Society & Culture

Now and forever, Andaluciá’s society is dominated by its great thinkers, painters, politicians, writers and poets. And, of course, the great bullfighters, guitarists and singers, who could and still can be found across the geography of Andalucía.

Obviously, and as might be expected of a region of such great influence, groups of the Roma or gypsy community also staked out their cultural territory, notably figures such as Camarón and Paco de Lucia, who gave Andalucía a greater stature beyond our frontiers.

There has existed, as long as there has been an Andalucia, perhaps lost in the most remote times, an ‘essence’ of Andalucía, abiding across the centuries, from the prehistoric civilization of Tartessos to the modern day, and perservering through successive civilizations, Roman, Muslim and Castilian.

The writer and thinker Blas Infante, born in Casares, affirmed, for example, ‘The life force, whose continuity perpetuates the genius of its heritage, is forever engendered in the Andalucían people themselves … their blood has been enriched with the frequent infusion of foreign blood, but their primitive energies have always risen to dominance.' (Blas Infante 1915: 62).

To follow some of the hypotheses, which have been characteristic of Andalucían culture throughout history: the openness and universality, the internal complexity and diversity, the tendency towards the provisional, the over-valuing of the incidental, the under-valuing of facets essential in other people, and so on. Such characteristics ‘seem to be marketplace commodities constants in every period of our history, and manifest themselves in diverse forms inside this constellation of elements that we call ‘culture’.’ (cfr Gran Enciclopedia, art. «cultura andaluza», 1979, vol. 3: 1124).

Foremost, the universalist vision, due to its historic role as a bridge between distinct civilizations, which has formed Andalucía; and which it has used to elaborate its own cultural synthesis, markedly open, internationalist, humanist.

Secondly, the revolutionary radicalism, made plain in collective outbursts at points throughout its history, and distilled since the past century by its contemporary social ideologies. 

Thirdly, in contrast to this radicalism, a very noticeable political cynicism, which has led its people at times into a certain passivity, or pessimism, in the face of the smaller achievements of daily politics; only in the great moments of history do they mobilize in acts of radicalism. 

Fourth, their lack of ‘Europeanness’, originating in the notion of Andalucía as a frontier crossroads in so-called western civilization, with the result that their identification with this idea is somewhat relative; it is a ‘western’ charge that has accumulated since the beginning of history, and still today is reflected in the perhaps clichéd symbols of the courage of the bull, certain forms of dance and song, of art and popular religion.

And the fifth characteristic, the predominance of realism and sensuality over mysticism, as we can observe in the life and aesthetics of Andalucía.

The Andalucían flag

Towards the end of the 11th century there appeared, for the first time, the green and white flag. Flapping from the tower of the Mezquita of Seville (La Giralda), it celebrated the battle of Alarcos. The green comes from the standard of the Umayyad dynasty, and represents the council of its people. The white, which in heraldry is interpreted as parliament or peace, was the pardon or peace signal of the Almohad dynasty. Our flag gives the message: Green for hope and unity, and white for peace and dialogue. It was born as a symbol of tolerance, for love of our land and its culture.

The era of globalization

For Andalucía, as much for all of the peoples who have arrived at a commonweal in the historic process of the centuries, in our case over millennia, and who possess a specific identity, the principal reasserted itself in the 21st century as Andalucía sought its position in a world that grows increasingly defined by the interaction between the two dynamics, opposing but complementary, of globalization and the reaffirmation of identity.

The linguistic identity

Those who know and defend  colloquial Andaluz speech [we] champion its normalization. The first case is that the Andaluz language, our form of speech, is the fruit of a historic process that began with the Roman conquest of the region, around the 2nd century BCE.  In that, Latin became the region’s sole language, usurping the indigenous language that had grown from a mixture of the diverse cultures that had settled in Andalucía prior to the Romans. Latin endured until the Muslim cilivization arrived in Andalucía in 711. The Almoravids settled here for seven centuries during which their kingdom, al-Andalus, rose to its ultimate splendour.  The Andaluz people assimilated, without imposition or force, the extraordinary ‘Andalusí’ culture, and its influence spread throughout Andalucía. From this epoch there still survive words and, above all, names that pepper the geography of Andalucía: Guadalquivir, Guadalhorce, Alcazar...

There are also certain circles which defend the idea that the Andaluz tongue is a poor accent of the state language, Castilian, a form of speech that is both fast and lazy in structure but not so distant from the real thing. Andaluz has its own speech and as many as 15,000 words of exclusive Andaluz etymology that fill the vocabulary of the people. We also have to include and highlight the distinctive accents that the regions possess. As an example, there are dictionaries that confirm this assertion. Words such as babucha (slipper), chigüato (degraded, weak), chícharo (bean), bajío (sandbar/mudbank), bujío (small bar), bastinazo (exaggeration), merdellón (disgusting person), aliquindoy (look out there!), churrete (dribble or stain) or picota (cherry) do nothing but confirm this fact.