It is an error of geography to have assigned Spain to Europe; it belongs to Africa: blood, manners, language, the way of life and making war, in Spain everything is African. The two nations have been mixed up for too longthe Carthaginians who came from Africa to Spain, the Vandals who left Spain for Africa, the Moors who stayed in Spain for 700 yearsfor such a long cohabitation not to have confused the race and customs of the two countries. If the Spaniard were Mohammedan, he would be completely African; it is religion that has kept it in Europe.
- Dominique Dufour de Pradt, Historical Memories of the Spanish Revolution, 1816---
The
Kingdom of Andalusia is a fascinating case study of the overlaps between cultures, continents, and religions. It has historically been described as the "Western Russia", a nation that by all accounts should unequivocally be European yet exists outside of the definition by sheer geographic and cultural happenstance. The phrase "Africa begins at the Pyrenees" was coined long ago to describe the uniqueness of its existence, but this generalized description of what makes Andalusia Andalusian is hardly apt. So, we begin with the history.
The name "Andalusia" is derived from the Andalusian Arabic endonym Alandalus, derived from the old Arabian name for the peninsula "Al-Andalus", which itself is uncertain origin. This name was brought to the region during the invasion of the Umayyad Caliphate from 711-719 AD, which brought not just the Arabic language but also its culture. Andalusia is the only majority Muslim region of Europe other than Albania, a fact that has kept it in constant conflict with the European states to the northeast across the Pyrenees. This conquest was not one of supplantation as it was for many other cultures though, but was instead one that brought about a period of cultural assimilation and tolerance unseen in most of Europe, where the ruling Muslim majority coexisted peacefully with Christians and Jews while most of Christian Europe was increasingly hostile to both Muslims and Jews alike.
And it's this one fact that keeps Andalusia from being considered fully "European" by many, the fact that it is Muslim. Really, what makes it overly different? Its government is a constitutional monarchy with a parliament modeled in the Britannian style, genetic tests show far more similarity with Europeans than Arabs, and its culture embraces the same "European" values of liberty, fraternity, and equality. The only feasible difference, the only realistically different thing about them, is the fact that they have long clung to the Islamic faith even into the 21st Century, after countless efforts during the Hispanian Crusades to dislodge them. Some would even say that they have benefited greatly from this position at a crossroads between Europe and North Africa, as it was never fully subject to the same intellectual dark ages of Europe through its constant access to Islamic texts and books preserving the ancient knowledge of Greece and Rome.
So what makes it different, besides religion? The answer is nothing. Andalusia is European, as European as France or Britannia or Scandinavia. The only thing keeping it apart is sheer prejudice and the artificial boundaries, and many consider this artificial boundary along the Pyrenees to have been what crippled its development. Long isolated by the mercantile powers of European empires, in many ways cheated out of a colonial empire of its own that by all accounts it should have built effortlessly. Even into the 1700s and 1800s, as Europe began to embrace Enlightenment ideas this was never extended to this nation, and Andalusia languished for it. Perhaps that is why its HDI remains below the European average, why its government remained a quasi-theocracy all the way until the "Scarlet Revolution" in 2008.
One can only wonder effect does this kind of thinking have on the people of a nation. It certainly helped build an Andalusian identity, something that King Yusuf XXV described as "Neither African nor European, but Andalusian" in 1905. It also shaped all of Europe's attitudes towards it, unfairly locking it away in the Andalusian Peninsula for centuries to stagnate while they grew fat off the stolen wealth of the world. Even during the Germanian Revolution, when Andalusia declared its support for the Germanians, France was far more brutal and inhumane in its attacks into the peninsula than it ever was with its campaigns in Germania. To the point that even in the 20th Century, Andalusians were described by figures in both Hesperia and Europe as "The European
".
Only now, far too late, is Andalusia finally being given something of a chance. With the aftermath of the Valentine's Day Bombings by radical Christian terrorists across Europe forcing many to reconsider their views on religion and culture, only now are many willing to approach Andalusia with any kind of even-footing. Lo and behold, ever since the European Community made greater efforts to help Andalusia economically and socially, its growth and prosperity have skyrocketed. Even during the Great Crash of 2003-2010, its economy grew rapidly and its per capita wealth exploded. Shockingly, the moment Andalusia was treated like a fellow European nation it began to experience the same levels of growth and development that many had once called uniquely "European". This growth continues to this day, to the point that now many see Andalusia as the next leading figure of Europe while nations like Britannia, France, and Germania stagnate.
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