The Best of All Possible Islands: Seville's Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe (Suny Series in National Identities)

The Best of All Possible Islands Seville’s Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe

R i c h a r d

M a d d o x

The Best of All Possible Islands

SUNY series in National Identities Thomas M. Wilson, editor

The Best of All Possible Islands Seville’s Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe

Richard Maddox

State University of New York Press

Publication of this book was made possible in part by a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and United States’ Universities.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2004 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, N.Y., 12207 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maddox, Richard Frederick. The best of all possible islands : Seville’s universal exposition, the new Spain, and the new Europe / Richard Maddox. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6121-1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6122-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Exposiciân Universal de 1992 (Seville, Spain) I. Exposición Universal de 1992 (Seville, Spain) II. Title. T894.1.B2M33 2004 907'.4'4686—dc22 2003059060 10

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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PART I GUIDELINES: CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER IN SPAIN 1. The Best of All Possible Islands and the Miraculous Year

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2. Possible Expos: Academic Meanderings from Tradition to Modernity and Beyond

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3. A Pocket History of the Liberalization of Modern Spain, with Observations about Its Relevance for an Understanding of Expo ’92

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4. Relocating the Subject: Macroethnography and Cosmopolitan Liberalism

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PART II ORIGINS AND STRUCTURES: THE STATE, THE PARTY, AND THE EXPO 5. Royal Patronage of a Noble Tradition: Madrid, Santo Domingo, Washington, and Paris, 1976–1982

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6. Seville, the Socialist Party, and the Commissioner General, 1982–1987

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7. The Voyages and Visits of the Commissioner General

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8. The Island World Takes Form

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Contents PART III CONJUNCTURES AND CONFLICTS: TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND THE CITY

9. The Two-Headed Monster

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10. The Monster and Seville

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11. Here Comes Everybody

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12. War, Stalemate, and Cultural Politics

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PART IV PAVILIONS AND PERFORMANCES: THE EXPO AS CULTURAL OLYMPICS 13. Media Agon

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14. Varieties of Europeanism

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15. Davids and Goliaths of the New World Order

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16. The Many Spains

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PART V DISPOSITIONS AND PRACTICES: THE SENSE OF FREEDOM AND THE POLITICS OF DAILY LIFE 17. Expo People and the Change in Spain

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18. Officials and Workers

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19. Visitors

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20. Renouncers and Resisters

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Contents

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PART VI THE AFTERMATH 21. Closing Days and Parting Shots

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22. Wandering in the Wilderness: From Cartuja ’93 to Sevilla Technopolis

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23. The Theme Park of Memory

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24. The Expo and the New Millennium

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Notes to the Text

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Official Documents and Publications Cited

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Newspapers Cited

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References Cited

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Index

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Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to the many people and institutions that have contributed to aspects of this work over the last decade and more. Financial support for research in Spain in 1990, 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2001 was provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States’ Universities, the Augustana College Research Foundation, the Berkman Faculty Development Fund of Carnegie Mellon University, and the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. In the early stages of the project, I also benefited from a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for European Studies at Stanford University. Portions of this work have been shared with many audiences, and I have profited from the lively discussions that followed my often tentative presentations. For their critical and encouraging comments, I especially owe thanks to members of the Departments of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maynooth, to members of the Departments of History and Modern Languages at Marshall University, and to the participants in a colloquium that was entitled “Questions of Identity in the New Europe” and was sponsored by the Remarque Institute and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University. My thinking about the Expo has been shaped in countless ways by conversations that I have had with friends and colleagues. Without the stimulating engagement of Paul Eiss, Peter Kivisto, Judith Modell, Roger Rouse, Donald Sutton, and Patrick Wilson concerning many issues pertinent to the emergence of a “new Spain” and a “new Europe,” this work would have been much impoverished. Deborah Cahalen, James Fernandez, Montserrat Miller, and anonymous reviewers for SUNY Press gave me valuable suggestions and encouragement, as did Thomas Wilson, Editor of the SUNY series in National Identities, and Michael Rinella, Acquisitions Editor at SUNY Press. Several Expo officials in Seville spoke to me under conditions of anonymity, and I appreciate their help. I am especially grateful to Alfredo Jiménez of the University of Seville for his indispensable insights into the workings of the Expo, and I apologize to him for being such an obtuse and unreliable interlocutor. All English translations of Spanish sources are my own. I thank Andrea Cuellar for preparing the figures and maps for the text. Without the support of many friends in Aracena and Seville, this book could not have been written. My heartfelt gratitude goes especially to Gloria

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Acknowledgments

Roncero Carretero, Felisa Vázquez and Luis Dominguez, Rafael Corral and Manuela Vázquez, Gloria Vázquez, Maria Luisa Sánchez Ortega, Andres Sánchez Ortega, Manuel Fernández Carmona and Mari Carmen Parente, and Berta Suárez Arias and Lino Juloa Núñez. Sharon Keller Maddox’s care and hard work have been crucial at every stage of the research and writing, and Zack helped me see the Expo through a child’s eyes. I dedicate this work to them and to our “family” in Aracena.

PART I

䉬 Guidelines: Contemporary Ethnography and the New World Order in Spain

1. The Best of All Possible Islands and the Miraculous Year From 15 April to 12 October 1992, a universal exposition, the highest category of world’s fair, was held in Seville, Spain. La Exposición Universal Sevilla 1992—commonly called Expo ’92—was located on La Isla de la Cartuja, an island (in fact, a peninsula) of previously undeveloped land that lies between two branches of the Guadalquivir River, just to the west of the historic center of the city. On this island, the pavilions of 112 countries, 17 autonomous regions of Spain, and 29 multinational corporations and international organizations were constructed, along with more than a dozen large thematic pavilions and nearly a score of theaters, cinemas, and auditoriums. Interspersed throughout the island were hundreds of restaurants and shops, 117 fountains, and extensive gardens and parks in which 25,000 trees had recently been planted. On the inside periphery of the island was a parking lot with spaces for 40,000 cars; close to an entrance gate was a recently erected train station; and connecting the city to the island were several newly constructed pedestrian bridges. Thousands of concerts, plays, shows, ceremonies, parades, and other public events were staged on the island or in Seville. Over its six-month course, the Expo was visited by perhaps 14 million people.1 Among these visitors were 69 heads of state or government and countless celebrities. In short, Expo ’92 was a very big deal.2 The universal exposition had been conceived as an occasion to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas. Following the advice of members of the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris, however, the Expo’s Spanish organizers finally chose the much broader official theme of “The Age of Discoveries” and invited participants from around the world to explore virtually any facet of human cultural achievement between 1492 and the present. As a result, visitors to the Expo’s major thematic pavilions were exposed to a persistently optimistic vision of the emergence of the modern world. While this vision represented Spain’s so-called golden century of discovery, empire, and artistic achievement as a crucial turning point in the development of a universal global civilization that is still in the making, it stressed the continuing importance of overcoming natural, technological, and cultural barriers to human communication and community. Indeed, rather than just presenting the island world of the Expo as a temporary locus of international cooperation—a sort of utopian campsite—the Expo’s organizers aimed to give a more comprehensive historical sense of how interactions among the cultures and peoples of the past have shaped the present world and created possibilities for future human progress. In this sense of having something about and for almost everyone, the organizers wanted the island to represent the best of all possible islands.

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its responsibilities as a full partner in the European Union and as a vital link connecting western Europe to Latin America and the Islamic Mediterranean. Indeed, the Spanish experience might well serve as a guide or inspiration for those countries in central and eastern Europe and elsewhere that were struggling to transform themselves into modern democracies. But how are we to understand and judge the significance of the Expo in its proper historical and cultural context? Was the huge expenditure of money and human effort involved in mounting the exhibition and the other events of 1992 worth it? Or was it all a rather pointless expression of national or governmental self-glorification—not so much a miraculous year as a year in which pride and vanity overcame economic prudence and Spaniards were encouraged to imagine that, as one Seville wit put it, “we were Marilyn” (Marilyn Monroe)? And in any case, why should we now be much concerned about what was ultimately a brief, if massive, exercise in international public relations that has been forgotten by most people or become a matter of mild nostalgia, even for many of those who live in Seville and were most directly affected by it? What did Expo ’92 reveal about life and culture in Seville, in Spain, and in Europe, and what insights continue to have value and relevance for understanding the present? The difficulty involved in such questions is not that they have no plausible answers. It is, instead, that they are open to so many reasonable responses because of the sheer complexity of events of this type. As Umberto Eco (1986:291) observed in an essay on Montreal’s Expo ’67, “An exposition presents itself as a phenomenon of many faces, full of contradictions, [and] open to various uses.” For this reason, it can be interpreted from many points of view. Several organizations and individuals have already written volumes focusing on such topics as the design and architecture of Expo ’92, the event’s economic impact on southern Spain, and its character as a postmodern cultural event. Here, my aim is to present an account of the Expo that stresses its political character and significance. This approach inevitably neglects many specific features of the Expo but permits me to consider how the emergent post–Cold War hegemony of what I will be referring to as “cosmopolitan liberalism” manifested itself in Seville, Andalusia, and Spain in the early 1990s. To clarify why I adopted the perspective that I did, I begin by describing how my views of what is most important and interesting about the Expo have changed over time. Next, I explain how shifts in personal and ethnographic perspective relate to changes in Spanish politics, society, and culture and to some of the problems that confront contemporary anthropologists as they seek to understand the “new Europe” and the “new world order.” My attempt to be candid is certainly in order, because much of the time—somewhat like Candide, endlessly agog on his travels through the wide world of the eighteenth century— I have been puzzled and perplexed about the precise relationship between the Expo’s Panglossian representations of past and present realities and my own and others’ quite different experiences and understandings of them.

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2. Possible Expos: Academic Meanderings from Tradition to Modernity and Beyond I first heard of the Expo in 1982, when the Spanish press reported that the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris had agreed to sponsor a universal exposition to be held in 1992. For the first time, the stories noted, a universal exposition was to have two seats—one in Chicago and the other in Seville. (The Chicago exposition was subsequently canceled, however.) Although some sort of Spanish observation of the Columbus quincentennial in 1992 seemed inevitable, neither I nor any of the Andalusians whom I knew were much interested in the news that Seville would be a site for a world’s fair. At the time, I was living in Aracena—a small town that had a population of approximately 7,000 people and is located in the hills of the western Sierra Morena, about eighty kilometers from Seville—and I was too busy bringing nearly two years of ethnographic and historical research there to a close to be concerned about an event that was still a decade away. Moreover, the aim of my research in Aracena was to investigate how local traditions and traditionalism had affected the political life of the town over the course of the past three centuries,1 and this interest seemed remote from the topic of world fairs. Then, too, neither my personal inclinations nor my anthropological training made the prospect of investigating the Expo seem particularly attractive. Like many ethnographers, I have always been drawn to those forms of local knowledge and customary practice that are easily overlooked and seem marginal, rather than being fascinated by what is modern, central, and unavoidable. Other things being equal, I would much rather attend to such homely and provincial matters as rural fairs and hog slaughters than to mass culture and international expositions. Indeed, I would never have paid much attention to the Expo if it had not been located in Seville and if I had not been forced to conclude that by investigating it I would better understand the circumstances of contemporary Andalusians in places such as Aracena. However, it was not until a return trip to Spain in the summer of 1985 that I became convinced of this. As I read about the Expo in Seville publications, it finally dawned on me that the Expo might provide an ideal opportunity for further exploring the tensions that exist between tradition and modernity, tensions that I had already encountered in Aracena. On the one hand, there is no city in Spain more closely associated with imperial history and living folk traditions than Seville.2 Visitors walking through the historic center of town in the early 1980s could find at every turn some impressive monument or building, such as the Giralda, the Alcázar, the House of Pilatos, the Convent of Santa Paula, and the great tobacco factory (now the university)—all of which bore witness to the centuries when Seville was the great metropolitan center of trade with the Indies. Every few steps

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along the way, visitors would also encounter a bodega, a bullfight poster, a barred window and sunny patio, a chapel of one of the penitential brotherhoods of Holy Week, or the blaring notes of a Sevillana played on a cheap cassette— all reminders that long after its heyday of imperial glory, the city had become the urban focal point of an essentially agrarian folk and gentry culture of extraordinary color and variety. Such experiences have led many tourists and not a few natives of a romantic and gullible disposition to conclude that in Seville it is still possible to find the authentic essence of Spain, the “real” Spain of the conquistadors, Don Juan, the Inquisition, Carmen, lace mantillas, flashing gypsy eyes and blades, Flamenco, and death in the afternoon. On the other hand, a visitor of Seville in the early 1980s would have had to be trapped in the middle of an extraordinarily large tour group not to realize that the city had become subject to all of the familiar pains of rapid urban growth and modernization.3 As is the case in many other Mediterranean cities, in Seville the city planners had never quite been able to keep pace with the steady growth in population. As a result, Seville was crowded and noisy and often snarled by traffic jams. Even though there was not much industry, the factories that existed managed to contribute extensively to the levels of air and water pollution. On the outskirts of town, there were whole barrios (neighborhoods) of shacks cobbled together by rural migrants who had been left without basic water and sanitation services for years. Closer to town, there were large areas with nothing but ugly, reinforced concrete, high-rise apartment buildings for the working class. And if the city was charged with the energy of its large numbers of young people, it also often seemed more than a little besotted by a rising tide of slick advertising for second-rate goods, strip malls, discotheques, and carpe diem consumerism. Worst of all, the city was plagued by a high rate of unemployment, especially among young people, and a steady increase in petty crime. The Expo was intended to ameliorate these symptoms of underdevelopment and to propel Seville into the twenty-first century, making the city the shining capital of the new autonomous region of Andalusia. Yet despite its recent growth, Seville in the early and middle 1980s was a fairly small and provincial place. Although its population was predicted to exceed 700,000 by 1992, it would still be by far the smallest city ever to host a universal exposition. Because of this, the impact of the Expo on the city and everyone who lived in and around it could be expected to be disproportionately large. The opportunity to study this impact in terms of the dynamic interaction of modernity and tradition seemed a chance too good to miss. Moreover, examining the Expo would allow me to shift my ethnographic attention from rural communities to urban environments, a shift that many anthropologists who work in Mediterranean Europe had been advocating.4 Between 1985 and 1990, I corresponded with colleagues and friends in Spain about my newly envisioned project and other matters, all the while gaining confidence in the good sense of my plan to study the Expo. My confidence

Possible Expos

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was disrupted, however, when I returned to Seville in the summer of 1990 and immediately caught a case of something peculiarly akin to that fabled anthropological malady, culture shock. As I visited the site on which the Expo was being constructed (La Isla de la Cartuja), talked with a few officials, and began to gather general information on the project, I could scarcely believe the scope of the changes that had taken place in and around Seville in just five years. The city had taken on the aura of a boom town. There were plenty of jobs available, prices were rising, money was being spent freely, and lots of people were obviously trying to figure out how to cash in on the state’s largesse and the anticipated bonanza of tourist spending. Some of this was predictable enough, but what was perplexing was just how modern and sophisticated Seville had become almost overnight. In the past, the provincial tone of Seville was set by working-class consumers, petit bourgeois shopkeepers, and a small circle of regional elite. Now it seemed as if these groups had been suddenly though by no means completely displaced by a new generation of professionals, well-educated functionaries and bureaucrats, and ambitious university graduates. The new trendsetters talked a lot about European markets, finance, taxes, grants for foreign study, business degrees, the media, and software; and they displayed a taste for the same corporate products, flashy cars, cellular phones, dress-for-success fashions, music, and expensive entertainment gadgetry that prevailed in the great metropolises of Europe. The dramatic shift in elite fashions and lifestyle threw me into a state of confusion about the significance of the Expo for Seville. The prospect of investigating this event primarily in terms of a dialectic of tradition and modernity no longer seemed very promising. The forces of modernity already at work seemed too powerful and the processes of transformation set in motion by them were too complex to be comprehended and explored adequately in such balanced and conventional terms. Even if it was not the case that everything that was solid and traditional about local life had melted into air, it did seem that a great deal had been swept into the dustbin of history at least for the moment, and it was not at all clear what new values and forms of identity might emerge. Thus, while awaiting the date when I could return to Spain in 1992, I searched for a better way to understand the relationship between the Expo and the broader contemporary changes that had already transformed the lives and outlooks of people in Seville. I began by delving into the vast literature about the hundreds of world fairs and other types of international exhibitions that have been held since the opening of London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851.5 This effort proved informative on many counts, but it was disappointing in several respects. In a nutshell, what I learned was that although international exhibitions have preserved features of traditional events, such as carnivals, market fairs, and holiday rituals, what initially defined them as a distinctively modern cultural genre was, as

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Walter Benjamin (1976:165) put it, their role as “places of pilgrimage to the fetish commodity.” In other words, it was by putting the most impressive and economically important or promising products and technologies of industrial societies on display that the great world fairs of the nineteenth century defined and reinforced the fundamental values of capitalism and material progress. Despite their embrace of the latest technology, most exhibitions have also served in one way or another to legitimate and, indeed, to glorify nationalism, popular or mass culture, the authority of the state, imperialist ambitions and domination, and the forms of modernity that are most closely associated with ideas about the superiority of Western civilization. The centrality of these themes is particularly well illustrated in Robert Rydell’s work (1984, 1993) on the essentially nationalistic and racist “symbolic universes” characteristic of American expositions held in the years between 1876 and 1916. But as Burton Benedict suggests in The Anthropology of World Fairs (1983:9), all world fairs are examples of a “distinctive form of modern international rituals” that “sell” ideas about “power relations” as well as material goods. Therefore, some of the most interesting recent work on international exhibitions tends to focus less on the commercial and directly economic functions of these events and more on the way in which they serve to create or encourage particular forms of social consciousness. For example, Tony Bennett (1994) not only invokes Marxist notions of the increasing commodification of all aspects of life but also invokes Michel Foucault’s analyses of power and knowledge and Guy De Bord’s great polemic against mass culture in the Society of the Spectacle (1977) in order to propose that world fairs represent one sort of strategy within a broader and still developing “exhibitionary mode of power” whose function it is to move the hearts, shape the minds, and regulate the practices of the masses through the creation of new forms of instruction, distraction, entertainment, and pleasure that complement more oppressive forms of domination and discipline. On the whole, then, and despite some important differences in emphasis and theoretical persuasion, there is a broad consensus in the literature on world fairs that these distinctive events have been contrived by ruling elites for a variety of reasons (including, most notably, the desire for profit, influence, and prestige) but that the broader significance of world fairs has been to convey some compelling version of the ideologies of progress, capitalism, nationalism, and Western superiority to large numbers of people in a relatively short span of time. Yet even though there was little cause to suppose that Expo ’92 would represent a radical departure from the patterns established by a century and a half of international expositions, the possibility of investigating it primarily as a set of variations on one of the key generic “traditions of modernity” did not seem much more appealing than my previous idea of viewing its relation to Seville in terms of a dialectics of modernity and tradition. For one thing, an essentially comparative approach that focused on classic modernist themes might lead me to underestimate the importance of what was most idiosyncratic and

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peculiar about the event and thus perhaps to miss those aspects of the exposition that revealed most about new and emergent tendencies in contemporary life in Andalusia. For another, I wanted to avoid the pitfall of paying too much attention to interpreting the symbolic messages communicated by expositions without sufficiently considering how the messages are chosen and produced or how their various audiences actually interpret and experience them.6 Unfortunately, I still had no real alternative model in mind. Instead, I fell back on the rather vague idea that I should study the cultural politics surrounding the event and focus on how the various ways in which what it meant to be Sevillano, Andalusian, Spanish, European, and so forth were being represented and contested in the Expo and Seville. Fuzzy as this notion was, it did not require me to abandon the hope of studying local culture and traditions altogether. In addition, studying the politics of culture held some attraction because it was more or less in keeping with the so-called postmodern turn in American cultural anthropology and the discipline’s apparently ever-expanding preoccupation with describing the politics of ethnic, gender, and other forms of identity in contemporary societies.7 My optimism about even this modest plan began to erode shortly after I arrived in Seville in the spring of 1992, a few weeks before the Expo’s official opening. To put the problem succinctly, it seemed as if the Expo were simply going to be too bland to be of much political and cultural interest. Little about the contents of the Expo cried out loudly for scrutiny, challenge, and critique. The cruder forms of capitalist self-promotion, nationalist chauvinism, and neocolonial arrogance of many past world fairs were hardly in evidence. Instead, multinational corporations stressed the general benefits of technical discoveries and economic enterprise for human welfare, and some even drew attention to the social and environmental problems attending the expansion of free markets. Similarly, in the pavilions of Spain and other countries, there were not many images that powerfully and unmistakably evoked the historical destinies and glories of nations, states, and empires. In one way or another, country after country represented itself as a human tapestry blessed and enlivened by the cultural traditions and ethnic diversity of its regions and peoples. The emphasis was on multiculturalism, pluralism, enlightened tolerance, and contemporary forms of global communication, represented by satellite links, computer-generated graphics, and endless banks of television screens. The Expo, in sum, was proclaimed by organizers to be continually and self-consciously sensitive to the needs, values, and ways of life of others. But it all seemed familiar and rather imitative of the more public service–oriented efforts of global media executives and Disney imagineers, who were, after all, the real innovators in the business of making history and culture fun for one and all. I ruminated that the Expo probably represented an effort to exploit an essentially moribund modern cultural form that was unlikely to survive for long in the dawning postmodern age of instantaneous communications, global

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marketing strategies, and the perpetual commodification, mutation, and recombination of signs and symbols of identity. However, my glum reflections about the enervating character of pseudo-events and the “lack of affect” induced by endless cultural pastiche were suddenly interrupted by an undeniably dramatic crisis that transformed the way I looked at the events of 1992.8 Not more than three weeks after the opening ceremonies, the Expo organizers announced that the sale of season passes for the Expo was being temporarily suspended and that admissions policies were under review. This announcement caused much consternation in Seville. Daily admission prices were high, and most Sevillanos felt that the bargain offered by season passes was nothing more than a just compensation for all the inconveniences that the Expo had caused them for years. The Expo organizers first argued that they feared overcrowding on Expo’s island site. Then they proclaimed that the event was not just for Sevillanos and that they did not wish the Expo site turned into a mere fairgrounds or park for the idle diversions of the local citizenry. These remarks and others like them prompted cries of protest from many quarters and were vehemently denounced by city officials, particularly the alcalde (mayor). Suits were filed to force the Expo officials to resume sales, and uncertainty continued for weeks until a final decision was made: No more season passes would be sold. The conflict over season passes was puzzling both because it seemed unnecessary and because the fury and resentments it aroused were so intense. While crowds during the first two weeks of the Expo were predictably large, they were being handled without strain, and the daily attendance figures were already showing signs of dropping. So why make a decision that was going to distress large numbers of people for no good reason? Was it, as many people bitterly guessed, just a ploy to shore up the Expo’s bottom line? Even if it was, why make the announcement in such a patronizing way that it was virtually guaranteed to add insult to injury? And why prolong the agony for weeks? None of it made much sense to me. But after years of speculating about what the Expo might mean in general terms, I at last had a specific mystery to solve that might well provide some insight into my broader concerns. What I discovered fairly quickly was that the embers of the dispute had been smoldering for a long time. Arguments about prices and admissions had been going on for at least two years, both within the Expo organization and between the Expo officials and Seville officials, and this issue was linked to wider, longer-running struggles concerning the fundamental character of the event. Once I realized that arguments such as this were not just normal petty squabbles, I began to appreciate the importance of what a cab driver had told me ten minutes after I had arrived at the Seville airport six weeks earlier. When I had asked him how the preparations for the Expo were going, he had waved his hand in annoyance and proclaimed, “Hombre, es nada más que un choque . . . una pelea . . . una cosa política” (“Man, it’s nothing but a collision . . . a fight . . . a political thing”).

A Pocket History of the Liberalization of Modern Spain

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So that was it? Expo island was not really the nicest, most tolerant, and most enlightened of islands after all? Instead, it should be construed as a site where a free-for-all over cultural and political turf had been occurring for years and would continue to involve everybody—Expo officials, local politicians, national party leaders, diplomats of participating countries, representatives of multinational corporations, residents of Seville . . . perhaps even me? And the various individuals and groups were fighting, conspiring, and cooperating with one another to influence and control various dimensions of the Expo in order to either assert their own visions or to resist others’ interpretations of particular domains of contemporary life? And the features of Expo that looked like disparate parts of an incredibly intricate but bland conglomeration might be the results of particular battles for cultural hegemony, leadership, prestige, and practical control won or lost? It was obvious that I needed to try to figure out the rules, strategies, and stakes of the game. I could see that the public style and tone of the Expo were open, optimistic, and pluralistic, but the dispute over the season passes seemed to pit the bureaucratic agents and policymakers of the state against a large segment of local civil society in a conflict that touched on some serious issues concerning the accountability and proper exercise of authority in a free and democratic society. The conflicts and strategies, I suspected, ultimately had a lot to do with the politics and culture of liberalism in Spain. To test this hunch, I set about trying to gain an understanding of the recent history of Spanish liberalism that could serve to illuminate what I had learned so far about the Expo. A summary of this history is presented in chapter 3.

3. A Pocket History of the Liberalization of Modern Spain, with Observations about Its Relevance for an Understanding of Expo ’92 Used as a marker of broad political allegiance, the term “liberal” is of Spanish origin and was first applied to describe the members of the dominant group within the Cortes of 1812 who adopted a written constitution and attacked the ancient privileges of the nobility and the church (Herr 1971:73). The nineteenth century was the heyday of Spanish liberalism. As Adrian Shubert (1990:5) pointed out, “Between 1812 and 1914, Spain had more years of constitutional, representative government” than any other country on the continent of Europe (see also Payne 1987:3–18). Yet for much of the twentieth century, liberalism—both as a political and economic ideology and as a broader social philosophy of freedom—was under siege from the left and the

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right in Spain, and other nations and states have made claims to the role of its principal adherents and guardians.1 The vicissitudes of liberalism have continued to shape the sense of history of Spanish scholars, politicians, and ordinary citizens alike. After the catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War, even the victorious Caudillo himself, Francisco Franco, defined his dictatorship as the antithesis of liberalism and went so far as to proclaim that “the nineteenth century, which we would have liked to eliminate from our history, is the negation of the Spanish spirit” (quoted in Carr and Fusi 1981:109). Since the decline of Francoism, however, the overwhelming tendency has been to represent authoritarianism as a relic of the past and to describe the present and foreseeable future in terms of the urgency of promoting processes of political, economic, and cultural liberalization in order to become more “European.”2 Exactly what it means to be a member of a European liberal society is not altogether clear. These days, the terms “European” and “liberal” are both invoked in a wide variety of ways, and often what is taken for granted about them in one context is hotly disputed in another. For the present purposes, it will be sufficient to note a set of five characteristics of popular liberalism that would probably be accepted in some form or other by most contemporary Europeans. First, there is the core and largely unexamined conviction that human beings are most happy and fulfilled when they are most “free.” This implies that the preservation of the freedom to act autonomously and without the pressure of unnecessary constraints ought to take some precedence over other important values involving ideas of sociomoral order, authority, equality, and solidarity, particularly when stark conflicts between these values arise. Second, there is the idea that freedom and other values are best guaranteed in modern complex societies through the establishment and defense of a set of key institutions, principles, and practices. Examples include political self-determination and representative or participatory democracy, the rule of law, the existence of competitive but “regulated” market economies, respect for human rights, the provision of at least the most basic necessities of life to everyone, and the preservation of public and private spheres of social relations that are insulated from state power. Third, there is a recognition that contemporary European liberalism properly provides an umbrella of tolerance for a wide variety of ideological formulations, ranging from “neoliberal” laissez-faire free market fundamentalism to Christian socialism, and that the protection of this umbrella should extend even so far as to provide some shelter for positions that challenge the fundamental principles of liberalism itself. Fourth, because liberal societies are diverse and pluralistic, there is a recognition that the exercise of freedom within them will inevitably generate conflicts involving competition for leadership and involving struggles against political and economic domination but that these conflicts must somehow be limited and regulated for the good of individuals and society as a whole. Fifth, there is a general conviction that how-

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ever broad the contemporary influence and appeal of liberalism may be, liberalism nonetheless primarily represents a collective, hard-won, and creative historical achievement of a family of peoples, cultures, and states whose roots lie in western Europe.3 Although many other factors and values in Spain and elsewhere shape the broader political culture for which liberalism provides a framework, the great majority of people in Spain today would, like most other West Europeans, probably assent to some version of liberalism similar to the one described above. Yet Spaniards are also acutely aware that not long ago many of their fellow citizens would have rejected crucial elements of this structure and that the processes of liberalization have been long, complex, and difficult. Indeed, recent versions of postwar Spanish history tend to describe liberalization as occurring in three overlapping phases, each of which is subject to further and more debatable subdivisions. The first phase was characterized by initially creeping and then galloping socioeconomic liberalization under the Franco regime. The second phase was marked by predominantly national political liberalization centered on the transition to and consolidation of parliamentary democracy during the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The third phase, which began in the mid-1980s and continues to date, is a period of comprehensive integration into the European Union (EU) and the broader system of transnational capitalism.4 In the 1950s, although Franco’s ideologues proclaimed Spain’s solitary grandeur as the staunchest defender of the spiritual values of Christendom against the red menace, western European states ostracized the Franco regime, which they regarded as the principal surviving fascist power on the continent. To overcome this isolation, Spain signed bilateral defense agreements with the United States and began to receive economic assistance from the U.S. government. Thus, Spain not only effectively became part of the Western anticommunist military alliance but also, and with no small irony, became heavily dependent on the diplomatic and material support of the U.S. government, the avatar of liberalism. This support did not resolve the problems created by Spanish economic autarky. But it did help clear the political way for young technocrats working within the Franco regime, who argued for economic modernization and subsequently secured World Bank assistance, courted foreign investment, and hatched numerous development schemes in 1959 and afterward. These efforts sparked a boom that transformed Spain from a backward, largely agrarian country into an essentially modern, urbanized, and industrialized society in the 1960s. For the Franco regime, the risks involved in the transformation of Spanish society were obviously very great. The gamble was that increases in the standard of living, the provision of some basic social services, and the promise of greater prosperity in the future would lead most people to tolerate the lack of basic political freedoms in the present. Nevertheless, the social, cultural, and political forces unleashed by economic growth were difficult to control.

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The Best of All Possible Islands

Urbanization, commercial expansion, and the growth of television and other mass media exposed Spanish society to the force of American and European popular culture. Industrial development created tensions that soon found expression in labor disputes and strikes. University unrest and student protests led to the creation of many quasi-political groups that nurtured a new generation of opposition leaders. By the late 1960s, as Franco and his allies of the Civil War aged, they found themselves confronting a youthful and restive society that looked forward to sweeping reforms. Although Juan Carlos, the grandson of King Alfonso XIII, was installed on the throne, the government remained in the firm grip of Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s key minister and closest confidant. Meanwhile, the Franco regime continued to respond to the young opposition groups with a “bunker” plan, in which periods of tacit toleration and vocal threats were punctuated by interludes of outright and brutal repression. This scheme of control was frustrated in December 1973, when Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the Basque revolutionary group commonly known as ETA, took responsibility for the “ascension” of the faithful admiral. Thanks to a car bomb planted by ETA, Admiral Carrero Blanco was nearly blown over the roof of the church in which he was accustomed to attending morning mass. Despite the efforts of Francoists to shore up their crumbling regime, it fell within a few months of Franco’s death on 20 November 1975. The regime collapsed under the mounting pressures exerted by the public at large and by political leaders. Foremost among the leaders was King Juan Carlos, who on 3 July 1976, to nearly everyone’s surprise and the initial dismay of the regime’s opponents, selected Adolfo Suárez, a second-tier and apparently “safe” Francoist, as president of a new government. With extraordinary speed, skill, and dedication, Suárez set about organizing the destruction of the existing order. In November 1976, the Francoist Cortes effectively committed suicide by approving a law of political reform that established a bicameral legislature elected by universal suffrage. This move won overwhelming popular support in a national referendum held a month later and set the direction for the second phase of postwar liberalization. In this phase, the primary aim was to create a viable set of national political institutions, parties, and practices that were, among other things, capable of removing obstacles to joining “Europe.” The first years of the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy were marked by a so-called ruptura pactada, a negotiated break from the legal framework of the Francoist state. Although it was called a rupture, the plan was engineered by Suárez in consultation with other political leaders and represented a determined effort not to create a crisis by purging and prosecuting corrupt Francoists or rooting out entrenched functionaries from every nook and cranny of the state. The plan’s moderation and lack of recrimination enabled many Francoists to recast themselves as long-closeted democrats, but it also allowed the personalist and authoritarian political ethos of the dictatorship to

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linger on long after the regime’s demise, with some unpleasant consequences for Spanish politics that are still in evidence today. In the spring of 1977, various political parties were reorganized or formed in anticipation of upcoming elections. The Communist party, El Partido Comunista de España (PCE), directed by Santiago Carillo, was legalized, despite the considerable risk of provoking a military reaction. Other parties included the following: a party of resurgent Socialists, called El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and headed by Felipe González; a broad coalition of center-right, mostly Christian Democrat groups, known as La Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) and led by Suárez; and a right-wing “neoFrancoist” party, called La Alianza Popular (AP) and led by Manuel Fraga. In June 1977, the first democratic general elections for the Cortes were held, and the UCD received a plurality (34 percent) of the votes and 168 seats in the Congress of Deputies. The PSOE closely followed the UCD with nearly 29 percent of the votes and 118 seats. The AP and the PCE both had significant and similar levels of support but trailed far behind the major parties. This nearly even split between right and left could well have led to a political stalemate reminiscent of the crisis-ridden Second Republic, but the leaders of the UCD, PSOE, and PCE decided to pursue a politics of consensus and to transform the Cortes into an assembly whose main mission was to draft a new constitution.5 The path for remaking the state was cleared by the Moncloa Pact of October 1977, an agreement between the government and all of the major political parties. In this pact on social and economic issues, the Socialists and Communists accepted a wage ceiling and used their influence to reduce the number of strikes occurring throughout the country in exchange for promises of agricultural, tax, and other reforms, most of which were never fulfilled. The monetarist strategy followed by the government on the basis of the pact reduced the inflation rate, but it also led to the collapse of many businesses and increased the level of unemployment to double digits, where it has remained to the present (see Camiller 1986; Salmon 1991). In addition to gaining the consent of the Spanish left to liberal policies that placed a heavier burden on workers than on anyone else, Suárez was able to win a grace period for drafting a constitution by taking steps to reassure moderate Basque and Catalán politicians that their demands for regional autonomy in the “new Spain” would be heeded. The Constitution of Spain turned out to be a cumbersome, sometimes ambiguous charter that bears the marks of many ad hoc compromises. Even so, it clearly establishes Spain as “a social and democratic state ruled by law” in the form of a parliamentary monarchy. Under it, the king is granted substantial power as head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces, but the Constitution protects the basic rights and freedoms of all citizens; grants unions and political parties formal status; concedes the rights of “Spanish nationalities” and regions to autonomy; declares that the state has no “official religion”

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The Best of All Possible Islands

(although it recognizes the important role of the Catholic church in society); and declares the legitimacy of free enterprise in a market economy.6 The document was approved by the Congress of Deputies and the Senate in October 1978, sanctioned by popular referendum in early December, and accepted by the king at the end of the year. Its adoption marked the formal beginning of the new liberal political order. In light of the many accomplishments of 1977 and 1978, the leaders of the main political parties expected to see their political positions strengthened in the general elections of 1979. To their consternation, this did not occur. Although there was a sharp decline in votes for the AP and although the PSOE lost some support to regional parties in the Basque country and, most shockingly, to El Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA) in its southern stronghold of Andalusia, the overall distribution of votes and seats among the parties was nearly the same as in 1977. Disappointment at these results sparked internal party struggles that had far-reaching consequences for each of them and for the liberal democratic order in Spain as a whole (see Colomé and López Nieto 1993; García Cotarelo and López Nieto 1988; Giner and Sevilla Guzman 1980; Gunther, Sani, and Shabad 1988; McDonough, Barnes, and López Pina 1986; Padró-Solanet 1996). Suárez had called the elections with the aim of establishing the UCD as the dominant party of the center right. To accomplish this, he had broken with the policy of interparty cooperation and had begun directing a campaign based largely on a “red scare” strategy. When this strategy failed to achieve the desired results, it undermined the authority of Suárez and impeded his efforts to deal with intensified ETA bombings and attacks directed primarily against state security forces and to move the UCD toward the political center on a number of issues. Suárez’s weakness began to encourage a flare-up of the smoldering internal rivalries among the “barons” of the party’s many factions. By early 1981, the UCD was rapidly disintegrating, as dozens of its prominent figures fled into the ranks of the AP or the PSOE and others tried with little success to go it alone as leaders of minuscule parties. Suárez himself eventually became the leader of one of the largest, most lasting and influential of the splinter groups after resigning as prime minister and leaving the government in the hands of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, a competent if uninspiring administrator who had few enemies in what remained of the UCD. Unfortunately, the rise of Calvo Sotelo did nothing to reduce increasing public disillusionment with party politics or to discourage a small but wellpositioned and not altogether unrepresentative group of military officers from launching a coup attempt, which had been rather transparently promoted by the various factions of the extreme right for months. Thanks primarily to the actions of the king, loyal officers, and others in the royal circle, the coup collapsed in eighteen hours—but not before providing the world with dramatic pictures of virtually the entire political leadership of democratic Spain held

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captive in the Cortes under the wary eyes and threatening machine gun of Colonel Tejero of the Guardia Civil. As awful as the coup attempt was, it had a salutary shock effect on the general public and on politicians. Millions of Spaniards participated in marches and demonstrations to reaffirm their commitment to the new democratic order, whatever its flaws. In addition, Calvo Sotelo was able to form a government that remained fairly stable, at least for a few months. His most notable achievement during this period was to tie Spain more firmly to the West by committing the country to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although this move was opposed by the left and probably by a majority of the Spanish people, it facilitated the urgent task of “professionalizing” and depoliticizing the armed forces. Nevertheless, the increasing popularity of the PSOE indicated that the general elections scheduled for late 1982 would arrive none too soon. The rise of the PSOE was linked to the decline of the UCD, but it also resulted from the virtual collapse of the PCE. The PCE’s acceptance of the monarchy, commitment to a series of Moncloa pacts, and embrace of remarkably bland Eurocommunist policies tended to confuse and disillusion its working-class militants but did not succeed in attracting new electoral support. As a result, Spanish voters deserted the PCE in massive numbers, and support for the party dropped by two-thirds to a mere 4 percent of the popular vote in the elections of 1982. Meanwhile, the PSOE, steadily liberated from pressure on its left, underwent a process of internal transformation whose trajectory was nearly the opposite of the trajectories of the PCE and the UCD.7 Following the PSOE’s disappointing results in the election of 1979, the party’s two key leaders— Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, both of Seville—sought to move the party to the right by sponsoring proposals to remove militant rhetoric and references to Marxism from the party platform. Although the general party congress of May 1979 rejected these proposals, González responded by resigning as general secretary and threw the PSOE into crisis. Over the summer, Guerra managed to institute new procedures for the selection of party delegates and the conduct of party meetings. In September, an extraordinary congress restored González to the leadership of a non-Marxist and indeed only vaguely socialist party whose new rules allowed far less scope for internal democratic debate and dissent from the policies of the triumphant “Felipistas.” Thus, in the run-up to 1982, the PSOE was able to present itself as a reunited and moderate social democratic party that actively sought the support of middle-class voters. During the general election campaign, the PSOE defined itself as the party for change and criticized the opportunism of the fragmented right and the irresponsibility of the equally fragmented left. It also promised to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and to hold a referendum on NATO membership. Much of the appeal of the PSOE lay in its ability to portray itself as a truly

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The Best of All Possible Islands

modern force that would promote greater fairness and openness in government and administration and would more effectively address the complex problems involved in the creation of the new autonomous regions. The results of the PSOE campaign were stunning. The elections of October 1982 produced one of the greatest victories for the left in the history of European politics (Camiller 1986). The PSOE won twice as many votes as its nearest competitor, the AP; effectively destroyed the remnants of the UCD; won nearly 60 percent of the seats in the Cortes; and initiated a period of Socialist government that was to last fourteen years. Once in office, the PSOE began to consolidate its emerging political hegemony by occupying every position of power that was open to it in state institutions and the public sector. It was so successful in this effort that Guerra was moved to declare that “outside the PSOE, there is nothing but a political desert” (quoted in Gillespie 1988:253). With its strong parliamentary majority, the government was able to pass a number of significant reform measures in the areas of defense, administration, taxation, and finance. In the long run, however, the PSOE’s greatest achievement, at least in conventional social democratic terms, was to universalize access to health care, education, and pensions. Efforts in this regard led to a steady rise in social welfare expenditures, which soon neared the West European average of 25–30 percent of gross domestic product.8 Extending the domestic welfare state was secondary to the PSOE’s overarching aim of integrating Spain into the broader liberal political and economic order of western Europe. Thus, in eager pursuit of modernization, the González government adopted economic policies that encouraged privatization and industrial concentration, controlled inflation, increased exports and foreign investment, and were generally in accord with the desires of Spanish and international finance. What the PSOE failed to do was to address the problem of increasing levels of unemployment. Indeed, rather than creating new jobs (as the PSOE had promised), the government’s policies contributed to the loss of nearly half a million more jobs within its first two years in office (Camiller 1986). In the realm of foreign policy, the PSOE leadership decided to reverse its anti-NATO position (see Gooch 1986), largely in order to pass the ideological litmus test devised by Great Britain and Germany for membership in the European Community (EC). Since it had been militants of the PSOE who had most vociferously advocated withdrawal from NATO through the device of a referendum, this placed the PSOE in the peculiar position of having to undertake a massive propaganda campaign to defeat its own earlier and erstwhile popular efforts to reestablish Spanish neutrality and autonomy in international affairs.9 Under the leadership of González, the PSOE announced that it would postpone the NATO referendum until March 1986. Then, having demonstrated to the political and economic leaders of the free world a willingness to sacrifice principle for advantage, the González

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government reaped the reward for its historic reversals and signed the treaty for Spanish accession to the EC in June 1985. Entrance into the EC and the recommitment to NATO marked the close of the second, predominantly political phase of postwar Spanish liberalization. The decade of transition from 1975 to 1985 had not only led to the institutionalization and consolidation of parliamentary democracy, but it had also steadily narrowed the range of viable options open to party politicians. The PSOE had gained electoral dominance and had adopted many policies and positions that were more consistent with center-right “bourgeois” conservatism than with democratic socialism. This meant that no national political force could hope to do more than steal votes from the PSOE’s disgruntled right or left flanks if it did not devise a strategy to attract support from the nonideological and moderate center, where most Spanish citizens had come rather apathetically to rest and recuperate from their recent prodemocratic exertions. Although the PSOE lost some votes in the election of 1986, it preserved a substantial majority in the Congress of Deputies. Even so, the small decline in PSOE support reminded its leaders that as the party of government it could no longer define itself merely as “for change.” It had to present some compelling vision of the future. Increasingly, the project and rhetoric of fully integrating the country into “Europe” fit the bill because it neatly married interest to idealism by promising both a dramatic increase in domestic material prosperity and a greater involvement in the effort to overcome ancient national rivalries and promote international peace and harmony (see Holman 1996; Wigg 1988). Also, Spain’s initiation into the EC and the PSOE’s quest for revitalization roughly coincided with the passage in 1986 of the Single European Act, which set the basic course for the creation of the single European market in 1992 and also revived plans for greater political convergence and integration. Well attuned to these developments, González was soon to be counted among the most ardent international and Spanish advocates not only of economic unification but also of greater political, social, and cultural cohesion for the EC. In fact, most other Spanish politicians were hardly less vocal in their endorsement of Spain’s “European vocation.” Regionalists in Catalonia and the Basque country saw “Europe” as a valuable counterweight to state centralism and Spanish nationalism. Leaders of the AP, who steadfastly continued to defend the “unity of Spain,” nevertheless viewed support for Europeanization as essential if they were to overcome the lingering taint of Francoism and successfully present their party as democratic, forward-looking, and moderate. This was particularly the case after 1989, when the AP renamed itself El Partido Popular (PP). In conjunction with this change, Manuel Fraga surrendered his position as national leader to the youthful José María Aznar in 1990. Aznar’s main appeal was that he was clearly not Fraga and could hardly be imagined in the role of a great dictator, but his political adolescence was

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marred by a tendency to present himself as a wistful, oddly Chaplinesque imitation of Felipe González. Thus, for a variety of political as well as pragmatic and idealistic reasons, Europeanism increasingly became the central unifying theme of Spanish politics in the third phase of postwar liberalization. Only a sector of the new Communist-led coalition, La Izquierda Unida (IU, or united left), expressed consistent and serious doubts about the risks entailed in jumping too quickly on board the speeding trans-Euro express. Membership in the EC led to an astoundingly rapid transformation of many aspects of Spanish life in the late 1980s, as I had observed but not fully understood during my visit to Seville in 1990. The driving force behind this transformation was, as Alfred Tovias (1995:100) has remarked, not so much Spain’s entry into Europe as it was “Europe’s entry into Spain.” Accession to the EC required a liberalization of the terms of trade and finance, and this quickly brought about a huge increase in foreign investments in Spain and led to a much more complete integration of Spain into the European and global economy. Transnational banks and firms forged numerous mergers and partnership agreements with Spain, and a flood of foreign consumer goods entered the country (Salmon 1995:73). On the one hand, because relatively few transnational corporations were based in Spain, the country became increasingly dependent, both technologically and financially, on foreign executives, experts, and investors. On the other hand, Spain’s economy grew at an impressive annual rate of 5 percent between 1986 and 1990, and its gross domestic product per capita increased by 27 percent during the same period (Tovias 1995:99). Overall economic prosperity and a rise in the standard of living for many Spaniards had a powerful impact on social attitudes and orientations. In the late 1980s, for the first time ever, a majority of the Spanish people began to identify themselves in public opinion surveys as “middle-class” in their basic values and aspirations.10 Most people seemed to accept the general direction of change, and EC flags and bumper stickers proliferated in the cities and countryside. Nevertheless, there were still many problems causing dissatisfaction within different sectors of Spanish society. ETA terrorism continued almost unabated. Many Basques, Cataláns, and others were frustrated by the slow devolution of power from Madrid to the autonomous regions. University students, small business owners, and workers often feared that their jobs and job prospects would be threatened by policies that had been designed to speed industrial reorganization and make Spain more competitive in the global economy, and many in these groups felt that the government was not doing nearly enough to minimize the negative impact of new policies on their lives (see Bruton 1991). As a result, university students sponsored demonstrations to demand greater accessibility to higher education and sweeping curricular reforms designed to increase the availability of technical

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and professional training. In December 1988, unions organized a massive general strike to protest an increase in short-term labor contracts, inadequate unemployment support, and a number of government decisions that were disliked by the public at large. Moreover, lurking just behind the generally optimistic surface of social and political life, there was a diffuse but expanding sense of annoyance, skepticism, and unease concerning the costs and consequences of rapid modernization. To some extent, this unease was fostered by the self-satisfaction and arrogance that some Socialist politicians and technocrats openly displayed with respect to their leadership roles and by the steadily mounting rumors and fragmentary reports of widespread political corruption, favoritism, and graft. More broadly, there was a perception that economic prosperity had not brought with it any resolution of basic social problems of fairness, equality, and solidarity, nor had it helped to reduce tensions among regional, class, and sectoral interest groups. These doubts and problems were reflected in a decline of support for the PSOE in the general Spanish elections of 1989, thanks to which González’s government barely managed to maintain a one-vote majority in the Congress of Deputies. None of this, however, did much to undermine Spaniards’ basic and widespread faith in “Europeanization.” On the contrary, the six-month tenure of González as president of the EC clearly helped to limit Socialist losses to the PP and the IU in 1989. In addition, the disintegration of state socialism in the east, Spain’s active support for German reunification and for the Allies in the Gulf War, and the leading (and, on the whole, successful) role the Spanish government played in defending the interests of Mediterranean and even Latin American countries before the EC all tended to reinforce Spain’s commitment to maintaining a united and strong Europe in the emergent and still quite obviously disorderly and precarious “new world order.” During the complex negotiations that resulted in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which set the terms for European monetary union, the Spanish government argued for increased funding to achieve greater equality between the rich and poor regions of the EC, advocated the idea of general European citizenship and rights, sought to expand the powers of the European Parliament, and urged the development of mechanisms to enable EC members to formulate common positions on international and defense issues. In other words, the Spanish government demonstrated that it was willing to surrender a degree of national sovereignty and conform its foreign and domestic policies to those of the EC as a whole in the expectation of creating a more cohesive political as well as economic union. Moreover, while the signing of the Maastricht Treaty and related agreements on the new “European Union” immediately generated widespread concerns in many countries about the surrender of political, economic, and cultural autonomy to community bureaucrats in Brussels, a similar nationalist reaction did not occur in Spain. Although the Maastricht Treaty was rejected in a

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public referendum in Denmark and barely survived a similar test in France, the Congress of Deputies in Spain approved the treaty by an overwhelming majority, with 314 votes cast for ratification, 3 votes cast against, and 8 abstentions (Ortega 1995:182). For all of these reasons, it is clear that 1992 was a year in which enthusiasm for a “Europe without borders” was particularly intense among the Spanish public. In 1993, however, Spain began to feel the full impact of its economic liberalization policies and the lingering general European recession. Two devaluations of the peseta in quick succession and a sharp rise in unemployment made the public more aware of the broader socioeconomic consequences that would follow from austerity measures necessary for Spain to meet the requirements for monetary union in the late 1990s. In addition to having doubts about the Maastricht agenda and the pace of full integration into Europe, the Spanish public began to become disillusioned with the PSOE. As a result of questions about government policies and concerns about entrenched power, the PSOE failed to win a majority in the elections of 1993 and was forced to negotiate an informal and fragile parliamentary coalition with center-right Catalán and Basque regionalist parties in order to stay in office (see Lancaster 1994). Even though the economy rebounded in late 1994 and 1995, during this period the PP and the IU were able to further undermine the position of the PSOE by focusing public attention on a seemingly never-ending series of cases of political corruption and especially on the activities of the members of a criminal conspiracy responsible for the clandestine “dirty war” against the ETA terrorists. The activities of the anti-ETA group led to the deaths of innocent people and were carried out with the knowledge and consent of a number of high officials. The possibility that government ministers—including, perhaps, González—were aware of the conspiracy raised grave doubts about the ministers’ commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law and forced the discredited PSOE to accede to demands for an early election. The national election, which took place in March 1996, brought the uninterrupted fourteen-year reign of the PSOE to a close. But to the surprise of almost everyone, it did not result in a sweeping victory for the PP, headed by José María Aznar. Thanks in large measure to the efforts of the shrewd and still amazingly popular and trusted González, the PSOE managed to win 37 percent of the vote. Not only did this demonstrate the fundamental strength of the center left in Spain, but it also forced the PP to enter a coalition with a Catalán regionalist party to gain the parliamentary majority necessary to form a new government. The end of the PSOE’s hold on power did not alter Spain’s basic commitment to strengthening the EU. On the contrary, despite the Bosnian debacle and other setbacks, popular support for almost every aspect of Europeanization remained high in Spain in the latter half of the 1990s; and the Aznar government, which won the election again in 2000 thanks to a booming economy and a

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remarkably lackluster campaign by the new leadership of the PSOE, quickly showed its willingness to take any remaining steps necessary to achieve full integration into the new European political and economic order. Thus, in little more than two decades, Spain has been transformed from a marginal nation struggling to escape from the confines of a claustrophobic dictatorship into an essentially pluralistic, tolerant, and free society populated by forward-looking and outwardly directed “Euro-optimists.” Or so, perhaps just a tad too superficially, it seems. But setting problems of appearance and reality aside for the present, it is not difficult to see that the processes of liberalization sketched above are relevant to understanding the nature and significance of Expo ’92. For now, it is enough to observe that many of the sharpest twists and turns in the long road to liberalization also mark key turning points in the history of the Expo. For example, King Juan Carlos first publicly proposed a celebration of 1992 at a critical moment in the transition from dictatorship to democracy—namely, in the early summer of 1976, just before he appointed Adolfo Suárez the new head of government. The official decision to hold the Expo was made in 1982, just when control of the government and state was passing from the UCD to the PSOE. The basic design and plans for the event were formulated in 1985 and 1986, in conjunction with Spain’s entrance into the EC and recommitment to NATO. The construction of the Expo buildings occurred in conjunction with the economic boom propelled by “Europe’s entry into Spain.” The Expo and other events of the miraculous year were held when the “spirit of Maastricht” was at its height but the popularity of the PSOE was in decline. And efforts to transform the site of the Expo into a center for advanced technology and economic development after 1993 were undertaken in the midst of recession and a crisis in employment. Although Spanish officials represented the Expo as the best of all possible islands because it offered a comprehensive and optimistic vision of the past, present, and future of global civilization, there is every reason to suppose that this vision was itself decisively shaped by the specific historical forces that were at work during a short but critical period of rapid sociopolitical, cultural, and economic transformation in Spain and Europe. But if to understand the Expo it is necessary to consider it as a product of the processes, politics, and culture of liberalization and Europeanization that emerged and became dominant in Spain during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, might not something like the reverse also be true? In other words, could the Expo be viewed not only as a product of encompassing processes of liberalization but also as a kind of high-pressure laboratory or factory in which new transnational forms of liberalized sociopolitical relations, cultural representations, and ideological legitimations were being concocted out of already existing materials and tested in preparation for broader distribution and circulation throughout the new Spain, the new Europe, and the new world order? This possibility had barely occurred to me in the late spring of 1992, when I

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was pondering what an ethnographic account of such a peculiar event in the midst of such an extraordinary period might eventually look like. But as time passed, the idea assumed greater and greater importance.

4. Relocating the Subject: Macroethnography and Cosmopolitan Liberalism As I became increasingly aware of the relationship between the Expo and processes of liberalization, I began to investigate four broad and overlapping topics that would cast different sorts of light on this relationship. The first topic concerned the origins and development of the Expo as a nonpartisan project of the Spanish state. Although the idea for the Expo had originated with the king and his circle, it had gained at least the nominal support of all sectors of the national “political class” by the early 1980s. Even so, the ultimate success of the project hinged on winning the participation of other countries, transnational corporations, intergovernmental bodies of the European Community, international organizations, and regional governments in Spain—each of which sought to promote its own interests and perspectives. As a result, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a seemingly endless series of negotiations conducted primarily by Expo officials and Spanish diplomats. The outcomes of these negotiations influenced the basic design and most of the details of the Expo. By charting the course of these courtships, I believed that it would be possible to understand how the position of Spain and of other states and institutions within the shifting international politicoeconomic and cultural order of existing liberalism was represented through the structure, themes, and organization of the exposition. The second topic to investigate was how the political dominance of the Socialist party in Spain and Andalusia affected events in Seville. Although the Expo was formally a nonpartisan project of the state, primary responsibility for it rested in the hands of the various Socialist governments in Madrid for most of the Expo’s history, and it was obvious that the project had been powerfully conditioned not only by international factors but also by domestic politics and the efforts of a variety of actors and groups to gain the upper political hand by building winning coalitions or by preventing their adversaries from doing so. Therefore, what I wanted to know was how the Socialists’ efforts to turn the Expo to their partisan advantage had shaped the event and how this, in turn, had influenced the Expo’s larger significance. The third topic to explore was the dynamics of the Expo as an unfolding public and media event. The primary way in which the Expo presented itself to

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its visitors and the world was as a prepackaged and relatively static array of thematically organized pavilions, displays, and images. Nevertheless, the meanings and values of the Expo’s material forms were subject to constant official and media interpretation, reinterpretation, and commentary over the course of the Expo’s six-month duration. Thus, there were many different versions of the Expo presented over time in accordance with who was talking or acting, when, and under what circumstances. From this perspective, one of the key questions posed by the event was how and to what extent the unceasing babble and bustle of Expo ceremonies, speeches, and entertainments altered the highly structured ways of viewing the world conveyed by the Expo’s material images and official themes. The fourth topic to investigate was how the Expo’s various audiences and participants actually encountered and talked about the event. Although the Expo was primarily intended to appeal to a mass audience of Spanish and European visitors, it was by no means clear that anything approaching a broad consensus of opinion about the meaning, value, or success of the event existed or would finally emerge. On the contrary, it seemed likely that local tour guides, supervisors of foreign national pavilions, maintenance workers, Sevillanos denied season passes, Spaniards traveling from northern regions of the country and stopping by for a day or two on their way to the beach, and German tourists attending both the Olympics and the Expo—to mention only a few of the possibilities—would respond to the Expo quite differently not only because they would be exposed to different facets of the event but also because they would bring along with them quite different personal and social expectations that would shape their understanding of it. Thus, to say anything at all convincing about the broad impact and efficacy of the Expo with respect to the cultural politics of liberalism, it was imperative to gain some sense of at least the most salient factors and dispositions that conditioned how different sorts of people experienced the event. Guided by, or perhaps burdened with, these four rather disparate topics for investigation, I began the most intense period of my field research by arranging a series of interviews with present and former Expo and Seville officials and functionaries. I also continued to amass and read more than a decade’s worth of official documents and newspaper accounts relevant to understanding the event. I discovered much more about the general history of the Expo and how it had affected life in Seville than I had known before, and I also slowly began to piece together an account of the intricate, shifting, and partly hidden political strategies and tactics that had surrounded and permeated the project from its very beginning. However, I had to postpone much of the research on my first two topics until after the summer and early fall of 1992, because it was urgent to observe the Expo and to talk to as many people as possible about it before it closed in October. I generally spent three or four days of most weeks in or around the Expo site, visiting pavilions and attending a long string of speeches, ceremonies,

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temporary exhibits, and performances. I was usually alone but was sometimes accompanied by my family and friends from Aracena or Seville. I also had hundreds of casual conversations with visitors about the event and related topics. On the whole, these informal “interviews” were remarkably easy and pleasurable to do, especially on crowded days when people were bored with waiting in long lines or in the late afternoons when they sought rest or refuge from the heat. In the evenings, while I waited for something or other to begin, I often passed the time by nursing a five-dollar beer and filling in sketchy notes about what I had seen and heard earlier. Clearly, in the larger anthropological scheme of things, fieldwork at the Expo did not qualify as hardship duty. But why, I guiltily asked myself, endure the travails of a quest for some remote and pristine ethnographic El Dorado when I could visit what the Expo promoters called “the whole world in a day?” Yet not quite everything about my direct encounter with the Expo was sweetness and light in the lap of luxury. Two developments prevented me from becoming enthralled by its comfortable charms. A good while before arriving in Spain with Sharon, my wife, we had decided that it would be better to live in Aracena than in Seville during the Expo. This was partly for the sake of our budget but primarily for the sake of our fouryear-old son. It would be far better for him to be free to play and roam with the children of our friends in a quiet and safe town than to be isolated in a dingy, overpriced apartment in a badly overcrowded city. Initially, then, I thought of the countless trips to Seville and the other liabilities involved in doing commuter ethnography simply as a professional price that had to be paid in exchange for personal benefits. Soon, though, I realized that every day I was encountering what seemed like a critically important but quite mystifying puzzle: Why were all of my most esteemed friends and the majority of townspeople in Aracena so vastly (and for me, at first, annoyingly) indifferent to events that were drawing worldwide attention barely an hour’s easy drive away? It was all well and good to consider what visitors to the Expo thought about it, but what about the hundreds of thousands of nearby Andalusians who often frankly did not give a damn? What did this suggest about the broader politics and culture of liberalism of which the Expo was a part? While I was wondering if my hitherto esteemed friends were just a bunch of dull provincials, a new development occurred and began to restore my respect for their judgment. Just as the public crisis concerning season passes for Expo was reaching its final frustrating conclusion, my own private and extended efforts to gain access to everything I needed to know about the Expo took an abrupt turn for the worse. To make a long story short: There I was— a scholar well-armed with government approval for my research, with a grant from Spain’s own ministry of culture, and with some good personal contacts— and when I sought pro forma permission from the Expo organizers to conduct research on the Expo site, I ran into a bureaucratic stonewall. This led to a direct and heated confrontation with a high official of the Expo, who offered a

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“compromise” solution that I rejected as an affront to and assault on scholarly independence. But having escaped from this encounter with some semblance of professional integrity (barely) intact, I was still faced with the dilemma of whether I should make my difficulties public at a time when tensions between the Expo and Seville would have made them a hot story for the local press. For a number of reasons, I was sufficiently chagrined by my loss of innocence that I chose instead simply to cultivate my various existing gardens more diligently. The proprietary attitude of Expo officials and the indifference that my Aracena friends showed toward the Expo together exerted a powerful distancing and alienating effect on my view of the events of 1992. I had been disposed initially to see the Expo in the best possible light, but now I became much more skeptical about the whole project. I must confess that the line separating ethnographic realism from skeptical cultural criticism had begun to become somewhat blurry for me at this time. However, after the conclusion of my research in Andalusia in 1992, I saw the principal task before me as one of constructing a “macroethnography” of the Expo. I first heard this term used by Michael Herzfeld during a lecture in which he urged anthropologists to supplement what they discovered through the use of traditional methods of direct participant observation with other types of information and evidence derived from “secondary” sources, such as archives, historical and literary works, and print and electronic media.1 The basic idea, as I understood it, was to extend the range of ethnographic interpretation by taking into account large sociopolitical formations and cultural processes, such as nation-states and nationalism, without sacrificing the virtues of contextual holism and interpretive particularism that have long characterized anthropological accounts of much smaller units of analysis, such as rural communities and local customs. To offer a macroethnographic account of the Expo, I needed a format that would allow me to show how interlinked but partially autonomous sociopolitical and cultural processes of widely varying scope, intensity, focus, and duration had affected one another and shaped the Expo as a complex event. The best format, I concluded, would be an episodic and discontinuous narrative history that would make it relatively easy to shift interpretive attention back and forth, sometimes focusing on the “little worlds” of the Expo, its visitors, Seville, and surrounding areas of Andalusia and other times focusing on the “big worlds” of international power relations, economic globalization, national politics, and the like. This is why my exposition of the Universal Exposition is broken into twenty-four substantive and interpretive essays. The essays are arranged in six overlapping parts that loosely correspond with the chronological stages of the Expo’s development and also signal shifts in primary interpretive and analytic focus. Part I, “Guidelines: Contemporary Ethnography and the New World Order in Spain,” has described the Expo in the context of contemporary Spain

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and contemporary ethnography. Part II, “Origins and Structures: The State, the Party, and the Expo,” focuses on the period from 1976 to 1990. It describes how the status of the universal exposition as a project of the state and of the governing Socialist party, as well as the difficulties involved in winning the participation of countries around the world, led to an event in which traditional symbols of national unity and identity were virtually banished from the site and supplanted by celebratory images of cultural and political pluralism. Part III, “Conjunctures and Conflicts: Technobureaucracy and the City,” focuses on bureaucratic struggles and rivalries inside the Expo organization in 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992. It explores how the struggles generated an event that had two sharply contrasting faces—one of which could be characterized as high-brow, humanistic, historical, and educational, and the other of which emphasized science and technology, mass entertainment, the future, and the economic bottom line. In addition, this part examines how the struggles inside the Expo influenced electoral politics in Seville and eventually sparked a revival of an oppositional “antipolitical politics” shaped by tradition-based local egalitarian and populist sentiment. The next two parts concentrate on the period from April 1992 to October 1992. Part IV, “Pavilions and Performances: The Expo as Cultural Olympics,” considers the Expo as a media event in which official participants engaged in a sometimes tacit and sometimes overt competition with one another in order to present their countries and institutions in the best possible light. Part V, “Dispositions and Practices: The Sense of Freedom and the Politics of Daily Life,” discusses the experiences and opinions of representatives from the Expo’s various audiences and explores the gap that existed between what the Expo’s organizers hoped to communicate and achieve in 1992 and what the event actually meant to those who built, visited, protested, and renounced it. Part VI, “The Aftermath,” deals with the period from late 1992 to 2001, describes what happened on La Isla de la Cartuja after the Expo ended, and discusses how developments on the island have influenced the ways in which the Expo is being remembered and evaluated in Seville. The “macroethnography” concludes by showing the links between the local history and events presented here and the broader political and cultural tendencies and dilemmas in fin de siècle and fin de millennium Spain and Europe. The work as a whole thus represents a history of the political culture of contemporary Spain as viewed through the ethnographic prism of a single event. But what is to be learned from this ethnographic history? As suggested earlier, the Expo was more than simply a product of the transition to a liberal, democratic order in post-Franco Spain. It was also a forum for advancing visions of the future of Spain, Europe, and the new world order. Seen from this perspective, the Expo can be considered to have fostered and promoted a view of the world in keeping with the tenets of what may be called “cosmopolitan liberalism.” My exploration of the tensions between cosmopolitan liberalism and the local egalitarian and populist traditions and impulses in Seville is what

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ultimately gives my account of the history of the Expo its overall analytic coherence and interpretive focus. In using the term “cosmopolitan liberalism,” I mean to refer to a highly contested and still somewhat inchoate configuration of cultural and political representations, values, images, and practices—a configuration that has already exerted a powerful influence on politics and daily life in contemporary Spain, Europe, and elsewhere and may yet crystalize into the dominant ideological formation of the twenty-first century.2 Cosmopolitan liberalism involves a reworking of some of the elements of conventional liberalism in ways that are better suited to the recent, rapid, and radical transformations of the global political and economic order. It thereby encompasses a complex set of responses to various actual or looming crises of legitimation and cultural authority that have been generated over the last two or more decades by shifts in global power arrangements, communications technologies, transnational patterns of production, exchange and capital accumulation, and the decline and collapse of state socialism. While there is no satisfactory way of briefly summarizing the philosophical views of human nature, history, and society on which the principles of cosmopolitan liberalism depend, it is at least important to note the following: Like other forms of liberalism, cosmopolitan liberalism ultimately derives most of its intellectual and cultural authority from its association with (1) a universalizing minimalist ethical humanism of individual rights and freedoms and (2) a maximalist philosophical and scientific rationalism that constitutes human beings, history, societies, and cultures as objects of knowledge, judgment, and governance. Both of these elements reflect an Enlightenment heritage.3 This philosophical tradition is important to bear in mind because it has influenced the most politically highly charged feature of contemporary cosmopolitan liberalism—namely, its preoccupation with and peculiarly naturalized and bipolar vision of the historical and contemporary significance of pluralism and cultural diversity. On the one hand, cultural diversity is represented as an expression of human freedom and a vital source, impetus, and locus of organic creativity and vitality. Vive la différence and, with it, innovation, change, imagination, art, invention, spirituality, happiness, wealth, progress, good ethnic restaurants—in short, most of the promise of civilized life and the proffered pleasures of Expo ’92. On the other hand, cultural differences are depicted as the root cause of most conflict, hatred, intolerance, and human suffering. In this respect, cosmopolitan liberalism is defined as the adversary of all forms of fundamentalism, essentialism, and religious, ideological, racial, and ethnic extremism that attempt to impose an excessive and divisive order on life but in so doing almost inevitably degenerate into violent anarchy and chaos. As a result, cosmopolitan liberalism tends to regard cultural differences—all the various categories of thought, action, and relationships that are constituted as otherness—either as

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fertile grounds to be cultivated and harvested or as wild kingdoms, full of threatening beasts to be tamed. This is to say that because of these polarized perceptions of the possibilities and dangers of otherness, contemporary cosmopolitan liberalism tends to define its primary political and cultural responsibility as one of domesticating the world and thereby making cultural differences both safe and productive. Every liberal tradition has a favored repertoire of normative prescriptions and coercive, tutelary, disciplinary, and regulatory strategies for counterbalancing freedom with the requirements of sociopolitical order. However, what distinguishes contemporary cosmopolitan liberalism from its liberal siblings and ancestors is the special priority that it gives to perspectives and projects which promote and create structures that mediate diversity and differences of all kinds at every level of social relations and thereby supposedly reduce conflict. In other words, cosmopolitan liberalism places the highest value on any institution or activity that can be construed as fostering interchanges, which bring divergent traditions, values, practices, and forms of meaning and identity into active interrelationships with one another in ways that generate new forms of interdependency. In the economic sphere, for instance, the expansion of free trade and the fluid movement of global capital are celebrated not merely because they promise to increase wealth and gradually improve conditions of life everywhere but also because they create pathways that bring peoples and cultures together and generate new forms of communication and interaction. From this perspective, basic processes of commodification function to mediate differences by making divergent values and interests at least partially commensurate with one another. For example, when the government of Papua New Guinea purchases some carved wooden masks from people of its Sepik River region, transports them to its pavilion at the Seville Expo, and places them on sale at a price that may be tempting, say, to a visiting American anthropologist, several things occur: Indigenous people are brought into the global cash nexus and are further incorporated into a state system; a sacred artifact is reobjectified and transvalued into a profane commodity but as folk “art” still manages to retain an aura of the exotic and spiritual; and a skeptical scholar becomes a sated consumer (“Damn, what a beauty this mask is; what a deal; what a wonderful world!”). From the perspective of cosmopolitan liberalism, all this is regarded positively insofar as it can be construed as domesticating without wholly obliterating cultural differences and as reducing the chances of discord and confrontation along several axes of economic, social, political, and cultural relations. Such exchanges can be seen as contributing to the creation of an emergent world cultural ecumene characterized by the proliferation of what Richard Wilk (1995) aptly terms “structures of common difference” that permit diversity and competition but limit and discourage conflict. Wilk discusses beauty pageants in Belize and the Caribbean, but what he says of them can be applied

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equally to the Expo in Seville, the Olympics in Barcelona, and countless other contemporary cultural phenomena ranging from soap operas to popular music genres that bring people from diverse cultural traditions either directly or indirectly together. Indeed, according to the Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition, one of the key justifications for the Expo was that it would help to forge “solidarity through interchange” in ways that might ultimately lead to the creation of “one single world common to all its inhabitants” (see OCGE 1987:8). Yet the full cultural force that cosmopolitan liberalism exerts by giving pride of place to strategies for the mediation and domestication of differences can be appreciated best when it is considered from a more directly political perspective. In this sphere what is distinctive about cosmopolitan liberalism is the stress that it places on gradually transforming an international regime based on the sovereign power of nation-states. In the interests of freedom, peace, and progress, critical dimensions of state power should be partially or wholly devolved and redistributed not just “upward” to suprastate and transnational bodies (such as the European Union and the Andean Pact) but also “downward” to subnational regional or ethnic and political communities (such as Catalonia and Scotland) and “outward” to public and private entities (such as national and transnational corporations, autonomously chartered banks and agencies, and nongovernmental organizations). This does not mean, however, that the state itself, much less the forms of coercive and regulatory power associated with it, will wither away (increasingly, a neoliberal as well as a Marxist fantasy). On the contrary, intrinsic to the logic of cosmopolitan liberalism is the notion that even as the state divests itself of some of its monopolies, it must also shoulder many of the new burdens involved in the increasingly indispensable and multidimensional functions of policing and coordinating the dense networks of interrelationships that exist among overlapping but quasi-autonomous entities, interests, processes, peoples, and cultures. Indeed, this vision of interactive, intermediary cosmopolitan polities that orchestrate ever-increasing multilayered interdependence and heterogeneity goes well beyond the concepts of mediation as interest balancing or as compensatory equalization by a centralized authority as they have been elaborated in either the laissez-faire versions or the welfare state versions of classic liberalism.4 Even though the appeal of cosmopolitan liberalism is not limited to any one group, its way of viewing the world is clearly most attractive to and consistent with the training, experience, interests, and functions of a particular class group. This group consists of the higher tiers of professionals, managers, career politicians, bureaucrats, executive officers, and the many sorts of technical, academic, and policy advisers who are supposed to be essential for the smooth day-to-day functioning and long-term development and integration of the new global political economy. This is the group whose members are best positioned to be the primary mediators and domesticators of

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cultural differences in the contemporary world and whose members are both qualified and inclined to approach most of the difficulties they face as a series of “problems” that can best be resolved through the systematic development and application of disciplines, policies, and programs which are represented as nonideological, nonpartisan, and pragmatic in their essential aims and spirit.5 Yet as the affair of the season passes and much else about the Expo suggests, the relationship between cosmopolitan elites and ordinary citizens is far more troubled and contentious than the Expo’s pavilions, programs, and representations ever indicated. Indeed, although the Expo was touted as a celebration of the achievements and promise of the new democratic Spain within the new order of a cosmopolitan and liberal European Union, the cultural politics of class, national, and regional identity that surrounded the event suggest a condition of present stasis and possibly impending crisis in processes of democratization. As corporate elites and state experts invoked ideals of freedom and tolerance and diversity in ways that furthered the concentration of technocorporate power in their own hands, many citizens of Seville felt compelled to reassert their own sense of cultural and to some extent political autonomy, while other protesters and critics discovered that their populist, egalitarian versions of cosmopolitanism were deemed beyond the bounds of legitimacy. Ultimately, however, the outcome of this contest was from most perspectives a less than inspiring political and cultural stalemate—a tempest in a teakettle. So even if, as seems likely, ordinary people and committed dissenters alike persist in their efforts to advance alternative visions of how to be citizens of their homelands and the world, what happened at the Expo does little to reassure us that such efforts will necessarily lead to a significant democratic transformation of sociopolitical relations anytime soon. In these circumstances, perhaps the most important contribution that an ethnographic study of the Expo can make is to help us better understand in what ways cosmopolitan liberalism encourages and in what ways it impedes the realization of more democratic, egalitarian, and just societies. From this perspective, my account of the Expo can be seen as a step toward the further development of a set of neo-Toquevillean ethnographic projects and themes within the anthropology of Europe whose general aim ought to be to explore the varieties of actually existing European liberalism (see also Verdery 1997) in order to better understand how notions of freedom, tolerance, equality, democracy, the individual, civil society, and the state vary in expression and practice from place to place, from time to time, and according to people’s social positions, immediate circumstances, and life trajectories.6 Without such work, we are unlikely to understand why, as John Borneman and Nick Fowler (1997:510) have observed, processes of Europeanization appear to be locked in an almost “manic-depressive cycle” of “Europhoria” and “Europessimism.” Nor will we be likely to conceive or advance any useful alternatives to this pattern.

PART II

䉬 Origins and Structures: The State, the Party, and the Expo

5. Royal Patronage of a Noble Tradition: Madrid, Santo Domingo, Washington, and Paris, 1976–1982 According to the Expo ’92 Official Guide, “On 31 May 1976, H. M. King Juan Carlos I of Spain announced that a Universal Exposition was to be held to celebrate the Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America” (see SEEUS 1992b:21). The statement, strictly speaking, is not correct. It serves as a sort of myth of origin, conveying the impression that the Expo sprang fully conceived from the royal mind, like wisdom from the ear of Zeus. The myth serves a number of useful purposes—such as enhancing the king’s prestige and defining the Expo as a straightforward project of the state—but it also distorts what may now seem to many Spaniards to be ancient history, something best left pleasantly blurred in the mists of time. In 1976, Juan Carlos did not literally “announce a Universal Exposition.” What he publicly envisioned was, for good reasons, put in slightly vaguer, more conditional, and less confining terms. To overlook this, as published versions of the origins of the Expo have tended to do since the early 1980s, creates an aura of manifest destiny about the celebration by obscuring the cultural politics that made it a risky venture from its very beginnings. But at almost any point along the long road from 1976 to 1992, events could have swung in a quite different direction. Indeed, when the king made his proposal in May 1976, virtually nothing was certain in Spanish affairs, least of all the future of the monarchy. It was only a few months before, in November 1975, that Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Spain’s dictator for nearly forty years, had died in Madrid. In accordance with the Caudillo’s plans, Juan Carlos de Borbón had recently been “installed” on a throne that had been vacant since the exile of Juan Carlos’s grandfather (Alfonso XIII) and the foundation of the second Spanish republic in 1931. As Franco lay dying, Juan Carlos had become the new head of state and, as such, he was formally pledged to defending the fundamental laws of the authoritarian regime that had been born in 1936 amidst the blood, ashes, and embittered passions of the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s demise quickly raised pressures for democratization to the boiling point. While the king recognized the need for liberalization, Carlos Arias Navarro, Spain’s prime minister, vacillated about implementing a law of reform that would make political parties legal. Arias Navarro dallied and finally failed to implement the law, in part because he feared the reaction of the army and Francoist stalwarts. In the view of the king and many other moderates, the failures of the prime minister seemed to be leading toward a complete disaster. Arias Navarro clearly had to go, but to dismiss him precipitously might well lead to a situation that threatened the monarchy itself. The army or the

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Francoist stalwarts might be provoked into attempting some sort of direct takeover, or the democratic opposition might irrevocably commit itself to a republic. In either case, a prophecy made by Santiago Carillo, the head of the Communist party in Spain, would be fulfilled: the king’s reign would go down in history as the reign of “Juan the Brief.”1 To forestall the end of his reign and to achieve what came to be called a ruptura pactada (a negotiated break) with the Francoist regime, the king not only had to distance himself politically from his own government but also had to strengthen his ability to act autonomously. But how could he do this? After consultations with his circle of advisers, Juan Carlos decided that he would be the first Spanish monarch in half a millennium to make a state visit to the Americas. The visit would have to be short, because being too far removed from the scene in Spain was as dangerous for the king as being on the scene but appearing incapable of acting. Therefore, he planned only two main stops, the first one in Santo Domingo, the capital city founded by Columbus in Spain’s first American colony, the present Dominican Republic, and the second one in Washington, D.C., the capital city of the “Free World.” The key theme running through Juan Carlos’s speeches and remarks in Santo Domingo on 30 and 31 May 1976 was the depth of Spain’s ties to Latin America and the king’s wish to revitalize them. Thus, even though the president of the Dominican Republic, Joaquín Balaguer, greeted the king with an expression of confidence that Spain would succeed in overcoming its “present crisis . . . under the guidance of its young monarch” (LV 1 Jun 1976:7), Juan Carlos scarcely made even indirect reference to the current state of affairs at home. Instead, in his main speech in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo (LV 1 Jun 1976:7), the king said, “We have much in common: language, culture, history, blood, the architecture of the cities, and the style of life that unites us even as it permits us to maintain our own identity in the same way that mountains are united at their base and are distanced from one another at their peaks.” After dwelling at some length on the character of these shared traditions, the king indicated that the Spanish crown would commit itself to “animating the voice of culture” and then made the following declaration: By renewing a noble family and monarchical tradition, I would wish, if everyone will help me, that the third Ibero-American international exposition might be celebrated in Spain. The first two, as you may remember, were celebrated in Seville and in Barcelona and were sponsored by my grandfather, King Alfonso XIII. Our peoples are ready. They can do something to be proud of. They should. It is only necessary to demonstrate what they are and what they do. For me, personally, nothing would be more inspiring than to initiate my reign with this enterprise and to become the patron of our strength and the spokesman of our spirit.

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. . . I want to proclaim from this first city of America my faith in the future of the Dominican Republic, which opens itself to us full of hope, and our firm decision to remain faithful to the Hispanic world, to which, in the phrase of your excellency [Balaguer], we feel ourselves always tied by the work of blood and by the mandate of history. (LV 1 June 1976:7) Several points about the king’s speech should be noted. Juan Carlos did not envision a “Universal Exposition” but instead spoke of a more narrowly focused and specialized exposition. He clearly hoped to hold the event soon (to initiate his reign) and did not link it to the still rather distant “Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America.” What he said was more like a tentative gesture or a conditional trial balloon launched into the winds than an “announcement” of a concrete proposal. More important, despite a couple of references to the future, Juan Carlos was hardly speaking as a visionary modernist or embracing ideals of progress. There was nothing in what he said to alarm conservative and reactionary forces at home. On the contrary, his themes were reassuringly familiar, were perfectly consistent with the rhetoric of political fraternity, and barely concealed a cultural condescension that had long characterized Francoist invocations of “hispanidad.” One of the key functions of this rhetoric was to reinforce nationalist sentiment by recalling the glories of the imperial past. Thus, in his speech in Santo Domingo, Juan Carlos was attempting to augment his prestige at home and abroad by declaring the continuities that existed between his reign and all of Spanish history, including recent Francoist history, and by asserting his traditional prerogatives as a patron of culture. The king pursued a quite different strategy in his more crucial visit to Washington. Having already evidently received private assurances of political backing from Henry Kissinger and the Department of State, the king was greeted by President Gerald Ford, who declared, “We are encouraged by Spanish progress under your leadership” and “we look forward to building and strengthening our relationship” (see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1979:813). To this critical public endorsement, the king responded with thanks and stated: The time of transition that the world is living through demands clarity of thought, a firm purpose, a resolute acknowledgment of the supremacy of spiritual values, and a constant exercise of the virtue of prudence, a virtue which is so particularly enshrined in your Declaration of Independence. But this objective could not be achieved without the certainty of being able to rely, should the need arise, on the many benefits derived from all good friendships. (Public Papers 1979:813) Later the same day, Juan Carlos alluded to the American bicentennial and spoke of freedom and order in his address to a joint session of Congress:

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The Best of All Possible Islands The monarchy will ensure, under the principles of democracy, that social peace and political stability are maintained in Spain. At the same time, the monarchy will ensure the orderly access to power of distinct political alternatives in accordance with the freely expressed will of the people. (Congressional Record 2 Jun 1976:16196)

These remarks reaffirmed the king’s commitment to political liberalization and his “certainty” of American backing for his leadership. The king’s speech did not go unheeded in Spain, nor did his stress on maintaining order. But the speech raised the possibility that Juan Carlos, like many figures of the Franco regime before him, was good at sounding much more progressive abroad than he acted at home. Take the phrase, “under the principles of democracy.” Did Juan Carlos mean “democracy” in the liberal American sense of electoral democracy or in something more like the Francoist sense of “organic democracy,” which had quite different political implications? He very likely preferred the former over the latter, and reformers could take hope; but his remarks had a useful ambiguity that left his political options open should his plans go awry. All in all, the king’s American journey was a masterful performance that revealed both his skill at maintaining a delicate ideological balance and his increasing strength as an autonomous political actor. While the king was in Washington, he embraced liberal ideals and prudent reform; while in Santo Domingo, he identified himself as a cultural conservative and ardent nationalist. For quite a while to come, these two tendencies were to define the cultural and ideological space of nationalist liberalism or liberal nationalism within which the Expo was conceived and developed. In the short run, however, the king’s proposed Ibero-American exposition, though admirably suited to his immediate political purposes of the moment, was quickly forgotten by almost everyone in the rush of ensuing events. Thanks in considerable measure to the resounding political and popular success of his voyage to the New World, Juan Carlos was able to replace Prime Minister Arias Navarro with the reform-minded but barely known Adolfo Suárez and thus to set in motion the difficult and perilous months of political and constitutional change that lay ahead. The general idea of sponsoring an Ibero-American exposition was subsequently taken up by members of the king’s inner circle of advisors and, in particular, by Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal, a wealthy diplomat and businessman who was a personal friend of the king and also happened to be a descendant of Columbus. During the late 1970s, some discussions were held concerning what might be appropriate for an Ibero-American exposition. As more time passed, plans for an exposition were incorporated into incipient plans for observing the upcoming fifth centenary of Columbus’s first voyage. What was envisaged at this point was a rather modest exposition set amidst a large and diverse set of official ceremonies, public observations, and academic, cultural, political, and

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economic exchanges. These activities were to be developed and coordinated by the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary, a commission that would be headed by Prado y Colón and would operate under the auspices of the Institute of Hispanic Culture. The institute was an agency that had been set up under the Franco regime to promote cooperative agreements between Spain and the countries of Latin America. Even as late as 1980 and 1981, members of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary had made few firm decisions about the 1992 celebrations in Spain. This state of affairs changed dramatically when they learned that a group in Italy was planning an exposition in honor of Columbus and that a group of Chicago business executives wished to sponsor a world’s fair in 1992 in the United States. The Spaniards immediately realized that no series of ceremonies and observations, however impressive and elaborate, was likely to win anything approaching the prestige and publicity of a world’s fair. As one Spanish official argued (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:80), the fair would inevitably become “the culminating point of the commemoration of the fifth centenary,” and other observations would be relegated to a secondary position. Faced with the unhappy prospect of being upstaged, the Spaniards concluded that the only effective way to answer the challenge from Chicago was to develop a proposal for a full-scale world’s fair in Spain. They also concluded that a pilgrimage to Paris was urgently required.2 Why Paris? As Walter Benjamin (1986:146) once observed, Paris had been the “capital of the nineteenth century,” the city that had most clearly expressed the triumphant new order of a bourgeois liberalism that transformed Europe and transformed the world. One of the ways in which Paris had expressed the triumphant new order was through the invention and elaboration of the cultural genre of world fairs—a genre that celebrated the material abundance and the industrial and commercial expansion of capitalism, the beneficent power of technology and science, the consolidation of national states, the glories of empire, the march of progress, and the superiority of Western civilization over all other civilizations. Although the first of the great exhibitions had been held in London (in the Crystal Palace in 1851), Paris had soon overshadowed this rival. Paris had hosted no fewer than seven major exhibitions (in 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900, 1931, and 1937), while London, New York, and Chicago had trailed far behind, with only two each.3 In keeping with its primacy in this realm of cultural endeavor, Paris had naturally become the seat of the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE), an agency formed to regulate expositions. The BIE was established by international convention in 1928. Its basic functions are to classify exhibitions into “universal” and various “special” types, to set the frequency with which exhibitions are held, and to facilitate and oversee the organization and development of the events. As a licensing organ, the BIE is able to exercise a considerable degree of cosmopolitan control over the representations of culture and history that are promulgated through literally

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hundreds of exhibitions ranging in scope from small trade fairs to displays of colonial art. Under the auspices of the BIE, expositions have been held in recent decades not only in Europe and North America but also in sites such as Tasmania, Guatemala, Hanoi, Calcutta, and Osaka. In early 1982, a Spanish delegation prepared to set off for Paris with a proposal that had been rather quickly cobbled together. The situation was delicate, and success was by no means guaranteed. The problem was that the Chicago group had already presented its proposal to the BIE the year before, and some strategy was needed to counter this advantage and gain approval to hold an exposition in Seville. Further complicating matters was a plan, which never bore fruit, to hold a universal exposition in 1989 in Paris to commemorate the French Revolution. As the Spanish delegation formally petitioned in Paris, other Spanish officials initiated discussions with officials of ten Latin American countries to convince them to join the governing body of the BIE. The Spaniards apparently argued that their government was likely to be far more sensitive and responsive to Latin American concerns about how the discovery of America was represented than were a group of entrepreneurs from Chicago. Given the strength of Latin American resentments concerning U.S. cultural imperialism, this was evidently not a hard case to make, and by early summer the General Assembly of the BIE had ten new members. Faced with the threat to their plans posed by the new Latin American members in the BIE, the Chicago entrepreneurs quickly realized the advantages of compromise. In November 1982, the American and the Spanish groups submitted a joint document requesting that the universal exposition of 1992 have two seats, one in Chicago and the other in Seville. In December, this unprecedented arrangement was approved by the General Assembly of the BIE, whose ten new members from Latin America voted for the first time. Thus, it took nearly a year for the Spanish state to overcome the advantage gained by the Chicago business executives through their private initiative and enterprise. The next step for the Spanish organizers of the exposition was to overcome obstacles at home. Under the leadership of Suárez, La Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) had played a critical role in steering Spain from dictatorship to full constitutional democracy in the years following Franco’s death. In deference to the Spanish king, the UCD backed plans for the Expo in the international arena, but its support was at best inconsistent and lukewarm because the party and its leaders were preoccupied with far more serious concerns. By late 1981, the UCD was rapidly disintegrating into antagonistic factions, terrorism in the Basque country was on the increase, and the economy was in dire straits. Worse still, the fundamental stability of Spain’s new liberal democratic system remained in some doubt, and the country was reeling in the aftermath of the February 1981 attempted coup. But partly for these very reasons, members of the UCD were not inclined to deny anything that the king wished. For it was the king who, in their eyes, had saved the new Spanish democracy. On 24 February

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1981 at 1:24 A.M., when the elected government of Spain was still being held at gunpoint in the Congress of Deputies, Juan Carlos had proclaimed to the army and the nation that “the crown . . . cannot tolerate, in any form, actions or attitudes of persons who try to interrupt the democratic process of the Constitution” (quoted in Maxwell and Spiegel 1994:17). After this declaration, the coup attempt had rapidly disintegrated. The king’s actions during the crisis convinced the general public once and for all of his commitment to liberal democracy and made him a national hero. Yet even the king’s clout and the success of Spanish diplomats in Paris did not completely guarantee that the Expo would take place. As everyone knew, the political star of the Socialists was in rapid ascent, and many militants within El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) remained hostile to the monarchy. Thus, when the Socialists finally gained control of the government, it was likely that they would try to undermine any project that promised to further enhance what they regarded as the excessive prestige and influence of Juan Carlos. As things turned out, after the PSOE’s great victory in the elections of late 1982, the cultural politics surrounding the Expo were indeed radically transformed, but not in the way many Socialist militants had wished. Rather than undermining the Expo project, the new Socialist government sought to take it over and to use it to reinforce its political position, just as the king had used it and to some degree continued to use it to secure his own. Despite the many changes that took place over time, some things about the Expo remained constant. As its early history so clearly indicates, the project was always less about commemorating the past or celebrating the future than it was about staking out a set of plausible claims to cultural and political authority on the shifting and uncertain terrains of the present. Moreover, from the very beginning, plans for the event were continually altered in accordance with the different and at times quite contradictory pressures exerted by domestic politics and nationalism on the one hand and by international affairs and cosmopolitan values on the other.

