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On Spain and literature – I

Annoyed at the infamous TV series Toledo I tried to find some consolation in the epic film El Cid, “a romanticized story of the life of the Christian Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, called ‘El Cid’, who in the 11th century fought the North African Almoravides and ultimately contributed to the unification of Spain.” But even that movie released in 1961 starts with a politically-correct scene. El Cid, interpreted by Charlton Heston, spares the live of a Moorish king in the hope that the Moor will behave in the future after an anti-Christian raid (and in fact he behaves like a gentleman in the rest of the film). Then in the royal palace El Cid has a private conversation with the woman he loved, acted by Sophia Loren, and makes a speech about his pacifist intentions when he is accused of treason for having spared the life of the Muslim king.

Well, well… What about forgetting old and new movies altogether and focus instead in the Spanish literature of the Middle Ages? What will we find there? Big surprise: the historical “Cid” found some work fighting for the Muslim rulers of Taifa of Zaragoza! This happened after his falling out of favor of Alfonso VI, king of León and Castile, who in 1081 ordered Rodrigo Díaz’s exile.

But what else can the literature of the age say about the ethno-nationalist mores, values, moral grammar and zeitgeist of medieval Spain? Let’s take a look…

retrato de soledad anaya

This is a photograph of Soledad Anaya Solórzano (1895-1978), who graduated in Spanish letters at Guadalajara in Mexico. From 1920 to 1923 she served as Director of Primary and Higher Education in the Mexican government. She also taught Spanish literature, a field that she mostly loved, and was the Principal of the Secundaria Héroes de la Libertad until her death (the Middle School in Mexico City where I studied). Of course, when Miss Anaya taught me she was in her late seventies and looked a little older than in the photo, but she still was in command of her intellectual capacities. Anaya never married and was the single author of Literatura Española (1941), a textbook of more than thirty editions that we used in her classroom and I will use below and in the coming entries on the subject of Spain. I must say that in the first chapters of Anaya’s textbook, first published during the Second World War, she unabashedly uses the word “arios” (Aryan) when referring to the first conquerors of the Iberian Peninsula.

However, about the first ancient text that Anaya analyzes, the 8th century legend of King Rodrigo and the Loss of Spain (pages 28-31), the jew-wise reader is shocked to see that no accusation is made of Jews inviting any Muslim into the peninsula. The old legend tells instead that Florinda, a Visigothic maid (a purely Aryan young woman) was seduced by King Rodrigo, another Iberian white, in Rodrigo’s castle. As revenge the Count Julián, Florinda’s father, “opened Spain to Muslim expansion” Anaya wrote: an expansion that had been previously contained by the Count himself. The Moors then invaded the peninsula “and easily destroyed the Visigothic power that already was much debilitated.” Anaya adds that “it is not known what happened to King Rodrigo, who caused so much harm” and that the “historical happenings related to this legend occurred in 711 A.D.” Note that King Rodrigo, not Count Julián (or the Moors, or a purported Jew who opened the gates) is blamed. Presumably, the accent of the legend rested on the sense of honor among the Iberians of those remote times.

Later, on pages 40-47 of the textbook I used in my middle teens, Anaya mentions the case of the legend of The Seven Infants of Lara, which recounts other Iberian whites using other Moors to take revenge about other cases of Aryan offences! This very famous medieval tale has Gonzalo Gustios, the crying father of the seven decapitated white boys in Córdova, marrying Aixa, the daughter of Almanzor (Almanzor, who had imprisoned Gonzalo Gustios, was one of the most powerful characters in the Caliphate). Mudarra González, the mongrel son of the Christian Gonzalo Gustios and the Muslim Aixa, is The One destined to avenge the father. The victim of course is not Almanzor, the Moor that ordered the decapitation of the boys on behalf of the valiant knight Ruy Vásquez. The victim is Ruy Vásquez himself that the mongrel dispatches at the end of the story.

Once more, for the medieval Spaniard race did not seem to be the central issue at all: but a knightly sense of honor, especially during in-group vendettas.

