Hispanidad

Hispanidad (is.pa.niˈðað, Hispanicity,) is a Spanish term alluding to the group of people, countries, and communities that share the Spanish language and Hispanic culture. The term can have various, different implications and meanings depending on country of origin, socio-political views, and cultural background. The term has been used in the early modern period and is in the Tractado de orthographía y accentos en las tres lenguas principales by Alejo Venegas, printed in 1531, to mean "style of linguistic expression". It was used, with a similar meaning, in the 1803 edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy as a synonym of Hispanismo (Hispanism), which, in turn, was defined as "the peculiar speech of the Spanish language". In the early 20th century, the term was revived, with several new meanings. Its reintroduction is attributed to Unamuno in 1909, who used the term again on 11 March 1910, in an article, La Argentinidad, published in a newspaper in Argentina, La Nación. He compared the term to other similar expressions: , , and . Unamuno linked the concept to the multiplicity of peoples speaking the Spanish language, which encompassed in turn his idea of La Raza, gave it an egalitarian substrate and questioned the very status of motherland for Spain; he claimed the need of approaching Hispanic American republics in terms of sisterhood (opposing "primacies" and "maternities"). Further development of the concept had to wait for the 1920s, when a group of intellectuals was influenced by the ideas of ultranationalist French thinker Charles Maurras and rescued the term. The term was used by Spanish priest Zacarías de Vizcarra, who was living in Buenos Aires. He proposed in 1926 that the expression Fiesta de la Raza should be changed to Fiesta de la Hispanidad. During the reign of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the Virgin of Guadaloupe was proclaimed "Queen of the Hispanidad" in Spain. In the later years of the decade, vanguard writer Ernesto Giménez Caballero began to elaborate a neo-imperialist narrative of the Hispanidad in La Gaceta Literaria.