Wednesday, July 8, 2015
J205 (13 rue de l'Université)
Exploring the fraught (and apparently dialectical and cyclic) relationship between centralism and regionalism from the 16th century to the present, this paper treats the historiographic and cultural-political afterlives of Castile's Revolution of the Communities, an uprising against the centralizing politics of Charles V (as Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor) of sovereignty-demanding municipalities within the region of Castilla y León. Heralded from the left as the first modern revolution (for its defense of popular sovereignty), it has also been decried by the right as the last gasp of the Middle Ages (in the brief resurgence of town-based corporatism). The Comunero defeat by royalist forces on the battlefield of Villalar on April 23, 1521 is a historical touchstone, repeatedly re-evaluated at moments of crisis, still a lightning rod in Spanish political discourse, and now (in its commemoration) a stage for the trumpeting of the oxymoronic regionalism of Castilla y León. The paper examines the shifting historiography of the Comunero revolution at moments of political crisis, and provides an ethnography of the festival, since Franco's death held annually on the battlefield, celebrating the Republic that Franco overthrew in what is now styled the "fiesta de la comunidad autónoma de Castilla y León". Tens of thousands gather in this amalgam of heavy-metal concert, labor union and leftist party rallies, and folkloric festival of regional music and dance, historical patrimony, and cuisine. Attending to such cultural politics, the paper interrogates the analogies and differences between the political conjunctures of the historical Comuneros and their latter-day commemorators.
