The Discourse of Indolence: Labor, Progress, and National Identity in 19th Century Spain

• In Event: Work as a Republican Virtue in the Nineteenth-Century Americas

Abstract

Throughout the 19th century, labor became a central topic in Spanish discourses of national regeneration. Envisioned as a civic virtue, intellectuals promoted labor as an essential step in social renovation and economic modernization; yet Spain was perceived, both nationally and abroad as an indolent nation that needed to acquire such culture of labor. As Ruth Mackay (2006) describes, Spanish enlightenment authors were partly responsible for this depiction, as they justified agrarian and economic reforms by spreading the idea that Spaniards customarily disdained manual labor. But European enlightenment discourse also contributed to it through different, but frequently complimentary arguments such as the Spanish heightened sense of honor, the climatogical impact or the influence of Spain’s mercantilist and bullionist policies upon social psychology.
Spanish economists of the 19th century tended to subscribe to the idea that Spaniards were not hard-working, or as the economist Bravo Murillo specified, “much less than what they had to be to face the modern economic system” (257). Other economists like del Valle Santoro and Jaumeandreu found some consolation in establishing a distinction among the industriousness of the Spanish regions, arguing that areas like Catalonia and the Basque Country had developed a work ethic. Towards the turn of the century, intellectuals like Costa, Mallada, Unamuno or Maeztu continued this discourse of indolence to support their particular visions of national regeneration. I suggest that this discourse acquired an almost mythological dimension that ultimately displaced the culture of labor, and with it the path of Spain to progress, into futurity.

Author

• Diana Arbaiza