From Confrontation To Unification

Spain is a vivid nation with enthusiasm and vitality. It is difficult to describe her special glamour, which depends on her abundant and suffering history.After Iberians' standing on this land, Phoenicians, Greeks , Celts , Carthaginians, Romans , Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Arabs, Jews and Gipsies followed their steps. These ethnic groups added new elements into Spanish Nation constantly while conflicting and merging, which made the Spanish be a characteristic ethnic group in Europe no matter in the national characteristic or the culture meaning.The dissertation lays emphasis on the progress of Spain's history to introduce the main course which the Spanish Nation forms finally in the Middle Ages, investigates and analyses the key affairs in this period, and also focuses on the development of Spaniards' national consciousness.This dissertation consists of three parts.Part one is exordium. Exordium briefly reviews and researches the current situation both in domestic and abroad. Based on the research of predecessors, this part introduces the academic achievement about Spanish Nation systematically, the important recognition of its national consciousness, and statements of the dissertation's research, significance and method.Part two, regarding to the known materials, describes the Visigothic governance in Spain after the Rome disintegration that was in the Middle Ages. The Visigoths established their own dominant position by the force of arms, and set up their regime. They firstly combined Spain as a unified country, and merged with locals step by step. After changing to believe Christianity, the Visigoths realized the spiritual unity with the peninsula resident. This initial emotion to the national approval became the premise which sprouted national consciousness spirit in the Reconquista.Part three focuses on the Spanish Nation growth course after the Arabs' invasion. The unstable national emotion caused the invasion, but when it became a threat to the whole Spain, the cliques in name of the Spanish- Visigothic descendants began to against the enemies in order to recover the country of Catholicism.At first, the Arabs drove straight in the peninsula. Some Christians represented by Visigothic remnants of defeated troops retreated to Cambrian and Pyrenean mountain area in the north peninsula. They set up kingdoms of Asturias, Navarra,Alagon and Castile. The north resisting centers of Catholicism formed in succession, and the force expanded gradually, and confronted to the several Muslim feudal lords' demesnes in south. A spiritual barrier separated Spain as two parts: Latin Christ parish and Arabic Muslim district. With the reorganization of all sorts of factors, the embryonic form of modern Spanish Nation came to rudiment slowly in the interaction.During the Reconquista, the long epic of Spanish Nation --El Cantar del Mio Cid came out. The protagonist was depicted as a national hero that is loyal to the sovereign and devoted to the country. Such idealized art expressed the strong hope of recovering territory and national emotion, reflected the awakening of national consciousness, and contributed to the further development of national consciousness at the same time .While Spaniards had the victory of Reconquista in the end, they began toliquidate all potential possible enemies -Arabs and Jews who were still in Spain.The long-term national and spirit conflict on Iberia Peninsula formed sizable cohesive Spaniards group, and inspired the breeding of its national consciousness, but it caused religious zealotry and intolerant vindictive psychology on the other hand. Hoping to bear the pure Spanish nation with the aid of a kind of extreme way, they launched the action of expelling and persecuting the Arabic and Jew on a large scale. Undoubtedly, it was an irrational behavior, but it could not deny that that strengthened Spaniards' national consciousness greatly to a certain level.In the end, to summarize the dissertation, we get such a conclusion as following: the Middle Ages is an important period for Spain to form modern nati...