Spain: The 'Spanish Problem' and The Imperial Myth

Abstract

During the early months of 1898, as Spain, struggling to maintain control over Cuba and her other remaining overseas colonies, faced up to the prospect of war with the United States, the nation's press waxed lyrical over the damage Spanish ships could shortly be expected to inflict upon those of the 'Colossus' and, indeed, on the coast of the United States itself.1 By the end of the year the greater part of Spain's obsolescent navy lay on the bed of the Pacific or the Caribbean, sunk in two brief battles with almost contemptuous ease by the American fleet. At the ensuing Treaty of Paris, Spain surrendered the last shreds of a once vast overseas empire: Cuba to pseudo-independence in the economic and political shadow of the United States; Puerto Rico and the Philippines to outright American rule; and some lesser Pacific island clusters to Germany. Foreigners saw little to marvel at in this humiliation of a country widely regarded in Europe as living on its past and its illusions.2 In Spain itself, however, the demolition of those illusions threw a large part of the politically aware population into a state of shock and despair. The year 1898 was henceforth to be known as the 'year of Disaster' and the otherwise diverse collection of intellectuals whose analyses gave rise to the notion of a 'Spanish problem' as the 'Generation of 1898'.