Talk:Spain in the Middle Ages

This article is not neutral. Some parts of it are downright Francoist propaganda

Take a look, for example, at this fragment:

   > All the elements of the Spanish people already existed in the Kingdom of the Catholic Goths; the Latinized Celtiberian race, or Hispano-Romans, the Gothic element, and the Catholic faith. These elements, however, were as yet uncombined, and still lacked that which thorough fusion was to make of them one people, with a character and historical destiny of its own. The Muslim invasion encouraged the Goths and Hispano-Romans, in the mountains of the north, became one people with one religion and one national aspiration, to reconquer their Spanish fatherland and make the Cross triumph over the Crescent.[1]
   > Though already morally a unit, the Spanish people were still eight centuries away from political unity, and the Reconquest was begun from four distinct centres. Chief among these four centres was Asturias. The fugitive Goths found a retreat in those mountains where the Romans had never been able to effectively establish their authority; only a few years after the Battle of Guadalete, they gained a victory over Alqama in the portentous Battle of Covadonga. Don Pelayo, or Pelagius, the Gothic chieftain who was victor at Covadonga, was acclaimed king, and took up his residence at Cangas de Onís. His son Favila was killed while hunting, torn to pieces by a bear, and was succeeded by Alfonso I, son-in-law of Don Pelayo, who set about pushing the Reconquest as far as Galicia and Tierra de Campos (the "Gothic Fields" or Campos Góticos).[1]

Not only the wording is clearly biased ("make the Cross triumph over the Crescent"???) and not appropriate of an encyclopedia, but some things said here are downright false. For example: "[the Goths and Hispano-Romans] became one people with one religion and one national aspiration, to reconquer their Spanish fatherland". It is debatable if even today Spaniards are "one people with one national aspiration", but the concepts of "Spain" or "nationality" did not even exist at the time, and wouldn't, for at least a thousand years!

The Christian kingdoms at the time were politically divided (kingdom of Asturias, many counts in the Pyrenees under Frankish authority...), and did not share a common language. And the Iberian peninsula at the time was far from "one people with one religion" since different groups (Christians, Jews, and Muslims) lived in those kingdoms at different levels of integration.

In conclusion, this fragment seems taken out of 1960s nationalist propaganda. The source is clearly biased as well, and there has been extensive historiography written about the Reconquista such that we don't need to resort to the "Catholic Encyclopedia".

After taking another look at it, practically the whole section titled "Medieval Christian Spain" must be reworked. It's not history: it narrates medieval Iberian history as a linear process directed at only one natural and positive outcome ("national unity", as it's called in the article), something that the Reconquista was not. And appealing to the "Providence" to explain a historical outcome is not history, it's, as I said before, propaganda, and goes against the basic principles of the discipline of History.

I recommend deleting the entire section and redirecting whoever wants to know more about it to Reconquista, since it is supposed to narrate the same events, but Reconquista is, at least, not blatant propaganda. Since I do not know what is the standard procedure here, I'll remove the worst parts and do something with the rest later.

Now the article is incomplete, but it's better incompleteness than directly disfiguring history.

Jllc (talk) 21:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree. The content is Francoist propaganda. Carlstak (talk) 15:21, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Major work needed

I am admittedly new to wikipedia editing, but it seems to me that this article needs a serious overhaul in terms of content and style to meet wikipedia's standards. The lede doesn't effectively and concisely set out the scope of the article, especially in terms of the time period that it covers. Compare this, for example, to the article on England in the Middle Ages, which is currently rated as a good article and clearly establishes the article's scope in the first paragraph.

The rest of the article is similarly in need of significant work. The 'Medieval Islamic Spain' section is just a list of Islamic kingdoms/dynasties in al-Andalus, and the section on 'Medieval Spanish culture' is just one long sentence with wikilinks that focusses entirely on languages. Furthermore, although some of the more egregious instances of propaganda have been addressed and removed as per the previous thread, the article's tone still fails to reach wikipedia's standards. The first sentence of the section on 'Early medieval Spain;, for instance, claims that the "hordes...hurled themselves for the first time upon the Pyrenean Peninsula". Not only is this wording clearly unfit for an encyclopedia, I've never heard the term 'Pyrenean Peninsula' used before and doubt I ever will outside of this article!

Like I said, I'm very new to wikipedia editing so I doubt I'll be able to fix the issues with this article on my own. I'm not sure of the proper procedure for organising a joint effort (if there is any), but if anyone wants to work collaboratively with me on this then drop me a message! Osbus00 (talk) 18:17, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Osbus00: There is not a clear cut analogy with England, good article status notwithstanding. I think that there is no compelling reason to exclude (continental) Portugal from this article. A renaming to suit the current common name for the geographical unit (Iberian Peninsula) could thus smooth out rough edges (I suppose sources could be provided if needed). The content of this article is nonetheless poor, very poor, so yes, there is major work needed ahead. I worked some holistic content about the pre-modern history of the Iberian Peninsula in the article "Iberian Peninsula". Perhaps you could use it.--Asqueladd (talk) 18:49, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Asqueladd Thanks for putting in the Rewriting tag, had no idea how to do that!

I agree that it may be more appropriate to expand the article to 'Iberia' instead of just 'Spain' in order to include Portugal, especially since Portugal only emerged as an independent state during this period (to the extent that 'states' existed in the middle ages). The only issues I could see are that this article is currently part of the 'History of Spain' series, although I'm not certain how such series work, and there is an existing article on Portugal in the Middle Ages. Osbus00 (talk) 19:56, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

You are welcome. The scope of Spain (as in the current-day territory, which at first glance if not particularly compelling it may look somewhat handy vis-á-vis embedding it in that bit-of-history of-current-country frame) actually operates as an aggravating factor to the teleological (not very neutral) discourse pervasive in this article throughout its history. Other than working with redirects (Wikipedia:Redirection) or piped links, there is no good solution to the History of Spain series templates should we agree on refocusing this article to a wider geographical scope, although, to be fair, I never paid much attention to those navigation templates (disclaimer: I secretly abhor such vertical templates). We already have Prehistoric Iberia as a similar precedent in any case (and the following articles in the series' template from a chronological standpoint do not pretend either to fit a current-day-country scope). In any case, much improvement could be made even if the article is not re-purposed. Nothing could be further from my intention than dissuading you from attempting to do so. Regards.--Asqueladd (talk) 20:26, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the scope of the article should be expanded to include all of Iberia. "Spain in the Middle Ages" itself is a vast subject, and the pitiful 21,759 bytes we have presently isn't enough to even outline it. I think you editors are up to the challenge, and it seems you would work well together. I'd love to jump in and help, but I wouldn't have much time for anything beyond copy editing, finding sources, and light editing of the text if needed. As you know, with such a wide panorama of history to consider, and all the explication necessary to tie the strands together, there is a lot of work to do—so much material to cover—but so worth it. The article could be one of the finest on WP. Regards, Carlstak (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2022 (UTC)