Descent Into The Spanish Labyrinth In Spain Summary

On Thursday, March 17th at 7:30 pm in Williams Hall, I attended the lecture Descent into the Spanish Labyrinth: Politics in Contemporary Spain, which Dustin Shannon presented. After studying abroad at the Complutense University of Madrid, Dr. Shannon slowly gained an appreciation and became accustomed to the daily lifestyle in Spain. As a result, he has lived and taught in Spain for about the last 17 years. During the two decades, Dr. Shannon was able to acquire more knowledge on Spain, which allows him to educate others about Spain’s history and culture. Before the lecture started, Dustin’s brother, Deric Shannon, gave a short introduction and brief summary about what was going to be discussed. Throughout the rest of the event, Dustin Shannon
Shannon talked about how nationalism in Spain was very complicated to define since certain nationalists like the Catalan and the Basque objected and wanted unity from Spain. He said it was considered to be more like a “regional nationalism”. Dr. Shannon continued to describe the 6 different phases in contemporary Spain. He started off talking about “The Second Republic”, which took place during 1931 to 1939, how it was the most liberal constitution. Dr. Shannon said this phase was extremely important because political parties were outlawed, which led to many events: when suffrage extended to women, a direct attack on patriarchy, Spanish nobility lost their title, and it created a divide between the old and new. He described how the relationship between the church and the state was bad from the beginning since there was a control on the amount of property the church could own. I thought this was unfair to the Church because they were limited to owning a certain amount of property. Dr. Shannon then explained how during the second phase “The Civil War”, Francisco Franco came to power and became the dictator of Spain. He said that during the war Nazi and Germany used air force to attack, which resulted in people organizing and preparing against the attack. The rebels, also known as the Nationalists, expected an easy victory, but the battle continued for 5 long years and did not fall quickly. When Dr. Shannon told us that Franco was good at playing groups, I was not surprised
Shannon continued to the different phrases, he began to rush and was not as detailed as he was with the earlier phases. I had a hard time keeping up with what phase and time period he was lecturing about. He talked briefly about the last three phases since he did not have a lot of time. During the “Transition” phase, the Law of Amnesty was created and nothing from the past could be prosecuted. I felt like this was unfair and unjust since people who committed these murder in the past, could walk the street. It was strange how the prime minister was also known as the president. The most important election happened during the “Constitutional Monarchy” period after Felipe Gonzales came to power and was president for 14 years. There was obviously a corruption in Spain, but people could not report it. It is strange how some people were oblivious about the corruption. I was not surprised when Felipe was brought down by the corruption. During the last phase, there were two parties that appeared during the general election. In Catalonia, the anti-nationalist party protected Spanish language and objected Catalan's. It was unclear to me why people moved to Catalonia if they felt