the beginning of the 20^th century. Modern Spain wouldn’t exist without its groundbreakers, but the new ground they broke will always be near totally distinct from any other Enlightenment. Places provoke options. Just like in the case of cycling, we do ourselves down when we forget the differences between cultures and how they impact history; anthro-historiography, you could call it.

When we inspect the Enlightenment, we tend to see some countries as revolutionary and others less so. As such, one would expect Spain’s religious history to seriously malign its freethinkers; and yet, the Spanish ilustrados are defined exactly by their ability to overcome this hurdle. Sometimes, a quiet revolution can be just as successful as a loud one. No one expects the Spanish Enlightenment.