Isabel Burdiel, historian: “The Transition pacts were an example of good sense and the ability to learn from the past”

The historian, professor at the University of Valencia, scholar at various foreign universities, in England and the United States, addresses here the question about that episode from which today’s Spain departs with a clarity unusual in the cultural or political language of this time.

She says, regarding that heritage that still endures, between forgetfulness or criticism: “They asked, and still ask, the Transition an immaculate and transhistorical perfection that almost rejoices because of its adolescent thought. Although it’s really not funny at all. They have destroyed a myth of consensus (and I use the term ‘myth’ with awareness of what I say) that had the capacity to project into the future.”

Her work as a historian has received the National award for his biography of Elizabeth II and that of the Valencian Literary Criticism for the biography of Mrs. Emilia Pardo Bazán. Among other books, these are also her works: ‘The Politics of the Notables’ (Alfonso the Magnanimous, 1987), ‘Mary Wollstonecraft. Vindication of women’s rights’ (Cátedra, 1994). ‘Mary Shelley. Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus’ (Cátedra, 1996), ‘Liberals, agitators and conspirators. Heterodox biographies of the Spanish 19th century’, edition with Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Espasa, 2000). And ‘Eminent Liberals’, edition with Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Marcial Pons, 2008).

We did this interview for this series, ‘Sense and history’, from a questionnaire.

Q. Would returning to other stages in history serve to better confront the current situation we are experiencing?

RLP Hartley said many years ago (1953), in a novel titled ‘The Go-Between’, that “the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” The interesting thing is that foreign countries tell you many things about your own. I think that history (with all its strangeness or perhaps because of it) helps to better understand the present and, perhaps, to face it.

Q. As in the past that we studied in schools, institutes or universities, now there are wars, incomprehensible confrontations, and extremely cruel ones as well. Where does this decision to confront and kill each other come from to humanity?

A. I can’t really answer that question because we would enter the realm of anthropology and biology. But I reiterate that history – with its insistence on explaining contexts, change and the scope and limits of human action – helps to know better. And knowledge, for better and worse, is power. In this sense, many readings can be recommended, but Chris Clark’s book, ‘Sleepwalkers, is still very instructive. How Europe went to war in 1914’ and those of Ziblatt and Levitsky on how democracies die and the tyranny of the minority. I really liked it at the time, and it is a precursor to these, a more historical book: Timothy Snyder’s ‘On Tyranny. Twenty lessons from the 20th century’. Also, by the same author, ‘The road to non-freedom’.

Q. You are a professor of History. Of the episodes you have studied, which one has been the most incomprehensible, and also the most damaging? On the contrary, of those you know, which one do you find instructive?

A. I tried to understand, in my study of Elizabeth II, how things could be done so badly by the Crown and also by important liberal political parties. That is, how some of the fundamental hopes that led many people, many liberals, to support the queen in the terrible Carlist war of the 1930s were corrupted and ruined. Also, and closely related, the risks of political instrumentalization of the monarchy.

Q. You have studied, for example, the figure of a fundamental writer in Spanish literary history, Mrs. Emilia Pardo Bazán, who is a symbol of the feminist struggle in our country, as such a writer but also as citizen. What influence does this literature have on women’s struggle for freedom and, in general, do you think that the history of literature serves to understand and direct that struggle?

R. For a long time Emilia Pardo Bazán has been “a loose link” in the history of Spanish feminism because of how difficult it was to locate and understand the relationship between her feminism and her conservatism. I have discussed many topics in my book, but, in relation to your question, what I have tried to do is precisely to understand the combination of conservatism and progressivism in Pardo Bazán’s feminist literature and essays.

If students still don’t know after your classes, it is largely your fault and not a sign of their inability to appreciate how great and excellent a teacher you are.”

Q. Your apprenticeship was completed abroad, in England and in the United States. What did she obtain, as an intellectual and as a citizen, from that contact with English and North American teachings? And those countries, what did they teach her to understand the future of life?