6. Seville, the Socialist Party, and the Commissioner General, 1982–1987 That Seville was to be the site for the universal exposition of 1992 was never seriously challenged. But the apparent consensus was less the expression of a common vision than of the fact that “Seville” meant somewhat different things to the different people who conceived and carried out the plans for the exposition.

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From a historical perspective, Seville seemed the natural choice for the Expo site. No city in Spain had stronger associations with Columbus and the Americas. In Seville, Columbus planned for a number of his voyages, and he lived in the city from 1504 to 1505, shortly before his death (Morrison 1942). Moreover, with the establishment of the American empire, Seville entered into its great period as the principal center of imperial administration and commerce with the Indies. The steady stream of gold, silver, and other booty that was sent to Seville from the New World attracted not only German and Italian bankers but also soldiers, vagabonds, missionaries, migrants, and wanderers from all over the Atlantic and Mediterranean. With the influx of wealth and people came the erection of churches, monasteries, and great houses by aristocratic and trading families, and there was hardly an art or craft that was not practiced at a high level inside the walls of Seville. Thanks, then, in considerable measure to Columbus, Seville became by far the largest and richest city in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, at the height of its power and influence, as one overawed contemporary observed, Seville seemed “not a city but a world” (quoted in Pike 1972:12). From a more present-oriented perspective, however, Seville did not appear to be the natural or inevitable choice for an exposition. The grandeur of “eternal Seville” was short-lived, and its long decline went hand in hand with the decline of imperial Spain. After 1717, when Cádiz became an important trading center and Seville lost its monopoly on trade with the Americas, Seville gradually came to be viewed as just another provincial regional capital. And in any case, expositions have not tended to be great respecters of history or tradition. Indeed, the fourth centenary of Columbus’s voyage was celebrated with an international exposition held in Barcelona in 1888. Not only was Seville overlooked as the site, but 1892 was ignored as the date to commemorate. Even though Barcelona’s links to Columbus and the Americas were much more tenuous than Seville’s links, Barcelona was a city on the move, and its rising bourgeoisie did not hesitate to erect a giant statue of Columbus there—never mind that the statue heroically points in the general direction of Africa from the wrong harbor of the wrong city (see Hughes 1992:366). Given the continuing cosmopolitan dynamism of Barcelona and the influence that the city exerts on the rest of Spain, Barcelona could well have been chosen as the site to celebrate the Expo in 1992. That it was not owes at least as much to the efforts of Manuel Prado y Colón as it does to the disinterested evidence of history. In his various roles—as a diplomat and wealthy businessman, a descendant of Cristóbal Colón (i.e., Columbus), a friend of King Juan Carlos, the president of the Institute of Hispanic Culture, and the appointed head of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary—Prado y Colón was in the right position in Madrid to push the candidacy of Seville as the Expo site and to discourage possible alternatives. And that is precisely what he began to do in the late 1970s. Even though Prado y Colón had a broad range of national

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and international experience, he always referred to Seville as his home. He backed Seville in part as an act of civic obligation and out of a sense of local loyalty. He no doubt also backed Seville for historical reasons, as he often and rather sententiously declared. But his support for the idea of holding the Expo in Seville was also mixed with a robust regard for his own self-interest, as events following the Expo would make clear. Prado y Colón’s own version of how he first discovered the future site of the Expo has a certain complex mythic resonance about it that matches the highly condensed official version of the royal origins of the event in the king’s Santo Domingo speech. According to Prado y Colón (DD-ex 27 Apr 1992:5; EC-ex 15 Apr 1992:8), on the advice of friends, one fine morning he took flight in a helicopter to survey La Isla de la Cartuja, a large patch of low-lying land situated between two channels of the Guadalquivir River and easily visible from the eastern edge of the historic center of Seville. Hovering in his airship above a flock of sheep that were scattering in panic from the storm of the swirling blades, Prado y Colón beheld the ruins of Santa María de las Cuevas, the Carthusian monastery in which Columbus had found refuge from his explorations and political difficulties. The pastoral scene made a true believer of Colón the younger. In this small island outside Seville, he beheld a brave new world that lay ready to be developed for the greater glory of the city, the king, and Spain. The rest, at least according to Prado y Colón, was mere detail. Skeptics may be reminded of Marx’s observations concerning how history repeats itself—the first time appearing as tragedy and the second time as farce—and may also recall Hollywood depictions of a gleeful Bugsy Siegel imagining a city of lights in the Nevada desert. And, indeed, the values of ancestral piety, national and local patriotism, and real estate development were to be closely intertwined in much of the subsequent history of the Expo. For Prado y Colón and his associates in Seville and Madrid, there was no real difficulty in combining a conservative political and cultural agenda with a liberalizing, capitalist economic one. However, for a group of native Sevillanos whose class background and political affiliations differed from those of Prado y Colón, matters were considerably more complex. This group of Sevillanos was at the core of the Socialist party and included the new president and vicepresident of the government in Madrid, Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra. Under their direction, the Socialist party eventually took over the Expo. But in the beginning they proceeded with great skepticism and caution. Among many influential members of the Socialist party, particularly those who remained attached to the idea of a republic, the Expo caused a great deal of concern because it promised to enhance the stature of the king and because it had been endorsed by key conservative political leaders. Moreover, the whole idea of an elaborate commemoration of 1492 and Spain’s imperial age was strongly reminiscent of the ultraconservative forms of nationalism that had buttressed the old dictatorship and were deeply detested by most Socialists and

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progressives. In addition, no one in Spain was more aware than the Socialist leaders that ambitious cultural projects such as the Expo were prone to turn into quagmires. As politically engaged Sevillanos from “outside the walls” of urban privilege, the Socialist leaders were familiar with the various legacies of the Ibero-American exposition that had been held in Seville in 1929.1 On the one hand, this exposition had transformed the south side of the city and had led to the construction of walkways along the riverfront (El Paseo de Colón), a beautiful park with fountains (El Parque de María Luisa), an affluent neighborhood (Los Remedios), and many fine pavilions that later were converted into museums, consulates, and government and university buildings. On the other hand, the 1929 exposition had chiefly benefited Seville’s commercial elite, and it had been inaugurated only after literally decades of costly false starts and delays. When it was finally held, it had served primarily to prop up the wobbling dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Furthermore, it had turned out to be a financial disaster. It had burdened the city with debts that limited new and much-needed expenditures on basic city services that would have helped to improve the conditions of working-class life for decades to come. Although many militants in the Socialist party viewed Expo ’92 with contempt and argued that there were far better ways to spend money than on royal pipe dreams, the fact was that the project was already well under way before the party leaders could do much about it. The Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) had approved a document called the “General Regulations for the 1992 Seville Universal Exposition” (see SEEUS 1988b) in December 1983, just as the Socialists were taking the reins of government into their hands. By the time the Socialists were prepared to deal with the issue of the Expo, it had become apparent that they could still kill off the project if they wished but that it was too late to do so without paying a considerable political price in both the domestic and international arenas. In light of this situation, the weight of opinion about the project began to shift in a more positive direction, at least in the party’s leadership, and a new conception of Expo ’92 gradually began to emerge. This new conception was more compatible with the Socialists’ plans for their own and their country’s future, and it was also closely related to the conception of another huge project for 1992, the Olympic Games. After their great electorial victory in October 1982, the main priorities of the Socialists were to promote the modernization, liberalization, and Europeanization of Spain; to consolidate the system of autonomous regions established by the Constitution; to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth and services; and to maintain or expand the Socialists’ electoral and political control over the central government, autonomous regions, and municipalities of the country. The new visions of the Expo and the Olympics were decisively shaped by these priorities and by Socialist notions of the Spanish politics of center and periphery, north and south, and city and country.

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Despite all the difficulties that the Expo project was facing in 1983, it was on as firm ground as the even more ambitious and costly project of bidding to hold the Olympics in Spain. The International Olympic Committee would not make its official decision about the site of the 1992 Olympics until October 1986. Although several cities in Spain could theoretically host the summer games, Barcelona had already advanced its plans and developed a viable candidacy by the time the Socialists took office. For all practical purposes, then, Barcelona was as much a fait accompli as a site for the Olympics as Seville was as a site for the Expo. Neither site could have been changed by the Socialists in Madrid without great exertions. But even setting aside this fact, the Socialists themselves had powerful reasons to prefer Barcelona and Seville—the centers of Catalonia and Andalusia, respectively—because of the party’s great interest in domesticating the political and cultural tensions between the central government and two of the most independent-minded of Spain’s new autonomous regions. Clearly, neither the Olympics nor the Expo could be held in Madrid, since this would enflame regional resentments everywhere. Other cities of the periphery were not good candidates for a variety of reasons. Most notably, the cities of the Basque country were excluded because imposing a state project there would be viewed as a direct provocation by ETA and would almost certainly be answered with a protracted and violent campaign. In contrast, holding the state-sponsored and state-funded events in Catalonia and Andalusia would serve both to satisfy regional pride and to impede the demands for greater autonomy by tying the governments and private sectors of these two key regions to Madrid in a mutually beneficial and cooperative way. In other words, grease from a couple of very large pork barrels would mediate the conflict of political and economic interests between the center and the periphery.2 This was particularly the case in Andalusia, which was of critical importance to the Socialists. As the largest of Spain’s autonomous regions, Andalusia is of extraordinary political significance because the approximately 7 million people who live there represent nearly 20 percent of Spain’s population (Salmon 1992:24). However, despite considerable concentrations of wealth along the much-touristed coast and among the elites who live in the larger cities, Andalusia continues to be one of the poorest regions of Spain and Europe. In 1975, for example, 79 percent of the working population consisted of jornaleros (landless agricultural day laborers), and even though 1.75 million people had migrated from the region between 1950 and 1980, the countryside remained locked in an endless crisis of unemployment and poverty (Sevilla Guzmán 1986:279). Although conditions subsequently improved in the region and especially in its cities, Andalusia still ranked 3rd in unemployment among the European Community’s 171 regions and 152nd in per capita gross domestic product in the early 1990s (DD 10 Jul 1992:55). In addition to poverty, Andalusia has generally suffered from a weak communications infrastructure and

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woefully overburdened and inadequate educational and health care systems. Under the circumstances, rather than seeing the society in which they live as modern and progressive, many Andalusians see their region as backward and dependent. Moreover, many view themselves and their neighbors as exploited and dominated by a commercial and agrarian elite that has been protected by governments in Madrid for centuries. Owing to this class dynamic, Andalusia has been and remains the most important regional stronghold of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). In Andalusia, unlike in Catalonia and much of northern Spain, the PSOE draws the lion’s share of its support from the countryside. In the first round of postFranco local elections in 1979, the PSOE gained control of most of the ayuntamientos (governing councils) of the small towns of Andalusia. In the national elections in 1982, the PSOE won 48 percent of the votes in the country as a whole but won fully 60 percent of the votes cast in Andalusia, where its rural support was strongest. Rural support of the PSOE was also vital in ensuring the party’s control of the government of the Andalusian autonomous region. In light of this political fact, once the Socialists had formed their first national government, they had been quick to adopt policies designed to ensure that their electoral control of the countryside would continue. Among other measures, they devised a system of rural empleo comunitario that provides agricultural workers with a full year of unemployment benefits if local officials certify that they have worked on a farm for sixty days. The system is easily abused, but many families rely on it, and control of this and other sources of patronage has made it no easy matter for opposition politicians to dislodge PSOE militants from local town halls (see Djurfeldt 1993; Pérez Díaz 1993:48–50). Even so, the political dominance of the PSOE in Andalusia has not been completely secure. National conservative parties have large and reliable core constituencies within the bigger towns and cities, as do national parties that are farther to the left than the PSOE. Consequently, the PSOE has had difficulty in winning or maintaining clear majorities in the ayuntamientos of the bigger Andalusian cities. This has especially been the case in Seville, Cádiz, and other areas of western Andalusia, the home base of the largest Andalusian regional party, El Partido Andalucista (PA). Although the PA (which was formerly called El Partido Socialista Andaluz) has never secured more than a small percentage of the total Andalusian vote, it has often prevented the PSOE from winning a clear majority in urban and provincial elections. It has also been a troubling opponent for the PSOE because it lays claim to the same moderate left-of-center ideological terrain and has been adept at convincing many voters that the PSOE’s dual identity as both a national and a regional party has continually led the PSOE to make contradictory pledges and to neglect local, regional, and working-class interests in pursuit of its higher national ambitions.3 The potential political threat posed by the PA was one of the factors that persuaded many Andalusian PSOE militants

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to support the Expo project in the early 1980s. For what better way could there be to reduce the threat of an autonomous regional political force than by backing a public event that would provide much-needed jobs and infrastructure in Andalusia, attract worldwide attention to Seville, and thereby demonstrate that as long as the various levels of government were left in the capable hands of PSOE leaders, no serious conflicts of interest would arise between the needs of the nation and those of its regions? Indeed, by sponsoring the Expo in Seville as well as the Olympics in Barcelona, the PSOE could place itself in the enviable political position of appearing to offer something to the most diverse sectors of Spanish society—both the poor and underdeveloped south and the prosperous and dynamic north. This would help the PSOE strengthen its claim that, unlike the other national parties of the right and the left, it represented the large “space of the center” in Spanish politics. Moreover, the sponsorship of massive projects such as the Expo and the Olympics was consistent with what Otto Holman (1989) and others (see Martínez Alier and Roca 1987–1988) have identified as two of the most important general strategies that the PSOE developed in the early 1980s for pursuing its domestic ends. The first was the strategy of “societal corporatism,” which led the Socialists to try to become involved in and mediate virtually every issue and conflict facing Spanish society. The second was the strategy of “bureaucratic clientelism,” which entailed using the resources of the government to enable Socialists to occupy every position of power and authority that became open to them in the state apparatus and the various institutions, agencies, and enterprises of the public sphere. For the Socialists to reap maximum political benefit from the Expo, the event would ideally have to be transformed into a celebration of modernity that supported the Socialists’ vision of Spain’s present and future, and it simultaneously would have to serve as a project of modernization whose expense could be justified in terms of the practical contribution it made to the general welfare of the people of Seville and Andalusia and, ultimately, to the country as a whole. Yet there was no escaping the fact that the Socialists did not have their hands free to shape the Expo in any way they wished. The commemorative and historical character of the event had been formally recognized by the BIE in the “General Regulations for the 1992 Seville Universal Exposition,” a document adopted in late 1983, and so had the Expo’s status as a nonpartisan project of the Spanish state. Moreover, before the Socialists could address the broader issues of Expo’s purpose, they needed to make decisions that would establish the project on a firmer bureaucratic and financial basis. Thus, in conformity with the BIE regulations, they reorganized the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary and chartered the High Foundation for the Commemoration of the Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America.4 These entities were the state organs responsible for the Expo and all of the other projects relating to the fifth centenary.

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King Juan Carlos became the honorary head of the foundation, but the executive presidency was reserved for the president of the government, Felipe González. In consultation with members of the cabinet and other influential figures who were appointed to the foundation, González authorized the development and administration of the Expo through a number of other subordinate entities. The two most important of these organizations were (1) the Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition and (2) the State Society for the Universal Exposition of Seville. This arrangement meant that the day-to-day business of the Expo would be organized and conducted under the auspices of a set of quasi-autonomous bureaucratic agencies and corporations, but the ultimate oversight and control over the personnel and financing of the Expo would remain firmly in the hands of the Socialists. Although the king was assigned the role of a figurehead, his views could by no means be wholly ignored or neglected. Because of his original sponsorship of the exposition and his tremendous popularity, his continuing goodwill remained indispensable to the project’s success. Other people who had been in charge of the project in its early stages would be replaced, however, regardless of their previous contributions to the project or their continuing ties to the king. Among those replaced was Manuel Prado y Colón, who had been serving both as president of the Institute of Hispanic Culture (an institute founded during the Franco regime) and as the “royal” commissioner in charge of the fifth centenary observations. The aristocratic Prado y Colón was roundly disliked by many Socialists and was resented for his rather proprietary attitude toward the Expo. More important, as a conservative monarchist with ties to the Franco regime, he was viewed as a man incapable of advancing the broader Socialist project of redefining Spain’s relations with Latin America in more egalitarian, fraternal, and democratic terms. To stress the PSOE’s commitment to redefining these relations, the Socialists changed the name of the Institute of Hispanic Culture to the Institute of Ibero-American Cooperation and appointed Luis Yáñez to replace Prado y Colón not only as the head of the institute but also as the director general of the fifth centenary. Yáñez was a member of the inner circle of Socialists from Seville and had the confidence of both Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra. While his appointment sent a clear message that a new day was dawning for the Expo, it did not resolve the problem of who was actually to be in charge of the event. Appointing Yáñez as director general of the fifth centenary made the problem of appointing a commissioner general of the Expo all the more difficult. With González ultimately in control, another Socialist at the head of the fifth centenary, and the king relegated to a largely honorary position, if the Expo were to retain any credibility as a nonpartisan project of the state, then a Socialist could clearly not be named its commissioner general. To appoint a Socialist would invite endless criticism and sniping from the political opposition,

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who in any case had already begun to complain about Socialist “usurpation” of the events of 1992. Thus, not only the success of the Expo as a state project but also the Socialists’ plans to take partisan political advantage of it hinged on finding the right candidate for the job of commissioner general. Given the high stakes of this appointment, it should not be too surprising (especially to academic readers) that the job search exacerbated the rivalries and factionalism existing within the Socialist party. Indeed, the politics of north and south and center and periphery that were important to Socialist calculations concerning the political value of the Expo wound up strongly affecting the process of deciding who should be in charge of it. The great Socialist victory in the elections of 1982 had not transformed the PSOE into a party for the masses. On the contrary, the reforms of 1979, which had enabled the PSOE to present itself to the public as a unified force capable of governing effectively, had more or less guaranteed that it would remain a relatively small, top-heavy organization of professional politicians. Even at the height of its popularity in the early 1980s, the PSOE still only had from about 40,000 to 50,000 active members, nearly a quarter of whom held some sort of office, usually in local government.5 The PSOE’s hierarchical organization and lack of openness created an internal hothouse environment in which personal ambition and careerism could flourish and in which most matters tended to be handled by executive decree or by isolating adversaries, forming alliances of convenience, cutting inside deals, and exchanging one favor for another. Thus, as an organization, the PSOE bore more than a passing resemblance to a complex patron-client network of “friends” and “friends of friends” who could be called upon to help foil the plots of enemies and rivals for position and influence. Indeed, inside the dominions of the PSOE, it began to appear that almost every local official wished to rise in the ranks, and every party notable felt that it was his destiny to become a prince or at least a princeling of the realm. What held the forces of personal ambition and factionalism in check, however, was primarily the personal power, authority, and shrewdness of the apparently indivisible partnership of González and Guerra, who throughout the 1980s were the sun and the moon, the king and viceroy, and the good cop and bad cop of Spanish socialism. The authority of González was almost unassailable, not only because he had extraordinary political intelligence and will but also because his personal charisma, youthful charm, and common touch made him far and away the most popular political figure in Spain—the only leader commonly and affectionately referred to by his first name alone. His unique personal popularity enabled González to situate himself above the fray in party politics and to act as the ultimate mediator who was concerned primarily with the general welfare of the party and the country. Almost regardless of the matter to be decided, González

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presented himself as the voice of pragmatic intelligence, trustworthy common sense, and, above all, “realism.” Guerra’s role as vice-president of the government was to control the party apparatus, enforce discipline in the ranks, and lead the attack on the political opposition. Within the party, Guerra’s supporters occupied key positions, particularly in southern Spain. On the one hand, Guerra supported the government policies of liberalization and accommodation to the European order—policies that took priority over traditional Socialist and even social democratic concerns in the 1980s. On the other hand, particularly around election time, he was adept at sounding the trumpet calls of class struggle and popular solidarity and suggesting that the declared commitment of conservative leaders to democracy masked their ties to the Franco regime and their defense of narrow interests. Guerra’s charmingly Muscovite view of the appropriate price to be paid by dissenters from the policies of the leadership was evident in his observation that “whoever moves will not come out in the photo” (Share 1989:148). Operating in tandem with González, Guerra was able to control the tendencies toward factionalism in the PSOE and indeed to create an impression of remarkable party consensus and unity. Despite this impression, however, the PSOE included many figures who were able to carve out bases of power because of their positions in the supposedly independent “branch office” parties of the various regions, their ties to outside sources of finance, their links to labor unions, and so forth. In addition, the PSOE included a new generation of liberal middle-class technocrats and policy experts who had been attracted to the party by the electoral successes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, were mostly from northern Spain, were impatient for reform and renewal, and were possessed by a spirit that was a curious mixture of idealistic optimism and crass opportunism. Although these so-called beautiful people and renovators of the PSOE had little popular following within the party, they were well connected to state and private enterprises, universities, and banks and were often favored by González. However, the new converts had little in common with the olderguard Socialist militants, who were from working-class backgrounds and tended to accept “Guerrista” control of the party apparatus. Relations between the technocrats and the Guerristas would become increasingly strained in the late 1980s and 1990s as electoral support for the party declined. But in the early 1980s, much effort was still being expended on reaching compromises that would bridge the gaps between these two tendencies within the party, and this effort affected a number of issues, including the question of who should be appointed commissioner general of the Expo. Local politics in Seville and Andalusia also came into play in the debates about the commissioner general. The PSOE of Seville was firmly under the control of Guerristas.6 However, the local party militants were far from happy with the state of affairs in the regional government of Andalusia. The presidency of La Junta de Andalucía was held by Rafael Escuredo, an energetic and

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excitable politician who had played a critical role in the PSOE’s successful efforts to undermine the PA in the period surrounding the referendum on Andalusian regional autonomy in 1980 and 1981. Escuredo enjoyed great popularity and was a strong proponent of agrarian reform, a traditional commitment of the left wing of the party. However, neither the national party leaders nor the local Guerristas were overjoyed with Escuredo’s transparent efforts to consolidate a substantially independent regionalist political grouping inside the PSOE. Indeed, from the perspective of the guardians of party discipline and unity, Escuredo was a maverick who had outlived his political usefulness. It was bad enough that he refused to stay still during the photo; he was also displaying a strong inclination to tell everyone else where they ought to stand. Thus, when the search for a commissioner general of the Expo was undertaken, the political situation inside the PSOE of Andalusia was highly volatile. The first serious candidate promoted for the office of commissioner general was Ricardo Bofill, the celebrated Catalán architect. Bofill’s considerable international prestige as a leading postmodernist innovator in design and construction, his acceptability to the conservative political opposition, and, above all, his strong but informal ties to influential middle-class Socialist policy experts in northern Spain (and particularly Barcelona) were all factors weighing in favor of his candidacy. In addition, Bofill’s cause was greatly helped by the support of Luis Yáñez, the director general of the fifth centenary (EC 16 Nov 1990:4). As a charter member of the Socialist inner circle from Seville, Yáñez was able to win considerable support for Bofill among the Guerristas. Thus, for a variety of reasons, Bofill initially seemed an ideal choice: his cosmopolitan reputation would immediately create considerable international interest in the Expo; his neutral political identity would help to preserve the idea that the exposition remained a nonpartisan project of the state; and he met with the approval of both the northern technocrats and the southern apparatchiks of the PSOE. Unfortunately, Escuredo responded to Bofill’s candidacy as if the Giralda were being sold to U.S. investors and moved to Arizona. But as Escuredo painfully discovered, his own position within the PSOE had become so isolated and shaky by this time that the best he could do was to publicly proclaim the unsuitability of a Catalán for a position at the head of Seville’s Expo and to resign in protest from the presidency of the junta in February 1984, when this and a number of his other efforts to defend Andalusian interests were thwarted by members of his own party. Escuredo’s place at the head of the regional government was taken by a far more cooperative party stalwart. It was, however, too late to save the Bofill candidacy. The delay created by the Socialists’ internal arguments had given business and civic leaders in Seville sufficient time to organize their own campaign against Bofill, and with help from the local press they easily succeeded in rousing public resentments against outside interference in Seville’s affairs.

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Their argument was that Bofill’s appointment would be an insult to Andalusian independence, pride, and competence. The public outcry against Bofill in Seville ended his candidacy, and the leaders of the PSOE realized that the whole matter had been badly bungled. The first real step that they had taken to move the Expo forward on their own terms had wound up being a political step backward. One of their key aims was to use the Expo to neutralize the force of Andalusian regional sentiment, and instead they had at least momentarily reawakened it. At the time, there were rumors that González was so annoyed with what had happened that he seriously considered abandoning the whole Expo project. However, many Andalusian candidates for the office of commissioner general were already being proposed by interest groups inside and outside the Socialist party, and the process had clearly taken on a life of its own. Almost a year passed before the field of candidates was narrowed to a single choice. Finally, on 11 November 1984, the cabinet ministers appointed Manuel Olivencia Ruiz as commissioner general of the universal exposition. Olivencia was a native Andalusian. Born in Ronda, he grew up in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in northern Africa, where his father practiced law. At the age of eighteen, Olivencia entered the university and followed in his father’s footsteps. After receiving additional legal training in France, Germany, and Italy, he began to teach commercial law in Madrid in the 1950s. He won a chair in this subject at the University of Seville in 1960 and then combined teaching with other activities, such as serving as an adviser to the Bank of Spain and as Spain’s representative to the United Nations Commission on Commercial Law. Olivencia was widely respected in Seville and had many connections to the city’s and region’s elite. Although he was clearly a moderate conservative in his political views, his only partisan political involvement had been a brief association with a small Andalusian liberal party in the mid1970s. Despite the fact that González and a few other prominent Socialists had been students of Olivencia during the early 1960s, Olivencia was not a person well known to the rank-and-file militants of the Socialist party or to the general public. Unlike Bofill and several other candidates, Olivencia had not sought the office; both the king and González had to prevail upon him to accept it. Indeed, in many respects, Olivencia represented the very opposite of Bofill. Although an urbane man of broad culture and experience, Olivencia was by no means a creative innovator or even a proven administrator of enterprises approaching the scale of the Expo. Rather, in his cultural and political conservatism and in his dignified manner, he was a model academic and professional legal consultant whose career was firmly rooted in a provincial city and whose life closely approximated the ideal pattern for an Andalusian gentleman. When the announcement of Olivencia’s appointment as commissioner general was made, no one publicly expressed any serious reservations about his

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suitability for the post. Yáñez (EC 16 Nov 1990:4) hailed the appointment as “a compromise of state” and praised Olivencia as “a man acceptable to all the political forces.” Many Sevillanos and other Andalusians rejoiced that under Olivencia there would be no “Catalanization” of the Andalusian economy. But while local entrepreneurs, the king, conservative politicians, and the Socialist leadership apparently were happy with Olivencia, there was already a good deal of grumbling going on among Socialist militants in the background. With the collapse of Bofill’s campaign, the northern, middle-class technocratic sector of the PSOE had been more or less cut out of the Expo action. Even more important, many Guerristas of Seville and Andalusia deeply resented Olivencia’s appointment. For them, his appointment represented not an “ideal compromise” but a clear victory for the right-wing traditionalist oligarchy of Seville, the group against which they had fought in one way or another for most of their lives. From the perspective of the Guerristas, this was far too big a price to pay to preserve the credibility of the Expo as a state project. The hidden opposition that sectors of the Socialist party had for Olivencia was eventually to have profound consequences for the exposition. Olivencia assumed his duties as commissioner general in April 1985. Little had actually been decided or done prior to this date, thanks to the delays that had occurred since the Socialists had exerted control over the project. In fact, a dense fog of uncertainty surrounded La Isla de la Cartuja, and no one as yet had much idea what sort of Expo was going to emerge from it. In early meetings about holding an exposition in Spain, members of the BIE had expressed concern that a focus on Columbus’s voyages and related events was too narrow to meet the criteria for a “universal exposition” (the highest category of international exposition). When the BIE insisted that a larger theme embracing some general realm or form of human activity be defined, the Spaniards proposed the theme of “The Age of Discoveries” and defined what they meant by “discovery” in terms that included not only geographical explorations but also cultural encounters and many other sorts of social, artistic, scientific, political, and economic endeavors. Indeed, the initial statement of the theme was so broadly conceived and vaguely specified that it was difficult to say what it did not include. However, in its final form, the 1983 “General Regulations for the Universal Exposition” (see SEEUS 1988b) mandated that the event “stress the crucial role of Spain in the Discovery of the New World” and “lay special emphasis on the decisive contribution of the American peoples in all areas of human endeavor” (SEEUS 1988b:19). It also required that the exposition explore the theme of “The Age of Discoveries” by examining “humanity’s capacity and inventiveness in facing the challenges and the dynamic of man’s relations with his fellow men; his environment; his social, cultural, and physical existence; and the evolution of knowledge” (SEEUS 1988b:20). The regulations obliged the organizers of the Expo to represent three historical periods: (1) the fifteenth century, just prior to Columbus’s voyage; (2)

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the “following five centuries of discoveries” in the various areas of human endeavor; and (3) “the future.” The regulations also mandated that the organizers pay attention to five subthemes: (1) “the Discovery of the World Community”; (2) “the Discovery of Society’s Relation with the Planet Earth”; (3) “the Discovery of Vital Necessities” (food, clothing, and so forth); (4) “the Discovery of Man’s Creativity”; and (5) “the Discovery of the Scope of Human Knowledge” (SEEUS 1988b:20–21). Confronted with this far from modest agenda, Olivencia began by assembling a team of Andalusian assistants to study the problem of how to meld the commemorative, universalistic, and future-oriented elements of the general plan into a coherent whole. In early 1986, the commissioner general and his assistants announced that there would be an international competition to design a general model of the physical layout of the Expo.7 And on 12 October 1986, during the annual celebration of a national holiday called El Día de la Hispanidad, the king officially proclaimed that a universal exposition would be held in Seville in 1992. By early 1987, Olivencia could point to several other practical advances that had been accomplished. The legal foundations of the Expo had been revised and clarified; the government had budgeted 3,600 million pesetas for work on the infrastructure of the exposition (EC-ex 20 Apr 1992:5); the two most important business associations of Spain had signed an agreement regulating private and corporate participation in the event; and workers had begun to clear the ground on La Isla de la Cartuja in preparation for construction. But these accomplishments did not satisfy leading Socialists, a number of whom began to complain openly about the lack of progress being made. Much of what was accomplished during the two years between the appointment of Olivencia and the proclamation of the Expo is summarized in a 1987 document called the Outline of Contents: Seville 1992 Universal Exposition (see OCGE 1987). The purpose of this document was to describe how the themes defined in the “General Regulations” would integrate the Expo’s “spaces and contents.” The outline indicated that the Expo would be divided into areas dedicated to general and specialized thematic pavilions, to Spanish national and regional pavilions, to pavilions of participating countries and organizations, and to precincts for entertainment, performances, and leisure. Beyond this rather elementary provision, however, the document specified little else. It said almost nothing, for example, about what the thematic pavilions were actually to contain. In fact, in the conclusion of the document, the authors admitted that the number and size of these projected pavilions were “impossible to determine at the moment of writing” (see OCGE 1987:64). Even so, the Outline of Contents did succeed in conveying a general vision of the exposition that hinged on the idea that the Spanish discovery of the Americas in 1492 represented the first vital step in a series of discoveries which initiated an accelerating process of global cultural, political, and economic integration.

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According to Olivencia’s critics, however, the Expo still lacked an idea matriz (organizing or core idea) that would give it unity, coherence, and a distinctive identity. Whether such unity was necessary to the success of the Expo is perhaps open to question, but that there was as yet no consensus about what it might be seems undeniable. The lack of an idea matriz was evident in the way in which the officials involved in the Expo project—including the king, the commissioner general, and various politicians—described it. Not only did the interested parties offer divergent views of the Expo, but they also continually changed their descriptions of it in accordance with their understanding of the expectations of different audiences. Although it was possible to find some justification for virtually any vision of the Expo in Juan Carlos’s various speeches or comments on the subject, the king often gave a nationalist inflection to his remarks when he was addressing Spanish audiences. This was evident, for example, in his October 1986 proclamation of the universal exposition (see OCGE 1989a:5ff.). As he spoke in Seville and invited all the countries of the world to participate in the exposition, Juan Carlos emphasized the pride of his countrymen in the “renewed Spain” of the present and in the key role that Spain had played during “the Age of Discovery.” He also invoked the “formation, for the first time, of a National State, under the Crowns of Castile and Aragon” as one of the great achievements of history. At about the same time the king was making his proclamation in Seville, Olivencia was delivering a different sort of speech to the prestigious Siglo XXI Club in Madrid. In this speech, the commissioner general was emphasizing that Spanish culture is a “very valuable instrument” and that although “we are not a great military or economic power, we are a great cultural one” (see OCGE 1989b:24). Meanwhile, leading Socialists involved in the Expo paid a bit of lip service to the discovery of America as “the reason behind” the project, but in their speeches they stressed “the theme of discovery in the fullest sense of the word” and “the challenge of finding a new formula for this type of international exhibition . . . on the threshold of the twenty-first century” (see SEEUS 1988a:6). Along these lines, the Socialists began to emphasize that the Expo was a “showcase” whose most important purpose should be “to project toward the outside an image of the Spain of today—modern, advanced, democratic, and integrated in the world after centuries of isolation,” as Yáñez later put it (ABC 21 Apr 1992:80). Thus, instead of seeking to use the Expo to embrace the national past, the Socialists envisioned it as an occasion to declare a historical break and a new political and cultural beginning. This meant, among other things, that they were more inclined to see the event as an opportunity to define Spain’s basic identity in terms of the country’s aspirations to join the ranks of the most advanced nations of western Europe than in terms of its affinities with its former Latin American colonies. Despite all this talk, Olivencia’s critics complained that little real progress was being made in Seville. While broader plans to strengthen the transportation

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and communications infrastructure of the city and Andalusia had begun to be realized, the Expo site itself was still a large patch of barren ground. This had a detrimental effect on the Socialists’ efforts to use the site as the centerpiece of a massive, centrally planned program of economic development. In November and December 1986, a public attack on Olivencia was launched by Yáñez (see DD “Dossier 16” 19 Apr 1987). Yáñez had already had several conflicts with Olivencia over areas of competence and the division of responsibility between the fifth centenary commission and the Expo, and he now criticized Olivencia about the lack of conceptual coherence in the Expo and the absence of an organized campaign to win foreign participation in the event. The charges were then echoed by the Socialist alcalde (mayor) of Seville, Manuel del Valle. This criticism of Olivencia led to a series of “consultations” between the commissioner general and representatives of the government in Madrid. After an encounter between Olivencia and González, both the government and the crown reaffirmed their confidence in the commissioner general. Nevertheless, in February 1987, when Olivencia gave the government a proposal to remodel the Expo administration, it was rejected on the grounds that it did not go far enough in its attempt to correct the Expo’s problems. Following this rejection, Yáñez and del Valle renewed their public expressions of concern. Although Olivencia himself did not directly respond to these mounting attacks, other officials close to him did so by pointing out that Yáñez should have voiced his complaints to the council in charge of administering the Expo, rather than broadcasting them in public. These arguments, however, did little but whet the appetite of what the press (EC 16 Nov 1990:1–2) characterized as assorted “Socialist wolves” who were mostly Guerristas from Andalusia and were more virulent in their opposition to Olivencia than was Yáñez. As criticisms against Olivencia intensified through March and early April of 1987, it seemed that the administration of the Expo was becoming increasingly paralyzed by the crisis, and rumors of the commissioner general’s imminent resignation began to circulate. Rather than resigning, though, Olivencia chose to heed the advice of the Socialists. He proposed to set up a committee to coordinate the activities of the Expo organization with those of the various agencies of local, regional, and national government, and he also proposed to appoint a group of distinguished experts from different cultural and scientific fields to advise him on the design and contents of the Expo. When these proposals were accepted in May 1987, a number of Olivencia’s staff members were removed from their positions or their jobs were more narrowly defined. At the same time, the responsibilities of the State Society for the Universal Exposition of Seville, which was the administrative organ whose primary function was to organize the actual construction of the exposition, were greatly enhanced. Most important, Jacinto Pellón was appointed consejero delegado (essentially equivalent to chief executive officer) of

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the State Society. Pellón was a civil engineer with the large firm of Dragados y Construcciones. Unlike Olivencia, he was regarded as a man of action and a person who knew how to direct large-scale projects. Although Pellón was not an Andalusian, he was a Socialist and was highly regarded by sectors of the party in his native Cantabria and in Andalusia. Under the new arrangement, Olivencia retained direct responsibility for the more “cultural” aspects of the Expo, including the design and contents of the theme pavilions and the organization of a program of performances, ceremonies, and so forth. He also retained ultimate control over the Expo’s purse strings. In addition, he was charged with the vital (and, by 1987, urgent) diplomatic task of securing foreign and corporate participation in the event. As the new head of the State Society, Pellón was the subordinate of Olivencia and needed the commissioner general’s formal approval for his policies and decisions. However, as the official directly responsible for the construction and technical administration of the event, Pellón in practice had to have a great deal of autonomy to enter contracts and distribute thousands of jobs as he saw fit. Initially, this new arrangement was heralded as the “coming of peace and money” to the Expo (ABC 8 Nov 1990:1–2). The Socialists who had attacked the commissioner general were delighted to have gained substantially more than a foothold in the Expo organization through the appointment of Pellón, and even Olivencia seemed content to be relieved of tasks for which he recognized that he was not well suited either by temperament or experience. But, of course, “peace” had been won at the price of transforming the Expo organization into a functionally bifurcated bureaucracy in which there were many areas of overlap and ambiguity. How, for example, was it possible to construct a pavilion without taking into account its projected contents and thematic significance? Only if the two arms of the Expo—the Office of the Commissioner General and the State Society—cooperated with each other in a spirit of openness and common purpose could such problems be resolved without too much difficulty. But given the Expo’s already contentious history and the political and cultural forces swirling around the project, it was unrealistic to think that a happy spirit of mutual accommodation could be maintained for any length of time. From the onset of the project, the paradoxical effort of the Socialist leaders to gain maximum political advantage from the Expo by maintaining the illusion that it was essentially a nonpartisan project of the state had had the effect of making it an object of political struggle inside their own party. Appointing the compromise candidate, Olivencia, to the position of commissioner general had not created consensus but, instead, had generated a form of low-level guerilla warfare that was aimed at undermining the authority of an official who lacked a strong base of political support. In 1987, faced with the public crisis of authority created by this warfare, the Socialist leaders had elected to further subdivide control over the event. What was the likelihood that this would make

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the organization function more smoothly and give the Expo greater thematic and cultural coherence? Hindsight makes it clear that the Expo was bound to be an event whose cultural significance was inevitably somewhat ambiguous, paradoxical, and hybrid because it was less the result of clear policies and an idea matriz than it was the outcome of complex calculations, struggles, and compromises that were primarily shaped by the efforts of members of the Socialist party to maximize their influence and control of local, regional, and national politics. In this sense, the early history of the Expo was largely determined by the complex political dynamics of the new Spanish state.

7. The Voyages and Visits of the Commissioner General When the crisis over the internal organization of Expo planning committees ended in early 1987, Commissioner General Manuel Olivencia was finally able to devote most of his attention to the crucial matter of persuading a wide range of institutions to participate in the exposition. The historical and cultural themes of the Expo made it especially important to secure the involvement of members of the European Community (EC) and Latin American countries. A great deal of effort also had to be given to the no less vital business of working out the terms under which the governments of Spain’s autonomous regions would participate in the Expo. In addition, invitations had to be extended to dozens of other countries, international agencies, and transnational corporations. All of this required the commissioner general to undertake a seemingly endless series of voyages and visits and to participate in negotiations with thousands of politicians, executives, and officials. He was, of course, backed by the government and aided by Spanish diplomats, by regional politicians, and, on many occasions, by the king himself. But Olivencia and a rather small team of lieutenants shouldered most of the burden. Indeed, that the commissioner general managed to bring each of the negotiations to a fairly successful conclusion within a relatively brief period of time was no small personal achievement, and it belied the Socialists’ continuing criticism that he lacked initiative, energy, and skill. Foremost among Olivencia’s team was Emilio Cassinello, an experienced diplomat who had been named president of the State Society for the Universal Exposition of Seville. Virtually all of the responsibility for the actual construction of the exposition had been placed in the hands of the consejero delegado (chief executive officer) of the State Society, Jacinto Pellón, but Cassinello was able to make a vital contribution to the overall project because in addition to his

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foreign relations experience he had served as Spain’s representative to the 1986 world’s fair held in Vancouver and had gained extensive knowledge about expositions. One of Cassinello’s responsibilities for Expo ’92 was to coordinate the policies being formulated by Olivencia in the course of his voyages with the practices being pursued by Pellón and his minions at the Expo site in Seville. This placed Cassinello in the position of a go-between and mediator. To fulfill his mission, Olivencia had to conduct a number of political courtships almost simultaneously. What made these courtships an unusually delicate affair was a series of shifts in Spain’s international and domestic situation in the late 1980s. On the international scene, after years of delay, Spain’s formal admission to the EC and its endorsement of the Single European Act in 1986 marked a key stage in the realignment of Spanish foreign policy. Henceforward, it was clear beyond doubt that the country’s highest priority would be to join the lead group of the EC, a group that was headed by France and Germany and was intent on forging a more complete economic union and eventually a political union of Europe. For Spain to join this group, the country would need to take measures to increase its influence among the member states of the EC and also to redefine the character of its relations with the rest of the world.1 To compensate in part for this quite real shift in its political and economic orientation, Spain declared its intention to act as the defender of Latin American, Mediterranean, and North African interests inside the EC. Since Spain lacked the economic means to do much to promote development outside its borders, the only independent avenue of action open to it was to take steps to promote political and cultural ties with these poorer regions. Thus, in Latin America, Spain sought to take a leading role in promoting democratization and in acting as a mediator in regional conflicts, and at the same time it sought to be an interlocutor between Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Overall, Spanish foreign policy in the 1980s was largely shaped by the necessity of accepting European “mentors” with respect to its own processes of modernization and democratization while striving to act as a “tutor” and patron in its relations with Latin America and North Africa (see Grugel 1995; Rosenburg 1992). The difficulties involved in Spain’s attempt to maintain something resembling a delicate balance between its actually quite lopsided European and non-European allegiances and interests had a large impact on how both Spanish and non-Spanish officials understood what was at stake in the Expo. This in turn had a strong effect on Olivencia’s negotiations with prospective participants and, finally, on the event itself. Securing the cooperation of Spain’s own autonomous regions was just as important to the success of the Expo as convincing other countries to participate. In the absence of pavilions representing Spain’s various regions, the image of the “new Spain” would have to be projected primarily through the country’s single national pavilion. The inclusion of seventeen regional pavilions would make it far easier to create a distinctively Spanish ambience for the

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exposition as a whole. Yet the involvement of the regions was by no means a foregone conclusion and required Expo officials to engage in negotiations that were nearly as long and complex as those conducted with foreign governments. Although Catalonia and the Basque country had achieved considerable autonomy from the central government as early as 1977, most regional governments had only been established between 1981 and 1983. Many issues concerning the prerogatives and responsibilities of the state and the regions had yet to be clarified and were under adjudication.2 Thus, in addition to all of the problems created for the Expo by party politics, Olivencia and his representatives had to tread carefully to avoid making the Expo a bone of contention either between the state and the newly established regions or between Andalusia and the other regions. The task was made more difficult by the fact that the regions varied markedly in their degree of legal autonomy and in their interests, aims, and views of their relation to the state. In the quasi-federal system that was emerging in Spain in the 1980s, the regions fell into roughly three groups. In the first group were Catalonia and the Basque country, both of which were referred to as “historic nationalities.” With a clear sense of their own distinctive culture, language, and institutions and with strong minority movements demanding full independence, the Cataláns and Basques had the most freedom to conduct their own affairs and were, of course, to be counted among the groups that were least disposed to support an event whose very origins and purposes made it likely to be a celebration of Spanish nationalism. In the second group but also on the so-called fast track to greater autonomy were Galicia, which was also recognized as an historic nationality, and Andalusia, which generally had a weaker sense of cultural distinctiveness from the rest of Spain but had enthusiastically embraced the idea of regional self-government in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the third group and following somewhat behind in terms of power that had been devolved from the central government were Aragon, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Castilla–La Mancha, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarre, and Valencia. Many of these regions had less independence from the central government and were, at least initially, a good deal less enthusiastic about the whole process of decentralization. While all these regions had their own presidents, legislatures, high courts, and expanding bureaucracies, they varied greatly in how much control they exercised or sought over education, health care, police, taxation, and many other matters. Throughout the 1980s, the stronger autonomous regions continued to argue that the reason the central government was invoking principles of interregional solidarity and fair treatment among regions was merely to delay and limit the devolution of power to the historic nationalities. The weaker autonomous regions continued to express concern that they would be neglected by and receive fewer resources from a state too eager to placate the demands of these stronger regions. Political tensions such as this contributed to the dif-

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ficulties involved in negotiations regarding the participation of the various regions in the Expo. Under the circumstances, the commissioner general was faced with the formidable task of persuading countless bureaucrats and politicians with their prestige and popularity at risk that they would be treated fairly and respectfully in the Expo, even though opinions about what was fair and respectful differed sharply from region to region. The way in which the concerns of foreign governments and Spain’s own regions were addressed by the commissioner general and other Expo officials in negotiations during the late 1980s had a powerful impact on the character of the Expo as an event. Rather than further blurring the exposition’s vague and general themes, as one might expect, the negotiations had the opposite effect. Because all the pressures and constraints that the many meetings with potential participants brought to the fore tended to push in the same general direction (as did a number of other factors that will be discussed in subsequent chapters), the Expo began to take on more definite outlines. Most of all, it began to be clear that the Expo in both its historical and modernizing dimensions would be a celebration of cultural and political pluralism. This was because the only way to reconcile all the many international, national, regional, and other concerns that the Expo aroused was to empty the idea of Spain itself of most of its traditional nationalist content and to present the Spanish state as a truly cosmopolitan polity that embraced many nations and cultures and articulated the various aspects of their diversity. The tendency to view the Expo as an occasion to celebrate cosmopolitanism and pluralism was never really in doubt in the negotiations with the twelve member states of the EC. From the very beginning, these states saw their participation in the event both as a gesture of solidarity and neighborly welcome for a new member of their association of wealthy and democratic nations and as a well-timed opportunity to define and promote pan-European traditions. The last universal exposition held in Europe had been in Brussels in 1958, only a year after the Treaty of Rome was signed and the EC was established, and it had not placed much emphasis on the themes of unification and cosmopolitan Europeanism. By the late 1980s, the EC members expected a single European market and some form of political union to emerge in the near future, and the idea of promoting these developments became increasingly appealing as movements for liberal reform gained strength in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. From this perspective, the Seville exposition offered a chance to represent processes of European cooperation and integration as a model for progress that other nations would do well to emulate. Appropriately enough, then, the Spanish diplomatic campaign to involve EC members in the Expo played upon the themes of general European cultural, economic, and political leadership and the possibilities for renewal and progress that Spain’s membership in the community represented. This was evident, for example, in a key speech given by Olivencia to the Spanish Institute in

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London in late 1986. In this speech (see OCGE 1989b:29–37), the commissioner general observed that even though recent world fairs had been held in Japan, Canada, Australia, and the United States, international expositions were really a creation of “Europe.” Praising the 1851 exhibition held in London’s Crystal Palace, he declared that the 1992 exposition to be held in Seville aimed to reawaken “the spirit of progress” so evident in the earlier event (OCGE 1989b:31). He also courted British support on the grounds that Andalusia is one of the least developed regions of the “new Europe” and that Spain “which is passing through a phase of profound and accelerated historical change, hopes to be able to offer to the world in 1992 the image of a nation in peace and liberty, a nation that assumes its history and looks to the future [and] makes the best of its traditions to nourish its eagerness for progress and modernity” (OCGE 1989b:34). Statements like this, which managed to stress Spain’s active embrace of a European “tradition of modernity” while conceding the country’s relative backwardness, were cleverly designed to win the hearts and minds of audiences confident of their own cultural and politicoeconomic advantages. Indeed, after Olivencia proclaimed that changing times and communications technologies required and made possible a “new dynamic model” for international expositions, he concluded his speech with the humble affirmation that “we want to maintain the essence of the old tradition [of expositions] of which this country [Britain] continues to be the master” (OCGE 1989b:37). This seductive appeal to both national pride and European solidarity set the tone of Spain’s campaign to win the support of EC members for the Expo. Portugal was the first European country to agree in principle to participate in Expo ’92, but others quickly followed. Even the Pope signed on after Olivencia and Cassinello visited the Vatican. In 1988, the European Parliament approved a resolution supporting the exposition and other observations of the fifth centenary (EC-ex 20 Apr 1992:5). For the most part, officials of European countries justified their participation in ways that echoed Spanish representations. For example, Laurent Fabius, speaking as president of the National Assembly of France, deemed the Expo worthy of French involvement because it would clarify the nature of “the encounter between the past and modernity inscribed in a new Spain that looks toward Europe” (DD 26 Nov 1989:14). Thus, in 1988 and 1989, through a series of media events, one European country after another declared its intention to invest tens of millions of dollars in the design and construction of a pavilion and, in most cases, to lay claim to a large construction site. It also became increasingly clear that almost every EC member was planning to present multiple aspects of its national past, present, and future as contributions to a common European civilization. Indeed, in early 1989, an EC spokesperson announced that the Council of Ministers of the EC would fund an EC pavilion whose principal mission was to convey the idea that “Europe” itself was one of the great “discoveries” (or rediscoveries) of the second half of the twentieth century and that “European unification” had helped

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“to establish peace between nations” (DD 31 Jan 1989:7). In recognition of these sentiments, there would be a grand Avenue of Europe near the core of the exposition, and great wealth would be expended on the presentation of cosmopolitan themes and values. Unfortunately, the commissioner general found negotiations with Latin American authorities to be far more troublesome than those with the European states. In the early 1980s, when Chicago and Seville were in competition to host a 1992 exposition, Spanish diplomats were able to win the support of key Latin American countries for the Seville project by presenting it as a counterweight to U.S. cultural and politicoeconomic domination. After the Chicago project collapsed, however, the appeal of Ibero-American solidarity was much reduced and nationalist sensitivities reemerged. Indeed, Latin American governments were concerned that the whole Expo project smacked of European neocolonialism. Further complicating matters for many governments was the problem of how to respond to indigenous and leftist groups, which were radically opposed to any celebrations of the “conquest” and “genocide” that had begun in 1492 (see Hale 1994; Hernández-Requant 1993). Although Cuba eventually participated in the Expo, Fidel Castro spoke for many Latin Americans in 1985 when in reference to the plans for the Expo and the fifth centenary he gave the following admonition: [October 12, 1492] was when one of the most shameful pages in universal history was opened. It was infamous and nefarious. . . . It clashes with all the values that we most appreciate. . . . We know what they [the conquistadors] did, because they arrived here with the sword. They blessed the conquest with the cross. I respect the cross more than the sword . . . [but] I believe that that part of history requires a critique and that the conquistadors, who today are proud of their forebears, should exercise a bit of self-criticism of the conquests, of colonialism, of themselves. (Quoted in Rosenburg 1992:184) In Spain, Castro’s remarks caused a sensation and sparked a great deal of commentary, both for and against the Expo, in the national media. In response to the concerns that Castro expressed, the Expo organizers initiated a complex campaign to persuade the Latin American nations to participate in the Expo (see Ross 1992). The campaign involved various confidence-building measures that were closely linked to efforts that the Socialists were making in the middle and late 1980s to promulgate the idea of a transatlantic Ibero-American “family” of democratic nations. The Socialists believed that one of the ways in which their idea of a family might be converted into a reality was through a series of summit conferences that would regularly bring together the heads of the Ibero-American states to address issues of mutual concern. The first of these summit conferences was held in Guadalajara,

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Mexico, in July 1991. However, well before this time, the groundwork for the summits had been laid by lower-level conferences that dealt with a variety of political, economic, and cultural themes. One set of lower-level conferences was held under the auspices of the Ibero-American National Commissions for the Commemoration of the Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America. During the group’s fourth meeting, which took place in San José, Costa Rica, in April 1986, Olivencia presented his basic appeal for Latin American participation in the Seville exposition. After expressing Spain’s “profound gratitude” for Latin American support of the Expo proposal submitted to the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE), Olivencia made a series of promises and pledges designed to convince his audience of Spain’s good intentions in sponsoring the exposition (OCGE 1989b:7–12). He quoted from the BIE-approved regulations of the Expo, which mandated a focus on the “crucial contributions” of the peoples and cultures of the Americas to all areas of human life, and he assured his Latin American audience that Spain would be “faithful to these norms” (OCGE 1989b:9). He also pledged that the Expo would “reflect on the problems” of “poverty, crisis, illiteracy, hunger, sickness, scarcity of resources and energy, wars, natural catastrophes” and similar problems that still confront humanity (OCGE 1989b:8) and would explore scientific and technical solutions to them. What was most striking about Olivencia’s speech was the rhetoric of equality and unity that pervaded his description of the relations between Spain and the nations of Latin America. Throughout the speech, Olivencia continually employed pronouns of the first person plural (we, our, and us). At one point, he forcefully declared, “I want to affirm in this forum that Spain conceives the universal exposition above all as our exposition—the exposition of all and each one of the Ibero-American nations, united in their history by the length of five centuries and today part of a community that shares cultural values enriched by the apportionments of each one of them” (OCGE 1989b:8). In keeping with this egalitarian approach, he concluded his appeal by assuming a virtual identity of culture and interests of Spain and Latin America: “I want to end by pointing out how much Spain, as the organizing country, anticipates the contribution to this exposition of all the brother nations of Ibero-America. All united in a pure demonstration of this brotherhood, we will be able to show the world what is entailed in our contribution to universal culture” (OCGE 1989b:12). Reassuring as this rhetoric of transnational equality and unity was, however, it did not halt the ongoing debates in Latin American political and intellectual circles concerning the historical and contemporary significance of 1492. Indeed, the Latin American press gave much coverage to bitter arguments between the Latin American cosmopolitans, who tended with some critical qualifications to accept the notion of an “encounter” between two worlds, and the nationalists, who stressed “confrontation,” the violence of the conquest, and the formation of mestizo peoples whose culture and lives differed fundamen-

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tally from those of the Spanish and Portuguese in Europe. But in the long run, the Spanish officials’ tolerance of these arguments as well as the direct engagement of some Spanish intellectuals on virtually every side of the debate seemed to incline many Latin Americans to view the Expo project favorably, albeit with considerable skepticism. Beginning with the Dominican Republic in February 1987, every Latin American government eventually declared its aim to be present in Seville. Nevertheless, after the December 1988 international conference of participating countries, practical issues concerning the cost of Latin American national pavilions and the size and location of construction sites reawoke concerns about Spanish cultural domination, caused disagreements among participants, and soon threatened everything that Expo officials had gained through tact and diplomacy. At the heart of the matter was that the poorer nations of Latin America and especially the war-torn countries of Central America could ill afford the expense of constructing pavilions and therefore requested financial aid from Spain. In April 1989, Spain agreed in principle to provide such aid with the assistance of the EC and the Spanish-American Development Bank. But there were strings attached. In order to hold down costs, to conserve space, and (although this was never admitted publicly) to prevent the construction of many unimpressive and small pavilions, the president of the State Society, Emilio Cassinello, proposed that all the Latin American national pavilions be housed under a single roof in one superpavilion. The idea of a single superpavilion met with almost unanimous opposition. Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela were adamant in demanding individual sites, and they and many others began complaining about how insulting it would be to occupy shelf space in a “supermarket” of countries. So despite the promises of aid and despite the efforts of Spanish officials to convince Latin American officials of the benefits of presenting “an image of unity to the world,” by June 1989, just three weeks before a crucial conference of the Latin American participants was to take place in Guatemala, only a handful of countries had been won over to the superpavilion idea (DD 1 Jul 1989:40). Recognizing that this issue was reawakening Latin American concerns about Spanish cultural domination, Olivencia sought a compromise. In a speech in July 1989, Olivencia indicated that any country wishing to construct its own pavilion could do so (DD 29 Jul 1989:14). At the same time, he reassured those who sought Spanish aid that the proposed collective pavilion of the “Plaza de America” would be the largest building of the exposition and would therefore be a “special attraction” and a focus of attention that would fulfill the BIE mandate of stressing Latin American contributions to humanity (DD 29 Jul 1989:14). Although Latin American comments on Olivencia’s proposal were generally favorable, the countries were still slow in formulating final plans. Argentina and Brazil in particular vacillated between constructing individual pavilions or joining the superpavilion.

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With these issues unresolved, negotiations dragged on for months after most of the European states and many other countries had confirmed their plans to participate. Eventually, Expo officials managed to persuade Argentina and Brazil to join the superpavilion, and the presence of these two large countries helped overcome the concerns of the smaller countries about being warehoused in a secondary pavilion. Their concerns were further eased when they learned that the individual pavilions of Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela would be constructed in different parts of the exposition site and would not, after all, form a distinct area that rivaled the “Plaza de America.” These developments, as well as Spain’s ability to use the possibility of additional subsidies as a carrot in bilateral negotiations with each individual country, finally led the remaining Latin American holdouts to agree to participate in the Expo before it was too late. With the European and Latin American presence in the Expo secured, the greatest single worry of Olivencia and his team was that one or more of the governments of Spain’s autonomous regions would refuse to participate in the event if they felt (or, more likely, perceived a significant political advantage in claiming) that a region’s status as a distinctive historical and cultural community was being slighted or undermined by the state or subordinated to Castile-centered Spanish nationalism. To prevent this from occurring, Expo officials emphasized three points. First, they stressed that the Expo was a project of the state—a project that both assumed and needed the participation of everyone if it was to be successful in presenting a modern and progressive image of the country as a whole. Second, they emphasized that the Expo was being planned in a way that would focus attention on the diversity and richness of Spanish cultures and traditions and that the plurality of Spain could be powerfully and unmistakably conveyed through the existence of seventeen separate regional pavilions. Third, they made it clear that each region was essentially free to choose the design, contents, and programs of its own pavilion and that it would be foolish for a region to pass up the opportunity to represent itself in a way that would be attractive to millions of fellow Spaniards and Europeans who were also potential tourists, customers, partners, and investors. Thus, rather than dwelling on notions of national patriotism, the Expo organizers developed arguments for regional participation that appealed not only to ideals of interregional solidarity and cooperation but also to local pride and interregional competition and rivalry. Each of these ideas and values had its own persuasive resonance, but a number of circumstantial factors also helped reduce the danger of defection from the Expo project by the stronger autonomous regions. In Catalonia, criticism of the Expo was dampened by the region’s need to cooperate with Madrid on plans for the upcoming Olympics and by the soothing effects of the massive state investments being made in and around Barcelona to prepare for the games. In Galicia, the conservative regional government was relying on support

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from Madrid to organize an elaborate cultural exposition in Santiago de Compostela in 1993 and was therefore inclined to lend support to the Expo in Seville. In the Basque country, the situation was considerably different and far more unstable. Many of the people who favored increased or full independence of the Basque homeland were clearly hostile to the idea of participation in the Expo. Nevertheless, the president of the regional government, José Antonio Ardanza, did not choose to view involvement in the Expo as something that undermined Basque aspirations for greater self-rule. Ardanza’s view had considerable support inside his own party, El Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), the conservative separatist group that controlled the regional government. Indeed, Ardanza’s willingness to cooperate with the Socialist government in Madrid on the Expo and other issues could be seen as a gesture that was useful in marking the ideological and political divide between the relatively conservative PNV and the more radical left-wing independence parties.3 To secure Basque participation in the Expo, Olivencia and the Socialists had to give the regional government assurances that some formula would be devised to recognize the distinctive national status of the Basque country in the exposition. Eventually, this promise was fulfilled by placing the Basque pavilion at the beginning of the string of autonomous pavilions on the Expo site and by celebrating the Basque “day of honor” with great fanfare the day after the opening of the exposition. Both of these concessions were justified on the pretext that the Basque country had been the first of the regions to achieve autonomous status under the new democratic constitutional system. Despite the concessions, considerable resistance to the Expo persisted inside the regional government. Thanks to some determined foot dragging and a general absence of enthusiasm and commitment, the Basque country was the last of the autonomous regions to present its plans for a pavilion in February 1991 and the last to begin actual construction four months later (ABC 26 Jun 1991:43). Nothing that either Olivencia or the Socialists could do, however, stood any chance of persuading the militants of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA)—a group committed to armed struggle against the Spanish state—that the Expo should be viewed as anything but a provocation and a target of opportunity. In fact, ETA’s public threats against the Expo and the Olympics had a significant impact on the physical design of the sites for these events, as well as on the antiterrorist strategies pursued by the Spanish government in the period before and during the events. It was primarily because Expo officials were so worried about offending the cultural and political sensitivities of the Basque country and other strong regions that difficulties arose in dealings with some of the weaker regions. Because these weaker regions were not as well financed by the national government, they tended to focus their attention on economic issues. The formula of self-determined and equal participation in the Expo had been devised to meet broad ideological requirements and was appealing enough in theory, but in

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practice it meant that the poorer regions would have to pay roughly the same heavy direct costs of designing, building, and operating a pavilion as the wealthier regions. When it became clear that the costs would be about ten million dollars or more, the officials of some of the poorer regions began to express reservations about the rather dubious public relations value of the Expo for their constituencies. The issue of costs and benefits was initially voiced most forcefully by José Bono, president of Castilla–La Mancha. Remarking that he would rather spend money to build a hospital in his region than to erect a pavilion in Seville, Bono suggested that the Expo was being forced on the regions. While Bono’s complaints about fairness were echoed by other local leaders, the Expo officials and the central government soon left little doubt that they were opposed to providing special subsidies to any of the regions except Andalusia and that they would exert political pressure to prevent opposition from becoming anything more than gestural. In most cases, gaining cooperation and compliance was not too difficult, because the majority of regional governments were in the hands of Socialist politicians who were more interested in winning concessions and playing to the home crowd than in actually boycotting the event. This was the case, for example, with Bono, a Socialist who harbored national political ambitions. After Bono’s gambit against the Expo was rebuffed by leaders in Madrid, he greatly modified his criticism of official policy (EP 30 May 1992:4). Nevertheless, a few of the regional governments—including those in Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, and Extremadura— continued to question the worldly wisdom of such an elaborate and expensive formula for recognizing what Olivencia characterized as “the unity of the state and the plurality of the autonomous communities and their cultures” (DD 3 Mar 1989:1). But it was only in Cantabria, the sparsely populated mountainous region of the northwest coast whose industries were being especially adversely affected by the government’s Europe-centered economic reform policies, that matters truly spun out of control. Even though Cantabria had made a formal commitment to participate in the Expo in the late 1980s, the president of the region, Juan Hormaechea, wanted to hold down costs by sharing a pavilion with other regions. The idea of a joint pavilion, which was just what the Expo organizers were proposing to the countries of Latin America, was sharply rejected by the same Expo organizers and by the Spanish government as an option for the regions of Spain. Angered and annoyed by this response, the Cantabrian government adopted the position that if the state wanted Cantabria to have a separate pavilion, then the state should pay for it, because the region had other far more urgent and pressing demands on its resources. This stance was also rejected by the Expo organizers and the central government. In February 1990, all parties agreed, though with a notable lack of mutual goodwill, that Cantabria would erect a modest pavilion in Seville but would dismantle it and move it to Cantabria after the end of the

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Expo. Then in December 1990, the government of Hormaechea fell. At this point, Jaime Blanco, a Socialist, became head of the weak multiparty coalition governing Cantabria. With the encouragement of the central government, Blanco adopted a new set of plans for a much more ambitious Cantabrian pavilion, and in June 1991 he belatedly but proudly laid the first stone of this pavilion in Seville. By August 1991, Blanco’s weak coalition had succumbed and Hormaechea was back in office. Promptly ordering a halt to construction of the Cantabrian pavilion in Seville, Hormaechea declared that without aid from Madrid there would be no money available to pay the building contractor. He also stated that the “fairs of Seville and the Olympics” were damaging other regions and that the central government was more concerned with solving the problems of Russia and Yugoslavia than with solving those of its own country (EC 29 Aug 1991:40). Virgilio Zapatero, a Socialist cabinet minister who was involved in oversight of the Expo, adamantly refused Hormaechea’s demand for a special subsidy and warned that Cantabria should exercise more care in protecting its foreign image even if it was unconcerned with its domestic one. In the meantime, Hormaechea had begun to negotiate with the pavilion’s contractor, who agreed to reduce the size and cost of the pavilion and to defer the date when payment for it would come due. Moreover, the Expo organization, faced with the prospect of having a half-constructed pavilion on the site when the Expo opened in April, agreed to lower the price of renting the pavilion’s site to the Cantabrian government. Having made his numerous points and having proved that he could throw his political weight around, Hormaechea then announced that construction would resume in November 1991 and that every effort would be made to complete the pavilion before opening day. As it turned out, this deadline was not met, but the pavilion was completed shortly after the Expo began. The Cantabrian crisis occurred too late to have much effect on the other autonomous regions, whose pavilions were already in an advanced stage of construction, but it illustrates the sorts of public political posturing, factional infighting, economic difficulties, and spirit of partisanship that the Expo organizers had strived to avoid and that could easily have caused one or more of the regional participants to withdraw. As it was, the Cantabrian dispute resulted in the construction of a pavilion that was attractive only to those whose architectural imaginations are stimulated by rusting gas cans, and it also generated a lot of bad publicity for the Expo and everyone involved in the dispute. Unwisely, the Socialists tried to limit the public relations damage caused by the conflict by suggesting that Hormaechea could be dismissed as simply an obstructive, political crank. Not to be outdone, Hormaechea continued to take great delight in disparaging the Expo whenever the opportunity arose. Shortly before the Expo began in April 1992, for example, he declared that Cantabria would not be in the Expo at all if the decision had been solely up to him; that the event

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was an “imposition” of the government, an “infamy,” a “circus,” and an “absurd waste”; that the whole idea showed “a lack of a sense of reality”; that, in contrast to Spain, no other country was governed by such a group of “horteras” (Madrid shop boys) and members of the “new rich”; and that those who promoted the Expo had constructed a “palace of Bokassa” (ABC 1 Apr 1992:4). Comments such as these reflected more than just personal animosity. As Hormaechea and other regional politicians well knew, in the years leading up to 1992 most people in northern Spain and in much of the rest of the country were either indifferent to and uninformed about the Expo or else tended to believe that it was going to benefit Andalusians and the Socialist party but do little for anyone else. As a result, Hormaechea’s inventive diatribes gave political voice to a strain of criticism that was influential in shaping popular attitudes about the Expo but was otherwise largely confined to the realm of occasional editorials, offhand comments by opposition politicians, and informal conversations among friends and acquaintances. For the most part, the press coverage of regional plans to participate in Expo ’92 in the late 1980s was bland, a fact attesting to the skill with which the event’s organizers and Socialist politicians managed to court and cajole local politicians, reconcile conflicting interests, and neutralize (if not completely overcome) both ideological and interestdriven forms of opposition in order to ensure that a semicircle of seventeen regional pavilions would be built around a “Lake of Spain” and would impress visitors with its harmonious blend of regional cultures in a diverse and cosmopolitan state. To further ensure the success of the Expo, Olivencia and his team engaged in negotiations with states from every corner of the world, as well as with multinational corporations such as IBM, Siemens, Fujitsu, Rank Xerox, and Banco Central Hispano. To attract corporate investments that went beyond simple concessionaire and sponsoring agreements but, at the same time, to avoid transforming the Expo into a thinly veiled trade fair, the Expo organizers invited large firms and financial institutions to become “associates” and “collaborators” with the option to build their own independent thematic pavilions or to underwrite special exhibitions or programs. This offer gave firms the opportunity to project an extraordinarily benign and disinterested image of themselves as patrons of science, art, and culture. The Siemens Corporation, for example, decided to build a large pavilion to house an exhibit entitled “Evolutionary Networks, Technology and Biology in Parallel,” while the Banco Central Hispano chose to subsidize the Pavilion of the Fifteenth Century and the major exhibit entitled “Art and Culture around 1492.” In return, these companies occupied both the physical and thematic center of the Expo. Thus, in addition to achieving a presence that easily rivaled that of the key countries of the EC, they managed to identify themselves with some of the key “discoveries of humanity” as well as with the cultural and material benefits of an expansively cosmopolitan modernity.

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Olivencia, Cassinello, and their associates followed a similar strategy in courting wealthy and powerful countries. The participation of Australia, Canada, and Japan was really never in doubt, but partly in recognition of the great international exhibitions that each of these countries had hosted in the recent past, they were offered and quickly accepted favorably located and very large pavilion sites. So, too, did the United States and the Soviet Union, although (as described in a later chapter) domestic politics soon turned the road to Seville rocky for both superpowers. Olivencia and his team courted the less wealthy and powerful states by presenting the Expo as “an open window to Europe,” an approach whose appeal had as much to do with the political and economic forces that processes of globalization had unleashed in the 1980s as it did with the effectiveness of Spanish diplomacy. For the rapidly industrializing countries of Asia, including Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand, the “open window” meant access to markets. For members of the disintegrating Soviet bloc, it represented an opportunity to reassert European identity and heritage. For rulers of the Middle East, it offered yet another way to pursue the apparently irresistible politics of money, influence, oil, and arms and to spurn Muslim integrists who nonetheless persisted in denouncing the Expo as a “macabre dance over the ruins of Islam” (DD 2 Jun 1992:24). Indeed, the overwhelmingly positive official responses that the Expo organizers received to their invitations in 1988 and 1989 convinced them that they could make the Expo into the largest event of its kind ever held, at least in terms of the number of participants. With this new goal in view, they appealed for and received additional funds from the Spanish government and the EC to subsidize not only the Latin American superpavilion but also three smaller joint pavilions that eventually housed the exhibitions of fifteen countries from Africa, seven from the Pacific islands, and eleven from the Caribbean islands. The pace of negotiations and developments became truly frenetic in 1989 and 1990, as one country, region, or organization after another hastened to jump on the bandwagon and begin construction. A sense of what was entailed in coordinating the events can be gained by simply noting that on 4 April 1989, which was just an ordinary workday for Olivencia during this period, the commissioner general had two or three meetings with members of his immediate staff, met the vice-president of the government of Italy, toured the Expo site with the ambassador of Ecuador, received the ambassador of Malaysia in his office, and flew to Murcia for discussions with the president of the regional government (EC 4 Apr 1989:14). This sort of schedule did not leave much time for quiet reflection about the Expo’s ultimate coherence, significance, and goals. In retrospect, however, what is most apparent about this phase of the development of the Expo is the incremental and cumulative impact that the voyages and visits of the commissioner general and his assistants had on the

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project. In the course of the negotiations, the Expo organizers had to accommodate the special needs and concerns voiced by almost all of the potential participants, ranging from the representatives of the superpowers to regional politicians and executives of transnational corporations. This meant in effect that the commissioner general pursued the interests of the Spanish state by trying to reach some compromise with highly divergent and at times contradictory perspectives both within and outside Spain—in short, by offering something to everyone: an Avenue of Europe for the governments of the EC; the choice of a superpavilion or individual sites for the countries of Latin America; great leeway in representing local culture and history for representatives of the autonomous regions of Spain; and a chance for some corporations not just to foot the bill and influence one or another aspect of the Expo but also to become independent participants and represent their own explicit and elaborate vision of their place in the world. But in the course of acting as mediators of divergent ideological, political, and economic interests in the most direct and concrete ways imaginable, the organizers of the Expo accomplished something else: They virtually guaranteed that Spain would be viewed as a cosmopolitan crossroads and organizing form of cultural diversity, rather than as a coherent and homogeneous nation. Moreover, by the very nature of the concessions and concrete agreements that they formulated with hundreds of agents and institutions of greater and lesser autonomy and authority, they ensured that the struggles for influence and the overall distribution of power in the world in the late 1980s would be reflected (or at least revealingly refracted) through the spatial, symbolic, and thematic organization of the Expo itself.

8. The Island World Takes Form In the 1970s, the Expo had originated as a state project that was supported by the king and was intended to commemorate the Spanish discovery of the Americas and to mark the beginning of a new liberal phase in Spain’s political history. Throughout the 1980s, these objectives were continually revised and elaborated as many other actors became involved in the project: the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) in Paris insisted that the specific commemorative theme of the Expo be broadened to the more universal one of human “discoveries”; the Socialist party came to view the event as an opportunity to further integrate Spain into the European Community, to gain a partisan political advantage over its rivals, and to modernize the underdeveloped economy of Andalusia; and a wide range of states, regional governments, and corporations also tried to ensure that their participation in the Expo would promote their var-

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ied interests. As a result, the actual process of planning, designing, and building the exposition facilities on La Isla de la Cartuja was subject to a continual series of modifications as the technical considerations and negotiations involved in constructing the site proceeded simultaneously with the cultural and political negotiations concerning themes and participation. By the late 1980s, however, these overlapping and complex processes had necessarily become much more coordinated and focused as general policies, concerns, and interests were transformed into a series of irrevocable decisions about concrete and particular matters and the Expo assumed a definite thematic, physical, and architectural organization. In this chapter, then, the spatial and thematic structures that made the island world of the Expo a distinctive place are described in ways that are intended to highlight the relationship between the highly politicized processes and concerns that conditioned the Expo’s development and the basic messages that a visit to the Expo was expected to impart concerning the emergent new world order and Spain’s place in it in the 1990s. The “Master Plan,” which had been adopted in 1987, called for the construction of an exposition area to be located in the center of La Isla de la Cartuja (see SEEUS 1988c; see also OCGE 1987:17–25). This area was to be surrounded by waterways, gardens, sports facilities, and partly hidden service areas and roads and would be connected to Seville, parking lots, and other transportation facilities via various gateways and bridges. The central area of the exposition would look like a triangle divided into three unequally sized and shaped zones (see fig. 8.3) that were to be linked to one another by a central artery called the Route of Discoveries (El Camino de los Descubrimientos). The lower right zone of the triangle would be devoted to the monastery of La Cartuja and the other major thematic pavilions; the lower left zone was destined for the pavilions of participating countries and organizations, with the buildings to be spaced along a series of avenues that intersected with the Route of Discoveries; and the upper zone was to be dominated by the so-called Lake of Spain, around which the national and regional pavilions of the host country would be arranged. Most other elements of the Expo design had to be left unspecified in the “Master Plan” or amended as conditions changed. For example, although the planners had anticipated an exposition with about sixty participants, this number nearly doubled by 1991 and required changes concerning how much space was allotted to each participant. Moreover, because BIE regulations gave participants in universal expositions the responsibility of designing their own pavilions and because hundreds of other people were involved in the conception and execution of everything from souvenir shops to lighting fixtures and park benches, it was inevitable that the site would be something of a hodgepodge of architecture and design whose final shape and sense, if there were any, would not be readily visible until very late in the process. While Commissioner General Manuel Olivencia was traveling around the world to win international participation in the Expo during the late 1980s,

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the covered area of the exposition, including the key thematic pavilions—nor the vast majority of the participating countries had broken much ground. Surprisingly, though, once things got started, there were remarkably few delays. Indeed, by mid-1991, it seemed as if the Expo had virtually sprung up overnight. By this time, it was also becoming visibly manifest that thanks to the policies and negotiations of the 1980s, the basic spatial organization of the urbanized island world of the Expo was well suited to portray a particular version of the world pecking order of contemporary nation-states, corporations, and other institutions—a version that was extraordinarily Eurocentric and was also systematically skewed to emphasize the importance of Spain. Situated near the intersection of the three zones of the Expo triangle described above, the national pavilion of Spain occupied a site meant to emphasize Spain’s pivotal role in history and at the same time place the country at the threshold of the future and the center of Europe. Indeed, Spain’s national pavilion was located at the end of the Route of Discoveries and the beginning of the Avenue of Europe (La Avenida de Europa). Occupying opposite corners on the Avenue of Europe were Spain’s neighbors, Portugal and France. The pavilions of most of the other countries of western Europe, as well as the pavilion of the European Community itself, were to be found down the broad expanse of this avenue. The European pavilions, along with the corporate pavilions interspersed among them, constituted by far the largest and most impressive architectural array of the Expo. On the other side of the Spanish pavilion was the Lake of Spain, the largest open space on the Expo site. On the lake’s far banks could be seen the pavilions of Spain’s regions, the pavilion of the United Nations, and the superpavilion housing the exhibits of most of the Latin American countries. In short, as if to proclaim Spain’s importance in the global scheme of things, the Spanish pavilion was located at the European core of the Expo but also in an intermediary position between Europe and Spain’s own diverse regions and between Europe and Latin America. In the world order portrayed by the Expo, the non-European superpowers and powers were relegated to the periphery. In deference to their political or economic clout, the United States, Russia, Japan, and the two oil producers of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela were awarded large parcels of land for their pavilions, but their location was on what might be considered the suburban margins of the Expo, along an avenue that ran parallel to the Route of Discoveries but was farthest away from the heart of Seville. This appeared to be just the place for the aggressive, obstreperous, and vulgar nouveau riche (or, in the case of Russia, the nouveau poor). It also appeared to be an appropriate spot for a few other countries to whom Spain owed some sort of special consideration. Thus, Canada and Australia were awarded large if somewhat marginal spaces because they had sponsored recent international exhibitions and were able to offer the Spanish officials advice about how to organize matters in Seville. Mexico was given a similar site, although considerably closer to the

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center of things, because its agreement to participate in the Expo despite serious reservations had been crucial in winning the involvement of other Latin American countries. Less happily situated were the poorer or less influential countries of eastern Europe and Asia, whose relatively smaller, though in some cases architecturally impressive, pavilions were housed on the narrower lanes of the Expo’s equivalent of crowded urban neighborhoods. And the worst situated were the remaining countries of the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific islands, and the Caribbean islands, whose pavilions were clustered in small, mostly temporary buildings on the edges of the participants’ zone. In sum, through its decisions and negotiations about matters such as the size and location of participants’ pavilions, Spain succeeded in conveying its own vision of its place in the emergent new world order of the 1990s and of the appropriate places of other countries as well. Indeed, the spatial organization of the Expo was reminiscent of those poster maps whose intention is to alter the viewers’ perception of order and importance by foreshortening the space between New York and Los Angeles or putting the southern hemisphere above the northern. Or at least this seems to be the effect the Expo had on Jean Dondelinger, the commissioner general of the European Community pavilion, who on one occasion rather unguardedly but enthusiastically declared that the Expo made it clear that “Europe is the center of power on the planet” (EC-ex 15 Apr 1992:20). Another key to understanding the Expo’s basic structure that became obvious in the period before the Expo opened was its highly self-conscious use of communications technologies and strategies. Plagued by anxieties that people would find the theme of “The Age of Discoveries” and the whole idea of holding an exposition to be outdated and boring, the Expo organizers took the official line that the “last universal exposition of the twentieth century” would revitalize the genre of expositions in anticipation of the new millennium: “Spain, poised at the gateway to the twenty-first century, has accepted the challenge of finding a valid formula for this type of international encounter [i.e., the universal exposition] that will allow it to match its objectives to the demands of our times” (SEEUS 1988d:6). In quest of this formula, which no one could ever quite define, the Expo organizers placed extraordinary emphasis on using high-tech displays and every available type of multimedia device to communicate with the Expo audience before and during Expo ’92, including satellite hookups that would allow “international TV channels” to ensure that the “best of Expo ’92 can be seen around the world” (SEEUS 1989a:3). More generally, in their efforts to guard against public anomie, the event’s designers made sure that it would be impossible to take more than twenty steps on the Expo site without being confronted with some sort of flashing electronic screen. As one of my companions on a later visit to the Expo remarked while in a heightened state of consciousness after exiting a display called the Retevision pavilion (conveniently located between the Spanish national pavil-

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ion and the Cruzcampo brewery pavilion), “I have seen the future and it is high-definition TV.” Amid the forests and seas of video screens, however, other strategies of communication were not neglected. As the Expo organizers liked to claim, Expo ’92 represented a “showcase” of the first order. To take advantage of an excellent advertising opportunity, by 1991 more than fifty multinational and national firms had become Expo “collaborators,” and the list of lesser concessionaires numbered more than a hundred. Corporate trademarks and logos were stamped on everything and left the ineradicable impression that there was at least one company around that was willing to fulfill a visitor’s every future need. Indeed, the whole Expo looked like the product of “Spain, Incorporated” (see Jameson 1984:60): we specialize in the care and feeding of multinational corporations; discounts available; no reasonable offer refused. Ample space was also allotted for self-expression and social interaction by means of direct consumption. The Expo had its own line of products that ranged from art books to keychains. In addition, most of the participants’ pavilions and many small businesses hawked assorted wares. Some three hundred restaurants and a like number of shops and kiosks gave the Expo site an aura that hovered between shopping mall and flea market. At least ostensibly, the communicative aims of the thematic and participants’ pavilions were nobler and more educational. As the Expo ’92 Official Guide (SEEUS 1992b:37) stressed, each pavilion presented an array of “visions and images,” and each participant was “trying to say something” by means of “architecture and contents.” The visitors were invited to bring their own knives and forks to a veritable feast of interpretation. In keeping with the “learning is fun” recipes of progressive educational theory, the standard ingredients employed were cinematic or video imagery (of course), moving models of one sort or another, and interactive participation. To take a rather elementary example, the Pavilion of the Environment, organized by Spain’s Institute of National Industry, sought to inform its visitors about the dilemmas involved in sustainable development. As visitors entered the pavilion, they walked along a passageway that presented a rather sharply abridged graphic history of life on earth. This journey ended, as so many did at the Expo, in a movie theater. In this case, the movie was entitled Concert for the Earth. Representing “the first example ever of a sixty-image-per-second film” (SEEUS 1992b:62), the movie began with beautiful scenery and ended with pictures of the trash and pollution generated by all humans (everybody, of course, being equally responsible). Moving right along, visitors entered a large darkened central space, where they were encouraged to play the “Biosphere Game” and choose which among a series of paths they wanted to follow in order to learn more about the population explosion, cities, water and food, industry, nature, and growth. Then they had to decide if they wanted to continue along the course of uncontrolled development or to follow the other path of sustainable

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development. Finally, visitors were encouraged to seek answers and satisfy their aroused curiosity by consulting “an expert computer” stuffed with facts and statistics. Over the course of the Expo, 1,363,509 persons reportedly benefited from this creative and involving learning experience (SEEUS 1992b:62; see also SEGA 1993:220). This impressive number of visitors was nothing compared to the myriad people who witnessed some of the more than thirty thousand shows and ceremonies that were scheduled over the six-month period of the Expo (SEGA 1993:293). Indeed, one of the most obvious features of the Expo site was the huge area occupied by auditoriums, cinemas, theaters, stages, and public areas for cultural “encounters.” In these venues, visitors were edified and entertained by state ceremonies, tragedies, comedies, political and academic speeches, concerts, folk dances, ballet, opera, and countless forms of popular music. No genres were neglected. The scale of events ranged from the mass spectacle of laser beam displays, music, and fireworks projected over the Lake of Spain and beheld each night by tens of thousands of people to the friendly casual exchanges between the tourists and the jugglers, musicians, and magicians who wandered around the site. A giant Sony Jumbotron television even made it possible to assume the role of a couch potato in the reassuring presence of hundreds of likeminded companions. Given the space and energy devoted to covering all these bases and forms of mediated and unmediated interchange among people, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that, if nothing else, the Expo demonstrated a near absolute faith in communication as a human good. In fact, one of the key logos of Expo ’92 was a yellow globe cross-hatched with red lines to suggest the proliferation of global networks of interconnection in “The Age of Discoveries.” As far as I am aware, there was never more than a hint of official doubt that communication might be an instrument of domination or be part and parcel of confrontation and conflict as much as comity. It is far less clear what anyone was supposed to make of all this or what larger ends, interests, and purposes the Expo’s invitations to interpret and interact were supposed to serve besides convincing people that Spain was a pretty swell country that knew how to offer something for everyone. One way to understand what was going on is to see it as an effort to reinforce the legitimacy of a world order dominated by nation-states and multinational capital. From this perspective, Spain sought to establish a central place in this order by employing nearly every conventional and postmodern communicative strategy available to impress visitors with its modernity and commitment to the institutional forms of contemporary Western liberalism. Indeed, one of the side effects of employing these strategies was to turn every form of communication at the Expo into a form of consumption and thereby to forward the process of transforming the active citizens idealized by conventional liberalism into passive consumers and docile subjects of the nation-state.

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This appears to be close to the basic interpretation of the Expo advanced by Penelope Harvey (1996:53) in Hybrids of Modernity, a book stressing that the Expo employed a range of “technologies of nationhood” but was essentially dominated by mechanisms of consumption. Many commentators and critics of the Expo endorsed similar views. Among them was Vicente Verdú (1992:213–15), who wrote in the magazine Leonardo that the Expo made the following clear: “Consumption is the king of creation . . . [and] all pleasure has entered the sphere of ingestion. There is scarcely anything, in politics, in science, or in the arts, that may not pass with celerity into a spectacle.” Verdú concluded that “the digestive apparatus of the general system of production” has “harvested the voices of the ages and the ones that gain energy from the latest cry” in order to feed its insatiable appetite. These interpretations of the Expo make sense. After all, the origins of universal expositions and world fairs are historically associated with the triumph of capitalism and the rise of the nation-state. These phenomena were evident in the pavilions of states, decked out in the usual nationalist symbolic and ritual trappings of flags and accompanied by ceremonial days of honor, and in the corporate pavilions and products, which were among the basic elements of the Expo’s structure. Even so, it seems inadequate to see the Expo’s deployment of both new and familiar strategies of communication as representing little more than a way of relegitimating the nation-state and corporate capitalism as the inevitable and indispensable organizing forms of human life on the planet. There was more to it than that. To view the Expo in this way effaces what is culturally and politically emergent in favor of what is dominant, and it runs the risk of missing both the creative and the destructive potential of contemporary processes of change.1 It also fails to take seriously the efforts of Expo organizers to find a “valid formula” for the future, and it relegates these efforts to a pose that hides a simple affirmation of the status quo of contemporary liberalism. Most important, it virtually depoliticizes the Expo by obscuring the active struggle over the meaning of the past, present, and future—a struggle that was part and parcel of attempts by the Socialist party and other political parties to achieve some sort of hegemony over different aspects of contemporary life. To better understand the emergent and more tenuous aspects of the Expo’s political and cultural significance, it is necessary to focus on how other elements in its structure tended to undermine the idea of the coherence and integrity of the nation-state. In analyzing these elements, it will be useful to look more closely at the messages and representations that were conveyed principally but by no means exclusively through the thematic pavilions. In addition, it will be useful to examine not only what was represented but also what was not represented at the Expo. The overriding purpose of the Expo was quite specific and essentially political. As countless commentators observed in one way or another, the Expo was intended to proclaim the “re-foundation of the Spanish state” on a new basis (DD 23 Aug 1992:12). While it was not altogether obvious what this basis

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was, besides being generally “European,” “liberal,” and “confederal,” it was crystal clear what it was not. It was not, in any conventional sense, nationalistic. Thus, what was most obviously missing from the Spanish and general thematic pavilions of the Expo were any but incidental representations and allusions to the specificities of Spanish political history. To be sure, there were quite a few representations of Spanish figures such as the Catholic kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, and of past happenings such as the Battle of Lepanto and the Treaty of Breda, but these were unaccompanied by narrative exposition and thus appeared more as interesting subjects for portraiture and portrayal than as historical actors and events with much significance in and of themselves. Even the key figures and events of the Spanish discovery and conquest of America were only blandly and thinly represented. As a result, anyone who was unacquainted with the story of Cortés and Montezuma or the story of Pizarro and Atahualpa was bound to remain uninformed by the Expo. Moreover, from the middle of the sixteenth century down to about the year 1975, the historical vacuum was almost perfect. There were a few pale Hapsburgs and vague references to the Inquisition, perhaps, but there was hardly anything concerning the expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain. There were no wars of succession or independence; no revolt of the Cataláns; no First Republic, Second Republic, Civil War; and, last but not least, no “National Catholicism” and no Franco. These extirpations of the national and imperial past largely succeeded in stripping the national symbols that were present in the Expo, such as the flag, of virtually all their binding and unifying emotional, historical, and ideological force and significance. The fate of Christopher Columbus at the Expo indicates just how complete this muting of nationalistic themes was. In keeping with the event’s emphasis on material technologies and communication, full-scale replicas of two of Columbus’s ships were anchored in the Guadalquivir River, near the huge Pavilion of Navigation. Similarly, in keeping with the focus on the cultural achievements of Europe, some reference was made to Columbus in the nearby Pavilion of the Fifteenth Century (see below). In addition, one of the ways in which the distinctive importance of Andalusia as a region linking the New World and the Old World was stressed was through a series of notifications of the “Columbus slept here” type, with notices gracing the Expo’s refurbished monastery of La Cartuja and several of the exhibits concerning Seville and other places in southwestern Spain. Otherwise, however, and in striking contrast to many earlier precedents, including Seville’s own 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition, the controversial figure of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and the Colonizer of Santo Domingo was most notable by his absence (DD 4 May 1992:6). In fact, there was not a single attention-grabbing statue or portrait of Columbus at the Expo. Thus, in symbolic terms, one of Spain’s great national heroes was effectively “disappeared” from an event whose original purpose had been to mark and measure his achievement.

