¡Santiago y cierra, España! is a Spanish-language phrase. The invoking of the apostle's name (Santiago, James in English) is said to have been a common battle cry of Christian soldiers in medieval Iberia and beyond into the Early Modern Period.[1] The full form, using a conjugated form of the verb cerrar,[n. 1] is recorded since the late-16th and 17th centuries.[1] It made a comeback in 1930s Spain as it became the motto of Ramiro de Maeztu's right-wing magazine Acción Española.[1] As a reminiscence of a mythicized look on the middle ages, embedded in narratives of the "Recovery" of Catholic Spain against the [Muslim] Other-enemy-invader, it has thus been historically embraced as a political slogan by arch-conservative milieus of Spanish society.[1] As a nationalist symbolic banner, the phrase has been a staple within far-right discourses in Spain, developed in war-related and national self-affirmation contexts.[2] The new world cities of Santiago de Cuba and Santiago de Chile are named after the Spanish battle cry.
Notes
edit- ^ According to Pedro de Ribadeneira, as a synonym of acometer (transl. assail).[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e Linares, Lidwine (2012). "¡Santiago y cierra, España!". Les Cahiers de Framespa. 10 (10). doi:10.4000/framespa.1552.
- ^ García García, Jesús (2023). "Ideología y exclusión. Nacionalismo antimusulmán de ayer a hoy". In Álvarez Díaz, Katia; Cotán Fernández, Almudena (eds.). Educar, comunicar, sociabilizar en la heterogeneidad. Madrid: Dykinson. p. 54. ISBN 978-84-1170-355-0.