A. As a historian I was taught to value the role of human action in historical development and the importance (actually the obligation) of writing history in an expressive and intelligible way, both for specialists and non-specialists. In 1990-91 at Johns Hopkins University, in the USA, I discovered the capacity for renewal of so-called poststructuralism, of cultural and postcolonial history. Today it is a common “diet”, and already with clear diminishing returns in Spanish historiography. It was then that I began to become interested in the relationships between history and literature.

Q. There is an anonymous graffiti that became famous in the world, “when we had the answers they changed the questions.” In your case, as a historian, have there been facts or certainties that are now very different from those that marked your convictions or from those that you knew in the past and even studied?

A. In any field of research, but certainly in history, the most important thing is to be able to ask questions and formulate a problem well. These questions and problems are modified with the answers given by other historians and with the interests of each era or situation. That’s what’s stimulating. Sometimes some of us are overly skeptical of new ways of doing history. This is healthy to avoid being dazzled by fashion and discovering the Mediterranean, but it can also be a way to take refuge in one’s comfort zone.

Q. A young journalist who has discovered his way of interpreting history asked me some questions so that I could pass them on to him. One is this: how do you see the relationship between historiography and journalism?

R. Juan, I really don’t know how to answer this. I believe that journalists are increasingly interested in history and that it is our obligation to respond to that interest and participate in the public conversation.

Q. And, related to that, what does it mean for the Science of History that for the first time there is an Infinite Archive, Google? Doesn’t the infinite and immediate possibility of access to the archive somehow dynamite the possibility of history as a form of knowledge?

A. Not necessarily. It always depends on the rigorous use that is made. A recent field that comes from all these innovations, and that is of great interest, is that of Digital Humanities.

Q. You carry out a very important teaching profession, because of your knowledge, because of your way of teaching it. What does teaching, teaching, contact with those who want to learn require today?

A. Above all, to respect the students and recognize that, if they are not interested or do not know, and they still do not know after your classes, it is largely your fault and not a sign of their inability to appreciate how great and excellent they are. you are like a teacher. In my field, what I try, above all, is to teach them to think historically. That’s the crucial thing.

“Savage liberalism and populism – and for a certain right that follows them – are not at all interested in quality education and know that their power and influence depend on their ability to erode public schools and universities.”

Q. Since teaching, and especially the teaching of history, is so important to encourage coexistence, and make it more intimate with knowledge, do you feel that in our country there is concern about improving the university or school?

A. It depends on who we talk to. Savage liberalism and populism – and for a certain right that follows them – are not at all interested in quality education and know that their power and influence depend on their ability to erode public schools and universities. Very worrying because it is not just our problem. We are, on a global scale, at a decisive and frankly alarming historical crossroads.

Q. This series of interviews that I do with historians try to find wisdom in those who have studied the past to interpret the present. The question that in This meaning I make to my fellow historians is whether some episodes of history shed light to interpret, and provide reasonableness to the responses that would make the present moment understandable or better. It is, so to speak, the question that opens and closes this particular series. In what areas of life, and the fight for life, do you now find those traits of common sense for which I investigate as a journalist?

A. I believe that the Transition pacts, with all their limitations, were a sample of common sense and the ability to learn from one’s own history. That good sense and capacity for dialogue and consensus between opposites (with the same or similar it is very easy to agree) has been reviled in terms that in most cases exhibit zero historical awareness: that is, they ignore the context in which that occurred. Political scientists are very given to that. It is not strange that Pablo Iglesias is one of them. They asked, and still ask, of the Transition an immaculate and transhistorical perfection that almost rejoices because of its adolescent thought. Although it’s really not funny at all. They have destroyed a consensus myth (and I use the term ‘myth’ with awareness of what I say) that had the capacity to project into the future. Societies need myths and, as Lévi-Strauss said, “myths are lies that tell the truth.”