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There were many other absences as well. Most notably, the nation itself in its liberal and democratic guise of an egalitarian collectivity of people and citizens capable of undertaking collective action in pursuit of common purposes was absent. Instead, “Spain” was primarily represented as an aggregation of regions, cultures, customs, and peoples who from time to time produce an individual genius (for example, a Cervantes or a Picasso) who is apparently apolitical and makes an extraordinary cultural or scientific discovery or contribution to European and global civilization. If nothing else, the absence of any sort of forceful and evocative nationalism created a degree of cultural ambiguity at the very heart of the event. The elementary structural unit that gave not only the Expo but also the new world order its most salient and manifest form was the nation-state, but much about the Expo seemed designed to ignore, suppress, and subvert crucial dimensions of this unquestionable sociopolitical fact. Why? Presumably, the reason was that in the idealized world of the Expo and to some extent in the even more confusing “real” world, some states (Spain obviously among them) were searching for and advocating different strategies for legitimating their own power and raison d’être. An examination of the contents of the thematic pavilions and of the rhetoric surrounding the Expo in general and the thematic pavilions in particular will help elucidate these strategies. As noted above, the great emphasis that the Expo placed on the various modes of communication was justified on the grounds that “encounters” between different groups and “interchanges” across different sorts of barriers inevitably lead to an increase in human cooperation and understanding. In keeping with this conviction, King Juan Carlos described the Expo’s aims in the following terms in his brief introduction to the Expo ’92 Official Guide (see SEEUS 1992b:13): “Collective aspirations and optimism depend fundamentally on dialogue among nations, mutual understanding, cultural interchange, and the sharing of knowledge. These are precisely the aims of all Universal Expositions and Seville’s in particular. They are the keys to entente and world solidarity.” Similarly, Felipe González (SEEUS 1992b:14) affirmed that “the cultural interchange that all this [i.e., the Expo] implies inspires collective confidence in the future. It represents solidarity among the peoples of the world.” In reinforcing the message that the Expo was designed to promote global solidarity, Emilio Cassinello (SEEUS 1992b:15), writing on behalf of the Expo organization, even went so far as to proclaim that the event heralded a “new approach to global cooperation” which recognized that “the future of each individual is what constitutes our common destiny.” Thus, the highest officials of Spain and the Expo were quite clear that it was now more than ever the responsibility of the state to promote global cooperation and solidarity and that this responsibility was ultimately more important than the pursuit of any narrower national interests. From quite early in the planning process, this position was conveyed to the Expo’s potential participants. For example, countries invited to participate

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in the Pavilion of the Discoveries were warned by the commissioner general’s office (see OCGE 1987:42) that “an excessively nationalistic attitude, ethnocentric in its aspirations, would be in flagrant contradiction to the philosophy of Expo ’92 and the interpretation of its theme, which celebrates precisely the universality of man’s capacity for discovery—man understood as a species above and beyond his nationalistic and ideological prides and prejudices—with a view to stimulating the elaboration of genuinely universal global bases for peaceful coexistence on the symbolic occasion of both the turn of the century and the new millennium.” To make the point even clearer, the commissioner general’s office went on to invoke the authority and achievements of science and technology (OCGE 1987:56): “We have the advantage today of being more aware than ever before of our tragedy and our problems. The tiny size of our planet seen against an immense universe brings us closer together. Differences of race, nationality, language, and beliefs fade into nothing when seen in such a context.” Remarks and observations such as this were clearly designed to dissuade participants from indulging in the temptations of parochial self-glorification. Instead, “countries, autonomous regions, and international bodies and companies” were all encouraged to explore particular facets of the “major subject” of discoveries and thereby contribute to the overall aim of “tracing scientific, technical, and cultural achievements since the discovery of America up to the present day” (SEEUS 1992b:46). The thematic pavilions that were critical to communicating this cosmopolitan vision were planned by individual architects who worked with design teams selected from and by the Committee of Experts, a committee that the commissioner general formed in the aftermath of the crisis in early 1987. This committee was headed by the queen of Spain and by the Nobel Prize– winning scientist Severo Ochoa. It was divided into four working groups that dealt with matters pertaining to humanities, social sciences, physical and natural sciences, and technology, economy, and enterprise (SEGA 1993:40). As might be expected, it was no easy matter for the multidisciplinary teams responsible for each pavilion to reach agreement with one another concerning the pavilion contents, nor did the process of coordinating the work of these teams and attempting to adjust the architecture of a given pavilion to its exhibitions, themes, and contents always proceed smoothly. As a result, each thematic pavilion was quite different from the others in its style, focus, scope, and contents. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the dozen or so pavilions and exhibitions devoted to culture and history and to science and technology did manage to convey a distinctive if somewhat disjointed and diffuse vision of “The Age of Discoveries”—at least to those visitors who took the time to think and read a bit about what they were seeing and hearing. In a nutshell, what visitors were generally supposed to learn of culture and history was this: Before the dawn of the modern age in 1492, humanity was divided into several great civilizations and hundreds of cultures, each of which

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was relatively insulated and isolated from the others and had its own particular way of viewing the world, its own customs, beliefs, values, knowledge, technologies, and accomplishments. Since 1492, however, the civilizations and cultures have increasingly come into contact with, been influenced by, and even merged with one another. Although this process of convergence and expanded communication has been fraught with difficulties and has sometimes engendered conflict, overall the encounters have stimulated impressive discoveries and advances in human knowledge, welfare, and mutual understanding. Thus, today, while we still face many problems, both the legacy of the past and the many tools with which contemporary science and technology have provided us should make us optimistic that progress will continue to be made in the future as each culture becomes better able to participate in and contribute to solving social and other problems, forging “solidarity through interchange,” and making “one single world common to all its inhabitants” (OCGE 1987:50). Each of the thematic pavilions contributed in various ways to the communication of this overall vision of the emergence of an increasingly cosmopolitan “worldwide society” based on expanded “intercommunication” (OCGE 1987:56–57). More than any other of the thematic exhibitions, the one entitled “Art and Culture around 1492” resembled the exhibitions found in conventional museums dedicated to the display of fine and decorative art. Housed in the refectory and adjacent areas of the monastery of La Cartuja, “Art and Culture around 1492” contained more than 300 objects on loan from 111 museums. Both the range and quality of these objects were impressive. Benin bronzes, Ming vases, works by Leonardo and Michelangelo, Tibetan statues of Buddha, Incan gold work, and Turkish carpets were on view. Special emphasis seemed to be given to religious art, but the dark corridors and illuminated showcases of the exhibit created a numinous atmosphere that affected how visitors would view even the most mundane drinking cup. Indeed, the thematic point of the exhibition was to convey the richness and mystery of (as well as the radical differences among) the “four worlds” of “Europe,” “Islam,” “the Far East,” and “pre-Columbian America” as these worlds supposedly existed in the “predawn,” just before the “awakening” of 1492 (SEEUS 1992a:21). The basic message conveyed again and again in a variety of spiritual and aesthetic tonalities was of a number of very broad and separate but quite equal cultural traditions. In contrast, the Pavilion of the Fifteenth Century, although it covered roughly the same period, focused exclusively on Europe and was more thisworldly in its themes and style of presentation. After passing through an idealized Renaissance garden and courtyard, visitors to the pavilion found themselves in an anteroom in which various late medieval and early modern European images and maps of the world were reproduced, along with early clocks and other instruments used to measure space and time. The main focus of the exhibition, however, was a multimedia show that used automatons,

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recorded narration, dioramas, and other devices to tell an allegorical tale of a Bohemian knight who sets out on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the fateful year of 1492. In the course of his wanderings, the knight is exposed to some of the new currents shaping the culture of his day. In Strasbourg, he discovers the new techniques of printing and the work of leading humanist scholars; in Urbino, he visits the court of the duke and is exposed to the revival of classical ideals; in Venice, he learns of the expansion of maritime commerce; and in Spain, he encounters an armored fellow knight who tells him a story that suggests the formation of a new kind of absolutist state under Ferdinand and Isabella. Finally, in Santiago de Compostela, he meets a Franciscan friar who describes the departure of Columbus, and this makes the knight wonder what the new world must be like. The show ends with the distant cry of “Land, ahoy.” Like the exhibition of “Art and Culture around 1492,” the Pavilion of the Fifteenth Century stressed the lack of communication among different peoples in 1492. In the pavilion, however, emphasis was also placed on the emergence of new integrating cultural and social forces (Renaissance cosmopolitanism, trade, and so forth) that heralded the dawn of a new order in Europe and beyond. Moreover, visitors were clearly invited to reflect on the parallels between the late fifteenth and late twentieth centuries. Indeed, Juan Gil, a member of the pavilion’s design team, concluded his introductory essay in the guidebook to the pavilion (see SEEUS 1992c:19) with the following remarks about the fundamental direction of historical change and the basic cultural and political problems that still remain to be resolved: “Now, once again, five centuries later, Europeans are still searching for that elusive unity. But now, as before, they have to reckon with the problems of exasperated nationalisms, those of the great and those of the small.” A further variation on the themes of cultural convergence and interconnection was developed even more clearly (if also more crudely) in what was to become the most popular and frequently visited thematic pavilion of the Expo, the Pavilion of Navigation. As visitors waited to enter this pavilion, they could observe the so-called Port of the Indies, where full-scale reproductions of ships sailed by Columbus and Magellan were moored. Once inside the pavilion, visitors were informed by predictable audiovisual means that before “The Age of Discoveries” many peoples—including Arabs, Chinese, and Polynesians—had developed complex maritime technologies but that, for the most part, voyagers steered clear of transoceanic voyages and clung to coastlines. After being briefly informed about early European advances in navigational and shipbuilding technologies, visitors were ushered into what appeared to be the lower deck of a disproportionately large galleon, where they could experience simulations of the sounds and turmoil of an early modern voyage from angles rather reminiscent of a rat’s eye point of view. Now convinced of the hardships and perils of traditional seafaring, visitors exited into a huge exhibition in which steady advances in maritime technology and other relevant developments were

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depicted through small-scale models of different sorts of ships and through various informative displays about subjects such as mass transoceanic migration. To remind visitors that transportation continues to undergo improvement, they were all expected to pass through a mock-up of part of a “space ship” before exiting the pavilion. Thus, the Pavilion of Navigation focused on a single area of endeavor and technology to inform visitors “how the earth came to be recognized as a single world” (SEEUS 1992b:52) and to reinforce the general notion that human discoveries have made it possible to overcome barriers to communication and community. The nearby Pavilion of Nature served as a transitional midpoint along the Route of Discoveries and separated the historical exhibitions found in the pavilions described above from the contemporary, science-oriented exhibitions found in the Plaza of the Future. The main part of the Pavilion of Nature was a large greenhouse in which four hundred plant species from the rain forests and other regions of Latin America were displayed. Related exhibits and audiovisuals provided information about expeditions to this region by Spanish explorers and naturalists, about extinction and worldwide threats to biodiversity, and about the medical and other uses of plants native to Latin America. The pavilion related history to science by showing both the benefits and costs of “discoveries” that have led to the transformation and, too often, the destruction of nature for human purposes. If the central themes of the historical pavilions were the diversity of cultures and the interactions and interdependence of cultures thanks to the emergent recognition that we all live in “one world,” then the main message to be gleaned from the four pavilions of the Plaza of the Future concerned the power of technology, the authority of science, and the responsibilities that the use of scientific knowledge ought to entail. According to the Expo ’92 Official Guide (see SEEUS 1992b:63), all of the science pavilions were inspired by the same technocorporate objective: “to describe the present situation and future perspectives of scientific and technological progress and social issues and to offer possible solutions.” Thus, the Pavilion of Energy sought to create an engaging experience for visitors by convincing them that they had entered “a giant, dynamic . . . energy machine” whose exhibits of food production, transportation, and manufacturing were “pulsating components” of a complex technocorporate mechanism (SEEUS 1992b:63). Paradoxically, the attempt to thrill people with the magic of energy was coupled with the goal of reminding people about “the need to produce energy more cheaply and the need to use less of it . . . in order to provide a reasonable standard of living for all” (SEEUS 1992b:63). The Pavilion of Telecommunications rather predictably provided myriad images of the “global village” and emphasized the ways in which new technologies have made it possible “to overcome frontiers, time, and distance” (SEEUS 1992b:64). Its most salient exhibit was a wall of 848 video screens that formed a huge buzzing and flashing map of the

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world on which appropriately diverse but always happy faces appeared and disappeared. The Pavilion of the Universe was the most impressive and popular of the science and technology pavilions. In an open-air plaza just outside the pavilion, there were full-scale mock-ups or actual examples of an elaborate clockwork waterwheel, a European space shuttle, a communications satellite, a twentymeter section of a particle accelerator, and a sixty-meter-high Ariane rocket. These “symbols of technology” were intended to overwhelm visitors with the increasing power harnessed by applied science and technocorporate cooperation between governments and industry. Inside the pavilion, the representations of basic scientific knowledge played on the juxtaposition of things of vastly different scale. The first section presented the microatomic and macrogalactic phenomena that approach the limits of the small and large and give the universe its structure. The second section introduced visitors to other “secrets” of astronomy by means of a “digital planetarium.” Finally, yet another massive video display, this one called “The Mural of Evolution,” related the biological and human dimensions of reality to the physical ones. Despite the grandeur of the vision presented in the Plaza of the Future, the scientific and technological pavilions not only developed but also considerably narrowed the theme of “The Age of Discoveries” by representing science as the paramount source of contemporary cultural authority and by conveying the notion that most human problems of solidarity and welfare could be ameliorated through the application of different sorts of technologies and instrumental, objectifying rationalities to particular collective problems. Nevertheless, the Expo organizers claimed that the Plaza of the Future as a whole not only demonstrated “a serious concern with social well-being and solidarity” but also provided “an excellent reflection of our late twentieth-century postindustrial era” (SEEUS 1992b:61). Thus, these pavilions provided a forceful technocorporate vision of the historical and present dynamics of human agency. It is important to note that the relation between the contemporary science-oriented pavilions and the historical pavilions was to have been examined in much more detail in the Pavilion of the Discoveries, the largest of the Expo’s thematic pavilions. This pavilion was designed to present a synthetic overview of the modern age by focusing on four overlapping developments: the processes of “biological and cultural mestisaje [hybridization]” set in motion by the discovery of the Americas; the contributions of great discoverers, such as Newton and Copernicus, to human knowledge; the impact of the industrial revolution on global society; and the need for solidarity among peoples in a world where both the unity and diversity of mankind have become unavoidable facts of life. According to the Expo organizers (SEEUS 1992b:59), “In essence, the whole exhibition was a call to humanism” in which a celebration of discoveries was to have been qualified by “a warning note about the way that we sometimes move backward—often beyond the bounds of civilization—in the

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name of progress.” Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the Pavilion of Discoveries a few weeks before the opening day of the Expo, and as a result of this “warning against blithe optimism,” it remains unclear to what extent and exactly how this key pavilion would have given cultural and political bite to its multimedia information bits. Even so, the broad political implications of the worldview promoted by the Expo’s thematic pavilions were not difficult to discern. The major pavilions all delineated one or another stage or dimension of a general historical and cultural process of globalization—a process that involves a movement from relative fragmentation, disorder, and limitations to relative integration, organization, and freedom by means of various types of discoveries, all of which increase the possibilities of communication and exchange among human populations and increase the possibilities of control over natural resources and energy. Throughout the thematic pavilions, the basic concern was to show that cultural diversity and vitality are enhanced, rather than diminished, by science, technology, and other forms of rationalized and objectified knowledge when the application of these forms of knowledge and power are guided by humanist values of equality and solidarity and are used to overcome the political, economic, and cultural barriers that separate people from one another. From this perspective, the nation-state was most often represented as a particular form of cultural and sociopolitical organization that is best viewed as a product of a particular middling stage of development in the forces of global integration. As such, the nation-state ought to be (and very likely will sooner or later be) transcended or at least transformed by more encompassing transnational and supranational political and cultural institutions and technobureaucratic corporatist integrations.2 It was manifestly one of the key missions of the thematic pavilions of the Expo to herald and promote this process. Indeed, Expo officials liked to point out that the history of the monastery of La Cartuja itself reflected these broader processes on a microcosmic scale. Founded to preserve the medieval worldview of religious orthodoxy, the monastery nonetheless eventually became a refuge for Columbus at the dawn of “The Age of Discoveries.” Later converted to secular purposes as a ceramics factory, it came to embody the power of industrial civilization and nineteenth-century liberal nationalism. Now, at the beginning of another era of rapid discovery and global integration, the monastery was being put to a new use, allowing it to serve not only as a monument to the past but also as a ceremonial center to inaugurate Expo ’92 and to celebrate the peaceful coming together of “the whole world on an island” (SEEUS 1992b:20). By purveying such representations and images, the thematic pavilions invited visitors to identify themselves not with a particular nation or group but, instead, with humanity in general and with the values of an emergent transnational and cosmopolitan civilization guided and organized in accordance with the general principles of Western liberalism. Even though this message was

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most explicitly communicated in the thematic exhibitions, they were not the only means by which the legitimacy of the unitary, sovereign nation-state was directly or indirectly undermined and displaced in the Expo. Many other aspects of the Expo encouraged visitors to question the conventional “one nation–one state” ideal, to examine “a world in permanent question of itself,” and “to fabricate a prophecy of the future in order to modify it” (SEGA 1993:137). For example, despite the central place given to national pavilions, the prominence of the corporate, international, and thematic pavilions tended to call both the autonomy and the dominance of the political form of the nationstate into doubt. The spatial proximity and juxtaposition of corporate pavilions with national ones (for example, the Siemens pavilion with the German pavilion) conveyed an impression that these different sorts of institutions overlapped with one another and were in some ways coequal and codependent—or, as the Expo ’92 Official Guide described it, “the perfect complement” of one another (SEEUS 1992b:237). Indeed, there appeared to be a high degree of parity between firms and states, not only because the corporations tended to define their identities with a fairly high degree of gravity and in terms of social benefits and public responsibilities but also because virtually every national pavilion was highly commercialized both in the sense that many used advertising techniques to promote national enterprises and encourage investment and in the sense that virtually all of them contained restaurants, souvenir stands, and specialty shops out to make a profit. As a result, much in the Expo made it hard to discriminate the strategies of representation pursued by transnational corporations from those pursued by nation-states. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that many poorer states, whose pavilions were small and whose exhibitions were modest, seemed to lack the autonomy, resources, and influence that global corporations obviously possessed in great abundance. In addition, the clustering of many exhibitions of participating countries in joint macroregional pavilions and the prominence of the independent pavilions of international organizations, such as the United Nations and especially the European Community, tended to undermine the notion that the territorial nation-state would remain the dominant form of political organization in the modern world. Just as important in limiting the authority of the nation-state was the way in which various concepts and images of culture deployed in the Expo trumped notions of national integrity and reinforced cosmopolitan perspectives. Overall (but with some important exceptions that will be considered in later chapters), relatively little attention was given to the notion of coherent national cultures in either the pavilions of participating countries or the Expo as a whole. In striking contrast, however, there were countless evocations of transnational and subnational diversity and plurality, and the Expo made it very clear that regions, ethnic and religious groups, other sorts of groups, and even small local communities had distinctive “cultures” in the sense of particular tradition-based complexes of common customs, values, and understandings. Moreover, the

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Expo placed strong emphasis on both traditional and modern beliefs, values, and cultural forms that cut across national boundaries. Thus, the existence of transnational civilizational traditions (European, Ibero-American, Islamic, and the like) and the increasing force of some near-universal values best summarized in terms of liberty, fraternity, and equality were virtually taken for granted throughout the Expo, as was the emergence of a widespread if not yet fully globalized popular culture of mass consumption and entertainment. The cumulative effect of the representation of all these different sources and patterns of variably shared meanings, values, and loyalties was to deny any particularly privileged status or authority to national identity. Ultimately, however, what most tended to undermine nationalist conceptions and legitimations of the state within the Expo was the way in which a broad range of individual states chose to represent themselves to the world. In keeping with the above-noted tendencies to celebrate internal diversity and transnational commonalities, most of the key participating states presented their countries in word, deed, and image not primarily as cohesive cultural communities or homogeneous territorially bounded entities but, rather, as cultural and politicoeconomic centers and crossroads. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the Expo as it unfolded over its six-month course was a sometimes tacit but often quite overt and highly publicized contest among countries to show just how open, plural, complex—and, in a word, “cosmopolitan”—they were. This was true to such an extent that it often seemed as if participating states were competing for titles in a kind of world championship or Olympics of diversity management (see Part IV). Of course, in this competition, as in many other sorts of organized struggles for power, wealth, and prestige, several factors were clear from the beginning: there were heavyweight, middleweight, and lightweight divisions; some of the contestants were essentially noncontenders or were not going to follow the rules; and participants were devising a number of strategies to maximize their particular strengths and minimize their particular weaknesses. But even if the elementary dynamics of competition among states inevitably raised the specter of chauvinistic particularism, because the basic aim of the contest was to present the state as a rational and cosmopolitan orchestrator of diversities, rather than as an architect of national unity, most of the strength of the idea of nationhood was absent from the struggle and what remained was a strain of nationalism so weak and residual that it seemed to have been allowed to survive primarily in order to inoculate those most vulnerable to it from more virulent strains of the disease.

PART III

䉬 Conjunctures and Conflicts: Technobureaucracy and the City

9. The Two-Headed Monster To the ordinary visitor setting forth on the Route of Discoveries, the Expo presented itself as a bland consensual mélange of the past and present. For all its diversity of themes, it offered nothing that was likely to shock a nineyear-old child or give much pause to any but the most skeptical of adults. Even if, as has been suggested, much of the exposition promoted a cosmopolitan vision that undercut the authority of nationalist and other strongly held ways of viewing the world, this was done with the perpetually smiling face of liberal tolerance. As a result, the Expo’s selective version of culture and history seemed little more than an elaboration of common sense, a sweetly reasonable version of the general opinions and aspirations of humankind. Who and how many would want to deny that cultural convergence holds more promise than isolation, that solidarity is better than prejudice, or that cooperation is needed to solve problems which are increasingly global in scope? The apparently seamless and broad appeal of such messages did not encourage doubts about what was left unsaid, about contradictions in what was being said, or about who exactly was saying what. Nevertheless, virtually everything about the Expo was at least a little less bland and straightforward than it first appeared to be. And if the event as a whole finally did manage to offer some sort of coherent and consensual vision, it appears on closer examination to have been a consensus that was rather narrowly based. Consider, for example, the endlessly repeated public relations slogan that the Expo offered “something for everybody.” This slogan was ordinarily buttressed by a listing of the diverse contents of many pavilions and the even more diverse series of concerts and other performances being offered. In general, it conveyed the notion that the Expo was cosmopolitan in scope and was democratic, pluralistic, and egalitarian in spirit. However, it also served as one among many means to obscure some important facts and relationships. On the one hand, the slogan belied the fairly obvious fact that the Expo was overwhelmingly designed to appeal to the tastes of urban, well-heeled, middle-class adults and offered little to most Andalusian country folk, working-class people, or even children, much less to members of minority groups, dissenters, radicals of one stripe or another, and numerous other identifiable segments of the population. On the other hand, the slogan tended to gloss over the fact that Expo ’92, like all expositions, was created by and reflected the views and purposes of a tiny cultural, political, and economic elite—an elite whose members in this particular case were divided into antagonistic factions and were often at one another’s throats. As discussed in Part II, the early history of the Expo’s organization was rocky. To maintain at least the appearance that the Expo was a nonpartisan

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project of the state rather than a partisan project of the Socialist party, Felipe González had appointed Manuel Olivencia, a non-Socialist, to be the Expo’s commissioner general. However, this decision was never fully accepted by sectors of the Socialist party apparatus and led to a crisis during Olivencia’s tenure in early 1987. To resolve this crisis, the Expo bureaucracy was reorganized. Jacinto Pellón, a fellow traveler of the Socialists, was made chief executive officer of the State Society and put in charge of its day-to-day operations, while Olivencia retained his position as overall director. This division of labor appeared to work well for only a short time. Internal disputes over prerogatives and responsibilities soon arose between the staff of the commissioner general’s office and the functionaries of the State Society, and a highly charged political environment made these conflicts difficult to resolve. Much of the problem was that Olivencia had little space for maneuver, both because he was carefully watched from Madrid and because his enemies within the Andalusian wing of the Socialist party had not been content with the gains that they had made in 1987 and continued to take every opportunity to attack his authority. Eventually, the tensions led to the metamorphosis of the Expo’s already bifurcated bureaucracy into a snarling twoheaded monster that was driven by what at times seemed to be an unbridled desire for autocannibalization. Not surprisingly, in neither the short term nor the long term did the struggles for control do the Expo much good. Ironically, they damaged the Socialist party even more, especially when the infighting in the Expo spilled over into Seville and altered the dynamics of local and regional politics. Thus, recounting how the bureaucratic struggles on the island world of the Expo affected and were affected by local and national electoral politics reveals some of the flaws and dilemmas involved in the Socialist party’s larger projects. To begin to understand the struggles, it is necessary to know something more about the Expo organization and the factions within it—who they were, how they operated, and what they wanted. The Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition was located on La Avenida de la Palmera in Seville, a short taxi ride from La Isla de la Cartuja. Although the Expo was large and complex, the staff of this office was rather small, particularly after the reorganization of 1987. The commissariat had four divisions that dealt with economic, technical, cultural, and foreign affairs. Each of these divisions was headed by a director, and there was also a director of the technical and office staff. The five directors reported to the secretary general of the commissariat, who was the immediate subordinate of Olivencia, the commissioner general. Olivencia himself reported to González through a cabinet minister (Virgilio Zapatero). Olivencia also had numerous other responsibilities. He was obliged to report on the Expo’s development to the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) in Paris and to the National Commission for the Fifth Centenary. He and his staff had direct responsibility for the overall design of the

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Expo, the contents of the thematic pavilions, and the recruitment and coordination of the involvement of other countries in the event. After the initial rounds of planning and diplomatic courtship were completed in 1987 and 1988, these functions were primarily exercised with the help of the Committee of Experts and through a college of commissioner generals of participating countries, which included the commissioner general of the Spanish section of the exposition. Olivencia and his staff were also expected to work with members of the State Society in developing and implementing overall Expo policies. In addition, the commissioner general was supposed to function as a general overseer and had the right and obligation to approve or reject all personnel decisions, contracts, budgets, and expenditures. During the period from 1987 to 1991, the staff of the commissariat remained fairly stable. Among the most important officials were José Luis Ballester, a Seville lawyer and businessman who held the key post of secretary general of the commissariat; Alfredo Jiménez Núñez, an anthropologist who specializes in Latin American studies at the University of Seville and acted as director of cultural affairs; and Rafael López Palanco, who in 1979 had represented the center-right Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) as a candidate for mayor of Seville and was director of technical affairs. A number of other figures also occupied influential posts. However, what is most important to note about the commissioner general’s staff is not so much the roles of particular individuals but the cohesiveness of the group as a whole. The solidarity of this group can be accounted for in a number of ways. Almost all the key members were Andalusian men, and most had established successful careers in law or academia. Despite their rather wide range of professional, public, and international experience, their family and professional lives were centered in Seville, and they were old enough to have begun their careers under the Franco regime. Most were moderately conservative in their cultural and political outlooks. In other words, they represented a good crosssection of the rather small and (until very recently) tightly knit upper-middle class of Andalusia. And in keeping with the dispositions and ethos of their class, generation, and region, what seemed to count most among this group were their personal relations with Olivencia, who not only came from a similar background but also easily commanded personal respect, with his reputation as a man of great charm and intelligence, an extraordinary memory, and (in private at least) a sardonic wit. As a sign of their loyalty to and affection for Olivencia, his immediate subordinates commonly referred to him as “Don Manuel,” a traditional and slightly formal title that nonetheless invoked relations of intimate familiarity and trust. Thus, despite the ordinary rush and bustle of daily business, the commissioner general’s office managed to preserve something of the tone and values of a classic Andalusian tertulia, a circle of friends and “friends of friends” who are bound to one another by shared outlooks and experiences as well as by common interests and purposes. Indeed,

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according to a member of this group, the tertulia continued to get together for regular monthly dinners even after their official duties in the Expo had ended. The State Society for the Universal Exposition of Seville was altogether a larger kettle of very different fish. After the appointment of Pellón as managing director in 1987, its offices were moved from La Avenida de la Palmera to the “caracolas,” a complex of small and temporary, though well-appointed, buildings conveniently located on the construction site of the Expo and perhaps not incidentally also conveniently removed from the scrutiny of the commissariat. From these new headquarters, Pellón set about the formidable task of ruling a rapidly expanding and highly complex bureaucracy that had vast resources, consisted of thousands of employees, and had to be reorganized more than once (in 1987, 1988, 1991, and 1992) as the construction phase of the project slowly gave way to phases in which the primary tasks centered on supervising operations, programs, and maintenance. Until 1991, the diplomat Emilio Cassinello was the president of the State Society, but he was hardly involved in the day-to-day work on the site. Rather, his primary role was to assist Olivencia in his negotiations with participants and to serve as a liaison between various parties. In addition, he presided over the Council of Administration of the State Society, a body that consisted of about two dozen members, including representatives from businesses, from the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary, and from the governments of Seville, Andalusia, and Spain. The council was heavily dominated by prominent Socialists, who often had more than one sort of stake in the Expo. Olivencia had a voice but no vote in the deliberations of the council. Although the basic function of the council was to approve or modify policies proposed by Pellón as managing director, the council rarely operated as anything other than a rubber stamp for decisions that had already been arrived at by Pellón alone or through his informal discussions with council members. The somewhat unstable and fluid organization of the lower levels of the State Society tended to parallel the organization of the commissioner general’s office in some ways and diverge from it in many others. For example, in both the State Society and the commissariat, there were subdirectorates with responsibilities pertaining to cultural affairs and international participation. However, in the State Society there were numerous other offices and branches, such as the subdirectorate for projects and constructions, the office of the secretary for planning, the adjunct director general’s office, the office of administration, the adviser’s office, and the legal adviser’s office, none of which had similarly named offices in the commissariat. It frequently took considerable experience and knowledge for the hundreds of lesser functionaries and employees of one wing of the Expo to figure out who their counterparts in the other wing might be, so there was ample room for unintentional offenses and lapses in official civility. Beyond this, there was also some difference, sometimes consequential and sometimes not, in the backgrounds and outlooks of the staff of the com-

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missariat and the staff of the State Society. The higher and middle levels of the State Society were almost always staffed by people who were either Socialists or avowed sympathizers and who had or wished to have careers in public administration or in the most advanced and highly corporatized sectors of the economy. In the vast majority of cases, the people at the higher levels were not Andalusians. Moreover, many of them were relatively young and ambitious and enjoyed conveying the impression that they were rising technocrats, managers, and experts who brooked no nonsense. One of my friends liked to refer to them as “Motorola muchachos” because they waved around their omnipresent cellular phones like fetishes linking them to the powers of earth and sky. The State Society was characterized by an ethos that was less paternalistic and familiar and was more authoritarian and colder than that of the commissioner general’s office. Pellón left no doubts in the minds of his subordinates that he was in charge, and he ruled the State Society with an iron hand. He had two chief lieutenants: Francisco Rueda, who was from Madrid and in charge of operations, and Ginés Aparicio, who was from Murcia and directed construction. But because Pellón had the brusque and humorless manner of a drill sergeant and was apparently unwilling to sacrifice efficiency for courtesy, he gave the impression of having few real intimates and no one on whom he ultimately depended. Partly as a result of the authoritarian tone set by Pellón and his senior staff and more than most Spanish organizations, the State Society seemed to suffer from the maladies that arise when bureaucratic functionaries are too obsequious toward their superiors and too arrogant toward their subordinates. Still, no one involved at any level in the Expo, from González and Olivencia to construction workers on the site, seriously questioned Pellón’s ability to get things done. And even if the State Society was not altogether a pleasant place to work for many people, it was at least an exciting one because it was where the action was. As everyone knew, “the engineer,” as Pellón was called, had at his disposal the lion’s share of a budget approaching 200,000 million pesetas. The imbalance of resources at their disposal is one of the key factors that exacerbated relations between the commissariat and the State Society and increasingly shifted the balance of power toward Pellón. To some extent, the shift was inevitable as the planning stage of the event concluded and the construction phase began. Once the commissioner general and his staff had decided on the basic design and messages of the Expo, determined the basic contents of the theme pavilions, and reached basic understandings with the participants, there was less for them to do, while the tasks of the officers of the State Society steadily multiplied as policies were put into practice. The shift in power in the Expo and the increasing polarization that resulted from it were also accelerated by the inadequacies of the bureaucratic procedures developed to enable the commissioner general to maintain general oversight of the Expo. Although functionaries of the commissariat and the State Society were in day-to-day communication with one another over many matters, most of the interactions

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were essentially contacts that presumed cooperation between equals, rather than oversight. Direct supervision of the State Society was at least formally limited to business surrounding the meetings of the Council of Direction, a body that was usually composed of Olivencia, Ballester, Cassinello, Pellón, and any of Pellón’s subdirectors who were invited to attend when matters related to their areas of responsibility were on the agenda. But these high-level meetings were intermittent and rather a thin and fragile mechanism for formulating directives, for resolving all the difficulties that arose through the complex activities of the State Society, and, above all, for gaining sufficient knowledge to be able to understand and approve proposals, contracts, and disbursements. For such a mechanism to work, a large measure of mutual goodwill and trust was clearly required from both wings of the organization. Yet it was precisely goodwill and trust that Olivencia most conspicuously was denied in his dealings with much of the Socialist party and with the State Society. Moreover, there was nothing that the Socialists were more anxious about than money matters—and with good reason, because beginning in the late 1980s, there seemed to be no end of rumors and scandals concerning Socialist graft. The first rumors of serious graft concerned Filesa and Matesa, two companies that produced useless consulting reports for a number of large corporations and banks and charged exorbitant fees that wound up in national party coffers. The taint of corruption reached Seville in early 1990, when news broke that Juan Guerra, the brother of Alfonso Guerra, had grown suddenly rich by setting up an office for influence peddling in the local Socialist party headquarters (EPI 19 Feb 1990:14). In these circumstances, the last thing that party regulars wanted was an outsider with a free hand to interfere and poke around in those aspects of the Expo which from their perspective ought not to concern him. In fact (and pretty much to everybody’s surprise), no major scandals directly concerning the Expo emerged. Even so, it is easy to understand why lots of people might have been more than a little worried about their reputations and the party’s political vulnerabilities, given that political favoritism was so obvious in the State Society and the contracts it awarded. Only about 7 percent (45 of 668) of the contracts for work on the Expo involved open competitive bidding. The remainder either were directly awarded or were granted after a minimal number of private proposals were solicited (ABC 19 Apr 1992:55). This practice, which allowed ample scope for the Socialists and their allies to engage in mutual back-scratching, extended from the top to the bottom rung of the political and economic ladder. Near the top were big banks and transnational corporations. Officers of the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and the Banco Hispanoamericano, for example, were closely linked to the Socialist party and had positioned their institutions to take maximum advantage of the Socialists’ fiscal policies and the “Europeanization” of the economy (see Holman 1996:167–99; Rivases 1988). Both banks were also among the largest patrons and financiers of the Expo. Similarly, the

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officers of Siemens were implicated in the illegal financing of the Socialists’ 1989 electoral campaign and were accused of paying “commissions” to party figures for their advice on securing public contracts (Holman 1996:186). Siemens was the corporation that reaped the largest profits from the hugely expensive construction of the AVE high-speed railroad between Madrid and Seville (a railroad designed to rapidly transport participants to the Expo), and Siemens installed one of the Expo’s key communications systems. It was clearly no accident that the Siemens pavilion was large and occupied one of the best sites in the Expo. A bit lower down on the ladder, the Dragados firm benefited substantially from the Expo and related projects. In addition to building the “caracolas” that housed the State Society, this construction company erected the Expo monorail, a theater on the Expo site, three bridges across the Guadalquivir River, and a number of other structures. Indeed, it was the largest single private beneficiary of the Expo. It received about 17 percent of the money awarded for construction through the State Society and the Ministry of Public Works for Expo-related projects (ABC 3 Apr 1992:56–57; ABC 19 Apr 1992:55; EP 22 Jul 1990:4). Both before and after the Expo, Pellón was one of the directors of Dragados. On a more modest scale, the Expo sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of many Socialists and their supporters, with the result that quite a number of small service-oriented businesses, consulting firms, and the like—often with rather confusing connections to one another—sprang up like weeds around La Isla de la Cartuja. One example was Producciones Arco Iris, a firm directed by Pablo Recio and Fernando Feijoo, two former high-ranking Socialist officials who had advised La Junta de Andalucía on matters relating to health, industry, and development. During the Expo, this firm supplied and maintained audiovisual and other equipment for the pavilions of Spain, Extremadura, and Canada. In addition, its directors controlled six other Expo concessions, five of which paid the State Society royalties that were much lower than the average rate (DD 20 Aug 1992:5; DD 21 Aug 1992:6). A second example was La Unión Temporal de Empresas (UTE), an organization that was awarded a contract for 787 million pesetas to construct an Expo exhibit called La Andalucía de los Niños. This exhibit consisted of scale models of churches, castles, and towns and was financed by the regional government (DD 27 Sep 1992:8). UTE was formed as a cooperative venture by three enterprises, which in turn were connected in various ways to three other companies. Among the principal investors and directors of these companies were the following: Mario López Gay, who in addition to being the brother-in-law of the official in charge of the exhibit was the brother of Pina López Gay, the vice-president of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary and a member of the Council of Administration of the State Society; Antonio Arroyo, the director of the Pavilion of Navigation, and his wife; and Pellón, his wife, and his children. There was nothing demonstrably illegal about such arrangements, but they do

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indicate the tendency for Expo officials to look favorably upon the initiatives of their families, friends, associates, and members of the Socialist party. Tracing who contracted what from whom in the exhibition could easily be extended ad nauseam, but enough has been said to indicate why the minions of the State Society were not comfortable with the thought that someone like Olivencia, who clearly had little appetite for this sort of “business discipline,” was their ultimate boss.1 Yet it was not simply mundane material concerns that increasingly poisoned relations between the commissioner general’s office and the State Society. There was also a cultural cleavage. This cleavage did not clearly emerge until after most of the decisions regarding the general themes of the Expo and the focus of the specialized historical and scientific pavilions had been made by Olivencia and his team in the middle and late 1980s. Although officials of the State Society directly challenged only the details of the themes and pavilions, it became increasingly apparent that their plans for other aspects of the exhibition did not harmonize well with the earnest and serious inflections that the commissioner general’s office had given to the interpretation of “The Age of Discoveries.” The disagreements that arose, however, had very little to do with basic philosophies or political ideologies. Pellón and his aides, as supporters of the Socialist party, were just as devoted to the values and perspectives of cosmopolitan liberalism as anyone in the commissioner general’s office, if not more so. The disputes instead arose over what sort of cultural level and tone should define the event. While recognizing that the Expo had to attract a large audience, the commissioner general’s office wanted to create an event that stressed information, education, and cultural accomplishments and aspirations and thereby enhanced the prestige of the country. In contrast, Pellón and his assistants believed that it was necessary to cater primarily if not exclusively to popular tastes in diversions and entertainment in order to guarantee the event’s financial success and to impress everyone (and, in particular, potential corporate investors in the Cartuja ’93 project) with the efficiency and modernity of the “new Spain.” As far as Pellón and his organization were concerned, as one journalist (EM 21 Jul 1991:7) put it, the goal of constructing and presenting the Expo was simple: “Countries and tourists come; it doesn’t cost a nickel; and it’s ready for later uses. The rest doesn’t matter. If the Expo has to be converted into a spectacle and advertized with hot dogs and hamburgers, well OK.” In other words, the aim of Pellón was to present the Expo as a “great fiesta” on a site extraordinarily well prepared for future use as a center for research and development. What this meant in public relations practice is evident in the various editions of Destination Seville, a monthly publication of the State Society for the tourist industry. For example, in the July 1991 edition (see SEEUS 1991:8), the Expo was promoted as “a continuous fiesta of unforgettable experiences,” “the biggest tourist event of our time,” and “an invitation not only to wonder at Mankind’s achievements but also to enjoy them.” Promis-

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ing pleasure, entertainment, accommodation, and convenience, the agents of the State Society noted that “enjoyment is guaranteed at Expo ’92 by day and by night” and stressed that “activities are programmed to go until 4:00 A.M.” Excitement would be created by “a vast multimedia show” each evening at the Lake of Spain, followed by “dancing to orchestras and bands” playing around the site. Performances would spill out “into the streets” from the theaters, bars, and restaurants, and revelers could ride an elevated railway, cable cars, and boats on the lake and could view Seville from a panoramic tower. In keeping with this titillating approach, the thematic and other pavilions of the Expo were described as “showcases” for the daily display of “wonders.” Visitors would have the chance to become adventurers and embark on “a retrospective trip through time, back to Viking villages and long ships, Aztec and Mayan treasures, the culture of the Maoris, [and] the way of life of desert-dwellers,” and they could also “explore at close quarters” technological achievements that “have revolutionized our lives.” In sum, from the perspective of the State Society, the Expo’s theme of “The Age of Discoveries” represented little more than an excuse for creating a “great park of attractions,” the best in infotainment, a technocorporate Disney World in Seville. And lest some benighted souls miss the promise of painless fun, the agents of the State Society reinforced the notion of the great fiesta with two other soothing images that they sought to implant in the minds of the Eurotourist masses. The first image was of “Curro,” the cartoon mascot of the Expo, a blanched, clipped-winged, smiling, and eternally mute takeoff of Big Bird with a rainbow-colored cone-shaped beak and a flaring coxcomb. Curro’s ubiquity and ineluctable inanity were supposed to ensure that even the younger members of families would be amused at the exposition and that vacationing adults would encounter nothing that need be taken too seriously. The second image continually touted was of the “microclimate” that was to be created on La Isla de la Cartuja (ABC 16 Jul 1992:46). The summer sun of Seville can be brutal. As the old joke goes, “Why do the poor gather in the parks in August? . . . Because roasted birds fall from the trees every afternoon.” In order to persuade domestic and foreign tourists that they should come to Expo ’92, the event’s organizers were installing a series of fountains, pools, shaded walkways, and rest areas in the center of the exposition to provide some relief from the heat. However, to lend glamour to this sensible plan, the organizers claimed that there would be an extensive “bioconditioning system” that emitted “microdrops” of water; and according to the best estimates of the most reliable experts and consultants of the State Society, this would lower the ambient temperature of the zone by at least three degrees centigrade but perhaps by as much as a remarkable five or six degrees. This exciting, ecologically sound, and indeed revolutionary technological breakthrough would make the whole “Expo experience” more agreeable. Or, to put it somewhat differently, there is nothing like an open-air shower to settle the nerves on a real

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scorcher and maybe even convince the gullible that they should come and see just how thoroughly modern, innovative, and comfy the new Spain could be. The increasing likelihood that the Expo’s messages about history, culture, and humanity would be drowned out by the enveloping buzz, bells, spray, and whistles of the grand fiesta was not reassuring to Olivencia and his staff. They continued to argue for a conception of the Expo that was humanistic and historical in focus and highlighted the Hispano-American encounter, the convergence of cultures, and the great traditions of scientific, artistic, and spiritual discovery. From their perspective, while officials of the State Society paid some lip service to these higher themes, in practice they were nonetheless proceeding with the conversion of the site into a theme park. To counter the tendency toward vulgarization, the commissioner general’s Office of Cultural Affairs publicized an ambitious expansion of a program entitled Expoforum ’92. This revitalized program was to extend and amplify the work of the Committee of Experts on the themes of the exposition by providing funds and a framework for a continuing series of conferences in which recognized and famous practitioners from various fields would be brought together to address contemporary problems and possible solutions. The hope was that the participants, topics, and timing of the conferences would be sufficient to attract worldwide media attention to the Expo and lend it a prestigious aura. Rather than being (or at least in addition to being) a theme park, the Expo would represent a platonic academy for the global village. The published papers from the first conference (see OCGE 1990) give a good idea of the broader aims of the commissioner general and his staff. In his greeting to conference participants, Olivencia pointedly declared, “I believe at times that we get lost in the material aspects of the exposition . . . but the soul of the exposition pertains to the world of ideas” (OCGE 1990:8). This perspective was further developed by Alfredo Jiménez, the director of cultural affairs, who indicated that “a universal exposition . . . demands a profound and serene reflection on the part of specialists in the most diverse fields of the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical and natural sciences” (OCGE 1990:25). Jiménez noted that because the Expo was to be “a mass event, a place of encounter for millions of people that belong to distinct cultures, subcultures, and differentiated social sectors,” the gathered experts had to bear in mind their responsibility to transmit “facts, ideas, and concepts” through “very diverse languages and idioms” (OCGE 1990:27). Even so, the fundamental aim was to convert Seville, Andalusia, and Spain in 1992 “into a great stage where the world will manifest itself to the world, . . . where humanity will speak to man, and where men will interrogate society, especially its leaders and directors” (OCGE 1990:27). The hope and opportunity of the Expo was to “hacer balance,” to arrive at a balanced judgment of the past and present that would open a way “not to a new year but to a new century, another millennium” (OCGE 1990:27).

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On the evidence of the other contributions to this first of many anticipated meetings of the minds, the interrogation of society via the forum was to be conducted at quite a high intellectual level. Indeed, few of the promises and dilemmas of cosmopolitan liberalism escaped at least some critical scrutiny in one or another of the papers presented. For example, Juan Antonio Carrillo Salcedo (1990), a professor of international law at the University of Seville and a judge on the European Tribunal of Human Rights, suggested that the key question confronting the world now, as in 1492, is that of a fundamental reorganization of power. After discussing a number of reasons why “the ship of [national] sovereignty is sinking,” he observed that while the lines dividing internal and external politics were becoming more and more relative and fluid, it was highly unlikely that a radical transformation of “the interstate character of the international system” (1990:38) would take place without a massive and long-term effort to educate and socialize (or resocialize) citizens. In a complementary vein, Pedro Cerezo Galán (1990) of the University of Granada argued that resurgent nationalism “is a mode of reaction to industrial cosmopolitanism” that is exacerbated by the increasing disjunction between “democratic legitimation by representation and technocratic legitimation by efficacy and success.” He identified the disparity between the increasing power of communications technologies and the impoverishment of the content of communication as “the gravest contradiction of our time” (1990:44). Most of the other presenters also made interesting and provocative contributions. Horacio Capel Sáez went so far as to claim that although confrontations between “universalism and nationalism” clearly would persist for some time to come, “Spain itself has ceased to exist; what exists is the Spanish state” (1990:85). Ricardo Díez Hochleitner, president of the Spanish chapter of the Club of Rome, observed that macroregional associations represent “the only present alternative to nation-states” and supported the call for massive new investment in education to raise citizens to “a high cultural level” (1990:130–31). Unfortunately, this rather abstract music of the spheres was not greeted with much enthusiasm in the State Society. Pellón was perhaps a bit tone deaf, and in any case he and his staff argued that complex ideas and debates could not be effectively “exhibited.” More important, they believed that publicizing the Expo as a venue for the esoteric chitchat of intellectuals would lead ordinary folks to bypass Seville and head for the beach. As a result, this difference of opinion concerning the cultural focus of the Expo became one of the definitive points of cleavage between the two wings of the Expo bureaucracy in the late 1980s. By this time, thanks to gossip in the press, it was becoming quite clear that key officials of the State Society and the commissioner general’s office did not view one another with great affection. Indeed, although little concrete information was publicly available at the time, it was also becoming more and more apparent that the whole Expo project was being affected by a

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struggle for power between popularizers and humanists, spenders and auditors, doers and thinkers, Socialists and non-Socialists, outsiders and Andalusians, “the engineer” and “Don Manuel.” The intensity of this struggle waxed and waned during the period from 1987 to 1992, and battles were fought on a number of different fronts.2 Even though each side publicly denied any ill will toward the other, the general positions and strategies of the antagonists were clear enough. Olivencia’s staff members sought to defend the commissioner general’s authority by continually reasserting their well-defined legal prerogatives and preeminence in policy making, whereas the functionaries of the State Society aimed to turn the commissioner general into a figurehead by staging a series of hit-and-run raids that eroded his practical control over one aspect after another of the Expo. Ultimately, the commissioner general’s court of last appeal was the government in Madrid and particularly González, his former student, who more than once had to decide if he wanted to pay the political price involved in accepting Olivencia’s resignation. Pellón, on the other hand, relied on the support of Andalusian Socialists and the technocratic wing of the party, who, though ready enough to concede that the managing director lacked diplomacy and tact, nevertheless insisted that he was indispensable to the Expo’s success. In times of acute crisis, the meetings of the Council of Direction tended to degenerate into shouting matches or studies in silence and resentment. Almost always during these encounters, Olivencia and Cassinello, as befitted their roles as the two highest officials of the Expo, strived to keep above the fray, maintain civility, and act as mediators and reconcilers in an attempt to reach compromise. In his role of managing director, however, Pellón was evidently more directly engaged in the arguments, as were his key lieutenants. On the commissioner general’s side, Ballester reportedly acted as the main sword and shield of Olivencia and was reportedly intensely disliked by officials of the State Society for doing so. Some of these disputes were well publicized. For example, mid-1989 was clearly a time when tensions were particularly intense. In May, Ballester offered to resign from his position as secretary general, evidently in the hope that his departure would restore a semblance of peace to the Expo. The commissioner general, however, refused to accept the offer. A few weeks later, the press began to publish stories concerning a dispute whose two principal antagonists were Alfredo Jiménez, the head of cultural affairs in the commissioner general’s office, and Ignacio Quintana, the director of the division of contents in the State Society. The particular point at issue involved the character of the exhibits of the Pavilion of Discoveries. Quintana wanted the pavilion to emphasize technology and science, to be organized into sections such as the chemistry section and physics section, and to display objects produced in laboratories and factories. Jiménez insisted on a much broader interpretation of the theme of discoveries, warned that science was not Spain’s strong suit,

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and disparaged the idea of a pavilion that resembled a “nineteenth-century museum” of industrial products and technology. This difference of opinion, as Jiménez later observed, made communication between his group members and their counterparts in the State Society “difficult, if not impossible” (ABC 24 Feb 1992:44). But because the prerogatives of the commissioner general’s office in matters concerning the contents of the thematic pavilions were quite clear and also because Jiménez was able to call on officials of participating countries such as France and Japan to support his case, Quintana soon was forced to seek new employment. Indeed, Quintana’s dismissal represented one of the bigger victories for Olivencia’s side, and it was quickly followed by a campaign whose aim was to pressure the recently appointed head of the Spanish section of the Expo into making Spain’s national pavilion less contemporary and more historical and cultural in its focus (EC 30 Oct 1989:12). This effort apparently met with some success and also provided the commissioner general’s office with an opportunity to publicize its overall vision of the “basic ideas” that should guide Spain’s presentation of itself in the Expo. What was important to convey was not Spanish technology but Spain’s “contributions to universal culture,” its “presence in America,” and the “pluralism of Spanish culture over the unity of the state” (EC 30 Oct 1989:12). Most of the conflicts remained more or less hidden from public view, and no good purpose would be served by dwelling on their gory details, many of which are in any case rather obscure and uncertain. Suffice it to say that all of the time-tested tactics of bureaucratic infighting were employed at one time or another. Appointments were canceled or postponed; directives were ignored; inquiries went unanswered; budget reports were delayed and edited for hostile consumption; one fait accompli after another was presented; minor officials caught in the cross fire were ousted; new appointments on one side were made to undermine the authority of already existing functionaries on the other side; and disagreements became highly personalized. Academic readers, especially those who have experienced life in factionalized university departments, will have no difficulty in imagining the perils, pains, and even perverse pleasures involved in what transpired. What is more difficult to assess, however, is the significance of these struggles for understanding the Expo as a political and cultural event. In press editorials and even in many of the retrospective public commentaries of those directly involved in the conflict between the commissioner general’s office and the State Society, the tendency was to regard what happened as a rather exemplary and unfortunate instance of “politics as usual,” a case in which conflicts of ambitions, passions, and interests among the “political class” degenerated into factionalism, clientelism, and the other familiar ills of Spanish political culture—ills that are best summarized by the traditional terms personalismo and amiguismo and by the more partisan and contemporary term “egosocialism,” all of which evoke the inclination to favor one’s self, friends, associates,

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allies, and party, often to the detriment of democratic practices and broader public interests. There was a fairly broad consensus concerning what some of the negative effects of these unresolvable conflicts on the Expo were. It was generally recognized, for example, that regardless of the outcome of particular battles, the very persistence of the conflicts progressively weakened the position of Olivencia. This was not only because they provided more grist for the mill of his avowed enemies inside the Socialist party but also because they created mounting and quite genuine anxieties even among those sympathetic to him. These anxieties tended to focus on what would happen if there were a total breakdown in relations between the commissioner general’s office and the State Society in 1992 and particularly after the inauguration of the Expo in April. If such a breakdown occurred, it might well do a great deal more than diminish the Socialists’ capacity to reap domestic political benefits from the project. If it seriously disrupted the operations or dominated the media coverage of the Expo, it could easily turn the event into an international embarrassment and a veritable foreign relations catastrophe. In addition, there was substantial agreement that the conflicts undermined both the coherence of the Expo and the campaigns to promote it in Spain and Europe. The bureaucratic infighting distracted a good deal of attention from the tasks involved in ensuring a reasonably good fit between the architecture of many pavilions and the contents on exhibit within them, and it also caused many delays in construction and design. Moreover, the continuing disagreements over what images of the Expo should be communicated to the general public both delayed promotional campaigns and prevented sufficient resources from being devoted to them. As a result, officials of participating countries complained (and public surveys confirmed) that many potential visitors from elsewhere in Europe were entirely ignorant of or at best barely aware of the event, while even many Spaniards were quite mystified by it (ABC 30 Sep 1992:52). University students in Madrid, for example, confused Expo ’92 with other celebrations of the fifth centenary, knew little or nothing about its attractions as a “grand fiesta,” and had only the vaguest ideas about what the supposedly definitive theme of “The Age of Discoveries” might mean (EPI 17 Feb 1992:14). Finally, it was broadly perceived that the struggle inside the Expo had the effect of driving a wedge between the Expo organization and Seville. One way the Expo did this was by reinforcing the already considerable skepticism concerning how much the event would benefit the city. In turn, this made it child’s play for the Socialists’ local adversaries to define the relations between the city and the Expo as an issue—indeed, the key issue—facing voters in the run-up to the crucial municipal elections of June 1991. Despite this fact, there was relatively little general discussion of what the conflicts inside the Expo and the tensions between it and the city suggested about the broader potential and limitations of such projects in a contemporary democratic society. This was

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perhaps because of the immediate pressures of electoral politics, the widespread view that what was occurring in the Expo was readily understandable in the conventional terms of highly personalized factional disputes, and the widespread, if often critical, acceptance of the overall direction and aims of the Socialists’ policies of modernization and Europeanization, particularly among the local press and opinion makers. It is clear in retrospect that the characteristic presumptions, dilemmas, and tensions involved in the emergent culture and politics of cosmopolitan liberalism were fundamentally shaping what was happening on La Isla de la Cartuja and in Seville. The Expo was obviously primarily the work of a small, but internally rather diverse, meritocratic elite of professionals and experts who were appointed by the Spanish state and who assumed without apparent doubt or hesitation that they were entitled to mold the cultural and political views, values, and dispositions of a vast domestic and international public. While members of this elite were obliged to consult with and secure the continuing cooperation of their counterparts in participating countries, their essential responsibility was to enhance the prestige and reinforce the image of a new cosmopolitan, democratic, and pluralist Spain envisioned and advocated primarily, but by no means exclusively, by the governing Socialist party. But given the complexity of this task, it was not surprising that there was a difference in expert opinion on how best to accomplish it, nor was it surprising that the form this difference of opinion took was structured by appeals to humanistic values on the one hand and pragmatic knowledge, rationality, and efficacy on the other. These are, after all, the two main sources of cultural authority that serve to legitimate contemporary liberalism. Thus, in keeping with the ideals of liberal humanism, the Olivencia group opted for an exposition that would mediate state power and elite authority through a communicative strategy that stressed the tutelage and education of citizens and political subjects. In contrast, the Pellón group endorsed a strategy of diversion and entertainment that reflected a bread and circus (or pork barrel and spectacle) view of how to produce, manage, and market consensus to consumers and thereby prepare the Expo site and the city for a new wave of transnational capitalist investment and development. Normally, strategies of education and diversion are made to appear almost seamlessly integrated and blandly complementary in expositions, theme parks, and the like. They are usually billed as “something for everybody.” And this is how things seemed to most tourists who briefly visited the Expo after it opened. This was not the case for many people in Seville, however, who had followed the story of the Expo from its beginnings. For them, the strategies of education and diversion were clearly aligned with the political and bureaucratic cleavages inside the Expo organization, and they appeared to be much more ideologically charged and contradictory than they were consensual and complementary. Indeed, the conflicts reinforced the concept of hierarchical levels of culture, a

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concept that is involved in the politics of class domination and hegemony in Spain and elsewhere. Moreover, it did so in a way that served to remind the people of the city that they were essentially passive viewers of struggles over which they had little or no influence but the outcome of which would certainly affect their lives for years, perhaps decades, to come. This recognition not only opened the way for the direct politicization of the Expo as an issue in electoral campaigns but also generated a strong negative response to key aspects of both the tutelary and the spectacle dimensions of the event. The form this response took is perhaps best characterized as a resurgence of tradition-based localism and regionalism that was egalitarian, populist, and democratic in spirit. How this came about and what its implications are for understanding the weaknesses and strengths of both cosmopolitan liberalism and alternatives to it are the main topics considered in the remaining chapters of Part III.

10. The Monster and Seville When the plans for Expo ’92 were in their early stages of development, most of the people of Seville greeted them with considerable coolness and a strange lack of interest. Their earlier disappointments with grandiose state programs of regional and urban modernization, such as the program in which Seville was designated a “national pole of development” in the 1960s, had perhaps led them to adopt a passive “wait and see” attitude toward the events of 1992. But as activity increased on La Isla de la Cartuja, so too did the people’s enthusiasm for the Expo. By 1991, nearly 80 percent of the population expressed great hopes for the project (LV 20 May 1991:14). Nevertheless, in conjunction with the troubling reports of continual conflicts within the Expo bureaucracy, this new enthusiasm and interest tended to heighten, rather than ease, the politicians’ worries and doubts about the project’s success and its future impact on Seville. This, along with a number of other factors, helped set the stage for making the Expo a critical issue in local politics. Although there was almost no disagreement in Seville that the city and the region needed outside aid and state support to spur economic development and overcome endemic social problems, not everyone agreed that the Expo was the best channel for this assistance. The Socialists’ overall strategy for Andalusia, of which the Expo was a key part, followed the conventional liberal wisdom that a rising tide lifts all boats: Expo ’92 and related projects (such as Cartuja ’93) would improve the communications, transportation, and service infrastructures of Seville and Andalusia; this would attract investment and spark the growth of the most dynamic sectors of the economy; and this, in turn,

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would create many jobs and eventually transform a backward Andalusia into the “California of Europe” (DD 27 Sep 1992:14). In the meantime, the state would maintain at least minimal programs of public assistance, rural employment, and the like, so that the gap between the well-off and the hard-pressed would not grow wider. From this perspective, the Expo appeared to be a nearly ideal vehicle of socioeconomic transformation, not only because it was designed to be a focal point of development but also because it would create many short-term and some long-term jobs in Seville and would at least momentarily ease the burdens placed on urban welfare programs. In addition, by holding out a brighter vision of the future to Andalusians, the Expo might help change what some regarded as stoic, resigned, counterproductive, and essentially conservative and defensive attitudes associated with decades and even centuries of poverty and oppression (ABC 2 Jul 1989:17). It took no technocorporate genius, however, to uncover some flaws and problems in this scheme. Commentators in the press and Sevillanos in the streets, including a good number of Socialist voters, were ready enough to point out what state planners glossed over. There were, first of all, questions concerning who would ultimately benefit the most and just how much money would trickle down to ordinary Sevillanos from the Expo—questions that were inevitably raised by the continual rumors and reports about how contracts were being awarded by the State Society. The well-connected and rich (nouveau and old alike) would almost certainly grow richer, but there were no guarantees for anybody else. Closely related to these questions were worries about what life would be like in Seville when the Expo was over. To be sure, the Expo was momentarily solving the city’s problem of paro (unemployment). Nearly six thousand workers were occupying the site during its construction phase, and many times that number were employed on associated public and private projects. Probably for the first time in a century, there was more than enough work to go around, as well as enough pork to satiate even a Louisiana congressman. Nevertheless, the graffiti covering the city provided the following warning: “Expo ’92, Paro ’93.” Having sunk thousands of millions of pesetas into the Expo, what would the government be able or willing to do to aid displaced workers after the Expo gates closed and before the confidently predicted explosion in private, hightech, corporate development occurred? The people also expressed many doubts about the impact of the Expo on urban reforms and infrastructure. Clearly, the historic center of the city was being refurbished, groomed, and modernized for the millions of anticipated visitors, but what about the “other” Seville, consisting of three dozen or more peripheral, sprawling, overcrowded barrios and barriadas that were primarily inhabited by several generations of working-class immigrants from the most impoverished areas of the Andalusian countryside? With all the resources and attention focused on the Expo, there was little left over to address

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urgent problems concerning the quality and quantity of housing, woefully inadequate public services and utilities, and a general lack of urban amenities of all sorts in these neighborhoods. Each of these nagging doubts and potential political issues raised the basic question of whether the Expo and related plans would ultimately serve to narrow or to widen the gap between the “two Sevilles,” the first of which housed the type of Andalusians whom José Cazorla (DD 7 May 1992:2; EP 12 Jul 1992:6–7) described as middle-class and “dynamic, with postmodern values and characteristics, involved in a culture of services, . . . and with high levels of education, spending, and consumption,” and the second of which housed a group that was largely rural in its orientations, working-class, underemployed, dependent on pensions and state subsidies, “traditional,” and “accustomed to slow change.” Could the “world on an island” or the high-speed railway between Madrid and Seville really be expected to bestow the blessings of progress on people in this second group, who in fact constituted the majority of Andalusians, or would they simply be bypassed? Beyond these direct socioeconomic concerns, many Sevillanos were also becoming increasingly aware that the Expo raised fundamental questions about local identity and autonomy that had no clear answers. If virtually every important decision concerning the Expo was imposed from above after little consultation with local authorities and with little regard for local opinion, was this reason enough to risk killing the goose that was laying golden eggs, particularly given the fact that the most important higher authorities had been born and bred in Seville anyway? If the aggressive cosmopolitanism of the Expo involved an implicit demand that Andalusians alter their values and aspirations and if it betokened an undervaluation and lack of respect for the spiritual and moral integrity and depth of Seville’s distinctive traditions by treating them as mere expressions of local color, did not Sevillanos do much the same by selling cute little figures of the penitents of Holy Week to every passing tourist? And if the sheer size and ambition of the Expo threatened to overwhelm the city, was it not the elders of Seville who had legendarily proclaimed centuries ago, “We will build a cathedral so big that everyone will think we are crazy”? Who was more nearly right, the editorialist who suggested that the city’s very traditions made it “the most natural mirror of cosmopolitanism” (ABC 19 Apr 1992:69) or the aging pharmacist who suffered from a heart condition, continually worried about the impact of the Expo on local values, and lamented that he now had to sell condoms “because so many foreigners are coming to Seville”? The ambivalence that Sevillanos felt about the Expo was expressed in some rather odd and unpredictable ways that betrayed their deeper doubts and sensitivities. For example, in 1989, when internal tensions within the Expo organization were at a peak, several months passed without much public criticism or comment about a series of arguments and peremptory decisions that would affect the city in manifold ways. Suddenly, however, there was a storm of angry

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protest when Expo officials chose Madrid as the site to introduce the Expo’s goofy, feathered mascot, “Curro,” to the public. Why not choose Seville? And why not choose a mascot designed by a Spaniard or, better still, by an Andalusian, instead of a Czech? When Luis Yáñez responded to this so-called assault on the sensibility of the city with the remark that Sevillanos were perhaps being a touch too “localist” in their reaction and then Jacinto Pellón announced that he would have introduced Curro in New York if it had been feasible, the reactions of the Sevillanos were as strong as if their beloved monument, the Giralda, had been converted into a telecommunications tower (EPI 20 Apr 1989:18). But then as quickly as it had arisen, this presumably symbolic protest about the lack of local experts being hired by the Expo organizers faded away. More commonly, however, the doubts and anxieties of Sevillanos were expressed through a rhetoric of sacrifice, inadequate recognition, and dubious reward. The cry of woe that could be heard everywhere was “Everything is under construction,” and this was close enough to the truth. Highways and bridges were slowly enclosing the city in a circle of concrete; the sewer system of the central districts was being renovated; scarcely a notable public museum or building was left untouched by remodelers; hotels were rising; new rail lines were being laid; and new bus and train stations were appearing. And everywhere these projects were accompanied by dirt, noise, and traffic jams that made going about the ordinary business of life a continual annoyance if not a travail. Making matters worse, prices in the housing and service sectors were rising rapidly, and Sevillanos laid most of the blame for this on the Expo and the opportunism it fostered in their neighbors. These inconveniences and problems gave the citizens of Seville ample reason to claim that they were paying a heavy price for the Expo and that they should be respected and compensated for fulfilling their responsibilities as hosts. But the idea of sacrifice went well beyond this. Intense anxieties were aroused by the threat of terrorism from members of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Nation and Liberty). This threat was by no means idle. During nearly a quarter century of violence directed against the Spanish state, the ETA had caused the deaths of over seven hundred police officers, public officials, and, all too often, innocent bystanders, primarily in the Basque country, Madrid, and northern Spain. However, having announced that the Expo and the Olympics were subject to attack because they involved the vital economic interests of the Spanish state, in 1990 the terrorists turned their attention to Seville.1 During the month of April 1990, ETA members sent threats to the national police in Seville, and the police captured an ETA militant who was driving a car loaded with explosives and was planning to park the car near the police headquarters in the center of the city. The terrorists also addressed a letter bomb to Manuel Olivencia and sent it to the Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition. When one of Olivencia’s assistants opened it, her left hand was blown off and her right hand was severely injured.

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This incident coincided with a meeting of the Committee of Direction of the College of Commissioners General of the Universal Exposition, which included representatives of twenty-one countries and international organizations. The terrorist acts led Manuel del Valle, the alcalde (mayor) of Seville, to hold a meeting with the alcaldes of three major cities of the Basque country, and together they issued a “manifesto for peace” that condemned ETA violence. Manifestos such as this had no apparent effect on ETA plans or actions, however, and a campaign of intermittent threats and armed actions continued against targets associated with the upcoming Expo and Olympic events in Seville and Barcelona. In April 1991, for example, two police officials were killed in Seville by a bomb. In May 1991, eight more bombs were planted in or near tourist establishments of the Costa del Sol. In July 1991, a package bomb was addressed to the head of the prison in Seville where six ETA militants were incarcerated. When it exploded in an office adjacent to the visiting room, the bomb killed four and injured thirty prisoners, visiting family members, and prison officials. In December 1991, three more bombs were planted in and around Seville. The first one exploded and did minor damage to a famous luxury hotel called the Alfonso XIII. The second bomb was found and disarmed on a railway line near Lora del Río. The third was discovered in the office of the Bank of Europe in La Calle Tetuan, one of the narrowest and most crowded streets in the center of Seville, and was disarmed. The head of this bank, Carlos Ferrer Salat, was also the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee. As one editorialist indicated in December 1991, “Everyone in Seville is conscious that . . . on the brink of Expo ’92, the city is perhaps the best showcase that terrorist organizations can find for their activities because of the event’s international scope” (EP 29 Dec 1991:12). The Sevillanos were well aware that it was far easier to protect the relatively self-contained island of La Cartuja than to protect the city of Seville, and they were concerned that they might have to pay a heavy price if too many resources and personnel were devoted to guarding the Expo site and its visitors and not enough attention was given to the vulnerabilities of ordinary citizens. These security and safety concerns, like a number of other aspects of the Expo, left the Sevillanos dependent on the central government for its patronage and protection but at the same time anxious and resentful about the disruptions of local life that this dependence entailed. Despite the growing anxieties, however, it was still fairly easy for elected officials of the Socialist party to fend off criticism of their policies. Officials could reasonably claim to be doing all that could be done to counter the threat of terrorism, and they continued to shrug off other criticisms and concerns, dismissing them as false charges fomented by political enemies or as pointless worries that would soon be proved groundless. For years, local and regional politicians had been telling the Sevillanos that if the present was difficult, the future was bright. For example, as Antonio Rodríguez Almodovar, a leading Socialist and the director of the Andalusian

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pavilion in the Expo, declared in 1989, “Seville is going to have a difficult time because it’s a small city for so much construction. We’ve got to ask residents for patience and compassion . . . [but] after 1992 this is going to be the most important city in southern Europe” (SJM 16 Apr 1989:9T). The results of the regional elections of June 1990 in Andalusia seemed to confirm the wisdom of following this political strategy. The returns from Seville were reassuring: the Socialists won an absolute majority in the regional legislature; and Manuel Chaves, an enthusiastic supporter of the Expo and of Madrid’s Europeanist orientation, became president of La Junta de Andalucía. This convincing victory strengthened the confidence of party leaders that the people of Seville would not fail to show their gratitude in the upcoming municipal elections in May 1991 and that there would be a Socialist mayor to welcome millions of visitors and hundreds of political leaders to the city in 1992. Scarcely four months later, in October 1990, the Socialists’ prospects for electoral success were beginning to look a lot more doubtful, however, because the political opposition in the city had suddenly discovered what they had long been looking for—a simple and clear-cut issue that would serve to crystallize the multilayered worries and resentments that swirled around the Expo and to define the difference between themselves and the Socialists. The issue, which concerned the prices that would be charged to people attending the Expo, was practically presented to Socialist opponents as a gift on a platter from Pellón. Although he was a Socialist, Pellón was so absorbed in his rivalry with Olivencia that he evidently failed to consider fully how his efforts to undercut the commissioner general’s authority would be greeted in Seville. Pellón’s tactical aim was to demonstrate his control over the Expo by announcing without the full involvement or formal approval of Olivencia a range of prices for admission to the event. He announced that the admission costs for adults would be 4,000 pesetas (roughly forty dollars) for an all-day ticket; 3,000 pesetas for a late-afternoon and evening ticket; 1,000 for a late-night ticket; and 10,000 for a three-day pass. There would be a 50 percent discount for children and senior citizens. Although these prices were clearly intended to make it possible for the Expo to break even financially, they seemed high to almost everyone, including foreign travel agents. To the Sevillanos, who had naturally hoped to visit the site at least several times over the duration of the event, the prices were truly shocking. It seemed as if Pellón had decided to relegate countless families of modest means to the role of outsiders and onlookers to the “great fiesta” for which they had labored and sacrificed. Not surprisingly, the protest in the city was immediate, vociferous, and virtually unanimous. It did not take long for Olivencia, who had been out of town when the prices were announced, to let it be known that he did not agree with the unilateral decision of his nominal subordinate. Pellón remained adamant about the prices. In response, the three groups of non-Socialists on the city council of Seville (who constituted an absolute

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majority on the rare occasions when they were in agreement) formed a coalition to force through a resolution that was addressed to the Council of Administration of the State Society and called for Pellón’s immediate dismissal from the Expo. This placed the Socialist alcalde of Seville, del Valle, in the embarrassing position of having to present the Council of Administration with a motion that neither he nor his party supported. The motion was tabled on dubious procedural grounds, however, and never came to a vote. When this happened, the opposition leaders of Seville accused the Expo of being “a perfect executive machine but without eyes or ears” and denounced the “colonialist” relationship between the Council of Administration and the city (EPI 20 Oct 1990:15). Rather than consulting with Olivencia, Pellón tried to shore up his deteriorating position by setting out on a visit to Madrid to explain to and garner support directly from the national government. Meanwhile, del Valle sought to muster local support for Pellón by persuading the president of the prestigious Ateneo of Seville to nominate Pellón for the honorary position of one the wise men in the “Cavalcade of the Three Kings,” an upcoming Christmas affair. This transparent attempt to enlist elite privilege to create the illusion of popular support provided excellent material for Seville’s wits, whose derision caused del Valle and the president of the Ateneo, who soon resigned, to look ridiculous (DD 16 Nov 1990:8). Pellón, however, was more successful. While he was in Madrid, Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra reassured him that they considered his work vital to the success of the Expo. The government also sent the Council of Administration a message that praised Pellón and reaffirmed his executive and policymaking prerogatives with respect to the Expo. Unfortunately, the message failed to even mention Pellón’s two superiors—namely, Olivencia (commissioner general of the Expo) and Emilio Cassinello (president of the State Society)—and therefore conveyed the impression that Pellón (chief executive officer of the State Society) had now won almost total control over Expo ’92. Olivencia, having already been bypassed and slighted by Pellón and the Council of Administration on the issue of admission prices, chose to interpret this blunder as an intentional and intolerable devaluation of his own authority. Therefore, on 29 October 1990, when Olivencia requested his own meeting in Madrid with González, almost everyone presumed that the subject of the meeting was to be Olivencia’s resignation. News of this effectively paralyzed the Expo and threw it into its most serious crisis since the appointment of Olivencia to the post of commissioner general in 1984. The critical encounter between Olivencia and González was delayed until 14 November 1990, in part because of an important Socialist party congress. In the meantime, as rumors swirled around Seville, those interested and involved in the Expo issues considered the options available, launched trial balloons, and generally tried to figure out and influence the way the political winds were blowing. The first response of local and regional Socialist leaders was to float

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the names of a number of possible replacements for Olivencia. Among those mentioned were Emilio Cassinello; Francisco Rodríguez Borbolla, the popular former president of La Junta de Andalucía; Luis Yáñez, the director general of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary; Jesús Aguire, the duke of Alba and the preeminent figure of Seville society; and even the Expo’s perennial warhorse, Manuel Prado y Colón. Members of the political opposition in Seville, however, insisted that everything should be done to keep Olivencia in his post. Their affirmations of continuing trust in Olivencia no doubt helped to remind the cooler heads among the Socialists that there could be a large political price to pay if the brouhaha over ticket prices directly led to the exit of a commissioner general who was also a popular and respected Sevillano. To elect a Socialist alcalde in 1991 would certainly be an uphill battle. As a result, Olivencia suddenly found himself the subject of many encomiums from unexpected quarters. Yáñez, for example, announced that Olivencia should be recognized as the “maximum responsible” authority of the Expo (EC 17 Nov 1990:3) and lamented the “inopportune presentation” of ticket prices. Others soon followed suit. Eventually, even Pellón was moved to state curtly that the commissioner general’s resignation was “not desirable” (EC 17 Nov 1990:3). With this preparation, it was not too difficult for González to persuade Olivencia to stay at his post. González reportedly “promised solutions” to the Expo’s problems and issued a statement reaffirming the commissioner general’s authority over the event. Even so, the vindication of Olivencia rang slightly hollow because no substantial changes were made in the organization and no decisions were reached concerning the pricing issue. In addition, González tacitly reaffirmed the necessary and important role of Pellón, and as if to minimize the importance of Olivencia’s present concerns, he reminded Olivencia that on several previous occasions he had offered to tender his resignation when some phase of the Expo project had been completed. With the avowed intention to get things moving again, González announced that he would come to La Isla de la Cartuja on 28 November 1990, when an important meeting of the various commissioners general of the participating countries was to take place. During his carefully orchestrated visit, González made a “new deposit of confidence” in the Expo organization as a whole and followed a ritualized protocol that gave pride of place to Olivencia (EM 29 Nov 1990:13). At the same time, he took pains to praise the work of Pellón. Not all was sweetness and light, however, for González requested “more work and less discussion” from everyone, and after many badgering questions from the press about who was really in control, he impatiently and not altogether helpfully declared that “en la Expo, mando yo” (“in the Expo, I give the orders”) (EM 29 Nov 1990:13; EP 28 Nov 1990:3A). Although the visit of González resolved nothing and reaffirmed the status quo, it brought the immediate crisis concerning the Expo to a seemingly peaceful conclusion. Indeed, during the following weeks, the repeated refrain

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of leading Socialists when they were asked about the crisis was “no pasa nada” (“no big deal”). This attempt to minimize a conflict that had been so highly publicized and openly discussed convinced no one, however, and the accompanying plea that the Expo should be kept out of politics also seemed a bit unreal, not to mention disingenuous, at least when it was voiced by Socialist militants. As the Socialists soon realized, the uproar about ticket prices and the continuing struggles inside the Expo organization made it easy for their opponents to define the key issue facing voters in the upcoming municipal election in terms of local influence and control over the Expo. First, these events had reinforced the general impression that the incumbent alcalde, del Valle, who was a modest and uncharismatic though respected administrator and a loyal party man, was either unable or unwilling to establish independent positions and policies vis-à-vis the Expo bureaucracy and Socialist leaders in Madrid. Second, the events had allowed the various non-Socialist political forces in the city to form what amounted to a common front against the Socialists by depicting the political landscape in terms of a set of cleavages—the Expo versus Seville, the state versus the community, Pellón versus Olivencia, and technobureaucratic power versus democratic participation and consent. These cleavages placed the Socialists (that is, the members of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español, or PSOE) in a surprisingly weak and defensive position before the campaign even began. They had every reason to fear the nonPSOE candidates, not only because these candidates were capable of fully exploiting their initial advantage but also because their combined talents, experience, and determination were extraordinary. PSOE members were perhaps least worried by Rosa Bendala, a candidate for alcalde who was relatively unknown and was from the left-wing coalition, La Izquierda Unida (IU). Although Bendala was highly respected for her intelligence and for her capacity to work miracles in bringing together the factions of her warring party, the far left in Seville was still too internally divided to pose much of a threat to the PSOE or anyone besides itself. Far more formidable was Soledad Becerril, an aristocratic, highly energetic, and experienced liberal reformer who had been in charge of the Ministry of Culture in Madrid under one of the governments of La Unión Centro Democrático (UCD). After joining El Partido Popular (PP), Becerril came to Seville with the mission of transforming the city’s rather backward-looking and complacent political right wing into a modern and effective force that could seriously challenge the PSOE domination of local and Andalusian politics. Although something of an outsider, she had considerable success in revitalizing conservative hopes. She also knew how to court local popular sentiment by occasionally making statements such as the following: “After being alcaldesa of Seville, the only thing left for me would be to die” (ABC 12 Dec 1990:51). The toughest challenger to the PSOE was Alejandro Rojas Marcos, a born and bred Sevillano from a well-connected and wealthy bourgeois family (see Teba 1981). During his youth, Rojas Marcos bought livestock from the

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father of Felipe González and plotted against the Franco regime. Later, he founded El Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA), a political force that challenged the dominance of the PSOE in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at the height of the so-called heroic period of Andalusian regionalism. With a great deal of effort, the PSOE was eventually able to co-opt or dilute most of Rojas Marcos’s key issues, and lacking a sufficiently distinctive political identity, the PSA was swept away in the PSOE tidal wave of 1982. But Rojas Marcos himself held his ground. In the mid-1980s, during his protracted sojourn in the political wilderness, he labored mightily to resurrect the PSA under the new name of El Partido Andalucista (PA). This left-of-center but non-Socialist political group was able to establish two bases of power in western Andalusia. Jerez de la Frontera served as one base, largely thanks to the youthful and dynamic leadership of Pedro Pacheco, and Seville served as the other. In the 1987 municipal elections in Seville, the PA won seven seats on the city council, representing a stunning advance from a party that had previously held no seats whatsoever. The upset deprived del Valle and his fellow PSOE members of an absolute majority on the council and immediately established Rojas Marcos as the principal opponent of the PSOE in Seville. While the left-wing predilections of Seville seemed to place a “natural” limit of around 20 percent on the votes that could be won by Becerril and the PP in the upcoming 1991 elections, the difficulties that Rojas Marcos faced were not insuperable. He was disliked as an ambitious and egotistical traitor to his class in some right-wing circles and was distrusted for the same reason in some left-wing ones, but because of his family background and his long experience in organizing working-class barrios, he knew every inch of his home town, and no one had a better feel for the political implications of what he once termed Seville’s “narcissism.” Thus, if there were going to be a non-PSOE alcalde to greet visitors to the Expo in 1992, Rojas Marcos was the most likely person to fill the role—but not without a struggle. Influential members of the PSOE, having realized that Rojas Marcos and Becerril were likely to devour the weakened del Valle, had already begun to seek an alternative candidate as soon as the crisis in the Expo was over. Finding an alternative was a complicated matter because the Seville branch of the PSOE had been thrown into discord and confusion by the influence-peddling scandal surrounding the brother of Alfonso Guerra and by the increasing likelihood that Guerra himself would be forced to resign from the vice-presidency of the government (which, in fact, occurred in January 1991). It soon became apparent that the PSOE in Madrid strongly favored Yáñez as the alternative candidate for alcalde in Seville. Yáñez was a Sevillano, and in his positions as the director general of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary and the secretary of state for international cooperation, he had long been intimately involved in the Expo and was well known in diplomatic circles, especially in Latin America. He was therefore capable of ensuring that the Expo had a strong

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PSOE identity, even if Olivencia remained as its commissioner general. Moreover, Yáñez was an able public speaker and a more forceful and prominent figure than was del Valle. However, Yáñez’s principal potential weakness was that he was much more closely associated with the PSOE branch in Madrid than with the PSOE branch in Seville and was rather out of touch with what was going on in Seville. Thus, while there was little doubt that Yáñez would be a strong and independent political actor once in office, it was less clear that he would commit himself to the defense of local interests. Indeed, months before 1 March 1991, the date when he officially accepted his party’s nomination as the PSOE candidate for alcalde of Seville, Yáñez had made it clear that his campaign would be based on the assumption that there were no fundamental conflicts of interest between either the Expo and Seville or the state and Seville. What was good for one of these institutions was ultimately good for the others. Thus, he saw no reason why he should not continue as head of the fifth centenary during his tenure as alcalde. Moreover, he refused to respect the distinction between the Expo as a project of the state and the Expo as a project of the PSOE. He maintained that, at least in domestic political terms, they were one and the same. And for this reason, in mid-December, he even asserted that the Expo’s commissioner general ought to publicly support the PSOE candidate for alcalde (ABC 15 Dec 1990:15). Olivencia, whose appointment had originally depended and still continued to depend on his political neutrality, rejected this assertion, of course, as did the opposition parties and many members of the PSOE (ABC 18 Dec 1990:14). Nevertheless, Yáñez’s tactical gambit clearly signaled that the campaign was going to be a contest in which a proud Expo insider, who was ready to admit that the alcalde of Seville needed a greater voice in the plans for ’92 and beyond, would be pitted against three Expo outsiders, who argued that nothing less than complete political independence from the Expo would do (DD 17 Nov 1990:1). As Rojas Marcos put it in one of his first speeches as a candidate, Seville wanted an alcalde who “commands” in the city and “does not have to bow his head and submit to whatever is decided” in Madrid (EP 3 Dec 1990:1A). Oddly, however, once this basic framework had been established by the contending parties, very little movement was evident in the lengthy electoral campaign. What had at first promised to be a dynamic pitched battle turned out to be an endless round of speeches and press conferences in which all of the candidates tried to shore up their positions by repeating what they had already said on numerous occasions. Yáñez, in particular, failed to mount an engaging campaign, despite the aggressive stance that he had assumed in the beginning. Again and again, he simply offered a “guarantee” of close “collaboration” between the Expo and city hall, without specifying much else about the relationship or his aims (EC 17 Mar 1991:17). In addition, he continually and complacently referred to the Expo as the “pearl in the crown” of PSOE achievements and expressed his support for both Olivencia and Pellón (DD 20 May

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1991:44). And although he repeatedly warned that votes cast for Rojas Marcos would be votes against progress and would have the effect of bringing the rightwing forces to power in Seville, the “nonideological” positions that he adopted concerning a wide range of issues facing the city (including security, crime, drugs, traffic, housing, and a proposed mass transport system) were barely distinguishable from the positions that were adopted by the PA and the PP (DD 20 May 1991:11). Indeed, the only effective strategy that Yáñez employed to lend a bit of interest and excitement to the overall monotony of his campaign was to arrange for about half of the PSOE ministers in Madrid, including González, to visit Seville and show their support for his candidacy at large PSOE rallies. Yáñez’s busy but lackluster defense of a slightly modified status quo permitted his adversaries to continue to link discontent about the Expo to qualityof-life issues in the city. Bendala’s approach was to argue that the PSOE members’ arrogant disregard for democratic processes and popular concerns was the main source of the problems in the Expo and Seville. With an eye on the national political scene, Becerril focused much of her criticism of the PSOE on the negative consequences of corruption, “enrichment,” insecurity, and amiguismo (cronyism) and denounced the “unilateral decisions” of the State Society and the attempts of the governing party to use the Expo for partisan advantage (DD 20 May 1991:44). Defining himself as the “only alternative” to the PSOE in Seville, Rojas Marcos gave a strongly local and Andalusian inflection to the issues raised by the IU and the PP. He stressed the “uniqueness” of Seville and, with Yáñez clearly in mind, he liked to proclaim the following: “To be a Sevillano is not only to have been born in Seville. To be a Sevillano is a form of being, of feeling, of loving, of living” (DD 21 May 1991:21). Much more strongly than the other candidates, Rojas Marcos also insisted that “the men and women of Seville have to have an outstanding role during the exposition, not only because they and no one else can give life to an event of this magnitude but also because afterward, in 1993, their active participation in it is going to provide a base for building the future” (EI 21 Apr 1991:30). To undermine the credibility of Yáñez, the opposition candidates also occasionally invoked the issue of admission prices to the Expo. They were helped in this by the fact that Pellón and Olivencia continued to engage in heated and wellpublicized arguments about the prices. The arguments resulted in only a few minor alterations to the basic pricing scheme that Pellón had initially imposed, and these minor adjustments did nothing to assuage local resentments or to convince Sevillanos that Yáñez and his party were doing all that they might on their behalf. Similarly, the opposition was able to wound Yáñez by directly challenging his determination to retain his position as the head of the fifth centenary. Rojas Marcos, for example, diagnosed his adversary’s reluctance to surrender his post as symptomatic of the PSOE’s unquenchable desire “simply to hold power rather than exercise it responsibly” and sarcastically concluded, “If I am elected alcalde, then I should be the head of the fifth centenary” (ABC 25 Mar 1991:21). Thanks

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to such gibes, Yáñez was eventually forced to resign the post, and this surrender in turn served only to cast more doubt on his assertion that “I alone can establish a greater presence [for the city] in the Expo” (DD 9 May 1991:29). By the middle of May 1991, public opinion surveys suggested that the local PSOE members’ strategy of closely identifying themselves with the Expo was not winning them votes in Seville, in spite of their strenuous efforts to counter the impact of the “divorce” between the Expo and the city, which had occurred during the previous autumn. The survey findings were confirmed in the election at the end of the month, which awarded twelve seats on the city council to the PSOE, eight to the PP, two to the IU, and nine to the PA. In comparison with the outcome of the 1987 municipal elections, this outcome represented only a slight decline in PSOE strength (a loss of one seat) and a moderate increase in PA strength (a gain of two seats), but it was regarded as a political upheaval of the first order by everyone in Seville and elsewhere in Spain, including the leaders of the PSOE. The chagrined Yáñez attributed the surprises in the 1991 election outcome to the PA’s success in attracting a backward-looking “folkloric vote,” and he later lamented that his “apparent weakness” was that he had adopted “a more civilized and European posture” in an effort to overcome “local atavisms and family demons” (DD 26 Apr 1991:3).2 Rojas Marcos and other candidates dismissed this interpretation and adopted a point of view closer to that of the author of a letter to the editor of Diario 16, who in mid-May had advised the PSOE candidate “to change this attitude of prepotency and power, because to believe that force and strength will achieve the desired result is not to know Seville, [a city where] whoever has won has always done so by means of personality, generosity, humility, art, and even grace” (DD 14 May 1991:4). What really alarmed the PSOE leadership was that when the election returns from Seville were viewed in conjunction with the equally disappointing returns from other large cities in Spain, they suggested that the grand projects of the Expo and the Olympics were not helping to provide the party with a clear mandate to proceed with its ambitious policies of modernization and Europeanization. More concretely, the results meant that on the eve of 1992, the PSOE members would suffer the humiliation of being dumped from their “cradle” in Seville when the maverick andalucista Rojas Marcos, with the support of the PP, became alcalde. This occurred in early June 1991, after a couple of weeks of intense and delicate negotiations between Rojas Marcos and Becerril over the terms of the pact that would enable the PA and the PP to govern the city in cooperation with each other. Even before this pact had been made, the PSOE’s impending loss of Seville had sealed the fate of Olivencia. On 29 May 1991, just three days after the election, Pellón met with the Council of Administration of the State Society and revealed the appointment of three of his hombres de confianza (cronies) to new high-ranking positions in the Expo. Before taking this step, Pellón proba-

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bly had consulted directly with Chaves, the president of La Junta de Andalucía, and through Chaves consulted indirectly with Narcis Serra, who had replaced Alfonso Guerra as vice president of the government in Madrid (DD 17 Jul 1991:5), but he certainly had not consulted with Olivencia. On behalf of Olivencia, who was absent from the meeting, José Luis Ballester, his official stand-in, pointed out that such high-level appointments could not be made without the commissioner general’s approval. Nevertheless, the next day, without the approval of Olivencia or the Council of Administration, Pellón announced the appointments to the press (DD 17 Jul 1991:10). This was obviously intended as a direct and highly personal challenge as well as an official challenge to Olivencia, because the effect of the appointments was to strip away most of the responsibilities of the secretary general of the State Society, Ignacio Montaño, who had survived the arrival of Pellón in 1987 and was widely regarded as Olivencia’s most important supporter inside the enemy camp. Presumably, the idea was to provoke a new crisis that would force Olivencia to protest to Madrid and (if past incidents served as a precedent) to submit a letter of resignation to González. This time, the letter would be accepted, no doubt with appropriate official expressions of regret and gratitude, and the way would be smoothed for a complete PSOE takeover of the Expo to compensate for the loss of Seville. But Olivencia refused to cooperate. Although accounts vary concerning whether or not he sent a report to Madrid discussing the new appointments, it is clear that he did not offer to resign. Moreover, in the following days and weeks, he repeatedly denied that there was a crisis in the Expo. Instead, he continued to maintain that there were “different criteria but not confrontations or hostilities between the commissariat and the State Society” on matters concerning the reorganization of the latter (DD 2 Jul 1991:43). Nevertheless, he could do little to suppress rumors that seemed to seep from every nook of the Expo and every cranny of the PSOE, including rumors that his departure was imminent and had indeed been discussed with and perhaps even decided on by González as early as the end of April (EC 17 Jul 1991:7; LG 12 Jul 1991:12). By the end of June, the press was repeatedly offering accounts, provided by unnamed Socialist sources, of how the Expo would be reorganized. So the writing was clearly on the wall, even if the authorship was a bit difficult to trace. On 15 July 1991, Olivencia was summoned to Madrid for a meeting with González, his former student. González requested Olivencia’s resignation. The request was refused. González told Olivencia he would be replaced and soon afterward left on an official visit to Mexico. On 19 July, Olivencia’s dismissal was made official by a vote of the Council of Ministers. Olivencia requested explanations; opposition political leaders, especially in Seville, protested loudly but to no effect; and the deposed commissioner general returned to the peace and quiet of his office at the University of Seville, having at least had the satisfaction of not submitting meekly to his ouster.

