Jorge Chauca García
Professor at the University of Malaga / Historian
The fraternal ties between Spain and Ireland are historical, and not only of ancient tradition but also of renewed relevance. The presence of Irish people in Malaga is relevant and urges us to pay due attention to this group from a mutual understanding. The University fulfills a social function as well as an academic one. The transfer of knowledge and the dissemination of its research and training are key to its success. Historians are depositaries of the past, but society is its owner and we owe it, especially from a Faculty of Education Sciences. After a couple of months of intense work, the Seminar “Ireland, Spain and Latin America in their historical relations”, a course included in the training offer of the Aula +55 of the University of Malaga, has successfully concluded.
Its closing was attended in valuable dialogue and live Gaelic music by Simon Taylor, an authority in his field with a long and meritorious career linked to the dissemination of Spanish and Latin American music. In addition to the university classrooms of La Térmica, the Irishman delighted the large audience attending two classical guitar concerts at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País-Casa América Málaga, always a generous home to all Malagueños with its noble hallway open to culture. His love for Spain and Latin America did the rest. The Irish Cultural Circle of Malaga and the Guitar Circle of Malaga also participated in this joint effort to bring both countries closer through cultural ties and affection.
And as a final climax, José Antonio Sierra, promoter and patron of the Spain-Ireland International Research Award of the María Zambrano Hall of Transatlantic Studies-Center for Ibero-American and Transatlantic Studies, gave a master class in the last class of the course on Hispanic cultural management in Dublin. Thirty-four years of residence in old Hibernia make him a qualified connoisseur and first-hand actor of the cultural relations between the two countries. Included in this work is the genesis of the Spanish Cultural Institute and the Cervantes Institute in Dublin. The former dates back to 1971 and joined the latter in 1991, promoting Spanish and Latin American studies from a broad vision of Hispanism.
Eoin O’Duffy, in his memoirs on the Spanish War, wrote: “Spain and Ireland have been united through the centuries by the closest ties of friendship, faith and kinship. Today, in many places in Spain, the Irish are greeted with the expression Celtic brother, which shows that they are treated as people of the same lineage”. The ties are numerous, starting with historical ties and continuing through cultural, economic, labor and academic exchanges and affection, among others.
Among the objectives of the course was the knowledge of the links between Spain, Ireland and America in historical perspective. This deepening sought an understanding of the present and an interest in a shared past, as well as an appreciation of the current joint reality. The lessons ranged from Antiquity to the present time. The Hispanic Monarchy and its defense of Ireland, the Irish in the Spanish Bourbon empire and their participation in the turbulent Atlantic world at the beginning of the 19th century. Contemporaneity focused on the nineteenth-century migratory flow, the Gaelic presence in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and the international and geopolitical triangular relations. Finally, more recent cultural and tourist relations.
Michael D. Higgins, once president of Ireland, confessed in “Paisanos. The Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America” (Tim Fanning, 2018), that he was delighted to foreword a book dealing with the role played by the Irish in the history of Spanish and Republican America. Whether in Spanish America or in Europe, the knots are very strong. Perhaps the Irish historian Declan Downey is quite right when he states that the Great Armada of 1588 “was not a failure for Spain,” for its memory is perpetuated to the present day by timely updating of family memories: “We commemorate it in an official way. And I think it is the only country in the world that every year remembers the deceased, prays for their souls, honors these people. It takes place in County Sligo and, increasingly, there are people coming from all over the world.” The Hispanic world and Ireland have been twinned throughout history and continue to be so at the dawn of the 21st century.
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