José María Ridao

Against a certain idea of history holding that nothing of relevance occurred in Spain before 1800. Against the assumption that the past holds neither guilty nor innocent, neither executioners nor victims. Against a history that attempts to integrate Spain seamlessly into Europe, glossing over a past marked by leaders who all too often distinguished themselves only through corruption, abuse of power, and a penchant for discord. José María Ridao presents a history of Spain that breaks a lance in favor of the heterodox—those cast out of canonical history for their subversive nature (Jews like Ben Sahl, the Arabs of Al-Andalus, Erasmians, Enlightened thinkers)—in whom Spain's true European dimension is expressed, offering a far more accurate and complex portrait of national identity.

For there is no single narrative of history, 'and it falls upon historians to remember that their discipline is merely one version among infinite versions. The search for a historical basis for certain individual or collective rights requires forgetting that the boundary between past and present remains almost always insurmountable, no matter how stubbornly words—certain words and certain ways of using them—bodefully suggest otherwise.'