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The new PSOE dispensation raised Cassinello to the post of commissioner general, where he began to function primarily as a public spokesman and diplomatic figurehead. Much of Olivencia’s formal legal authority was transferred to a group of ministers headed by Serra. In short order, almost all of Olivencia’s loyal team of subordinates in the Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition resigned, as did Severo Ochoa, the head of the Expo’s Committee of Experts. Among other things, this meant that in the future no Sevillanos or Andalusians would hold high-ranking positions in the Expo and that the ambitious projects associated with the Expoforums, which were intended to attract international attention to the event, would be sharply cut back and eventually all but shelved. In contrast, the hardy Yáñez was reappointed to his position as head of the fifth centenary in early August. And last but not least, Pellón was promoted to president of the State Society (the office formerly held by Cassinello) and rapidly consolidated a virtual dictatorship over nearly every aspect of policy and practice on La Isla de la Cartuja. So ended the years of protracted struggle between two bureaucratic heads of the Expo: Olivencia, the stoic statesman whose Beckett-like laments of “I can’t go on, I’ll go on” had lent an air of resigned bathos to his public persona, versus Pellón, the Promethean eat-my-liver technocrat who liked to proclaim, “The only things that worry me . . . are those I don’t control” (DD 17 Jul 1991:6). With a few swift surgical strokes, the two-headed monster suddenly became a different sort of beast. After the gore was washed away, the order of the day was clearly all power to Pellón and all credit to the state and to the PSOE— except, of course, in still anxious and skeptical Seville, where the prodigal son of Andalusian politics, Rojas Marcos, had just triumphantly returned home, riding on the back of the Expo as if it were an elephant in a three-ring circus.

11. Here Comes Everybody After the turmoil of the spring and summer of 1991, some months of peace and calm followed in the relationship between the Expo and Seville. Jacinto Pellón, now the president of the State Society for the Universal Exposition, had more than enough to worry about on La Isla de la Cartuja, where delays and unforeseen disasters abounded. Alejandro Rojas Marcos, now the alcalde (mayor) of Seville, was absorbed by city affairs and the problems involved in working out a modus vivendi for his fragile coalition with Soledad Becerril and other members of El Partido Popular (PP) on the Seville council. In retirement from his Expo duties, Manuel Olivencia maintained a dignified silence. And as the opening day for the Expo rapidly approached, the “atmo-

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sphere of irritation and mutual incomprehension” that had existed between “the city and the directors of the Expo” (ABC 7 Nov 1991:38) slowly faded into the background and was replaced by a spirit of cooperation. When public officials of all stripes urged the Sevillanos to do everything they possibly could to ensure the success of the Expo, many responded positively, making the period leading up to and culminating in the 20 April 1992 inauguration of the event a relatively happy, if hectic, period in which the tensions between the state and the city, bureaucrats and elected officials, and cosmopolitan and local values seemed to have taken a back seat to hard work and the exercise of mutual forbearance and tolerance in the pursuit of a common higher purpose. Unfortunately, little had actually been done to address the underlying conflicts of authority and interest that had sparked the conflicts of 1990 and early 1991. Despite the aggressive campaign rhetoric of Rojas Marcos, once in office he rather predictably both chose to and was forced to pursue a more moderate course (DD 14 Jun 1992:5–9). His most ambitious plans for urban reform, which involved several road-building and construction projects, ran head on into financial realities and the opposition of his coalition partners in the PP, and even after these projects were suspended, he was forced to renege on a pledge not to raise local taxes. This made him vulnerable to criticism from his embittered opponents in El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), who were quick to accuse him of being a do-nothing alcalde who nominally ruled but allowed Becerril and the right wing to govern. To counter these charges, the new alcalde was perhaps more ready than he might otherwise have been to demonstrate his willingness to cooperate with Expo officials. By doing so, he was able to take some credit for the rapid completion of a number of important Expo-related renovation projects in Seville, which partly compensated for his lack of progress on other fronts. Moreover, he was able to immunize himself from future charges that he had obstructed and undermined the Expo in its most critical stage of construction—no small political precaution if the event later turned out to have grave problems. In keeping with his policy of cultivating cordial relations with Pellón and others, Rojas Marcos markedly toned down his public rhetoric about the Expo, but he still continued to assert the need for an autonomous role for the city in the events of 1992. Moreover, as opening day approached, he began to insist that the many Expo pavilions which had failed to obtain the appropriate municipal licenses do so (ABC-ex 8 Apr 1992:59). In addition, Rojas Marcos repeatedly demanded more money (3,000 million pesetas) from Madrid to compensate for the expenses that Seville was incurring as a result of the Expo. When this demand was rejected, it provided the alcalde with the opportunity to once again raise the question of how much the city was benefiting from the Expo and to call for a personal meeting with the head of government in Madrid (EP 1 Apr 1992:1A). Rather surprisingly, Felipe González agreed to this encounter in early April and made a vague

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promise to explore ways to provide more help. But he also stated that “Seville is [now] a genuinely first-class city, and Sevillanos will have to learn to pay for this” (ABC 10 Apr 1992:53). This warning provided Rojas Marcos with further grist for the mill. The next day, he answered González by saying that Sevillanos had already paid and sacrificed all that they could and that “since the Expo was a project of the state, the state should pay” (ABC 11 Apr 1992:53). Just a few days later, he made the following observation about the position he had taken before he was elected alcalde: “I was in the opposition and my view was critical because I was convinced that the Expo was a project of the Spanish state and that it was marginalizing the city and its inhabitants. Seville was not participating actively in its realization, and for this reason we organized a march on the island of La Cartuja, and we took the Bastille of Expo ’92, which has since then formed a part of our city” (ABC 15 Apr 1992:34). Meanwhile, the dismissal of Olivencia, the appointment of Emilio Cassinello, and the direct responsibility assumed for the Expo by the government permitted Pellón to assume a less public and antagonistic role and allowed him to concentrate on the formidable practical problems to be resolved before opening day. Even with the efforts of 6,000 workers on the site, by early in 1992 it had become obvious that not all of the pavilions were going to be finished by 20 April. The huge Plaza of the Americas seemed to be in a state of chaos, and less than two weeks before the Expo opened, only three of the sixteen countries housed there were prepared to present the contents of their exhibitions (EC 11 Apr 1992:26). The pavilions of Cantabria, the Red Cross, La Promesa, and Yugloslavia were nowhere near completion. And the pavilions of numerous other countries, including Australia, Belgium, Holland, France, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, and Oman, were either running behind schedule or were encountering serious last-minute problems of one kind or another. More important, about 15,000 workers had to be trained in a few weeks, and there were problems in the systems designed to provide the Expo site with basic services and supplies. When the Expo site was opened to thousands of visitors during a series of “test days” in the spring of 1992, things did not run altogether smoothly. For example, representatives of participating countries were delayed up to ten hours in securing their credentials, and many pavilions never opened. The doubts raised by the trial runs were compounded by a series of accidents and other mishaps that occurred on the Expo site. Union officials attributed many of the 2,000 reported work-related accidents, including one death that happened at the beginning of April, to hurried efforts to complete the construction (DD 20 Apr 1992:16–17). By far the most disturbing mishap was a fire that destroyed the Pavilion of Discoveries on 18 February 1992. Apparently, this fire began because of the exhaustion and carelessness of a harried worker. Four other serious fires occurred during the construction period, and the last of them consumed the Pavilion of the Pacific Islands just a few days before the Expo opened.

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To counter the growing doubts and anxieties, government officials and Expo organizers offered countless words of encouragement and confidence as opening day approached. For example, in mid-March, while in Seville to celebrate his fiftieth birthday with his family, Felipe González visited the Expo, declared that it was time “to finish the job,” and observed that “90 percent of it is already there, and in the forty days and forty nights that remain, we will achieve 120 percent” (EPI 16 Mar 1992:14). Pellón also appeared in press pictures, paint gun in hand and dressed in a spotlessly white and inviolate coverall, applying touches of camouflaging color to the charred hulk of the Pavilion of Discoveries. But despite these heroic efforts, an atmosphere of suspense and uncertainty prevailed. The suspense did nothing, however, to deter the rising voices of the Expo’s political critics outside of Seville. Indeed, as the opening date approached, attacks on the whole project of the Expo and on the PSOE’s involvement in it notably intensified. From the right, opponents questioned whether the immense costs of the Expo and related infrastructure would ever bring an appropriate return on the investment, and they simultaneously complained about the high prices associated with the event (EP 5 Apr 1992:11N). Strong resentments toward Seville were also expressed by many commentators from northern Spain. As J. Llamazares observed in an editorial, people around the country had begun to question PSOE patronage of the city and to ask why they were receiving so little, given that “they [too] are children of God, even if they are not Sevillanos” (EPI 6 May 1991:14). Meanwhile, in Andalusia itself, leftists derisively described the Expo as a “cathedral” in an industrial and agricultural “desert” (ABC 12 Apr 1992:56). Declaring that “90 percent of Andalusians believe that the expenditures which have been made are out of place and time,” the regional head of La Izquierda Unida (IU) predicted that the Expo would serve only to increase territorial imbalances, because after 1992 the government would turn its attention elsewhere and public investments in the region would come to a screeching halt (EC-ex 9 Apr 1992:24). In keeping with this hostility, no members of the political opposition in the Andalusian parliament went to the PSOE-sponsored ceremony in which Pellón was awarded a medal for his work on the Expo (EPI 2 Mar 1992:15). Yet criticism from outsiders and even from fellow Andalusians did not seem at this juncture to have much of an impact on Sevillanos. The larger political and policy issues appeared to take a back seat to the more immediate preoccupation with several key questions concerning whether the Expo could be pulled off without public and international embarrassment: What would work and what would not? How many visitors would come? How much money would they spend? And what would Europe and the rest of the world think of the event? The only great exception to the primarily mundane worries of most Sevillanos concerned matters of terrorism and security. Local fear and foreboding of ETA terrorism reached a high point after the December 1991 bombings in the

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city. However, in cooperation with other countries, the security forces of Spain launched a well-timed and aggressive campaign against ETA in January 1992. This bore immediate fruits and eventually led to the capture of three of the group’s most important leaders and a number of other militants in March. These blows evidently threw the organization into confusion, and both the Expo and the Olympics were spared its attentions for the remainder of the year. Although the anti-ETA campaign brought some relief to concerned Sevillanos in the weeks before the Expo opened, the people’s general fears of terrorism were fueled by various newspaper stories that raised the question of whether other armed groups, such as Sendero Luminoso, assorted Latin American Maoists, Corsts from the Philippines, Palestinians, Islamic fundamentalists, and the Irish Republican Army, would make the Expo a target (EC 19 Apr 1992:44; EPI 21 Oct 1991:8). To reassure Sevillanos and the public at large, the general outlines of the measures taken to protect the Expo were well publicized. As it increasingly became apparent from press accounts and direct experience, the island world of the Expo was something of a fortress and panopticon. The bridges across the Guadalquivir River restricted access to the site, as did the high fences and other barriers that surrounded the exposition grounds. A network of at least five hundred electronic sensors and alarms had been planted to detect intruders, and guards in the central control station of the Expo security headquarters could keep much of the site under surveillance on video monitors. Provisions were made to screen and to search every bag that visitors brought to the exposition. When the Expo opened, about 2,000 people would have some sort of responsibility for security inside the exposition grounds, and perhaps another 8,000 members of the national police, regular military, Guardia Civil, and other agencies would be on duty in and around Seville. Highway checks and searches would be frequent, city streets would be well patrolled, and navy boats would cruise the river (see SEGA 1993:110). Sevillanos followed the plans and activities of the Expo’s security forces with interest and, for the most part, with approval. Nevertheless, their anxieties began to mount as opening day approached. Adding to their well-founded worries about whether the unfinished pavilions would ever be completed were jitters brought on by stories in the press regarding the possibility of last-minute strikes and regarding whether a “suicidal” rate of work was producing symptoms of hysteria among Expo workers (EPI 6 Jan 1992:14). Perhaps because of the mounting tension, Sevillanos became more deeply engaged by and favorably disposed toward the Expo than they had been at any time in the past. The fact that the inauguration of the Expo was scheduled to occur just after the conclusion of the solemn exertions of Holy Week and just before the opening of the spring feria (the most important fiesta of the year for Seville and surrounding towns) merely added to the atmosphere of anticipation. Plans for the Expo’s inauguration on Monday, 20 April 1992, were appropriately elaborate. Ceremonies, speeches, concerts, and shows were tightly

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scheduled in the hope of attracting the attention of Spain, Europe, and the rest of the world. Hundreds of members of the international press would be on hand to report on the various events. During the day, almost nonstop coverage was to be presented on Spanish television. In the evening, the highlights of the inauguration and the opening show “Sevilla, Sevilla” were to be broadcast to a billion people around the world via satellite links to sixty-two television channels. If everything came off as planned, a crucial first battle would be won in the campaign to create a new image of a modern, progressive, democratic, and efficient Spain in 1992. Not surprisingly, the widespread desire of ordinary people and especially ordinary politicians to be at the center of things created numerous problems of access and protocol for the organizers of the inaugural ceremonies. To guarantee that the Expo’s first day would be a success, the general plan was to limit the number of visitors to the site to 150,000 people. Eligible to attend were Expo workers and their families, certified members of the press, members of the group of people (mostly Sevillanos) who had bought season tickets before 13 March 1992, and people who had received special invitations or passes. The officials of participating countries, regions, and organizations were each entitled to a certain number of entrance passes of various types to use as they wished. By early April, however, it had become apparent that Pellón and his assistants had seriously miscalculated how many admission passes should be distributed to participants. At this point, they suddenly announced that those who had been promised 500 passes would receive only 100, those promised 350 would get 75, and those promised 200 would get 50 (ABC 20 Apr 1992:60–61). These cuts generated an immediate outcry from all quarters and sparked a short but nasty “war of the entrance passes.” Forced to compromise, Cassinello pledged that all ordinary passes that had already been issued would be honored, even if their number exceeded the new allotments. For the members of Spain’s political class, it was an invitation to the inaugural ceremony proper that attracted most attention. With the exception of the Expo’s former commissioner general (Manuel Olivencia) and some leading figures of the left (most notably, Julio Anguita, head of the IU), it seemed that every bureaucratic official and every politician in the country wanted to be on hand to take some credit for the Expo, to bask in reflected glory, or just to be recognized among the power elite. However, considerations of space and security limited to 1,700 the number of dignitaries and honored guests that would attend the ceremony scheduled to take place shortly before noon in the garden in front of the monastery of La Cartuja (ABC 20 Apr 1992:60–61). The area was divided into several colored zones, some of which were more distant than others from the giant canopy that had been erected to shelter the movers and shakers of the state and the Expo from inclement weather. Each invited guest was assigned a zone in which to sit, and, predictably enough, the seating arrangements became a matter of great private and some public interest.

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The alcalde of Córdoba, for example, initially refused his invitation to the ceremony because his seat was in the outback of the yellow zone, and he deemed this an insult to his office and his city (ABC-ex 14 Apr 1992:48–58). Barely a trace of parochial narrowness or petty politics was evident on 20 April, however. When the great day finally arrived, the lions lay down with the lions— although not, of course, with the lambs, who had to watch the proceedings on the Sony Jumbotron located on the other side of the exposition grounds.1 Seated in the front rows at the inaugural ceremony were Spanish dignitaries, including most members of the cabinet, the president of the supreme court, the leaders of the Cortes, representatives of the three military branches, the heads of opposition political parties, the archbishop of Seville and other churchmen, the presidents of Spain’s autonomous communities, Jacinto Pellón, and assorted aristocrats, bankers, diplomats, business executives, and other notables. While the assembled guests waited for a ceremonial march by the royal guards to begin at 11:30 A.M., Alfonso Guerra, the attack dog of Spanish socialism, chatted briefly but apparently amiably with his favorite prey, José María Aznar, the leader of the PP. By such forms and gestures, the character of the Expo as a nonpartisan project of the state was made manifest and visible. The inaugural addresses that followed were suffused by the spirit and rhetoric of cosmopolitan liberalism. Emilio Cassinello, commissioner general of the Expo, was the first to speak (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:58–59). After invoking the event’s themes, he declared that Expo ’92 had become “the measure of all expositions” because of its “scale of participation,” its “architectural, urbanistic, and cultural quality,” and its affiliation with Seville, “a city doubly millenarian, a refined amalgam of great cultures, that has opened itself to the world once again.” During the Expo’s seven years of construction, he elaborated, “another city has been created with an area equivalent to the historical center of Seville,” a city whose thematic pavilions “combine, without unnecessary solemnity, intellectual rigor with the clearest and most attractive formulas of exposition.” And in keeping with the spirit of the times, “the exposition reveals a confidence in progress but without the obstinate optimism of other epochs whose experience has helped us to realize that the power of technology can provoke inequality and that on more than one occasion it has been subordinated to designs of domination and destructive projects.” Thus, he concluded, “the unique experience of being in the Universal Exposition is to be part of a simple message from Seville to all the world: ‘We are a single and united us’” (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:58–59). Cassinello was followed by Ted Allen, president of the Bureau of International Expositions, who said nothing of great interest and quickly turned over the podium to Seville’s alcalde, Alejandro Rojas Marcos. The latter had insisted on keeping the contents of his speech secret, much to the trepidation and annoyance of anxious PSOE and Expo officials, who squirmed in their seats in fear that he would disrupt the spirit of unity and harmony of the day. But Rojas

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Marcos chose instead to demonstrate that Sevillanos could be cosmopolitan without sacrificing one iota of their passionate attachment to their own city: Today, as we did five hundred years ago, we set out anew from this land toward an encounter with a new world. Humanity searches for itself. Frontiers fall and peoples affirm their signs of identity. This exposition will help to discover this world, and it will remain forever an example of hope in the future. Today, the twenty-first century begins. . . . The hour has arrived to end the culture of violence. The hour has arrived to render homage to life. For this, there is no better point of reference than Seville, true mistress in the art of living. Her people, without losing their smiles or their manners, fight tirelessly against the marginalization and underdevelopment that still surrounds us. . . . One hopes that this exposition, which is being celebrated in Seville, thanks to the initiative of his majesty the king, signifies the beginning of the end of the historical debt owed to Andalusia, a region that has given so much to Spain and to the world. . . . This exposition had to be celebrated in Seville. . . . There is no city like this one, which has been able to promote understanding among people of the most diverse cultures, . . . a city where for centuries Christians, Jews, and Muslims have lived in peace. For this reason, as alcalde of Seville, I want to name as honorary Sevillanos all those citizens of the world who are disposed to fight for a society without borders, . . . a society in which liberty and justice reign, . . . because as that great universal Sevillano and fighter, Bartolomé de las Casas, said, ‘All men are one.’. . . Welcome to Seville. Welcome to three thousand years of history forged by the most diverse civilizations. Welcome to the city of tolerance and of peace, of painting, of poetry, of music. . . . Welcome to the city of harmony and rhythm, of imagination and magic. Welcome to the land of art and beauty, of joy and love. Welcome to Seville, men and women of the world, because this city so charged with the future will deliver itself to you so that you may live life intensely. (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:60) Rojas Marcos was followed by Manuel Chaves, a member of the PSOE and president of La Junta de Andalucía. Chaves also but more prosaically noted the tolerance and pluralism of the region, and he observed in various ways and at some length that “the Expo has permitted Andalusia to arrive on time for its meeting with progress” (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:60).

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The longest speech of the day was reserved for the head of the Spanish government and the PSOE, Felipe González (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:58). González began by mentioning the other key events of 1992 in Spain and by somewhat defensively noting that the Expo had gone through many transformations but that what was important was that in each instance it had been able to respond and overcome adversities. “Today,” he observed, the Expo “is a reality that satisfies us because it represents and embodies the will to advance in liberty, a will that our people expressed so heartily in the transition to democracy and in the Spanish Constitution of 1978.” Casting his gaze to the future, González then observed: [The Expo] is not an isolated effort or without continuation. It definitely aims to take advantage of this impulse for renovation in order to connect . . . this territory with other spaces of growth and development in our country. For this reason, the meaning of the Universal Exposition of Seville transcends the six months of its celebration and prolongs itself in time. The infrastructures, . . . the potential for growth, and the quality of life that its surroundings offer are good points of departure for Cartuja ’93, . . . a project that is capable of continuing the task realized and of stimulating development so that this community will be situated among the prosperous regions of Europe. . . . Let’s make the Universal Exposition of Seville a success for everyone—a success for the international community and a further step along the road of cooperation and peace that we all desire. (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:58) After these surprisingly bland words from a charismatic politician who usually managed to avoid sounding like a second-rate bureaucrat, King Juan Carlos ascended to the podium and raised the level of rhetoric to a more inspirational plane. The king began by nominating Expo ’92 as the “greatest exposition in history,” thanking the thousands of people who had made it possible, and observing that one of its primary goals was “to transmit to its visitors the idea of the diversity and the richness of the cultures that man has created, the idea of the innovative capacity of the human being, and also the idea of tolerance, of respect for plurality, of international solidarity” (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:59). Toward the end of his speech, he announced: The bridges that unite the island of La Cartuja with the city of Seville are therefore splendid symbols of what Spain wants to transmit about itself—[symbols of] the union of the past and the future, of art and technology, and of places of meeting for our visitors, with whom we will share friendship and dialogue. The queen and I, like so many other Spaniards, have become adoptive Sevillanos in order to proudly

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share this Universal Exposition with its visitors. I am sure that all visitors will be able to confirm that hospitality and courtesy are distinctive traits of the personality of our people. There are, without doubt, going to be months of hard work in which we have to offer the best of ourselves, the best of Spain. The result of this effort cannot be other than success. The Universal Exposition of Seville is now inaugurated. (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:59) Following these words, balloons were launched skyward, thousands of doves were released, and the bells of the thirty-eight campaniles of Seville pealed. At 12:30 P.M., the king and the members his family retired to the royal pavilion in the monastery of La Cartuja to host a reception for the guests of honor. At 2:00 P.M., the inauguration of the universal exposition officially ended, and the inauguration of individual pavilions ensued, beginning with the Pavilion of Spain. Throughout the afternoon, a storm of speeches was unleashed within the Expo site and the city. For example, Aznar, the head of the PP, presented his views at the Pavilion of Castilla y León. This speech was seconded by his political godfather, Manuel Fraga, the president of Galicia, who remarked that the goal of the Expo was not to secure immediate profits but to make an investment that would contribute to the “Europe of the autonomies” (ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:61). This phrase neatly sewed together the themes of local pride and cosmopolitan hospitality that sounded everywhere on the great day. At 6:30 P.M., King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía briefly toured the main area of pavilions. Shortly afterward, the evening’s many shows, operas, and concerts began. At 9:00 P.M., the spectacular laser and fireworks show that was to be held every night around the Lake of Spain was presented for the first time and was broadcast to hundreds of millions of people. By 10:00 P.M., the official schedule of the day’s events was concluded, but the festivities, of course, continued throughout the night. Most local, national, and international commentators and the public of Seville evidently judged the inauguration a smashing success.2 In its combination of state ceremony, high-brow concerts, and popular entertainments, it offered, as promised, “something for everybody.” And Cassinello and Pellón were about as close to a state of spontaneous and uncalculated euphoria as they seemed capable of getting. Even so, the political reviews that came in over the course of the next few days were a bit more mixed. Praise for the king and his speech were nearly unanimous, but there was little enthusiasm for the speeches given by others. Rojas Marcos was, however, a partial exception. At least in Seville, it seemed to most people that he had stolen the show, both with his ornate and romantic but nonetheless moving rhetoric and with the adroit way in which he had managed to give most of the credit for the Expo to the king and none of the credit to the PSOE. In comparison, González had been quite

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pedestrian in his speech about the PSOE’s “most ambitious project,” and his critics detected a “mythification of the superficial” and “an obsession with image” that they were quick to argue characterized the political culture of the “Felipista decade” more generally (DD 21 Apr 1992:16). Setting aside the finer discriminations of partisan politics and editorial judgment, however, almost everyone was impressed with the extent to which the various speakers—the king, the PSOE leaders, Rojas Marcos, and even, in their separate venues, the leading opposition politicians—spoke with a nearly unanimous voice. Cosmopolitan internationalism, regional pluralism, the importance of state initiatives, an escape from the backward and authoritarian legacies of the past, and a future of peace and rapid economic development were the order of the day for nearly everyone. To be sure, the rhetorical strategies employed by the various authorities to invoke these themes varied a bit. For the king, the Expo metaphorically stood in for the whole world, while the city of Seville was virtually equated with all of Spain, and the “bridges” between these entities were emphasized. In contrast, Rojas Marcos located the wide world in the cosmopolitan traditions of Seville, allowed the Expo to serve as a symbol for the efforts and aspirations of the Spanish people and state, and emphasized the theme of hospitality. Yet whether via images of bridges, hospitality, or some other figurative device, the basic message of the inauguration day speeches was clear enough: the mission of the Expo, Seville, and the Spanish state in 1992 was to mediate the various political, economic, and cultural divisions that kept the people of Spain, Europe, and the world from cooperating with one another. The official observations of the first few days continued to reinforce the idea that relationships between local, national, and cosmopolitan cultures could and ought to be harmonious. Thus, on Tuesday, 21 April, the day after the inauguration of the Expo, Rojas Marcos at a ceremony marking the completion of renovations to Seville’s Baroque town hall warmly thanked the king for his and the state’s support of the Expo and the city and for helping to return Seville to its historical role as “the capital of southern Europe” (ABC 22 Apr 1992:43). Also on Tuesday, José Antonio Ardanza, the lehendakari (president) of the Basque country, who spoke at the ceremonies initiating the Expo’s series of official “Days of Honor,” tactfully avoided direct reference to ETA violence and instead embraced the ideals of tolerance, peace, prosperity, and solidarity. Cassinello followed this up by remarking that the nineteen Spanish pavilions at the Expo (the royal pavilion, the national pavilion, and the seventeen pavilions of the autonomous regions) did not show any excess or division but instead demonstrated the “diversity of the country” (DD 22 Apr 1992:3). The message of solidarity amidst diversity was also strongly reinforced from a more cosmopolitan perspective on Friday, 24 April, during the celebrations marking the day of honor of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and the Center for Human Rights, in which various speakers referred to a new worldwide faith in universal solidarity (DD 25 Apr 1992:7).

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The only sour note in the otherwise harmonious chorus of optimism was sounded by Jordi Pujol, the conservative president of the Generalitat, on Wednesday, 22 April, which was Catalonia’s day of honor. Pujol argued that the idea of “solidarity” had to be made compatible with “competition” if the former was not to fall into the “most absolute decadence.” Defending Catalán nationalism and personal enterprise over state enterprise, he made the following remarks: “It is possible to know what a consumer of Coca-Cola is, but we do not know what a citizen of the world is. . . . The citizen needs a city, like Seville, a nation, a country, and his own identity, a defined environment in which to be” (DD 23 Apr 1992:4–5). Of the half million or so people who visited the Expo during its first week (ABC-ex 24 Apr 1992:53), probably very few paid any attention to the words of Pujol, and those few who did were inclined to dismiss his remarks as just one more instance of Catalán touchiness and arrogance. The overwhelming majority of Expo visitors during the opening days were Sevillanos and Andalusians from surrounding towns, and they were swept up by the atmosphere of the grand fiesta. Although they were proud and happy to hear that the Expo was receiving highly favorable reviews in the popular press throughout Europe and in much of the rest of the world, what most absorbed their attention was snapping photos, listening to the countless performances of folk music, and deciding what to see and do next. They did not waste much time pondering the larger significance of the event. Indeed, the Sevillanos and Andalusians tended to accept at face value the standard official version of what the Expo meant. They reserved their strongest expressions of concern for the unseasonably high temperatures and for the fact that a large number of pavilions, including the Pavilion of Spain, were closed because the air-conditioning or something else was temporarily out of order. Despite these minor annoyances, there can be little doubt that the opening week of the Expo represented the high point of the relations between the Expo and Seville—the period when the people of the city most felt and believed that the Expo was “truly their own” and that the values of cosmopolitan liberalism were compatible with their own particular interests, values, and way of life. To some degree, the Sevillanos felt this way because of the tenor of the official speeches, but in large measure they also felt this way because they themselves had made sure that the opening of the Expo was successfully incorporated into the city’s great annual religious and secular festivals of Holy Week and the feria. As a result, the Expo had not disrupted the solemnity of Holy Week, and it seemed to augment and complement the gaiety and excitement of the feria. The Sevillanos were therefore able to indulge themselves in a nearly uninterrupted month-long cycle of highly ritualized and public spectacles and diversions, the likes of which few people ever have the chance to witness. Indeed, by the end of the Expo’s first week, it was apparent that hundreds of thousands of people—everyone from foreign dignitaries to Andalusian gentry in

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horse-drawn carriages to agricultural workers in crowded buses—were taking great pleasure in moving back and forth between the Expo site, with its hypermodern pavilions and discos, and the feria grounds, with its traditional tents, music, and bars. And in these circumstances, who, besides perhaps Jordi Pujol, would want to deny that it was possible to be a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, with eyes cast toward the broad horizons of the future, and at the same time be an Andalusian who proudly embraced the customs and values of tradition? Well, to name just one . . . there was Jacinto Pellón.

12. War, Stalemate, and Cultural Politics The state of near perfect harmony between the Expo and Seville lasted less than a week. On Monday, 27 April 1992, Jacinto Pellón announced that the sale of season passes was being suspended for an indefinite period. He noted that people had already purchased 195,000 season passes for general admission (at a price of 30,000 pesetas each) as well as 85,000 season passes for evening admission (at a price of 10,000 pesetas each). Because the system for distributing the passes was under severe strain, however, 60,000 passes had yet to be delivered. Moreover, Expo officials now believed that another 200,000 or more passes would be requested, far outstripping previous expectations. Pellón went on to observe that the Expo “had a limit” and that its services could not support such large numbers of regular visitors. Evidently, this limit had nearly been reached on Saturday night, when a flood of visitors from Seville’s week-long feria (fair) had entered the site. In the interest of everyone and especially of those tourists who planned on simply visiting the Expo for a day or so, Pellón was calling a halt to the sale of season passes in order “to evaluate the impact of this demand on the functioning of the site” (ABC-ex 28 Apr 1992:49; DD-ex 28 Apr 1992:1, 5). The sale of season passes had already been suspended for ten days in March and had then been resumed. This time, however, Pellón made no promises concerning when or if the suspension would be lifted. Reaction to Pellón’s announcement was immediate. Alejandro Rojas Marcos, the alcalde (mayor), remarked that while Seville “had clearly been up to the challenge of the Expo, the Expo was not up to the challenge of Seville” and characterized the suspension as a “barbarity” (EC 29 Apr 1992:29). His coalition partner from El Partido Popular (PP), Soledad Becerril, expressed the desire and expectation that the suspension would be temporary (EC 29 Apr 1992:29). A few hours later, a spokesman for the entire municipal council declared that the council “considers the indefinite suspension of the season passes inadmissable because this measure strongly pun-

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ishes the people of Seville.” The spokesman added that the sector of the city’s population with the least economic capacity had been effectively deprived of any possibility of visiting the exposition because of the high price of daily entrances (DD-ex 29 Apr 1992:16) and that the suspension was particularly unacceptable because Seville had so clearly demonstrated its “unconditional support” for the exposition. In addition, an association of consumers in Seville announced that it was filing a complaint before the director general of consumer affairs of the board of health, claiming that Pellón’s explanations for the suspension were “neither convincing nor reasonable” (DD 29 Apr 1992:16) and listing thirteen reasons why the suspension should be judged “illegal and abusive,” including the charges that Pellón had made false promises and broken an implied contract with the public. By mid-week, the radio stations, press, and streets of Seville were buzzing with expressions of concern and anger over the suspension. Most people apparently felt that the suspension was unjust and prejudicial to Sevillanos. Some felt that it demonstrated the incompetence of the Expo organizers. More claimed that the motivation was surely financial and proved the organizers’ overwhelming concern for the bottom line. Only a few people suggested that it made sense to limit the crowds, and the usual rejoinder to this opinion was that the crowds were huge because of the feria and would soon decline to manageable levels. Many people were especially annoyed that no advance warning of the suspension had been given. Arguing in ways that seemed rather inappropriately to evoke memories of the Civil War and the dictatorship, they lamented that the suspension had created two classes of Sevillanos—the favored “haves” and the abandoned “have-nots”—and had split many families into two groups, one consisting of those who had purchased passes and the other consisting of those who were left without recourse. Beholding the mounting tide of popular discontent, Emilio Cassinello (commissioner general of the Expo) and Manuel Chaves (president of the government of Andalusia) rushed to the defense of Pellón and pointed out that the decision to suspend the sale of passes had been unanimously adopted by the Council of Administration of the State Society. Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal, the city’s own representative on this council, was thus soon obliged to admit that he had indeed voted for the suspension, but he rather enigmatically insisted that he had done so only as a “private member” and stressed that his vote had been cast with the understanding that the suspension of sales would be temporary. Caught in the middle once again between the demands of party loyalty and the particular interests of their constituents, the regional spokesmen of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) followed the same course as Prado y Colón, trying to play it both ways. On the one hand, they deemed the decision to suspend sales as “prudent”; on the other hand, they earnestly expressed their confidence that the matter would soon be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction (DD-ex 29 Apr 1992:5).

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Pellón tried to remain aloof from the hubbub, but he could not long resist the temptation to respond to reporters’ persistent questions. With his usual flair for public relations, he quickly succeeded in making matters worse. Over the course of a few days, he declared that season passes were not exclusively for Sevillanos, that the city council should therefore have no particular interest in the matter, and that everyone should remember that the Expo is “not Seville’s” (DD-ex 1 May 1992:3). He also observed that while Sevillanos were welcome to visit the Expo, they should not “set up house” on the site (DD-ex 1 May 1992:23). Using an analogy with bus riders who hold passes, he argued that it would be “tragic for the company” if season ticket holders never got off the bus. Meanwhile, an anonymous Expo official was quoted as saying that the Expo would be a success “in spite of Seville” (DD-ex 1 May 1992:3). These condescending remarks, which seemed to deny Seville and Sevillanos any special role or stake in the Expo, were regarded as adding insult to injury, and local citizens were not slow to respond. In a letter to the editor of Diario 16, one incensed Sevillano wrote that it would be all right if Pellón visited Seville, but “we wouldn’t want him to live here” (DD-ex 1 May 1992:23), and a staff editorialist of this newspaper suggested that Pellón evidently had “in his head” a nightmare image of an Expo attended only by “provincials munching on sandwiches” (DD 9 May 1992:2). The initial storm of discussion began to lose its force in early May, as officials and politicians sought to establish a secure position for themselves and as Sevillanos awaited the final decision on renewing the sale of season passes. During the calmer period, however, the dispute over the passes was linked to a number of other issues concerning access to and control over the Expo. There were, for example, many complaints about the lack of tickets and the types of seats available to the general public for concerts and other cultural events related to the Expo. In large measure, this problem was apparently due to the many seats that were reserved for officials of participating corporations and countries and for Spaniards well connected to the PSOE (DD-ex 16 Jul 1992:6). However, it was both disconcerting and annoying for people to have to wait in long lines and pay large sums for advance tickets to events and then, when the magic hour finally arrived, to find themselves seated in remote corners of the balcony and peering down on hundreds of unoccupied reserved seats surrounding clusters of complacent VIPs. At the same time that these concerns were being broached, it seemed increasingly possible that the whole issue of season passes might be mooted by a significant decline in attendance at the Expo. By late May, the proportion of Expo visitors who held season passes had declined from the April high of nearly 70 percent to only 30 percent (DD-ex 20 May 1992:4). The total number of visitors had also significantly dropped from a high of 320,116 people on 2 May (during the weekend of the feria) to an average of about 150,000 people per day by the last week of May (DD-ex 3 Jun 1992:3). This was well under the

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number of visitors predicted by the Expo organization and thus was a cause of considerable concern. Nevertheless, Expo officials argued that 350,000 Sevillanos still wanted to purchase season passes (DD-ex 17 May 1992:3). This figure was hotly disputed by consumer groups and other protesters in Seville, who insisted that the number had been intentionally and fraudulently inflated by at least 100,000 people (ABC-ex 29 Jun 1992:50–51; DD-ex 30 Jun 1992:3). Such charges met little response from Expo officials. As time passed, Sevillanos grew more impatient and began to accuse Pellón and others of intentionally delaying a decision on the issue. By early June, public rhetoric rose to new levels of intensity as local politicians began to anticipate final word from the Council of Administration on the matter of the season passes. Rojas Marcos warned that there “has never been an Expo that thumbed its nose” at local citizens (DD-ex 18 Jun 1992:6). Rosa Bendala, the leader of the Izquierda Unida (IU) group on the city council, asserted that “the situation that has developed is attributable to the irresponsibility, lack of knowledge, . . . and lack of common sense” of Pellón and his subordinates and that the affair of the season passes had clearly destroyed Pellón’s credibility as a manager (DD-ex 18 Jun 1992:6; DD-ex 20 Jun 1992:3). An IU spokesperson also lamented that “Sevillanos have had to endure the nuisances of the Expo’s construction but are not able to enjoy its benefits” (DD-ex 20 Jun 1992:3). In addition, members of the PP voiced their criticisms. For example, Becerril argued that the Expo’s organizers were well aware of Seville’s “vox populi” but chose to disregard it for reasons that were “purely economic” (DDex 2 Jun 1992:6). And as one of her colleagues observed, the entrance policy showed that, for Pellón, “the Sevillanos have always been only extras in his spectacle . . . [because] when he needs them, he opens the door, and when he is finished with them, he slams it shut” (DD-ex 18 Jun 1992:5). Only the members of the local PSOE continued to try to sit on the fence over the issue. Although the Socialists had voted with the majority on the city council in officially protesting the suspension of the sale of season passes in late May, they also rather illogically attempted to blame Rojas Marcos for the crisis by claiming that his “lies, falsehoods, and demagogy” and his “failure to integrate [compaginar] the interests of Seville with the general interests of the state” had made it more difficult to find a satisfactory solution (ABC-ex 21 Jun 1992:64; DD-ex 30 May 1992:1; EP “Andalucía” 30 May 1992:1). On Monday, 22 June, Pellón finally announced the definitive decision of the Council of Administration: the sale of season passes was permanently suspended “by consensus but without a vote” of the council members. Pellón stated that the main reason for the suspension was the “intensive use” made of season passes by the Sevillanos who held them. The Expo was made only “to be visited,” but the season pass holders came many times “to enjoy themselves for a while,” and this potentially threatened the efficient functioning of the Expo site. Pellón also reported that the council rejected proposed compromise solutions,

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such as selling passes that were valid for a shorter duration of time during periods when attendance was expected to be low. However, the council voted for an increase in the number of scheduled “blue days” (days when admission was half price), raising this number from five to ten days (DD 23 Jun 1992:5). According to Pellón (DD-ex 20 Jun 1992:3; DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:3), obtaining a season pass had become “a psychological problem” for Sevillanos, even though it was his opinion that “everyone who wants to go to the Expo can do so under current prices.” Moreover, once such passes had been purchased, Sevillanos attended the Expo as if it were “psychologically free,” and this also was a major source of difficulties (DD 20 Jun 1992:3). The announcement of the council’s decision in tandem with Pellón’s foray into social psychology created a firestorm of anger in Seville. Within minutes of the announcement, Rojas Marcos proclaimed that suspending the sale of season passes was a “declaration of war” against Seville. He stressed that he felt “offended as a Sevillano and indignant as an alcalde” and was “now looking for the weapons necessary to fight the State Society” (DD 23 Jun 1992:7). The alcalde seemed particularly annoyed that no one in the city government had been consulted beforehand about the decision to suspend the sale permanently, and this led him to observe that “it is not as if Sevillanos are Martians raining from the sky.” On the contrary, he said, “we Sevillanos are reasonable and want to embrace the Expo, but they [the Expo organizers] will not let us.” Rojas Marcos also dismissed the increase in the number of “blue days” as mere “celestial music” (DD 23 Jun 1992:7; EC-ex 23 Jun 1992:2). Even those who had little interest in the Expo or already had secured season passes were quick to deplore the injustice of the suspension, and many people openly expressed the view that Pellón should be dismissed immediately. The newspapers of Seville were full of commentaries written by editorialists, politicians, prominent local citizens, and ordinary townspeople about the “war” between the Expo and the city. As previously, the main themes sounded in this storm of words were that the decision and everything related to it were “unjust,” “a barbarity,” “disrespectful,” “shameful,” “a mockery,” “an abuse of citizens’ rights,” and “a deception” and that the people of Seville had “suffered” and would continue to suffer from the acts and arrogance of Expo officials (DD-ex 23 Jun 1992:6–8; DD-ex 26 Jun 1992:6; EC-ex 23 Jun 1992:2–4). As one anonymous person, speaking for many, put it: “It gives me incredible pain to know that I’m not going to be able to visit the exhibition. I’ve always been enamored by the Expo, and I believe that it’s the most marvelous thing in Seville. But I can’t pay the entrance fees, and I waited in order to buy a season pass and go more often. What Pellón has done to Sevillanos has no name” (DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:4). Another person had two proposals to make to local politicians: first, that Chaves, who along with the Socialists of La Junta de Andalucía had awarded the gold medal of Andalusia to Pellón for meritorious service, should take back the medal because “Pellón has done nothing for us”; and, second, that

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Rojas Marcos “should convoke the whole city, without respect to political sympathies, against Pellón, so that Pellón may be declared a persona non grata” (DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:4). Perhaps hoping that the storm of protests would soon dissipate, leading Socialists responded as blandly as they could to the vehement protests. Despite the fact that only a few days earlier the PSOE members of the city council had ardently been calling for the resumption of season pass sales, after the final decision was made they decided that all was really for the best. Without going so far as to defend Pellón directly, their spokeswoman explained that they “would have wished more for Sevillanos, but we believe in any case that the decision of doubling the number of family days [“blue days”] is a formula that makes access easier and, to a certain extent, may satisfy Sevillanos. One has to remember, on the other side, that the Expo is a project of the state that has to function as well as possible for the good of the country and that it has been financed by all Spaniards and not just by those in Seville” (EC 23 Jun 1992:25). Despite Rojas Marcos’s characterization of the problem of season passes as a “political problem of the first magnitude” (DD 23 Jun 1992:7), most of the response to the situation was rhetorical. Attempts at direct political and legal redress were, at best, cautious and limited. Although there was some talk of strikes and demonstrations against the Expo and also of using the city’s power over various sorts of licenses to force concessions from the State Society, all the options that seriously threatened to disrupt the event were eventually rejected by local politicians. Instead, Rojas Marcos renewed his demand for a few “free days” for Sevillanos, which he claimed that Pellón had already promised, and the city council met with Chaves and Virgilio Zapatero, who represented the government in Madrid, to ask them to annul the decision to cancel the sale of passes (DD-ex 26 Jun 1992:62). Members of El Partido Andalucista (PA) circulated a petition, which gathered thousands of signatures and requested Felipe González to overturn the decision and fire Pellón (ABC-ex 1 Jul 1992:45). In addition, a young unemployed man from Seville filed a private suit against the Expo, claiming that the organization had broken its implied contract with the residents of the city. Even though local editorialists lauded this as a “cry against injustice,” the suit was eventually rejected by a court on the grounds that the suspension of sales did not violate principles of equal treatment for all citizens (DD-ex 17 Jul 1992:3). Local politicians responded to this judgment by arguing that it ignored the special “social reality” of Seville, but nothing more came of the effort. Similarly, although the European Union’s Commission of Communities agreed to consider a case lodged by a PA member and deputy of the European Parliament who complained that the Expo organizers were guilty of fraudulent publicity concerning the season passes, this suit bore no practical fruits (ABC-ex 28 Aug 1992:40; ABC-ex 29 Aug 1992:38). In sum, then, the war between the Expo and the city was almost entirely a war of words and gestures. Understandably unhappy with the prospect of

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becoming everyone’s favorite target, Pellón unfortunately chose to respond to the situation by making public a private letter from a palace official who praised his work on behalf of the king. However, this effort to mend his reputation by invoking royal approval amounted to a serious breach in protocol and only met with expressions of scorn and mockery in Seville (DD-ex 1 Jul 1992:3). Yet this debacle merely set the stage for what was, perhaps, the lowest point in the war between the Expo and Seville, which occurred in early July in the rather unlikely but symbolically appropriate setting of El Teatro Maestranza, a new and quite grand theater located in the heart of the city. The occasion, also symbolically appropriate, was a guest performance of La Traviata by the singers of La Scala. Pellón arrived with his wife just minutes before the performance was supposed to begin, but his presence did not escape the attention of the aficionados of the upper balcony, who greeted Pellón with a scattering of whistles, boos, catcalls, and statements such as “Out to the back of the line” and “To the street, sin vergüenza [shameless person], and show your ticket.” The jeers and insults spread quickly throughout the theater, and when the management dimmed the lights in an attempt to calm the storm, the noise only increased. After some minutes, the tidal wave of disapproval finally receded, and the shaken and completely mystified Italian singers tried valiantly to get on with the show (DD-ex 12 Jul 1992:17). After Pellón’s ritual scourging, the war between the Expo and Seville cooled considerably and entered a long period of simmering hostility characterized by muted resentments and mutual incomprehension. It did not boil over into intense conflict again until the closing days of the exhibition, when Expo officials and local politicians alike hurried to impress their summary interpretations of the event on the general public. Yet even though the conflict over the season passes was ultimately just a tempest in a teakettle, it demonstrated the truth of Alain Touraine’s (1995:185) well-known observation that “regional consciousness and the defense of local liberties are the principal foundations of resistance to technocracy.” Faced with the possibility of overcrowding, Expo officials had asked local citizens to be reasonable and pragmatic, to accept limitations on their access to the site, and to become, in effect, like everyone else, mere tourists and day-trippers. The general argument against what amounted to special privilege for Sevillanos was based on universalist, liberal, legalist, and cosmopolitan principles of equality and fair treatment. Everyone should have equal rights, equal time, and equal freedom to pay and consume in a splendid marketplace of culture and fun. And if this was not enough, Sevillanos were also encouraged to recognize that any inconveniences that they might be obliged to endure were in the interest of Spain as it sought to craft a modern and progressive image of the country in the arenas of international opinion. Many Sevillanos, however, never accepted the administrative rationale that the Expo was in danger of imminent collapse or the notion that their unique interest and involvement in the event was unworthy of special recognition and

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accommodation. From their perspective, despite the state’s sponsorship, the Expo was in and of Seville. The Sevillanos were the ones who had built it, had endured all its inconveniences and uncertainties, and were expected to serve as its hosts. How could they welcome people to an event that they themselves could not afford to attend and had no voice in running? Thus, although the affair of the season passes seemed minor, it generated great passion and anger because it touched on fundamental questions concerning state versus local control, the nature of freedom and self-government, and the kinds of policies that could and could not be considered reasonable and pragmatic. In Seville, more than in most cities, the sense of local cultural identity is closely tied to involvement in the leisure-time activities that take place in the streets and plazas during the afternoons and evenings, as well as to massive popular participation in the city’s great annual events, such as the processions of Holy Week and the celebrations of the feria. This being the case, the denial of easy access to the Expo was viewed as an assault on the collective identity of Sevillanos. Although they could attend the Expo as ordinary private individuals, the suspension of season tickets seemed designed to deny them the possibility of experiencing the event as members of the local community. Thus, the affair of the season passes both reflected and helped to widen the gap that existed between the values and views conveyed by the Expo and those dominant in the public culture of the city. Indeed, the latent contradictions and tensions that existed between the Expo’s official culture of cosmopolitan liberalism and Seville’s vision of itself were brought to the surface and stirred up by the conflict over the season passes, but these tensions were evident in many other ways as well and had far-reaching political and cultural consequences that affected how Sevillanos understood the significance of the Expo and their own position and identity within Spain, Europe, and the world. From the perspective of the Expo organizers, Seville still clearly had many of the characteristics of a provincial southern backwater whose social and economic life was too stagnant and whose culture was excessively inward-looking and complacently proud. The city had been unable to meet the challenges involved in revitalizing its economy and providing for its expanding population. The Expo was what was needed to transform a city still too much under the spell of its past into “a mechanism that will make the Europe of superdevelopment arrive at the gates of Africa” (ABC 19 Apr 1992:3). Even so, in the short term, Seville had several other instrumental and cultural functions to perform in order to guarantee the success of the exposition and to lead the way into the future. Its new highways, bridges, airport, train station, hotels, and other facilities had prepared it to serve as a staging area for the events taking place on La Isla de la Cartuja. As a result, what the Expo organizers desired of Sevillanos above all was that they provide service with a smile and keep their understandable eagerness to profit from the event within bounds that would not intimidate tourists or do too much violence to the ideals of efficiency and hospitality. In addition, at least

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for the duration of the Expo, the event’s organizers were not averse to taking advantage of the city’s rich local culture and traditions. The city would therefore have the status of an official attraction of the exhibition, and the so-called Pavilion of Seville would function as a sort of living museum. The attractions of the Pavilion of Seville included exhibitions of contemporary Ibero-American painting, antique silver work, photographs of the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition, Anjou tapestries, and Bibles in five hundred languages. These exhibitions were scattered throughout the city in locations such as the Convent of San Clemente and the former railroad station in La Plaza de Armas. To help visitors find their way from place to place through the labyrinthine streets of the old city center, the municipal government had, in spite of the opposition of the State Society to the scheme, enlisted the aid of several hundred young volunteers, whose job it was to give directions and hand out maps to the dazed and confused. The volunteers were almost without exception cheerful, knowledgeable, and eager to help. But they often had little to do, because the various exhibitions of the Pavilion of Seville tended to attract few visitors from outside the city. Only the magnificent display of religious art called “Magna Hispalensis,” an exhibit housed in the Cathedral, consistently drew large crowds to the city center. Yet even the success of “Magna Hispalensis” revealed the underlying ambivalence of Sevillanos toward the Pavilion of Seville. Many people who admired the elegance of the exhibit and the quality of the works displayed nonetheless openly questioned the wisdom of turning the Cathedral’s sacred space into what was essentially a secular museum and concert hall. Moreover, the decision to allow souvenir kiosks, a gift shop, and an outdoor cafe to be located in El Patio de las Naranjas inside the Cathedral’s walls led to many public complaints and expressions of indignation from ordinary Catholics and officials of the city’s lay religious brotherhoods. From their perspective, enthusiasm for the Expo had seduced local officials into allowing the money changers into the temple (ABC 8 May 1992:43). But perhaps the clearest indication of the general lack of enthusiasm for reducing Seville to the status of a pavilion was the failure of local and state officials alike to ensure a timely conclusion to the renovations of Seville’s extraordinary Museo de Bellas Artes, which houses some of the finest works of Murillo, Zurbarán, and other Spanish painters and is located only a few hundred feet from the main gates of the Expo. From April to October of the Expo’s “miraculous year,” the museum remained closed. It thereby came to symbolize for many people not only the disappointments but also the absurdity of treating Seville as a mere adjunct of the Expo. In contrast, there seemed to be very few Sevillanos who doubted that the Expo was and should be treated as the newest barrio (neighborhood) of Seville. Although this new barrio lacked permanent residents, it had a pleasant aspect and was ideal for the leisure-time pursuits of the paseo, the traditional evening promenade and stroll during which the Sevillanos’ immense capacities and tal-

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ents for intense socializing were most visibly on display. The problem was that the actions of Pellón and his associates had made it difficult for local residents to use the site as they wished. But as local people soon discovered, this formidable obstacle was not altogether insurmountable. The entrance gates to the Expo site were equipped with elaborate and expensive technology that required the holders of season passes to have their fingerprints electronically checked against those on file in the Expo’s data bases, but the system worked less than perfectly. When the technology was turned up to its maximum levels of sensitivity, it took a long time to verify each pass holder’s identity, so long lines tended to form and people became disgruntled. However, when the system was operating at a lower level of reliability, as it usually was, it was quite easy to enter using someone else’s pass (DD-ex 14 Aug 1992:4). More traditional forms of gate-crashing, although difficult, were not altogether impossible for the young, agile, and determined. And, of course, it was always possible to purchase relatively low-priced tickets that allowed evening admission and access to at least some of the attractions on La Isla de la Cartuja. Indeed, the cancellation of season ticket sales and the response of Sevillanos to it contributed powerfully to the emergence of two quite distinct Expos. The first, Expo Día, or the “daytime Expo,” was the one dominated by hordes of tourists waiting in lines in the sweltering heat to catch a glimpse of the wonders of the world displayed in the pavilions. This was the official Expo in which the objects of culture and history and the speeches of dignitaries were featured. The second, Expo Noche, or the “nighttime Expo,” had a completely different character. Although its excitement was partially dependent on officially sponsored concerts and other performances, its ambience was almost entirely attributable to the large numbers of Sevillanos who invaded the island every evening and sought to charm and seduce (sometimes quite literally) one another and their guests. During the evening and throughout the night, the darkened and closed pavilions of the daytime Expo served as a mere backdrop for fireworks displays, walks along the river and through the gardens, conversations among friends, flirtation, romance, and other diversions such as singing, drinking, eating tapas (snacks), dining, and dancing. This Expo was characterized not by the formalities and busy pursuits of the day but instead by the pleasures of relaxed and spontaneous social intimacy. For this reason, its distinctive structures of feeling resonated with those of the traditional cultural forms of the fiesta and the paseo, rather than with those of the modern museum or amusement park. And because of this, Expo Noche provided an alternative and distinctively local way of appreciating and experiencing the human intercourse made possible by gathering together the “whole world on an island.” Officially, Expo Noche began at 6:00 P.M., when the lower evening admission prices went into effect. In theory, this allowed entering visitors ample time to visit a few pavilions before they closed at 8:00 P.M. In practice, however, many pavilions closed an hour or more earlier, and the ones that remained open

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attracted long lines. Even allowing for the possibility of many evening visits, it was therefore difficult to see much of the Expo, and many Sevillanos thought it was not worth the trouble to visit any but the two or three most important pavilions during the evening hours. As the pavilions began to shut their doors, a steadily increasing crowd of daytime visitors, especially families with children, gathered around the Lake of Spain for the show of sound, light, fireworks, dancers, water-skiers, and laser-projected images that featured “Curro,” the mascot figure of the Expo. When the spectacle ended, many visitors who had spent the whole day on the site were ready to leave. Especially on weekends, these visitors were replaced by Sevillanos who were out for an evening on the town and, in particular, by large numbers of young and single people whose night was just beginning. Depending on their age and whims, many Sevillanos made their way to one or another of the Expo’s centers of nighttime activity. Teenagers were especially drawn to the area around the Sony Jumbotron, a giant open-air video screen that ordinarily showed music videos and concert films during the evening. Young adults also had their favorite destinations, such as the Kangaroo Pub, which attracted quite a few foreign employees of the pavilions of participating countries, and a discotheque housed in the partially burned out Pavilion of Discoveries. While groups of adult married couples tended to favor the more Andalusian ambience of the Tierras del Jerez and Cruzcampo pavilions (which offered tapas, beer, wine, and entertainment by Sevillana and Flamenco singers and dancers), they also liked the cinemas and concert venues, the cheaper restaurants, and the free salsa and samba performances sponsored by the pavilions of some of the Latin American countries. Always, however, there were many people simply strolling around or sitting and chatting over a drink in the plazas, patios, streets, and gardens of the Expo. Thus, the nighttime Expo offered many ways to relax as well to “search for the intensity of life” (DD-ex 10 May 1992:20–21). It was no small irony that perhaps the highest point of this “search for the intensity of life” during the nighttime Expo occurred for many Sevillanos on 23 June, just when the furor over the season passes was also at its most intense level. The night of 23 June is La Noche de San Juan, an annual holiday that welcomes the arrival of summer and has long been celebrated in Seville and throughout Spain and much of Latin America. At the Expo, however, 23 June had also been designated as the official day of honor of Puerto Rico in recognition of the country’s capital city and patron saint. Thus, when the roughly 200,000 Sevillanos and others who had chosen to resort to La Isla de la Cartuja for the evening arrived on the site, they entered a milieu that had been especially prepared in advance to create an extraordinary experience of fiesta. In addition to the usual entertainments of the Expo, they found about twenty sites where groups of musicians filled the air with the rhythms of the Caribbean, and they encountered a meandering cavalcade of about 150 musicians and 800 vis-

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iting students who had all apparently dedicated themselves to a campaign to convince the world that “Puerto Rico is salsa.” There were also costumed figures running here and there, inviting visitors to a battle between white and red devils and to a bonfire of cardboard towers and other constructions. “Follow us,” they chanted. “Our fire will mark the road to the most magical night of the year!” (DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:8; DD-ex 25 Jun 1992:12). This was more than enough enticement for Sevillanos, who generally regard themselves and their neighbors as true connoisseurs of a “culture of leisure” (EP 4 May 1992:19), to pursue all the pleasures and enjoyments the night offered. At 3:00 A.M., when the Expo began to close, there were few signs of weariness among the still huge crowds. Although Sevillanos outnumbered other visitors by a great margin, the guiding presence of the Puerto Ricans created a cosmopolitan ambience and an occasion of transcultural communion that was, at least in my experience, almost unparalleled in size and conviviality. La Noche de San Juan seemed one time in which the Expo’s promise of an authentic and intense encounter between the cultures and peoples of the world was actually close to being fulfilled. The formalities of the Expo as a state project were momentarily forgotten as foreigners and locals met one another with few of the inhibitions or expectations that limit ordinary interactions among strangers. At the same time, the carnivalesque merrymaking permitted Sevillanos from all walks of life to feel that they had again taken full possession of the Expo and had made it completely their own, if only perhaps for one evening. As one local commentator described it, La Noche de San Juan was the night “when the Expo lost its virginity” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:48). However, in Victor Turner’s classic terms of ritual analysis, Expo Noche more generally represented an antistructural, communitarian alternative to the structured, institutionalized forms of cosmopolitan liberalism that dominated Expo Día.1 The local popularity of Expo Noche, of course, did no harm to the Expo as a tourist attraction. Indeed, in spite of the conflict over the season passes, the enthusiastic participation of a considerable number of Sevillanos in the “grand fiesta” had been anticipated and hoped for by the State Society. Thus, when the press exclaimed that “foreigners have discovered in the Expo a different dimension of the twenty-four hours of the day: the existence of a night with thousands and thousands of possibilities to be lived” (DD-ex 10 May 1992:20), one heard no groans emanating from the public relations bureaucrats on La Isla de la Cartuja. However, it must have caused these bureaucrats some discomfiture to note that, as increasingly became the case, locals and visitors alike when asked “What is the best thing about the Expo?” responded simply, “Seville.” As Richard Bastin, a well-informed journalist filing stories about the events of ’92 in English, stated: “The Sevillanos and Andalusians generally made the Expo site what it has been. . . . Nearly everyone interviewed by this column—including even those most critical of other aspects of the Expo—was unhesitating in heaping praise upon the locals” (DD-ex 10 Oct 1992:15).

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Outsiders were almost wholly unaware of the broader implications of such praise. However, it was a different matter for those who knew the story of the tensions between the Expo and the city and who recognized that Sevillanos had partially succeeded in recapturing the event and reaffirming their own local identity, in spite of the barriers erected by the State Society. For such people, even casual expressions of satisfaction with Seville were laden with significance, not only because these expressions reconfirmed their perception of the social and political distance existing between the Expo and the city but also because they pointed to the clear advantage of the latter. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, the Sevillanos’ nightly spontaneous efforts to reappropriate the Expo and put it to their own uses had the effect both of making tourists happier with the event as a whole and of reinforcing local people’s sense of Andalusian cultural difference and their own discontent with some of the features of the Expo’s version of the “new Spain.” The leaders of the opposition to the Socialists in Seville, especially Rojas Marcos, were well attuned to the nuances of Sevillanos’ simultaneous embrace of and disgruntlement with the Expo and were eager to nurture this ambivalence for their own political purposes. In addition to making what they could of the battle over the season passes, they sought other ways to turn the Expo to partisan advantage. One form their efforts took was a steady stream of complaints and suggestions about how to improve the Expo. These efforts ranged from threatening to collect the nearly 700 million pesetas in fines lodged against pavilion sponsors who had not secured the proper municipal licenses (DD-ex 27 Jul 1992:1) to arguing that the Expo should remain open after its official October closing date (DD-ex 21 May 1992:3) and to accusing Felipe González of breaking his promise to concede extra funds to Seville for Expo-related expenses (DD 26 Jul 1992:10). The general aims of these tactical maneuvers were to point out the faults in the administration of the exposition to Sevillanos and to keep the local Socialist party off balance and in a defensive posture. But perhaps more influential than the intermittent sniping at an odd lot of targets of opportunity was the persistent campaign conducted by Rojas Marcos to reassert the dignity and autonomy of the city and its government. In early May, for example, when Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands visited, Rojas Marcos attacked the organizers of state protocol by publicly refusing to award the queen the honorary keys to the city in the place and manner scheduled. Instead, he proudly announced, “Seville does not gives its keys in hotels,” and insisted that the gift could be granted only in conjunction with a royal visit to the newly refurbished city hall. Embarrassed Expo officials rushed to apologize to the queen, but the mayor remained adamant (DD-ex 9 May 1992:3). Similar issues were raised in relation to the visit of Ibero-American heads of state to the Expo in late July. After the summit meetings in Madrid and a brief tour of the sites of the Olympics in Barcelona, the plan was for more than a dozen of the political leaders of Latin America to make a quick visit to the Expo.

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The government schedule, which had originated in Madrid, made no provisions for any official ceremonies in Seville. Although Rojas Marcos was among the dignitaries invited to greet the heads of state inside the Expo, the mayor and other members of the city council nonetheless proclaimed their desire to organize some sort of official ceremony, however brief, in the city. This idea was summarily rejected by the PSOE, whose spokesmen suggested that it was Rojas Marcos’s overweening ambition, rather than any lack of respect for Seville, that was creating a problem where none in fact existed (DD 19 Jul 1992:13; DD-ex 21 Jul 1992:6). In response, Rojas Marcos adroitly turned the tables on his adversaries by arguing that he wanted recognition only for the city, not for himself; by questioning why Sevillanos should have to pay 4,000 pesetas in order to greet the heads of state; and by stating that it was the PSOE members who were using the summit for partisan purposes and “making the grave mistake of separating Seville from the Expo” (DD 22 Jul 1992:10; DD 26 Jul 1992:10; DD-ex 21 Jul 1992:6). He later added that his recent visit to Barcelona for the inaugural ceremonies of the Olympics had filled him with enormous envy and that he would give anything for the Expo to engage in an act of affirmation of Andalusia which would match the celebrations of Catalán culture that he had witnessed (DD 28 Jul 1992:12; DD-ex 26 Jul 1992:3). As things turned out, all of the efforts of Rojas Marcos to have the heads of state spend “at least five minutes” at some official act in Seville came to naught. In tandem with Rojas Marcos’s campaign, other social and political forces tried to capitalize on the split between the Expo and the city. For example, conservative elements, led by the archbishop of Seville and the senior brothers of the city’s Holy Week confraternities, launched their own extended protests against the inclusion of a carnivalesque figure that looked like a drunken bishop in the Expo’s daily parade of costumed characters (ABC 23 Aug 1992:8). Although figures such as this were common enough in local celebrations, the fact that the Expo representations were sponsored by the state and that the group who had created and conducted the parade was Catalán, rather than Andalusian, was viewed as adequate reason to regard the drunken bishop as an insult to religious and Andalusian sensibilities. Thus, in conjunction with the provocative suspension of the sale of season passes and the emergence of the marked difference between the daytime and nighttime Expos, the actions of opposition politicians and other public figures created a cleavage of near monumental proportions between the Expo and the city. In directly political terms, the consequences of the schism between the Expo and Seville led to a curious sort of stalemate. The PSOE consistently tried to counter criticism of the Expo by pointing to the event’s manifest successes; by suggesting that it ultimately served the interests of ordinary people of Seville; by asserting that it was opposed only by entrenched elites worried about losing their influence over local affairs; and, in particular, by arguing that the attacks were motivated by the personal and partisan political ambitions of

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Rojas Marcos and his fellow travelers. There was some plausibility to all these claims and accusations. It was hard to deny, for example, that Rojas Marcos enjoyed being the center of attention, delighted in exploiting the prerogatives of his office, and well deserved his ironic nickname, “Su Majestad” (“Your Majesty”). Nevertheless, the PSOE’s counterattacks had remarkably little impact on attitudes in Seville, and party leaders virtually always found themselves on the defensive. This was primarily because the Socialists never succeeded in establishing any political distance between themselves and Pellón. Pellón was usually identified with various representatives of the animal kingdom, such as a “stinking fish” and an “elephant in a china shop,” when he was not being accused of forging links with the devil. “He has been a delight,” said one of his detractors, and “if he didn’t exist, we would have to have invented him; he has incarnated perfect evil . . . almost, one would say, with conviction” (DD 4 Oct 1992:16). The “perfect evil” that Pellón was supposed to embody was, of course, the dictatorship of a technocratic state, and the Socialist party’s apparent unwillingness or inability to end his rule on La Isla de la Cartuja was clearly damaging to its political position in Seville. Indeed, some thought that Pellón’s position in the Expo and his cancellation of the season passes could only be explained as acts of vengeance by the PSOE against the Sevillanos who had cast their votes for Rojas Marcos and Becerril in the municipal elections of 1991. Unlikely as this was, the existence of such opinions caused near panic among local Socialist militants, who began to believe, along with editorialist Ignacio Camacho, that their own party’s policies might well permit Rojas Marcos “to grow old in the mayor’s seat” (DD 24 Jun 1992:4). Although this eventually proved not to be the case, there is no doubt that Rojas Marcos and the PA were the primary political beneficiaries of the tensions between the Expo and the city. Even if many people recognized that the Socialists were not entirely wrong in depicting the mayor of Seville as a strutting, egocentric cock-of-the-walk, this did Rojas Marcos surprisingly little political harm. It was better, it seemed, to have the entertaining flashiness of a real hometown señorito than the calculations of run-of-the-mill politicians and coldhearted technocrats. The ultimate reward for Rojas Marcos’s efforts was the transformation of the hitherto almost dead PA into a lasting, formidable, and active political force in Seville and surrounding areas. Moreover, as the Expo passed its midway point in July, it became clearer that the real measure of the achievement of Rojas Marcos and other local opposition politicians was to have ensured not only that the PSOE would be denied an overwhelming political triumph but also that the dominant party in the region and the country would be hard-pressed to harvest any electoral advantage whatsoever from its massive investments of prestige, energy, and resources in the exposition. In other words, what the opposition achieved was essentially a stalemate, but this stalemate was tantamount to a humiliating and bitter defeat for the Socialists. Rather than serving to celebrate a decade of Socialist government and set the

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stage for the continuation of its rule in the 1990s, the Expo wound up exposing the dominant party’s vulnerability. Yet at least as important as the direct impact of the split between the Expo and the city on party and electoral politics was its influence on and implications for the more diffuse and indirect aspects of struggles for ascendancy in Andalusian, Spanish, and even European cultural and political life. Put in negative terms, the tensions surrounding the Expo reinforced two of the most enduring features of Spanish political culture. The first is the conviction that politicians and officials of the state are not so much representatives or mediators who act in the interests of all as they are members of an entrenched, elite “political class” who pursue their own interests with little real regard or respect for the opinions or needs of ordinary citizens. The second is the closely linked notion that ideologies and policies often amount to little more than the vehicles and camouflage for what are essentially intensely personalized conflicts among power-hungry “big men” and their factions. As the party in charge of the Expo, the PSOE was affected most by these perceptions; but opposition politicians, such as Rojas Marcos, were also seen as stamped from the same basic mold, even if circumstances made them more responsive to local interests. There was a belief that the legacy of elitism and personalism inherited from the authoritarian regimes of the past still continued to shape the political life of the present, and this belief reaffirmed long-held perceptions in Seville of a deep chasm between the interests of the state and those of civil society. This in turn tended to undermine the Expo’s promotion of cosmopolitan liberalism, an idea whose legitimacy depended precisely on the credibility of the claims of politicians and other agents of the state to act as rational, pragmatic, and neutral mediators of cultural differences and conflicts of interest. Indeed, the contrast between the way in which the event’s organizers formally accepted and praised ideals of cultural diversity and the way in which they sought to limit local control over the Expo in practice was particularly striking to many Sevillanos. As a result of this contradiction, Sevillanos’ sense of exclusion from the Expo and their manifest lack of influence over the event and its organizers reinforced ingrained patterns of political skepticism by making the experience of the European Union’s much-lamented “democratic deficit” palpable, immediate, and real. In spite of the celebrations of a plurinationalist Spain within a confederal Europe taking place on the Expo site, from the perspective of Sevillanos the Expo manifestly did not succeed in escaping “statist” tendencies toward bureaucratic centralism. Thus, the violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of local and regional autonomy meant that Sevillanos had no need for a guidebook to European Union jargon to understand that the much-ballyhooed principle of “subsidiarity” (the Eurospeak term used to express or possibly to obscure the idea that in the interests of the ultimate goal of harmonious integration, policy decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of political administration) was being honored more in the breach than in the observance.2

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To put matters in more positive terms, however, the split between the Expo and the city prompted Sevillanos to refortify the patria chica of Seville (the “little homeland”) against powerful outsiders who wished to transform its basic character. Through their words and deeds, Sevillanos repeatedly declared the partial autonomy of local civil society and reaffirmed local values that were essentially communitarian and populist in spirit. In large measure, this was done by continually recreating a space of imagined difference between the city and the Expo. Although this space of difference was evoked in countless ways and in endless streams of conversation and argument, ultimately what shape it took depended on implicit and explicit comparisons of the Expo as it actually existed with the Expo as it might have been: If only Sevillanos and sympathetic others had been able to play a more prominent role in its planning and administration, what was good about the event would have been better and what was bad about it would surely have been eliminated. The contents of the Spanish and thematic pavilions would have been more imaginative and informative; the food of the kiosks and restaurants tastier; the music and dancing more exciting; the programs and diversions for children more stimulating and educational; the speeches of dignitaries less boring; the visits of celebrities more thrilling; and on and on. Most of all, though, the Expo would have been more spontaneous, more joyous, more lively and animated, more truly Andalusian, more intense—in sum, freer, more open, and more accessible not just in the economic sense but in every way. Much of this pie-in-the-sky talk was recognized as just that by many Sevillanos, who nonetheless delighted in it because it placed them in the position of judges of the Expo, rather than clients or victims of it. However, the more serious cultural and political implications of Sevillanos’ vision of the Expo that might have been were evident in the local understandings of the character, conduct, and public persona of the former commissioner general of the Expo, Manuel Olivencia. After Olivencia had lost his post, he had maintained nearly a year of almost unbroken silence and had not attended the opening ceremonies of the event. When reporters had asked him about this, he had responded by simply saying that his “presence in the inauguration of the Expo was neither obligatory nor comfortable” (DD 25 Apr 1992:1). But during this period of dignified exile in “Macondo” (as the press characterized it when they learned that Olivencia had been reading Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude), a suitably magical transformation occurred in Olivencia’s public identity. Helped along by occasional newspaper stories that depicted him as a reserved and politically naive Andalusian academic who had sacrificed his personal life and career for the Expo and had wound up on the scrap heap as an innocent victim of state and party politicians and scheming technocrats, Olivencia began to reemerge as an exemplary local hero, a man who had always done his best to defend the interests of the people of Seville. There was, of course, a certain irony in this representation of Olivencia, because for most of his tenure in office he had easily assumed the role of an

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urbane and sophisticated Spanish diplomat whose primary responsibility was to negotiate agreements with the representatives of other governments. In this role, he had paid relatively little attention to the relations between the Expo and Seville and had been roundly criticized for this neglect by local businesspeople. However, he had also staunchly argued in favor of lower admission prices to the Expo in 1990 and early 1991, and this clearly made all the difference to most Sevillanos. Well aware of this, Olivencia bided his time and remained silent until after the “war” between the city and Pellón began. When he broke his silence by engaging in a series of interviews and editorials that stretched out over several months, it was obvious that he was primarily concerned with addressing a local audience of fellow Sevillanos. In his various statements, Olivencia rejected the notion that it was necessary to cancel the sale of season passes, and he revealed that he had long harbored grave doubts about the contents, programs, administration, and lack of transparency in the finances of the Expo. He asserted that the Expo was “not a football field” designed to hold only “a fixed number of people” and suggested that there were many ways to solve the problem of overcrowding besides turning to “the drastic measure of forcing everyone to pay 4,000 pesetas to enter” (DD-ex 5 Jul 1992:3). The publication of these remarks coincided with the first anniversary of his firing. Later, during what amounted to a triumphal public return to La Isla de la Cartuja, when Olivencia was surrounded by camera crews, reporters, and many of his former colleagues from the Office of the Commissioner General and was officially received in the emblematic Andalusian pavilion of the Tierras del Jerez, he took the opportunity to voice his worries about the post-Expo future of Seville, to remark on the greater success of the Olympics in representing Catalán solidarity, and to note the lack of symbols of Andalusian identity in the Expo. He also declared that for himself “what has always been most important are the demonstrations of affection of the pueblo itself, of my neighbors, and of their recognition [of my contributions to the Expo], which has been expressed many times and in the most elementary ways” (DD-ex 9 Sep 1992:3). This was more than sufficient to establish Olivencia as the presiding figure over the Expo that might have been. The general opinion was that if Olivencia and his team of Andalusians had been allowed to remain in charge, the real Expo would have been a much closer approximation to everyone’s ideal. In terms of the cultural politics of Seville, what is most important to stress about Olivencia was his nonpartisan and nonpolitical status. Although it was obvious to everyone that his expressions of concern about the Expo were partly motivated by an understandable desire to even the score with Pellón and the Socialists, Olivencia never publicly encouraged any of the talk that suggested that he would be an ideal future candidate for mayor of Seville. He consistently denied harboring any political plans, affiliations, or ambitions at all (DD 11 Sep 1992:16), and he seemed to recognize that his rebirth as a popular local hero was heavily dependent on the notion that he stood above politics.

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With the return of Olivencia to the public stage, it seemed as if the high melodrama centering on the relations between the Expo and Seville had come almost full circle. If the resolution was still in doubt, then at least the whole cast of characters was once again on the scene. First and foremost, there was Seville, the “eternal” nurturing mother, widowed by modernity but still beautiful and alluring, the object of desire. As Ignacio Montaño, the commissioner of the Pavilion of Seville, described her, Seville is “a classical and feminine city that uncovers its veils but never discloses everything, especially not through its [masculine] monumentality” (ABC-ex 4 Jul 1992:56). Then there was the Expo, the brash seducer, the world-bestriding suitor who promised wealth, pleasure, renewal, and the keys to the kingdom if only the city would surrender and become his consort. But behind the handsome suitor stood the fearsome figure of Pellón, the powerful, sinister, cruel manipulator with his own dark plots and purposes. Opposing him, there was the prodigal son, the charming but self-absorbed and unreliable Rojas Marcos, who had returned home after a long political absence only to find his mother half beguiled and his inheritance in peril. Finally, there was Olivencia, who had once again reappeared in the garb of a wise, dignified, avuncular family counselor, determined to expose and challenge the plots of his old nemesis, to advise caution about the handsome suitor, and to help his family and friends in their time of trial, temptation, and decision. To a considerable extent, this sort of personalization and dramatization of the tensions between the Expo and Seville was orchestrated by the local press.3 For this reason, it might be simply dismissed as a contrivance to provide distractions for a politically passive readership in the thrall of media spectacle and scandal. Yet such a view overlooks the extent to which the principal actors involved in the melodrama seemed to inhabit their roles with genuine satisfaction, and it also overlooks the important place that the melodrama had in giving shape to the rather inchoate feelings and ambiguous opinions about the Expo that were evident among Sevillanos. Casting the myriad relations and issues separating the Expo from Seville in the familiar forms of family drama helped the citizens of the city to better comprehend what was at stake in the event for themselves and their neighbors, and it helped focus attention on the particular perplexities of what it meant to be Sevillano, Andalusian, Spanish, and even European in a situation in which neither wholeheartedly embracing nor rejecting everything about the politics and purposes of the Expo seemed a satisfactory response. Indeed, the distinctive structure of feeling and expression of conflicts in identities that were part and parcel of the way in which the relations between the Expo and Seville became dramatized helped the Sevillanos demystify the abstractions of policy positions and claims concerning the general interests of the state and the people and thereby helped them understand that what was happening between the Expo and the city amounted to a struggle for their own hearts and minds. Although the partial return of Olivencia to public life was one of the most crucial events in helping many Sevillanos discover where their ultimate sym-

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pathies lay, it suggested no particular course of action or shift in direct political affiliations. Rather, the legitimacy of Olivencia as someone who spoke in the name of all the people of Seville provided a key focus of an antipolitical cultural politics that was based on the perception of an enduring conflict of interest and values separating local civil society from the politics and culture of the state. Thus, what the various elements of the drama—the long-running disputes over questions of access, the complaints about the general lack of influence of the municipal government on the Expo, the ill feelings toward Pellón, the spontaneous efforts to recapture the site and make it part of Seville, and the rise in the popularity of Olivencia—both reflected and helped create was a communitarian culture of cosmopolitan populism. This alternative and oppositional cultural response to the Expo was grounded in a sense of distinctive local identity and values, but it also involved a more broadly inclusive democratic and egalitarian vision which affirmed that life was best when ordinary people, regardless of their particular identities as Cataláns, Danes, or Paraguayans, were left free to work out their own relationships with one another, to accept their differences, and to build relations of mutual familiarity, trust, cooperation, and intimacy as they saw fit. At least in its ideal form, the culture of cosmopolitan populism was as tolerant of the differences among ordinary people as it was skeptical of the policies of encompassing corporate and state institutions directed by meritocratic elites. Moreover, although it did not coalesce into a social movement and although its intensity and focus constantly shifted, it was deeply rooted in an enduring sense of pride in and identification with the city, and it was strong and persistent enough to neutralize many aspects of state-centered cosmopolitan liberalism. While Sevillanos by no means rejected cosmopolitan values, they regarded their own popular version of these values as a natural extension of (or at least as the complement of) local and regional cultural traditions, while they clearly resisted the notion that members of the technocorporate elite, the Socialist party, the Spanish state, or the European Union were unquestionably to be conceded the roles of privileged guardians, judges, and mediators of such values. Indeed, the main reason that the Expo failed to guarantee either the continuing leadership of the Socialist party or the ultimate success of cosmopolitan liberalism is that it manifestly failed to transform Sevillanos into ideal postmodern subjects—that is, subjects who vacillate between one identity and another and are supposed to be grateful to experts and leaders for the order, direction, and benefits they provide. Instead, Sevillanos, again and again and in a wide variety of ways, asserted that one cannot really be a full citizen of Spain, Europe, or the world without having a primary commitment to and engagement in the life of a particular place.

PART IV

䉬 Pavilions and Performances: The Expo as Cultural Olympics

13. Media Agon While disputes between Expo organizers and Seville unfolded in the early summer of 1992, the official Expo of thronging tourist masses proceeded almost without interruption. This Expo was a “media event” in nearly every sense of the term. Just as the organizers hoped to use the Expo to “change the image of Spain” in Europe and elsewhere, the 110 or more participating countries sought to portray themselves in the best possible light as so many past, present, or future El Dorados. These efforts involved a massive objectification and reification of history, culture, and human life through the deployment of millions of words, things, images, and communicative acts that served as vehicles for messages directed to different kinds of visitors and officials, as well as to a broader, indeed potentially global, public put in touch with the Expo events via television and print. For the unprepared, to enter the Expo for the first time was akin to stepping into a disorienting Babel inside a hall of mirrors—a world in which most sounds, objects, and images seemed to appear again and again in endlessly varied echoes, distortions, guises, reformulations, and displacements. Yet the whole thing turned out to be less chaotic than it first appeared, and there were a number of ways of finding one’s way through the maze. As discussed in chapter 8, the spatial organization of the pavilions on the island of La Cartuja had a definite Iberocentric and Eurocentric form loosely based on real geography, and the thematic pavilions conveyed the glories of modern discoveries in manifold and overlapping ways that stressed the transcendence of time and distance and the convergence of increasingly cosmopolitan peoples and cultures since 1492. This spatial and thematic organization invited the curious to interpret every participant’s self-presentation in the Expo in terms of how each country or organization defined its particular place in the world and its contribution to global progress. In particular, the ways in which virtually every official participant in the Expo chose to present its own distinctive identity could also be readily understood in terms of four axes: (1) the architecture and design of pavilions, (2) the pavilion contents, (3) the ceremonial acts in which officials of all pavilions engaged, and (4) the cultural performances that each pavilion sponsored. Taken together, these four axes of repetition and variation composed the manifest “structures of common difference” that organized the Expo’s plethora of objects, images, and messages. The axes also constituted the main terrain on which each participant competed with others for visitors, praise, and prestige. Before considering why and how this competition was conducted, a few words about each of these basic forms of selfpresentation are in order. In many previous world fairs, the key architectural symbol—such as the Crystal Palace of London, the Eiffel Tower of Paris, or the Atomium of

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Brussels—tended to be monumental because the aim was to glorify nationalism and empire. Unlike previous fairs, the Expo lacked a key defining structure. Rather, as the official summation of the Expo stated, “Architecture was the first manifestation of a plural world” that Expo visitors confronted (see SEGA 1993:145). If any single set of structures came close to capturing the spirit of the whole exposition, it was the new bridges over the Guadalquivir River, because of their combination of engineering daring, simple forms, and practical usefulness. These structures created impressive effects by using mostly modern, manufactured materials to invoke tradition while avoiding the direct reproduction of monumental formulas. Other highly praised buildings that reflected these tendencies were the Pavilion of Spain, which relied on the sheer white surfaces of Mediterranean architecture and the universal geometric forms of the cube, the dome, and the rectangle to achieve its effects, and the Pavilion of France, which topped its subterranean “well of images” with a canopy of material that seemed to float in the sky. Nevertheless, the overall architectural impression of the Expo was one of a great heterogeneity that included a more than ample mix of dubious avantgarde experiments and distressing nostalgic mimicries of the past. One of the reasons that so many pavilions presented themselves as riddles of taste and intention was the decision of numerous participants to construct temporary buildings that were relatively cheap and could easily be disassembled. Such buildings were well suited to the just-in-time efficiencies of late capitalist production and were generally surrounded by an overabundance of small kiosks, souvenir stands, benches, and other miscellanea intended to capture every potential consumer’s eye. The resulting hodgepodge of aggressively engineered but badly integrated constructions tended to lessen the impact of the handful of truly distinguished buildings. This led Salvador Pérez Arroyo, a noted Spanish architect, to the unhappy conclusion that the Expo as a whole was a great architectural disappointment, because whatever unity of effect it had was an unfortunate by-product of the tendency for every individual edifice to try to attract attention to itself, no matter how mundane its purpose, ephemeral its function, or low its budget. As he put it, “The Expo is a species of shouting. Each pavilion wants to give a shout. It is as if a competition for beauty had been instituted, and to compete on this terrain is a great mistake” (ABC “Artes” 24 Apr 1992:32–40). The pavilions’ contents were even more diverse than their architecture, which was at least limited by size and economic considerations. Because the Expo’s theme of The Age of Discoveries permitted virtually anything to be construed as a discovery of something or other, surprisingly few pavilions felt obliged to link their presentations of identity directly to the events of 1492. As a result, some pavilions stressed historical themes, while others focused almost exclusively on the present or future. Some pavilions contained almost nothing except a few photographs, while others seemed overstuffed with odd

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curiosities and treasures. There were gold and emeralds from Colombia, Caravaggios from the Vatican, leather work from Morocco, trout from Navarre, Goyas from Aragon, hamburgers and human rights from the United States, spices from Malaysia, marine life from Monaco, an iceberg from Chile, horoscopes from Korea, tents from Oman, origami from Japan, herring from Sweden, astrolabes from China, jazz from the Netherlands, canned goods from Africa, and, as the promotional brochures said, “so much more” to be found in almost every nook and cranny. There were pastiche and hybridity galore and odd mixes and matches of things until it became difficult to decide if or why Brueghel was to be preferred to Batman. And all of this is not to mention the millions of images contained in the singular pride of almost every pavilion: its own thrilling and spectacular movie. Yet amidst this at times nauseating proliferation of objects and images, there were always some fairly simple, if paradoxical, messages being proclaimed (or shouted) in unmistakable ways: “Here are the things that we most esteem; here are things that make us different and singular, many and one; here are things that betoken how much like everybody else we are but show our own extraordinary contributions to humanity; here is why we matter; here is who we think we are.” In keeping with these kinds of messages, the strategies of objectification employed by most pavilions tended to place special emphasis on the display of key works of art, relics, technological artifacts, or natural objects that anchored the exhibitions of the pavilion as a whole. These key things were presented as if they were unique and incomparable expressions of a particular culture and, simultaneously, as if they were the perfect, transparent expression of universal forms, values, and desires. Thus, in spite of the sheer multiplicity of images in the Expo, the island of La Cartuja seemed to reverberate not only with a fetishistic materialism but also with an oddly neoplatonic faith in the made-thing as a palpitating and vibrant emanation of the ideal. Another element that enabled the comparison of one participant with others was the series of ceremonies associated with the observations of official “Days of Honor.” These special days were intended to focus public attention on a particular pavilion for a short period during the course of the Expo. During the week of 19–25 July, for example, Sunday was devoted to Sri Lanka, Monday to Japan, Tuesday to the Sony Corporation, Wednesday to the autonomous region of Galicia, Thursday to Oman, Friday to Venezuela, and Saturday to Tunisia (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:12–13). In contrast to the architecture and contents of the pavilions, which showed great diversity, virtually every day of honor followed the same basic pattern. Each began with an official act on the stage of El Palenque. After short speeches were given by Commissioner General Emilio Cassinello and sometimes by members of the government from Madrid, additional speeches were given by the commissioner of the participant’s pavilion or by visiting dignitaries. This phase of the official ceremonies was usually followed by some sort of musical

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performance, a visit to the participant’s pavilion, and an official meal. The afternoon and evening were devoted to sponsored events that were open to the public. The days of honor were always important because they enabled officials to transform pavilions from cultural warehouses into stages where politicians and bureaucrats were able to define the meaning of a country’s participation in the Expo and to comment on a wide variety of contemporary issues. As a result, the days of honor were occasions par excellence for the pronouncement of official truths and the articulation of orthodox visions of the world. Like the ceremonial acts, the cultural events and performances that participating countries sponsored had a crucial role in defining their identities. Many of these events were arranged and partly financed by the Expo organizers. Thus, in addition to staging all sorts of performances by Spanish artists, including immense and glitzy musical reviews with dozens of popular singers and dancers, the Expo organizers brought in artists and celebrities from around the world. In the international sphere, the organizers tended to favor classical musicians, actors, dancers, and opera stars, who clearly added to the cosmopolitan luster of the proceedings on the island of La Cartuja. In addition to concerts by the world’s best-known orchestras, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, there were productions of Greek tragedies, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and other well-known plays. There were also performances of works such as Peer Gynt, Carmen, Don Giovanni, and Un Ballo in Maschera by La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Opera, and other renowned companies. During their stay in Seville, foreign performers were, of course, regarded as exemplars of their particular arts. But they were also often seen as living national treasures and unofficial cultural ambassadors of their home countries. As such, each performer had a considerable impact on his or her country’s image at the Expo. Other sponsored performances were directly arranged by the officials in charge of pavilions from participating countries and were usually held in association with their own country’s day of honor. Like the Expo organizers, these officials were interested in staging classical and broadly popular performances; however, the programs offered by individual countries and regions (including most of the autonomous regions of Spain) also tended to include many folk performances. Indeed, the propensity toward the folkloric gave the day of honor ceremonies a strange twist: they all began with official discourses focused on the cosmopolitan present and future, but many of them were oddly punctuated by nostalgic interludes and finales that evoked local cultural traditions and the past. In sum, the architecture and contents of the various pavilions gave the Expo its substantial form, while the celebration of one day of honor after another and the staging of special performances gave the Expo whatever temporal rhythm and variability it possessed. The nexus of pavilions and performances was what the official encounter of peoples and cultures on the island of La

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Cartuja was quite literally all about. Through these structures of common difference, each participant was able to define its identity in relation to other countries and institutions and to engage in a competition for prestige. But to understand how this competition was conducted and its various winners and losers were determined, it is necessary to consider the broader dynamics of the Expo as a mass media event.1 From the organizers’ perspective, the attention of the mass media was crucial to the Expo’s success as a tourist event and to the larger aim of changing the image of Spain. For this reason, the State Society devoted a great deal of money and energy to promotional campaigns that were directed at travel agents in Europe and America. Elaborate computer data bases, communications links, and other facilities were also provided to keep the representatives of the international print and electronic media happy. In addition, Radio Expo broadcast its news in five languages, and a deal was made with a Mexican television network to program daily coverage of the Expo throughout the Americas (DD-ex 10 Aug 1992:12; EPI 16 Mar 1992:16). Despite these efforts, the consensus among officials of participating countries was that the Expo was not well promoted, especially in Europe, where concerns about recession and astronomical hotel prices in Seville represented barriers that were not easily overcome. The perceived weakness in the Expo’s own publicity campaign made the event’s officials all the more eager to court free press coverage, but here, too, there were problems. About 18,000 reporters from nearly 7,000 organizations were accredited by the Expo, but well over half of the reporters were Spanish and the great majority of the journalists were assigned to the Expo only for short periods. This accounts in part for the spotty coverage that the event received in the international and national press. While huge numbers of mostly laudatory stories appeared about the Expo in the early days of April 1992, there was a dramatic decline of news stories throughout most of the summer, despite occasional dramatic upswings prompted by occasions such as the visit of Charles and Diana, the prince and princess of Wales. Coverage increased again in the closing days of late September and early October, but many of the stories were critical of the cost of the Expo and skeptical about the impact of the events of 1992 on Spain’s increasingly recessionary economy. Thus, for most of the period of the exhibition, silence about it was more the rule than the exception in Europe and the rest of world, while even in much of Spain news of what was going on in Seville was intermittent and usually quite cursory in character (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:54–55; DD-ex 14 Sep 1992:4–5). In tandem with the falling daily attendance figures reported in June and July, the marked decline of national and international press and television coverage was a source of consternation to Expo officials. The officials did what they could to recapture the attention of the mass media. For example, on a visit to Genoa, Jacinto Pellón declared the Expo to be the “greatest museum in the world” and complained about newspaper stories that trivialized the importance

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of the event by dwelling on high prices and other mundane matters (DD-ex 31 Jul 1992:6). But these efforts were of little avail. The problem was that once the Expo’s major features had been duly noted by newspapers, magazines, and other media, there was not much else to say that was attention-grabbing, so the Expo ceased to be news in the usual sense. The pavilions and their contents were static, and the ceremonies and performances associated with days of honor were of little interest to the national and international media. In contrast, most people in the city of Seville, officials and workers on the island of La Cartuja, and the local press assumed the Expo to be an event of transcendent importance—if not for Spain, then certainly for Seville. The desire to hear about the Expo and the motivation to report on it were therefore strong. In three of the four local newspapers (or local editions of national newspapers), special sections were devoted to the Expo and contained dozens of stories every day.2 Even so, the local press labored under the heavy burden of making the Expo seem interesting again and again. While this burden was somewhat eased by extensively covering the events of special local interest, the press also employed a variety of strategies to fill all those pages of its special sections. The most important of these was to provide Sevillanos, visitors, and officials alike with a readily available compendium of vital information concerning the Expo and an up-to-the-minute guide to what was happening on the island of La Cartuja. Thus, the special Expo sections always contained suggested itineraries for visiting the Expo for one, two, or three days; a schedule of upcoming events; rankings of the pavilions, based on their content and architectural appeal; and reviews of recent ceremonies, concerts, and programs. This strategy for making the Expo news generated a vast and continuous secondary level of local media commentary that was nearly as influential in shaping the public meaning of the Expo as were the sponsored exhibitions and performances of the official participants themselves. The role of the local press was crucial in several ways. Even though the relationship between press commentary and the views of the public was not simple and mechanical (as discussed in Part V), few Expo visitors or employees were uninfluenced by media representations of the Expo, which reached them directly or, more often, by word of mouth. Although each person’s experience and opinions of the event varied somewhat, the local press was either the source or the clearing house of most of the taken-for-granted, commonsense rhetorical currency of everyday conversations about the event. Thus, even when individuals had little direct knowledge of the press coverage, they ordinarily had some sense of how their own views departed from or were consistent with what “everyone” was saying. And what “everyone” was saying almost always turned out to consist mostly of what the local press chose to publicize. Even in western Andalusia, most people’s direct experience of the Expo was quite limited, and most of what they knew about the event derived from local newspapers and television. Moreover, the local press had a disproportion-

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ate influence on national and international coverage, since short-term visiting journalists tended to rely on their more experienced and knowledgeable local colleagues. Thus, just as Spanish politicians, bureaucrats of the State Society, and the administrators of particular pavilions were primarily responsible for establishing the orthodox, official truths of the Expo, the local press had a critical role in regulating and establishing public opinion about these truths. The main way in which local journalists exercised this function was by putting particular principles of interpretation for judging the value and quality of the Expo’s array of images and performances into daily practice. Indeed, the day-to-day application of these evaluative criteria was the strongest force in transforming the Expo from a rather static and ceremonious display into a more dynamic, six-month-long contest for prestige. Although each official participant had its own motivations for wanting to stand out from the crowd, it was ultimately the press who exposed, intensified, and dramatized this impulse and thereby turned the Expo into a sort of cultural Olympics with a steady stream of losers and winners, black eyes and bull’s eyes, paraded before the public. The primary rationale for this exercise of cultural authority by the press was straightforward and quite familiar: to help people of varying inclinations decide how best to spend their time and money. What more useful, more natural role could the press play in contemporary societies dominated by consumerism? However, the criteria actually used to arrive at these judgments were not so innocent or transparent in either their origins or their broader implications. In the international and national press, and especially in the local press, pavilions and performances were overwhelmingly judged in terms of what may be designated elite, technopopular, and exotic standards that were transparently Eurocentric. In the case of pavilions that made a special effort to present the most sophisticated intellectual, humanistic, and aesthetic “discoveries” of humankind— the best that has been said and done, to paraphrase Matthew Arnold—the press felt obliged to respond to these claims of distinguished achievement by acting as critical arbiters of educated taste. As a result, much at the Expo, from antique art to fashion shows to the food in pavilion restaurants, tended to be evaluated in accordance with journalists’ understanding of the highest contemporary standards of cultural excellence. For example, among the thematic pavilions, the Pavilion of Arts was sometimes sharply criticized for the second-rate quality of its revolving exhibits, while the display entitled “Art and Culture around 1492” was almost universally admired, because both in its organization and in the quality of the works it included, it equaled the sorts of special shows that these days draw large crowds to the major museums of the world and seem designed to induce something approaching feelings of sacred awe before aesthetic objects. Similarly, certain cultural performances, such as a symphonic concert featuring the music of Penderecki, were widely praised—not in spite of but, rather, because of their reputation as “difficult” works with appeal “only for a minority” (DD-ex 5 May 1992:21).