In the next chapter Anaya approaches the ancient texts about El Cid. His life inspired the most important epic poem of Spanish literature: the Cantar de mio Cid. Now that I reread her book after forty years of reading it for the first time I was shocked to see Anaya’s sentence that El Cid was “the terror of Moors and Christians” (my emphasis). When I finished the chapter I was surprised to learn that El Cid’s fame was not entirely based on the feat of expelling some Moors from the peninsula, but mainly on the chivalrous character of this historical (and legendary) figure of the Reconquista.

This, and similar cases I’ll be recounting in these brief series about the classics of Spanish literature, moves me to expand the category of this blog previously known as “White suicide” as the “Aryan problem.”

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Islam Islamization of Europe Mainstream media Reconquista

Empty-headed Spaniards

cabezas-huecas

Further to my post “Empty-headed Britons.” Of the television series I have been reviewing, I have found the first season of the Spanish-produced Toledo: Cruce de Destinos, premiered the last year, as the most offensive to date. It starts with a stunning scene in a Spanish garden of a wealthy family of whites in the 13th century. After some idyllic moments the family is attacked by the Moors with women, adolescents and children being assassinated in cold blood. One would expect that when the men return and see their families butchered the plot of the entire series would be revenge and expulsion of the Moors, right?

Nope! The whole series is an attempt to demonize the patriot Spaniards of such century, some of them real historical figures, that tried to expel the enemies by force. No kidding: that is exactly the ethos behind the script.

King Alfonso X of Castile is filmed as talking about “el sueño de la convivencia de las tres culturas” (“the dream of the coexistence between the three cultures”), meaning the Christian, the Muslim and the Jewish cultures as his ultimate dream for Castile. The series are perfectly Manichean: the hawks who crave for a war against the Moors and the Semites are absolutely evil; and the multicultural doves are the goods guys of the films. The first season actually ends with King Alfonso saying that his son Sancho, the hawk, is going into exile for life while the dove, his son Fernando, will inherit the crown to pursue his dream.

The whole series can be sketched thus:

• The Moors are revealed as the cruel invaders that they were in real history

• The Christian patriots who hate them are depicted as intolerant bigots throughout all episodes

• No single piece of mischief—nothing at all!—is ever committed by the Jews, who are always depicted as innocent doves

In a heated discussion in the first episode, the very one that depicts realistically the butchery of a white family, the Queen Violant of Aragon gives a speech to the main hawks of the story, the Archbishop of Toledo and the Count Miranda. The Queen says that Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek. Most surrealist of all is that the central character of these Spanish series, Rodrigo Pérez de Ayala whose eldest son and wife were among the victims of the butchery in first scene, sides the pacifist monarchs against the hawks!

Then Rodrigo returns to his home after not seeing for ten years what was left of his family. Who is the first guest to share Rodrigo’s table? Abraham Rubini, a Jew: his best friend throughout the series in fact. So much so that Rodrigo has a conversation with Abraham almost ignoring his surviving family who had been entranced to see that his father had finally came home after a decade…

Toledo serie estreno I

The hawks Sancho and the Count Miranda are depicted as almost rapists or as rationalizing or excusing the rape of an innocent commoner girl. And—typical—the casting directors chose a very stunning actress to interpret the role of a Moorish woman: the one who speaks for the Muslim side (in the pic, sat at the front center).

In another scene, Abraham (extreme left in the pic) tells Rodrigo that Rodrigo’s role in the Castilian government must be “to defend the weak” of Toledo against the hawks. And in a discussion between Abraham and the Archbishop (standing at the right with his hands together) inside the royal court, the Christian is depicted as pig-headed and the Jew as wise. The richest Muslim of Toledo is also depicted as wise and concerned about the inexcusable intolerance of the Archbishop. It’s the Archbishop the one who incited a mob of fanatic Christians to attack the candid scholars working in Toledo’s school of translators, a school headed by Abraham. Afterwards there’s a scene where the hawk Sancho cowardly tries to stab the dove Fernando in the back, also in the royal court.

It is unnecessary continuing to recount more outrageous scenes, except adding that the series also contain typical scenes of soft-porn that have become so fashionable in recent TV series.

