5 - Nacionalización and decentralisation

Summary

Enough has been said by now to lend support to the contention that Ortega's overriding social aim was the modernisation of Spain. We have observed two of the political implications of such a project: the massaging of the language of socialism in the service of national construction, and the cavalier treatment – when necessary – of the principles of liberalism and democracy. Now it is time to analyse the effect of the specifically national focus of Ortega's enterprise, because it provides us with a theme which runs right down through his political thought. It should be noted, incidentally, that this theme places him firmly in the tradition of the Generation of 1898, for whom the recovery of Spain (as a nation) took precedence over all other political undertakings. To the extent that he was locked into this tradition, the national focus of Ortega's concerns obscured other problematic features of the politics of early twentieth century Spain – such as the class struggle which necessarily accompanied industrialisation. From a national perspective, the division of the nation into classes could only endanger the unity required for Spain's recuperation.

This carving-up of the nation into classes is just one example of the ‘social illness’ (OC 11, 17) which Ortega calls ‘particularism’ and from which he believed Spain to be suffering ‘acutely’ (ibid.). Again it should be pointed out that this notion formed a part of Ortega's political thought practically from the beginning.