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Elite critical impulses were also given free reign in assessing the influence and importance of scientific achievements and in the journalistic penchant for quoting the acerbic comments of intellectuals about the many shortcomings of the Expo. Thus, when José Luis Aranguren, an art historian at the University of Madrid, vaguely observed that the Expo was “much more in the line of the imaginary than of the imagination” and complained about its comprehensive “lack of ideas,” this was solemnly noted by the press (DD-ex 23 Apr 1992:17); and when Greek actress Irene Pappas and a group of other artists issued their “Manifesto against Stupidity” in Seville, a good deal was made of this protest against the vulgarities of mass culture at the Expo and elsewhere (DD 3 Oct 1992:6). In general terms, such exercises of “elite” critical acumen in the press served to reaffirm the superiority of Western scientific discoveries and the primacy of rather conservative and conventional versions of Western canons of taste and value in the humanities and the arts. The primacy of these standards did not, of course, exclude non-Western works from being deemed worthy of appreciation. On the contrary, the cultural achievements of countries such as China and Japan were warmly praised. However, instead of fostering an understanding of these achievements in their own terms, the press glibly applied its Eurocentric criteria of seriousness, sophistication, and excellence to convey the impression that all high cultural canons were essentially cosmopolitan and perhaps even universal in their comprehensiveness and relevance. Yet many pavilions could not easily be judged by high cultural standards, because their aim was to give a broader sense of popular customs, everyday life, and enduring collective, historical achievements. The press generally evaluated these pavilions in terms of technopopular standards. For the broad public of often hurried and distracted tourists, the press tended to emphasize what was most appealing or unappealing about the pavilions and to highlight the technical apparatuses and techniques that best explained how each of them achieved its major effects. In this critical register, journalists acted less as connoisseurs and Virgilian guides to particular exhibits and more as representative tribunes of popular taste in diversions and in painless, if superficial, education. Among the thematic pavilions, for example, the press highly recommended the Pavilion of Navigation, which displayed hundreds of scale models of different types of ships and also provided the crowd-pleasing, simulated experience of undertaking an early modern ocean voyage within the decks of a giant sailing vessel. Among the national and corporate pavilions, the press’s designated leaders in the popularity sweepstakes were the Pavilion of Canada and the Pavilion of Fujitsu, which were both praised primarily for offering movies of great visual appeal. Similarly, the press applied technopopular standards to judging cultural performances. The daily cabalgata (parade) that wended its way through the Expo and featured Els Comediants—a troupe of Catalán actors who donned elaborate costumes, rode on large floats, and engaged in slapstick parodies of tourists, politicians, movie stars, and other stock

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figures—set a standard for the press’s commentaries on other popular amusements. So, too, did the nightly spectacular that was held around the Lake of Spain and included fireworks, sound, and laser images that employed complex computer-run technologies to present such diversions as an enactment of a great battle between the “guardians of light” and a giant dragon. As all of these examples suggest, to complement criticism based on elite cultural tastes, the press promulgated an alternative popular standard that seemed primarily inspired by the typical Hollywood blockbuster, with its characteristic synthesis of simple narrative lines and virtuoso special effects. Although the great majority of pavilions were evaluated in accordance with elite criteria or technopopular criteria, there were a few countries, almost all non-Western, which represented themselves in ways that appeared to be anomalous and exotic from these conventional points of view. So in keeping with the Expo’s avowed emphasis on cultural tolerance and plurality, the press applied a third set of criteria, which could be used to condemn the capacity of some unfamiliar images and performances to cause stupefaction or inspire mere boredom and to praise the capacity of others to provoke curiosity and wonder. On the one hand, some things strikingly exotic or at least mystifying to most Spanish eyes were disparaged by the press as vulgar carnival attractions (for example, the “giant” man from Pakistan, who was over 2.7 meters [8.9 feet] tall and greeted people to his country’s pavilion). In addition, many pavilions from the less developed countries of the world were summarily dismissed because they were viewed merely as housing shoddy imitations of Western products. On the other hand, demonstrations of the traditional artisan skills of Africans, Asians, and Arabs were mostly favorably noted, and a few of the more exotic cultural offerings from a variety of far-flung pavilions were widely trumpeted for their rarity and capacity to arouse a strong audience reaction. Among these offerings, the show of Mexico’s famed “Voladores de Papantla” was singled out for high praise. During their performance, five “Indian” men, bedecked with Aztec feathers, climbed a pole thirty meters high and a few centimeters in diameter. After some preparations and formal gestures, four of them launched themselves into the air. As the ropes tied around their waists unwound from the pole, the men stretched their arms like wings and slowly descended to earth in ever-widening circles. When the four flyers reached land, they were greeted by costumed women. Meanwhile, the fifth man, in an astounding display of courage, balance, and grace, played a wooden flute and danced on one foot on top of the narrow pole in what seemed a ritual invocation of archaic gods. Expo journalists regarded this performance with understandable awe and placed it outside the category of the Expo’s ordinary events. But they also discussed other unusual performances in the same breathless terms. One example was the daily staging of exuberant Maori dances and war chants, which took place in front of the Pavilion of New Zealand and always ended with a great shout of aggression

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that startled the slightly intimidated audience into a sudden confrontation with cultural otherness. Other examples were the traditional dances of bare-breasted young women from the Pavilion of Papua New Guinea and the Pavilion of the Pacific Islands. Indeed, what seemed to link the performances of the Voladores to those of the Maori and the others and thereby to constitute the category of the exotic in the minds of most journalists was their organic vitality, their emotional force, and the direct way in which they exposed the dangers and pleasures of the life of the body to the public gaze. At the Expo, “authentic natives” were deemed most authentic when they danced. Overall, the evaluative cultural criteria employed by the press in its assessments of pavilions and performances were profoundly shaped by classical or contemporary European culture. As a result, in its own rather diffuse and takenfor-granted way, the daily press commentary disseminated an unexamined set of occidentalist assumptions and dispositions that were redolent of mind/body dualism and a social order marked by a graduated hierarchy of mental and physical labor. Just as the “elite” level of cultural commentary pointed toward the true north of the pure works of the mind and spirit, the “exotic” variety of criticism tentatively probed the wilder southern climes of untamed human nature and passion, while the vast middle latitudes of technopopulist discussion mapped the terrain where the energies of the mind and body were harnessed and domesticated for the sake of the happiness and welfare of mass society. Beyond this, however, the press paid little attention to what was missing, muted, or repressed in the Expo’s pavilions and performances. For example, consider the Expo from the point of view of the “identity politics trinity” of gender, class, and race. The Expo contained hundreds of thousands of images of women, the great majority of which depicted them in conventional ways as smiling wives, mothers, homemakers, or alluring objects of desire. Moreover, in terms of its dramatized and troubled relations with Seville and its emphasis on exploration and discovery, the Expo stamped itself and modern culture with a stereotypically masculine, assertive identity. Yet neither at the Expo nor in the mainstream of press coverage was gender or the condition of women significantly broached as a fundamental category of understanding or concern. Similarly, issues of class and race were not broached. To the limited extent that such vast structures of power and domination entered into the Expo’s aseptic and bloodless representations of history and the contemporary world, they did so in pale and neutralized guises as the unfortunate downsides of cultural diversity. As a result, the press’s evaluative commentaries on the Expo’s pavilions and performances were complicit with the elementary strategies of avoidance that were embraced by official participants. But even though journalists did not consistently challenge the false facades and charades of the official Expo, in constantly seeking to make the event more newsworthy they did occasionally provide some avenues for the return of the repressed by linking the activities of the pavilions on the island of La Cartuja

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to current national and international news stories. For example, although officials of the Pavilion of Colombia had no desire to dwell on their country’s difficulties with the cocaine trade, the press did not fail to mention such problems when the opportunity arose and an easy connection to the Expo could be made (see chapter 15). Other news stories that the press associated with what was happening on the island of La Cartuja involved the legacies of anger and resentment created by the Gulf War; difficulties in winning public support for the Maastricht Treaty; the crises of democratization in South Africa, eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union; and the emerging nightmare of Bosnia. When such connections were made, they disrupted and sometimes even spoiled the smooth presentations of identity that typified the public programs of national pavilions. Ultimately, then, it was the interplay of the press’s strategies of coverage with the choices made about self-presentation by each of the participants that determined the outcome of the public competition for prestige. As discussed in subsequent chapters, the gold medalists in the Expo’s cultural Olympics were the superpavilions which managed to avoid being caught off guard by breaking news stories and which were able to combine some exhibitions that appealed to elite tastes with others that met technopopular criteria. These big winners offered “something for everyone,” a total package of edification and amusement. Thus, maximal complexity, maximal mediation of differences, and maximal immunization from the threat of the return of the repressed were the keys to success in the media agon. To the extent that countries were able to embody these precepts, they were able to present themselves in ways that suggested they would play a leading role in the “new world of the future.” As one commentator summed up the Expo, “The encounter in Seville has consisted basically in a competition to appear most and best . . . because the world is competitive and it could not stop being itself here” (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:17). This was the simple truth, but it is also important to consider the more complex relationship between the domesticated, indeed mock, competition for prestige that took place on the island of La Cartuja with the more serious and often deadly struggles for leadership and ascendancy taking place “off site.” Although it was the case that the participants best endowed with real cultural, political, and economic capital and most willing to expend some of it in Spain were in the best position to compete on the Expo’s symbolic terrain, the results of the competition on the island of La Cartuja by no means reproduced the actual order of power and hegemony in the world in 1992. Rather, because the sham, symbolic character of the competition somewhat evened the odds among unequals and because many aspects of real sociopolitical struggles were repressed, the Expo provided an arena in which status relations could be more easily contested. In some cases, the result was that the relatively weak (most notably, Spain itself) could appear to be at least potentially much stronger. This possibility reinforced the hope of many participants that their relatively elevated position in the ephemeral global pecking order on the island of La Cartuja might help to launch

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them on a path of upward mobility, eventually enabling them to compound the minuscule symbolic advantage that they had gained through their involvement with the Expo. In the remaining chapters of Part IV, we will explore in more depth why some of the attempts of participating countries to gain prestige failed, why others succeeded, and what the implications of these successes and failures at the Expo are for understanding the broader cultural politics involved in the emergence of cosmopolitan liberalism.

14. Varieties of Europeanism The Expo made a plausible claim to being universal because it attracted official participants from around the world. Even so, it was obvious to everyone who beheld it that the exhibition was a lopsidedly European event, dominated by European wealth and stage-managed largely by and for Europeans. The avenues on which the European pavilions were located were the most impressively arrayed and heavily visited on the site, and it was easy to see the whole exhibition as primarily an occasion to celebrate the continent’s global preeminence in the past and to launch its much anticipated drive to assume an expanded role in constructing the post–Cold War “world of the future.” Indeed, the timing of the Expo seemed just right for this kind of joint propaganda effort because 1992 appeared to be a “miraculous year” of renewal, not only for Spain but also for the European Community (EC) as a whole. The year had opened with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty, which established the framework for eventual monetary union and called for pushing the processes of political and cultural integration forward, and it was scheduled to close with the elimination of most of the remaining barriers to the free movement of people and goods across the borders of the member states. The end of the EC and the birth of the European Union (EU)1 in 1992 did little to allay the doubts of many Euro-skeptics, and the daily news provided them with ample grist for their mills. The issue of how to deal with the possible admission of the countries of central and eastern Europe into the EU still had not been satisfactorily addressed. The problem of the treatment and status of recent non-European migrants as well as established “guest” communities of long-term foreign residents loomed larger than ever in the new “Europe without borders” (see Stolcke 1995). The signs of a revival of chauvinistic, far-right nationalism in such key countries as Germany and France were discouraging, as were the signs of widespread economic recession. Above all, the EU member states’ increasingly obvious inability to agree on anything resembling a

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common foreign policy to deal with the Bosnian crisis was profoundly troubling. Nevertheless, despite these and many other problems, public opinion polls in most of the EU consistently indicated that overall optimism about the future of Europe was at one of its cyclical high points in 1992. Nowhere was the “spirit of Maastricht” more vital than in Spain, and nowhere in Spain was it stronger than on the island of La Cartuja.2 There were myriad versions of the “new Europe” floating about the continent, yet it was far from clear exactly which of them (if any) was the primary source and inspiration of this widespread, if never more than moderately enthusiastic, optimism. Was it the Europe of the Bundesbank, corporate power, and market competition with the United States and Japan; or was it the “Plato to NATO” Europe of collective security, peace, and the defense of “Western civilization”? Was it the statesmen’s Europe of council meetings and summit deliberations on intergovernmentalism, superfederalism, and the negotiated devolution of sovereignty; or was it the Europe of bureaucratic commissions, agencies, and experts regulating everything from codfish quotas to space exploration in pursuit of “functionalist dreams” of maximal efficiency and the integration of complex systems (Zabusky 1995:36)?3 Could it be the contentious, representative, democratic Europe of the European Parliament, with its emerging transnational party coalitions of center-left and center-right voting blocks; or could it be the supranationalistic, quasi-patriotic Europe of shared bumper stickers, anthems, holidays, stamps, monuments, and history textbooks under a single flag?4 Was it the “Europe of the regions” allowing maximal freedom for the expression of local loyalties and ethnonationalist differences; or was it possibly the balanced, moderate Europe of complementary, nested, multiple identities in which one could simultaneously and harmoniously be Catalán, Spanish, and European?5 Was it the Europe of the Social Charter, cohesion funds, welfare benefits, social solidarity, and the end of North-South inequalities; or could it be the consumers’ Europe, where everything from high-quality socks and televised soccer to cheap sex, credit cards, and beach vacations is available to the mobile and smart shopper?6 No doubt some people opted for one of these versions of the “new Europe” to the exclusion of others, and no doubt most of these versions of Europe have a special ideological or cultural appeal to those who occupy particular social positions, even if each version is commonly represented as embodying general interests. However, it is almost certainly also the case that for the great majority of people, optimism about Europe was closely linked to their capacity to construct and, if need be, to reconstruct their own customized, amalgamated, imagined, and idealized notion of Europe out of this broad cultural and political inventory of possibilities and realities. From this perspective, Europe is less an “idea” than it is an almost empty semiotic vessel that can be filled with significance in many different ways.7 Indeed, the symbolic function of “Europe” often seems to represent a weaker, secular parallel to great cosmological and religious

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images, such as the true cross, whose very cultural authority seems to depend in large measure on their mysterious capacity to unify opposites and be reinterpreted in light of changing circumstances and situations. Although each of the separate, discrete, and often contradictory versions of Europe noted above was present in some way at the Expo, it was ultimately this symbolic Europe of seemingly endless promise, reconciliation, and paradox that bestrode the Expo island like a colossus. To a great extent, this was because no country or institution was willing to risk being associated too strongly or openly with any one vision of what Europe should be, given that each of them wanted to offer visions of themselves and of Europe that appeared to transcend the profane world of petty politics and narrow ideologies. So in keeping with these powerful impulses to avoid controversy and to seek legitimacy through association with holy symbols, virtually every member country of the EU, and some nonmember countries from central and eastern Europe as well, fervently embraced the most vacuous and ambiguous yet compelling and ubiquitous of Europeanism’s sacred incantations—namely, “unity in diversity”—as a formula both for portraying themselves and for describing the sort of Europe that they hoped to make with others. This formula was sanctioned not only by the official policies of the Expo, which stressed cultural plurality and the universal achievements of humankind, but also by one of the key nontechnical articles of the Maastricht Treaty, which enunciated the notion of “unity in diversity” in the form of a virtual ethical imperative: “The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the member states, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore” (Article 128, quoted in Shore 1993:784). Similarly, there seemed to be a consensus among the western European participants that the best way to translate the sacred EU formula of “unity in diversity” into cultural practice at the Expo was for each country to represent its “discoveries” simultaneously as unique flowerings of its own particular culture and as contributions to the common cultural heritage of Europe and, ultimately, the world. Indeed, one of the things that made the Expo seem the best of all possible islands was that virtually every European country portrayed itself as a giver, donor, and contributor to others, while references to being a receiver and beneficiary were few, and there was hardly a mutter about takers. The especially strong emphases on the twin notions of “unity in diversity” and “discoveries and contributions” of the European participants at the Expo guaranteed that the pavilions and performances of these participants would have a considerable degree of homogeneity. Even so, the formulas were pliable enough to allow each country and institution to develop its own more or less populist, elitist, technocratic, and even ironic variations on the basic themes and thereby to undermine or reinforce national stereotypes and to complete with one another for prestige. Moreover, the way in which the participants chose to express these themes permitted one to infer a good deal about which

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of the particular visions of Europe they tended to prefer, despite their official reticence about such matters. Certainly this was the case with the Pavilion of the European Community, which did not succeed in suppressing its essentially technocorporate vision of the new Europe. The subterranean EC pavilion was located in the center of La Avenida de Europa, whose street space was designed as a gardenlike environment with flowing waters and curving pathways intended to be reminiscent of the Alhambra. On each side of the avenue, six, tall white fabric cones were linked to one another by canopies that were inspired by the sails of The Age of Discovery. At one end of this double line of towers, near the entrance to the EC’s pavilion, was a fifty-meter-high, cone-shaped beacon that was covered with the colors and national flags of the current twelve members of the EC and was designed to “evoke the unity and interdependence” of these member states (see SEEUS 1992b:229). Near the steps leading down to the pavilion proper, visitors encountered Ludmila Tcherina’s abstract sculpture entitled Europe in the Heart. Contrary to these symbols of unity, the exhibits of the pavilion contained little to foster strong sentiments of belonging. The official theme of the pavilion was “From the Europe of the Renaissance to the Renaissance of Europe, 1492–1992.” Once inside, visitors were greeted by a video wall in which ninety-eight screens flashed images of landscapes, cityscapes, and happy European faces. At the conclusion of this sixminute show of diversity, which was unencumbered by narration, the ceiling opened and visitors suddenly found themselves sheltered together under the single multicolored beacon. After the overture, the visitors’ normal path led through a series of rooms that contained exhibits on the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the rise of nationalism. The path then led to halls that dealt with some of the forces affecting the birth, development, and future of the EC. In most of these halls, video monitors and other devices made massive amounts of information available under such enticing headings as the “Chronology of the Age of Discoveries” and “Statistics of the European Community.” At the exit, there were large quantities of printed materials available, especially educational pamphlets on aspects of the Maastricht Treaty. As a final treat, visitors could take a step into the future by using their credit cards to obtain souvenir bills of ten and twenty “European Currency Units” (the forerunner of the Euro). According to the official line, the twin missions of the pavilion were to demonstrate that the EC “should be honored as one of the great discoveries of the twentieth century” and to provide a venue for its member states to declare “their readiness to show themselves to the world as a tangible entity” (SEEUS 1992b:229). Similar less-than-inspiring calls for cooperation were sounded repeatedly in the events surrounding the observation of the EC’s day of honor. The date of 9 May had been chosen for Europe’s special day because it marked the anniversary of a speech that had been given by Robert Schumann in 1950 and set the

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stage for the Franco-German coal and steel accords and, eventually, for the Common Market. It was not exactly Bastille Day or the Fourth of July in terms of its historical resonances, but it was evidently enough to stir a politician’s heart to oratory. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of Spanish Eurodeputies and Brussels officials, Felipe González began by asserting that Europe currently had more in the way of material welfare and security than any other area of the world and that there was no justification for disillusionment about the EU’s future. Egon Klepsch, president of the European Parliament, responded by declaring that Europe would not be constructed all at once but through many concrete decisions. Jacques Delors, the activist president of the European Commission, then discussed at considerable length the prospects for an upcoming EU summit meeting in Portugal. Among other things, he criticized Britain for its negative response to recently proposed EU labor policies and observed that “reconciliation between deepening and broadening Europe under principles of peace, law, and interchange will be the bases of future agreements” on political and economic integration and the incorporation of new member states (DD-ex 10 May 1992:4–5, 27). More speeches followed. None raised the roof, although Emilio Cassinello, the Expo’s commissioner general, did win praise in the press by speaking out against racism and xenophobia and arguing that “neither ideologies nor military force can serve to maintain cohesion.” Rather, he asserted, it was the “cultural will” of the member countries that provided “the best formula . . . for increasing integration” (DD-ex 10 May 1992:4–5, 27). The ceremonies continued with a concert given by the EC’s Youth Orchestra and featuring the “Hymn of Europe.” Twelve parachutists, carrying the twelve flags of the member countries, alighted on the island of La Cartuja. Later, González and the European dignitaries had lunch and visited the EC’s pavilion, some of the member states’ pavilions, and the World Trade Center. Although the luminaries in attendance at these events were more luminous and numerous than usual, the day of honor of the EC was otherwise fairly typical of this Expo genre. In addition to 9 May, other days were devoted to the celebration of European institutions. On 12 May, for example, there was a conference on European citizenship, which affirmed that “the European citizen should participate in three levels: the national, the European, and the regional levels” (DD-ex 13 May 1992:8). The date of 2 June, the day of honor for the Council of Europe, was dedicated to a consideration of the best uses of European wealth. On this occasion, Catherine Lalumieres, the secretary general of the council, compared the “rediscovery of the Europe of the East” to the discovery of the New World. In her speech, she contrasted the EU, in which “frontiers are being abolished by its peoples,” to a world in which “intolerance, fanaticism, and war have not disappeared” (DD-ex 3 Jun 1992:6). Overall, the official participation of the EC or EU in the Expo was no disgrace, but neither was it a great success. The public response to the EC’s pavil-

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ion was unenthusiastic, and many visitors walked right over the top of it without a second thought. In this respect, the decision to opt for cultural metaphors of foundational depth and aspiring height, as reflected in the underground halls and the cone-shaped tower, was a design error. Moreover, the efforts to educate the public by providing them with voluminous information about the structure and rationale of the EC did not inspire delight among many visitors, perhaps partly because it seemed to reflect an attitude of bureaucratic condescension and self-absorption. Similarly, press reports of the speeches and other activities of EU officials were respectful but no more than that. The combination of what often seemed like obligatory, ritualized preaching about diversity, cohesion, cooperation, and unity and what appeared to be an unceasing preoccupation with the details of policies, programs, and negotiations was all too familiar stuff and offered little in the way of exciting news. Yet for those with an ear to listen, the various EC programs and speakers clearly asserted the basic worldview of cosmopolitan liberalism in Europeanist terms: the EC had become or was rapidly becoming the most important center of creativity, peace, and prosperity in the contemporary world because cooperation among member states had multiplied ties between countries and because mediating community institutions had largely, if not yet wholly, domesticated old rivalries among nations, classes, regions, and peoples. In comparison, much of the rest of the world remained threatened by the untamed forces of fanaticism and intolerance. The EU was not the only European participant at the Expo whose activities appeared to be limited by a desire not to seem too assertive. Perhaps for different reasons, Germany and the United Kingdom also seemed to constrain themselves. The pavilions of both countries were large but seemed to lack focus. The official theme of the Pavilion of Germany was the rather vague one of “Visions-Impressions” (or, as it might have been more aptly titled, “No Need to Worry about Germany”). Its exhibits considered the relations between humankind, nature, and technology by exploring four topics: the city and urban life; nature and the environment; discovery and invention; and the dream of flying. In keeping with the fourth topic, the central area of the pavilion contained reproductions of antique German flying machines and zeppelins suspended in the air. There were also videos on the daily life of a German family, a reproduction of the library of the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, an exhibit that featured a “tree of life” with discolored leaves planted in asphalt and surrounded by trash, and a large double pendulum mechanism that symbolized the discoveries of scientists and engineers. Concern for making technological advancements while preserving the environment was the innocuous keynote of the pavilion. Indeed, the only explicit reference to political matters was a large chunk of the Berlin Wall, which was placed at the entrance of the pavilion and was surrounded by placards and photographs celebrating the reunification of the two Germanies. By far the most popular and attractive feature of the Pavilion of Germany was its large patio. Two items on the patio were an elaborate water sculpture and

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a carousel-like construction with giant revolving figures of Faust, Don Quixote, and other characters drawn from Spanish and German literature and folklore. Children were delighted with both of these contrivances. In addition, to entertain the adults, the patio contained a stage on which a seemingly endless stream of rosy-cheeked folk musicians from different regions of the Federal Republic performed. And to top things off, there was a snack bar serving good, relatively cheap food. These features made the pavilion one of the favorite gathering spots at the Expo, especially for vacationing families from northern Europe. Like Germany’s pavilion, Germany’s day of honor was remarkably lowkey for a European superpower. The high point of the day, if it can be called that, was a speech by the pavilion’s commissioner, Hans-Gerd Neglein. Although Neglein also happened to be the president of the Spanish and Portuguese division of Siemens, a giant German corporation, his speech contained no allusions to mundane economic matters. Rather, smilingly and a bit pompously, Neglein declared himself to be an ardent “ecologist” and “Europeanist.” He then went on to explain that the pavilion stressed performances by popular and folk musicians, jugglers, and acrobats because his country wanted to show German “hospitality” and because “we wanted to get away from pomp and military airs” and to show that the German people are a “worthy representative of Homo ludens” (ABC-ex 12 Jul 1992:68). There was nary a hint of the fabled Sonderweg here. The German pavilion and its officials tactfully avoided all references to political history, to Nazis whether echt or neo, to resurgent nationalism, to German economic clout and its exercise in the EU, and to problems with German reunification and the inclusion of central European countries into Germany’s and the EU’s sphere of influence. Instead, the aim was apparently to create an impression of Germany as an already thoroughly, antiseptically, and generically Europeanized country, inoculated from its own past and from the temptation to exploit its present power by the cultural and political blandness of its citizens’ environmental sensitivities and prosperous lifestyles. Like the nearby German installation, the Pavilion of the United Kingdom occupied a large site at the end of one of the two major European avenues of the Expo. Also like the German pavilion, the British pavilion had a popular orientation, rather than an elitist one, and seemed to suffer from the lack of a thematic focus. However, while the patio of the German pavilion drew crowds, there was no single attraction that drew people to the British pavilion. The major aim of the Pavilion of the United Kingdom seemed to be to convey the message that British science, technology, and communications systems were at the cutting edge of new developments and that the country’s economy had been thoroughly streamlined and reformed (or perhaps Thatcherized). The most notable feature of the pavilion was a “wall of water” that flowed over the pavilion’s front surface, which was embossed with a giant image of a Union Jack. Inside, the exhibits touched on the themes of earth, air, fire, and water.

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Visitors were invited to discover the “new Great Britain,” to rediscover “the Planet,” and to meditate in the “cathedral of water.” Visitors were also confronted with a kitsch masterpiece representing Spain and the United Kingdom entwined as two hearts. This accorded with the official intent of the pavilion’s commissioner to correct what he took to be the dominant Spanish view that Britain was a “traditional, inward-looking, and unfriendly country” (DD-ex 16 May 1992:23). Thus, if the lack of focus in Germany’s pavilion seemed to derive from the country’s desire to hide its power in the “new Europe,” the lack of focus in the United Kingdom’s efforts seemed to derive from its overeagerness to convince visitors of its modernity and openness, despite its insular role as the most reluctant partner in processes of European integration. While the pavilions of the EC, Germany, and Britain received tepid receptions, the pavilions of France and Italy were considered by the press and most of the public to be gold medalists in the Expo’s cultural Olympics. France had an initial advantage because its pavilion was directly across from the Pavilion of Spain and therefore in an ideal location. Moreover, the elegant design of the French pavilion, with its floating canopy and its subterranean “well of images,” played on the same imagery of metaphorical heights and foundational depths as the EC’s pavilion but did so in a way that immediately captured and held public attention instead of diffusing it. Visitors entered the French pavilion by climbing five or six steps up to a large platform with a transparent plexiglass floor. Above the platform was the “artificial sky” of the canopy, which appeared to be supported only by four slender pillars that came to small points. After crossing the platform, the visitors reached the exhibition hall, which was like a relatively small and windowless black box, the contents of which illustrated the rather elitist theme of “The Book and the World.” On display were a collection of antique books from an “imaginary library” that included medieval manuscripts, The City of God, and The Social Contract, as well as works by modern French authors such as Balzac, Zola, Hugo, and Malraux. All of this, of course, was designed to remind visitors of the coming glories of President François Mitterand’s grandiose pet project, the new national library in Paris. Next, the visitors slowly descended through a series of hallways that contained six exquisitely detailed and complete models of Paris from different eras of the city’s history. Then they entered transitional areas that focused on changes in communications technologies and featured a film on Parisian world fairs, a large model of an electronic circuit that resembled a city plan, and holograms of imagined cities of the future. Having been exposed to this new point of view on the models of Paris, visitors were then ushered to an area in which they could peer down the “well of images,” a seventeen-meter-deep rectangular hole that had mirrored walls and a floor onto which a flood of images were projected. The well of images offered three different visions or shows. The first one featured a voyage via a careening helicopter from Paris to Seville, and the second one was about the Earth’s varied landscapes. The third and most impressive

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of the offerings was entitled Traversing the Universe and displayed images of Earth, exploding novas, spiral galaxies, and the like. Visitors could view these spectacles at a leisurely pace from surrounding balconies after they visited the book and city exhibits, or they could view them quickly from a side entrance onto a narrow catwalk. In my no doubt jaundiced view, the well of images was a black-light, Elvis-on-velvet, basement-rec-room sort of experience, the most impressive effects of which were considerably diminished by the many hats and sunglasses that had slipped off the peering heads and noses of visitors and became silhouetted at the bottom of the well. Apparently, however, for most visitors the well of images was one of the Expo’s technopopulist peak experiences. Jack Lang, France’s minister of culture, modestly admitted that the success of the pavilion was “well merited” because the French pavilion “tried to give the best [of] tradition and modernity, putting an emphasis on the messages and vectors of knowledge from medieval manuscripts to computer images” (DD-ex 7 May 1992:5). The celebrations of France’s day of honor were equally impressive, thanks in no small measure to the public relations value of President Mitterand’s “visit of grandeur” to Seville and the Expo (ABC-ex 7 May 1992:51). With full protocol and surrounded by heavy security, Mitterand began his quasi-royal progression with visits to the seats of regional and municipal political authority in Seville. The municipal visit provided Alejandro Rojas Marcos with a fine opportunity to upstage his Socialist rivals, which he promptly did by provoking Mitterand into a largely impromptu response to his observation that great numbers of Andalusians had been victims of ETA, the Basque terrorist group. Acutely sensitive to lingering doubts about the strength of his government’s efforts to contain ETA’s activities in southern France, Mitterand passionately proclaimed that his country showed “no weakness” in this regard and then rather oddly went on to assert that France’s initial opposition to Spain’s admission to the EC had been an “absurd problem” and that now relations between the two countries were more harmonious than ever before. Mitterand concluded his remarks with praise for Seville, and Rojas Marcos answered by associating Seville’s “convivencia” (i.e., its tolerance of cultural differences) with France’s revolutionary formulation of universal human rights, which he termed “the most important cultural conquest of humanity” (DD-ex 6 May 1992:8). This exchange of challenges and pleasantries was the big news of the day and represented a coup for the political upstart, Rojas Marcos. It overshadowed Mitterand’s visit with Manuel Chaves (a fellow Socialist and the president of Andalusia), and it also diminished the importance of the speeches delivered in the formal ceremonies on France’s day of honor at the Expo. Throughout his five-hour visit to the site, Mitterand was accompanied by film star Alain Delon, and this drew large crowds. And just as Mitterand himself succeeded in pleasing the assembled multitudes by personally embodying the updated (though ailing) version of the grand old tradition of European

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socialism and statesmanship, so, too, the French pavilion succeeded by evoking the cosmopolitan symbols of Enlightenment culture—the city, the book, and the natural world—to represent its contributions to European and global civilization. In contrast to the EC, German, and British claims, the French claims to a position of cultural preeminence were unabashed. And in contrast to other European countries, France virtually ignored the differences among its own regions, as if to say that while bureaucrats in Brussels and bankers in Bonn may scheme their schemes, what really counts originates in Paris (or, if truth be told, the Left Bank). Indeed, French political and cultural self-assurance was so great that Bastille Day was observed on the island of La Cartuja, only with a haute couture fashion show—the liberty, equality, and fraternity of hemlines evidently being what there is to celebrate nowadays in lieu of the excitement of revolutionary freedoms. The choice of familiar Enlightenment tropes of cultural unity amidst diversity enabled the planners of the French pavilion to present the relationship of elite culture and popular culture as one of almost seamless continuity. They could offer The City of God and the great cities of men for humanist tastes and at the same time provide pretty pictures of the cosmos and the microchip for mass audiences. Because the French pavilion merged these two critical registers of elite and technopopular evaluation of the Expo’s pavilions and performances into a whole, it was consistently ranked by the press and the public among the top four or five national pavilions on the site. The “Italian Palace,” a large pavilion of three floors and many windows, was intended to remind Expo visitors of the architecture of Italian hill towns. The pavilion’s exterior was pleasant but unremarkable. However, its open interior and broad hallways highlighted the visual appeal of its contents, and the exhibits themselves were among the few at the Expo to present much of an intellectual challenge to visitors. Hanging in the large atrium on the first floor of the pavilion was a banner posing this question: “Why Columbus?” Suspended above the banner were giant spheres representing the Earth as it was conceived before the voyages of Columbus, the moon as it was mapped by modern astronomers, and Mars as the still largely mysterious goal of future space explorations. Also suspended above the banner were full-scale models of a modern satellite and a Renaissance perpetual motion machine reminiscent of Galileo and Leonardo. On the ground, the allusions and clues to the riddle were a bit more obscure: an ancient ship excavated at Nemi, an image of a struggling Hercules, and a number of classical and Renaissance sculptures. What these objects had to do with the question posed earlier was left to the imagination of the visitors. Upstairs, the thematic exhibitions repeatedly juxtaposed works of art with scientific and technological apparatuses in playful and puzzling ways. For example, in an exhibit entitled “The Body,” an oversized model of the head of Michelangelo’s David was split in two to reveal holographic and

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CAT-scanned images of the brain; a silly-looking “chronosphere” permitted “time travel” to great moments in Italian sports history; and race cars were described as “artificial bodies.” In one section of an exhibit about technology, an elegant painting of an alchemist by Longhu was juxtaposed with an odd tree of chemical elements and an assortment of modern plastic dishes. In another section, there was a reproduction of one of Enrico Fermi’s early and quite simple laboratories, but there was no mention of Fermi’s later career in the United States or the great physics research center that bears his name. And in another area, a reproduction of Piero della Francesca’s perspective on the “Ideal City” was juxtaposed with computerized games about urban planning and the construction of “artificial islands.” Visitors to the Pavilion of Italy encountered numerous other interactive exercises. In an exhibit concerning modern communications networks, for example, they could see their own images inserted into a larger video bank array. And in an exhibit that described money as a means of storing information, they could produce and take home a commemorative coin of the Expo. However, the high point of a visit to the pavilion (at least for those of a somewhat jaded sensibility) was Michelangelo Antonioni’s video piece entitled Energia. This video was projected inside the giant Earth sphere that was hung over the pavilion’s central gallery, and visitors had to enter the sphere via a narrow suspended catwalk to view it. After a brief and irrelevant “laser moment” typical of the Expo, the video began to develop its theme of the cyclical and entropic nature of energy flows. Accompanied by a pounding soundtrack, the video blasted visitors with an onrush of images of seasonal cycles, cataclysms, volcanic eruptions, and expenditures of human energy through industrial production, war, and so on. In striking contrast to the Expo’s other media presentations, which typically made use of the most advanced techniques to present banalities, Energia spewed forth images of grimy realism and violence, using what seemed to be extremely crude technologies and badly focused hand-held video recorders. Yet because of Antonioni’s consummate editing skills and his ability to fit the rhythms of his soundtrack to his rush of images, Energia was far more absorbing than any of the more highly produced films offered on the island of La Cartuja. It seemed as if the director were thumbing his nose at the rest of the Expo by demonstrating that genuine skill and vision, not technology and big budgets, are what is necessary to transform raw material into art. This was consistent with the other exhibits of the Italian pavilion, which juxtaposed artistic works with scientific endeavors to show how each sphere of activity involved the workings of the creative imagination. At its best, the Italian pavilion was more than interactive in the usual mechanical way. It was as if the exhibits invited the visitor to enter into a rambling dialogue with a witty and quicksilver intelligence. The press generally described the Italian pavilion as “containing great marvels” but suffering from a lack of organization (DD-ex 22 Sep 1992:23). There is no doubt that many visitors missed much of the humor and rhyme of

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the pavilion, especially those who were expecting to encounter more elementary forms of expository reasoning and were unprepared to appreciate the double entendres, sleight of hand, and protean visual punning of the exhibits. Nevertheless, the pavilion was immensely engaging in its presentation of an Italian perspective on the “history of desire and knowledge,” and like the French pavilion, it succeeded in drawing large crowds because it appealed to both popular and elite tastes. Just as Italian politicians liked to answer European complaints about their lack of compliance with community standards by proclaiming that a united Europe is inconceivable without Italy, the Italian pavilion seemed to assert its cosmopolitanism by showing that the notion of a common European cultural heritage is inconceivable without taking Italian contributions to it into account. Indeed, Europeanist cultural themes were strongly voiced during the observation of Italy’s day of honor on 10 September. Comparing the mission of the EU to the church of Rome, Italian president Oscar Scalfaro declared that “one must build Europe on rock and not on sand” and stressed “the importance of constructing a Europe beyond the economy, united, like man, by the spirit.” This was a vision of Europe, he claimed, that deeply “appealed to the Mediterranean temperament,” and he went on to criticize all forms of “nationalist individualism” and to salute “all the Italians of the world” (DD-ex 11 Sep 1992:4). His sentiments were echoed by the commissioner of the Italian pavilion, who affirmed that all the peoples of the EU “dwell in a common European house” (DD-ex 11 Sep 1992:4). Thus, Italian officials were more openly pious and devout in their support for the cultural and political as well as the economic unification of Europe than were the leaders of any other country. Among the contributions of the smaller countries of the EU, those of Portugal and Belgium stood out. Portugal had been the first country to agree to participate in the Expo, and its enthusiasm for the event never waned. The theme of its large pavilion was “Discover Portugal, A Nation of Discoverers,” and the exhibits inside focused almost entirely on the country’s early maritime and imperial history. The contents of these exhibits were of high quality but extremely various, making it easy to get lost in the plethora of objects. In this respect, the pavilion was like a disconcertingly giant Renaissance cabinet of antique wonders and curiosities. However, Portugal made up for the limited popular appeal of its pavilion by sponsoring several days of concerts and performances that attracted large crowds of its own citizens. On Portugal’s day of honor, the Expo was shaken by the “Lisbon earthquake,” an officially sponsored embassy of Portuguese youth. Appropriately enough, the speeches of the day stressed the themes of egalitarian neighborliness and European brotherhood. Commissioner General Cassinello began by generously characterizing the Expo as “the common house of Spain and Portugal.” Narcis Serra, vice-president of the Spanish government, then offered a warm greeting to Portugal’s president, Mario Soares, a fellow Socialist. In his speech,

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Soares characterized his country as a “pioneer of convivencia with other peoples” and described the EU as the “first line in the fight for the reduction of the inequalities and injustices that dramatically mark contemporary societies” (DD-ex 1 Jun 1992:3; DD-ex 29 Sep 1992:13). More than most countries, then, Portugal’s cosmopolitanism was suffused with a populist, democratic spirit. So inspired were the Portuguese by the events in Seville that they promptly decided to organize their own international exposition for Lisbon in 1998. Belgium developed a more assertively sophisticated and essentially elitist strategy of self-portraiture by entitling its pavilion “The Museum of Europe,” by describing itself as a “Europe in miniature,” by claiming to be “in the heart of Europe,” and by stressing that it served as a host to no fewer than 850 international organizations, including, of course, the EU. As the official pamphlet of the pavilion confidently asserted in the course of its discussion of the country’s trilingualism, “To know Belgium with its diversity is to know Europe.” Moreover, the pamphlet continued, “This is the Belgian mentality: the alternation between the hearth and the universe, the neighborhood and the world in its broadest conception.” Cosmopolitan rhetoric aside, however, what was most impressive about the Pavilion of Belgium was the way in which it contrived to shelter and protect what its pamphlet described as the “most precious objects” that Belgians possess—including works by Van Eyck, Rubens, and Magritte, along with anatomical illustrations by Vesalius, art nouveau, and antique scientific instruments—on the second floor of an open air pavilion that was virtually without walls. During the Expo, Belgium won high marks for sponsoring and staging numerous activities on the large patio of its pavilion. These included fine jazz concerts and theatrical performances by international groups. Of the remaining member states of the EU, Ireland made the greatest impact at the Expo by focusing on its role in the expansion of medieval Christianity and on its contributions to European literature. Bloomsday, for example, was observed at the Expo in the midst of a cycle of literary readings, and a giant inflated figure of Gulliver was hauled up the Guadalquivir River. Other EU countries, such as Greece, the Netherlands, and Denmark, contributed little worth remembering. This was also the case with two of the three new prospective members of the EU, Sweden and Austria. However, the sleek lines and attractive wood and metal surfaces of the Pavilion of Finland were widely admired as a finely executed example of sculptural architecture. All three prospective members of the EU and all of the established members except Denmark continually affirmed their allegiance to the European project and to the great cosmopolitan principle of unity in diversity (DD-ex 5 Jun 1992:6). Denmark largely avoided the subject, probably because of its reluctance to draw attention to the negative results of its recent popular referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. The booming chorus of EU harmony was in striking contrast to the lower and more dissonant tones sounded by the countries of eastern and central

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Europe. To be sure, the “other Europe” of struggling postcommunist nations expressed a strong desire to join the prosperous and democratic West, but these nations were also possessed by an almost equally strong urge to assert their own newly recovered independence and sense of nationalist pride. The Pavilion of Hungary was the most impressive of the pavilions of the “other Europe” and was the one that most reflected the region’s ambivalence.8 Hungary’s exhibitions were housed in a long and narrow wooden building with seven bell towers stretched along the spine of a steep shingled roof reminiscent of rural churches. Among other things, each of the bell towers was supposed to symbolize a particular change in the fortunes in national history, such as the liberation of Budapest from the Turks in 1686. The interior of the pavilion had the atmosphere of a nationalist shrine. Offering very little in terms of content, it nonetheless created a powerful and even somewhat eery impression. The pavilion’s first hall contained nothing but a giant oak tree from the Danube region. The tree rose to the ceiling, and its full root system was exposed beneath a plexiglass floor. The whole of it was stripped to a stark bone white. On the wall, the oak was described as a “primitive and universal symbol of darkness and clarity, depth and height, of life, growth, and immortality.” In the hallway leading from this room to a large theater, there were exhibits informing visitors that while Spain was exploring the Americas, Hungary represented Europe’s main line of defense against the Ottomans. In the theater, visitors were shown a film concerning twentieth-century Hungarian history. The travails and suffering of wars and the grimness of the decades of state socialism were heavily stressed, but the film ended on a more positive note of redemption and hope for the future. Nothing in the entire Expo matched the dark nationalist intensity of the Hungarian exhibits. Despite this, the pamphlet and other printed materials of Hungary’s pavilion did not fail to emphasize Europeanist and cosmopolitan themes. They defined Hungary as a “diverse European country” that has been “a point of contact and encounter” and an “intermediary between East and West.” Hungary also laid claim to full cultural participation in Europe through a series of excellent concerts of classical music. And on its day of honor, the officials of its pavilion underscored Hungary’s expanding communications and transport connections to the rest of Europe and touted the international trade fair that was scheduled to take place in Budapest in 1996. Nevertheless, the theme of the sponsored performances of the day was “A Peasant Wedding.” As if to suggest that Hungary had some way to go before it fully realized the “spirit of Maastricht,” Commissioner General Cassinello charitably if somewhat condescendingly observed that both Spain and Hungary “have left dictatorship behind . . . [but] need to change their images and to gather their strength in order to develop and enter into the European project” (DD-ex 25 Aug 1992:4). Hungary’s pavilion was far more popular with the press and the public than were the pavilions of other countries of central and eastern Europe. Some

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of these countries, such as Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Latvia, employed exhibits of religious art (especially icons of national saints) to symbolize their freedom from Soviet armored divisions and godless communism. However, what was still then the just barely unified country of Czechoslovakia took the opposite course and constructed a self-consciously modernist pavilion, a black box that contained little beyond some Bohemian glasswork and austere atonal music and seemed to be almost universally disliked. Poland aimed for its pavilion to be a “Global Solidarity Museum,” but because of the country’s economic straits there was little on display to represent the great recent days of mass resistance and protest besides a few posters. The visit of Lech Walesa to the site on Poland’s day of honor, however, somewhat compensated for the poverty of Poland’s pavilion. Walesa drew large crowds of respectful onlookers, spoke of new hopes for European and global cooperation, and likened the fall of communism to the epoch-making discovery of America (EP 4 May 1992:17). In general, the obviously limited budgets, modest displays, and avantgarde posturing in the pavilions of the “other Europe” did more to reveal than to bridge the gap between the countries of western and eastern Europe. At best, it was obvious that the countries of the East were still on the outside looking expectantly in. At worst, there was the pavilion of war-torn Yugoslavia, which contained almost nothing beyond its forlorn and anxious, mostly Serbian staff, who tried to maintain their own dignity in the midst of a never fully resolved public debate among Expo officials, Spanish politicians, and others about whether they should be expelled from the site. As matters turned out, the Yugoslavian pavilion remained open, but its emptiness was a constant reminder of the slowly unfolding outrage of genocidal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and it therefore presented, in its own perverse way, one of the most powerful and disturbing messages of the entire Expo.9 The last of the European pavilions worthy of note was that of Switzerland, which maintained a kind of ironic distance from the member states of the EU but had none of the nationalistic overtones of the pavilions from the “other Europe.” Festooned with the provocative assertion “Switzerland does not exist,” the Pavilion of Switzerland parodied the genre of pavilions, and by implication the pretensions of its neighbors, in high postmodern style. In so doing, it transformed the witty riddles of the Italian pavilion into self-deprecating slapstick and played against the stereotypes of the Swiss as unimaginative plodders through the lush fields of European culture. Totally to the contrary, a “Wind of Fantasy” was supposed to sweep through every nook and cranny of the pavilion, although normal visitors had to enter as pedestrians through a great “Dragon” gate before encountering a “Kitschosco” (kitsch kiosk and information booth) surrounded by figures of giant stags. Adjacent to the kiosk, a rickety-looking tower of corrugated paper soared nearly forty meters skyward in a mockery of monumentalism that brought to mind a giant wasp’s nest. The gateway space opened onto a performance area, which was

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normally populated by a succession of magicians, clowns, acrobats, mimes, and dancers. Tiers of steps leading to the pavilion doubled as seating for the audiences of the various shows, and all around there were colorful banners and iron sculptures of giant sunglasses and similar stuff. The top of the steps also served as a launching platform for regularly scheduled, deafening blasts from amassed alpenhorns. Inside the Pavilion of Switzerland, visitors first encountered a sound room into which avant-garde compositions drawing on folk music were piped. Other halls contained ironic tributes to Swiss efficiency, precision, and cleanliness; kitsch representations of mountains, cuckoo clocks, chocolates, and cheese; an intentionally pointless “celebration of circles and pi ”; a videoloop of Woody Allen repeating, “I believe in the intelligence of the universe with the exception of some Swiss cantons”; and homages to Spain as host country in the form of film clips from Buñuel and a room full of small, mounted, imitation bulls’ heads. The veritable pièce de résistance of the pavilion was a squishing meat-grinder fountain of raw flesh in the restaurant that served food to tourists and was named “Eaten by . . .” The point, or at least one of the points, of all this clowning one-upmanship and drollery seemed to be to suggest that Swiss culture transcended local particularities and even Europeanist pieties and offered a neutral vantage point from which to view one’s own foibles and those of others with mocking and ironic but ultimately sympathetic eyes. Most visitors seemed to respond to the pavilion with a mix of genuine amusement and equally genuine surprise and even shock at its cultural temerity. Not altogether surprisingly, however, many Swiss politicians and segments of the press and public were embarrassed and scandalized by the pavilion, at least initially. But their response tended to become less hostile as it became clear that the pavilion was a popular success and as the pavilion’s defenders argued that giving a group of contemporary artists and designers such liberty to express themselves was in the best traditions of Swiss pluralism, tolerance, and freedom (DD-ex 2 Jun 1992:23). The celebration of Switzerland’s day of honor allowed politicians and officials to adopt a somewhat more dignified posture and to deliver standard orations on the theme of the diversity and unity of Switzerland and of Europe. Delivering his speech in four languages, the vice-president of the Swiss Federal Council affirmed that Switzerland wanted to be “inside the construction of Europe” and argued that his country “has much to bring to Europe, most notably its long democratic tradition of solidarity and peaceful coexistence among its cantons.” Self-deprecating wit was evident, though, even in these formal ceremonies. For example, the various speakers were announced through a hand-held megaphone despite an adequate public address system; and at one point in the proceedings, a woman danced across the stage, apparently wrapped only in the flag of the EU, presumably in order to symbolize Switzerland’s ardent embrace of Europeanist ideals, even though the country

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was not a member of the community. Commissioner General Cassinello responded to the Swiss participants with a rare display of a sense of humor and praised the Swiss pavilion for “demythifying the commonplaces of the Expo” (DD-ex 2 Aug 1992:6; EP 2 Aug 1992:3). Mirror, mirror on the wall, who are the fairest Europeans of all? This was the question that ultimately seemed to preoccupy the organizers and officials of the pavilions of virtually all the countries of western Europe. Members of each country seemed to want to answer it with a resounding “WE ARE!” Officials from countries that had the most prestigious and popular pavilions, such as Italy and France, developed their claims by pursuing essentially an elitist macrocosmic strategy and represented their cultural achievements as panEuropean and even universal in their scope and significance. Those from countries such as Belgium and Switzerland chose to portray their nations as microcosms of European achievements and diversity. And those from countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom seemed to suggest that although their nations had their distinctive claims to glory, their greatest claim was that they were really not much different from other Europeans these days. Despite the competition among the European pavilions for pride of place at the Expo and despite the different ways in which their officials chose to invoke Europe as a symbol, what did finally stand out is how much the countries of western Europe shared. This did not amount so much to a substantial identity or agreement in terms of culture, values, and political or economic arrangements as it did to a structured repertoire of mutually comprehensible and overlapping discourses and images by means of which arguments about what it means to be European or French or Swiss could be elaborated and contested. This repertoire was largely constituted in terms of bureaucratic governmentalism, technological innovation, popular democratic values, local ethnic diversity, a transnational elite cultural heritage, and overarching mutual concerns about peace and material prosperity. Because of this limited repertoire from which each participant constructed its own self-portrait, the German pavilion resembled the British pavilion; the Italian pavilion looked like a variant of the French; and it was tempting to view the Swiss pavilion as a commentary on Belgian choices. Moreover, because of this shared overlapping repertoire of representations and images, it was not difficult to imagine how one country might have switched pavilions with another with relative ease—how, for example, Italy might have stressed the modernity of its communications systems and economic infrastructure while the United Kingdom might have stressed its contributions to science, literature, and the arts. Because of these commonalities, the cumulative impact of the European presence at the Expo gave a kind of credibility and force to the cosmopolitan ideal of unity in diversity, if for no other reason than it demonstrated the strength of a collective political will to impose this vision on recalcitrant realities. The massive investment in the Expo by the states of western Europe was

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more than sufficient to create an impression that the “new Europe” was the region of the world where maximal complexity and difference stood the best chance of being maximally mediated and domesticated in the future and was the region where people of the present felt themselves to be happiest and most prosperous and secure. As a result, a Europeanized image of the world was indelibly stamped on the whole Expo.

15. Davids and Goliaths of the New World Order The center of the Expo site was occupied by the pavilions of European countries. The peripheries tended to be populated with pavilions sponsored by the various Davids and Goliaths of the world—the small and large countries of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The size of a country’s pavilion and the scope of its sponsored performances often approximated the country’s actual political or economic position in the contemporary world. The pavilions of the United States, Japan, and Russia were suitably large, for example, while the pavilions of the Dominican Republic, Thailand, and Gabon were relatively small. But world fairs have traditionally provided states the opportunity to show off, to live beyond their means, and to make claims to a higher status in the international system than their actual power and influence seem to warrant. As a result, even though the Expo provided more than ample concrete evidence of real disparities in power and clout between the countries of the North and South and those of the East and West, it also enabled the most ambitious participating states to express highly optimistic views of their place in and potential contributions to the “new world of the future.” Thus, the pavilions of Australia, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea were, perhaps, somewhat culturally puffed up and inflated, while those of Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia seemed rather too modest and unaspiring in relation to their large populations and international importance. However, neither real power and size nor sheer ambition and determination were particularly good indicators of popular and critical success in the competition for prestige at the Expo. In numerous cases, what was perceived as overweening ambition, arrogance, incompetence, or lack of appropriate commitment to the Expo led to public rejection and embarrassment. Moreover, while the reasons for failure or mediocrity at first sight seemed too various to make much sense, everything ultimately tended to work to the comparative advantage of Europe. Indeed, it was as if the game had been fixed from the beginning, because the cultural and political agenda of the Expo had been set by and favored the leading group of competitors, who, even as they touted

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diversity, judged other countries’ self-portraiture in terms of the ideas and values of contemporary Europeanism. From this perspective, the fate of the United States at the Expo is especially worthy of consideration. As sole surviving superpower of the Cold War, leader of the recently victorious coalition in the Gulf War, fountainhead of neoliberal market fundamentalism, and corporate homeland of Paris’s new “EuroDisney,” the United States appeared to be in an ideal position to triumph at the Expo. U.S. planners predicted that half a million tourists from the United States would flock to Seville in 1992 (NYT 19 May 1991:14). Moreover, on the island of La Cartuja, the U.S. pavilion had been granted one of the largest and best sites, near the European core zone. But in every way, U.S. participation in the Expo became a public relations nightmare. Many of the problems of the United States were of the country’s own making. After the plans for a universal exposition in Chicago fell apart in the mid-1980s, Barton Myers designed a bold pavilion to be erected in Seville. The design was obviously going to be expensive, so the project quickly came under the scrutiny of congressional cost-cutters. Representative Neal Smith of Iowa and Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina led the fight to eliminate federal funds for U.S. participation. After a delay of almost three years, only eighteen million dollars, most of which was drawn from funds for the United States Information Agency, was budgeted for the Expo, and this amount was supplemented by a few million dollars from private corporate donations (NYT 12 Feb 1990:6; NYT 7 May 1990:18E; NYT 18 May 1991:5). Congressional obstruction thus forced the U.S. organizers to fall back on the “old geodesic dome trick” (NYT 25 Aug 1991:14) and come up with a bargain-basement plan for the pavilion. This plan not only featured two domes long used at international trade fairs but also incorporated images frequently seen at elementary school multicultural fairs. As finally constructed, the Pavilion of the United States was fronted by a “wall of water” that symbolized the Atlantic Ocean. The pavilion’s large interior courtyard was shaded by a metallic canopy imprinted with a huge U.S. flag, and the courtyard itself was dedicated to good, clean American fun, including demonstrations of tennis, volleyball, skateboarding, and basketball, as well as occasional singing and dancing. Decorating the wall of the first dome and its extension was a mural that was designed by Peter Max and recalled the psychedelic 1960s. The mural featured a portrait of Sitting Bull (or possibly a look-alike) in full eagle-feathered war bonnet. Inside the dome, visitors were shown a film that was entitled Song of the World and was sponsored by the U.S. government and General Motors. The theme of this saccharine “We Are the World” style homage was “the stages of life.” The opening shot of the film showed a group of Native American men gathered around a campfire outside a modest house. Suddenly, their conversation was interrupted by the cries of a newborn, which prompted one of the smiling elders to pull out a cellular phone to spread the good news. This scene was followed by

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a cascade of images from around the world, including toddlers taking their first steps, children on the way to school, cross-cultural teenage romances, assorted weddings, and grandparents doting on grandchildren. The high point of the film was what amounted to a General Motors commercial interlude that depicted learning to drive as a universal human experience and rite of passage. In the covered areas leading to the second dome, visitors encountered exhibits on Kansas City (Seville’s “sister city”), a shop selling jerseys from American professional sports franchises, and a hamburger and hot dog stand that tried to reproduce the ambience of Yankee Stadium. The second dome housed one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights. This display was accompanied by a short introductory film whose theme was the universalization of human rights and whose message was this: “Where liberty reigns, there is my country.” The film mainly consisted of short statements by “witnesses to liberty,” such as Felipe González, former U.S. chief justice Warren Burger, and president Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua. After viewing the film, visitors could read and contemplate a detailed history of the Bill of Rights and its international influence. However, most people simply walked through a hallway area to an outside kiosk selling Baskin-Robbins ice cream. While slurping their cones, they waited in line at the back of the site for entrance into the “Spirit of America,” a two-story, mid-priced, prefabricated, suburban tract house that was sponsored by the American Plywood Association and had an energy-efficient design and all the modern conveniences. With the exception of the basketball demonstrations and hamburgers, the offerings of the U.S. pavilion were not greeted in the kindest terms by the press and the public in Seville. Most dismissed the Song of the World film for its manipulative sentimentality and low production values. Some criticized the exhibits dedicated to the Bill of Rights as a crude attempt to present particular U.S. values as the primary source of inspiration for the rest of the world. As several people noted, the exhibits paid virtually no attention to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man or to related United Nations declarations and failed to acknowledge that certain U.S. rights, most notably the right to keep and bear arms, were far from being widely accepted. Others pointed out that from a European perspective the use of the death penalty in the United States clearly and notoriously contradicted the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In addition, many Sevillanos were especially annoyed by the U.S. “dream house,” which they tended to view as a condescending insult to their own way of life and preferences in domestic architecture. In general, then, the U.S. pavilion was disliked because it was seen as a parochial and clumsy attempt to present certain aspects of U.S. political and popular culture as cosmopolitan and universal. Indeed, the very modesty of the pavilion was interpreted as yet another symptom of the blind arrogance of the United States. The character of the sponsored performances and official acts at the Expo also undermined the efforts of the United States to present itself as a

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fully democratic and pluralistic society that other countries would do well to emulate. Partly to counter protests in the United States against observations of the fifth centenary, the organizers included two Native Americans in their plans to inaugurate the U.S. pavilion in Seville. On the opening day of the Expo, Austin Two Moons, president of the Indian Heritage Foundation and a “spiritual leader of the Cheyennes,” blessed the earth and water of the pavilion with the assistance of Pale Moon, a Cheyenne dancer. A few hours later, an indignant Pale Moon complained to the press that no Indians had been invited to attend the formal dinner and other celebrations of opening day and that she had been used as a “circus attraction.” She also observed that nothing in the pavilion reflected the “true cultural heritage” of Native Americans (DD-ex 21 Apr 1992:22; EC-ex 20 Apr 1992:30). Other problems with government-sponsored events at the Expo did not help matters. Officials of the pavilion had promised appearances by such giants as Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, and they had assured Expo officials that President George Bush was planning to come, even though he was in the midst of a faltering campaign for reelection. None of these promises bore fruit. Instead, visitors were invited to such events as a long-distance appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who insulted fat kids and promoted physical fitness via satellite (DD-ex 30 Apr 1992:19). In mid-May, on the day of honor of the United States, Tony Randall of “Odd Couple” fame and Barbara Eden of “I Dream of Jeanie” served as hosts for “America, the Dream Goes On,” a musical review featuring appearances by the Trojan Marching Band of the University of Southern California, by the Symphonic Orchestra of the University of North Texas, and by Nobody’s Fool, an aptly named, if obscure, country and western group. Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Sylvester added to the luster of the proceedings, as did the wife of the vicepresident of the United States, Marilyn Quayle, who stopped off in Seville on her way to drought-stricken southern Africa. After praising “individual liberties,” Mrs. Quayle eloquently proclaimed that “it is necessary that people realize that they can be free and they should fight for it.” Frederick Bush, the commissioner of the U.S. pavilion but no relation to the incumbent president, then rather imprudently claimed that he and his fellow Americans had brought “our best ideas, our best ideals, our best people” to the Expo and that the pavilion represented the “real American way of life.” In terms of diplomatic protocol, because the vice-president’s wife was the lowest-ranking official (or, strictly speaking, nonofficial) to represent a participating country on its day of honor, no major Spanish authorities were present at the ceremonies. However, after a cabinet-level delegate from Madrid sowed some confusion by referring to Mrs. Quayle as “Mrs. Bush” and referring to Commissioner Bush as “Mr. Quayle,” Commissioner General Emilio Cassinello politely, if perhaps a bit disingenuously, lauded the United States for not retiring “into the end of history” (DD-ex 11 May 1992:3; DD-ex 18 May 1992:3–4).

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In the aftermath of the U.S. day of honor, the Seville press delighted in talking about “old TV stars” and the “shame” of the United States. Under one headline that somewhat misleadingly read in English, “House of Democracy Welcomes Unelected First Lady,” Richard Bastin tartly observed that Mrs. Quayle had appropriately included a visit to the U.S. pavilion “in a tour of disaster zones” (DD-ex 18 May 1992:23). Another editorial likened U.S. participation in the Expo to the arrogance of imperial Rome (DD 19 May 1992:14). From time to time, Commissioner Frederick Bush, who was not at ease with the Spanish language, tried to defend the U.S. pavilion by making feeble statements such as “Money is not the measure of everything” (DD-ex 30 Apr 1992:19). But it was all to no avail; the United States headed virtually every list of the worst pavilions of the Expo. Led by the press, most people thought that the pavilion’s efforts to celebrate the international appeal of U.S. popular culture demonstrated provincial shallowness and that its advocacy of human rights should be taken more to heart at home instead of being used to justify the U.S. government’s efforts to further its interests abroad. In other words, the press and most of the public at the Expo viewed the U.S. pavilion as reflecting a superficial cosmopolitanism and a deeply flawed liberalism that did not stand comparison to the supposedly more genuine, tolerant, and cooperative Europeanist versions of these same basic values. Nevertheless, the full impact of the tacit and unequal (and, from the U.S. perspective, presumably largely undesired and unanticipated) competition between Europeanism and Americanism at the Expo can only be appreciated when account is taken of how this relationship affected and was affected by the status and strategies of other participants in the exhibition’s cultural Olympics—particularly Canada and Puerto Rico but also Mexico and other Latin American countries. It seems no accident (as Marxists like to say) that Canada and Puerto Rico were universally cited among the great successes of the Expo. Canada’s large, green, cube-shaped pavilion was well designed and attractive. Its best feature was a shaded internal patio area with a pond, flowing water, and a stage for an almost uninterrupted series of musical performances, all of which helped visitors to endure long waits in line without becoming too overheated or bored. The main attraction of the pavilion was an eighteenminute movie that was entitled Momentum and used IMAX technology to celebrate the natural and multicultural diversity of Canada at forty-eight sharply etched frames per second. The film’s images of Niagara Falls, busy Blue Rockies beavers, baseball, rugged coastlines, and bustling citizens of Toronto were stimulating enough, but the Expo was already overstuffed with high-quality montages of this type. The pavilion’s other exhibits seemed at first sight to be well executed but rather conventional and uninspired. Yet with an admirable and uncommon economy of means, both the film and the other exhibits did provide a Canadian perspective on some of the key themes of the entire Expo

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by focusing on the high quality of life for “people of many cultures” in a federal democracy richly endowed with natural and human resources.1 While the intrinsic attractiveness of the Canadian pavilion and its contents contributed to the popularity of Canada at the Expo, it was the skill of Canadian officials at handling public relations that really boosted the country’s popularity. Unlike the head of the U.S. pavilion, who stumbled from one defensive posture to another, Luc Lavoie, the commissioner of the Canadian pavilion, and his subordinates never faltered. Even before the Expo began, Canadian officials had won the gratitude of their Spanish counterparts by offering valuable advice garnered from their experience in organizing the 1986 World’s Fair in Vancouver. And well before many other pavilions had even finished basic construction, Canadian officials declared their pavilion ready to receive visitors. What mattered the most, however, was the way in which Canadian officials courted Sevillanos. Commissioner Lavoie repeatedly expressed his love for Seville and once explained to a journalist that he wanted his two young daughters to become fully a part of the life of the city with which he himself had so fully identified (DD-ex 20 Apr 1992:16). The ability of Canadian officials to forge a symbolic identification with Seville and Spain was nearly matched by their eagerness to distance themselves from the United States and embrace Europe. On one occasion, for example, Commissioner Lavoie defined his country as “wealthy, fresh, and, above all, free.” He then agreed with an interviewer that “you could say that Canada was a sort of American Dream gone right” and went on to affirm that “we’re here at the Expo because of Europe; it is, after all, the first Expo of the EC” (DD-ex 4 May 1992:23). From a public relations perspective, Canada’s day of honor, which was celebrated on the first day of July, the 125th anniversary of its founding act of confederation, was equally impressive. The visiting minister of foreign affairs, Barbara McDougall, invoked her prophetic countryman Marshall McLuhan by defining the Expo as a “global village” in which “the term ‘universal culture’ has a real meaning,” and she reaffirmed Canada’s allegiance to “freedom, democracy, human rights, tolerance, compassion, and especially peace in the world” (ABC-ex 2 Jul 1992:49). But the master stroke of the day was to invite 219 Andalusian children and parents associated with a Catholic school in the working-class suburb of Camas to a free breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup, which culminated in singing happy birthday to Canada. Even the concert of Celine Dion, given later in the evening, paled beside this perfect example of the popular touch. Through such efforts, Canada immunized itself from criticism at the Expo. While the United States suffered the death of a thousand cuts, hardly a rumor was heard about Canada’s treatment of the people of its First Nations or about the bitter and unresolved debates swirling around Quebecois nationalism. To the delight and with the connivance of the Spanish public and officials, the United States was also upstaged by its postcolonial dependency, the

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Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Aside from the pavilions of the autonomous regions of Spain, Puerto Rico was the only subnational political entity to have its own free-standing pavilion at the Expo, and the significance of this as a declaration of cultural and political autonomy was lost on no one. Indeed, the press reported many rumors that the U.S. government had attempted to discourage Puerto Rican officials from proceeding with their plans for the Expo after Spain had extended an invitation to participate (DD 27 Apr 1992:6; Ross 1992:3). With the help of substantial aid from Spain, Puerto Rico invested millions of dollars to construct a relatively small but visually striking pavilion that had copper and green glass surfaces and made elegant use of elementary cylindrical and rectangular forms. Inside, there were exhibits emphasizing the island’s role as a cultural, tourist, trading, and manufacturing crossroads; galleries displaying the works of native artists; and the obligatory film of natural and social scenery, which in this case featured a distorted map of the Atlantic with an oversized Puerto Rico bridging the distance between Europe and the Americas. Yet what made the pavilion a true magnet for visitors in the central zone of the Expo was its exterior stage, which featured salsa groups performing frequently and loudly before large crowds, and its adjacent bar, which offered a wide variety of colorful rum-based concoctions. In striking contrast to the United States, Puerto Rico enjoyed a prominent place on all the lists of the best of the Expo. This was partly because the musical and other events that the Puerto Rican pavilion sponsored were able to transform the island’s day of honor on the summer solstice into the Expo’s greatest night of merrymaking and celebration (see chapter 12). And it was partly because the official speeches on the day of honor not only permitted Puerto Rican officials to emphasize the island’s cultural and linguistic ties to Spain but also provided an occasion for Spanish officials to elaborate their own vision of Spain’s and Europe’s relations with Latin America. This vision was essentially tutelary, but it also explicitly (if not altogether plausibly) claimed to offer a means of transcending the harmful legacies of colonialism and insular nationalism. In the presence of the governor of Puerto Rico and high-ranking Spanish officials, Commissioner General Cassinello staunchly defended the self-government and substantial autonomy of Puerto Rico from the United States, but he was careful not to lend any support to the idea that Puerto Rico should declare complete independence. No doubt with other Ibero-American countries and the autonomous regions of Spain in mind, he instead praised Puerto Ricans as a patriotic people who had nonetheless rejected “retrograde nationalist plans that can define themselves only through oppositions and exclusions” and who had demonstrated their openness to increasing ties of cooperation and solidarity with other peoples and countries (DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:8). Even though Puerto Rico managed to convey a compelling portrait of itself as at least partly autonomous from the United States, most of the countries of Latin America did not ultimately enjoy the same kind of success. This is

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because they failed to overcome the general notion that they were plagued by internal disorders and a lack of farsighted leadership as well as by external dependency on Europe and the United States. Mexico was the most important exception to this rule. Before the complete debacle of the regime of Carlos Salinas, Mexico had possessed considerable international prestige as a country successfully adjusting to the demands of the new global economy. In keeping with this prestige, it had opted to construct a large free-standing pavilion apart from the giant Plaza of the Americas, which housed most of the other Latin American participants in the Expo. The Pavilion of Mexico occupied a privileged location near the Pavilion of Spain. The distinctive giant “X” that marked the extended elevated entryway to the Mexican pavilion drew long lines of visitors. Passing through the axis of the “X,” visitors found themselves in a lengthy hallway containing exhibits designed to impress them with “the complex history that shaped this nation of many intertwined races and cultures” (SEEUS 1992b:189). Giant stone Olmec heads and images of Aztec gods, Mayan princes, Catholic saints, and the Day of the Dead were juxtaposed with those of smoking volcanos, tropical rain forests, high deserts, and monarch butterflies. Farther on were exhibits, video displays, and films dealing with the impact of the Columbian exchange on the lives of people in the Americas and Eurasia, the struggles of national independence and the Mexican Revolution, the glories of democracy under the longdominant Partido Revolucionario Independista (PRI), and the artistic achievements of the great muralists and Frieda Kahlo. In addition, floods of images of the contemporary ethnic diversity and cultural vitality of “eighty-eight million Mexicans” were presented in terms of themes such as “Mexico Is Young,” “Mexico Is Tradition,” and “Mexico Is Solidarity.” Thanks to the breadth and richness of the Mexican exhibits, the Mexican pavilion was one of the handful of non-European pavilions that clearly rivaled the pavilions of the larger European countries, and it left no doubt in visitors’ minds of either the complexity or the particularity of the culture and history of Mexico. For the most part, the sixteen countries whose pavilions were housed in a 40,000-square-meter, multilevel edifice called the Plaza of the Americas fared poorly, although as a whole the edifice attracted large daily crowds because it served as a sort of cultural shopping mall. As Latin American critics had observed early on, the warehouse-like character of the huge building tended to undermine each country’s efforts to present itself as having a unique and autonomous national presence and identity. Indeed, the building tended to reconfirm the impression conveyed by the European pavilions that Latin American countries represented something for others to discover, rather than being truly vital and independent societies with autonomous histories and traditions of their own. This impression of marginality and dependency was hardly altered by the fact that the only other pavilions to be housed in collective buildings were those of the poorer regions of Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, and Asia.

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Again and again, visitors to the Plaza of the Americas seemed to be reminded that the present state of Latin American societies was less glorious than their past or their increasingly threatened natural environments. Indeed, many (if not most) visitors to the plaza were first drawn there by the promise of the “Gold of America,” a sort of archaic jewelry store of some five hundred preconquest gold artifacts that were mostly drawn from Colombia and the Quimbaya treasure of Incan art, which was normally kept in Madrid. Although the artistry of the gold work was impressive, the exhibit provided virtually no context for understanding its significance and instead invoked images of the European quest for El Dorado. Moreover, on the way to this exhibit, visitors encountered startling life-size statues of people who were indigenous to the rain forests of Amazonia and were depicted huddling around campfires or engaged in hunting and other activities, all of which seemed designed to invoke easy sentiments of nostalgia for primitive innocence and a disappearing way of life. Besides the “Gold of America,” the only other joint pavilions found in the Plaza of the Americas were the one sponsored by the various fifth centenary commissions of Spain and Latin American countries and the Pavilion of the Inter-American System, which represented the joint efforts of the Organization of American States, the Pan-American Health Organization, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Inter-American Institution for Cooperation in Agriculture. Unfortunately, budget problems and a general lack of coordination left both of the large spaces devoted to each of these pavilions almost empty. In comparison with Spain’s thematic pavilions and the Pavilion of the European Community, these Latin American analogues were failures. Inside the Plaza of the Americas, there was nothing resembling a collective embrace of contemporary Latin Americanism or Ibero-Americanism comparable to the nearby insistent celebrations of the spirit of Europeanism. As the commissioner of Ecuador observed, the Plaza of the Americas lacked strong expressions of “dialogue and friendship” or much evidence of a will to unite to solve common problems (ABC-ex 16 Jul 1992:47). Left to fend for themselves, most of the national pavilions housed in the Plaza of the Americas adopted strategies of self-presentation similar to Mexico’s strategies but were less successful in using images of glories of the past to lend plausibility to their claims concerning tolerant ethnic pluralism and sociocultural vitality in the present. Peru provided the clearest and in some ways the most honest example of the difficulties involved in the representational strategy of appealing to elite interests in pre-Columbian cultures in order to convey a populist message of progress toward liberal democracy and prosperity. The official theme of Peru’s small pavilion was “A Millennial Presence,” and the intention was to show that “the splendors of the pre-Columbian past [are] a cultural contribution to modern civilization” (SEEUS 1992b:103). The primary attraction of the pavilion was an exhibition of artifacts from the Mochica period tomb of the “Lord of Sipan.” Also on display and of considerable interest to visitors were a

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collection of erotic ceramic figures from the same period and other objects dating from the fourth to tenth centuries. The pavilion’s film was in the standard Expo montage style and featured smiling and industrious peasants and workers and scenes from the family life of elites. What was most interesting about it, however, was how its tempo of onward and upward boosterism was continually interrupted by various slogans imbued with what seemed to be self-doubt, frustration, and insecurity: “Vale un Perú?” (“What is Peru worth?” or, perhaps, “Is Peru worth it?”); “Un Perú posible?” (“A possible Peru?”); and “Ay, hermanos, hay mucho que hacer” (“Ah, brothers, there is a lot to do”). The official acts sponsored by the Pavilion of Peru did nothing to counter this impression of a country in crisis. On the contrary, the Expo coincided with the high point of protest against president Alberto Fujimori’s autogolpe (self-coup); and on several occasions, Spanish officials, including Commissioner General Cassinello, criticized “violence against the law” and the suspension of democratic processes in the country (DD-ex 26 Apr 1992:5). With appropriate variations, the basic structure of the Peruvian pavilion was replicated many times in the Plaza of the Americas. The pavilion of Peru’s rather hostile and unfriendly Andean neighbor, Ecuador, for example, centered on an exhibit of pre-Columbian figures and 2000-year-old ceramic work. But it also included the monstrance of the Cathedral of Quito from the colonial period; contemporary paintings by Guayasamin; and various images of smiling indigenous people from the highlands and lowlands, of cities animated by the spirit of mestisaje (mixing) and hybridity, and of rural gentry on horseback. Guatemala presented a chronology of ancient Mayan cultural, political, and economic achievements, along with splendid jade works and a version of the Popul Vuh. El Salvador featured the god of rain, Xipe-Totec, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Like Peru, each of these countries only obliquely alluded to the contemporary armed struggles and other travails through which they had recently passed or were still passing. But they did add to the shopping mall atmosphere of the Plaza of the Americas by dedicating a considerable portion of their pavilions to stores selling indigenous handicrafts. In light of the wars and massacres afflicting Central America, it made one wonder if the Mayans who had produced much of the pottery and weaving were still alive. Also like Peru, many other Latin American countries did not entirely succeed in preserving their images from the bad publicity of the news of the day. The Pavilion of Colombia was one of the most popular of the Plaza of the Americas, not because of its celebration of Colombia’s “diverse human races” but, rather, because it offered excellent free coffee in a large cafe. But not even the visit of the great Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who is immensely popular in Spain, overshadowed the scandal that ensued when Pilar de la Mora, the Colombian pavilion’s subdirector (who also happened to be the wife of its commissioner), resisted being searched by Expo security agents (DD-ex 15 May 1992:5). It was widely, although probably wrongly, rumored

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that she had done so because she was carrying drugs, and when she and her husband angrily resigned from their positions a few days later, this protest was taken as confirmation of the supposed fact. So strong was the association of Colombia with the drug trade that when one of my Sevillano friends first saw the pavilion’s theme, “Con Mucho Gusto” (“With Great Pleasure”), emblazoned on a wall, his instant response was, “Sí, Con Muchas Drogas” (“Yes, With a Lot of Drugs”). Bolivia was the subject of one of the more interesting minor scandals involving Latin American countries, because it proved to be the only country prepared to mount a serious attempt to overcome a negative stereotype in a way that aimed to contribute something concrete to the Expo’s aim of fostering cross-cultural tolerance and international understanding. Most of the Bolivian pavilion was devoted to the standard mix of pre-Columbian artifacts (from Tiahuanco) and images of contemporary multiethnic diversity. However, what drew negative attention to the pavilion was its insistence on the theme “La Coca No Es Cocaína” (“Coca Is Not Cocaine”) and its determined efforts to stress the legal commercial uses of coca and to use the Expo as a platform to market the product more broadly. These efforts met with the cold disapproval of Expo and Spanish authorities, who vetoed plans to give each visitor to the pavilion a coca leaf and who seized eight kilos of leaves that were shipped to the Expo for this purpose (DD-ex 16 May 1992:3; EP 17 Apr 1992:1). In response, President Paz Zamora of Bolivia enlisted the aid of the World Health Organization to affirm the beneficial effects of coca in the treatment of a number of maladies (DD-ex 7 May 1992:6). A diplomatic breach between Spain and Bolivia was avoided when Queen Sofía graciously chose to sip a coca infusion on her visit to the pavilion and thus royally vindicated Bolivian national honor. Although Bolivia had not exactly won the dispute, the officials of the pavilion took satisfaction from the belief that they had made their points (DD-ex 7 Aug 1992:4). Even though it was at best an “also-ran” in terms of the Expo as a whole, the Pavilion of Brazil was the biggest popular success in the Plaza of the Americas. Most critics attacked it, but the public nonetheless enjoyed the pavilion for the kitsch and garishness of its exhibits, which featured, among other things, heavily rouged baroque angels suspended from the ceiling; mannequins in the garb of Carnival kings and queens; oversized Candomble fetishes; a winding trail through a multicolored cardboard and papier-mâché rain forest; and an aquarium of piranhas. For crowd appeal, though, nothing matched the samba musicians and scantily clad dancers who paraded through the Plaza of the Americas every hour, enticing visitors to the Brazilian pavilion like erotic Pied Pipers. Yet alluring as this was, much of the press and public thought it rather strange that South America’s giant had opted for Gargantuan frivolity at the Expo. Although the activities during Brazil’s day of honor gave further testimony to the country’s genius for partying, in general the official observations

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organized by Latin American countries attracted relatively little attention. Rather, it was the long-planned joint visit of twenty-one heads of state after the Ibero-American summit conference in Madrid in late July that was expected to put a Latin American stamp on the whole Expo. Unfortunately, if this opportunity to assert a strong, collective Latin American identity was not entirely lost, it was certainly not exploited to the fullest advantage. In considerable measure, this was because the summit participants in Madrid never quite discovered firm ground on which to stand together. Although some leaders proclaimed that the Ibero-American nations had been taken over by “a fever for unity,” the joint and individual statements issued by the heads of state suggested instead a bit of a chill.2 These statements contained calls for more representative democracy, economic liberalization, relief from foreign debt, and condemnation of the United States for drug arrests outside its borders. The efforts of the Andean Pact and Mercosur countries to achieve greater economic cooperation were also highly lauded. But the heads of state were reluctant to anticipate or discuss any transnational arrangements approaching the levels of integration of the European Community, except in the vaguest terms of future promise and potential. As the president of Uruguay put it, for the present “our community is only cultural.” Moreover, when Felipe González adopted the role of a teacher of democracy and lectured his colleagues (particularly Castro and, indirectly, the absent Fujimori of Peru) that neither intolerance nor authoritarianism nor recourse to arms was an acceptable substitute for democratic politics, his unvoiced assumption of the superior accomplishments of Spanish liberalism seemed to generate as much irritation as commitment. Anonymous senior Latin American officials responded that Spain was strong on advice and rhetoric but short on aid. In their view, Spanish interests in Europe and Latin America were contradictory, and “more concrete results” were needed from Madrid (ABC-ex 26 Jul 1992:61; DD 22 Jul 1992:1). As a result of this bickering, the press characterized the summit as “decaffeinated” and noted that it had produced no concrete accomplishments and had failed to take advantage of the “historic opportunity” of the fifth centenary (DD 23 Jul 1992:6; DD 25 Jul 1992:19–20). If the summit in Madrid was lackluster, the visit of the Ibero-American heads to the Expo was even more anticlimactic. Although it had long been heralded as one of the great events of 1992 on the island of La Cartuja, when the heads of state finally arrived for their visit in Seville after a stop in Barcelona for the opening of the Olympics, they had little or nothing noteworthy left to say, and some of them expressed a desire to get home as soon as possible to deal with the urgent problems that awaited them. The morning of their visit to the Expo was taken up with ceremonies of protocol in the monastery and royal pavilion. Next, the group was ushered on a nonstop tour of the Expo via the elevated monorail. Each leader then paid a visit to his own country’s pavilion, and the group reassembled in the Pavilion of Spain for an afternoon banquet hosted

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by King Juan Carlos and Felipe González. That more or less concluded the formal activities, and the heads of state began to depart. In contrast to the visits of European luminaries such as François Mitterand and Lech Walesa, the “historic visit” of the Latin American heads of state to the Expo wound up being a rushed affair during which most of the actors appeared to be merely going through the motions (DD 26 Jul 1992:4; DD-ex 27 Jul 1992:3–4). Earlier during the Expo, González had boldly declared that the Latin American countries were “closer strategically and culturally to Europe than any other nation [sic]” (DD-ex 23 Apr 1992:23). Yet there was little about Latin American participation in the Expo or the Ibero-American summit to make this claim seem to be anything other than an expression of Spanish ambitions to play a mediating and tutelary role between the European Community and its still-struggling former colonies. At the Expo site, even though Latin America occupied a huge physical, imaginative, thematic, and commemorative space that was exceeded only by the space allocated to Europe and Spain itself, neither the vast Latin American region as an entity nor any of its individual countries, with the possible exceptions of Mexico and (perhaps, in its odd way) Brazil, managed to attain a fully autonomous, respected, and admired cultural and political presence there. Rather, as the Expo seemed to make clear, the guiding Europeanist and cosmopolitan principle of “unity in diversity” could not yet be applied to Latin America, where phrases such as “unity in misery” and “violence in diversity” seemed more grimly apt. Thus, if Latin America was “closer to Europe,” it was close in the way that poor cousins, orphaned nieces, and other desperate dependent relations are close to the fat uncles and demanding patriarchs who guard family patrimonies in Latin American novels. Unsurprisingly, matters stood quite differently with Japan, whose presence loomed as large as a continent on the island world. Japan’s barn-like pavilion was said to be the largest prefabricated wooden structure in the world and was consistently ranked among the top five or so attractions at the Expo. Yet the Japanese presence was not limited to its national pavilion. More than the identity of any other country at the Expo, the identity of Japan was closely tied to its transnational corporations. Sony’s screens were a ubiquitous presence on the site, and Fujitsu’s pavilion was the only corporate pavilion to rival the best national pavilions in popularity. Indeed, the Pavilion of Japan and the Pavilion of Fujitsu showed ideal complementarity. While the former stressed Japanese traditional culture and fine arts, the latter was a model of contemporary technopopulist cosmopolitanism. Fujitsu’s main attraction, an IMAX film entitled Echoes of the Sun, featured spectacular microphotography of photosynthesis, muscle movements, and other energy transformations that are necessary for life. Rather than celebrating a single day of honor, Japan enjoyed almost a week of honor in mid-July, because its national day of honor was immediately followed by Sony’s special events. Kabuki companies, koto players, drummers, flutists, and experts in the martial arts performed during this period. Hundreds

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of Japanese politicians and business leaders who had traveled in some 250 groups from the Olympics to the Expo listened as Prince Naruhito formally announced plans for a universal exposition to take place in the year 2005 in the prefecture of Aichi (ABC-ex 21 Jul 1992:42–43). All in all, the presence of Japan at the Expo was a triumph because it conveyed to the public and the press that Japan had developed its own distinctive Asian form of technocorporate cosmopolitan liberalism—a form that could rival the European one—and yet had also demonstrated the vitality of its unique elite cultural traditions. This paradoxical achievement was matched by only a few other participants in the Expo, such as France, Italy, and Spain. Like the proverbial “little engine that could,” Japan proved that it was the little archipelago that could forge its own path to the “new world of the future.” In contrast, China seemed to be the awakening dragon that might do so, but only on its own terms. The relatively small, squat, and drab Chinese pavilion was reminiscent of socialist realism. Inside, it displayed antique wonders of science and art, including a squad of exhumed terra cotta soldiers, a giant astrolabe, an ingenious water compass, and an ornate cannon. In addition, however, it contained exhibits on ethnic pluralism, industrial modernization, aeronautics, missiles, and satellites. During China’s day of honor, these exhibits provided the context for a speech by the vice-premier, who affirmed that his country was more open to the exterior world every day and declared that China was prepared “to lead the way to Third World development.” To these assertions, Commissioner General Cassinello diplomatically responded in standard Western tutelary fashion that “the presence of China in the Expo has the value of a symbol” because the country “is en route to integrating itself with a world of globally accepted values without abandoning its identity” (ABC-ex 16 Jul 1992:42; DD-ex 16 Jul 1992:17). At the Expo, the press and public tended to cast the former Soviet Union in the role of the world’s incredible shrinking giant. In response to onrushing political events, what had originally been designed as the Pavilion of the USSR was hastily converted to the Pavilion of the Commonwealth of Independent States. However, the pavilion’s contents were overwhelmingly Russian. Its cavernous, shadowy interior was divided into a series of descending terraces of twenty-two centimeters or so in height. Its general theme was rather charmingly defined as “Man Discovers the World in Order to Be Happy.” Exhibits featured the exploration of Siberia; Russian encounters with the peoples of northern Asia; the requirements for a space voyage to Mars; a puzzling computer display called “Man Discovers the Cosmos within Himself ”; and photos of familiar and anonymous Russians. As if to make clear the gap between the present and the recent past, there were many religious icons on view, as well as a small church containing a saint’s shrine. Although the Russian exhibits suffered from a general lack of clear organization or purpose, they were regarded as better than what might be expected

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in light of the turmoil inside the former USSR, even if, as was frequently noted, they avoided direct reference to perestroika, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and subsequent Russian efforts at political and economic liberalization. The commissioner of the pavilion explained this reticence by archly declaring, “Perestroika means a return to our roots, and it is these roots and progress that we are showing” (DD-ex 22 Apr 1992:8). However, during the observation of Russia’s day of honor, various officials made statements aimed to convince the audience that Russia was “moving in the direction of Europe.” One speaker regretted that President Boris Yeltsin could not be present to personally say that “peaceful coexistence is possible in diversity.” Vice–Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranim affirmed that “Russia has renounced the class struggle and is returning to Christian morality” (DD-ex 13 May 1992:5). Such statements were generally interpreted as reflecting good intentions but great ideological uncertainty and political anxiety about the future. Concerning the rest of the countries participating in the Expo, those which are usually regarded as marginal and exotic from the perspective of Europeanist cosmopolitan liberalism generally maintained this status at the Expo. But at least some recognition was conceded to the authority of traditions, most notably Islamic ones, that construed cosmopolitanism in quite different ways. Partly for this reason and partly because of the sheer mystique of the power of oil, Saudi Arabia’s pavilion drew considerable attention from the Expo’s press and public. The facade of the pavilion was constructed of tiles, adobe, and bricks. Material from hundreds of carpets and tents covered its roof and gave the whole pavilion the appearance of a movable desert palace. The largest exhibition space was reserved for depicting the country’s central place in Islam and featured models of the holy cities and mosques of Medina and Mecca, as well as a video of Muslims who came from all over the world to participate in the hajj. Other Middle Eastern countries laid claim to a kind of cosmopolitanism by stressing their roles as heirs and preservers of the traditions of great civilizations of the past. Syria focused on the contributions to Eurasian culture springing from the Fertile Crescent. Egypt focused on the obvious, although some visitors complained that its pavilion suffered from a shocking shortage of mummies. In addition, the Arab League represented itself as a sort of European community in embryo and sponsored a series of programs under the theme of “forty-seven years of joint Arab action for development, peace, and dialogue” (SEEUS 1992b:109). Kuwait presented the most pointedly political pavilion of the Expo through its exhibits displaying the effects of the Iraqi invasion and the Gulf War on its natural and human environments. Israel also had a transparently political agenda in mind but emphasized its peace-loving character. Indeed, Israel defined its pavilion, which mirrored the desert themes of other countries of the region, as a “tent of peace.” The modest exhibits of the “tent” stressed democracy, diaspora, and the role of Jerusalem as a cosmopolitan capital for three

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faiths. Predictably, neighboring Arab countries complained that the Israelis protested their desire for peace a bit too much (DD-ex 12 May 1992:23). Other notable pavilions included Morocco’s pavilion, whose beautifully handcrafted building of glass, carved wood, mosaic tiles, and stones reminded some critics of a bus station but was popular with the public and well suited to its purpose of promoting new bridges, both figurative and littoral (across the straits of Gibraltar, it was hoped), between northern Africa and Europe. Australia’s pavilion was as large as and more colorful than Canada’s pavilion, but its main drawing card, the Argyll diamond, was less exciting than Canada’s movie. South Korea was the most aggressive of the still-rising Asian economic tigers, but its pavilion appealed mainly to visitors with an interest in computerized horoscopes. Thailand’s, Indonesia’s, and Pakistan’s pavilions were essentially stores or restaurants, and both Thailand and Indonesia staged wonderful dance performances that attracted many tourists. India’s pavilion had the form of a colorful peacock tail, but the billion people of the world’s largest democracy were represented by fading tourist posters and images of ethnic diversity that would have been less than impressive even on the walls of a New Delhi travel agency. The least visible and least visited pavilions of the Expo were located in the outback beyond Australia and stuck in the Plaza of Africa, a large building designed, constructed, and largely paid for by Spain. If the Plaza of the Americas resembled a large suburban shopping center, the Plaza of Africa was closer to a struggling strip mall. The plaza housed the pavilions of two dozen or so African countries, including Angola, Cape Verde, the Congo Republic, GuineaBissau, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zimbabwe. The plaza’s saving grace was a great (but temporary) exhibition of classical Benin and Yoruba bronzes entitled “Treasures of Nigeria.” Otherwise, the pavilions of most African countries were either simply shops selling indifferent tourist art or shoddy display areas for the promotion of export products such as chemicals, peanuts, and cotton. The worst pavilions contained little more than a few photographs of wildlife, some cans of tuna, and jars of honey. Although many African countries and cultures were present at the Expo, that did not prevent their virtual symbolic annihilation. In sum, because some participating countries were less successful than others in crafting impressive or popular self-portraits and because external realities sometimes impinged on their efforts at self-promotion, the Expo’s version of which of the countries could be expected to assume leading roles in the creation of a new world order for the second millennium was in some respects quite familiar but also quite clearly skewed in particular directions that tended to favor Europe. Europe, first and foremost, but also countries such as Japan and Canada presented themselves as liberal and cosmopolitan counterweights to the hegemony of a self-obsessed, parochial, vulgar, and overconfident United States, while it seemed that Russia, China, India, the Islamic countries,

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and Africa could be discounted as real contenders for leadership or even full participation in the world, at least for the present. Most of the countries participating in the Expo chose to present themselves as the heirs and often the contemporary guardians of cultural legacies inherited from the past; and at the same time, they tried to suggest that their present ethnic diversity and cultural vitality had prepared them to secure happiness for their people and to contribute to the causes of international cooperation, peace, and progress. However, it was also the case that most non-European countries were far more successful in conveying the glories of their pasts than of their presents. This had the effect of putting whatever pretenses they might have to contemporary regional or world leadership in doubt, and it made it appear that the extension of Eurocentric cosmopolitan liberalism (or some universalized variant or elaboration of it) to the rest of the world ultimately represented the best hope for the future of all humankind.

