The Hispanosphere

Valenti Puig's "Spain's Atlantic Option" (Summer 2004) makes a well-argued case for a Euro-Atlantic orientation for Spain and offers a very useful analysis of the emerging network civilization of the Hispanosphere. Yet he wonders whether the idea of the Hispanosphere is "an idea whose time has either gone or not yet truly arrived." It is the weight of his own analysis that demonstrates that the momentum of economic, social and political trends is overwhelmingly on the side of this phenomenon. Zapatero's election and Spain's consequent turn toward Paris can only be a speed bump along this road, and a minor one at that.

I very much hope that this article can serve as a starting-point for further discussion. Such a dialogue should not fail to include three questions. One is what institutional arrangements might better serve to support and accelerate this productive collaboration among the Hispanosphere nations. The second is whether Spain's European structural ties might come into conflict with its Hispanosphere vocation, and if so, how might they be restructured to accommodate this end. The third is whether the larger framework of the developed world, including structures such as NATO and the OECD, might not benefit by recognizing and encouraging emerging network-civilization vectors of cooperation. Indeed, it is worth asking whether an architecture of linked and overlapping network civilizations might not be a preferable alignment for the future, rather than one of regional (and increasingly opposed) blocs.

A dialogue around these questions could ask, for example, whether market-integrative mechanisms beyond current Mercosur-EU ties might usefully link the Iberian nations with Latin America. It might even be worth considering whether a common currency linking Iberia with Mercosur might be preferable to the euro for Spain. Such an Ibero-Atlantic community might also become a development vector for nations like Angola.

"Civilizational" analysis has usually been linked with a fairly pessimistic and deterministic reading of the matter, as if civilizations are inevitably fated to clash and do so catastrophically. Yet it is no more given that any two civilizations must necessarily fatally clash than that any two nations must do so. In constructing Anglosphere and Hispanosphere institutions within the broader framework of collaboration within the set of all free and open societies, we have the chance to present the positive side of the civilizational vision, a Concert of Civilizations from which no culture or people can ultimately be excluded.

Zapatero and his party will soon discover that the Franco-German vision of Europe is not a solution to Spain's problems nor even to France's and Germany's. By persevering with the Euro-Atlantic option, Spanish conservatives have a chance to prepare an alternate vision that will gather increasing luster as the Fortress Europa vision tarnishes.

JAMES C. BENNETT

President

The Anglosphere Institute

COPYRIGHT 2004 The National Interest, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group