The Spanish-Irish brotherhood at the University of Malaga
The presence of Irish people in Malaga is significant and encourages us to pay due attention to this group based on mutual understanding. The University fulfils a social as well as an academic function. The transfer of knowledge and the dissemination of its research and training are key to its success. We historians are custodians of the past, but society is its owner and we are indebted to it, especially from a Faculty of Education Sciences.
After a couple of months of intense work, the seminar ‘Ireland, Spain and Latin America in their historical relations’ has been successfully concluded. The course is part of the training programme offered by the University of Malaga's Aula +55.
Its closing featured valuable dialogue and live Gaelic music by Simon Taylor, an authority in his field with a long and meritorious career linked to the dissemination of Spanish and Latin American music. In addition to the university classrooms of La Térmica, the Irishman delighted the large audience attending two classical guitar concerts at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País-Casa América Málaga, always a generous home to all Malagueños with its noble hallway open to culture. His love for Spain and Latin America did the rest. The Irish Cultural Centre of Malaga and the Malaga Guitar Society also participated in this joint effort to bring the two countries closer together through cultural ties and affection.
And, as a grand finale, José Antonio Sierra, promoter and patron of the Spain-Ireland International Research Award of the María Zambrano Centre for Transatlantic Studies-Centre for Ibero-American and Transatlantic Studies, gave a master class in the last class of the subject on Hispanic cultural management in Dublin. Thirty-four years of residence in the old Hibernia make him a qualified connoisseur and first-hand actor of the cultural relations between both countries. Included in this work is the genesis of the Spanish Cultural Institute and the Cervantes Institute in Dublin. The former dates from 1971 and was attached to the latter in 1991, promoting Spanish and Latin American studies from a broad perspective of Hispanism.
Eoin O'Duffy, in his memoirs on the Spanish Civil War, wrote: ‘Spain and Ireland have been united throughout the centuries by the very close bonds of friendship, faith and kinship. Today, in many parts of Spain, Irish people are greeted with the expression “Celtic brother”, which shows that they are treated as people of the same lineage’. The ties are numerous, starting with the historical ones and continuing with the affection and cultural, economic, labour and academic exchanges, among others.
Among the objectives of the course was the knowledge of the links between Spain, Ireland and America in a historical perspective. This deepening sought to understand the present and the interest in a shared past, as well as to value the current joint reality. The lessons ranged from antiquity to the present day. The Spanish Monarchy and its defence of Ireland, the Irish in the Spanish Bourbon empire and their participation in the turbulent Atlantic world of the early 19th century. The contemporary period focused attention on the 19th-century migratory flow, the Gaelic presence in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and international and geopolitical triangular relations. Finally, the most recent cultural and tourist relations.
Michael D. Higgins, former president of Ireland, confessed in ‘Paisanos. Los irlandeses olvidados que cambiaron la faz de Latinoamérica’ (Tim Fanning, 2018) that he was delighted to write the foreword to a book dealing with the role played by the Irish in the history of Spanish and republican America. Whether in Latin America or in Europe, the ties are very strong. Perhaps the Irish historian Declan Downey is quite right when he says that the Great Armada of 1588 ‘was not a failure for Spain’, because its memory is perpetuated to the present day by the timely updating of family memories: ‘We commemorate it officially. And I think it's the only country in the world that remembers the dead every year, prays for their souls, honours these people. It takes place in the county of Sligo and, increasingly, people come from all over the world to take part’. The Hispanic world and Ireland have been linked throughout history and continue to be so at the dawn of the 21st century.
Jorge Chauca García is a professor at the University of Málaga (Faculty of Education Sciences), historian, doctor in Modern History (University of Málaga) and doctor in American History (University of Seville), author of numerous publications, member of various university institutes, foundations and Americanist associations, secretary of the International Commission of Hispanists and professor of the Seminar ‘Ireland, Spain and Latin America in their historical relations’ at the Aula +55 UMA. He has carried out research stays in Peru, Chile and Italy.