16. The Many Spains The abundant resources that Spain devoted not just to its national pavilion but also to its seventeen free-standing regional pavilions made the host country the inevitable winner of the Expo’s competition for prestige. The sheer scale of Spain’s collective participation in the event enabled the organizers of its separate pavilions and exhibits to elaborate the two basic strategies of selfrepresentation that had been adopted by other countries of western Europe. Like France and Italy, Spain again and again presented its artistic and other “discoveries” as essential contributions to a larger European and emergent global civilization; but like Belgium and Switzerland, Spain also presented itself as a microcosm of European pluralism, an entity composed of many particular ethnic and regional cultures, each with its own distinctive character. In addition, the Spanish pavilions placed more emphasis on ties to Latin America and on the global influence of Iberian and European culture than did the pavilions of other European countries. Ultimately, the elaboration of these strategies permitted Spain to present itself as Europe’s Europe—the model of a new kind of complex, postnationalist, liberal polity that is cosmopolitan in its ties, commitments, and openness to its neighbors and the rest of the world and is free, internally diverse, and tolerant. Rather surprisingly in light of the great ambitions reflected in these strategies of representation, the national and local press offered relatively little direct commentary on the cultural politics of the Spanish pavilions. Although journalists expressed doubts about the huge expense and grandiosity of the

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Expo as a whole, they rarely questioned the appropriateness or accuracy of the specific representations of Spanish national and regional identity. Apart from the attention given to the conflict between the Expo and Seville and an occasional editorial observation that Andalusian and Spanish realities did not entirely match the Expo’s sanitized and smooth images, there appeared to be a widespread tacit agreement not to direct much attention to the representations and postures that were part and parcel of Spain’s domestic and international situation. In the absence of this kind of critical commentary, the Spanish national and regional pavilions were largely judged in accordance with the same narrow elite and technopopular criteria that were used to judge the pavilions of other participating countries. If nothing else, this media silence about the larger implications of how Spain projected its identity at the Expo was testimony both to the emergent strength of Eurocentric cosmopolitan liberalism as a cultural and political formation and to the lack of clearly articulated public alternatives to it. Even so, the cultural politics surrounding the Spanish pavilions could not be entirely ignored, because the many squabbles that broke out over one aspect or another of the national and regional pavilions’ exhibits, ceremonies, and sponsored programs usually reflected more deep-seated problems in the “Spain of the autonomies.” As discussed earlier, one of the great fears of the Expo’s organizers had been that one or more regional governments (the most likely candidates being the Basque country and Cantabria) would refuse to participate in the event. Once it had been finally settled that all of the regions of Spain would be present at the Expo, a somewhat different set of concerns took over. Some officials of the Expo and of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) worried that too many regions would be inclined to project an “excessively folkloristic” self-image that would undermine the event’s mission of presenting Spain as a fully modern and progressive country. Others wished to discourage regional politicians from using the Expo as a platform for launching what amounted to their own foreign policy initiatives. This seemed especially likely to occur with either Galicia, which already had sent nearly two dozen trade and cultural missions abroad, or with Catalonia, which had established a virtual embassy in Brussels and had “opened [itself] to the world” in order to protect and expand its autonomy within Spain (see García 1995:127). Worries were also expressed about the possibility that some representatives from poorer regions would use the Expo to further protest what they perceived as their lack of full self-government and the unequal and unfair distribution of state and European Community development funds, including, of course, some of the funds used to modernize Andalusian roads and infrastructure for the Expo.1 Finally, there was concern over possible terrorist attacks by ETA or other groups. In one way or another, then, what bothered the Expo’s organizers was the prospect of one or more regions departing too much from the general Expo plan, whose basic goal was to project an image of Spain as composed of diverse but equal regions freely and harmoniously participating in the development of

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a confederal state and the “new Europe.” Given the strength of ethnonationalist sentiments in some regions and the persistent social and economic problems that plagued others, the fear that at least one or two regions would appear to be distressingly divisive and discontented, if not downright rebellious, was quite plausible and raised the specter of the dark side of cultural difference—Spain as a potential Yugoslavia. Yet there was no denying that the Spain of the regions was a country of stark political and economic inequalities. Well-publicized statistics were eloquent on the subject. For example, in 1991, the three relatively small though populous regions of Catalonia, Madrid, and the Balearic Islands enjoyed per capita incomes above the European average and accounted for 40 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the four poorest and relatively large regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, Castilla–La Mancha, and Galicia had per capita incomes that were less than 75 percent of the European average, and they accounted for less than 25 percent of the national GDP (figures derived from Zaldívar and Castells 1992:151–53). But even though the existence of such regional, class, and other inequalities and the discontents deriving from them were not entirely muted at the Expo, the organizers and political overseers of the event ultimately proved remarkably successful in constructing a portrait of Spain that made the country seem more homogeneous and contented with the status quo than it actually was. Even allowing for the fact that the press was rather uncritical about Spanish self-representations, this was no mean achievement. Indeed, by examining how the Spanish pavilions presented regional identities in positive, if rather blandly consensual, ways in spite of the political and economic tensions that usually remained just off stage, we can better understand not only why Spain triumphed in the Expo’s cultural Olympics but also what kinds of pressures and constraints the emergent hegemonic formation of cosmopolitan liberalism had begun to exert on the normally contentious, highly factionalized, and partisan day-to-day practical politics of Spanish regionalism in the early 1990s. When viewed from across the Lake of Spain, the semicircle of uniformly sized and spaced regional pavilions offered impressive visual confirmation of the key Europeanist message of “unity in diversity.” At one end of the semicircle, the pavilions of the “historic nationalities” of Catalonia, the Basque country, and Galicia occupied places of honor; and at the other end, near the Barqueta gate that linked the Expo to the old center of Seville, was the Pavilion of Andalusia, the host region, anchoring the line. The imposing Spanish national pavilion, or Pavilion of Spain, was situated on the opposite side of the lake and seemed to stretch along the whole shore. As Manuel Olivencia had observed, the placement and architecture of the various Spanish pavilions were designed to “physically express the unity of Spain and at the same time to reflect the plurality of its autonomous communities and their cultures” (ABC 3 Apr 1989:14). But there was perhaps a bit more involved in the spatial symbolism of the Spanish pavilions than Olivencia had indicated. The Spanish national pavilion

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stood in a mediating position between the pavilions of the Spanish regions on one side of the lake and the pavilions of La Avenida de Europa on the other, while the Latin American pavilions within the Plaza of the Americas also stood near the Spanish regional pavilions. The symbolic significance of these arrangements seemed to invite visitors to question just how important or unimportant national borders and subnational boundaries are in the contemporary world. Much the same was true of the exhibits and contents of the Spanish national pavilion, which seemed designed more to undermine than to define notions of a bounded, cohesive national culture. Indeed, for a long while it appeared that almost the only thing that the various people involved in the planning and administration of the pavilion could agree on was that “because of Spanish diversity, we are not going to be able to give a very nationalist message but will instead give a European and universal one,” as Angel Luis Gonzalo Pérez, the commissioner of the Pavilion of Spain, had declared in an early interview (ABC 8 Jul 1989:8). Gonzalo, a telecommunications engineer, had definite ideas about the image of Spain that he wanted the national pavilion to project. In addition to being commissioner of this pavilion, he laid claim to being commissioner of the entire “national section” of the Expo, with some authority over the regional pavilions as well. According to Gonzalo, it was important for Spain to stress its modern scientific and technical advances to “transmit the central message” that “Spain is not a different country [from the rest of Europe] and that Spain participates in the great international projects” (Cambio 16 “Special Edition” 27 Apr 1992:17). As the planning process unfolded, however, Gonzalo was not able to exercise absolute control over the contents of either the national or the regional pavilions. Rather, he had to win approval for plans for the Spanish pavilion from a large board of advisers after consultations with twenty architects and at least two hundred other assorted experts and interested parties, many of whom showed an obvious lack of enthusiasm for the ideas of the commissioner (EC 23 Sep 1989:8). Moreover, although they readily admitted that they had no real authority over the Spanish pavilion, staff members working for Olivencia openly and staunchly opposed “futuristic” schemes that neglected Spanish historical contributions to “universal humanistic culture” (EC 30 Oct 1989:12). Gonzalo was also soon at loggerheads with Julio Cano Lasso, the architect of the national pavilion, whom he accused of wanting to construct a pavilion “for more elite people, as if it were a hall in El Prado.” Cano Lasso responded that he did not want to see “a technological version of a feria booth [a booth for a local fair]” (EPI 8 Jul 1991:8). In the face of this broad opposition, Gonzalo finally had to shift his position. He eventually accepted a proposal for the pavilion that stressed high art and historical culture and relegated contemporary Spanish technoscientific developments to a relatively minor position. Although Cano Lasso’s design for the Pavilion of Spain was supposed to reflect a country that was “dynamic, pluralistic, and advanced” (SEGA

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1993:184), the design obviously drew primary inspiration from the classical Mediterranean tradition; and the building’s sharp lines, geometric shapes, and cool white surfaces of marble and mortar were clearly more high-modernist than postmodernist in spirit. One end of the structure was dominated by a huge white cube, while the other end featured a grayish, shining dome. In between was a three-story tier of halls, exhibit areas, restaurants, patios, ramps, and entryways that tied the whole structure together. The interior of the giant cube housed an exhibit entitled “Treasures of Spain.” This collection consisted of forty-seven art works by Berrugete, Dali, Gris, Miro, Murillo, Picasso, Ribera, and others, and it included El Greco’s Baptism of Christ, Velázquez’s portrait of the mounted Conde-Duque of Olivares, and Goya’s La Maja Desnuda. The exhibit was intended to provide irrefutable evidence of Spain’s great contributions to European culture.2 The press and the public almost unanimously agreed that it did, even if the experience of encountering all these masterpieces lined up in rows and isolated from any other context was a bit sterile and overbearing. Less impressive was the pavilion’s other art exhibit, which was entitled “Passages of Spain” and was clearly devised to appeal to elite contemporary tastes. Although the exhibit featured some major pieces by Tapies, Saura, and Barcello and although, as critic Javier Rubio wrote, “eighty percent of the artists deserve[d] to be represented,” the exhibit suffered from “not one bad surprise but many,” largely because the order in which the works were presented made no discernible sense thematically, stylistically, chronologically, or otherwise. As Rubio also sharply observed, “Good works do not necessarily make a good exhibition” (ABC “Artes” 8 May 1992:34). Fortunately, “Passages of Spain” detracted little from the prestige of the pavilion as a whole, because the exhibit’s entrance was hard to find and it was sparsely visited. In contrast, long lines were common at the entrance to “Caminos de España” (“Roads of Spain”), the major popular exhibit of the national pavilion. This show consisted of six halls celebrating the geographical, historical, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity of the country. In the first hall, visitors encountered representations of the “Dry Spain,” the “Wet Spain,” and the like, along with images of many of the endless varieties of Spanish fiestas, ranging from riotous carnivals of strutting giants and big heads to stark and austere corridas de toros (“bullfights”). After this colorful, folkloric introduction to the regions and cultures of Spain, visitors walked down a long tunnel to begin their encounter with Iberian history in the painted prehistoric caverns of Altamira. Throughout the second hall, the emphasis was on the cultural mestisaje and convivencia (mixing and peaceful coexistence) of ancient Spaniards, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Jews, and Catholics and on the role that diversity played in culturally and politically preparing for the great outward expansion of the peoples of the peninsula during “The Age of Discoveries.” Interestingly, the

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well-armed Moorish and Christian figures depicted in the hall never seemed to have invaded or conquered anyone; instead, they had apparently simply “arrived” in a peaceful and prosperous land made even more peaceful and prosperous by their presence (Cambio 16 “Special Edition” 27 Apr 1992:17). Evidently all that these warriors had been after was the opportunity to join in the philosophical chats of the real-life versions of three “animatronic” students, who represented the famous School of Translators of Toledo in the exhibit. The third hall was devoted to the “Impacts of the Discovery.” In this exhibit, the discovery was depicted as a mutually beneficial and immensely fruitful encounter of European and American civilizations—an encounter that was remarkably free of bloodshed and social upheaval. Electronic versions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza guided visitors in the fourth hall, whose theme was Spanish language and literature. The fifth hall introduced visitors to contemporary Spain by means of a giant model of a personal computer whose keyboard prominently featured the letter “ñ,” a symbol over which considerable dispute was surging at the time, with defenders of Spanish linguistic integrity trying to vanquish Eurospeak bureaucrats in Brussels. The hall was also blessed with nearly a hundred sources of computer-generated, video, and projected images of countless thousands of smiling Spanish people and their most up-todate machinery and technology. The sixth hall was dedicated to conveying a remarkably optimistic vision of “El Futuro del Presente” (“The Future of the Present”) and also to an odd exercise in technopopulist nostalgia entitled “El Futuro de Ayer” (“The Future of Yesterday”). The latter exhibit focused on the discoveries and often-errant predictions of the past that had shaped people’s ideas about what the future would hold in store for their descendants. After contemplating these two exhibits, cynics may have been tempted to conclude that predicting the future is a precarious and rather pointless enterprise. However, the intended point seems to have been that Spain has its own distinctive, still vital, and constantly evolving “traditions of modernity.” The great dome sheltered “Vientos de España” (“Winds of Spain”), the last of the national pavilion’s major shows. Every eleven minutes, 162 visitors buckled the belts that kept them from being ejected from their rolling and tossing seats as they were launched on a vertiginous Moviemax tour of Spain and carried by various means of conveyance, ranging from hang gliders and bicycles to horse carriages and hot-air balloons. Mountain peaks and Mediterranean waves were skimmed, and the gardens of the Alhambra, Cathedral of Santiago, and windmills of La Mancha were visually strafed. The simulated experience of being blown around Spain seemed to excite great pleasure in all visitors not prone to motion sickness. Indeed, “Vientos de España” was perhaps the most popular single attraction of the Expo. The staged performances and other events sponsored by the Spanish pavilion were nearly as various as the contents of the pavilion’s exhibits. Classical concerts, popular music reviews, zarzuela anthologies, and dramas such as

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Alberti’s La Gallarda were all on the schedule. In addition, every week, renowned chefs from different regions of the country offered their own spectacular fare in the pavilion’s restaurant. But what most set the programs of the Spanish pavilion apart from those of other pavilions was a cycle of conferences and speeches on three key topics: “The Gaze of the Other: Foreign Images of Spain,” “The Spanish Language,” and “Toward a Democratic World Society.” Each of these themes was addressed by a number of cultural and political luminaries, including Hans Kung, Octavio Paz, and Helmut Schmidt. Taken as a whole, these conferences helped compensate for the loss of intellectual luster in the Expo, which had occurred when Olivencia was dismissed from his role as commissioner general and his plans for an extensive series of high-brow cultural forums were suspended. Unfortunately, the sponsored programs of the Spanish pavilion were as expensive as they were impressive, and the pavilion had already begun to overrun its budget early in the summer of 1992 (DD-ex 14 Aug 1992:3). This created a serious barrier to the elaborate plans for celebrating Spain’s day of honor in October. Pavilion officials tried to remedy the situation by reducing telephone bills and air-conditioning costs and cutting other operating expenses. They also asked for more money from the government. This was all to no avail. The final decision was to fold the observations of Spain’s special day into the Expo’s closing ceremonies (see chapter 21). Although the forced improvisation represented an embarrassing failure for pavilion officials, it was barely noted by the press or visitors and did no harm to Spain’s public image at the Expo. As a matter of fact, the conflation of national identities and goals with the broader global perspectives and values embodied in the Expo as a collective transnational project was perfectly consistent with the general strategies of representation pursued by Spain. The Spanish national pavilion stressed the host country’s most glorious artistic contributions to European and global culture, the deep multicultural roots of Iberian civilization, the spread of this complex civilization to the Americas, and the continual involvement of its peoples and cultures in general projects of political, economic, and technological modernization. All of these strategies of representation tended to undermine notions of a unitary, bounded national culture and to present the state less as an entity or singular agent than as a complex, historically constituted and evolving organization for orchestrating diversity and heterogeneous interests. Similarly, the final merger of the Expo’s internationally focused closing ceremonies with Spain’s day of honor seemed to herald the emergence of a truly plurinational state within the cosmopolitan polity of the European Union and an increasingly interdependent international community. Because of the national pavilion’s success in communicating the complexity of Spain’s historical and contemporary identities via many media and symbolic registers, its only near-competitors in the Expo’s contest for press and public renown were Japan and perhaps France and Italy. However, the sheer

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presence of the seventeen regional pavilions on the far side of the Lake of Spain represented one of the Expo’s most impressive and unavoidable sights and was more than enough to trump Spain’s potential rivals in the cultural Olympics of prestige. This was probably just as well because the regional pavilions were ultimately best judged in relation to one another, rather than in relation to the national pavilion or the pavilions of participating countries. Moreover, relatively few foreign tourists actually set foot in the regional pavilions, while the great majority of Spanish visitors seemed to feel obliged to visit at least the pavilion of their own region and perhaps of one or more others as well. As a result, the regional dimension of the Spanish presence at the Expo wound up being a much more parochial affair than the event’s organizers had wished. In any case, foreign visitors tended to view the regional pavilions as rather boring minor variations on one another, while Spaniards were better prepared to appreciate the significance of the differences among the pavilions. As was generally the case with the regional pavilions, cultural and political moderation prevailed even in the troubled Basque country’s contributions to the Expo. The compromises that had guaranteed the Basques first place in the line of regional pavilions and the honor of celebrating the Expo’s first day of honor set the tone for the pavilion as a whole. Its exterior was decorated with the red, white, and green of the Basque flag, and its exhibit spaces were mostly devoted to exploring the theme of “America and the Basques” in ways that highlighted the movement of people and goods back and forth across the Atlantic. A short film presented a charming view of the Basque country through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl on a family vacation. A video wall intermixed images of the seafaring past and the industrial present and future. Another highlight of the pavilion was a large canvas by Eduardo Chillida, which was entitled Peace Now and Forever. Overall, the pavilion explicitly declared that the Basque country was a society with millenarian roots but open to the world, and it presented Basque cultural difference in the most domesticated manner that was imaginable. Moderation was also the keynote of the ceremonies observing the Basque day of honor. José Antonio Ardanza, the Basque lehendakari (head of the autonomous government), admitted that “Euskadi is more known for its problems at the moment than for its capacity for work and industry and risk and adventure.” He then declared, “We are here because our old and long tradition motivates and impels us toward the future. . . . The Expo is going to permit the Basque people to show ourselves to the world, with our present will toward peace, tolerance, and progress.” Another Basque official added, “Terrorism is a passing image, and the Basque people existed before terrorism and will continue existing after it,” and he suggested that “the international image of terrorism has been superimposed on a people that want peace in relation to other cultures.”3 Commissioner General Emilio Cassinello responded, “The Spain of the Expo is the Spain of the Autonomies, of tolerance, and coexistence. . . . It is

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right that everyone knows that we are different not only from others but from we ourselves” (DD-ex 22 Apr 1992:1, 3). Nevertheless, in a press conference later in the day, the lehendakari and Spain’s minister of the interior, José Corcuera, refused to comment directly on ETA actions or street violence in the Basque country and, instead, piously reiterated their desire for “a future full of progress and free of violence.” As a result, the next morning’s headline summarized both their attitude and the theme of Basque participation in the Expo more generally as “Forget the Terror” (ABC-ex 22 Apr 1992:50). But as everyone well understood, the most likely reason that the Expo and the other key events of 1992 had been spared from ETA attacks was not because real progress had been made toward peace. Rather, it was because the extensive antiterrorist campaign launched by the Spanish state (in cooperation with France) against ETA early in February 1992 had temporarily reduced ETA’s capacity to act. Operating within a far less violent and polarized regional political climate, the organizers of the Pavilion of Catalonia could risk being bolder in their assertion of ethnonational identity. But compromise and the mediation of cultural difference were the basic order of the day here as well, particularly in light of the need to cooperate with the government in Madrid on myriad matters involving the summer Olympics. As discussed earlier, even though Catalonia’s day of honor followed on the heels of the Basque celebrations, Jordi Pujol, the conservative president of the Generalitat, called not for peace between the regions and Spain but, instead, for each region to become more economically competitive. He also insisted on Catalonia’s specific demands for more legal and financial autonomy (DD-ex 23 Apr 1992:5) regardless of how matters stood with the other regions. Pujol’s invocation of Catalonia as one of Spain’s and Europe’s most advanced and culturally sophisticated regions was followed by folkloric performances of the sardana (the Catalonian national dance) and by the construction of towering human pyramids of men in traditional peasant dress.4 Something of the confidence and condescension of Pujol’s lecturing was also conveyed by the hypermodern irregular geometry and sharp angles of the region’s pavilion, which announced itself as “Catalunya” by means of energetic red and gray graffiti scrawled on its front wall by Tapies. Inside, there was “a sample of the music, art, gastronomy, tourism, and technology of Catalonia,” characterized as “a culture of its own based on tradition and modernity” (SEEUS 1992b:151). Visitors first encountered a few great pieces of Catalonian art by Martorell, Gaudi, Miro, Dali, and others. The aesthetic then gave way to the commercial in a section on the dynamism of Catalonian business and industry. The largest space in the Catalonian pavilion was devoted to a wideranging historical exhibition on the Catalán language and books, prints, and publishing. The special emphasis given to this particular cultural domain may have been puzzling to many foreign visitors, but Catalonians were well aware

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that the region’s most important national holiday, 23 April, is observed not only as the Day of St. George, Catalonia’s patron saint, but also as the Day of the Book, because it coincides with the anniversary of the deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare and is an occasion for many book fairs and other civic activities. As such, the holiday involves a symbolic unification of the nationalist, linguistic, and European dimensions of Catalán culture (see Llobera 1996:198–99). To add a touch of cosmopolitan one-upmanship over Madrid and the rest of Spain, the book exhibit prominently displayed a notice claiming that Barcelona is “the world capital of publishing in Castellano.” This message was consistent with the pavilion’s general efforts to convince visitors that Catalonia contains everything worthwhile that Spain has to offer—and more. Galicia, the third of Spain’s “historic nationalities” presented itself to the world in an austere pavilion of gray granite. Some exhibits in the pavilion suggested Galicia’s long-running involvement in general European culture by stressing the cosmopolitan character of the great medieval pilgrimages to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Other exhibits focused on Galician migration to the Americas and, more recently, to northern Europe. In addition, a campaign to attract tourists and modern pilgrims to Galicia in 1993, the year of the Holy Jubilee, was promoted as a renewal of cosmopolitan Galician and European traditions. Underlying tensions in the politics of regionalism were especially evident in the events surrounding Galicia’s day of honor, thanks to the prominent role taken in them by Manuel Fraga, the founder of the Partido Popular and the current president of the government of his native region. Among other things, Fraga used the Expo to launch a mini-initiative in foreign policy that was designed to reinforce the sense of Galician ethnonational identity. In consultation with Fidel Castro, he unilaterally declared that he was changing the observation of Galicia’s day of honor from the date of 26 July to the date of 22 July, so that the Cuban premier could visit his father’s birthplace in Galicia, attend the Ibero-American summit conference in Madrid, and attend Galicia’s and Cuba’s days of honor in Seville (DD-ex 28 May 1992:1). These plans did not work out, and Castro left Seville before the celebration of Cuba’s special day began. However, Fraga was quite successful in making the Expo administration and his PSOE adversaries in Madrid look inconsiderate and unaccommodating to a guest. At the same time, he was able to dramatize his own sense of obligation and hospitality toward a fellow Gallego, in spite of the ideological distance that separated the right-wing, reconstructed minister of the Franco regime from the aging, beleaguered hero of socialist revolution in the Americas (DD-ex 28 Jul 1992:3). In addition, Fraga used the occasion of the Expo to promote his own federalist vision of a Spain and Europe composed of equal regions that would be free to manage their own affairs except in some matters of justice, defense, and global foreign policy (EP 23 Apr 1992:17). Even though Fraga’s federalism departed from the official and more statist line of his own national party, he also

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transformed the Galician pavilion into the primary stronghold of El Partido Popular in the Expo by inviting all its national leaders to both the inauguration of the pavilion and the celebrations of Galicia’s day of honor. Before the assembled party bigwigs at the ceremonies marking the day of honor, Fraga defended his hospitality to Castro as a “family matter” (cosa de familia) and presented both his sense of Galician regional identity and his federalist views in ways that were designed to distinguish them from what he clearly regarded as the excesses of Basque and Catalán nationalism: “Today, Galicia is recovering its historical and cultural identity in an exemplary and balanced fashion by reclaiming its freedom without sterile inferiority complexes or overly aggressive and arrogant attitudes that are scarcely efficacious and lack solidarity” (ABC-ex 23 Jul 1992:46–47). In other words, even as Fraga invoked his hospitality to Castro to reinforce his own political identity as a Gallego (an identity which, according to his critics, Fraga had rather belatedly and conveniently rediscovered), he endorsed federalism in order to make it clear that all Spanish regions should have the same legal status and prerogatives and to reject Basque and Catalán exceptionalist claims. By striking this delicate balance between an assertive and independent-minded cultural identity and a principled federalist vision of equal rights and obligations for all of Spain’s regions, Fraga sought both to deny any political space to minority Galician nationalist parties and to establish his own and his party’s role as judicious national mediators of the tensions existing within the Spain of the autonomies. If the leaders of the “historic nationalities” downplayed the differences between their regions and the rest of Spain by stressing their commitment to peace (in the case of Ardanza), to exemplary leadership (in the case of Pujol), and to constitutional federalism (in the case of Fraga), the other regions, especially those governed by the PSOE, were inclined to demonstrate their enthusiasm for the general goals of devolving state power to the regions and “joining Europe” while at the same time calling more or less strenuously for fairer or more equal treatment from Madrid and, by extension, from Brussels. Moreover, because the regions employed the same basic strategies to draw attention to their natural resources, traditional cultures, and present realities, they seemed to differ mainly in emphasis and to represent a set of variations on common themes. No doubt with the tourist trade in mind, Navarre’s pavilion was notably Hemingwayesque in style and emphasized mountainous landscapes and the appeal of local custom. The official theme of the pavilion was “Navarre, Naturally,” and its most ambitious exhibit was an artificial trout stream. Unfortunately, the sun never quite rose on this effort because the distressed, transplanted trout insisted on dying before they could be hooked or cooked. The pavilion also gave a great deal of attention to the glories of Pamplona’s fiesta and corridas of San Fermin, which were lauded as cosmopolitan events because they are “capable of converting the French, Australians, North Americans, or Sevillanos into Navarrese” (EP “Andalucía” 14 Jun 1992:2).

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Navarre’s day of honor was designed to be a transregional and nonpartisan show of solidarity, bringing the conservative presidents of the Basque country, Aragon, La Rioja, and Navarre together with the PSOE’s minister of the economy and the interior, Carlos Solchaga. During the proceedings, the presidents issued a joint call for greater regional control over financial resources. In response, Solchaga only weakly affirmed his sympathy for their point of view, and he promised nothing substantial. Although a Navarrese himself, Solchaga was roundly booed by the audience for his policies. This was something of an embarrassment for the regional presidents, who were mostly middle-of-theroad politicians much more interested in wooing than attacking the central government, at least on this occasion. It was, however, a source of considerable pleasure for the head of El Partido Popular, José María Aznar, who was also in attendance. Appropriately enough, then, the ceremonies ended with a disorganized parade of carnivalesque figures of gigantes and cabezudos (giants and big heads). The Pavilion of Asturias was partly a zany variant on the nature themes of Navarre, but it also included a number of other fantastic elements. Its exhibits featured groves of fake, painted trees; a homage to bears around the world; audiovisuals of horses and bulls; a fanciful display on medieval castles, warfare, and knights in shining armor; an enchanted forest with mythical animals and other beings inhabiting a space that also had large mock-ups of strawberries, apples, ceramics, and other “typical” products of the region; and an invocation of the “Dream of America.” Finally, to give fading traditional industries their due, there was a giant representation of some sort of mining machine with rusting wheels and cogs. The day of honor of Asturias in September entailed some equally odd juxtapositions of tradition and modernity. Pavilion officials arranged for 150 buses to make the long journey south to Seville for the occasion, with the hope that “all the professionals of Asturias will be able to attend in order to meet other experts and to raise their level of professional development” (DD-ex 10 Sep 1992:4). Given this technocratic mission, the speeches of the day by the region’s leading Socialist politicians focused on some of the regional social and economic problems that had been created by national policies of industrial reconversion. However, the official ceremonies culminated in one of the most unabashedly folkloric of all the region-sponsored performances of the Expo: a real and painstakingly authentic peasant wedding, held in accordance with the customs of the Vaqueiras, a small, barely surviving group of herders from the Cantabrian mountains (ABC-ex 31 Aug 1992:48). In contrast, the Pavilion of Aragon opted for more classical and Europeanist tones. It represented Ferdinand of Aragon not primarily as a cofounder with Queen Isabella of the Spanish state but, rather, as a cosmopolitan European prince who was able to bring together diverse peoples from many kingdoms. In a similar vein, the pavilion exhibited Mudéjar art and praised it as

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achieving a harmonization of the aesthetic traditions of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic cultures. It also exhibited ten fine but relatively unknown works by Goya and justified the choice on the grounds that the works were unlikely to have been seen by people who had only visited Europe’s great museums and were unaware of the treasures to be found in Aragon’s many small cities and towns. During Aragon’s day of honor, the president of the region demanded rapid progress to “full autonomy” comparable to that held by the three “historic nationalities,” but he was also careful to affirm that “Aragon and Europe are compatible entities, in the same way that Aragon and Spain are complementary realities” (DD-ex 6 May 1992:6). Other regions, such as the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Murcia, and Valencia, also stressed their artistic and cultural traditions and their contemporary commitment to Europe. Having been among the most vocal of the few Socialist critics of the Expo in its planning stages, the president of Castilla–La Mancha, José Bono, had finally relented and embraced the Expo. During his speech on his region’s day of honor, he said that although he had been concerned about the great expenses involved in participating in the Expo, his regional government had been able to hold down the costs by securing private donations. Moreover, his region did not want to miss “the wedding of Spain with the world,” because the people of Castilla–La Mancha were “committed to both the bride and groom.” He concluded by stating that the Expo showed that Spain was not a “broken and divided” country. On the contrary, it was “seventeen autonomous communities working as a team in a race against the clock to keep up the rhythm of Maastricht and to arrive at the European Union on time” (DD-ex 30 May 1992:4). In spite of Bono’s rhetorical bluster and early efforts to cut costs, the Pavilion of Castilla–La Mancha was one of the most impressive and frequently visited of the regional pavilions, primarily because it contained nine magnificent El Greco paintings as well as some other fine works of art. In contrast, the pavilions of the neighboring regions of the meseta of central and northern Spain, Castilla y León and Madrid, were undistinguished and rejected by the critics and public alike. Officials of the Pavilion of Castilla y León complained that their region had been neglected in the state-funded commemorations of the fifth centenary because it was governed by El Partido Popular, and perhaps, they insinuated, these political tensions had negatively affected the plans for the regional pavilion as well. However, officials from the autonomous community of Madrid did not bother with such excuses. Indeed, in his speech on Madrid’s day of honor, the region’s president was apologetic about the pavilion’s “humility,” lack of contents, and “very discreet” participation in the Expo. At least, he observed, the top floor of the pavilion “has a good view” (DD-ex 29 Jun 1992:3). Juan Hormaechea, the maverick conservative president of Cantabria, was anything but apologetic about the poor showing of his region at the Expo.

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Although the hastily constructed Cantabrian pavilion contained little more than a homage to Juan de la Cosa (Columbus’s navigator and cartographer) and a dreadful mock-up of the Caves of Altamira, the ever-irascible Hormaechea was indifferent to criticism and took every opportunity to provoke Expo and PSOE officials. He declared, for example, that he wanted no members of the national government in attendance at Cantabria’s day of honor unless problems surrounding his region’s eligibility for structural adjustment funds from the European Union were resolved to his satisfaction. When this did not occur and he learned that the minister of social affairs, Matilde Fernández, still planned to be present for the ceremonies, he canceled the official acts of the day by fax at the last minute from his Seville hotel. Shortly thereafter, he predicted that many Socialists would wind up in jail for diverting funds illegally, and he charged that the only criteria for investments made in the Expo and the Olympics were “electoral criteria” (ABC-ex 13 Aug 1992:34).5 Abandoned at the Cantabrian pavilion, Minister Fernández dismissed the accusation that the government was intentionally marginalizing Cantabria and said that Hormaechea seemed to be afflicted by an “especially nervous comportment” (DD 13 Aug 1992:7). As it turned out, the Cantabrian affair was only the most dramatic of several occasions in which the tensions troubling the relations of regional governments with the Spanish state and the European Union surfaced at the Expo. The protests of some Extremadurans about similar issues were more measured and effective and were also less partisan. Because Extremadura borders western Andalusia, its PSOE-led government had rightly predicted that Extremadurans would flock to their home pavilion in the Expo. The government had therefore been willing to spend a lot of money to ensure that the pavilion and its sponsored performances would be impressive, even though Extremadura was plagued by economic problems and by an alarmingly steady loss of emigrants to the more developed parts of the country. As finally constructed, the Pavilion of Extremadura more than satisfied the regional government’s expectations. The first floor featured a Roman statue of the goddess Ceres and examined encounters of different cultures in the region from the Bronze Age to the sixteenth century. It also housed a large exhibit on the role of the many Extremadurans—including, of course, Cortés and Pizarro—who were involved in the conquest, exploration, and evangelization of the Americas. The second floor was dedicated to a movie that was simultaneously projected on three screens and highlighted contemporary Extremadura’s natural beauty, theater festivals, and other tourist attractions. In addition, the second floor displayed a fine exhibition of paintings by Zurbarán and Morales. The Pavilion of Extremadura sponsored several events aimed at promoting the development of the region. One of these affairs featured the mayors of seven small towns located in the Sierra de Fregenal. The mayors were supposed to promote local products, such as ham, as a means of drawing attention

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to the fact that the European Union had identified their part of Extremadura as a special investment zone, but instead the mayors turned the occasion into an opportunity to denounce the abandonment of their people “by all the governments of Spain.” As one of them put it, “We are poor, and we have the right to cease to be poor.” As far as the mayors were concerned, neither European Union plans nor Socialist rural employment schemes were helping much (DD-ex 3 Jun 1992:8). In response to this well-publicized demonstration of discontent, when regional president Juan Rodríguez Ibarra delivered his keynote address for Extremadura’s day of honor, he repeatedly called for “unity among all Extremadurans” as the best means to speed agricultural and industrial development and increase employment. These sentiments were echoed by other national PSOE officials and were enthusiastically applauded by the 10,000 Extremadurans in the crowd, who may have been unusually receptive to such messages of regional solidarity because their trip to the Expo had been partly organized and subsidized by the regional government (DD-ex 15 Jun 1992:4). Nevertheless, the mayors of the Sierra de Fregenal had registered some sharp points about the fate of poorer regions in the new Spain. The last and largest in the long line of regional pavilions stretching around the Lake of Spain from the Plaza of the Americas was that of Andalusia. As the Expo’s host, Andalusia had opted to construct a pavilion of 7,992 square meters, about four times the average size of the other regional pavilions. Although the Andalusian pavilion was by far the most heavily visited of the regional offerings, virtually no one among the press or public was willing to declare it an unqualified success. The official theme was “Andalusia, Tradition and Change,” and the pavilion aspired “to offer the world a model of balanced and harmonious progress” (SEEUS 1992b:142). What visitors found in the pavilion, however, was a hodgepodge of uneven and often superficial exhibits. The pavilion strived to do too many things, and as a result it did few of them really well. It was tempting to blame many of the pavilion’s shortcomings on Andalusian diversity. As Spain’s largest autonomous region, Andalusia is composed of eight provinces that are characterized by stark socioeconomic and cultural contrasts. The ways of life of the hypermodern and well-heeled jetsetters of Marbella and Málaga differ fundamentally from those of struggling “post-peasants” from the villages of the Sierra Morena and the agrarian laborers of the countrysides of Córdoba. Nevertheless, other complex regions and even some plurinational states managed to convey their “unity in diversity” at the Expo more successfully than Andalusia did, and the reasons for Andalusia’s difficulties in this regard are less attributable to diversity per se than to a particular combination of directly political and more broadly cultural dilemmas. But what it all seemed to boil down to was too many cooks wanting to add their special touch to a dish under the supervision of a master chef who was not sure what recipe he wanted to follow.

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The commissioner of the Andalusian pavilion was Antonio Rodríguez Almodovar, a writer of children’s books, compiler of folk stories, professor of Spanish literature, and politician. As a militant of the PSOE, Rodríguez had served as vice-mayor of Seville in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had held a number of appointed posts in the regional government. After his appointment as commissioner, he gave some interviews in which he expressed his understanding of Andalusian culture and his emerging vision of the pavilion. In the course of these interviews, he defined the principal Andalusian cultural virtue as “stoicism in the face of adversity” and the principal defect as an “at times excessive resignation.” He also characterized the region’s history as “passionate,” “tragic,” and “vital” and affirmed that “now Andalusia is beginning once again to have the protagonism that it had in its grand Renaissance epoch.” In short, the region was a “pauper that is waking up to be a prince.” Within this framework of understanding, Rodríguez made two promises about the Andalusian pavilion. First, he pledged that it would “preserve those signs of identity which each of us recognizes as his own.” By this, he meant that the pavilion would celebrate Andalusian popular culture and custom as expressed in its music, food, fiestas, religion, social values, and stories. Second, he promised that the pavilion would reflect Andalusian “enthusiasm for the possibilities of the future,” although he was quite vague about what these possibilities were (ABC 2 Jul 1989:12; EC 22 Jun 1989:10; EC 12 Jul 1989:18). Rodríguez’s views and promises suggested a deep-seated ambivalence and uncertainty about the relationship between Andalusian traditions and modernity. As an academic, he loved the oral and literary culture of the past; as a Socialist, he was committed to building a better tomorrow. He most admired stoicism but wanted to reinforce enthusiasm for material progress. He worried about the immobilizing effects of “resignation” but wanted to preserve lively cultural traditions. He was caught betwixt and between competing values and wanted to embrace the best aspects of past and present. He was not unlike most of his fellow Andalusians; but even though these tensions may make for a vital personal, professional, and social life, they do not necessarily lead to coherent and impressive world’s fair pavilions without further firm choices and efforts at synthesis. And in this case, they did not. They might have, if Rodríguez had been left to his own ruminations and devices. But special interests, ranging from those of the business associations of Seville to those of the olive growers of Jaén, wanted to be represented in or influence the contents of the pavilion; and Socialist politicians of all types, ranging from the president of the region down to the municipal council members of the smallest towns, offered advice that they regarded as indispensable. Eventually, the twenty-two members of the Andalusian commission for participation in the Expo mandated that the pavilion focus on the newly found political autonomy of the region, the integrating character of its culture, and the

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decisive role that Andalusia has played in discoveries since 1492. This less than original plan was approved by the regional government, but it did little to settle disputes over what the actual contents of the pavilion should be. Long delays ensued. Many compromises were made. In the end, the most notable thing about the Andalusian pavilion was its architecture. Designed by Juan Ruesga, the structure was dominated by an inclined cylindrical tower of blue ceramic tile, which bisected a quadrangular edifice of white marble. Among the signs of Andalusian identity to be found inside were images of the feria (fair) of Seville and the pilgrimage to El Rocío; examples of regional art from antiquity to the present; the first Spanish grammar book of Nebrija, along with books and manuscripts by Lorca, Antonio Machado, and Juan Ramón Jiménez; watercolors by Picasso; a sports car designed in Motril; an ultralight plane built in Rinconada; an exhibit on biotechnology; an electronic encyclopedia of Andalusia; representations of the twelve labors of Hercules, which were somehow linked to the twelve signs of the zodiac and twelve hours of the day; paintings by Guillermo Pérez Villalta; an eighteen-minute movie, projected by nine cameras onto nine screens, of a dizzying voyage around the Andalusian countryside via various means of transportation; and another movie, which was shorter and apparently consisted of outtakes from the first movie but focused on favorite tourist sites. After viewing this diverse but hardly coherent exhibit, visitors could retreat to a shop and bar on the lower level. Although many of the regional pavilions presented one exhibit after another without easily discernible rhyme or reason, the larger size of the Andalusian pavilion made its lack of integration particularly apparent. Most Andalusian and many other visitors therefore seemed at least mildly disappointed by the pavilion and had difficulty understanding why some objects (such as sports cars, airplanes, and biotechnology) were so prominently displayed, while many things that they valued and had expected to see represented (such as popular customs and handicrafts) were either absent or relegated to a minor position. The general opinion of the press and the public seemed to be that the pavilion’s exhibits were mostly mediocre and grossly inadequate in conveying the complexity and richness of Andalusian culture. The Andalusian pavilion also offered an extensive series of performances, but the success of this program was a matter of some debate. Although local musical groups from all eight provinces of Andalusia gave concerts throughout the summer, many people argued that the pavilion’s decision not to sponsor any corridas de toros conceded too much to foreign ethical sensitivities. Above all, there were complaints that not enough attention had been given to the various facets of the art of Flamenco (ABC-ex 4 Apr 1992:54–55). Public annoyance with this was sufficiently strong that the official responsible for scheduling shows in the pavilion was eventually dismissed (DD-ex 2 Sep 1992:13).

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In response to this kind of criticism, La Junta de Andalucía (the regional cabinet) assumed the costs of a concert that included a homage to the great singer Antonio Mairena. The concert was held on the evening of Andalusia’s day of honor (2 August), featured many highly respected artists, and was widely praised. However, it was the only real high note of what most Andalusians agreed should have been one of the Expo’s most memorable days. Although nearly half a million dollars was spent on the celebration, none of the dozens of bands, musical groups, and other performers who were scattered around the Expo site seemed able to animate or really excite the crowds, which happened to be particularly large because it was a Sunday and admission prices had been cut in half. The official speeches of the day were also notably uninspiring and were slyly partisan. Virgilio Zapatero, the PSOE minister charged with oversight of the Expo, began by praising Manuel Chaves, the PSOE head of La Junta de Andalucía, and saying that “this Expo, Señor Presidente, is in good part the work of your government.” In turn, Chaves praised some of his subordinates’ contributions to the event and criticized “those who doubted our ability to organize an Expo.” With Seville’s mayor (Alejandro Rojas Marcos) and the politicians from La Izquierda Unida clearly in mind, Chaves also expressed particular disdain for the opposition’s “strategy of victimization.” After congratulating a local cyclist who had won an Olympic gold medal, he cursorily invoked the memory of Blas Infante, the martyred Socialist hero and father of Andalusian nationalism, who had been killed by Francoist forces exactly fifty-six years earlier, on 2 August 1936.6 Chaves concluded by declaring, “Among all the peoples, Andalusians support cooperation and the progress of humanity” (DD-ex 3 Aug 1992:3; DD-ex 4 Aug 1992:4). None of the other speeches of the day rose for more than a few seconds above this mundane level of politics as usual. It seemed as if once again the Socialist party’s double identity as the dominant party of the state and the majority political force in the region had limited the assertion of Andalusian political autonomy and muffled the celebration of regional difference. What remained after this process of domestication and muting had taken place was a tamely folkloric and at the same time implausibly technological and modern vision of Andalusia for which not even Andalusian Socialists seemed able to muster great enthusiasm or genuine commitment. All of the pavilions and performances sponsored by the various regions of Spain were generally judged by the press and the public in accordance with the same narrow elite and technopopular criteria that were applied to the Expo as a whole. In this competition for prestige, regions that stressed their rich artistic traditions, as did Catalonia and Castilla–La Mancha, received the highest praise. Regions that attempted to blend the popular and the elite, as did Asturias and Murcia, were given honorable mention. Trailing far behind were regions whose pavilions suggested a certain indifference toward participating in the Expo. Most notable in this third category was Madrid, whose poor showing in

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the regional sphere (like the poor showing of the United States in the international sphere) was in obvious disproportion to its real politicoeconomic power and cultural influence. Regardless of the fact that some regional pavilions were judged to be better than others, the cumulative effect created by the seventeen regional pavilions reinforced the national pavilion’s representation of Spain as a harmonious and complex blend of different social and cultural elements. Indeed, all of the regional pavilions were much the same insofar as they were structured by the contrasts between tradition and modernity and between high culture and popular culture. Thus, while each regional pavilion publicly proclaimed its cultural distinctiveness and autonomy, each did so in ways similar if not virtually identical to all the others. This impression of diverse homogeneity was further reinforced by the rhetoric of pavilion officials and regional politicians. As a rule, officials began or ended their speeches by affirming the general desire of their region to participate in making a “new Europe” and by affirming the complementarity of their particular regional identity with more encompassing national or cosmopolitan ones. But the main substance of their discourses nearly always focused on specific difficulties that regions faced in achieving full integration within Europe and in assuming their rightful place in the Spain of the autonomies. The solutions that they proposed to these problems usually tended to involve the devolution of more legal authority, budgetary control, and financial resources from the European Union or the state to the regions. And, almost always, state officials answered sympathetically while arguing the need to treat all regions fairly and pointing out the constitutional or practical barriers that prevented an immediate and fully satisfactory response to a particular region’s specific demands. By such means, the ideology and values of cosmopolitan liberalism as a general way of viewing the world were normalized and woven into day-to-day political practices. Regional variations in culture, ways of life, and socioeconomic circumstances were thereby merged with the familiar politics of competing interest groups. And larger issues concerning ethnonational independence, technocorporate power, processes of democratization, and social equality were transformed into narrower, ostensibly nonideological claims and counterclaims that were the stuff of unending arguments and negotiations about whether and how to redistribute rights and resources among different levels of political organization ranging from local communities and regions to national states and the European Union. Ultimately, then, Spain successfully presented itself as Europe’s Europe at the Expo in three ways. First, as discussed in Part I, it organized the “universal” thematic pavilions of the event in a way that reinforced occidentalist notions of global cultural and historical convergence, with European liberalism almost always in the role of leading the way to the future. Second, because the Spanish national and regional pavilions were virtually indistinguishable in their

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general contents and themes from those of other European countries, Spain presented itself as a microcosm of European cultural pluralism and of “unity in diversity.” Third, because the political rhetoric surrounding regional participation in the Expo seemed to reproduce mutatis mutandis the political rhetoric governing the participation of countries in the European Union, to be an engaged Spanish citizen was virtually the same as to be an engaged citizen of the “new Europe.” The Europeanist “spirit of Maastricht,” a curious blend of grandly inflated cosmopolitan idealism mixed with an obsessive concern for complex technobureaucratic mediations of competing interests and conflicting sovereignties, was very much the spirit of the Spain of the autonomies.

PART V

䉬 Dispositions and Practices: The Sense of Freedom and the Politics of Daily Life

17. Expo People and the Change in Spain Perhaps the most important explicit aim of the Expo was to change the image of Spain. It was generally understood that this meant convincing foreigners that Spain had emerged from decades of dictatorship and relative isolation as a thoroughly liberal, progressive, and democratic state and that the Spanish people wholeheartedly embraced the overall direction of social transformation. Yet the notion that Spain still lagged somewhat behind the leading countries of western Europe, particularly in terms of its economic development but also in terms of its political and cultural development, was widely held by Spaniards as well as by foreigners. Thus, the organizers clearly saw the Expo as an opportunity to provide Spaniards themselves with a more optimistic and inspirational vision of their country’s present and future place in Europe and the world. From this perspective, the Expo can partly be understood as a massive state effort orchestrated by El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) to modify the Spanish people’s sense of their own collective identity by promoting cosmopolitan values, aspirations, and attitudes. This aspect of the Expo, which sought to engineer a partial cultural transformation of Spanish citizens, was obviously a potentially sensitive matter and was therefore less explicitly voiced than the effort to correct foreign misimpressions of contemporary Spanish realities, even if it was indirectly invoked in official pronouncements concerning the Expo’s broad educational mission and its ultimate significance. Because of this official reticence, the question of exactly what Spaniards were to be or become was never really clarified or held up to critical scrutiny. Moreover, virtually no direct attention was given either while the Expo was unfolding or in its aftermath to the question of how effective the event actually was in altering Spaniards’ perceptions of themselves, their country, and the world. Instead, these fundamental issues of meaning, identity, and transformative efficacy were displaced and refracted in various ways that rendered them much more elusive than they might otherwise have been and prevented them from becoming a matter of serious public concern. Most notably, the near obsession of Expo officials, politicians, and the media with whether or not the Expo was a “success” in terms of its ability to attract crowds, to pay for itself, and to win expressions of popular approval went far in reducing questions of meaning and efficacy to apparently trivial and easily manageable utilitarian proportions. Nevertheless, it is possible to infer a great deal about the organizers’ vision concerning the ideal kinds of subjects and citizens needed in the “new Spain.” In general terms, there is no doubt that the Expo’s sponsors desired Spaniards to regard themselves as good Europeans and cosmopolitan citizens of the world—citizens who are tolerant of other cultures, who accept the need for and inevitability of an increasing interaction and interdependence of different

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peoples in order to facilitate progress and limit conflicts, and who at the same time take pride in their own regional and national traditions and the contributions of these traditions to human happiness. The realization of these positive values and pluralist dispositions virtually seemed to require contemporary people to have at least some conscious sense of self and society as constituted by multiple, overlapping, and ideally complementary cultural identities that are primarily based on membership in different sorts of communities, such as local, ethnic, national, and religious communities. In addition, the Expo celebrated and demanded great openness, tolerance, and flexibility in balancing the often conflicting obligations and values involved in these various identities, in encountering people from other traditions, and in adapting to the constantly changing circumstances of dynamic societies. Indeed, touring the Expo required visitors to keep shifting their perspectives as they strived to understand people from diverse backgrounds and various parts of the world. As a result, it seemed that the exercise of freedom and the pursuit of happiness for fully modern people both at the Expo and outside it involved a complex and continual process of picking and choosing among diverse cultural options and attempting to harmonize and integrate them. From this perspective, the exercise of personal freedom at the Expo was difficult to distinguish from the exercise of consumer choice. Just as careful consumers selected from a wide variety of goods and services, good cosmopolitan citizens of the world were expected to consider and then choose the communities and identities that were most in keeping with their values, backgrounds, and dispositions. Endowed with cultural capital in the form of inherited membership in particular cultural communities, visitors were invited to reinvest and exchange some of this capital by developing interests in other ways of viewing the world so as to maximize their individual pleasure and increase their overall social utility and cultural tolerance. Thus, one of the underlying reasons that the Expo’s organizers could so readily equate the question of the efficacy of the event in changing or reinforcing visitors’ identities with the popular success of the event was that they were already disposed to see cultural identities in terms of socially conditioned individualized preferences. However, complementing this essentially liberal worldview of interacting peoples and free cultural markets was another equally important and equally pervasive way of representing society and social identities. Again and again at the Expo, it appeared that there were in every culture and country basically two kinds of people: those who are “discoverers” and those who are “just plain folks.” Just as the functionaries, consulting committees, and politicians who organized the Expo never seriously doubted that they were entitled to shape the event as they saw fit for the edification and entertainment of the great multitude of Sevillanos and tourists, they represented the broader social world as essentially bifurcated. On the one hand, there were the discoverers, such as Columbus, Einstein, Picasso, Henry Ford, Leonardo, and the Buddha. The highest virtue

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resided with these heroic innovators, the leaders from all realms of endeavor who actively employed the resources and tools of imagination, representation, and reason “to solve the problems of humankind” through the exercise of creative freedom and rational disciplines (see OCGE 1987:43). On the other hand, there was everyone else—all of those ordinary people who lived ordinary lives and whose smiling faces were featured in the films of the Expo and on the walls of most pavilions. The imagined social world of the Expo rested then on the foundation of a presumed elementary hierarchy of talent, vision, merit, and achievement, which extended across cultural boundaries. Clearly, this representation of universal human society was in basic harmony with the particular traditions of egalitarian individualism. As Louis Dumont (1986, 1994) has argued, modern liberal societies (some forms of racism, sexism, and the like aside) are in principle deeply hostile to any ideas of holistic organic social hierarchy based on essential differences among people. Consequently, structural inequalities and hierarchies of authority are tolerable and justifiable only if they can be construed as open, shifting, based on natural variations in individual capacities, and in the final analysis consistent with the general welfare of all. Similarly, throughout the Expo, the relationship between the discoverers and the ordinary people was represented as complementary: the discoverers provide the new hybrids and other innovations that increase productivity, prosperity, and happiness for everyone in the long run, while the ordinary people cultivate the mostly local cultural grounds from which discoverers spring. Particular natural and cultural differences thereby represent the seed ground for the increasingly rational and efficient pursuit of universal human happiness. Ultimately, whatever bumps there may be along the pathways to the future, the interests of ordinary people and expert authorities were envisioned by the Expo organizers as essentially the same. The two-tiered view of the social order as composed of meritorious discoverers and just plain folks was as fundamental to the Expo as the distinction of bourgeoisie and proletarians was to classical Marxism. Indeed, it would not be too unreasonable to suppose that the former distinction represents a domesticated, updated, and depoliticized version of the latter—a version that is well adapted for the legitimation of class and other inequalities in information age society. At the Expo, this “utopianism of the ruling class” (see Touraine 1971:352ff.) was both retrospective and prospective in its scope, and it envisioned cooperation rather than conflict as the normal relationship between discoverers and ordinary people. It was also tightly grafted to the ubiquitous tolerant and pluralist images of peoples and cultures in interaction around the globe. This ideological dimension of the Expo entailed a massive simplification of cultural and politicoeconomic processes and minimized the importance of relations of domination, subordination, exploitation, and resistance in human history. However, it was evidently attractive not only to the politicians, state bureaucrats, academics, executives, media specialists, and technicians

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who organized the Expo but also to other groups of elites and experts who wield or hope to wield increasing power in contemporary societies.1 Although the ordinary citizens and the constituents of these various other groups could hardly have been unaware that relations of power, status, and class were far more complex, unequal, and contested than the Expo’s simplifications allowed, whatever inadequacies they may have perceived in the event’s representations were largely left unvoiced, at least in public forums. Viewed from this angle, the Expo can be understood as promoting a highly domesticated vision of human freedom and responsibility, a vision finely attuned to the interests and position of the contemporary Spanish and European upper-middle class of professionals, managers, and “symbolic analysts” of various sorts. These people are likely to see free choice for themselves and others as operating primarily in terms of choosing a career and attaining the skills, knowledge, and qualifications necessary to pursue and advance it. In personal terms, freedom means the freedom to specialize, become expert, solve problems, achieve goals, make a contribution, and win distinction and respect. Success in such endeavors translates into the capacity to help family members and friends, to pursue leisure interests, and perhaps even to develop an avocational expertise or to cultivate the specialized and general forms of connoisseurship that one’s life experience, status, and resources have made available. Ordinary folks are seen as having the same basic sorts of desires and opportunities but as being limited in some way or another in their talents, circumstances, or will, with the result that they work for little more than a comfortable wage and are inclined toward the simpler pleasures offered by mass culture. This vision of freedom as the capacity and right to find one’s own niche and to develop one’s “human capital” in an increasingly interdependent world is rather distant from the John-Wayne-on-a-horse freedom of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-determination prominent in the more laissez-faire, competition-oriented versions of classic liberalism. Contemporary role models tend to be astronauts, not John Wayne types. They tend to be highly trained, rigorously selected, and disciplined agents of vast technocorporate institutional networks, instead of the lonesome cowboys of selfsustaining rugged individualism. However, what the Expo’s bifurcated representations of the social world as composed of heroic discoverers and just plain folks offered to middle-class and upper-middle-class people was an opportunity to associate themselves and their fairly modest visions of personal freedom, responsibility, and happiness with the persons who contribute most to the material and moral progress of universal history. The Expo’s dualistic representation of the world as divided into discoverers and just plain folks was obliquely reflected in the organizers’ two basic strategies for reassuring themselves and others of the success of the event. On the one hand, success could be claimed by highlighting the testimony and reactions to the event of exemplary figures of all types, but especially of those mass

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media celebrities who have become the charismatic icons of various cults of personality, lifestyle, fashion, and taste. On the other hand, success could be gauged on the basis of the numbers—that is, on the basis of how many and what types of people visited the event and how many responded positively or negatively to on-site public opinion surveys. Oddly enough, given their contrived and staged character, neither of these strategies was quite as free of disturbing static as the organizers might have wished, although both ultimately served their predestined public relations purpose of vindicating the Expo’s success. The tales told by the numbers were particularly troubling in the late spring and early summer of 1992. After the opening day, crowds had subsided. There was a dramatic decline in attendance in May, June, and July; and in spite of the arguments over season passes and overcrowding, there was generally more than enough room for everyone on the island of La Cartuja. During this period, the actual number of visits averaged about 162,000 per day, instead of the 295,000 visits projected (DD-ex 20 Jul 1992:3). The low point was on 1 June 1992, when only 110,482 people entered the Expo (see SEGA 1993:282). The relatively low number of daily visits for July was especially distressing because officials had predicted that this would be one of the event’s biggest months. Faced with such disappointing results, Expo officials began to backtrack and reduce their estimates of how many visitors it would take for the event to be a success. By the end of July, Jacinto Pellón went so far as to anticipate that the Expo might receive one-third fewer visitors than previously expected (DD-ex 29 Jul 1992:3). Making matters still worse from a public relations perspective, the press cast some doubts on the capacity of Expo officials to add correctly, and opposition politicians of La Izquierda Unida suggested that attendance at the Expo might finally be inflated by 2 million or even 2.5 million (ABC 13 Oct 1992:14–15; DD-ex 10 Jun 1992:17). By mid-August, however, it was clear that a dramatic reversal was under way, and hitherto anxious officials began to boast of growing crowds. But even though over 8 million visits were reported in August, this figure still fell slightly below the pre-Expo official projections. Thus, it was not until the deluges of September and early October—with nearly 11 million visits and 4,860,254 visits, respectively (SEGA 1993:282)—that officials confidently began to assert that the Expo was a huge popular success and to claim that it had fully vindicated its organizers’ hopes and therefore had presumably gone far in achieving its mission of changing the image of Spain for foreigners and Spaniards alike. By this time, however, even the most triumphant assertions did not entirely succeed in drowning out the sighs of relief or the skepticism about statistics. When the number of daily admission figures was summed, the total was said to be 41 million “visits” (SEGA 1993:282). Most people entered the Expo site on more than one occasion. Although determining the number of individual “visitors” was impossible, most estimates have been between 12 million and 15 million. Determining the origins and other characteristics of these visitors

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has also been difficult. Early projections optimistically predicted a mix of about 60 percent Spanish and 40 percent foreign visitors. Despite the lack of numerical data on individual visitors and their countries of origin, the pie charts in the Expo’s official summary (SEGA 1993:281–85) indicate that the final mix of domestic and foreign visitors was about what had been anticipated. But there is much cause to doubt the official estimates, and uncertainty has continued to exist concerning the vital question of just who the Expo’s public really was. There is a broad consensus that the first half of the Expo had far fewer foreign visitors than had been anticipated. Most figures from April to July suggest that around 80 percent of the Expo’s visitors were Spaniards. The majority of them were young and lived in western Andalusia, and more than half of them possessed season passes (DD-ex 9 May 1992:6; DD-ex 21 May 1992:11; DD-ex 21 Jul 1992:3, 19). According to Pellón, by late July, 32 percent of all visitors were foreign, with the French and Portuguese predictably leading the way (DD-ex 30 Jul 1992:3). In August and again in September, the estimated percentages and the absolute numbers of foreign (especially Portuguese) visitors and non-Andalusian Spanish visitors were revised upward. By the end of the Expo, the more optimistic press and official estimates were suggesting that the Expo was visited by two Spaniards for every foreigner and that the French and Portuguese visitors were accompanied by considerably lesser numbers of Germans, Italians, Britains, Belgians, and Dutch, in roughly that order (ABC 13 Oct 1992:14–15; DD-ex 8 Aug 1992:3; DD-ex 19 Aug 1992:15; DD-ex 16 Sep 1992:3). Despite these estimates, few Expo officials denied being disappointed at the relatively low numbers of foreign visitors that came to the Expo. My own impression was that there were very few days before September when one-third of the crowd consisted of foreigners, and this impression was supported by almost every Sevillano with whom I discussed the matter. A somewhat clearer picture emerges from the official public opinion surveys, which were designed to measure visitor satisfaction, as well as from the supplementary information provided in informal man-in-the-street interviews conducted by the press. When visitors were asked to rate the Expo in terms of their overall satisfaction with it, the public response was always highly favorable (in the range of 8 or 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most positive). The response to the large public shows and the response to the general cleanliness of the site were especially high, with approval of the quality of the pavilions following close behind. The only consistently negative evaluations were given on “value for the money” questions. As the press pointed out, although the young people who conducted the surveys tended to ask their questions to visibly contented people, most of whom were Spaniards leaving the Expo early in the day, and although the survey results reflected “a statistically improbable proportion of young girls” (DD-ex 9 May 1992:23), the great majority of visitors included in the survey reported that they truly enjoyed the Expo experience. Even so, the reported surveys were conducted early in the

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Expo and are not a reliable guide to how most visitors experienced the event during the overcrowded periods (late August, September, and early October). Probably even more important than attendance figures and opinion surveys in lending plausibility to official claims concerning the Expo’s success with the public were the testimonies of celebrities of all categories. The presence of aristocrats, billionaires, pop stars, actors, VIPs, and others recognized as having a special relationship of grace with the secular trinity of power, money, and fame was indispensable in creating an aura of success around the Expo. In part, this is because celebrities could function in the media as standins or representatives for just plain visitors to the extent that one could assume or at least pretend that the opinions and experiences of celebrities were a reasonable approximation of those of the sweltering masses of tourists. But more than this, the celebrity opinions were important because the celebrities figure in contemporary media culture as the true experts about personal identity, a special class of people whose real work (regardless of the particular source of their fame) is making themselves into models of what the self should be and whose true vocation therefore lies in the freedom and duty to overcome all obstacles and seek pleasure and fulfillment in perpetual voyages of self-discovery. When it came to bearing witness to what the Expo had to offer its visitors, who could possibly be better than these heroes, heroines, and supporting cast members who figured prominently in every entertainment page, gossip magazine, and talk show and who were the very avatars of the displaced desires of millions of ordinary people? It is no wonder that Expo officials, politicians, and the press all afforded extraordinary treatment to and eagerly sought out even ephemeral and fading jetsetters to add a touch of glamour to the island world of Expo. For example, Jesús Gil, the maverick and evidently eminently corruptible mayor of Marbella (a resort town riddled with golf courses and catering to the expatriate rich and famous who visit the Málaga coast), organized special VIP trips to the Expo, during which luminaries such as Gunilla Von Bismarck, Susie Burton (widow of Richard), and Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe were invited to comment on their outings and declared that they liked the Pavilion of Monaco (ABC-ex 24 Apr 1992:56; ABC-ex 3 Jul 1992:52; DD-ex 2 Jun 1992:19). In keeping with their spirit of devil-may-care sophistication, Gil himself declared that he would have “kissed Chaves [his nemesis, the president of Andalusia] on the mouth” if Chaves had permitted the Expo to be held in Marbella (DD-ex 3 Jul 1992:1). Many other sorts of notables were also pressed into temporary service as celebrity guarantors of the Expo’s attractions. This worked well enough with figures such as Walesa and Mitterand but less well in the case of prominent bankers, heads of various ministries from Madrid, and second-tier rock musicians. Without question, the key figure in the Expo’s world of celebrities, the sun king in its firmament of stars, was Juan Carlos of Spain. The king’s response to the Expo was a subject of immense interest to the organizers, press,

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and large segments of the public, not simply because he was head of state but also because of his great personal popularity and his special role as initiator and royal patron of the event. While his speech on the opening day of the event had gotten the Expo off to a good start, the public naturally looked to the king for more personal signs that he truly embraced the event. But the king left Seville after the opening ceremonies, so evidence of his personal satisfaction with the Expo was not apparent in May and June. His unexpected and even surprising absence and silence quickly led to widespread talk (purportedly originating in palace circles) of royal dissatisfaction with the Expo. This in turn led the press to speculate that Juan Carlos was resentful at having been pushed aside during the planning process, was angry with Pellón and the PSOE about the politicizing of the event, was annoyed by certain breaches of protocol in the organizers’ dealings with him, and so forth (DD-ex 23 May 1992:3). Whether any of this was true remains moot. Nevertheless, these rapidly gathering clouds of doubt in conjunction with the low daily attendance figures cast heavy shadows on the island of La Cartuja, and the question of the return of the king began to assume the proportions of Arthurian romance. Where was the king? Does he feel betrayed by the Expo? When will he come? Will he like it when he comes? How many times will he come? By mid-June, it was obvious that the public image of the Expo’s success was in danger of withering and that only the royal presence could be counted on to immediately restore its vitality. Finally, on 25 June, sixty-seven days after the inauguration of the event, the king and queen together made their first official visit to the Expo. After viewing the “Magna Hispalensis” exhibition in the Cathedral, they toured the Expo pavilions, devoting their special attention to those of Latin America. Juan Carlos expressed great satisfaction with what he had seen during the day and pledged to visit again. He called the Expo “proof of a modern Spain” and declared with apparent enthusiasm that “everyone has to come to the Expo” (DD-ex 26 Jun 1992:3–5). In sum, the king pronounced the key magical phrases and formulas, and the land was renewed. A series of visits by members of the royal family ensued shortly thereafter, and each received extensive attention in the press. Special note was made of Queen Sofía’s particular capacity to endure and even apparently enjoy marathon visits to many pavilions in a single day, but the three royal progeny also made their own lengthy, separate, and well-received forays on the island of La Cartuja. By the last week of the Expo, the king and queen had visited the site together ten times and had done even more than could reasonably be expected of them to ensure the event’s success, even if some lingering doubts remained concerning the king’s private views of the event and its organizers.2 Less critical to reinforcing the Expo’s public image as the embodiment of the “new Spain” but scarcely less ballyhooed in the press were the visits of other European royalty to the Expo. The efforts of Prince Rainier and his son, Albert, of Monaco to remain incognito as they jotted around the Expo on a golf

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cart were in vain; and his heartthrob daughter, Caroline, clearly did not harbor even a faint hope of escaping the crowds that greeted her with cries of admiration (“Guapa! Guapa!”) or of evading the reporters who chose to interpret her “austere, sad, and discreet” demeanor as a sign that she was still in mourning for the death of her second husband, rather than as evidence of any disenchantment with the Expo itself. Similarly, the failure of her sister Stephanie to visit the Expo was explained and excused by discreet reference to affairs of the heart after a bodyguard hinted that she had not accompanied her family because “she is in love” (DD-ex 17 May 1992:3). However, it was the prospect of a visit by Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales, a couple who ranked second only to members of the Spanish royal family in their capacity to rouse high levels of public interest on the island of La Cartuja, that created the most anticipation and excitement of all the visits by European royalty. Some feared that Charles would attack the Expo’s resolutely postmodern architecture and design, while others worried that Diana would be crushed by a throng of uncontrollable autograph seekers. But during the visit, Charles restrained whatever critical inclinations he may have had and endorsed the events in Seville by observing that “the word change is the true significance of the universal exposition that is being celebrated in Seville.” Meanwhile, Diana, who (it was cattily observed) insisted on making her own way around the site, unaccompanied by her husband, managed to escape bodily injury from her fans. Although her admirers noted that she seemed rather tired and failed to show much enthusiasm for anything she beheld, this was attributed not to any qualities of the Expo but, rather, to her much-rumored marital difficulties (DD-ex 22 May 1992:1, 2, 3, 4–5). A procession of other royalty, aristocrats, celebrities, and stars visited the Expo almost daily, and most did their bit in confirming the interest and grandeur of the events in Seville or testifying to the modernity of Spain. Sweden’s king and queen stressed their own country’s and Spain’s future in a united Europe (DD-ex 1 Jun 1992:4). Surrounded by a crowd of screaming female fans, crooner Julio Iglesias noted the remarkable transformation of Seville and then ruefully lamented that he had not been able to sing in the Expo’s inauguration (DD-ex 24 Jun 1992:21). Catherine Denueve used her visit to Seville to launch a new perfume, which was called “Carmen” and captured the essence of the new and old Spain (DD-ex 28 May 1992:4). Fashion designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada approved of the sophistication of the uniforms of Expo workers and especially praised the “little hats” worn by the azafatas (hostesses or pavilion attendants) who assisted visitors. Although avuncular American newscaster Walter Cronkite dismissed the Pavilion of the United States as “idiotic,” he was impressed by the Expo as a whole. Veronica Castro, the star of “The Rich Also Cry,” a soap opera that has been immensely popular throughout the Spanishspeaking world, was so effusive in her praises of the Expo that she was almost overcome with emotion (DD-ex 26 Aug 1992:14). Michael Douglas, the most

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important Hollywood star to visit the event, compared it to a “Hollywood superproduction” with “100,000 extras a day” (DD-ex 8 Jul 1992:16). Rocío Jurado, one of Spain’s most popular singers, declared simply that “this universal exposition being celebrated in Seville is a work of God” (DD-ex 20 Jul 1992:4–5). While King Juan Carlos’s every word about the Expo was carefully chosen and was read like a rune, it did not seem to matter that the comments of other notables and celebrities were laden with banalities and absurdities. What did seem to count was the simple, approving, charismatic presence of these superpersons in large numbers on the Expo site. Finally, then, the story of the rising attendance and high public satisfaction—a tale of numbers and celebrity quotations released by officials and disseminated by the press—succeeded in creating an aura of great popular success around the Expo, especially in its closing weeks. But this aura has ultimately obscured more than it has revealed about the event’s effectiveness in transforming Spaniards’ and foreigners’ sense of contemporary Spanish society and of themselves. To gain a more critical and nuanced understanding of the significance and impact of the Expo on its various audiences, it is necessary to consider what Michael Herzfeld (1992, 1997) has characterized as “the question of efficacy,” the question of how symbolism actually works in particular situations. For to ignore how ordinary people actually react and respond to official messages and public representations in specific contexts is tantamount to accepting “the disembodied rhetoric of officialdom” at face value (Herzfeld 1992:39). In dealing with the Expo and similar mass events, it is no easy matter to decide how best to approach the question of efficacy, because a wide range of possible theoretical approaches present themselves. On one end of the spectrum, it is possible to view these events as instantiations of Guy De Bord’s “society of the spectacle.” From this perspective, the Expo can be regarded as one of those “completely equipped blocks of time” (De Bord 1977:152) that advanced capitalists ostensibly market for purposes of entertainment, pleasure, and edification. Such blocks of time offer people highly contrived and strictly limited experiences whose purported effect is to further the creation of a society populated by distracted, bemused, docile, and apolitical masses. This approach to events such as the Expo ultimately represents the events as mechanisms for the production of unfreedom, mechanisms that are as powerful in their own domain of values and meanings as Fordist factories and prisons are in theirs. All the excitement of bread and circus spectacles tends in the last analysis to turn out a set of more or less uniformly dull and compliant subjects, just like factories producing cars. Most readers are likely to recognize at least some element of truth in this approach, even if it does seem to exaggerate the efficiency and coherence of strategies of mass cultural production as well as the gullibility and passivity of those who experience them. On the other end of the spectrum, analysts of events such as the Expo can take heart from perspectives such as those inspired by the work of Michel

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de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). Though scarcely less critical of advanced liberal societies and fully aware of all the forces making for conformity and limiting autonomy, de Certeau suggests that many if not most people are able to adapt what is given to them by their social environments and to put it to use for their own diverse purposes. Thus, visitors to the Expo or a similar event can be expected to make their own itineraries and to interpret and experience the event in ways that may not correspond to and may even oppose official expectations and programs. Even many highly structured and constraining situations leave more space for social and cultural creativity, improvisation, and choice than is usually apparent at first sight, and it is common for people to exercise these “tactical” capacities. This way of understanding some aspects of the exercise of freedom and the making of social destinies in contemporary culture is clearly more appealing than many postmodern prophecies of doom, and it is particularly useful in explaining the gaps that usually exist between formal representations and informal popular practices and understandings when analysts attempt to gauge the impact of highly contrived, artificial events and experiences. Even so, the danger of this kind of approach is to overestimate the reality of or potential for criticism, change, and resistance in everyday forms of cultural improvisation, rule-bending, and spontaneous social innovation. What’s true in the inch may prove false or, more likely, irrelevant in the mile. Nevertheless, the posing of such starkly contrasting perspectives indicates the complex dialectic of freedom and unfreedom that seems still to exist at the heart of liberal societies. Moreover, the distance between these theoretical alternatives virtually impels analysts of an event such as the Expo to evaluate the event’s impact only after plunging more deeply into an ethnographic exploration of the constraints and pressures and the nature of the practical conditions and contingencies that influence the responses of different sorts of people to the event. Indeed, when I undertook this exploration, it quickly became apparent that individuals and groups responded to the Expo in more complex, ambiguous, and various ways than either of the alternatives noted above would readily lead one to expect. To appreciate the relationship between this wide range of responses and the broader question of the efficacy of the Expo in changing the image of Spain and promoting the values and worldview of emergent cosmopolitan liberalism, it is useful to begin with three points of orientation. The first point is a familiar one but bears stressing. It is that the general social position of individuals tended to condition the way they experienced the Expo and that people who occupied similar class positions and came from the same regions and countries tended to understand and respond to the Expo in similar ways. Of course, this is not to say that class identity and regional or national identity were the only broad social factors that mattered. Gender and age also influenced what people did and what they liked and disliked. But the Expo had

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been designed with a target audience of young and mid-life adult, upper-middleclass and well-educated Spaniards in mind, and in the long run this clearly made a great deal of difference in how different groups responded to the event. The second point is that the specific dynamics of a visitor’s encounter with the Expo were as important as class and regional factors in understanding the visitor’s disposition toward the Expo. Some people were exposed to the exposition almost continually for years on end, while others were exposed for only a day or two. Some people came to the site as members of official delegations or large groups, while others visited alone or with their families or one or two friends. Each pavilion had its administrators and managers; hundreds of businesspeople had an interest in the site; and thousands of workers were employed in manifold capacities. In addition, there were considerable numbers of dissenters and resisters, some of whom acted independently and some of whom represented various organizations protesting the event. Finally, there were the hundreds of thousands of western Andalusians who were bombarded with news and publicity about the grandeur and attractions of the Expo but never even entered the site and in some cases actively renounced any interest or involvement with it. To understand the efficacy, impact, and significance of the Expo, it is necessary to consider not only the different sorts of people who experienced what was happening on the island of La Cartuja but also the different ways in which they encountered the event. The third point to recognize is that few, if any, people who visited the Expo were expecting an experience which would lead to a new way of looking at the world and themselves (despite all the rhetoric of change and the new world’s dawning that they heard), and it is unlikely that anybody actually had this sort of conversion experience. I never met anyone who claimed that his or her fundamental outlook had been transformed by the Expo. On the other hand, it was by no means rare to meet people who avowed that the Expo had no serious or long-lasting impact on them. This suggests that what people mostly sought from the Expo, aside from simple diversion or a good job, was a reaffirmation of their sense of self. It also suggests that this understandable but conservative desire acted as a strong brake that tended to neutralize the event’s cultural and tutelary efficacy. Indeed, again and again in the stories and descriptions of the Expo, there were noticeable efforts by people to incorporate what they experienced into essentially self-validating and more or less wellestablished systems of values and purposes that tended to maximize their sense of mastery and autonomy over the Expo’s social and cultural milieu. There is nothing surprising in people’s efforts to domesticate the Expo, but they often entailed active processes of evaluation and reinterpretation that led to picking and choosing what was good and bad about the event according to highly diverse criteria. Although people’s evaluations of the Expo were usually finely attuned to their social position and to the particular ways in which they encountered the event, they were not determined by these factors. Rather,

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the processes of appropriation allowed ample scope for imagination and invention as well as the repetition of conventional formulas, and this gave the visitors the capacity to make themselves into the heroes and heroines of their own often somewhat idiosyncratic Expos. Because the processes of appropriation also served to incorporate the experience of the Expo into the ordinary ups and downs of daily life, these processes represent the most personal and subjective dimensions of the cultural politics of the event. But precisely because the processes of appropriation and neutralization were central to the politics of everyday life at the Expo, we must ask how these microprocesses affected the general efficacy, impact, and significance of the event. The absence of much evidence of conversion or seamless seduction or befuddled mystification among Expo visitors raises the question of how best to understand the less than dramatic cumulative effects of the event on the broader cultural politics of society and state in Spain. Although these hegemonic effects may have been rather limited, they were by no means insignificant, and it is probably best to describe them in terms of how they contributed to the familiarization and normalization of the emergent worldviews, values, and ideologies of Europeanism and cosmopolitan liberalism that had been gaining increasing force in Spain, especially after the country’s admission to the European Community in 1985 and the impending advent of a post-Maastricht “Europe without borders.” The Expo clearly did not transform many people into fervent and dedicated Europeanists and transnationalists, but it did help to make Europeanism and cosmopolitan liberalism more salient, unavoidable, and commonly recognized aspects of ordinary cultural discourse and sociopolitical practice by giving condensed symbolic expression to broader, less obvious, and more incremental and diffused processes of socioeconomic transformation and shifts in power. It gave some cultural depth and focus to these processes and made them, on the whole, more acceptable. Although this process of normalization did not generate overwhelming enthusiasm and unqualified or unambiguous consent, neither did it spark stiff resistance or a level of opposition that was difficult to contain. The Expo thereby played an instrumental role in altering commonsense notions about the present, and it made it abundantly evident that new structures of transnational relations would bear more weight and exert more force in shaping the basic architecture of Spanish society, culture, and politics in the future than most people had fully appreciated up to that time. Even so, it is essential to realize that the way in which the Expo’s various audiences took Spain’s emergent new place in Europe and the world into account mattered a great deal. Because there were so many different ways in which the meaning of the event was individually and collectively appropriated, familiarization took many different and sometimes contradictory forms, making the whole process of normalization notably uneven, incomplete, and full of unresolved tensions. Although there were, perhaps, some modest changes in Spain and its image as a result of the Expo, the changes were not all in one

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direction. Even though analysts and others might be tempted to think that the primary purpose of the Expo was to legitimate a particular course and vision of cosmopolitan historical development by simultaneously creating an aura of both familiarity and manifest destiny around it, this was clearly not the Expo’s primary or sole effect. Rather what the Expo seems mostly to have done is to impress people with a new sense of the complexities, polarities, and uncertainties of contemporary life. Somewhat ironically, the very process of assimilating and appropriating the meaning of the event by its audiences and participants tended to reinforce relatively established forms of identity and association even as it made it apparent that these established forms now exist alongside and in the midst of new forces that cut across and tend to blur the boundaries of communities, classes, regions, and nations.

