An interesting article on The Guardian today highlights an interesting question regarding cultural protectionism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1734778,00.html?gusrc=rss
Excerpt:
Ministry bans export of Spanish writer’s manuscripts
Dale Fuchs in Madrid
Monday March 20, 2006
The Guardian
Signed manuscripts by one of Spain’s most influential novelists and philosophers of the 20th century, Miguel de Unamuno, have been declared “not for export” by the culture ministry, days before they were due to auctioned in Madrid.
The decision is part of a mounting effort to keep Spanish cultural treasures at home and follows a move earlier this month to get Interpol to prevent the sale of five 10th-century wooden beams from the historic Great Mosque of Cordoba.
On March 27, the Sala Durán auction house in Madrid plans to sell nine lots of letters and other documents by Unamuno, the author of Fog, Abel Sánchez and Teresa, some of them written during his exile from 1926 to 1930 in the Canary Islands and Paris, during the dictatorship of Primo Rivera. Other letters up for sale were written to his wife, children and other intellectuals and writers of his times, such as the poet Rubén Darío.
News of the sale, however, sounded the alarm at the culture ministry. It said it had declared the Unamuno manuscripts off limits to foreign buyers as “a cautionary measure” to “guarantee this assembly of extraordinary interest for Spain’s documental heritage” remains in the country.
It is the first in what will be a series of legal measures to preserve Spain’s cultural patrimony, the statement said. The Sala Durán told Spanish news agencies the auction would proceed as planned.
An interesting predicament (and I’d be curious to have people who live in Spain give more context to this). I suppose the chief conflict is whether cultural artifacts/icons should be freely subject to export or mandated to remain in-country. Although it isn’t clear who would be bidding on the works of de Unamuno (private sale, museum, university, etc.), there is a strong argument that by allowing fragments of ones heritage to be exported you are also exporting articles of cultural identity which could arguably serve a greater good via public access in an international setting (again, assuming the auction tilts towards public institutions). The world would be allowed to understand aspects of Spain’s culture that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to when these elements are available to them.
One of the problems with cultural protectionism is that the benefits tend to be short-term; if you refuse to allow cultural artifacts to be exported then you deny your culture a necessary life. Culture can neither be created nor destroyed by man; it is an ecosystem unto itself. Logically then, if you close the free export of culture (and I understand there may be very persuasive arguments for holding back) you are effectively cutting off a vine which should necessarily thrive unheeded. I generally feel that the only cultures which require protection are extinct/demised cultures – the Aztecs, for example. There is no way for the remnants of their culture to thrive without artificial means, thus it makes sense to take a protectionist stance.
My question is thus: what is the state of Spanish culture? Is there a need for protectionism? Am I totally off-base (probably)? Has Spanish culture, like Egyptian, been raided by foreign interests?
Have your say below…
