A Spanish Disquisition: How one European nation can distinguish itself.(Spain and free trade)(Brief Article)

The subjective Geiger counter registers a lessening of anti-American sentiment, if only by comparison with France and Germany and the green wastes of Scandinavia.

Thanks in part to the conservative government of President Jose Maria Aznar, which five years ago succeeded the dreary socialism of Felipe Gonzalez. Another leavening influence may be the presentiment among some Spaniards that the future of the peninsula rests with the United States and an imaginative expansion of NAFTA across the seas to the British Isles and Iberia. Yes, Spain and perfidious Albion, longtime rival powers, may be destined to become bosom trading pals. Should this happen, it will be thanks to the wisdom and prescience of Francisco Franco, an ogre to politically correct Spaniards, much as McCarthy is to the liberally correct in America.

On July 10, in the cultural section of Madrid's venerable ABC, a headline proclaimed: "United States May Be the Launching Pad of the Spaniard in the 21st Century, or His Cemetery." The sense of the headline is cryptic. The report was of the annual meeting of the Cervantes Institute, at which its director, Jon Juaristi, delivered an address in which he noted the burgeoning global economic importance of the Spaniard. Prof. Gonzalo Gomez Dacal of the University of Salamanca noted that Spaniards (meaning, Hispanics) in the United States are a "value in ascension," the population of 35.3 million Spanish-speaking immigrants displacing blacks as the most numerous minority and dominating the politics of such major cities as Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. The strength of this minority, declared Sr. Juaristi, resides not only in its numbers (which are projected to grow phenomenally), but in its manner of assimilation. The Hispanic immigrant "doesn't reject his roots, and the more cultured he is, not only the better does he speak English, but the more does he resist losing his maternal tongue." In "the near future," Juaristi predicts, the United States will provide (an unspecified) maximum potential for people of Spanish blood and become their "launching pad in the 21st century." Spain and (foremost) Mexico will play major roles in the political implications of this phenomenon, and must take advantage of it "from the point of view of cultural investment."

As reported, these are murky asseverations. Where the cemetery referenced to by the headline comes in, the article does not get around to. Explicit is the recommendation that Spain exploit the opportunity of furthering Spanish interests through the agency of Hispanic immigration into the United States, and plainly implicit is the heralding of an historical opportunity for Spain to serve ...