18. Officials and Workers During the six months that it was open, the Expo created an impression among the general public that it was a smoothly operating and efficiently run event that was almost problem-free. But for the people who were employed at the Expo, this was not the case. Their workaday knowledge of the event was more intimate, extensive, and functionally oriented than that of visitors, and difficulties that appeared to an ordinary tourist as an irritating molehill often assumed the proportions of a mountain of discontent for those in positions of responsibility. For most foreign participants, the Expo was at the center of their working and nonworking life. Even most local employees devoted a considerable portion of what leisure time they had to enjoying the event. An intense double engagement with the Expo as employees and spectators for months and sometimes years on end made these “participant observers” into something approximating the first citizens of the island of La Cartuja. However, like the societies from whence they came, the artificial and transitory society to which they belonged at the Expo was far from homogeneous. The Expo was composed of people not only from diverse countries but also from distinct classes and occupational groups—people whose interests inevitably colored their perceptions of the Expo and the “new Spain” that it was supposed to represent. The professionals and managers, an elite group who governed the island, hoped to advance their careers in government service at different levels, ranging from the diplomatic corps to local administration, or to establish themselves as leading experts and consultants in educational and entertainment projects. Businesspeople aimed to make a profit by providing services. Work-

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ers wanted to make a good living at least for a few months and perhaps to qualify for better-paying jobs in the future. The differing interests and motivations of these three groups predisposed them to view the Expo through the lenses of particular class identities and personal trajectories. For this reason, examining the variety of experiences of the Expo’s functionaries is particularly useful in gaining a sense of the considerable distance separating the Expo’s domesticated images of social life from the realities of contemporary Spanish society. The elite group of directors and subdirectors of pavilions, programs, technical services, and other services was the segment of the Expo’s workforce that was most equally balanced in terms of the mix of Spaniards and foreigners. Generally well-educated, well-traveled, and well-off, the members of this group also came closest to resembling the idealized innovators, facilitators, and mediators prominent in the Expo’s representations of cosmopolitan subjects. Most of the foreign participants lived together in a housing complex called La Ciudad Expo (Expo City) and often encountered one another at official functions and in favored bars and restaurants on the site and in Seville. The residences of the Spanish elite were more scattered, but many Spanish officials still had fairly extensive contacts with one another and their foreign colleagues. Information and gossip circulated among the elite freely and quickly. As expected, the public statements of the elite tended to be imbued with official optimism about the success of the exhibition in promoting international harmony and its broad educational goals. The Expo, the “new Spain,” and the city of Seville were all copiously and frequently praised. Hyperbole was not unusual. For example, as the Expo’s final hours approached, the spokeswoman of the Pavilion of Morocco avowed the following: “The Expo has been better than the United Nations. Here there are no frontiers or conflicts. It [the Expo] has had Muslims, Catholics, and Buddhists who have all talked to one another without problems. We have talked person-to-person and country-to-country and religion-to-religion. I believe this is the best system for bringing together peoples and cultures” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:25). With only slightly more restraint, the director of the Pavilion of Germany declared that “the organizers have done a terrific job” and that his opinion of the Expo was “95 percent positive.” He even went on to praise the fence surrounding the site because “it lets you see through” (DD-ex 28 Sep 1992:27). In a later interview, he stressed “the harmony and joy among the participants and among the visitors as the essence of the event.” However, he did confess that he “would have liked it if the same harmony had existed between the city [Seville] and the Expo” and sadly added that “as a foreigner” he did “not understand very well what has happened” in that arena (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:25). Spanish officials, of course, lauded the Expo as an international encounter. But they also took pains to stress the positive local impact of the event, partly because they were aware that their foreign colleagues were alternately troubled and amused by the “war” between the Expo and Seville. The director

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of the Pavilion of Energy remarked, “My best professional experience was in the mounting [of the exhibit] in the pre-Expo period. During the six months of the exposition, I was able to see it more as a Sevillano than as a worker, and I’m confident that it has contributed to making us Sevillanos more cosmopolitan and open” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:31). Similarly, the Spanish architect of the Pavilion of the United Nations summed up the Expo by averring that “we have demonstrated that Seville is an open, cosmopolitan city and knows how to do things even if it has great nostalgia for the past” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:32). In private, members of the elite with whom I talked tended to be more critical of the event than their public statements suggested. In particular, they tended to believe that the central themes of the Expo were not clearly enough communicated to the public, and they were not impressed with the exhibits of many of the national and thematic pavilions, including in some cases even their own home pavilions. However, these officials were for the most part far from being cynical about the purposes and significance of international exhibitions; and if they sometimes were quick to point out the little hypocrisies, shams, and thin facades of idealism that were evident in the event’s rhetoric and representations, they were also committed to the broad goal of increasing international understanding, cooperation, and integration as well as to the goal of promoting the prestige of their own countries. Their enthusiasm for the Expo was far from unqualified, but it was genuine. Nevertheless, there was one dark side to the elite participants’ experience of the event. Behind the public stage, the day-to-day work of putting on the show was fraught with difficulties that tarnished the image of the “new Spain” for many officials. Although the Expo’s cosmopolitan ideal was of near equals cooperating with one another by means of thickly layered and interwoven networks of communication and coordination that functioned to harmonize diverse purposes and values, what the elites actually experienced was an inefficient and cumbersome bureaucracy whose shortcomings were made worse by obstinacy, ignorance, and arrogance. Most of the time, the conflicts that the Expo elites had with the minions of the State Society were not voiced in public. But eventually the strains and annoyances became so great that some officials could no longer restrain themselves. At one time or another, almost every division of the State Society was the target of specific complaints, as were Spanish government officials and private contractors. In general, however, elite participants perceived a vast bureaucracy graced with hundreds of confusing organizational acronyms and overlapping competencies. Owing to a lack of clear information, neither the elites nor many of the lower-level Expo workers with whom they had to deal could easily discern who was really in charge of what. This resulted in many delayed decisions, unpleasant confrontations, and accusations of unreasonable demands and willful obstruction. A key example of the sort of thing that undermined relations between participants and the State Society in the early days of the event was the

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inexplicably complex and many-stepped process of gaining the accreditation that was necessary to enable officials, employees, and suppliers to have access to the site. It sometimes took more than a week for all the paperwork to clear, and even those lucky enough to have secured the proper identification badges and permits were often delayed at the gates by the inspection procedures. On one notorious occasion, Expo security police fired their guns into the air to stop a New Zealand official from bolting the line in which he had been waiting for hours to get to work. This incident was talked about for months and became part of elite folklore about the Expo as a lesson in how not to start out on the right foot (ABC-ex 11 Oct 1992:68; DD-ex 15 May 1992:23). Other common complaints concerned bad transportation and hotel arrangements for official groups, the high costs and low functioning of the Expo’s advanced fiber-optic telephone system, and the endless confusion about licenses, fees, and permits. However, for many participating officials, the root of most of the Expo’s organizational evil was El Centro Oficial de Distribución y Almacenamiento (CODA), the official center of distribution and stores, which exercised virtually monopolistic control over everything that entered the Expo site. The mission of CODA was to facilitate delivery of all supplies and to extract the surcharge that the Expo imposed on all goods. Participants could make their own arrangements with independent suppliers but were encouraged to use firms with whom the Expo had contractual agreements. In either case, it was necessary to work through CODA. This was no easy task. There was unending paperwork; promised deliveries were often inexplicably delayed; surcharges and prices were high; the quality of goods was sometimes poor; what was delivered was not always what was ordered; the trucks of independent suppliers were frequently denied access to the site or charged “irregular fees”; queries went unanswered; complaints were rebuffed; and so on (ABC-ex 24 Apr 1992:76; DD-ex 21 Aug 1992:4). But worst of all was what participants perceived as the antagonism and indifference in CODA’s attitude toward them. Soon after opening day, this led a high foreign official who chose to remain anonymous to lament that CODA’s “general methods are more appropriate to Nazi Germany and a shame for democratic Spain” (ABC-ex 4 Jul 1992:64). Both denials of such charges and promises of improvement were forthcoming from Jacinto Pellón and the State Society, but few changes in CODA’s way of operating were evident to most participants. Even during the closing weeks of the exhibition, when it no longer made much difference how CODA responded, pent-up anger and a desire for revenge led to open denunciations. The secretary general of the Commission of Pavilions, Denmark’s Ole Philipson, praised the Expo as a grand success in its public functioning; but he observed that participants were maltreated by the State Society and the governments of Andalusia and Spain, that the “bureaucracy was not from this century,” and that “Spain should have thought about modernizing its administration” (DD-ex 4 Oct 1992:3). The commissioner of the Pavilion of

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Switzerland characterized the Expo as “the reign of paperwork” (DD-ex 27 Sep 1992:20). Such criticism was not limited to northern European participants who prided themselves on efficiency. The commissioner of the Pavilion of Sri Lanka declared that because of the excessive expenses and delays induced by the Expo bureaucracy, he was going to begin shutting down his pavilion two months before closing day (DD-ex 3 Sep 1992:15). Even the Japanese officials, who were clearly reluctant to offend their hosts, rued the Expo’s high prices and delays and the impoliteness of lesser functionaries (DD-ex 26 Sep 1992:19; DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:25). Some officials were so embittered that their denunciations began to take on distinctly anti-Spanish and chauvinistic undertones. An Austrian director, for example, lamented the “calvary that we have suffered during the Expo” and declared that his own company had been very much interested in entering the Spanish market but was now reconsidering because of the “Third World bureaucracy” it encountered at the Expo. He went on to “regret the image that this has given Spain” and to claim that “a good number of businesses have canceled their plans to remain here because they [the bureaucrats] are making life impossible” (DD 18 Oct 1992:3). A Finnish official complained that “there’s always someone cashing in here” and said he believed that the Cataláns who organized the Olympics had shown themselves to be better organized and “more international in spirit” than were the Expo bureaucrats. Other officials observed that “nobody here [at the Expo] likes to see foreigners making money,” that the Expo was “a trap,” and that the bureaucrats “invited us here, and now they are taking our money” (DD-ex 11 Oct 1992:19). In response to such charges, officials of the State Society tended to argue that everybody wanted everything immediately and for nothing. However, many other Spanish officials agreed with the denunciations of their foreign colleagues. The commissioner of the Pavilion of Nature characterized the whole Expo as a “Kafkaesque castle of bureaucracy,” and the commissioner of the Pavilion of Valencia noted that lower-level Expo functionaries were expert in “improvising obstacles” (DD-ex 8 Oct 1992:4). Indeed, it often seemed that Spanish officials were more annoyed by the vagaries of Expo operations than were the other participants. For example, one evening as a junior-level manager of a European pavilion and I sat talking in the Kangaroo Pub (a popular bar at the Expo), he told me that it had taken nearly two weeks for him to obtain paper supplies for his pavilion’s food concession. In the interval, desperate pavilion workers had resorted to sneaking napkins onto the Expo site in their day packs. As we were joking about this, a young and carefully groomed Expo functionary from northern Spain, who was seated next to us, began to look agitated and finally interrupted to say in a rather officious tone of voice that such lapses should be reported immediately to higher levels of the administration. The European manager assured him that complaints had been promptly registered. The young Spaniard then became slightly apologetic and admitted that he, too, had

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tales of bureaucratic woe to tell. But instead of reciting them, he began to blame most of the problems of the State Society on what he saw as the moneygrubbing machinations of politicians of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and the laziness of southerners. And as he spoke, he became more and more angry until finally his voice seethed with contempt. At this point, the European manager (who was much taken with Seville) and I began to defend the virtues of Andalusians against the prejudices of rigid and “closed” northerners. The conversation then shifted to a more lighthearted if inconclusive and meandering debate about Spanish traditions and the supposition that the country had to become more modern. Although problems between CODA and the participants undeniably existed, it is difficult to say if the Expo bureaucracy was in general, comparative terms as inept as many participants said it was. Every bureaucracy is, after all, a good deal less efficient and far more conditioned by prevailing social practices and cultural values than it usually claims to be (see Herzfeld 1992), and the sorts of complaints lodged against the Expo are so familiar and stereotypical as to be almost universally recognizable. Moreover, even the Expo’s severest critics recognized that it operated smoothly for the general public. In light of these mitigating factors, what is probably most important to recognize about the elite group’s criticisms of Expo bureaucracy is how these criticisms functioned symbolically. The criticisms basically accomplished three things. First, they reaffirmed the central importance of standards of rationalized procedures, administrative mediation, and instrumental efficiency as defining aspects of modernity. Second, they enabled the critics to represent themselves as the guardians and judges of rational instrumentalism in ways that validated their individual countries’ claims and their own claims to authority and prestige (“if we were in charge, things would certainly be different”). Third, they served to put Spain back in its place in the global pecking order, generally recognizing it as an upwardly mobile country aspiring to but not quite achieving full modernity at this point in time. In other words, key values of technocorporate cosmopolitan liberalism, which the Expo so vociferously advocated in its formal themes and exhibits, were used by elite participants to judge it and through it to judge Spain. In the eyes of many of the Expo’s official elite, Spain appeared as a nouveau riche whose excessive eagerness to become a member of the right club exposed its shortcomings in background and preparation. It was as if the country surreptitiously tried to butt in line while others waited to be seated in the dining room. The general public may not have noticed how local habits undermined good manners, but those who most mattered did. Spanish officials who made the same sorts of criticism of the Expo blamed the faux pas on specific political and regional groups in order to assert their own higher standards. Foreign officials tended to be less discriminating and to see the administrative problems of the Expo as revealing something about the country as a whole. For this

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influential group, the “new Spain” had proved not quite new enough, and this seriously hindered the Expo’s success in fulfilling its most basic mission of changing the image of the country.1 In some key ways, the day-to-day experience of businesspeople with the Expo paralleled that of the elite officials. Without question, some businesses, especially those involved in consulting, construction, and wholesale supply, profited greatly in 1992, while most of the service-oriented bars, restaurants, and shops on the Expo site and in Seville appeared to do well enough. However, there were also dozens of businesses that struggled and did not survive even the six-month duration of the event. Although there is nothing unusual in the fact that some enterprises prospered while others failed, what was peculiar was that this occurred initially in an atmosphere of highly inflated expectations that were partly attributable to the State Society’s overly optimistic projections and publicity and were partly due to the widespread belief among Sevillanos and Spanish entrepreneurs that the event provided an opportunity for those with initiative to get rich quick. Unfortunately, by the time the Expo opened, most of Europe was deep in recession, so investments and vacation travel were in a slump. As a result, many consultants in the giant World Trade Organization building adjacent to the Expo site waited in vain for foreign corporate executives (see chapter 22), while the owners of small businesses anxiously hoped for the promised hordes of foreign tourists. For those entrepreneurs, large and small, who eagerly anticipated but never really made the big money, the tendency was to blame the Expo. The largest single economic failure associated with the Expo was the bankruptcy of Coral, an officially sanctioned organization linking seventeen hotels, most of which had been constructed or renovated for the event at great cost. Coral had been financed by a number of the largest Spanish banks, and the Expo itself had a 28 percent share in the organization (EC 23 Jun 1992:28). To recoup its investments, Coral had set room rates at an exorbitant level. Then when large numbers of upper-middle-class tourists failed to come, the consortium paid the inevitable price. Within a few weeks of opening day, 30 percent reductions in prices for most of the hotels were announced but to no avail. Most visitors and tour groups had already found or arranged for other accommodations. Losses mounted quickly to more than 1,500 million pesetas; bankruptcy loomed; the Expo was faced with the prospect of assuming a large portion of the debt; and the whole enterprise had to be reorganized. When room rates were lowered again and package deals were offered, this nearly set off a general price war among other hotels in Seville. The fiasco was accompanied by vociferous demands for external audits, and the press provided numerous commentaries detailing the false assumptions that had been made about the tourist market (ABC-ex 7 May 1992:3; ABC-ex 11 Oct 1992:69; DD-ex 22 Jun 1992:3; DD-ex 26 Aug 1992:13). Many of the other businesses on the Expo site also suffered from the lack of well-heeled tourists. Several dealers in expensive antiques, whose shops

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were located near the thematic exhibitions, were feeling the pinch. Dozens of excellent restaurants that were the pride of their pavilions offered high-priced meals for those on expense accounts, but few visitors enjoyed such perquisites. The exorbitant prices of most ordinary foods and of even the tackiest souvenirs held down sales. Indeed, the amount of food purchased on the site throughout the course of the exhibition never reached half of the lowest early estimates (DD 12 Oct 1992:47). Even the levels of alcohol consumption during Expo Noche (“nighttime Expo”) were surprisingly moderate (DD 19 May 1992:5). To make matters worse, because everyone had expected high volumes of sales, most on-site concessionaires had agreed to Expo contracts that required them to pay between 15 and 25 percent of their income as royalties to the sponsoring organization, although a few specially favored businesses had, for reasons not altogether clear, been conceded rates of only 8.5 percent (EP 7 Aug 1992:1). Low profits, perceptions of unfairness, and in some cases real losses led individual businesses and finally the Association of Concessionaires to request a renegotiation of their contracts, as well as a restoration of the sale of season passes and more days of free admission for Sevillanos (DD-ex 21 Jul 1992:4). Expo officials, who were themselves under intense political pressure to present a positive balance sheet for the event as a whole, at first adamantly rejected the demands of the concessionaires. Accusing them of creating an “atmosphere of crisis that is totally false,” the officials consistently claimed that only a few businesses were struggling and that their struggles were a result of their owners’ miscalculations (DD-ex 22 Aug 1992:3). This led to a series of countercharges and confrontations that did nothing to resolve the issue. Complaining of the “fiscal voracity” of the Expo (DD 24 Jul 1992:3), the concessionaires claimed that Pellón and the State Society had manipulated projections in order to convince them that 400,000 people would visit the site on an average day in July, when in fact the average attendance had been only 160,000 (DD-ex 22 Jul 1992:3). The concessionaires also claimed that 70 percent of their businesses were losing money (ABC-ex 26 Jul 1992:54–55). Expo officials counterattacked by accusing concessionaires of underreporting their sales and devising ways to circumvent or sabotage the perpetually malfunctioning computer system that was supposed to record virtually every transaction. One functionary declared that he could “count on one hand the businesses that were paying [their fees] religiously” (DD-ex 24 Jul 1992:3). Others estimated that 40 percent of sales were not being reported and that the Expo was being cheated of somewhere between 10 million and 25 million pesetas a day (ABC-ex 28 Apr 1992:50). The press lamented that fraud had become the most favored commercial strategy at the exhibition. Insisting that “only a miracle in September can save many businesses from failure or losing a lot of money,” the president of the Association of Concessionaires warned that many businesses would make good their threat to shut down immediately if no relief was forthcoming (ABC-ex 4 Aug 1992:46).

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Finally, after long defiance, Pellón agreed to talk, but he imposed a condition of public silence on the negotiations and apparently pressured the president of the Association of Concessionaires to resign. A general arrangement was evidently reached, because food prices on the site were soon reduced to some extent (DD 11 Aug 1992:1). However, most complaints were dealt with on a case-by-case basis; and as Pellón himself observed, this process was complicated and difficult, and the results were often far from satisfactory (ABC 19 Aug 1992:42). A case in point was that of Ibense, an Andalusian firm that was supposed to be the exclusive concessionaire of frozen desserts at the Expo. In late August, assuming the mantle of the emperor of ice cream, Pellón suddenly ordered the suspension of all sales of the company’s products in the midst of a dispute over royalties and rights. The mayor of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where Ibense is based, then immediately went to court with the company’s lawyers to obtain an order for the immediate reopening of business at the Expo (ABC-ex 27 Aug 1992:38). Similar confrontations occurred between the State Society and various other concessions, including a flower supplier called Everflora and an immensely popular and presumably highly profitable bar called the Kangaroo Pub. In the case of the pub, the State Society demanded that it pay 70 million pesetas in back royalties in August. Rather than dispute these demands in court, the foreign owners and managers of the pub took the path of least resistance, fired their 200 or more employees without warning, and fled the country (ABC-ex 28 Aug 1992:39). Expo officials worried that this incident would set a precedent to be followed by other foreign businesspeople and even foreign government officials faced with the bureaucratic nightmares that everyone fully expected to encounter when selling off or tearing down their stores, kiosks, and pavilions at the end of the Expo. Thanks to the crowds of September and October, the “miracle” that the president of the Association of Concessionaires had longed for finally arrived for at least some businesses. But it arrived too late to change the atmosphere of mutual suspicion and hostility that existed between the Expo bureaucrats and the businesspeople. The promise of big profits had seduced many of these people into agreeing to bad contracts, and although the Expo greatly benefited from the services they provided, any rewards that they finally received for their efforts were considered by them to be less than they deserved and less than fair. Compounding their sense of grievance was the suspicion that if they were not making much money, somebody certainly was: possibly it was the State Society; possibly it was the enterprises in which high officials of the State Society or their relatives had invested; possibly it was companies with connections to the PSOE; and possibly it was all three. In any case, for many businesspeople, especially those involved in small concessions, the Expo was not the “new Spain” of corporate investment, transnational finance, rational management, and master’s degrees. It was the “old Spain” of ruthless manipulation, profit

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gouging, shadowy deals, and personal favoritism—the Spain in which every law is immediately found to engender it own type of fraud (“hecha la ley, hecha la trampa”). Insult was added to injury especially for Sevillanos, who well remembered that the State Society’s functionaries from northern Spain had disdained dealing with southern Spaniards on the grounds that southerners were hopelessly enmeshed in outdated business practices and attitudes. The State Society had promoted the idea that the new global economy was characterized by multilayered, smoothly functioning cooperation between government and business and by the fair mediation and accommodation of divergent interests. Looking back on this idea, the local business community responded that maybe the characterization was true “elsewhere” but certainly not at the Expo. Like the business owners, the ordinary Expo employees often experienced problems with the State Society. In addition to the thousands of jobs in Seville that were greatly affected by the Expo, about 11,500 workers were directly employed on the Expo site. Those on the site included about 200 CODA employees, 1,300 street performers, 5,000 workers in concessions, and 5,000 workers in pavilions and other buildings (ABC-ex 6 Apr 1992:64). A minority of the pavilion employees were foreigners, and many of these people, especially the ones from the less developed countries, were the sons and daughters of privilege. Some among them had a bad reputation for being condescending, spoiled brats. However, most of the young foreign employees were enthusiastic and bright, and they valued the chance to meet their peers from other countries and seemed more than willing to explore international contacts at all levels. For these people, spending the summer at the Expo offered an ideal combination of work experience and at least the possibility of romantic adventure. Spanish workers were far more numerous, of course, and their jobs were more various. In contrast to foreign workers, the Spanish workers generally came from more modest educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, although there were exceptions, such as the son of Manuel Chaves (the president of Andalusia) and other young people with links to the PSOE. Initially, most Spanish workers were delighted with the prospect of employment at the Expo. The event had brought nearly full employment to Seville for the first time in memory, and this was extraordinarily important for young people, who had suffered most severely from the perennial job shortage in the region. For many workers in their twenties, the Expo was the first job that they had ever had, and even if it lasted for only a few months, they hoped that the qualifications they gained from it would serve as a stepping stone to more permanent positions and careers (ABC-ex 27 Aug 1992:41). Moreover, the international audience and the aura of hypermodernity made the Expo seem an exciting place to work, even for clerks, sanitation workers, and service workers whose basic tasks were not particularly interesting. These positive factors were partially offset by the increasingly darkening economic prospects for Spain as a whole, by anxieties about what would

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happen in Seville after the Expo, and by the generally dismal state of relations between government and labor in Spain.2 Since 1989, when a general strike against liberal economic and employment policies had brought millions of Spaniards into the streets in protest, the government and the trade unions had been at loggerheads. This antagonism continued after the Expo and indeed reached its nadir in 1993 with the imposition of new, more “flexible” policies on wages, contracts, and working conditions. In early 1992, however, the basic discord was being expressed through countless labor disputes in particular industries. For example, construction workers planned a strike against the Olympics and the Expo in March, and this strike had been avoided only by forced arbitration (ABC 3 Apr 1992:75). There were separate threats by hotel, sanitation, security, telecommunications, transportation, and medical unions to strike in April. Most of the threats and disputes at least indirectly were prompted by issues surrounding the adaptation of the Spanish economy to European market and regulatory norms, and most also directly concerned the terms of temporary employment contracts, an issue of vital interest to virtually all Expo employees (ABC 3 Apr 1992:38; ABC-ex 14 Apr 1992:42). For their part, Expo managers were plagued by worries about how these possible labor actions would affect basic services on the Expo site. The generally bad environment created by the strike threats deteriorated still further when the government in Madrid made its so-called decretazo (arbitrary decree) on unemployment around the time that the Expo was receiving its first visitors. This decree tightened eligibility requirements and lowered benefits for the jobless and thereby directly affected the future prospects of almost all Expo workers. In addition, it was expected to have a disproportionate impact on Andalusia, where unemployment was more common and of longer duration than in other regions. The unions were outraged by the decretazo and responded to it by calling for a second general strike, the aim of which was to force the government to rescind the decree (DD 25 Apr 1992:47; DD 29 May 1992:5–8, 12). The strike was supported by La Izquierda Unida, El Partido Andalucista, and other political parties and was scheduled to last for half a day on 28 May 1992. This gave Expo officials ample time to reach agreements with employee representatives on how the strike would affect the Expo. Thus, when 28 May arrived, there were few serious problems at the Expo (or, for that matter, elsewhere in Spain). Union representatives handed out pamphlets that explained the reasons for the strike in several languages, but only three Expo entrance gates were opened, and there were few visitors on the site. Things went so smoothly that Pellón characterized the strike as a success for both the unions and the Expo (DD 29 May 1992:5–8, 12; DD-ex 29 May 1992:3; EP 23 May 1992:1). A more dramatic link between the Expo’s international themes and agenda and the problems of Spanish workers and the unemployed was made when Cuba’s foreign minister, Ricardo Alarcón, arrived at the Expo for his country’s day of honor. He was greeted by a large crowd and many of the lead-

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ing figures in the Spanish labor movement. The eminent poet Rafael Alberti, in his nineties and suffering from poor health, proclaimed Cuba one of the few corners of the Third World where children were not begging in the streets and medical care was available to all elderly people. The intense enthusiasm of the crowd and the militant solidarity affirmed between Spanish workers and the Cuban people were a source of considerable embarrassment for PSOE ministers, whose own militancy and commitments to working-class solidarity were much in doubt and whose official stance was critical of Cuba’s lack of democracy (DD-ex 28 Jul 1992:3). The context of bad labor relations and worsening economic forecasts shaped workers’ understanding of the Expo at least as much as did pride and excitement about the event itself. The greatest single source of concern was the increasingly poor prospects for post-Expo employment. However, wages and working conditions on the site were also far from ideal. Workers averaged an equivalent to about 1,000 dollars a month in wages—not much in relation to the inflated prices that prevailed in Seville, especially in the housing market. Moreover, wages were often quite low in relation to workers’ qualifications and certainly in relation to the handsome compensation received by the Expo’s higher officials, directors, and consultants (DD-ex 25 May 1992:3). The conditions of employment at the Expo also seemed oppressive to many workers because of their fears of sudden and immediate dismissal. Like the firms that employed them, Expo workers suffered from the poor rates of attendance in the early months. The first round of firings began in May and affected 200 waiters in restaurants that had few clients. These dismissals sparked strong union protests, and the State Society was obliged to concede high indemnities to the workers (DD 7 May 1992:4). But this did not prevent the abrupt dismissal of another 700 waiters, food workers, retail clerks, and daycare center employees a couple of weeks later (DD 13 May 1992:6). By midJuly, a total of 1,000 workers had been fired. By late August, an additional 700 workers who had mostly been employed by concessionaires were out of a job (ABC-ex 27 Aug 1992:39). During this period, the Expo was also beset by a series of work stoppages and protests over wages, overtime, benefits, and other issues. These activities were organized by security workers, parking lot attendants, cleaning crews, and employees of the Pavilion of Spain, among others. The actions occurred about once every ten days on average and led the press to characterize the Expo as a “workers’ paradise lost” (DD 16 Jul 1992:7). As one sanitary worker described the Expo, “It has been awful [fatal]; I have not enjoyed it. I have no accreditation, and in addition, my comrades and I have had to strike for them to pay us” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:24). Not just members of the service crews but also public relations employees were discontented with their jobs. The pupis and azafatas (key information dispensers and pavilion attendants), whose interactions with visitors strongly

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influenced public perceptions of the event and Spain as a whole, had many complaints, some of which were shaped by the politics of gender as well as of class. Many azafatas strongly resented being ordered around as if they were waitresses by both Expo functionaries and members of the public. They denounced and threatened to strike over a variety of issues, including unpredictable working hours, abusive demands for unscheduled overtime, inconsistencies in the salaries being paid to different people for the same work, failures to deliver promised bonuses for work in the wee hours, and the purportedly unjustified dismissal of seven of their colleagues (DD 7 Jul 1992:6; DD-ex 10 Jun 1992:6; DD-ex 11 Jun 1992:3). They also were angered by the incompetence, inexperience, and sheer nastiness of some of their supervisors, who tried to browbeat them into submission and, as one pupi put it, “told us things just to make us afraid” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:32). For many, probably most, of the workers, the Expo was at least as much a study in shadows as in light. To be sure, some employees were overwhelmingly positive. One young pavilion attendant, for example, summarized his experience by saying, “The Expo has been my second home, my place of work, and my center of diversion for drinks at night; in two words, it has been work and pleasure” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:23). Another pavilion attendant declared, “The Expo has permitted me to experience the reality of the world through my coworkers from every country of the planet. What before was for me only a movie, I now know is real . . . what’s really happening in the world” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:24). In contrast, many workers expressed frustration and disillusionment about their jobs and their overall experience of the Expo. For example, the conductor of the monorail lamented, “[I work] without airconditioning, and I listen to the same tape that describes the site for fifty-two hours a week. From now on, I don’t want to even look at the Expo” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:24). A secretary at the Expo declared, “I would not repeat the experience. I have worked through vacations and weekends, and I haven’t seen anything but the Pavilion of Navigation” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:31). And another functionary confessed, “Because I have been working, I haven’t seen anything. . . . If I tell the truth, I am very tired of everything” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:26). Many of the public relations workers also complained about the numerous difficulties that they had in dealing with both the public and their superiors. As one waiter described his situation, “When the people come to eat, tired from the lines of the pavilions, they begin to fight at the tables, . . . but the worst thing is to be always surrounded by bosses” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:31). A young supply officer seemed to speak for many when he observed, “I will always remember that I worked in one of the most important areas of the Expo and responded to thousands of questions every day. It has been marvelously horrible” (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:24). As discussed in earlier chapters, the official Expo presented a number of key concepts and images of the contemporary social world, which among other

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things suggested that the interests and the work of experts and ordinary people are complementary and increasingly harmonious and that social conflicts are increasingly being domesticated through the actions of complex networks of mediation in a “new Spain,” a “new Europe,” and a new world order, all of which are beckoning us toward a happier future. Each of these images had some real cultural force and appeal. However, their transformative efficacy for the Expo’s employees and managers was quite clearly limited by the character of the concrete practices and specific experiences that engaged the event’s elite directors, its businesspeople, and its workers from one day to the next. In each of these spheres of practical activity, the old realities and stereotypes of Spain as a rather backward country beset by bureaucratic arrogance, inefficiency, personalism, unfairness, and exploitation were far from being dispelled by official optimism and rhetoric. The elite found administrative irrationalities and parochial prejudice everywhere; the businesspeople saw official functionaries as obsessed with their own interests and unconcerned with the welfare of others; and the workers largely saw their superiors as ordinary bosses, not as inspirational guides or discoverers. As a result, cleavages of class, region, and nationality, as well as hierarchies of power, were more reinforced than transcended by the event for the very people who were most involved in it. The all too familiar gap between social experience and ideological representations that participants encountered at the Expo, as elsewhere, led many of them to defend themselves from perceived or real threats to their integrity, autonomy, and well-being by reaffirming their identities in equally familiar ways. Rather than transforming participants’ sense of the possibilities of the present and of themselves in any dramatic way, the Expo generated a good deal of criticism and ambivalence that tended to subvert its underlying evangelical cultural purposes. Instead of viewing the Expo as an event signaling a great new beginning for Spain, many of the Expo’s participants simply and ultimately relegated the Expo to the vast and ever-expanding category of the “marvelously horrible,” a category that increasingly seems to encompass so many aspects of cultural life in contemporary advanced societies.

19. Visitors In contrast to the employees, whose response to the Expo was strongly colored by their experience of it as a workplace, ordinary visitors considered the exhibition to belong almost wholly to the realm of diversion and pleasure. To choose to go was almost by definition a voluntary act—an expression, however minor, of the exercise of personal freedom and the pursuit of happiness— that reflected personal identities, interests, and concerns for status and prestige.

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Although most visitors took their freedom to choose for granted, this, of course, did not mean that they escaped the direct collective pressures and inducements exerted by the official organs and mass media publicizing the Expo, nor did it mean that the experiences of choice offered by the event were not highly regulated and manufactured or even that visiting the Expo did not in some cases involve considerable effort which sometimes amounted to hard work, albeit of a rather peculiar kind. In other words, the experience that most visitors had of the Expo was strongly conditioned by its place within the “free time” cultural industries of tourism and leisure. Indeed, even though the Expo belonged formally to the realm of freedom, it was for this very reason pervaded by the conventional cultural expectations and practical cost-benefit disciplines of consumerist desire that shape contemporary tourism and recreation. What seemed to matter most in shaping how visitors understood the Expo was the kind and degree of “cultural intimacy” (see Herzfeld 1997) with which they approached and experienced the various dimensions of the event. For some, many dimensions would be familiar and would make them feel comfortable and “at home.” For others, many dimensions would be relatively new or alien and could be a source either of excitement and pleasure or of some uncertainty and anxiety. Of course, because of the power of mass culture and media in contemporary life, almost everyone who went to the Expo shared some common knowledge and expectations about the sort of event it would be. Visitors of all kinds had a broad, if often rather fuzzy, initial understanding of world fairs and similar exhibitions, and everyone knew that the occasion for the event was the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage. They expected the Expo to be about virtually “everything”—the past, present, and future of humankind, along with much information about the natural world and new technologies. They also realized that different countries aimed to communicate the richness of their cultures and customs in the best possible light, and they recognized that the general mission of the Expo was to promote international peace, tolerance, and mutual understanding and cooperation. Beyond this general sort of familiarity, however, the specific aspects of the event that made some visitors feel more at home and others less so can broadly, if by no means exclusively, be understood in terms of the influence of geocultural (local, regional, and national) identity and of class position on people’s experiences. As a rule, foreigners (who were overwhelmingly European but with substantial groups of North Americans in the mix) were initially less familiar with the Expo’s history and purposes and less comfortable in the Andalusian milieu than were locals, and they spent less time at the Expo than did Sevillanos. Sevillanos were generally disposed to feel at home at the Expo because they were quite literally at home in every other way. People from northern Spain generally occupied a middle position in this regard. However, the importance of geocultural identity in understanding the degree and kind of intimacy people had with the Expo and in the long run the sort of impact that the

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event had on different types of visitors is partly offset by the influence of class position. Most foreign and northern Spanish visitors were relatively well employed, educated, and wealthy. As a result, they tended to be well acquainted with many of the event’s hypermodern cultural themes and well equipped to spend the money needed to make themselves comfortable at the Expo and in Seville. The majority of Sevillano and Andalusian visitors occupied more marginal or at least more modest socioeconomic positions, and if this did not ultimately undermine their capacity to make themselves fully at home at the Expo, it certainly conditioned the ways in which they could do so. Roughly one-third of Expo visitors were foreign, and their experiences were strongly conditioned by the general prominence that the Expo and Olympics had temporarily assumed in 1992 as focal points of the apparently ever-expanding transnational subculture of mass tourism.1 Indeed, because there have been few other countries in the last half-century whose international image, domestic culture, and economic development have been as powerfully shaped by tourism as those of Spain, it seems clear that the indirect and direct influences of the tourist subculture were particularly strong on foreign visitors to the Expo. Under the slogan of “Spain is different,” the Franco regime had swayed millions to seek out the country’s beaches, bullfights, and bars as a means of attracting much-needed foreign revenue and mitigating some aspects of the country’s relative political and diplomatic isolation as one of western Europe’s last remaining dictatorships. With the coming of parliamentary democracy, state officials had continued to encourage “sunny Spain” vacations for the masses, but they had also aggressively promoted more upscale museum- and monumentoriented “cultural tourism,” as well as the development of seasonal and permanent retirement communities for foreign residents. By the early 1990s, Spain ranked third (behind the United States and France) as a tourist destination and averaged over 34 million visitors a year (NYT 26 May 1991:20). Even more than the Olympics, the Expo was well matched to this general “fun in the sun” plus “culture” formula because of its location in romantic Seville, its proximity to the beaches of the Costa del Sol, its half theme park and half global museum image, and its promise of a wide range of both diverting popular entertainments and edifying cultural experiences. Yet if Spain itself equaled fun plus culture, then the Expo seemed to offer the tourist still more: the best of the old Spain and the best of the new Spain, with the best of the rest of the whole wide world tossed in as a bonus, all on a small island in the Guadalquivir River. This heady blend of “Spain plus” was what gave the Expo’s organizers cause to hope that the dominant image of the entire country might be transformed almost overnight from somewhat underdeveloped and traditional to progressive and avant-garde. As an epitome of tourist culture in a much-touristed land, the Expo naturally raised high expectations among visitors as well. In conversations that I had with many foreign tourists, what most stood out in their comments about

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why they had decided to come to the Expo was a general curiosity about world’s fairs; the impression that this particular Expo was a spectacle so large in scale and so impressive in scope that it should not be missed; and the possibility of combining a visit to the Expo with a visit to the Olympics, to the beaches of the Costa del Sol, or to the monumental attractions of Seville, Córdoba, and Granada. Even so, many visitors were acutely aware that Spain was not as highly developed as Germany or France and felt that they were taking some risk in coming to the Expo, despite all the publicity testifying to the event’s success and popularity. This was largely because they perceived the Expo to be an ambitious hypermodern event implanted in a relatively backward region of Europe, and they worried that they would in some way wind up being disappointed by the experience. They hedged their bets by incorporating the Expo as one part of a larger itinerary, and this generally meant that their visits to the Expo site would be relatively short. Yet the limited investment that most foreign visitors were willing to make in the Expo seems to have done little to diminish their immersion in the quasi-ritualized, existential questlike dimensions of contemporary tourism. On the one hand, the special nature of the event and its setting seemed to overheat desires for peak experiences of pleasure or illumination. On the other hand, these same factors aroused sharp anxieties about practical inconveniences and obstacles and about how these expected challenges could best be overcome so as to yield maximal happiness with a minimal expenditure of money and energy. In spite of the massive amount of publicly available information concerning the Expo, visitors usually arrived at the Expo’s gates for the first time unable to say much about the exhibition’s fundamental themes. Very few of them seemed aware that the path of an ideal visit would lead them from the historical thematic pavilions along the Route of Discoveries to the pavilions devoted to science and the future and thence to the pavilions of participating countries. Instead, most people had in mind a short list of individual pavilions and exhibits they wanted to see, a list that they had concocted on the basis of publicity, press reports, and word-of-mouth information. These scattered targets usually included one or two of the most popular thematic exhibitions (such as the Pavilion of Navigation), the offerings of the visitor’s own country, the Pavilion of Spain, and perhaps one or two other popular destinations (such as the Pavilion of Japan or the Pavilion of Canada). Such itineraries did not hold forth much promise of lending the kind of coherence to the Expo experience that the organizers had anticipated. On average, nonlocal visitors spent about two and a half days at the Expo. When they arrived at the gates on their first morning, most people had to spend some time waiting in line—frequently the wrong line for the type of admission they had purchased or planned to purchase. After passing through the turnstiles, visitors then encountered security checks, which entailed the use of metal detectors, scanners, and bag searches conducted by Expo security staff. These

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checks did not always go smoothly, because of language barriers and Expo rules restricting what could be brought on the site in terms of food, drinks, and so forth. While the uninitiated wasted their valuable time figuring out what to do next, the more experienced Expo visitors rushed off to secure admission tickets for shows later in the day or to get to the most popular pavilions before lines formed. Many first-time visitors eventually headed for the monorail, the cable cars, or the Banesto Tower to get an overview of the Expo site. Others headed for a kiosk selling maps or guidebooks. Most, however, simply started off in one direction or another, perhaps slightly intimidated by the scale and complexity of things but clearly eager to get started on their “personal voyages of discovery.” If they were lucky, by early afternoon they would probably have visited two or three large pavilions and perhaps have viewed one or two smaller exhibits, and they would have stopped for a few minutes to watch some street performers or to be puzzled, bored, and occasionally impressed by the speeches and ceremonies of some country’s day of honor. Sooner or later, they would have to choose whether to eat an overpriced hot dog or dine in a restaurant that might leave them strapped for cash for the rest of the day. Although there were always substantial numbers of unmarried young Spaniards and foreigners in their twenties, accompanied by friends and lovers, it nonetheless seemed that for most people a visit to the Expo was a family affair. Relatively few foreigners appeared to come to the event as individuals or as part of large, organized tour groups. Rather, the Expo represented a milieu in which the politics of interpersonal, domestic relations could flourish among husbands and wives and parents and children. What pavilion to visit next, how to keep young children or teenagers amused, what to eat or buy, whether to split up or keep the domestic unit united, how to deal with lines and heat, and a myriad of other mundane topics were a focus of continual concern. Normally, the way in which conversations unfolded about these topics was less influenced by the character of the Expo itself than it was by the patterns and styles of interpersonal relations that constituted the common culture of familiar shared understandings and misunderstandings of particular domestic groups. From family to family and group to group, the impact of these microsocial factors no doubt varied considerably, but it often appeared to be the case that the dynamics of domestic relations were more critical than anything else in shaping visitors’ experiences of the Expo and that the centrality of interpersonal concerns tended to act as a kind of cultural filter which limited the impact of the event on its audiences. Indeed, the matter of deciding whether and how to accommodate the various interests of different family members in different aspects of the Expo transformed a very public kind of activity (the tourist visit) into an intimate and particular sort of domestic experience (namely, the family vacation). There were several other common patterns that tended to link the visit of one group of people to another yet at the same time to make every visit unique. First of all, there was the broadly perceived imperative to economize

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that influenced foreign, Spanish, and local visitors alike. It was easily possible for a family of three or four to spend $1,000 a day on a visit to the Expo (e.g., $200–$400 for lodging, $100 for admissions, $200–$300 for meals at midrange restaurants on the site or in Seville, and $100–$200 for tickets to an evening concert) (EP 26 Apr 1992:12–13). As a result, there was a great deal of talk at the Expo about how expensive everything was. Efforts to economize sapped many visitors’ energy and were a major source of distraction, as was the need to seek out practical information about prices, locations, services, schedules, and performances. On the one hand, such information was readily available through many media, and the Expo staff of pupis and azafatas (key information dispensers and pavilion attendants) were also usually on hand and willing to help. These employees delighted in telling stories of befuddled tourists inquiring if “Curro,” the Expo mascot, was a native bird; if “Rank Xerox” was an Asian country; if the United Kingdom and England were the same country; if the “rheumatic train” was only for men; and so forth. On the other hand, the desire for directions and practical information (who, what, when, where, and how much does it cost) was so intense that it was the spark of countless interchanges among the visitors themselves. Indeed, this sort of exchange of information and opinion was often almost the only direct experience of “international cooperation” that visitors had at the Expo. Usually, conversations among visitors were brief and to the point. However, when people were waiting in lines or relaxing in a plaza and discovered a common language through which to communicate, the exchange of practical information often was supplanted by more evaluative commentaries on the quality of pavilions, movies, exhibits, and other aspects of the Expo. What usually characterized these exercises in practical cultural criticism and advice was an understanding that what the information seeker really wanted to gauge was not so much the intrinsic merit or value of a particular pavilion or exhibit but, rather, how much time and effort he or she should be willing to invest to experience it now or at least very soon and under roughly the present conditions. The key question was therefore not so much “Is it good?” in the abstract sense but, rather, as the Spanish would say, “Vale la pena?” (“Is it worth the trouble?”). A final thing that most foreign and many Spanish and local visitors to the Expo shared was a desire to make their time at the Expo somehow memorable. Many visitors, for example, appeared to spend an inordinate amount of time collecting pamphlets and other materials, shopping for small souvenirs, and making photos and videos of themselves, their families, and attractive sights and objects of one kind or another. This effort to objectify and conserve some record or token of their experience on the site usually bore only the most indirect or fragmentary relation to the themes of the Expo as a whole but presumably strongly affected how the event would be recollected in tranquillity. All of this, of course, required a good deal of effort, especially in the first hours of a visit. Consequently, on hot days (which is to say most days), the

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pavilion-viewing pace seemed to lag in the postprandial late afternoon hours as people sought places to rest, chat, and perhaps shop between brief forays into more of the Expo’s “many worlds.” As pavilions closed in the early evening, crowds began to gather around the Lake of Spain in anticipation of the Expo’s signature laser, light, and sound show. After this spectacle, most first-time foreign visitors, particularly those with children, were generally and quite visibly frazzled and far too tired to truly enjoy the pleasures offered by Expo Noche (“nighttime Expo”). Some people heroically persisted, unwilling to give up the day’s adventure. Large numbers, however, retreated to the exit gates, where on their way out they encountered throngs of Sevillanos who were entering the Expo and talking excitedly about the promise of an evening’s diversion. Having more or less successfully surmounted the peril of aimless and ungratifying wandering that novices faced, second-time foreign visitors to the Expo were, on the whole, better-organized and surer of what they did not want to miss at the exhibition. In the morning, it was their turn to rush off to the most popular attractions that they had failed to see on the first day of their visit. Over the course of the second day, they often managed to tour six or even more pavilions. Even so, because they were more sharply aware of how much there was to do and how little time in which to do it, many second- and third-day visitors seemed increasingly to adopt hit-and-run strategies: they would skip past pavilions with even short lines and try again later, and they would move quickly through most exhibits, stopping only for things that either strongly interested them or caught their eye. For large numbers of visitors, then, as their time at the Expo slipped away, the aim increasingly seemed to be to cram in as much as possible and as quickly as possible in order to approach, if not finally reach, the impossible dream of experiencing “everything.” After two or three days of this, most foreign visitors were, if not always sated, at least convinced that they had had enough of what was on display to be able to say that they had “seen the Expo,” and most of them were quite ready to declare themselves satisfied with the event and their own encounter with it. But there were exceptions to this rule—almost certainly hundreds of thousands of them. As increasing numbers of people visited the Expo site in August and admissions first reached and then consistently exceeded the level of 300,000 per day, the Expo began to become as much an ordeal as a pleasure for foreigners and Spaniards alike. By September, news reports of the influx of steadily growing crowds of vacationers generated what the press characterized as a tidal wave of “panic-visiting.” Throughout September, crowds regularly exceeded 400,000 per day. The worst single day of the Expo was Saturday, 3 October, when 629,000 visits were recorded. Beginning in August, the hotel rooms of Seville were fully occupied, and Jacinto Pellón declared “massification” of the Expo a “marvel.” Soon, however, the strain on basic services at the Expo site had become obvious to everyone, and there was talk of restricting entrances. In mid-September, officials began to

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request Sevillanos not to come on weekends (DD-ex 14 Sep 1992:3; DD-ex 15 Sep 1992:1). But such appeals seemed to have little effect, and conditions on the site deteriorated. To enter the most popular exhibitions and films (such as those of the Pavilions of Navigation, Canada, and Spain) in some cases required waiting in line for as long as six hours. Even to see the iceberg in the otherwise uninteresting Pavilion of Chile exacted a price of thirty minutes or so in the withering sun (DD-ex 13 Sep 1992:3). To catch a bus to the other end of the Expo or to the parking lots might take forty-five minutes. For visitors to move around became a chore and to revive themselves with food or drink a formidable task. In these circumstances, other visitors were less likely to be regarded as fellow travelers and more likely to be seen as antagonists. Consequently, unpleasant encounters with strangers increased, and tempers occasionally flared. Moreover, the presence of huge crowds seemed to dwarf the Expo itself. Peering in any direction, the visitor could see little more than a crush of other people looking around at one another and at pavilions that seemed suddenly to have shrunk in size and grandeur. Under these conditions, visitors of all kinds were hard-pressed to derive much sense, value, or pleasure from the event. Massification tended to homogenize everyone’s experience of the Expo, to limit responses to it to the level of forlorn or irritated complaint, and to reduce its positive meaning almost to the vanishing point. Those ensnared in endless crowds and lines were not particularly inclined to see the Expo as a celebration of either freedom or diversity and did not feel themselves enriched, entertained, or better-informed by the experience. “I’ve been to the Expo, but I saw nothing” became a frequent lament. Those fortunate enough to have visited in less crowded times were far less likely to feel the event was a waste of time and money. But what, finally, did it all mean to them? Opinions naturally varied widely, as did people’s experiences of the event. Some people were just befuddled, and many others apparently made little effort to rethink their initial vague and general expectations about the Expo in light of what they had seen, done, and felt during their visits. For such people, the Expo remained a hodgepodge of images and impressions. Perhaps more commonly, foreign and non-Andalusian visitors and, to a considerable degree, local visitors tended to interpret the Expo from the limited perspective of what can be called tourist realism. This perspective generally assumed that the Expo as a whole and the various parts of the Expo provided idealized and partial visions of reality which were somewhat distorted, but it also assumed that within certain vague limits, stretching the truth was inevitable, tolerable, and even commendable, at least in instances in which the promulgation of some higher values, such as peace and solidarity, were at stake. This common recognition formed the tacit basis for a good deal of reflection aimed at articulating what constituted reality and whether or not a particular pavilion or exhibit had violated commonsense boundaries of acceptable selective emphasis and distortion. So, for example, opinions

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would be formulated and discussed concerning how accurately and well the Pavilion of Germany represented German culture and history. For some people, the absence of virtually any reference to World Wars I and II and the Nazi past was sufficient to condemn the pavilion as a whole. For others, this absence was troubling enough to prompt expressions of concern. Still others were ready to accept the pavilion’s strategy of focusing only on the more positive aspects of contemporary German culture. Although particular features of pavilions and exhibits sometimes provoked strong expressions of annoyance and dislike (the zanier aspects of the Pavilion of Switzerland come to mind as an example), most of what was presented to visitors seemed fairly innocuous. Consequently, visitors’ critical and summary judgments about pavilions seemed more often to be influenced by preexisting dispositions than by what they directly encountered on the site. National stereotypes were very much in play in this domain, as the German example suggests. But so, too, were judgments of taste influenced by class position and education. Thus, if a visitor was inclined to regard Spanish culture as beset by traditionalism, conservatism, slavish respect for conventional opinion, and elitism, then the central place of the “Treasures of Spain” exhibit of master paintings in Spain’s national pavilion could easily enough be construed as evidence in support of this view. If, however, a visitor was inclined to see most Spaniards as vulgar, boorish, and culturally insecure, then the same exhibition could be represented as an overwrought effort to compensate for these shortcomings. Judgments of taste and intent, assertions of specialized knowledge and expertise, claims of personal experience, and citations from the store of common knowledge disseminated by the mass media were all cultural registers that could be and often were invoked as a means of judging the relationship between appearance and reality and minimizing or maximizing the cultural distance between oneself or one’s own kind and what was on display. But strenuous and extended efforts in criticism and the explicit reaffirmation of personal identity were far from the norm at the Expo. More commonly, interpretation and evaluation took place casually in the form of passing comments, provisional observations, and tentative conclusions that were part of the general flow of conversation and activity. Even after visitors’ sojourns at the Expo were concluded and the experience could be summarized and seen as a whole, the exercise of critical judgment was embedded in personal narratives whose focus was primarily on the character of individual visits. When I asked visitors about their reactions and experiences, the typical form their narratives took was a “we did this and then we did that” recapitulation of various activities, punctuated by more detailed comments on the high and low points of the experience. The mundane and egocentric character of most tourist narratives strongly suggests that the Expo had a limited transformative capacity to change people’s opinions and outlooks. In fact, many foreign visitors claimed not to have encountered much at the fair that was unfamiliar to them.

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The question of how efficacious the Expo was in changing the image of Spain for foreign tourists is best approached in light of this tendency to incorporate the Expo into preexisting schemes of common sense and common knowledge. In many cases, foreign visitors to the Expo and Seville invoked either directly or implicitly one of two kinds of comparison to express their understanding of the relation of the Expo to the “new Spain” and the “new Europe.” On the one hand, they would compare the Expo and Spain with wherever their home was and with Europe more generally, almost always to the advantage of the latter. On the other hand, they would compare the Expo with the rest of Spain or with Andalusia, usually to the advantage of the former. To put this a bit less abstractly, they generally admired the Expo as impressive evidence of Spain’s commitment to modernity and to Europe, but they usually also judged it as deficient in some ways, with most foreign visitors feeling that if their own country had chosen to have a world’s fair, these deficiencies would not have been in evidence, either because of the native virtues of their compatriots or because their own country was more modern and progressive than Spain. In addition, most foreign visitors viewed the Expo as much more modern and efficient than Spain as a whole and especially than Andalusia. As a result, they saw the event as a somewhat contrived and artificial implant that reflected Spain’s aspirations, ambitions, and potential more than its realities. Within this framework, Seville was most often praised in cultural terms as a charming repository of tradition, history, custom, and folklore; and this was viewed as compensating for at least some of the city’s shortcomings in terms of socioeconomic development. More concretely still, many foreign visitors with whom I spoke mentioned the poor highways and exhausting road trip to Seville and the difference between the drought-stricken, dust-blown, torrid Andalusian countryside, which looked like an ecological disaster zone in 1992, and the lush gardens of the Expo and the central city. They noted the contrast between the refurbished monuments and new bridges and highways of central Seville and the urban sprawl of peripheral apartment blocks, uncontrolled industrial wastelands, stinking ditches, and run-down neighborhoods on the outskirts. Along with local wits who were proclaiming 1992 a vintage year, they observed that local water was in short supply and had a quite distinct “aroma, flavor, and color.” They were annoyed by high cover charges and fraudulent bills in Seville restaurants and complained of paying Paris prices for often second-rate and sometimes “Third World” lodging and services in garish and cheaply constructed new hotels and decrepit hostels alike. They talked of the various museums, parks, malls, monuments, exhibitions, and theme parks of their homelands as being better or equally well organized and at least as impressive as those of the Expo and Seville. Their appreciation of high-tech glitter, highly polished surfaces, and charming local color was diminished by their perception of highway robbery, and they often raised the question of whether the massive expenditure

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of money that the Expo so clearly entailed could possibly bring a significant return on the investment for Spain or participating countries. Pleased as they usually were with the Expo in spite of these manifold complaints, many of them confessed to being ultimately mystified by the rationale for the event and could not bring themselves to declare that they finally believed it was all “worth it” regardless of the obvious costs in material resources and human effort. In other words, like the foreign officials discussed in the last chapter, most foreign visitors felt enough reservations about the Expo to justify what was ultimately a rather condescending view of it and of Spain. In many respects, Expo visitors from northern Spain faced the same sort of obstacles and had the same kinds of concerns as visitors from foreign countries. Like foreign visitors, most northerners came to the Expo without much advance preparation or knowledge, encountered initial problems of orientation, and tried to cram as much as possible into visits of two or three days. Even so, they were more at home than foreign visitors, so many things were somewhat easier for them. Surrounded by fellow Spaniards and local residents who spoke the same language, they had immediate access to information and evaluations of various aspects of the Expo that sometimes proved illusive to foreigners. Moreover, the style of the whole operation (including opening and closing hours, encounters with Expo staff, and methods to obtain tickets for this or that performance) was familiar to them and was understood usually without a second thought. Even though most visitors from northern Spain appeared to be middle class, they seemed nonetheless to come from broader and more varied sectors of society that included both rural and urban public employees, businesspeople, clerks, school teachers, and the like, whereas most foreign visitors tended to be drawn from the ranks of urban professionals. In addition, most northerners came to the Expo with their families or with large groups. Some of these were private tour groups, whose members were often neighbors or were part of some sort of voluntary association, such as a religious brotherhood or soccer club. However, most large groups were heavily subsidized by some government body or agency and tended to be composed of a special category of people, such as the disabled, the unemployed, students, retirees, public employees, teachers, or civil servants. These groups were usually the object of some kind of official attention and were subjected to speeches whose seldom stated but transparent aim was to create a sense of special favors granted and received. Often, the efforts to keep the tour groups together for guided visits to particular pavilions proved futile or led to a good deal of confusion and delay. As a result, while Spanish visitors usually had the same general sorts of personal and domestic concerns as foreign visitors, very often the character of their interactions with others was more intense and extensive. The intensity of social relations among Spanish visitors could be attributed in part to the greater opportunities that these visitors had for conversing

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with fellow countrymen. But it was also likely due in considerable measure to the greater inclination and interest in engaging others that characterizes Spanish social life in general. As Rosa Montero (1995:316–17) and others have indicated, Spaniards spend more time socializing with family and friends (an average of 2.5 hours a day) than do all other Europeans except Swedes, and Spaniards also consistently place greater value on maintaining their social relationships. In keeping with this inclination, far fewer Spaniards live alone (1 in 10) than do other Europeans (about 1 in 4), and Spaniards tend to do a lot of socializing in bars, most of which are open to all members of the family (Montero 1995:316–17; Zaldívar and Castells 1992:17). Apparently, Spaniards get less sleep on average than do other Europeans, presumably because they would rather be with one another than snooze.2 Certainly, an interest in chatting with family and friends, a willingness to take frequent breaks from pavilion viewing for snacks and more talk, and a tendency to keep late hours were all much in evidence among Spanish visitors at the Expo. Indeed, these social values and patterns shaped the basic rhythms of daily activity on the Expo site. Whereas for foreign visitors the pavilions, exhibits, and shows of the Expo generally remained the primary focus of attention for hours on end, for many Spanish visitors (local and nonlocal alike) the exposition often seemed to recede intermittently into the background and become a mere setting for face-to-face interactions among family, friends, and members of various sorts of groups. In comparison with foreign tourists, Spanish visitors also frequently appeared to be somewhat more acquisitive than inquisitive. Perhaps this was partly because they were closer to home, traveling by car, and better able to shepherd their new possessions than were foreigners. However, as Juan Goytisolo suggested, the upsurge in consumer buying power that began in the late 1980s may have led his compatriots to “travel to shop” more than “to look” (DD-ex 7 May 1992:18; EP 14 May 1992:VI). In any case, a great enthusiasm for purchasing everything from large antiques to tickets for the Expo lottery was readily observable. Noveau riche Spanish yuppies could be encountered wheeling around the site in the “Mercedes of the Expo,” the small but quite threatening motorized carts, often stacked with overhanging bags and packages. Tourists of more modest means delighted not only in the purchase of “Curro” memorabilia and other Expo souvenirs but also in the collection of free pamphlets, decals, stickers, and trinkets of all sorts. Roaming bands of Spanish teenagers fully indulged themselves in a national and perhaps Europewide fad of collecting and festooning themselves with small, multicolored metal pins, which allowed them to associate themselves with pop bands, countries, corporations, and various brands of clothing, perfume, sunglasses, jeans, and the like. The pin from the Pavilion of Japan was especially highly prized and in short supply, so a good deal of bartering and informal buying and selling went on to obtain this and other such rare and desirable items. According to one

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journalist, the most frequently heard request at the Expo was “Dame uno” (“Give me one”) (DD-ex 24 Aug 1992:1). Without question, though, the greatest fad among Spanish visitors of the Expo was collecting stamps in their “Expo passports.” Apparently the mania to collect as many imprints as possible began among Sevillanos in their early teens, but it had spread to large numbers of Spanish visitors of all ages and even to a few foreign tourists by mid-July. Once possessed by the frenzy, groups of youngsters rushed from the entrance of one exhibit to the next in a race to see who could accumulate the most stamps in the least time. Since this competition often did not involve any actual tours of pavilions, staff members were often quite annoyed by a constant stream of requests for stamps and often refused to comply with the rude demands of hit-and-run youths. Adult visitors felt a much greater obligation to tour pavilions at least briefly before asking for a stamp. However, many adults were scarcely less intent on attaining a record of their visits than were their offspring. Indeed, one of the most unpleasant and pointlessly protracted confrontations that I witnessed at the Expo involved a pavilion hostess and a middle-aged Spanish man who became irate when he could not get a suitable imprint, since the only ink pad available had become dried out because of the high demand for stamps. It is difficult to say exactly why the passport fad became so intense. No doubt there was some element of ersatz cosmopolitanism involved in the desire to collect stamps from pavilions around the world, and some people may have at least briefly fantasized that to have visited a pavilion and attained a stamp was as good as actually visiting a country. But probably more important was the fact that the Expo was designed overwhelmingly to appeal to adults, and the improvised passport game became immensely popular among older children and young teenagers simply because it represented one of the relatively few ways they were able to devise to make their visits to the fair exciting and fun. Similarly, some adults were swept up in the fad not so much because they thought that having seen the Expo they had seen the world but, rather, because they wanted to accumulate evidence and material tokens that proved they had seen the whole fair and would serve as spurs to recollection of the event in the future. Still, it is some indication of the cultural power of normalization inherent in mass spectacles that what is often viewed as an anxiety-provoking or tiresome experience of dealing with officials at international borders could so readily be transformed into a source of diversion on the island world of La Cartuja. Just as the intensity of face-to-face interactions and the high levels of conspicuous consumption were more evident among Spanish visitors than foreigners, so too were the pressures to economize. Many Spanish visitors came to Seville and the Expo expecting relatively high prices but were still shocked to discover just how expensive everything was. In conjunction with the temptations to overspend that the Expo offered, this miscalculation left many people short on cash, and the main way in which they tried to economize was on

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expenditures for food and drink. Efforts to cut back on these things inevitably became a serious focus of concern, because having large afternoon meals and engaging in frequent interruptions in the flow of activity for leisurely conversations and tapas (snacks) are activities that lie close to the core of Spanish notions of what sociability and pleasure are all about. The diminished capacity of many people to follow these familiar social patterns was a major topic of conversation and complaint, and after a day or two of being faced with astronomical Expo prices, many visitors from northern Spain began to imitate local people by attempting to carry as much food and drink as possible with them into the Expo site. The Expo initially had rules forbidding the importation of food and drink. Visitors sometimes were denied admission if they were unwilling to leave their comestibles behind, and in theory they could even be expelled from the Expo if forbidden items were found. Expo officials justified these rules on grounds of security and hygiene, but most visitors believed that they were simply a device to force people to spend more money, and they were outraged that bureaucratic power and the private greed of Expo businesses had denied them the basic right to provide for themselves and their families as they saw fit. Armed with this conviction, they did not hesitate to try to sneak as much as they could in their day packs and handbags. This led to frequent arguments with the Expo’s gatekeepers in the spring and early summer. Finally, in July, it led to a court decision that visitors could not be expelled from the site simply for smuggling contraband food (DD-ex 31 Jul 1992:5). By this time, however, the Expo’s restrictive policies had become part of the folklore of the event. Even though Spanish tourists usually visited the same short list of major thematic and national pavilions as their foreign counterparts and, like them, wanted to see as much as possible of what the Expo had to offer, the general visiting patterns of the two groups tended to be somewhat different. More inclined to frequent rest breaks and more accustomed to late hours, Spanish visitors often took greater advantage of the attractions of Expo Noche and the evening programs of concerts and performances than did visitors from other countries. In addition, as noted previously, Spaniards always constituted the great majority of visitors to the regional pavilions of their own country. That Spanish visitors were also especially drawn to the offerings of countries with which they perceived relatively close cultural connections and already felt themselves to be more or less at home at the Expo inevitably colored the way in which they experienced both individual exhibits and the event as a whole. The idea that the Expo was a project of Spain conceived as a single cohesive entity did not loom as large for Spanish tourists as it did for foreigners. Although Spaniards were well aware that national prestige was on the line and seemed indeed to see the Expo as a more unqualified success from this perspective than did most foreign visitors, they tended nevertheless to talk about different aspects of the Expo as reflecting the efforts and interests of different institutions and sectors of Spanish

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society, such as the government in Madrid, the Expo organization, regional bureaucracies, private companies, and even individual officials and designers. What the Spanish visitors said about the achievements and shortcomings of these various groups had a sharply comparative and competitive edge. The inclination of Spanish visitors to rank and evaluate was not limited to the comparison of one regional pavilion with another, but it was most strongly and consistently expressed in this area. Moreover, comments on regional pavilions almost seamlessly slipped into the expression of opinions about regional cultures—opinions in which stereotypical characterizations of Andalusians, Basques, Castilians, and Cataláns abounded. So there was a lot of talk about laziness and hard work, pretentiousness and vulgarity, greed and poverty, arrogance and spontaneity, coldness and warmth, know-how and incompetence, formality and informality, and contrasts between what was real and what was mere appearance. Largely because of the almost universal perception of relative northern wealth and southern poverty, the notion of the Expo as an artificial implant in Andalusia had less prominence among Spanish visitors than it did among foreigners, not because they failed to recognize it but because it was taken for granted. Like foreign tourists, many Spanish visitors asked themselves whether the Expo was really worth its huge cost; but ordinarily the latter did so in ways that evoked the broader context of domestic social and political experience in 1992—the context of the Olympics in Barcelona, the threat of recession, the continuing scandals, the failure to deal with the problem of ETA terrorism, the upcoming elections, the sense that both the country and its citizens were living beyond their means, and the social, cultural, and economic adjustments necessary to “join Europe.” What permeated all these familiar issues in relation to the Expo was the fundamental question of fairness in the distribution of state and public resources. Without question, the majority of northern Spaniards visiting the Expo regarded the expenditures in Seville as neither fair nor wise. They felt it was all a matter of politics and favoritism, and they suspected that not even Andalusians would benefit much from the Expo. The northerners were quite sure that they had already paid and would continue to pay a disproportionate share of the Expo’s costs. As much as they enjoyed the fair, these complaints, concerns, and resentments were never too far from most of their minds. This view of the Expo was in keeping with the contrast between appearance and reality that pervades the mass culture of tourism, but it was also in keeping with the broader ambivalence that foreign and domestic visitors alike expressed about virtually all levels of political culture. In principle, most visitors embraced Europeanist ideals of increased cooperation, tolerance, and integration among countries. In practice, however, visitors were concerned that the rhetoric of cosmopolitan liberalism justified excessive and expanding technocratic domination and bureaucratic regulation, masked an unequal distribution of wealth and power, and threatened a significant loss of freedom in many

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spheres of life. Similarly, they generally respected the right and desire of national, regional, and ethnic groups for democratic self-government and autonomy; but they also viewed much of the politics surrounding regionalism and nationalism as a set of stratagems that were employed mostly in order for one set of people to gain unfair advantages over others. In other words, visitors believed in the overarching goals of solidarity and freedom but perceived the constant workings of narrower interests. In some cases, this sort of political double vision seemed to produce political apathy. In others, it provided an active desire for reform. But most people simply accepted the idealistic and scandalous sides of contemporary politics as the normal and natural state of affairs in the public life of modern liberal societies and had clearly decided to live with it as best they could. This mix of acceptance and skepticism set limits to the Expo’s transformative capacities and helps explain why it was so easy for Spanish visitors to enjoy the Expo and to affirm that it was a great success for Spain while also doubting the ultimate importance, wisdom, and value of the whole project. Sevillanos judged the Expo differently. In spite of their misgivings about the aftermath of the event and their opposition to the State Society, by midsummer it was difficult to find local residents who seriously doubted that the Expo was worth all the inconvenience it had caused them. As much or more than other visitors, Sevillanos recognized that the Expo was an artificial island, but they were determined to naturalize, domesticate, and possess it. This made the Expo a different sort of place for them. People from Seville and from areas within an hour’s drive or so from the Expo gates almost always comprised the majority of visitors on the site. For them, the Expo was in some ways a more dramatic experience and in other ways a more casual and relaxed experience than for outsiders. In general, locals tended to be much more familiar with almost every aspect of the Expo. They had heard about it for years; they knew people who worked there; they easily recognized the changes that the Expo had brought about in Seville; and many of them were actively engaged by the political and cultural conflicts surrounding the event. This knowledge and familiarity inevitably affected how they experienced the fair. Most obviously, the proximity of the Expo affected the tempo and rhythm of daily life for Sevillanos. The popularity of Expo Noche changed many people’s hours, making it harder to get things done in the mornings. Some shops opened later. Appointments would be missed, and the Expo would be blamed. Traffic jams and crowded bars and restaurants near the site prompted local residents to alter their accustomed routines. For the tens of thousands of Sevillanos who were lucky enough to have secured season passes, the Expo was always accessible; and it was not unusual for adults to visit the site four or five times in a week and for their children to pop in and out two or three times a day. Neighbors who had not managed to get season passes and who could not pay full admission prices for more than a few visits tried to adjust their plans to take

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advantage of special days when discounted admissions were available and to enter the Expo after 8:00 P.M., when the cheaper Expo Noche admissions went into effect. It was as if Seville’s feria (annual fair), which usually lasted less than two weeks, had been extended to last for six months and the city was on holiday and at work simultaneously. In countless households, budgets were strained, and debts began to mount. Yet if one of the effects of the Expo was to make ordinary daily life more hectic, strenuous, and expensive for Sevillanos, once local people were inside the gates, their pace was usually far more relaxed than that of outsider visitors. To be sure, at first Sevillanos were eager to see as much as they could. But after a full day or so of visiting, their approach altered. If for foreign tourists a twoor three-day visit to the Expo was akin to a forced march through new terrain, for Sevillanos the visiting pattern quickly came to resemble a series of relatively short, meandering reconnaissance missions over increasingly familiar ground. How Sevillanos incorporated the Expo into the rhythms of daily life can be illustrated by briefly describing a day at the fair that I, my wife, and my son spent with Andrea, Juan, and their daughters. Andrea and Juan are both elementary school teachers, and I have known them for many years. Although they have lived in Seville for decades and are firmly ensconced in the city’s middle class, Andrea’s family is from Aracena, the town in which I did earlier fieldwork, and Andrea and Juan were among the first people whom I met in Aracena in 1980. As soon as season passes to the Expo became available, Andrea purchased them for herself, her husband, and her two teenage daughters. One morning in mid-May, we arranged to meet them inside the Expo gates. The morning was cool, the Expo attendance was low, and I was eager to visit a number of pavilions that I had not yet seen. First, however, we stopped for coffee for nearly an hour to catch up on family news, and then Andrea, adopting the role of tour guide, suggested that we ride the cable cars to get an overview of the fair. Everyone agreed, even though we had all already toured the Expo more than once. When the ride was over, we walked to the Pavilion of Spain, where we found that tickets for the daily showings of its signature movie were no longer available. Nobody was too surprised by this, and we began to stroll around the center of the Expo, briefly visiting the Pavilions of Portugal and Iraq and chatting all the while about the exhibits, the Expo, and other topics. We spent the most time, perhaps thirty minutes, at the Pavilion of the Holy See (the Vatican pavilion), where Juan had heard that there were some good paintings temporarily on exhibit. Following Andrea’s suggestion, we next decided to go to the Plaza of the Americas to see the exhibit of preconquest gold artifacts. Once there, we found a short line, and since it was by now nearly 1:00 P.M., it was time to repair to Juan and Andrea’s flat for the afternoon meal. Their apartment was only a ten-minute walk from the Expo, but by the time we had cooked, dined, talked, cleaned up, and rested, it was 6:00 P.M. before

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we set out for the Expo again. On the way, we stopped at the chapel that sheltered La Macarena, Seville’s most famous and revered image of the Virgin Mary. Once back at the Expo, we visited the Pavilion of Andalusia, but not for long, because the hall was closing for the day. Then at Andrea’s suggestion we took a walk through the gardens on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, eventually returning to our starting point, where we met large numbers of Sevillanos coming into the Expo for an evening’s diversion. Joining the mainstream of strollers, we slowly made our way around the semicircle of Spanish regional pavilions as crowds gathered for the sound and light show on the Lake of Spain. However, we spent the next hour or so mainly wandering from spot to spot where professionals and ordinary enthusiasts were dancing Sevillanas. During this time, we ran into some of Juan and Andrea’s friends and acquaintances, while their daughters went to the Sony Jumbotron, which was blasting pop music to a crowd of a thousand or more teenagers and young adults. We then joined the daughters for drinks and tapas of seafood at the Tierras del Jerez pavilion, which along with the Cruzcampo beer hall was a highly popular meeting place. Far more than the official Pavilion of Andalusia, the Tierras del Jerez pavilion was the heart and soul of the Expo for Sevillanos past the age of thirty or so. The pavilion was designed like a large caseta (canvas tent) from the feria and featured nightly Flamenco performances and daily horse shows, as well as exhibits that evoked other aspects of regional culture. The pavilion was sponsored in part by the city governments of Seville and Jerez and in part by some of the region’s famous wineries. The pavilion directors, vociferously supported by Pedro Pacheco, who was the mayor of Jerez and one of the leading figures of El Partido Andalucista, were in constant conflict with Pellón and the State Society over the provision of Expo supplies, high financial losses, and problems in the reporting and payment of Expo surcharges. It was commonly believed that Pellón especially disliked the folkloric, Andalusian character of the pavilion and its programs because they appealed primarily to what he regarded as a narrow, provincial audience (DD-ex 12 Oct 1992:34). Because the Tierras del Jerez pavilion represented both authentic Andalusian culture and political resistance to the bureaucrats of the State Society, it appealed to large numbers of Sevillanos. As a result, it was immensely popular, in spite of its sometimes surly waiters and its astronomical prices. The cultural and political associations of the Tierras del Jerez pavilion largely explain why Juan and Andrea believed that it was the only really suitable place to end our day at the Expo on a sufficiently high note; and despite my protests, Juan insisted on assigning himself the role of local host and ambassador and paying a tab that was high enough to provision NATO for a week. We left the Expo at 1:45 A.M. It had been a fine day, and we had seen parts of less than a half-dozen pavilions in sixteen hours. As we parted, Andrea talked with pride about what a marvel the Expo was for Seville and how the people of the city had embraced the event and made it their own. With considerable sat-

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isfaction, she also observed that now we had seen the Expo like Sevillanos and asked me to confirm that this was a far better and more “tranquil” way of experiencing the event than was available to ordinary tourists. I assented to Andrea’s view, albeit a bit halfheartedly. Later, however, I began to realize that over time many Sevillanos accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about the Expo in spite of their usually rather haphazard and casual way of approaching and enjoying the event. Appropriately enough, this minor revelation occurred in the company of Juan and Andrea over the course of a weekend visit to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a large town at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, where they and a large group of their friends and neighbors were accustomed to spending a good part of their summer vacations enjoying the beach and the town’s excellent seafood, with perhaps an occasional foray into the countryside or the nearby Doñana National Park. Over the course of a long day on the beach, a group ranging from five or six to about fifteen people engaged in a series of conversations whose main but by no means only topics were the Expo and Seville. The majority of the people taking part were married adults who were in their forties and were of more or less middle-class status, with a wide range of mostly modest clerical, managerial, and commercial occupations and various levels of education. All were Sevillanos, and several lived in the same block of flats as Andrea and Juan. Most of the group had voted on more than one occasion for El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), but there were a few backers of El Partido Popular (PP). None were political activists, but neither were they indifferent to politics. A few people had young children, but most had unmarried offspring in their middle to late teens or early twenties, some of whom occasionally chimed in with their own usually skeptical and mocking commentaries on the misperceptions and inaccuracies of their parents’ statements. These conversations (thanks to Juan) were clearly being conducted in part for my benefit, but they took their own wandering course. The talk ended in the late afternoon, when everyone scattered to rest, to take a final swim, or to help children set up betting booths in anticipation of the horse races that thunder along the beach and draw thousands of visitors to the town every summer. Our conversation began with a consideration of the relative merits of the Expo and Sanlúcar as vacation places. Almost everyone affirmed that the appropriate response to the Expo’s slogan “ahora o nunca” (“now or never”) was the appeal of the beach “ahora y siempre” (“now and always”). But all were quick to add that they had already been to the Expo several times and would visit again when they returned to the city. Moreover, a couple of the teenagers confessed that the attractions of Expo Noche were sufficiently de rigueur that they had already made one trip to Seville and back during the week they had been in Sanlúcar and were planning another for that evening and the following day. A discussion about why Sevillanos were so enthusiastic about the Expo ensued and eventually focused on a lengthy consideration of the conversion of the

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event into something like a grand plaza during the feria and an ideal place to escape the heat of the city and take evening paseos (strolls). When I proposed that Sevillanos were ignoring the pavilions and exhibits in favor of popular entertainments and bar-hopping, the response was laughter mixed with protest. A couple of teachers agreed that Sevillanos were “nibbling” at the Expo as if it were a merienda (snack) and were failing to take advantage of the event as an educational opportunity. Other people asserted the contrary, and this led to a long and meandering discussion of the official themes of the Expo and of the merits and faults of many pavilions. In particular, there was a good deal of talk about the meaninglessness of the theme of discovery and its effective disassociation from the celebrations of the events of 1492. There were also elaborate commentaries offered on the Pavilions of Russia, France, and Portugal and the Plaza of the Americas. Extensive efforts were made to goad me into defending the Pavilion of the United States. Most of the discussions took the familiar form of comparing the images projected by national pavilions with the supposed realities of their countries. However, pronouns, antecedents, and the distractions of the beach initially led to a good deal of confusion centering on whether speakers were commenting on a country or a pavilion, and this turned into a series of running jokes that mocked every attempt at generalization. So, for example, if someone said something about the Italians, someone else would shortly interrupt by inquiring, “Do you mean northerners or southerners?” Other variations included queries and statements such as the following: “Are you speaking of the rich or the poor?” “But the Parisians are very ugly.” “The Communists or the Catholics?” “Well, that’s true of the men but not the women.” Among other things, the discussions amply demonstrated the ease with which Sevillanos incorporated features of the Expo into preexisting symbolic schemes of class, nationality, and gender, as well as their facility in adjusting these schemes to meet the rhetorical needs of the moment. Some of the other topics touched on over the course of the afternoon included the conflict between Alejandro Rojas Marcos (Seville’s alcalde, or mayor, for whom most of the people present felt a sort of grudging admiration and bemused gratitude) and Pellón; the possible impact of the Bosnian war on the Expo and the European Union; skepticism about the “new Spain” and the “new Andalusia,” mixed with a recognition of the need to become more modern and European; the two sides of Andalusian and Sevillano character in relation to the Expo (generosity and friendliness versus greed and animosity); the Andalusian love of regional folk traditions; and the Andalusian ambivalence about being supposedly “medio moro” (half Moorish). Not one of the Sevillanos present would accept the notion common among northern visitors that the Expo would have fared better if it had been located elsewhere. All attributed this point of view to simple jealousy and suggested that such attitudes explained why Andalusia was usually short-shrifted

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through all manner of political and economic maneuvers. On the other hand, although no one doubted the importance of having an autonomous regional government, a lot of the people present more than half-seriously attributed the existence of specifically regionalist and ethnonationalist political parties (most notably El Partido Andalucista) to the self-interested machinations of a segment of the regional academic and political class (“people like you,” said Juan, referring to me) and to a rather more widespread, puerile competitive urge to keep pace with other regions (“the Cataláns and Basques and even the Galicians have them, so we want them, too”). The afternoon’s conversation ended on a note of general consensus: Everyone in the city was broke; hard times and unemployment were going to follow the Expo; but in the long run, the Expo would prove to have been a great achievement for the city. No one cared very much whether the Expo had helped the PSOE or the government in Madrid. Without any great enthusiasm or conviction, the people present did, however, believe that the Expo had projected a positive image of Spain and had advanced European cooperation and integration. Even so, when they talked of the Expo, they talked of it first and foremost and indeed almost exclusively as Sevillanos. Finally, then, two factors seemed most important in shaping the way my companions at the beach and Sevillanos more generally experienced and interpreted the Expo. The first factor was the extensive and multifaceted knowledge that they had gained about the event, partly as a result of their own efforts and curiosity and partly as a result of the fact that, like it or not, they had had to hear about and live with the Expo for years on end. This knowledge enabled them to appreciate the complexity and evaluate many of the different dimensions of the Expo from various perspectives. And if they finally embraced the Expo and declared their love for it, they also knew it intimately—warts, wrinkles, deceptions, and all. The intensity and excitement of the Expo during the six months it was open were only a part of the story for Sevillanos. They could never completely view the event as a wild fling, because its character as a long and at times rocky courtship and marriage was never far from their minds. In keeping with this, the second factor that shaped local understandings consisted of the cultural and political will to incorporate the experience of the Expo into the day-to-day life of the city while the event lasted and, along with this, the patient and confident conviction that sooner or later the Expo or at least its legacy on the island of La Cartuja would become fully a part of the city. Rather than being remade in the Expo’s image, Sevillanos would domesticate the Expo and remake it in their image. For all visitors, then, including Sevillanos, the Expo was recognized as an “artificial island,” and this recognition limited its efficacy in promoting the “new Spain,” the “new Europe,” and the new sorts of cosmopolitan citizens that were supposed to inhabit these polities. Even so, these images of a new order were not actively resisted. Instead, they were normalized by being incorporated as

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secondary elements in preexisting conventional frameworks of representation. The way in which this was done depended on the specific dynamics of encounter that conditioned how visitors experienced the Expo—dynamics that differed notably for foreigners, Spanish tourists from the north, and local residents, largely because of the different levels of familiarity and different sorts of expectations that they brought with them to the event. But what finally seems most interesting about the complex patterns of response to the Expo is a peculiar paradox. The official expectation was clearly that the Expo would have the greatest transformative impact on Sevillanos and Andalusians, people who were supposedly overly tradition-bound and passive inhabitants of a markedly underdeveloped region of southern Europe. Yet even though there is no denying the prominent place that the Expo came to occupy in their lives for a time, what stands out about the local response to the event is how aware Sevillanos were of the need to assert a degree of autonomous control over the Expo and their own destinies. This paradox can be understood in many different ways. It suggests, for example, that efforts by authorities to impose a particular vision of social reality on ordinary people will often be met with a resistance roughly proportional in its intensity to the challenge being posed. Perhaps more important, it suggests something about the exercise and character of freedom in contemporary, highly complex liberal societies. Foreigners whose expectations about the Expo were most strongly influenced by the commodified publicity-driven culture of mass tourism tended to approach the event as autonomous individuals who lack specific local obligations and are swayed by romanticized notions of free choice and unbounded if tame adventures—that is, as cosmopolitan Robinson Crusoes encountering “the whole world” on a small but happily civilized and comfortable island. In practice, however, because the Expo was a highly engineered environment and because outside visitors were far from home, their brief experience of the event tended to be limited, constrained, and rather prepackaged and standardized. Indeed, if they were really pressed for time or unlucky enough to arrive when conditions of “massification” prevailed, their experience was likely to be more oppressive and alienating than pleasurable, and they were likely to be reminded of the unreal character of conventional representations of what freedom means when one is truly, if temporarily, isolated within contemporary society. In contrast, Sevillanos, being at home, experienced the Expo as inextricably linked with the ordinary habits and practices of daily life and with the complex and counterbalancing networks of allegiances, obligations, and prerogatives that shape their usual spheres of action and fundamental sense of personal and collective identity. The immediate presence of this social environment made it possible for them to deal with and to understand the Expo in far more varied and nuanced ways than outside visitors could. In practical terms, then, their proximity to the Expo gave the Sevillanos a more real ability to choose than outsiders had. No less important, the awareness of Sevillanos that their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens faced similar sorts of options and were respond-

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ing in familiar or at least comprehensible ways to the event generated a diffuse if generally rather evanescent and fleeting sense of social solidarity among them. This sense of solidarity went some way toward transcending the divisions of class, status, and party that normally dominate local life. It also helps explain why so many Sevillanos were so intent on incorporating the Expo into the life of the city and so confident that they would eventually succeed, in spite of the efforts and power of Expo bureaucrats and state politicians to thwart them. What all this suggests is that the positive experience of free choice under the conditions of contemporary mass societies is more closely linked to direct engagement and participation in the life of specific, concrete communities than it is to abstract and theoretical notions of individual autonomy. From this perspective, it is not mobility but off-setting connections and complex commitments that make one free, and there is no intrinsic reason to suppose that cosmopolitans are more well-connected and committed than locals.

20. Renouncers and Resisters What of the others? Millions of foreign tourists, Andalusians, and other Spaniards visited the Expo. Many millions more, who could have done so with no great difficulty, either chose not to go to the Expo at all or decided to make their acquaintance with it as fleeting as possible. Moreover, there was a much smaller number of people, perhaps a few thousand, who brought themselves into proximity with the Expo only to protest it. If the aim here is to understand the Expo in terms of its efficacy in promoting cosmopolitan and liberal images of Spain, Europe, and the world for broad cultural and political purposes, then it is important to gain some sense of why so many people were apparently indifferent to the Expo or openly hostile to it. Obviously, it is more difficult to gauge the motivations of the vast and anonymous population whose key defining characteristics are their public silence and inaction (the renouncers) than it is to gauge the motivations of those who vociferously demonstrated against the Expo (the resisters). Therefore, with respect to the renouncers, my discussion will be limited to considering the perspectives and dispositions of a few of them whom circumstances allowed me to know. They are all people from Aracena, the hill town where I lived in 1992 and where I had done extensive research in the early 1980s. The town is about a hour’s drive from the Expo and in 1992 had a population of about 8,000 people. For reasons discussed below, there is little cause to suppose that the basic reasons why Aracenans eventually rejected and ignored the Expo were different from the reasons of other Andalusians or even people from northern Spain.