What alarms me is that Spaniards are largely clueless about what is happening to their media. Yes: it is true that in the blogosphere some Spanish critics have pointed out that the historical King Alfonso, also called The Wise, did not participate in such alliance of civilizations between Christians, Muslims and Jews, and that the series puts Toledo as a mainly Muslim city when really at the time they were a distinct minority in the city, surpassed even by the Jewish quarter. The TV story “invents a conspiracy of radical anti-Muslim Christians against King Alfonso, when in fact there was no such company.” But what made me laugh was a comment in “La serie Toledo” stating (my translation) that “the series could have been called ‘Zapatero in the country of the Alliance of Civilizations’.”

Even these critics don’t see the obvious: that patriot Christians have been painted with black; warrior Muslims with grey, and the Jews of Toledo with white! (In contrast to these fictional white doves, those interested to learn how the Jews behaved in historical Spain are advised to read the pertinent sections on the subject in Kevin MacDonald’s Separation and Its Discontents.)

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Ancient Rome Autobiography Carthage Catholic Church Catholic religious orders Celts Civilisation (TV series) Counter-Reformation Goths Indo-European heritage Islam Kenneth Clark Miscegenation Racial studies Recceswinth Reconquista St Francis

On Spain and Teresa of Ávila

Most of the television series I have been watching for critical review contain subtle and not so subtle anti-white propaganda. In a search to counter such traitorous series of the present century I also watched Teresa de Jesús, a mini-series premiered on Spanish television in 1984 that present the life of Spain’s great saint. Its dialogue is in Spanish but versions with English subtitles are available.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a nun of the Catholic Church, a Spanish mystic and writer, and the founder of the Discalced Carmelites: a branch of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (or Carmelites). What struck me the most in the series is that many of the characters don’t look white at all, and in contrast with the obvious treason that I recounted in my previous post on The Hollow Crown the intention of the creators of the series was obviously different. The characters simply reflect the fact that many Spaniards are not real whites or Aryans.

See the important entry linked on the sidebar, “On anti-Nordicism.” If you want specifics about why most Spaniards are not pure Indo-Europeans let me say that the original Iberians, or iberos as we say in Spanish, men of the Aryan race, migrated from the Black Sea basin and went all over Europe up to the British isles, leaving a substantial proportion of people in the Iberian Peninsula which absorbed the previous inhabitants. Fifteen centuries before the Christian Era the Phoenicians and the Aryan Greeks (see the recent entries in this blog under the title, “Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?”) founded many colonies in the southern coastline, and with time merged with the original Iberians.

Visigoth_warrior_dress

Six centuries before the Christian Era the Celts arrived, who also were Aryan, and fought with the residents of those lands but with time the Celts also mixed with them, giving birth to the Celtiberians. In the 6th century the Carthaginians (white Mediterraneans mixed with Semites) took over Cadiz and established some colonies. In 205 B.C. they were defeated by the Romans during the Third Punic War and expelled from the peninsula.

By that time the ethnic elements of the interbred peoples in the Iberian Peninsula were: autochthonous peoples (of unknown ethnic group?), iberos (Aryan Iberians), Aryan Celts, Phoenicians (half-bloods?), Aryan Greeks, and Carthaginians (half-bloods), producing a culture founded on the will of Celtiberians. In the first centuries of the Christian Era the peninsula would suffer further invasions from the Vandals, the Huns (non whites!), the Alans, and finally the Visigoths or Goths who proceeded from the occidental region of the Dniester River. Those were the groups that had arrived to what the Romans called the Hispanias by 409 A.D., when their empire was in the throes of agony.

The fall of the Roman Empire produced a gap in political, cultural and military power that non-whites occupied. From 713 A.D. the Arabs conquered most of the Iberian territory with the exception of the mountainous Asturias, the first Christian state that started the long period known as the Reconquista. Re-conquering the peninsula for the original Europeans would last no less than eight centuries, but this meant eight centuries of miscegenation with Arabs and Semites, both non-whites. The Moor occupation of this part of Europe ended in 1492 with the conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. So many centuries of Muslim domination resulted in the peculiar phenotype of the peoples we see today in Spain, and explain why quite a few of them don’t look like real whites.

It is worth remembering that the mess started before. In the first centuries of our era the Iberian Goths burned at the stake their fellow Aryans that dared to mix their precious blood with non-whites. Alas, the king of Hispania Recceswinth committed the greatest blunder in Iberian history: a blunder still unrecognized by Spanish intellectuals or historians but a gigantic blunder nonetheless. By converting to Christianity Recceswinth abolished the long ban on miscegenation (which reminds me the Spartan ban on miscegenation), which resulted in the subsequent mongrelization of the Visigothic Iberians. The king of Hispania’s decision allowed any person of any racial origin, as long as he professed Christianity, to intermarry with the Aryan Goths. Such failure of the nerve occurred just a few decades before these territories were invaded by the Moors.

