Patriotism is for reactionaries … nationalism is the way forwardSpain may be on the brink financially, but it has a richer sense of itself than Britain – a country bloated with nostalgia
I've been stepping out each morning recently slap-bang into the hallucinatory haze of Barcelona's Block of Discord, the explosion of art nouveau "modernisme" as practised most brilliantly by Antoni Gaudí in the early part of the 20th century. So it was more in sorrow than in anger that I heard on the BBC World News that a £3m, 1,300ft-long reclining woman sculpted into the landscape near Newcastle airport was soon to be officially "opened" – which sounds rude, of a female sculpture – by the Princess Royal.
Northumberlandia – or "Slag Alice" as she is already fondly known by the locals – will ape the goddess forms of which ancient people were apparently fond. We are always told by earnest feminists with interesting earrings that these symbolise the power of women in a pre-industrial Eden, but I have my doubts. That's like saying that the white horses cut into chalk hills mean that ponies once ruled the Earth, in the manner of those fanciful sci-fi apes.
I think it's more likely that these alleged goddesses are actually just some sort of ancient pornography. But no doubt Naomi Wolf is somewhere planning to put Slag Alice on the paperback of her new book about vaginas, while boo-hooing all the way to the bank about the moral bankruptcy of the Brazilian. If it's retro, even the sex industry seems acceptable – just look at the number of women who pay good money to go to burlesque classes and would slap you silly if you suggested they might like to take stripper lessons.
Fresh from the epidemic of Windsor worship and patriotic fervour that characterised this summer (the SS Great Britain meanwhile moonlighting as the Titanic, being steered safely into port by a reliably clubbable gang of old Etonians), of course it makes sense to stick our collective heads even further up our collective fundament and yearn for the good old days when peasants were pleasant, men were men and women were 1,300 feet long and naked. Lord forbid we should build some lovely modern buildings that harness hope and imagination (and are paid for by some nice self-made tax-evaders, as opposed to the wretched taxpayers) to express faith in the future as opposed to obsession with the past.
I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically – if the past was so great, how come it's history? I have always looked (with fascinated revulsion) upon those strange individuals who go back, often repeatedly, to ex-romantic partners as one regards a dog returning to its own vomit in order to have yet another taste of the appalling mess.
It's the same politically. Danny Boyle's Olympic spectacle lost me at the bit where the happy serfs gambolling in their Arcadian glade were crushed by the wheels of industry. It seems that thinking things were better in the past – like antisemitism – is one of the few activities that left and right can enjoy together.
In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist – as opposed to the UK, where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors. On a two-hour tour bus commentary, Juan Carlos was mentioned once (as we passed his Barça base) and the Spanish royals of the past just a couple of times. It wasn't quite as good as the Paris tour bus commentary in which the minxy guide said in perfect English: "And here is where our royal family had their heads chopped off!", but it was a whole lot better than the English equivalents, with their endless blather about the monuments and buildings constructed in the honour of numerous kings and queens we wouldn't recognise from Adam.
Here, they had the Olympics 20 years ago, and every stadium and swimming pool is still being put to dazzling public use. I wonder if the same will be true of London in 20 years' time. Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration – not a bunch of half-witted monarchs. And they were funded by self-made men such as Eusebi Güell and Pere Milà rather than patronised by patricians, which makes it all the more clever and righteous. The Passeig de Gràcia was the street where the new rich of the early 20th century showed off their new wealth and didn't they do it well – no playing at being landed gentry for them, just the most outlandish and fantastic apartment buildings and town houses.
And what a giant their chosen architect, Antoni Gaudí, was. There's none of this sucking up to royalty that you often find in many English landmark buildings – and there is a healthy respect for the fact that commerce rocks the cradle of civilisation. On a wall plaque in the apartment of the Casa Milà (popularly known as La Pedrera) I read verbatim: "Between 1905 and 1929 emerged a consumer society which called for more and better public services and, in effect, transformed the city."
It's very hard to imagine the phrase "consumer society" used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England. Both left and right would identify it as the enemy that caused the breakdown of family, community and all those other overrated, oversentimentalised padded cells that serve to do little more than keep us in our place at best or drive us mad at worst.
In Barcelona, I felt again what I have felt in countries as far apart as Wales and Israel over the past decade: that my favourite country is no longer the one I was born in. For all you cosmopolitan Observer readers, that's probably par for the course, but for someone of working-class origin, steeped in the nourishing broth of British pop culture, it's quite a shock.
Until a few years ago, I never thought I could be anything but English or live anywhere but England. But now I look at the fact that we worship our monarchy and are governed by old Etonians and I wonder what it was all about – the second world war and the welfare state. It's very much the modish thing to say that patriotism is good and nationalism bad, but I prefer a bit of healthy nationalism – not letting your neighbours trample all over you or take your fish quota – and sod patriotism, with all its mythical, monarch-worshipping implications.
Though I was only in Spain, and an untypical part of it at that, for a short time I couldn't help thinking that reports of its imminent death are greatly exaggerated. Given a choice between the liveliness and lack of deference of Barcelona and a Britain hogtied by the bindweed of terminal nostalgia, I know which I would choose. And no one – given my track record of xenophobia – is more surprised by my choice than myself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/09/julie-burchill-nationalism-beats-patriotism
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