It is not surprising to see, after eight centuries of unbeatable miscegenation, the formation of a superstitious culture that eventually would be called Spain. I must confess that the most incisive opinion I have ever read about Spain appears in the foreword to the printed version of Civilisation, the 1969 television series featuring Kenneth Clark:

Some of the most offensive omissions were dictated by my title. If I had been talking about the history of art, it would not have been possible to leave out Spain; but when one asks what Spain has done to enlarge the human mind and pull mankind a few steps up the hill, the answer is less clear. Don Quixote, the Great Saints, the Jesuits in South America? Otherwise she has simply remained Spain, and since I wanted each programme to be concerned with the new developments of the European mind, I could not change my ground and talk about a single country.

But what if even Cervantes, Spain’s great saints and the Jesuits were not so terribly cool from the viewpoint of racial preservation? What if the staunch Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, which produced Cervantes, the Saints and the Jesuits was uncongenial to white interests? These are the sort of questions that move me to say something about the 1980s’ television series of St. Teresa.

Racial phenotype of the actors aside, what struck me about these series is that its creators depicted Teresa as suffering from a typical hysteria; in her case, to the point of a catatonia she suffered as a young woman. What caused her hysterics will remain unknown, although it is interesting to read her autobiography. A copy in the original language that I have in my bookshelf says that Teresa confessed that she “was the most cherished of my father” (this comes from an English translation), and the very first words of her first chapter are: “I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God.” Although only a very idealized parental-filial relationship appears in the first paragraphs of Teresa’s autobiography, I suspect that her psychosomatic illness attests to something that she, the so-called expert of the “Interior Castle” (the human soul), never confessed.

Teresa_of_Avila

Whatever the dynamics of Teresa’s family it is interesting to see that even in these series, televised for a Catholic audience, Teresa is described by her sister nuns as pretending to be “the different one,” as always acting out her sufferings and psychosomatic ills. Some of the nuns interpreted her behavior as a trick to be the bossy of the nuns of the several convents she founded. Even Teresa’s hostile takeover of her original convent from the power of other nuns is depicted, albeit shown as something noble for the cause. As I have said, Teresa de Jesús has as its target group pious Catholics. So much that the (apocryphal in my opinion) story of Teresa’s miraculous levitation while praying is recounted as historical, as well as an instantaneous flourishing of an almond tree at the end of her life (“Everything she touches turns into life”).

Teresa was a religious genius only in the sense that St. Francis was a religious genius too. Both saints basically used theatrics big time to act out their emotional issues and gather large followings; followings that eventually reformed monastic orders. My Catholic father, who insufflated in me a love for St. Francis during my adolescence, was totally wrong in his statement that “the only supermen are the Saints.” I would say that Christianity has no saints in the sense of psychologically integrated, or truly emergent, individuals (William Pierce is what presently I regard as the closest specimen of the archetypal “overman”). In Teresa de Jesús for example the so-called saint is depicted as fairly tolerant about the New Christians, or Conversos with Jewish blood, while other Spaniards of the series are presented as suspicious about those rich merchants of dubious origins. Also, Teresa’s most famous vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear, in-out in-out delivering the poor woman into an ecstasy, has all the marks of an erotic sublimation in the mind of a celibate nun.

The last episode contains an epilogue describing what happened in this primitive culture after an agonic Teresa died. Hunting for relics fanatic religionists cut her hand, one of her fingers, an arm and an eye, thus mutilating her dead body. It surprised me that the creators of the series described such post-mortem atrocities, some even perpetrated by the dignitaries of the Church, as something sublime and noble.

The reformer of the Carmelite Order was canonized forty years after her death, and in the century when we were born Teresa was even named a “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Paul VI. Here in Mexico I recently visited a property of the Carmelite Order and their wealth impressed me. As I have said elsewhere, as to white interests is concerned Spain’s Counter-Reformation experiment in Europe and the Americas was “an utter disaster”