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The fact that so few of my friends from Aracena went to the Expo was at first a source of puzzlement to me, because they did not seem completely uninvolved in the event. Indeed, they often avowed considerable interest in it. In the years preceding the Expo, the townspeople were nearly as well informed about the event as were Sevillanos, and something akin to a spirit of 1992 had also arisen among the Aracenans, thanks to the expectation that their town would enjoy spillover economic benefits from the investments in Seville. This hope was not unreasonable. One of the main roads from Lisbon to Seville passes by Aracena, and if lodging were going to be in short supply and expensive in the city, then possibly some Portuguese visitors would want to stop over in the town. In addition, at least two dozen local workers were employed on the Expo site for at least part of the period of construction. What is more, in the run-up to 1992, local and regional improvement projects of all sorts tended to be linked to the general strategies of modernization and development of Andalusia and Spain that the Expo symbolized. Thus, even though the improvement of the road to Seville was a project that had been in the works for decades, the fact that it was approaching completion in 1992 was partly credited to the Expo. Similarly, the new and refurbished hotels and camping sites in the municipality, the increased publicity for the town’s impressive caverns and nearby regional natural park, and the reconstruction of Aracena’s ancient town hall were all associated with what was happening on the island of La Cartuja. It was even rumored that work on a palatial country house in the region was being undertaken because its owner, Manuel Prado y Colón, expected to host King Juan Carlos during his visits to the Expo. As things turned out, no great tourist bonanza developed in 1992 in Aracena. Nevertheless, it was a reasonably prosperous year, and most people seemed to believe that the town had benefited at least a little from the Expo and associated projects. So I was somewhat disappointed when relatively few townspeople were interested in visiting the event. Those who went to the Expo consisted mostly of secondary students, courting couples in their twenties, and middle-class professionals, business owners, teachers, clerks, and civil servants in their thirties and forties, especially those who had relatives in Seville. The courting couples generally favored Expo Noche (“nighttime Expo”), while the others tended to go on weekend days. The great majority of the Expo visitors from Aracena declared themselves favorably impressed with the scale, organization, and polish of the event and often expressed some surprise that everything seemed to be functioning so smoothly. But I knew hardly anyone who had seen more than a handful of pavilions or who had visited the Expo more than two or three days. Thus, while some of their endorsements of the event or specific aspects of it were quite enthusiastic, their actual behavior was lukewarm. The majority of Aracenans never went to the Expo at all. Abstention was especially high among working-class people and pensioners, but abstainers included many well-off solid citizens for whom neither money nor transportation

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posed any real barriers. Evidently, they had asked themselves if it was “worth the pain” to visit the Expo and had answered “no” or at least “not now; maybe later.” When I asked people why they had not (yet) gone to the Expo, I heard a wide range of answers that usually had the slightly implausible and perfunctory character of excuses. A number of well-established adults and retirees said it was important for young people still in search of jobs and careers to go in order to understand what their economic options were but that it was not important for them personally to attend. A couple of workmen claimed that they had seen how hurriedly and shoddily many pavilions had been constructed and were afraid of accidents. Quite a few people said they planned to visit in September, when the crowds would be smaller; and then when September came, they said they would not be able to endure the last-minute crush. Others said that they could see everything they wanted on television; that the Expo was too expensive or too confusing; that it was too hot and unpleasant in Seville; that they would go when their cousins came from Barcelona; or that they already knew about the discovery of America and foreign cultures. In other words, there was no shortage of reasons and explanations for not having visited the Expo. But the most common theme sounded is best conveyed by the following statement, which is simple and in Andalusia is virtually unchallengeable: “No me interesa” (“It doesn’t interest me”). Variations on this statement included “I don’t like things like the Expo”; “It’s not for me”; “It’s not for us”; and “It has nothing to do with me.” Such statements of renunciation were sometimes elaborated, but they generally represented rock-bottom revelations of taste and preference, beyond which there was apparently nothing to be said and no appeal to be made. In some instances, these flat and final declarations reflected a parting of the ways between rural Andalusian culture and modern, urban forms; but at least as often, people sought to make statements that were to be understood as purely personal. Consequently, it is no easy matter to interpret the significance of townspeople’s attitudes of renunciation. Did the negative postures being assumed toward the Expo indicate sociopolitical and cultural alienation, passivity, and indifference? Or was something else involved? Because pushing the issue further in conversations yielded no insights that seemed more revealing of basic values and motivations, it is necessary to approach the matter from another, more practice-oriented angle and to consider what townspeople did instead of going to the Expo. If nothing else, this perspective is consistent with what seemed to be many townspeople’s usual way of dealing with the Expo—to ignore it as much as possible. On several occasions, I invited friends to accompany me to the Expo, but we always ended up doing something different—something pastoral or something community-oriented. One fine Sunday, for example, when I had planned to go to the Expo, I found myself instead with a half-dozen friends and their children on a picnic in the countryside, complete with wine, guitars, archery contests, wild flowers, and a touch of late afternoon excitement from a fighting

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bull in a nearby pasture. During the picnic, I learned from one of my friends what it was like to be a painter working on the Expo buildings. And I also learned that Prado y Colón had paid local workmen from a variety of Swiss bank accounts (which were eventually to become a focus of prosecutorial scrutiny) to bury the swimming pool of his city house in sand and then to excavate it and finally to bury it again, in accordance with his sense of what his guests would most enjoy during this or that gala, party, or reception held during the Expo. Another time, I helped a group of friends clear some land on which one of them was planning to build a country cottage to get away from it all on the weekends. The site for the cottage, sylvan though it was, was actually only three or four kilometers from his house in town and a three-minute walk from a village pub. On two other occasions that would have been ideal for visiting the Expo, we went on romerías (pilgrimages) to the shrines of the Divine Shepherdess and the Queen of the Angels. As usual, these events were more mobile secular fiestas than occasions for the expression of religious devotion. Then, too, there were the processions of Holy Week and, a week or two later, the children’s processions that reproduced the Easter events in miniaturized but scarcely less elaborate form. In addition, there were annual ferias (fairs) in several surrounding towns and hamlets, followed by preparations for the nearly week-long feria of Aracena itself in August. And one evening, a large group of friends gathered around the TV to watch a regional broadcast on Aracena’s folk culture, which featured the musical talents of several of those present as well as reports on the natural attractions of the town and region, the excellence of the local jamón serrano (cured ham from the sierra), interviews with some “grandfathers and grandmothers of the pueblo,” and instructions on how to fix potaje de castañas (chestnut soup), supposedly a beloved local dish. (Later, one of the grandmothers told me that everyone, including herself, had always hated this stew because it was associated with periods when the poor had nothing else to eat.) At first sight, then, it seems that many of the townspeople of Aracena renounced the Expo because they chose to embrace the folk culture of the region instead. Even so, this inclination should not be understood simply as a triumph of rural tradition over urban modernity. For one thing, a number of the “traditions” referred to earlier, such as the pilgrimage to the chapel of the Divine Shepherdess, had only very recently been invented or revived. For another, there were many other communal organizations and activities, including municipal sports teams, dramatic performances, and foreign language and music lessons, that were almost equally attractive to townspeople but cannot easily be placed in the category of traditional folk culture. Indeed, what seemed most to appeal to many townspeople was not so much that the customs and events were “traditional” in character but, rather, that they were created and controlled by their participants, that they depended on the cultivation of face-to-face social relations, and that they allowed room for the exercise of a broad range of cul-

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tural skills. If anything characterized local culture, it was not backward-looking traditionalism but dedicated amateurism. Moreover, the distance that Aracenans maintained between themselves and the Expo did not reflect any general notion of a lack of involvement in contemporary urbanized ways of life. Not only did most townspeople express interest in and know a good deal about what was happening elsewhere in Andalusia, Spain, and Europe, but they also seemed convinced that Aracena was not at all insulated from these developments. A number of townspeople, for example, attributed the partial recovery in local agriculture as well as the expansion in local retail commerce that had occurred since the mid-1980s to Spain’s new membership in the European Community. They also observed that phenomena such as the recent influx of foreign residents and tourists to the sierra, the establishment of foreign language schools in the town, the increasingly common practice of taking foreign vacations, and the availability of cable television owed a great deal to processes of European integration. Similarly, they regarded increasing local concerns about educational quality and the availability of programs that offered the means to secure formal accreditation for specific kinds of jobs as proof of the integration of the town into the larger Spanish and European economies. And they also pointed to the establishment of new social service centers and programs dealing with the problems of women, senior citizens, unemployed individuals, consumers, and youth as an indication of the arrival of some of the more refined benefits of the welfare state in Andalusia. A few people even pointed out that the new and immensely popular local television station (which broadcast town council meetings, religious processions, reports on local organizations, weekly news about activities in Aracena, and, on occasion, live interviews with local and regional people living in Europe, the United States, and Latin America) would have been impossible to establish and maintain without outside support and the most up-to-date communications technologies. Similarly, few townspeople saw any great differences in the character of local, regional, and national politics. On the contrary, they were quick to point out numerous parallels between political life in Seville and that in Aracena. Since the first municipal elections of the post-Franco era, the local government had been in the hands of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), and for thirteen years Aracena had had only one mayor. During the early years of the post-Franco era, the Socialists had enjoyed great popular support because they had stressed democratic openness and had undertaken many projects to improve the quality of life for ordinary townspeople. The Socialist-dominated town council had continued to be quite activist in its approach to local government throughout the 1980s; but by the early 1990s in Aracena (as in Seville, Andalusia, and Spain as a whole), significant cracks in support for continuing Socialist rule had begun to appear. As was virtually inevitable after so long in office, the Socialists had become involved in many conflicts over the control of

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resources, and these conflicts converted many of their early supporters into adversaries. This was particularly true of one dispute that led townspeople to question the Socialists’ commitment to rural workers. The dispute involved a set of decisions that resulted in the closing of a school whose purpose was to train forestry and environmental workers. During the summer of 1992, the issue that most concerned the people of Aracena was the remodeling of the town’s central plaza. The project’s completion had been long delayed, and its cost seemed excessive. Many people did not like the redesign of the plaza, and the managers of a handful of kiosks were angered by new arrangements that they felt would damage, if not completely destroy, their modest businesses. Making matters worse, the contract for the project had been awarded to a construction firm from another town, and there was widespread belief that Aracena’s mayor, who also served as a provincial deputy and was thought to harbor ambitions for higher party and political offices, had been pressured into issuing the contract by provincial PSOE officials. Thus, around the time of the Expo, townspeople in Aracena believed that local politics were being influenced by the same sorts of backroom favoritism, outside interests, faction-ridden party politics, and bad planning that influenced the politics surrounding the Expo. As things turned out, the mayor of Aracena survived in office longer than did the Socialists of Seville, who were defeated by Alejandro Rojas Marcos and El Partido Popular. Nevertheless, when the crisis finally came in Aracena, it bore some striking similarities to what had happened earlier in Seville. The crisis in Aracena came in late 1993, when the town council, apparently under insistent pressure from the mayor, once again awarded a construction contract to a nonlocal firm with close ties to the provincial party apparatus. This time the contract gave permission to construct a housing complex on the lower slopes of Aracena’s greatest treasure, the monte (mount or hilltop) that the townspeople refer to as El Castillo. The monumental array on El Castillo includes ruined castle walls and a medieval church that is officially recognized as a national monument. Hardly anyone knew of the construction company’s plans until bulldozers appeared on the hillside one morning and began clearing the site. The rumble and roar of the heavy equipment immediately aroused great alarm, because it was obvious that a large construction project would significantly alter El Castillo. Townspeople were concerned that the proposed housing project would undermine aesthetic and architectural values associated with their local traditions, would destroy the picturesque and panoramic view of Aracena and the sierra, and would reduce the town’s appeal for themselves and for tourists. Petitions against the project were circulated by a group of local artists and concerned citizens of both the left wing and the right wing, and a rally to protest the project was quickly organized. The rally brought more townspeople into the streets than any other political event since the reestablishment of parliamentary democracy. In the aftermath of the demonstration, debates were

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aired on local radio and television, and finally the town council was formally requested to suspend the project. This request was met with stony silence and a refusal by the mayor, who had devised the joint municipal and private initiative and was acutely aware that some twenty local families as well as the town government and other groups had already invested considerable sums in the residences to be built. The opposition to the project then formed two groups, one called the Cultural Association of the Sierra and the other called the Coordinating Committee for the Defense of El Castillo. These groups succeeded in stopping work on the site by appealing to the Delegation of Culture (a body of the province of Huelva) and claiming that a halt to construction was necessary to guarantee the preservation of valuable archaeological remains. Various political maneuvers and petitions then followed, and many suits wound up in the courts and dragged on for several years. The project was effectively terminated long before the suits were fully resolved. Municipal elections were still more than a year away, but the affair of El Castillo had sealed the fate of the mayor and the Socialist party. Even though the mayor removed his name from the list of the candidates before the election, the Socialist party was defeated for the first time since the transition to democracy. In the aftermath of the election, a new coalition government was formed, and a youthful and immensely likable and intelligent communist of La Izquierda Unida (IU) was chosen as mayor. This choice was rather odd because there are few communists in Aracena, but the new mayor had campaigned on a platform of democratic openness and fairness in local affairs; and as townspeople told me repeatedly, there was never any doubt that he was “for the pueblo” and would resist outside influences. Moreover, as the mayor himself often said, he viewed local customs such as the town’s feria and its processions of Holy Week as offering some protection from the more negative aspects of “individualism, competition, bureaucracy, and technocracy” that he personally abhorred, and he therefore believed that the key to “Aracena’s future lay in preserving the legacies of the past.” Thus, the battle over El Castillo in Aracena revolved around the same kinds of cultural, political, and economic issues that had exacerbated tensions among state officials, city politicians, and the general public in 1991 and 1992 in the war between the Expo and Seville. In Aracena, just as in Seville, the political defense of traditional culture and local control against state power and entrenched interests did not imply rejection of cosmopolitan values and orientations. As the Aracenans railed against the plans to alter El Castillo, an editorialist in a local paper (La Voz de la Sierra de Aracena Sep 1994:24) simultaneously urged local youth “to incorporate Aracena and its sierra into Europe in order to make cosmopolitan and synergistic progress while at the same time conserving the personality of the pueblo.” This argument for “cosmopolitan and synergistic progress” was echoed in respect to the resolution of other issues in Aracena as well. For example,

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after a long period of contention between the town council and the municipal band over issues such as finances, work expectations, and appropriate levels of musicianship, most of the issues found a cosmopolitan solution with the arrival in town of a new band director, a trombonist from Scotland. Having a foreigner play such a role was virtually unheard of in Aracena. Nevertheless, the new director quickly persuaded local authorities to invest more resources in the municipal band, and he sparked great enthusiasm for a wide range of musical entertainment and education. Besides lifting many townspeople’s spirits, he arranged a series of concerts for the band in western Andalusia. He even took advantage of a European Union cultural exchange program to organize a concert tour for the band in Scotland, which was the first significant experience abroad for most band members and their families. The tour was a great success, but, tragically, when the group arrived in Málaga on the return trip, the energetic and relatively young band director suddenly suffered a heart attack and died. This was a terrible shock for the band and, indeed, for a large segment of the town. The townspeople responded with an outpouring of grief and sympathy for his family and arranged a series of ceremonies that were well attended and transformed the director from a resident foreigner into a virtual local hero, an honored “son of the pueblo.” Thus, even though townspeople showed little enthusiasm for the official cosmopolitanism of the Expo, they acted in ways that showed they could readily embrace a kind of immediate, firsthand, and face-to-face openness to outsiders and to new cultural influences. Since Aracena in the 1990s was more a microcosm of the larger world than a backwater, the various ways in which townspeople chose to cultivate their own gardens reveals much about the general cultural politics of renunciation surrounding the Expo. The primary value of invocations of local traditions and customs was not to freeze the town in the past but to carve out a domain of intimacy and familiarity that served as a buffer between the community and the institutions of the state and the larger society. But this use of the category of tradition always obeyed a strategic rather than a fundamentalist logic, and in many contexts “modern” and even “cosmopolitan” values were actively embraced. Moreover, while notions of what constituted the realm of tradition or the traditional in Aracena inevitably depended on a strong if open-ended set of local spatial and historical points of orientation and reference (such as were embodied in the monumental array of El Castillo), more important still was a set of moral expectations about the honoring of local commitments and loyalties and the egalitarian quality of ideal social relations, as the heroic status achieved by the Scots band director suggests. With respect to the Expo, the citizens of Aracena saw no real conflict between the embrace of traditional culture and custom and a cosmopolitan populism. So when Aracenans declared that the Expo held nothing of interest for them and chose to ignore it, this was not because it was strange and alien but, rather, because it was all too familiar and uninviting. Instead of investing their resources and

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energy in trips to the Expo, they chose to husband them and put them to work in the town, and in so doing they managed to create some realms of social action that were relatively autonomous and relatively unconstrained by encompassing sociopolitical and cultural pressures. Knowing full well that the Expo was the product of high-level experts and officials who represented interests and values that were not necessarily shared by themselves and other Andalusians, the townspeople in Aracena maintained their cultural distance, turning away from the tutelage and pleasures offered by the Expo and deciding instead to edify, educate, and entertain one another. Their choice casts doubt on the idea that various contemporary regional ills, including underdevelopment and political disengagement, are attributable to the lack of a strongly rooted civic culture—an idea that liberal political theorists and other observers of southern Europe frequently advance.1 What may seem at first sight to be apathy and alienation often masks the always risky but usually accurate and prudent view that structured and systematic inequalities limit freedom of action and chances for success in many situations and that it is better to keep to small matters when there is little that can effectively be done about big ones. The so-called apathy disappears almost magically in situations in which a capacity to make real choices and decisions is present and in which officials can be held directly accountable for their policies and practices. The famous “democratic deficit” in southern Spain and elsewhere in Europe is not at its heart a problem of cultural backwardness; it is a problem of entrenched power. The fate of the protesters who chose to resist the Expo suggests that the strategy of renunciation adopted by the townspeople of Aracena and countless others of their compatriots was far from being unreasonable. For a number of reasons, the Expo was a difficult target for the small groups of naysayers who sought to oppose it directly. The Expo was a hard target to center because of the diffuseness and plurality of its meanings and images. Along with its predominant Eurocentric representations of global cultural convergence and cooperation and of technobureaucratic and corporate power, the Expo affirmed respect for all peoples and cultures and exhibited proenvironmental themes. In many ways, including virtually banishing Columbus from the island of La Cartuja, it also sounded anticolonial themes. This made it difficult for left-wing protest groups to convey what they found to be objectionable about the event in general terms. Indeed, while those who resisted the Expo were inclined to use an urgent rhetoric of domination, exploitation, oppression, and impending catastrophe to evoke their concerns for the plight of people around the world, the Expo itself contained few such blatantly aggressive elements. Official attitudes and representations tended more toward barely disguised indifference and a complacent attitude which suggested that in the long run everything would be better for everyone, even those most marginalized in the new world order.

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Moreover, any criticism about particular issues concerning the Expo was likely to be answered by some spokesperson referring to something or other in order to assert “us, too.” When delivered with an appropriate air of sadness over being misunderstood, such responses of mutual concern seemed quite effective. But even when traces of smugness and arrogance were evident, the Expo still had a great capacity to neutralize each criticism by reproducing it in a minor, appropriately mild and domesticated way in some nook, cranny, footnote, or official remark. Then, too, the resisters had barely more than their own voices and in some cases their own bodies to employ as a means of communication. Their access to the mass media was limited and always highly edited. In contrast, the Expo had massive organizational resources at its disposal and could constantly repeat and vary its basic messages about the nature of the contemporary world through adroit use of virtually every medium. The twin communicative powers of redundancy and variant elaboration controlled by the institutional apparatuses that had produced the spectacle in Seville could not be even approximated by the resisters. Another difficulty that resisters faced involved the capacity of the authorities to tolerate and legitimate some forms of protest while denying the legitimacy of other sorts of opposition. For example, the event’s organizers recognized, albeit belatedly, that it was appropriate for the Expo to somehow acknowledge the plight of the wretched of the earth, the world’s most destitute and unrepresented people. So to fulfill this obligation, officials agreed to a proposal by Father Bartolomé Vicens, head of the Foundation of Man, to construct on the island of La Cartuja a “nonpavilion” that represented a “symbolic space” for “the absent, those who have no voice or who have a voice and are not heard” (ABC-ex 27 Jun 1992:54). This space consisted of what amounted to be a vacant lot with an apparently derelict construction crane surrounded by discarded building materials, cardboard boxes, and other refuse. It was said to signify a “cry by people who want to be treated more humanely” (ABC-ex 27 Jun 1992:54). Unfortunately, most visitors who noticed the work at all were mystified by what it was supposed to mean. Nevertheless, this concession to the neglected and the muted perfectly embodied the Expo’s ability to simultaneously sanction, incorporate, and neutralize dissent. Although the Expo’s organizers did not like the idea of the Expo being a site of labor actions during the general strike against the decretazo on unemployment (see chapter 18), they, along with the government in Madrid, recognized the right of unions to protest economic policies. Rather than choosing to regard these actions as a threat to the Expo, they negotiated with labor leaders to ensure that the strike had, as Jacinto Pellón put it, “the least possible effect on the international image” of the exhibition (EP 23 May 1992:1). The same general willingness to tolerate and negotiate (and thereby to legitimate) characterized the official attitudes toward other labor actions near the Expo site. In contrast, the most formidable challenge that resisters to the Expo faced revolved around the concerns for public security that officials could invoke to

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prevent or, if need be, to justify the suppression of protests and demonstrations. The bombings and other actions that ETA had taken against the Expo in Seville in 1990 and 1991 had created fear and anxiety about the threat of terrorism during the event. As it turned out, the campaign launched against ETA in early 1992 by the state security forces temporarily rendered the Basque group ineffective. But of course no one could be certain of this at the time, and, if anything, the news that ETA had suffered serious reverses had increased the worries in Seville, because people assumed that ETA would make every effort to seek revenge and reassert its presence as soon as possible. Consequently, the security apparatus in and around the Expo was elaborate and immense, involving thousands of agents of every sort working overtime and making use of high-tech surveillance devices. Unfortunately, while Expo visitors quite rightly expected to be protected against terrorist violence by ETA or some other clandestine organization, the media and Expo officials tended to conflate the need to protect visitors against terrorists with the far more doubtful inclination to try to ensure that visitors’ experiences at the Expo were not dampened or disturbed by protesters or by other people deemed undesirable from a public relations standpoint. It was well known, for example, that authorities actively discouraged certain groups of citizens, including gypsies, drug addicts, individuals with records of petty crime, and the indigent more generally, from staying too long around the fair. That these official efforts were of dubious legality sparked few complaints. It seemed to be taken for granted that protecting the Expo from any and all disruption was in the public interest. Yet neither the successful “massification” of the Expo nor the legitimate aspects of official concerns about security should be allowed to obscure the existence of several relatively small but highly committed groups of international and domestic protesters or to obscure the fact that many of the people who belonged to these groups were badly treated by authorities and found it difficult to make their voices heard. The core of the resistance to the Expo was composed of domestic environmentalists and pacifists loosely linked to a network of representatives of indigenous peoples from Latin America and activists from elsewhere in Europe. However, a number of autonomous individuals and progressive sectors, including anarchists and socialist and communist youth groups, were also involved in actions against the Expo. For instance, El Patio de la Asociación por Derechos Humanos de Andalucía formed a network of groups that included the Critical Architecture Collective, the Ecological Pacifist Confederation of Andalusia, other “greens,” and similar groups. In turn, this local coalition had ties to another coalition of indigenous Latin American groups that was called Conic, or the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Continent, and was planning large demonstrations against the fifth centenary observations in October in Seville, Madrid, Barcelona, and other places. Under the title of “Disenmascaremos ’92” (“We Will Unmask ’92”), leaders from a number of these groups were organizing a schedule of anti-Expo

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protests that stretched throughout the summer (EC 16 Apr 1992:43). Beyond denouncing the “genocide of 1492,” neocolonialism, and racism, the activists hoped to focus public attention on more specific issues, such as Latin American foreign debt, immigration policy in Europe and the Americas, the loss of biodiversity in the Amazon, and the social, economic, and environmental consequences of the advent of the single market in Europe.2 To begin the protests and also to honor the legacy of Bartolomé de las Casas, an event called “El Encuentro Internacional de Solidaridad” (“International Encounter of Solidarity”) was to be held in Seville from 17 to 23 April 1992 to coincide with the opening of the Expo. This event was to include a number of peaceful protests and marches. Indeed, many of the primary organizers of the event were committed pacifists. Nevertheless, authorities in Seville were hostile to these plans and refused to issue permits for the marches and demonstrations. Alfonso Garrido, a delegate of the government of Andalusia, argued that it was “obvious that the rights of the majority of citizens have to be protected” and that the demonstrations would constitute a threat to public order and were clearly unsuitable for El Paseo de Colón, a “touristic zone” near the Expo. In addition, he related the planned actions to disruptions that had occurred the previous October when another, evidently unrelated group had entered the Cathedral of Seville and performed a “pagan exorcism” invoking the Pachamama before the tomb of Columbus. To no avail, representatives of Disenmascaremos ’92 protested Garrido’s statements and the decision to deny the permits (EC 24 Apr 1992:22; EP 31 Mar 1992:2). On the evening of 19 April, a serious clash occurred between police and about four hundred youths who had been attending a rock concert in the center of Seville. Whether the youths were simply being rowdy or had a serious purpose is unclear. In any case, the youths had gathered in La Plaza de San Marcos just as worshippers were leaving a service held in the church there. The police evidently received reports that some of the youths had shaved heads and were damaging cars and spray-painting the walls with anti-Expo and other slogans, while other rioters were masked and were “communicating with one another by radio.” The reports were sufficiently alarming that authorities instructed a special police antiriot unit to restore order. The unit attacked the crowd with truncheons, riot guns, and rubber bullets. This, of course, created utter chaos, as panic-stricken youths and churchgoers alike fled the onslaught and sought refuge in surrounding streets. As a result of this display of overwhelming force, three people suffered serious gunshot wounds, dozens of others were beaten and fled to hospitals, and dozens more were jailed. Three hours passed before calm was completely restored (ABC 20 Apr 1992:58). The next day, a relatively small crowd of Spanish and foreign demonstrators attempted to block the Barqueta bridge to the Expo to show their revulsion for “neocolonialism, slavery, and exploitation,” to demand freedom for those detained by police the night before, and to denounce police brutality (DD

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21 Apr 1992:5). This demonstration was also broken up by police, and a number of people were arrested. In addition, security forces raided a camping site on the outskirts of Seville and arrested on obscure grounds another two dozen people who were thought to be planning acts against the Expo. After these arrests were made, a total of about eighty people from Andalusia, the Basque country, Catalonia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, and elsewhere were being held by the police on a range of charges (DD 22 Apr 1992:8A). According to official commentary on the events, responsibility for everything that happened could be laid at the feet of Disenmascaremos ’92. Indeed, rather than making any effort to distinguish among the various sorts of demonstrators and demonstrations, official spokespersons seemed to be determined to lump them all together. For example, much was made of the purported fact that a couple of the people arrested after the rock concert carried a general set of instructions from the anarchist union La Confederación Nacional de Trajabadores (CNT) on what to do if arrested. Moreover, security officials suggested that the protesters had suspicious links to ETA and foreign subversives. One of the Basque groups, Amaikurko Quetzal, whose members had taken part in the demonstrations, supposedly had ties to the ETA front party, Herri Batasuna. However, the evidence for these and similar claims turned out to be rather thin. For instance, in the case of Amaikurko Quetzal, the connection between the group and ETA was that an ETA militant had been captured a few years previously with literature from the group in his possession (DD 22 Apr 1992:8A). No matter. The police were convinced or at least they tried to convince others that it was more than likely that a broad conspiracy was afoot to disrupt the inauguration ceremonies and, if possible, to shut down the Expo (DD 21 Apr 1992:5). Representatives of Disenmascaremos ’92, CNT, and other groups denied these accusations and insinuations. Indeed, they asserted that all of the demonstrations and events that had happened so far had been spontaneous and unplanned and that there was no conspiracy. Moreover, a Disenmascaremos representative noted that his group was firmly opposed to all forms of violence and insisted that the group intended to confine its efforts to “conferences, debates, and peaceful acts” (DD 23 Apr 1992:6). A CNT spokesman denied that police had been provoked and declared that his organization was not opposed to the exhibition of technological developments at the Expo but was opposed only to the use of the Expo as a platform to celebrate the fifth centenary. Furthermore, the resisters countercharged that the security forces had detained people illegally, had used excessive force in taking demonstrators into custody, and had withheld food from some youths for up to thirty hours while they were in custody. In addition, they said that the security guards hid their identification badges and faces and then proceeded to maltreat detainees in jail by handling them roughly and shouting obscenities, threats of rape, insults, and Francoist slogans in their faces (DD 20 Apr 1992:5; DD 1 May 1992:16).

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Respect for the letter of the law, including perhaps basic civil rights, was not, however, at the top of the list of official priorities at the moment. Alfonso Garrido, under pressure from regional IU parliamentarians, grudgingly admitted that there was no firm evidence linking the demonstrators of La Plaza de San Marcos to Disenmascaremos ’92 (EP 23 Apr 1992:1). José Corcuera, the minister of the interior, held a press conference in which he attempted to explain why the actions taken by the police against the demonstrators were justified (ABC 22 Apr 1992:51). Nevertheless, in short order, the courts freed about twenty Spanish youths, sentenced a handful of others to lengthy jail terms, and directed that about fifty foreign detainees be interrogated by the authorities and then expelled from Spain (EPA 23 Apr 1992:1; EC 24 Apr 1992:22). None of the retractions, qualifications, and judgments had much apparent impact on what the lesser police functionaries were saying about the resisters, nor did they have much effect on what the press emphasized or the public seemed to believe. On the contrary, legitimate forms of protest were effectively tainted by being associated with “random” youth violence, which was in turn linked to terrorist plots and conspiracies. Ecological pacifists and members of the Association for Human Rights from Seville were tarred with the same brush as Basque nationalists, Catalán anarchists, and obscenity-spewing “punks” from northern Europe. Editorialists in the local press chimed in by characterizing those under arrest as “outsiders,” “barbarians,” “savages,” and “huns” and by depicting local peaceful resisters as if they were the dupes of foreign agitators and terrorists. Just so no one would harbor doubts about who the true defenders of civilization and natural decency were, one editorialist observed that “the Indian may cultivate his myths, may protest, [and] may do what he wishes” but “he must let others have their fiesta in peace” (DD 21 Apr 1992:5; DD 23 Apr 1992:3). So much for the Expo that promised something for everyone. So much for the free movement of people and ideas in a “Europe without borders.” So much for cosmopolitan pluralism and openness. And so much as well for open resistance to the Expo. Although the actions that the police had taken led to a series of suits that dragged on in the courts throughout the 1990s and although official inquiries were occasionally promised, the fact that the police actions were the first use of firearms against demonstrators in Seville since 1973 (when the Franco dictatorship was alive but tottering) did not generate much evident public concern or even sympathy for the dissidents (DD 1 May 1992:16). There appeared to be two sets of rules. One was for docile citizens and tourists, while the other was an undeclared “state of exception” that was reminiscent of martial law and applied to those who were deemed not to belong. Exactly why the authorities chose to respond with overwhelming force to reasonable requests to demonstrate and to a few minor provocations on the part of putative resisters is not clear. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the intemperate pursuit of a strange kind of perfection for the Expo’s public image. Or

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perhaps, as John Hargreaves (2000:73–75, 84) has suggested, the repression of the demonstrators in Seville was ultimately intended to send a message not so much to the small numbers of pacifists, ecologists, and representatives of indigenous peoples who were involved in the events but to the far larger number of militant nationalists who were agitating for a greater Catalán presence at the Olympics at the same time. In any case, the calm of the Expo was never seriously disturbed again. As local activists readily admitted, they were intimidated because the authorities had made it very clear that there was quite literally no place for radical dissent at the Expo or in Seville in 1992. Thus, in the interests of tranquillity, the liberal cosmopolitans of Expo officialdom were implicated not in the suppression of sectarian fanatics or terrorists but, rather, in the suppression of a group of equally cosmopolitan activists who represented sectors of the new transnational social movements that have emerged in Europe and elsewhere since the late 1960s and operate partly outside the arena of normal electoral and party politics. For the authorities, the suppression of these dissenters was relatively easy, because the dissidents did not manage to mobilize sufficient popular support in Seville or to effectively ground global politics in local issues and concerns in an open and democratic way. This enabled the authorities to label the resisters as outsiders and to orchestrate a reaction against them as strangers and subversives. Nevertheless, the efforts of the protesters to resist the Expo were not a total failure. If the aim of the Disenmascaremos group was to unmask the structures of power and interest that lay behind the Expo’s bland facades, they succeeded in a way. Their actions provoked a response that revealed the massive security apparatus and manipulative public representations which the authorities were willing to use to undermine even mild protests, and this in turn suggested the constraints on the kinds of freedom that the event as a whole was designed to support and to help bring into being. At the Expo, people were free to work, to consume, to complain about particular conditions, and to choose which particular pleasures and interests they wished to pursue. People were even free to renounce and disengage themselves from involvement with the Expo. But, evidently, they were not free to broadcast or to put into actual practice their radical alternatives to the vision of the world or the ways of mediating differences in power and values that were deemed rational, efficient, and fair by the established authorities and various kinds of experts. The constraints on expression and action that were imposed in association with the Expo cast light on the issue of the transformative efficacy of the event. In spite of the Expo’s origins as a commemoration of 1492, the event was essentially a celebration of “the new” in keeping with liberal ideologies of progress. As a result, the past was represented as a process of constant change whose overall direction was toward cultural convergence and the formation of “one world common to all its inhabitants” (see OCGE 1987:50). In contemporary terms, the event was to herald the advent of a “new Spain,” a “new Europe,”

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and a new global ecumene increasingly guided by cosmopolitan people tolerant of others, adaptable to change, and open to progress. As a mass spectacle, the Expo was successful in disseminating images and messages that normalized and popularized this kind of vision. However, in many different ways, the effectiveness of this cultural strategy was reduced by people’s sense that much of what the Expo was all about was “old” and in many ways all too familiar. While ordinary workers discovered that the Expo was an employer much like any other, even the Expo’s most ardent supporters among participating officials saw much of the old Spain at work in the pettiness and rigidity of the Expo’s bureaucracies. The Expo’s visitors of various types tended to encounter the event and incorporate it into their lives in ways conditioned by the familiar microdynamics of personal life and by the shaping force of class, regional, and national differences. Insofar as their responses and interpretations of the event were diffuse and individualized, they fell well within the bounds of tolerance, diversity, and criticism of contemporary advanced liberal societies. However, when the Expo was directly challenged by organized resistance that refused to accept any authoritative distinction between experts and just plain folks or between officials and citizens, it quickly became apparent that along with the power of cosmopolitan polities to organize, integrate, mediate, and domesticate a vast range of socioeconomic, political, and cultural relations, there comes a greater capacity and will to block, differentiate, regulate, and punish threatening heresies and heterodoxies. So even though the violence suffered by the dissidents was on a relatively minor scale, the resisters could still bear witness to two lessons. The first lesson was that those who can be represented as among Europe’s and the world’s troublemakers, whether in Seville, eastern Europe, or countless other places, should beware. Along with the new, open, and fluid transnational world of free choice, free markets, and free movements of people, things, and ideas, there comes the expanding powers and imperatives of the police to impose limits. The second lesson was that, as a broad coalition of Polish renouncers and resisters proclaimed three years before the Expo, “There is no liberty without solidarity.”

PART VI

䉬 The Aftermath

21. Closing Days and Parting Shots The Expo ended as it had begun—with embittered parochial politics and elaborate official celebrations of cooperation and progress. After the furor over the season passes had subsided in late summer, most Sevillanos sought to enjoy the fair as best they could and were more concerned with the effects of the massification on the event than with the continuing squabbling among local politicians and officials of the State Society. Nevertheless, by mid-August a new source of contention had emerged and begun to attract public attention. The day of honor of Andalusia had been lackluster, so the desire to give the exhibition a stronger regional stamp now centered on the much-anticipated day of honor of Seville, which was scheduled for the end of September, and on plans to have a strong Andalusian presence in the Expo’s closing ceremonies. To be successful, both of these efforts would require members of the various political parties to cooperate with one another and with Expo officials. But because grudges abounded and because everyone had an eye on post-Expo politics and electioneering, the odds that peace and harmony would prevail were low. Still, what actually happened exceeded even the most pessimistic predictions. By mid-August, Alejandro Rojas Marcos, the alcalde (mayor) of Seville, revealed that he was considering a protest against the government to coincide with Seville’s day of honor. He cited a long list of grievances that included disputes over licensing fees, the refusal of Expo officials to grant a day of free admission for Sevillanos, and issues concerning how expenses would be divided between the city and the region. Referring to Jacinto Pellón and Felipe González, the alcalde lamented, “They have deceived me” (DD 16 Aug 1992:7). Such remarks did not endear the alcalde to Socialist politicians or Expo officials. At the same time, Pellón was boasting of the increasing crowds at the Expo, rejecting calls for special emphasis on Andalusia in the closing ceremonies, and making condescending observations that regional flags already abounded on the Expo site (DD-ex 15 Sep 1992:1). Obviously, a spirit of compromise was not being established for future collaboration. Evidently with the aim of calming things down, two other figures began to insert themselves into the discussions: Virgilio Zapatero, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) cabinet minister who was responsible for overseeing the events of 1992, and Emilio Cassinello, who was the commissioner general of the Expo. Zapatero made efforts to guarantee a strong Andalusian presence at the closing ceremonies, with activities including the playing of the regional anthem (DD-ex 17 Sep 1992:3). Cassinello stated that the Expo was “everyone’s project” and called for an “armistice.” Nevertheless, he was critical of the motives of El Partido Andalucista (PA) and Rojas Marcos, and he rather undiplomatically stressed that “the city of Seville as such is not a participant in the

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Expo” (DD-ex 17 Sep 1992:3). Seeking to answer mounting criticisms of the Expo and the PSOE by national officials of El Partido Popular (PP), Cassinello characterized the Expo as “an investment,” in contrast to José María Aznar, who had referred to it as a “dispilfaro” (a looting) (DD-ex 20 Aug 1992:3). Meanwhile, in the city hall, the vice-mayor of Seville, Soledad Becerril of the PP, announced that the municipal budget for observations of Seville’s day of honor would be small. Her announcement represented an attempt to shelter her party from the coming political storm and to put more pressure on her coalition partners of the PA to cooperate with Expo officials. Socialist members of the city council reluctantly agreed to support the day of honor but expressed skepticism about Rojas Marcos’s ability to organize the event without conflict (ABC 27 Aug 1992:36). To reduce Rojas Marcos’s chances of reaping political gains from the event, they also proposed that part of the celebration be devoted to recognizing the contributions of former mayors, as well as Pellón, to the Expo project (ABC 28 Sep 1992:6). As Seville’s day of honor and the Expo’s closing ceremonies approached, both local and national politicians appeared to expend more energy positioning themselves politically than planning for such mundane matters as how to handle the closing of hundreds of pavilions and businesses and what to do about the tens of thousands of Sevillanos and others who would suddenly be unemployed. Thus, Javier Arenas, vice–secretary general of the PP, dismissed calls for a truce about the Expo by observing that the PSOE had been responsible for transforming the event from a project of the state into a project of the Socialist party and by predicting that González would soon regret attempting to take all the credit for it (DD 13 Sep 1992:8). The Socialists responded to these attacks by renewing their efforts to represent the Expo as a triumph for the PSOE and for Spain. Zapatero, for example, suggested that none of the catastrophic predictions of the Expo’s critics had come true and that none would, and he added that he was sure the PSOE would be more generous and objective in recognizing and praising the work of all those who had been involved in the Expo than would other political groups (DD-ex 10 Sep 1992:4; DD-ex 28 Sep 1992:6). Seville’s day of honor featured marches through the city, performances by the municipal band, and a wide range of festivities on the island of La Cartuja—but very little political harmony or generosity. On the evening of 29 September, a large crowd that included more than a hundred high officials of the pavilions of participating countries and institutions gathered in La Plaza de San Francisco in front of the city hall to celebrate the theme “Seville, a Universal City.” However, the high note of the evening was vitriolic partisanship. When Rojas Marcos initially took his seat on the speakers’ platform, he faced cries of “Fuera! Fuera!” (“Out! Out!”), to which he responded, “Out where? From Seville not even death will take me.” No fool, Jacinto Pellón had rejected an invitation to attend the event. During the speeches, every mention of Pellón’s name was met with whistling and booing, and the catcalls were especially loud

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and long when Cassinello sought to single Pellón out for praise. Only Manuel Olivencia, the ex–commissioner general, was greeted with anything approaching broad enthusiasm. When Rojas Marcos delivered the last speech of the evening, in which he cited a long but bipartisan list of notables who had helped shape the Expo, few people were paying much attention because the atmosphere was so tense (DD 1 Oct 1992:12). If anything, the ceremony that took place the next day inside the Expo grounds was worse, since the opposing sides were better prepared and the conflict moved from the audience virtually onto the official stage of El Palenque. With government ministers and regional authorities in attendance, the ceremonies began discordantly. Rojas Marcos and Pellón arrived roughly at the same time; and amidst the loud applause and equally loud whistling and shouting, it was not completely clear who was being lauded and who was under attack. The first speech was given by Cassinello, who proclaimed that “the Expo is Seville; it was Seville and more than ever it will be Seville” (DD-ex 2 Oct 1992:3). This sentiment met with general approval. When Rojas Marcos rose to speak, it quickly became obvious that a noisy group of Socialists in the audience aimed to drive him from the stage. At this juncture, Rojas Marcos asked the minister of territorial administration, Juan Eguiagaray, to inquire of González if this was how the Socialist party understood the respect merited by the city of Seville. Then as Rojas Marcos tried again to begin his discourse, a group of Socialist officials rose from their seats and began to leave the auditorium. Despite this exodus, the mayor’s words continued to be drowned out by shouting militants who had remained behind for this purpose. Only after Eguiagaray appealed to his fellows to show “institutional respect” was the mayor able to carry on with his speech. Meanwhile, at the back of El Palenque, bitter and hysterical arguments between Socialists and Andalucistas could still be heard, and for a time it appeared that the exchange of insults was going to degenerate into an exchange of blows. This furor momentarily subsided, but confusion reigned again when Rojas Marcos, surrounded by a half-dozen police, tried to leave the auditorium amidst cries of “Viva! Viva!” and “Fuera! Fuera!” (DD-ex 2 Oct 1992:3; EP “Andalucía” 2 Oct 1992:1). Members of the various political groupings quickly tried to place the blame for the scandalous events at the doors of their adversaries. Rojas Marcos argued that the boycott of Seville’s day of honor had clearly been well organized and stressed the responsibility of the directors of the PSOE. Francisco Moreno of the PSOE claimed that Rojas Marcos had sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind and added that the mayor had “lost his virginity . . . and should not be regarded now as a victim of the intolerance that he has practiced” (DD-ex 2 Oct 1992:3). Vice-mayor Becerril lamented that “political blindness” had “once again” resulted in damage to the image of the city (DD-ex 2 Oct 1992:3). By adopting a condescending and essentially maternalistic attitude of “all you boys should be ashamed of yourselves,” Becerril probably fared best in

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the damage-control efforts. However, her seemingly neutral stance caused a serious rift with her coalition partners of the PA—a rift that the PSOE members tried to take advantage of by suggesting that they might be willing to support Becerril as mayor in the near future. Once again, nobody had really won the game at hand. Although the whole brouhaha could be attributed to partisan efforts to ensure that one’s rivals gained no advantage in their efforts to take credit for the Expo, the broader effect of the conflict was to further discredit the entire political class in the eyes of the public. Even the most partisan Sevillanos conceded that the whole business was a frivolous distraction from more important issues. Few were inclined to see the conflict as the rough and tumble of democracy in action or as the expression of principled differences of opinion among public servants dedicated to the common defense of the general welfare. Rather, most people viewed it as a manifestation of a self-absorbed culture of political personalism that had momentarily run out of control. In juxtaposition with the Expo’s pie-in-the-sky universalism, the almost incestuous character of local partisan squabbling created an aura of unreality and misdirection around the whole realm of public political life, which seemed to be shaped mostly in accordance with the great distance that lay between formal espousals of liberal idealism such as the Expo represented and the avid pursuit of narrow interests that was embodied in the day-to-day political life of Seville. Naturally enough, then, the official closing ceremonies of the Expo unfolded a few days later without any particularly notable Andalusian presence and with a blind eye to the turmoil in Seville. In most respects, the cycle of speeches, entertainments, and ceremonies that ended the Expo showed only minor variations on the pattern that had been established in the Expo’s inauguration. Once again, troops of national and international politicians and dignitaries arrived in Seville to see those who had been most actively involved in the Expo engage in lengthy speeches expressing mutual gratitude and congratulation. As things turned out, the closing ceremonies were indeed impressive and unfolded almost without a hitch. Nevertheless, amidst all the rhetoric and exuberance of the Expo’s last hurrahs, there were many indications of weariness and a readiness for it all to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Although almost every pavilion, office, and division of the Expo seemed to have organized some sort of closing ceremony, it was the presence of Spain’s royal family that distinguished the most important events on the island of La Cartuja and in the city of Seville during the last three days of the Expo. On Saturday, 10 October, Queen Sofía visited the pavilion of almost every participating country. During Saturday and Sunday, King Juan Carlos presided over ceremonies that took place in the palace of the Alcázar and the Cathedral of Seville and were primarily attended by Spanish officials and the diplomatic corps of Latin America. Speeches by Javier Solana (Spain’s foreign minister), Luis Yáñez (director of the quincentennial events), and Javier Pérez de Cuellar

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(former secretary general of the United Nations) stressed the importance of constructing what Yáñez called “the edifice of Ibero-America.” Pérez de Cuellar singled out Spain as the country in the “best position to interpret and defend Ibero-America before the international community.” In his remarks, Juan Carlos linked the spread of liberty to processes of economic development and hailed Latin America’s recent democratic advances. Thus, though the settings of the ceremonies invoked the past, the words of the speakers were directed toward fostering the emergence of transnational institutions and cooperative efforts to build a more cosmopolitan and liberal future (ABC 12 Oct 1992:22; DD “Andalucía” 12 Oct 1992:5, 8). Everyone expected the final day of the Expo, 12 October 1992, to be the grandest because it had been designated as Spain’s day of honor and because it overlapped with two annual Spanish fiestas: La Fiesta Nacional, a patriotic celebration with strong military and religious overtones focused on Zaragoza’s Virgen del Pilar, a patron saint of the armed forces; and El Día de la Hispanidad, a holiday recognizing the ties between Spain and the Americas. The final day’s festivities began in a city occupied by 4,000 security agents on maximum alert and by an army of mobile TV units aiming to provide continual extensive coverage of all the goings-on. In La Plaza de España, the great public space that had been constructed as the centerpiece of the Ibero-American exhibition of 1929, the king, accompanied by Felipe González, presided over a military concourse that honored “all those who gave their lives for Spain” and included units from the various branches of the armed forces. Under the Franco regime, this concourse had been one of the great annual pageants. With the coming of democracy, it had become an occasion for the expression of sentiments of national unity and purpose otherwise increasingly out of fashion. But this year, although everything was scrupulously correct, no speeches were made and everything was concluded in a half hour. This part of the day’s ceremonies was described by the press as being remarkably “cold and according to protocol” (EP 13 Oct 1992:20). Clearly, like the Expo itself, all ceremonies planned for 12 October were designed to downplay and domesticate militant nationalist themes without going so far as to suppress them altogether. The scene of the day’s events then shifted to the island of La Cartuja, where a crowd of 2,000 guests that included the cabinet, the heads of the regional governments, and, indeed, almost every important politician in Spain, along with numerous foreign dignitaries, began to gather in El Palenque shortly after noon. Commissioner General Cassinello opened the proceedings with a speech in which universalist themes were prominent. He began by proclaiming that “today, all of this ends,” but he concluded that the Expo would pass into the annals of history as a “depository and symbol of the culture and spirit of humanity” which had “integrated the diversity of all peoples in a new global cultural event.” Along the way, Cassinello defined the Expo as “the emblematic

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project, the dream and rational purpose of a country that was looking for a new historic state and new opening to the world” (ABC 13 Oct 1992:56–57, 74). When González came to the podium, he spoke without a written text and mainly stressed the value of the Expo for Spain. Like the other speakers, he thanked all those who had been involved in the Expo. He also took special pains to acknowledge the role of security forces who “have done discreet, prudent, and silent work but have made coexistence and peace possible.” In addition, he described the Expo as making it possible for Spaniards to have reached the “somewhat intangible objective of regaining confidence in ourselves” and of furthering the goal of “integrating the rich diversity of Spain more as Spain so that there will not be a North and a South that separate us or a center and a disaggregated periphery” marked by different levels of development (ABC 13 Oct 1992:56–57, 74). When King Juan Carlos delivered his speech, he presented a technobureaucratic twist to the connections between the Expo, the world, the new Spain, and Europe. According to the king, [The Expo was] a courageous gamble to evaluate and test the capacity of the Spanish population. It was a complex exercise in political fluidity, in systems organization, infrastructure development, and in human resources. It has been a great effort of mobilization and solidarity, a constant test of the collective will to give the best and to present to the whole world the image of a modern and dynamic Spain. Today, we can say that it has been worth the effort. (ABC 13 Oct 1992:56–57, 74) Moreover, the king continued, the Expo prepared the country to “pursue new goals that confirm that Spain is a modern country, capable of working with other nations to construct a just and peaceful international order.” And most of all, the Expo made it clear that “the Spain of today . . . can and must now make its decisive contribution to the great project of integrating Europe” (ABC 13 Oct 1992:56–57, 74). By mid-afternoon, large numbers of ordinary visitors, mostly Sevillanos, were entering the Expo site to see the cavalcade for the last time or to get a last hug from “Curro,” the Expo mascot. By evening, hundreds of thousands of people had gathered near the Lake of Spain for the Expo’s last great fireworks display. Then at 10:30 P.M., from the balcony of the Pavilion of Spain, Juan Carlos prepared to close the Expo. After extending “many thanks to all,” he concluded with words of support for Cartuja ’93, the economic development project that was soon to take over the site. “I am confident,” he said, “that Cartuja ’93, which has already initiated its work with enthusiasm, will know how to generate economic development, social progress, welfare, and solidarity by taking advantage of the resources that have been created here. With this wish, I

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declare the Universal Exposition of Seville 1992 closed” (ABC 13 Oct 1992:55). The subsequent light and sound show offered a final spectacular display of laser imagery. But it was not quite the end. The next day, in a gesture that clearly showed the deftness of the royal touch, Juan Carlos hosted a reception in the city for more than 1,000 cicerones, the corps of young people who had volunteered to guide visitors around Seville during the Expo. The king shook hands with each one of them, and Rojas Marcos officially named him a cicerone de honor. The king’s gesture was of greater significance than simply offering encouragement to youth. The Expo organization had criticized the idea of having cicerones, but the city had established the program anyway and it had proved to be immensely successful. Thus, in his last act, Juan Carlos identified himself with the people, rather than with the bureaucratic organs of the state, and at the same time helped to finally close the bridge between the city and the Expo in a way that neither local politicians nor Expo officials had been able to do. Meanwhile, on the island of La Cartuja, thousands of accredited employees were allowed to enter the site for free, accompanied by one companion, and some pavilions and facilities remained open on a voluntary basis. But there was a shortage of things to do, even if there was much to recall, and most of these working visitors began to leave the site by late afternoon. On the way out, one worker spoke for many when he succinctly observed, “It’s finished. Now what?”

22. Wandering in the Wilderness: From Cartuja ’93 to Sevilla Technopolis The plans to shut down the Expo and to launch Cartuja ’93, the hightechnology research and development park that was to replace it, were far less developed than the plans for the Expo itself had been and were almost as confusing and contentious. The goal of Cartuja ’93 was to establish Seville as an international center of economic innovation just in time to take advantage of the advent of the “Europe without borders,” a single huge market with no internal barriers to the movement of resources and people. Unfortunately, much of Europe was deep in recession and preoccupied by the Bosnian war; and although the economic difficulties appeared to arrive in Spain somewhat later (thanks to the stimulus of the Expo and the Olympics and other factors), when they did finally arrive, they quickly assumed crisis proportions, especially in Seville. As a result, plans for the post-Expo period, which had not been particularly well laid in the first place, were undermined by unanticipated difficulties and no one was quite sure how best to proceed.

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By early 1993, the peseta had been devalued, deficit spending and interest rates were high, the national economy was shrinking, and Spain was in its worst recession in twenty-five years (EPI 5 Jul 1993:1). Moreover, because of the government’s aim to meet the criteria for inclusion in the first tier of countries in the coming European monetary union, sharp cuts in spending were going to be necessary in health care, subsidies to struggling industries, unemployment entitlement, and other areas.1 The impact of all this on Seville was suddenly everywhere to be seen. In the year after the Expo closed, unemployment rose to an incredible 28 percent. Hotels and other businesses were forced to close, and it was said that the city had returned to levels of economic activity similar to those of five years before the Expo. Even the drought worsened. As things turned out, recovery from this dire situation was fairly rapid in the mid-1990s. But much damage had already been done not only to many people’s lives but also to the ambitious plans for the post-Expo period in Seville. A year after the Expo closed, officials were predicting that it would be necessary to wait ten years to determine whether or not the event had been an economic success (DD 12 Oct 1993:11). The economic crisis also affected national and local politics. El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) had planned to call early national elections in 1993 to take advantage of the impetus of the Expo and the Olympics and to launch another decade of Socialist government. By early 1993, because of the poor state of the economy and because of the mounting scandals over personal corruption and illegal party financing, a sweeping victory for the PSOE appeared highly unlikely. Nevertheless, seeing nothing to be gained by waiting a few months, the party leadership stuck to its plans and called for elections in June 1993. The Socialists eked out a narrow victory by winning 38 percent of the vote and forming a parliamentary coalition with Convergencia i Unió (CiU), the leading Catalán regional party. No one believed initially that the big events of 1992 had had much of an impact on the 1993 election. Rather, the PSOE victory was attributed to the weakness of the opposition and to the continuing popularity of Felipe González, who had now won his fourth successive national election. Still, the general view was that the long, slow political decline of the PSOE had not been reversed but only momentarily arrested, and the strategists of El Partido Popular (PP) almost immediately began devising ways to undermine the prestige of González by bringing to his very doorstep the responsibility for illegal actions of security forces against ETA in the late 1980s. This distressingly successful effort, along with a somewhat stronger PP platform and more assertive leadership, proved enough (though barely) to bring the PP under José María Aznar to power in 1996. Then PSOE disarray and a lack of direction among the Socialists helped the PP to win again, this time more convincingly, in the elections of 2000. Thus, the events of 1992, far from relaunching the PSOE, can be seen in retrospect to have been a monumental last-ditch effort to stave off a crisis

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of energy and vision of the “Felipista” leadership that had directed the Socialist party from 1975 through the mid-1990s.2 Meanwhile, in Seville, the post-Expo crisis did nothing to resolve the stalemate in local politics. Because the city’s most severe problems were national and international in origin, local politicians were left without the resources to do much other than lament the situation and try to blame their opponents for it. Thus, in the 1995 municipal elections, the results were virtually identical to those in the 1991 elections, with seats on the city council almost equally divided among the PSOE, the PP, and El Partido Andalucista (PA). This meant that the fragile coalition between the PP and the PA would survive for a few more years—but with a significant change of places between Alejandro Rojas Marcos, who now became the vice-mayor, and Soledad Becerril, who became the mayor. By 1999, the PA had split and split again, and its pact with the PP had collapsed in Seville. PA members began actively cooperating with the PSOE government of Manuel Chaves on the regional level. With the support of Rojas Marcos and the PA, the PSOE subsequently reclaimed the government of the city, even though the basic divisions of the electorate were essentially unaltered. Thus, if the Expo and its aftermath had had an impact on local party politics, it was largely to guarantee that the Socialists’ control of Seville—the birthplace of the modern PSOE and still the most important city of the PSOE’s increasingly important though increasingly insecure regional Andalusian stronghold—would remain tenuous.3 The economic ups and downs of the 1990s and the highly unstable political situation greatly complicated the problems of what to do with the island of La Cartuja and also made it difficult to assess in useful and meaningful ways the broad impact that the Expo had on Seville. Without question, the political and economic uncertainties made the material and cultural legacies more confusing and contested than they might otherwise have been. Even so, the very character of the confusion of the post-Expo period suggests a great deal about the forces and counterforces that continue to shape the culture and political economy of contemporary Spain. In the early weeks and months of the post-Expo period, the two most urgent tasks were to shut down the Expo site and to render accounts of the event’s profits and losses. The first of these tasks teetered for months on the edge of chaos. The second was for years completely politicized. With respect to the first task, each participant in the Expo had to make arrangements to sell, transport, or junk the numerous contents of its pavilion. In addition, it had to decide whether to maintain its representation in Seville in some form or, alternatively, to auction off, demolish, or cede its pavilion to the Expo. All of this was to be done as quickly as possible to clear the way for Cartuja ’93, and the whole process was to be regulated by the State Society. In fact, however, from the very beginning, the process was snared in bureaucratic delays and sudden changes of plans; and just as the sales and closures were to get

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under way, things were thrown into a state of uncertainty by the sudden firing, for obscure reasons, of the trusted and popular head of the participants’ division of the State Society (DD-ex 8 Oct 1992:15). Under these circumstances, many participants began to improvise by holding their own auctions, selling the pavilion contents on a rapidly emerging “black market,” making their own arrangements for demolition, and neglecting to inform Expo officials about their actions and plans. Moreover, some participants ignored the red tape of the State Society and began to negotiate directly with the administration of Cartuja ’93 before formal control of the site had been turned over to this entity. In sum, the whole process became disorderly and lengthy, and quite a large number of pavilions were not so much closed as simply abandoned or plunged into a state of suspended animation, with decisions about their final disposition delayed until some undetermined date in the future. The failure to achieve anything resembling administrative closure in late 1992 and early 1993 obviously made the job of rendering some account of the Expo’s costs rather difficult, but this was actually one of the lesser problems surrounding this matter. Even before the Expo’s final days, opposition politicians had called for Jacinto Pellón to appear before parliamentary and other boards of inquisition to account for costs, and Pellón and other Expo and government officials had begun to contradict their earlier statements and to claim that the Expo had financed itself without a burden remaining for the tax-paying public. After the Expo closed, Pellón (and, later, Virgilio Zapatero as the responsible cabinet minister) maintained the position that the Expo had essentially broken even and had perhaps made a small profit throughout the fall of 1992. Although Pellón and Zapatero backed these claims with thousands of pages of data and figures, if there were any people who sincerely believed that their figures reflected the economic realities of the Expo, rather than reflecting a preordained political position, I have never encountered them. According to Emma Dent Coad (1995:379), the events of 1992 could probably be best characterized in terms of “almost enough visitors who spent not quite enough money.” Most people were convinced that the real costs of the Expo were much higher than reported and would never be known. For as long as the PSOE had a parliamentary majority, the issue of Expo costs lapsed into a sort of limbo. However, in 1997 and 1998, with the PP in control of the government, the issue suddenly reemerged. The Tribunal of Accounts reported to the Congress of Deputies that the Expo had lost some 35,000 million pesetas between 1982 and 1992. While the tribunal found no evidence of outright fraud, it noted that there were numerous procedural and factual errors in the records, and it accused the Expo organization of making excessive and uneconomical expenditures and manufacturing paper profits. This report was more than enough to launch further investigations requiring the testimony of a series of past and present high officials of the Expo and Cartuja ’93 (EP 1 Nov 1997:Internet). The most dramatic appearances were made by Pellón and

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Manuel Olivencia, who seemed to engage each another in one last indirect pas de deux before the court of Judge Baltazar Garzón. For his part, Olivencia claimed that he had been unable to exercise adequate oversight of Expo expenditures because of difficulties in communication with the State Society, and he repeated his suspicions that some officials of the Expo had been overpaid for their services (EP 15 Nov 1997:Internet). In contrast, Pellón blandly defended the legality of Expo accounting procedures and explained that the discrepancies between the Expo figures and those of the Tribunal of Accounts were simply the result of different accounting methods. Other notables testified along similar lines and in accordance with their political affiliations. The results of these investigations were once again far from clear. Politicians of the PP had hoped to uncover evidence of widespread fraud and to tar the PSOE with yet another major financial scandal. However, the courts found no evidence of criminal misuse of funds among important Expo officials, and this allowed the Socialists to dismiss the whole proceedings as a politically motivated witch-hunt. The matter of Expo finances and the questions about who profited most from the event still have not been entirely laid to rest. Even in 2000, the so-called Caso Expo—a criminal proceeding centered on the accusation that a Socialist functionary from Málaga had extracted 6,500 million pesetas in illegal commissions from the Expo and had hidden the money in bank accounts on the island of Jersey—lingered in the courts and headlines (EP 22 Sep 2000:Internet). Far more important, however, for understanding the legacy of the Expo is what happened on the island of La Cartuja in the midst of the political and economic turmoil and confusion of the 1990s. The project of Cartuja ’93 had originally been conceived by Socialist technocrats under the influence of Berkeley sociologist Manuel Castells as a corporate and academic research and development park that would help to fundamentally transform the economy of Andalusia. Initially, there was no place in this scheme for directly commercial enterprises that would amount to a “vulgarization” of its high purposes (DD 27 Sep 1992:14). What eventually emerged after years of struggle bore some resemblance to this vision, but in many respects it was also a rather different sort of beast. The early months of the project were far from happy, and remarkably little was accomplished. In addition to the bad economic environment and the difficulties involved in shutting down the Expo, problems developed in the transfer of control of the Expo site from the State Society to Cartuja ’93, the administrative entity headed by Rafael de la Cruz, a member of the technocratic wing of the PSOE. Pellón and de la Cruz soon clashed over their responsibilities and competencies, and lurking behind these clashes were the play of different interests and different notions of what sorts of businesses and enterprises would be allowed onto the site. For some months, it seemed as if the old conflict between the State Society and the Office of the Commissioner General was going to be

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resumed in a new form. By mid-1993, however, Pellón and the State Society had retired from the scene more or less willingly, although not before some decisions important for the future development of the project had been made. Perhaps most notable among these was that the island of La Cartuja would have multiple uses, including the establishment of a theme park that would continue to offer recreational attractions to the general public—a crucial first step in the direction of the “vulgarization” of Cartuja ’93 if ever there was one. But even after the end of the involvement of the State Society, many disagreements persisted within the organization of Cartuja ’93 itself. Formally, the Spanish state had a controlling 51 percent interest in Cartuja ’93 while the region of Andalusia had a 44 percent share and the city of Seville had only a 5 percent stake (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:62–63). In practice, however, both Seville’s effective power and its interest in the project were much larger, and it had sufficient administrative prerogatives of various sorts to block or delay initiatives not to its liking. This situation left ample room for squabbling and political posturing by members of the PSOE, PA, and PP alike. Moreover, each of the levels of public administration involved was subject to the pressures of a wide range of interest groups and institutions. Further complicating matters were the claims on state resources made by other similar projects, such as a technological park in Málaga, and the reluctance of the national government to invest more money in Seville when other cities and regions were already complaining of neglect. In conjunction with the recession, the nearly universal perception of discord, indecisiveness, bureaucratic blockages, uncertain incentives, and a lack of clear policies and commitments concerning the future of the project had a devastating effect on potential participants in Cartuja ’93. Having endured the travails of dealing with El Centro Oficial de Distribución y Almacenamiento (CODA) and the State Society during the Expo, few participating countries or corporations were inclined to take another plunge into even more troubled waters. As a result, Cartuja ’93 quickly assumed the reputation of being “a great swamp” of offices and acronyms, and some opposition politicians even predicted that it would become a “new Sarajevo” (DD 19 Oct 1992:3). Consequently, in late 1992 and 1993, one country and corporation after another reviewed and reconsidered its plans, with the most common outcome being a decision to cancel, delay, or greatly reduce its involvement in the project. Among the first and greatest blows to the morale of those involved in Cartuja ’93 were the decisions of Canada and the Fujitsu Corporation to withdraw. Canada had been one of the most popular and enthusiastic participants in the Expo, but rather than converting its pavilion into a center to promote CanadianSpanish exchanges and investments, it simply gave its installation to the Expo and left town. Fujitsu had constructed one of the most popular and technically sophisticated pavilions of the Expo and was just the sort of large, rich, and glamourous research-dependent enterprise that Cartuja ’93 hoped to attract, but

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it decided that the project was not well enough defined and that the costs of remaining would be too great (DD 17 Oct 1992:11). By early 1994, it had become clear that despite some minor successes the whole project was in danger of enduring a slow and painful death. Thus, in February, a number of steps were taken to reestablish the project on a new basis. Rafael de la Cruz was replaced as head of Cartuja ’93 by Jaime Montaner from the regional government of Andalusia. At the same time, the state ceded 7 percent of its share in the project to La Junta de Andalucía (thereby giving the regional government a controlling 51 percent of the capital) and began to more aggressively pursue a policy of “privatization.” This policy involved offering long-term leases to private investors and even discussing the possibility of selling parcels of the site outright, in defiance of the protests of Rojas Marcos and most of the other municipal authorities of Seville (DD 1 Feb 1994:12; DD 25 Feb 1994:27). Despite these efforts to revive the project, in the mid-1990s it appeared that most of the island of La Cartuja was reverting to wilderness—albeit a peculiarly postmodern sort of wilderness endowed with excellent, if underutilized, infrastructures and services. There remained only a few outposts of civilization, such as the College of Engineering of the University of Seville (which occupied the old Plaza of the Americas building), a theme park, and a scattering of offices and recreational venues. The gardens along the Guadalquivir River were untended, and most of the island seemed all but bereft of daily human occupation and activity. Moreover, at the very heart of the old Expo, behind chain-link fences, a tide of weeds appeared to be taking over the dry plazas and fountains surrounding the boarded up and slowly deteriorating former pavilions of European and international participants. Fortunately, however, as Seville began to recover from the recession of the immediate post-Expo period, life also began to return rather suddenly to the dead zones of La Cartuja. By 1999, after another administrative restructuring, change of leadership, and redistribution of interests in the project, Cartuja ’93 was definitively subdivided into two constitutive elements. The first, called Sevilla Technopolis, was to be a scientific and technological park consisting of public, corporate, and academic centers of investigation and development. The second, called El Espacio Metropolitano para la Cultura y el Esparcimiento (Metropolitan Space for Culture and Amusement), was to include the following: a theme park; film and performance venues; park lands; extensive athletic facilities; the monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, which houses various institutions dedicated to the preservation of the cultural and historical patrimonies of Seville and Andalusia; and a handful of old Expo installations, including the Pavilion of Navigation, which would remain open to the public (see www.cartuja93.es). Sevilla Technopolis could boast of no fewer than 140 enterprises and entities on its terrain by late 1999, and this number had risen to an impressive 187

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by the year 2000. It is important to note, however, that because of the policy of privatization, most of the constituent enterprises and centers of the technopolis are small in scale; and rather than being oriented toward direct, intensive research and development, most tend to be oriented toward the provision of services (e.g., cleaning services, restaurants, and a postal consulting agency), the dissemination of information (e.g., the Foundation of the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean and the International Gerontological Foundation), and the marketing of products (e.g., Ericsson Radio, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Supercable of Seville). Transnational corporations are represented but almost entirely in the form of small branch offices instead of vital corporate centers. Moreover, almost all of the larger centers represent preexisting government institutions, academic centers, or state-subsidized public or joint agencies, such as the Center for New Water Technologies, the Meteorological Center of Western Andalusia, and the Institute of Material Sciences. Nevertheless, over 6,000 people are employed on the site, and in comparison with the dark years of the immediate post-Expo period, there is cause for mild optimism, especially for mid-level public and corporate managers and “symbolic analysts” who wish to work and live in Seville. So even if the course of development of Sevilla Technopolis can hardly be construed as a model of careful planning and the harmonious cooperation of the multiple governmental and corporate sectors involved and even if the project was far from being a triumph of democratic participation, it can at least be said that Sevilla Technopolis ultimately fared somewhat better than most of the development schemes that have accompanied international exhibitions. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the city of Seville had already derived most of the benefits that it was ever likely to receive from the massive expenditures made on Expo ’92 and Cartuja ’93. But in February 2001, Alfredo Sánchez, the new Socialist mayor, who, like his predecessors, seemed quite enamored of big investment schemes, held a large conference whose aim was to develop a general strategic plan for the city for the year 2010. The conference involved the participation of no fewer than 141 “entities and associations” whose collective efforts generated a tentative proposal of 464 points, which included constructing a new metropolitan public transportation system, modernizing the city’s port facilities, and taking steps to facilitate the development of the North-South axis of interchange within Spain and Europe (ABC “Andalucía” 28 Feb 2001:Internet). Even if Seville was still Seville, thanks surely in part to the Expo it could certainly no longer be accused of provincial complacency and lack of ambition. Perhaps with this in mind, the mayor also announced the appointment of a commissioner general for a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the Expo in 2002. Apparently, none of the assembled conferees found it out of place to be planning a commemoration of what had been, after all, a commemoration. Progress marches on, and their eyes, we may suppose, were on the future.

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23. The Theme Park of Memory As time passed, memories of the Expo functioned like badly wired lights from a carnival sideshow. At first, these memories were so dim that nothing much could be discerned. Then there was a blinding glare. Finally, after some modifications were made, they settled into a steady glow that left many things obscured while highlighting others. In the months and years immediately following the Expo, it often seemed as if the event had never happened. Despite the debate about the future of the island of La Cartuja, hardly anyone, from ordinary Sevillanos to even those who had held important positions on the site, seemed to want to talk about the Expo. When the subject was brought up, the general attitude toward it was one of indifference unmarred by more than a few traces of fondness or pleasure. Perhaps this disposition to silent apathy represented the long-anticipated “hangover,” which served to counterbalance the intense engagement of Sevillanos with the Expo during the six months that it was open (DD 12 Oct 1993:10). Or perhaps the new preoccupations and urgency of the economic crisis momentarily overwhelmed memories of the Expo or generated a sense of disillusionment with it (DD “El Dominical” 9 Oct 1994:2). In any case, it seemed as if popular memory of the Expo was buried almost as deep as the Expo time capsule, which was to be left in place for 500 years and which contained, among many other things destined for virtual oblivion, the texts of the 160 speeches that Emilio Cassinello had given for participants’ days of honor (EP 12 Oct 1992:1). But eventually it became clear that some sort of selective cultural process had gone on just beneath the surface of superficial indifference during the months and years of the early post-Expo period. For by the mid-1990s, it was no longer unusual to hear people voice unprompted expressions of nostalgia for the Expo or to discover that they were interested in considering questions about its legacy for Seville. Moreover, although the responses of Sevillanos to the Expo while it was going on had been notably complex and nuanced, the retrospective vision of the Expo that had emerged by the mid-1990s seemed to be much simpler. Memories of the conflict between the Expo and Seville had softened considerably. Some people even took pleasure in suggesting that Sevillanos were too faction-prone and “entangled with one another” and that therefore the city needed someone like Jacinto Pellón to take charge of future projects. But the primary note that could be heard was one of great pride in the Expo, and this seemed to be composed of about equal parts of passionate nostalgia for a time when Sevillano culture had charmed visitors from around the world and of an optimistic and forward-looking civic boosterism that was eager to develop some ambitious undertaking comparable to the Expo all over again. In short, the period of the Expo was increasingly being viewed as a special time

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in which life in the city had been more exciting and creative and at least momentarily freer from the mundane concerns of day-to-day existence. This cultural remodeling of the Expo seemed at first sight to be a spontaneous and almost natural expression of popular sentiment. However, closer scrutiny suggests that collective memory was being managed by the media and directed along certain paths by authorities, bureaucrats, and members of interest groups who were seeking to invoke the legacy of the Expo to validate their own projects. In addition to Sevilla Technopolis, the most important enterprises that affected how the Expo was being remembered were the theme park on the island of La Cartuja and the effort to promote Seville as a future site for the Olympic Games. In its first manifestation, the so-called Park of Discoveries aimed to take advantage of some of the cultural and recreational installations of the Expo in order to offer the public a more permanent leisure-time experience that was both diverting and educational. Thus, the project involved a selective “recycling” of parts of the Expo that by its very nature would encourage people to remember and “relive” the event in a certain kind of way. The theme park was developed, owned, and operated by Partecsa, a group of mostly private investors, initially licensed by Cartuja ’93. The key figures in Partecsa were primarily ex-directors of the State Society, such as Alfonso Seoane, who became executive director of the enterprise. However, Manuel Prado y Colón, the adviser of King Juan Carlos and one of the key figures of the early years of the Expo, was brought in as president of Partecsa largely because of his ability to attract new investors (DD 26 Jan 1993:20). In effect, then, Partecsa was a mechanism that enabled officials with links to the Expo to convert the knowledge, experience, and connections that they had gained as public servants into private gain. The Park of Discoveries was scheduled to open in April 1993, but because of the difficulties involved in shutting down the Expo and the time required to add new attractions, its opening was delayed until June. This allowed an ample period for many people in Seville to be swept away by a tide of panic buying of season passes for the new theme park. By May, fearing to be left once again outside the gates looking in, at least 46,000 people had ensured their admission, sight unseen, to the park for its first season. By June, 300,000 passes had been sold (DD 25 Jun 1993:5). It was not the first time nor the last that the post-Expo period seemed to be characterized by a return of the repressed. On its opening day, 150,000 people visited the Park of Discoveries. They encountered a new roller coaster and other rides. But for the most part, what they found were the same things that had been there during the Expo. The pavilions of navigation, nature, the universe, and energy and a dozen or so other pavilions were more or less intact, and one of the regional pavilions had been converted into a venue for video games. Also unavoidably on view were many closed and abandoned pavilions. The media critics were harsh. Most adults were not impressed with what they encountered, so by July of 1993, daily

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attendance figures were in a dramatic state of decline. Despite this, the Park of Discoveries proved to be a popular gathering place for teenagers, and its first season was by no means a failure. In 1994, however, attendance declined further, and there was no rush to renew season passes. Consequently, before the beginning of the 1995 season, Partecsa announced that the Park of Discoveries would be closed for eighteen months for a complete remodeling under the guidance of Ogden, a U.S. company that had extensive experience in the theme park business and had recently become a major partner in Partecsa. If nothing else, the Park of Discoveries had at least served its main interim purposes of attracting more capital and enabling its shareholders to secure a new thirty-eight-year license for the site (DD 25 Jun 1994:22; DD 21 Jan 1995:23). So the Expo devolved into the Park of Discoveries, and after a few years the discovery park devolved into the Magic Island (La Isla Mágica), a pure amusement park stripped of the surviving thematic pavilions of the Expo and of the pretensions to public education and edification. After some delays in construction, the Magic Island opened with great fanfare in the spring of 1997 and was honored with a visit by the king in June. The attractions of the Magic Island are concentrated around the old Lake of Spain and are described as follows in one of the publicity sheets: The main thesis of the theme park centers on the exploration of the New World by Spanish pioneers in the sixteenth century. Thanks to this thematization, Isla Mágica submerges its explorers in exciting adventures from another time. This immersion is based in the sensations that visitors experience throughout the six thematic zones that comprise the route of the thematic park: “Sevilla, Port of the Indies,” “The Port of America,” “Amazonia,” “Pirate’s Den,” “Fountain of Youth,” and, finally, “Eldorado.” Each of the six zones contains versions of standard amusement park rides with decorated facades that invoke the park’s basic theme. In addition, the park features many stage and street shows of various kinds in which costumed actors, singers, and dancers play the parts of sailors, cannibals, pirates, priests, prostitutes, Indian chiefs and maidens, conquistadors (referred to as “Spanish hidalgos” in the public relations literature), and others, ostensibly in an effort to recapture the sheer multicultural and artistic richness, warmth, joy, and humor of “The Age of Discoveries.” Unfortunately, by the time that the Magic Island opened, its most direct and authentic link to “The Age of Discoveries”—namely, Manuel Prado y Colón, a descendant of Columbus—was no longer its president and key public spokesperson. No doubt this was in large measure because Prado y Colón was under indictment for (and had indeed spent a night in jail because of ) his

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alleged actions in an international scandal that involved the shady dealings of Spanish financier Javier de la Rosa, secret Swiss bank accounts, sums on the order of 100 million dollars, fraudulently overvalued land in Seville, the notorious Kuwaiti investment office, tax fraud, and even hints that attempts had been made to blackmail King Juan Carlos (EP 11 Feb 1996:51; EP 26 Jul 2000:Internet). Were it not for the anachronism, Jesús Sainz, the new president of Partecsa and another old Expo hand, might have considered transforming Prado y Colón’s roller coaster problems with the law into a new attraction for the Magic Island. Even so, something of the spirit of Prado y Colón may perhaps still be detected in the theme park as it is. Although the Expo itself had suppressed colonialist and neocolonialist triumphalism in its eagerness to promote a more Europe-centered, cosmopolitan, and liberal vision of the past, the Magic Island has revived a highly sanitized version of the encounter between Europe and the Americas in order to attract and spur consumer spending. Thus, several cycles of cultural editing have transformed conquest, massacre, plunder, empire, and demographic decimation into a multicultural variety show offering fun for the whole family. This Disneyfication of imperialist nostalgia has tended to displace and distort popular recollections of the Expo and has made the real event seem to be more puerile, superficial, and objectionable than it actually was.1 By the year 2000, despite these extended efforts to make much of what remains of the Expo into a theme park capable of vying with other embodiments of the genre and despite Partecsa’s willingness even to rent out the former Pavilion of Spain for weddings, baptisms, and other private functions, the Magic Island had not become a “tourist attraction of the first order.” Consequently, the enterprise has been refinanced and reorganized once again. Current plans call for another expansion of the park, moving its borders into the gardens along the Guadalquivir River, and the conversion of the former Pavilion of the Future into a hotel (ABC 28 Feb 2001:Internet). Along with Sevilla Technopolis and the theme park, the third major project that affected the Expo’s local legacy in the 1990s was the campaign to bring the Olympics to Seville. In a way, this effort also represented a return of the repressed. For during and immediately after the Expo, admiration for the success of the Olympics had been mixed with a certain envy and a strong conviction that Barcelona and Catalonia had exercised significant control over the summer games and had put their cultural stamp on them in a way that Sevillanos had been unable to do with the Expo. Thus, organizing a successful campaign to bring the Olympics to Seville and other parts of Andalusia would in a sense bring unfinished cultural and political business to a triumphant conclusion. Initially, because the prime mover of the Olympic effort was Alejandro Rojas Marcos of El Partido Andalucista (PA), the effort met with stiff political opposition from the provincial and regional governments, which were in the hands of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), although not from the

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Socialists on the city council (DD 1 Jan 1994:12). Later, however, a wide range of politicians began to realize that regardless of the project’s chances for ultimate success, extensive human and material resources would be devoted to the effort to prepare the city for the Olympics. As a result, opposition declined and support increased to the point that all of the major regional political parties except La Izquierda Unida (IU) eventually embraced the basic idea. The work of the Seville Olympic Commission has consisted of mustering support among public and private sponsors, such as the Chamber of Commerce, Partecsa, construction companies, and local newspapers; launching a broader public relations campaign whose ultimate target is the International Olympic Commission; overseeing the remodeling or construction of sports facilities and other edifices; and attracting athletic and other events to Seville to demonstrate the city’s capacity to host the games. Thus far, the two major achievements of the project have been the construction of an Olympic stadium near the other sports facilities of the island of La Cartuja and the successful hosting of the World Track and Field Championships in the stadium in 1999. Seville’s candidacy for the Olympics has not otherwise fared well. In addition to the intense international competition involved in such efforts and the less than encouraging responses from the International Olympic Committee with respect to the candidacy, the project has been somewhat undermined by the city’s rivalry with Madrid for the site of the Olympics and by a lack of enthusiasm and support from the national government. Indeed, the initial target date for the event of 2004 had to be changed to 2008 and then again to 2012. While hopes for the candidacy still persist, it was not a sign of great optimism when the decision was made in 2001 to place the campaign under the authority of a general office of sports promotion headed by Alfonso Seoane, a former director of Partecsa and the State Society (ABC 9 Jan 2001:Internet). Moreover, criticism of the Olympic project has been increasingly evident in Seville as well. Some Sevillanos would prefer not to have to wait for the indirect benefits of Olympic Games, technology ventures, theme parks, and other grand schemes to be realized before seeing improvements in the basic necessities and amenities of urban life.2 But for a number of reasons, the continuing allure of the Expo and the desire for the big event and the big fix remain perhaps the most powerful counterforces to what would seem to be a more modest, commonsensical, and realistic approach to the city’s future. For one thing, as memories of the Expo have been simplified and the event has become an object of nostalgia, the inherent difficulties involved in grand schemes have appeared to be less formidable than they really are. For another, the Expo had a huge and often formative and decisive impact on the careers and expectations of hundreds of administrators, politicians, functionaries, and experts. In the immediate post-Expo period of economic downturn, these highly trained people needed employment and many of them found it in regional and municipal government, public service jobs, and the major post-Expo

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private enterprises and initiatives. Such people have naturally been disposed to view their professional futures in terms of their past experiences, and they have not been inclined to give up the ambitious scale on which they were accustomed to work in the early 1990s. But perhaps most important, the Expo and its legacy of grand projects have had a powerful effect in altering, if not completely transforming, both the material reality of the city and at least one set of ideal images of urban life for Sevillanos. On the one hand, none of the grand projects has been an unqualified success, and with its distinctive traditions of culture and sociability still more or less intact, Seville remains Seville. Indeed, because life in many parts of the city remains much the same as in the past, including unfortunately high rates of unemployment and inadequate housing and services in many neighborhoods, when talk turns to the Expo, the recollections of many Sevillanos tend to focus partly on a period of full employment, partly on the presence of so many different kinds of people in the city, and not much at all on the official claims of progress or the themes of the exhibition. As a result, the kind of nostalgia that many ordinary Sevillanos feel for the Expo centers on the conviction that for its duration they were able and indeed obliged to be themselves and to represent the most positive aspects of local culture, such as traditions of hospitality and courtesy, in an especially intense way. Thus, they recall the Expo primarily as a kind of rite of cultural renewal that involved six months of nonstop socializing and revitalized the spirit of the city, rather than as a watershed in the city’s broader social and economic history. However, it is obvious to even the most die-hard advocates of traditional local and regional culture that at least the urban core and public face of the city have been dramatically altered. From this perspective, the Expo can readily be seen as the driving force in a fundamental transformation of the city from a rather disheveled and quiescent provincial center into a dynamic and polished regional capital—a city dedicated to administration, services, education, commerce, and tourism, with museums, manicured monuments, schools, public buildings, recreational centers, theaters, plazas, parks, and other infrastructure and amenities to match. As a result, Seville’s official face at all times and its public culture at most times (except perhaps during the great celebrations of Holy Week and the feria) increasingly seem to match those of other European cities and to be consistent with a sort of ruling cosmopolitan standard or set of expectations about what the day-to-day, cultivated, well-managed, orderly, and well-tended urban life should be. Indeed, for some people who remember how Seville was only a decade or two ago, the core of the city now sometimes seems a touch foreign and artificial and, in contrast with surrounding neighborhoods, too generic. One might even say that these days a walking tour of the attractions of contemporary Seville inside its old walls is now far more similar to an amble along the Route of Discoveries on La Isla de la Cartuja than it was even in 1992 when the Expo was in progress.

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Of course, not everything that has changed in Seville sprang from the Expo, but much of it did. Moreover, whatever the future ups and downs of Sevilla Technopolis, the theme park, and the Olympic project may be, the overall course of the city’s development is likely to continue in the same general direction. Although the new and stunningly complex “metaplan” for Seville and surrounding communities is critical of overreliance on “big events” as a strategy of urban transformation, it is itself a nearly perfect expression of a grand technocratic scheme whose fundamental goal is the “redesign of Seville as a European urban region.” In keeping with this scheme, the planners envision Seville primarily as a center for the “most advanced sectors of investigation and communication.” To reach this goal, it will be necessary both “to transform the city into a place in which the consumption-creation relation is inverted in favor of the creative moment of cultural production” and “to achieve a more fluid relation among the diverse groups of the city” (ABC 18 Dec 2000:Internet). This is the Expo’s dominant culture of cosmopolitan liberalism condensed into a rhetoric of urban planning. The future will be a world of fluidly interacting, local social and cultural groups of ordinary citizens who benefit from and support the work of an upper tier of creative experts and symbolic analysts with broader horizons. But in the vision advanced in the “metaplan,” the future stands in striking contrast and tension with key popular convictions concerning what has been the most valuable about the Expo and what remains the most appealing about life in Seville. Much will depend on how or if this tension can be resolved. Currently, however, what seems most clear about the Expo’s legacy for Seville is that it is not free of irony and ambiguity. Before, during, and after the Expo, Sevillanos sought to take cultural and political possession of it and to incorporate it into the life and endowments of the city. In the post-Expo period, as the state withdrew from Cartuja ’93 and the project became more subject to local and regional control, this goal seemed to have been achieved in some measure. However, just as Seville appeared finally to be laying claim to the Expo, the Expo in the form of its legacy of the big projects and big plans of politicians, managers, experts, and planners seems to have reasserted its sway over the imagination and resources of the city. As Manuel Marchena, the director of the new strategic plan sees it, “Seville cannot permit itself the luxury of continuing to look to the past and not to the future. . . . Those who do not realize that we are immersed in a change of shore from the historical center [of the city] to the banks of Cartuja ’93 do not understand what is happening in Seville” (ABC 24 Jun 2001:44). Nevertheless, because of all the swirling countercurrents of the urban milieu, the abiding issue of whether the Expo will become Seville or whether Seville will become the Expo has yet to have a definitive answer. As a specific development project, the Expo may be all but dead and buried, but since nothing has yet been settled in its host city, the spirit and the memory of the event, for good or ill, still live on.

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24. The Expo and the New Millennium Seville’s Expo was touted as the last great world’s fair of the twentieth century. This claim, like almost everything else about the Expo, is debatable. In 1998, Lisbon held a major international exhibition with a maritime theme. And in 2000 (the last year of the twentieth century, according to calendrical experts), Hannover, Germany, held a universal exhibition with the official theme of “Humanity, Nature, and Technology: A New World Arising.” The Lisbon and Hannover exhibitions differed little from Seville’s Expo in their emphasis on global perspectives and their eagerness to promote ideals of European integration and unity. Even so, despite some clouds that loomed on its horizon, Seville’s Expo appears to have represented an as yet unsurpassed pinnacle of optimism about Europe and the world. Among the many factors that helped make the Expo a high point for the expression of harmonious cosmopolitanism were the lingering afterglow of the end of the Cold War; the allies’ victory in the Gulf War; the hoopla about the “spirit of Maastricht” and the advent of the “Europe without borders”; the particular role Spain was attempting to play in eastern Europe, Latin America, and the southern Mediterranean as a model of peaceful, democratic transition and liberalization; much talk about the emergence of a multipolar new world order; and even Seville’s own history as a great early modern world center of commerce and culture. Since the end of the Expo, however, the “Trans-Euro Express” appears to have been slowed by a variety of other factors, including the disciplines and sacrifices required for meeting the criteria for entrance into the European monetary union; the necessity of coming face to face with the tragedy in Bosnia and the lack of effective coordinated European action to bring it to an end; the broader reawakening of nationalist, ethnic, and regionalist interests; the inability to simplify the increasingly cumbersome structures of consultation and decision making in the European Union (EU); and the vexing dilemmas involved in simultaneously creating a “broader” and a “deeper” union, with many more members and higher levels of integration. Nevertheless, many of these problems have been dealt with in ways that have furthered the consolidation of a transnational European polity and have clarified some aspects of its structure and ideology. For example, the challenges presented to ideas of a unified Europe by Kosovo and events in the former Yugoslavia sparked the first war of cosmopolitan liberalism. The bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia in the name of universal human rights and the values of European civilization eventually led to the acceptance of the idea of a European defense force capable of undertaking such actions independently of the United States; and since neither all Kosovar Albanians nor all Kosovar Serbs have embraced these values, it also led to an apparently long-term European commitment to maintain a kind of protectorate in order to limit more

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ethnonationalist bloodshed. Similarly, when the EU decided to temporarily suspend Austrian participation in EU business after members of the right-wing party of Jorge Haider entered the national government, the decision was rather ineptly handled but still demonstrated the EU’s willingness to try to enforce a pluralist liberal ideology that goes beyond the minimal requirement that all member states of the organization regularly hold fair and free elections. In addition, in the Nice conference of 2000 and its aftermath, decisions to expand the EU from its membership of fifteen countries to at least twenty-seven countries within a decade, to allow different levels of participation in the community, and to seriously take up the question of adopting something like a European constitution indicate that amidst much fluidity and uncertainty the basic direction of European integration has continued in line with the expectations raised in 1992. Moreover, the idea of a united Europe—whether conceived in federalist terms (a “United States of Europe”), confederalist terms (a “United Europe of States”), or other terms—has, even among those most skeptical and opposed to it at the time of the Expo, now clearly achieved a prominence in popular political culture. It is not that efforts to artificially create a sort of supranationalist European patriotism to rival and transcend national and regional loyalties have proved notably successful, and it is not that the swings of public opinion for and against the EU have notably modulated. Rather, it is that while the idea of Europe may not generate much depth of popular allegiance or enthusiasm, the political, economic, and cultural realities of European integration and their impact on daily life have become increasingly obvious, normal, and unavoidable for vast numbers of people. As a result, the EU has largely been recognized in some form as an enduring feature of the domestic, international, and global landscape. Indeed, many people’s attitudes for or against European integration increasingly tend to mimic the mix of enthusiasm, indifference, skepticism, and engagement that they have with respect to their home states and societies. Thus, the vision of creating an ever more cosmopolitan European polity seems somewhat troubled but more or less intact on both the institutional and popular levels, and no particularly attractive or credible alternatives to this grand project have been proposed. Since the late 1980s, if not earlier, then, and for the foreseeable future, the new spirit of the age has been the spirit of cosmopolitan liberalism, at least in western Europe.1 Certainly, the Expo was one of the vehicles that gave a relatively early material form to this spirit and thereby revealed some key aspects of the relationship between contemporary Spanish and western European political cultures and broader transnational processes. For the present purposes of summary and conclusion, we can condense this immensely complex relationship to manageable proportions by briefly considering it from the perspective of the question of “globalization,” a term that has frequently been used in discussions of the Expo and became one of the ubiquitous and often annoying “buzz words” of both popular and academic culture in the 1990s.

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In its most positive usage, globalization is equated with worldwide technologically driven processes of political and economic integration and the homogenization and domestication of cultural differences—processes which, it is assumed, will eventually benefit everyone. This comforting notion was surely a prominent aspect of the Expo. However, other understandings of globalization also abound. Cosmopolitan pessimists, such as Samuel Huntington, anticipate that liberal internationalism and other aspects of globalization will largely be confined to “the West” and that “the clash of civilizations” will become more severe in the twentieth-first century (Huntington 1996). In contrast, cautious optimists, such as William McNeill, hope that increasing connections among transnational elites will “sustain a contrary trend toward global cosmopolitanism” and forestall “the coming anarchy” (McNeill 1997:22; see also Barber 1996, Castells 1996, and Kaplan 1994). However, both the pessimists and the optimists seem to accept as virtually inevitable the recent and unprecedented concentration of power, wealth, and cultural authority in the hands of various shifting coalitions and alliances of national and transnational elites.2 Taken together, these elites constitute a minuscule percentage of the world’s population, but they increasingly determine the destiny of billions. Yet the idea that people without office, credentials, or ties to dominant institutions might play a direct and unmediated role in broad decision making or have much that is useful to contribute beyond their labor, appetites, and consent to the new world order evidently strikes many of these writers as hopelessly romantic and dangerously populist. Consequently, for many commentators, the cosmopolitan spirit is haunted by the specter of global chaos and conflict. Some academics and intellectuals, including many anthropologists (see, for example, Sahlins 2000), have stressed the unevenness and uncertainties involved in processes of globalization but have also pointed to the resilience of local cultures and the capacity of these cultures to absorb and appropriate for their own uses things imported from the outside. As a result, globalization has been characterized as a set of simultaneously homogenizing and redifferentiating processes that establish new interdependencies even as they generate new inequalities and differences among people. In light of this confusing complexity, David Harvey (2000) has suggested that it might be better to focus instead on processes of “uneven geographical development” that are basically driven by the requirements of capital. Others, such as Michael Kearney (1995) and Arjun Appadurai (1991, 1996), have proposed that we describe the contemporary world in terms of processes of deterritorialization, the implosion of peripheries into centers, and the multidimensional cultural flows and “reticular” and “interstitial” social forms that ramify through various shifting “econoscapes,” “ethnoscapes,” and the like. Such descriptions leave little doubt that globalization comprises a mind-bogglingly wide array of processes which are uneven, partial, and contested and that dialectical tensions involving identity/difference and incorporation/differentiation are part and parcel of its manifold phenomena.

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Even so, the emphasis in these accounts on the rapidity of change and the unboundedness of processes generates an impression of chaotic postmodern mutability and indeterminacy that seems to underestimate the ways in which both the newer and the more well-established and durable institutions, forms of power, and patterns of interaction are being reinforced and reconsolidated even as they are being reshaped. With respect to globalization, one is never quite sure whether rather less or rather more is happening than meets the eye. On a more popular level, at the time of the Expo and increasingly since then, talk of globalization in Europe has tended to have a more definite political and ideological focus. These days, the term “globalization” is closely associated with unmitigated neoliberal dogmatic fervor; the challenges involved in technological and economic competition with the United States and East Asia; the cultural perils of “Americanization,” symbolized by McDonald’s and Hollywood; the pressures to cut social welfare programs; and the reign of the remote and omnipotent deity of macroeconomics through its incarnated agents, the World Bank, the World Trade Association, and the International Monetary Fund. Globalization is therefore constituted as a panoply of external, invasive forces and represented as something that must be domesticated by good Europeans in order to preserve the values of a distinctive civilization under threat. Not long ago, the Spanish newspaper El País published an article whose headline was “Cosmopolitismo contra globalización” (EP 3 Nov 2000:Internet) and whose subject matter was a report on a conference in which great efforts were made to define the European project as an alternative to globalization. Indeed, whether one is in Europe, the United States, Latin America, or Southeast Asia, globalization is commonly represented as a force coming from somewhere else. Nevertheless, it would seem more plausible, if perhaps less politically comforting, to see Europeanization as a primary manifestation of the thing itself, because in many respects (indeed, most respects) transnational processes of political, economic, and cultural integration have gone further, are more highly developed, and are more normalized and institutionalized in Europe than anywhere else. Given the confusion surrounding the idea of globalization, it may be best to abandon the concept of globalization altogether, as Harvey (2000) suggested. Based on the evidence of the Expo, an alternative way of characterizing much of what is going on in the world might be in terms of the emergence of, interaction among, and reactions to proliferating forms of political, economic, and cultural liberalism. Somewhat different transnationalist forms and organizations seem to be arising almost simultaneously in many places, including Latin America (e.g., Mercosur), East Asia, and even North America (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement). Moreover, there are many new national and subnational graftings of liberal political and economic ideologies with religious, nationalist, ethnic, and regional cultures and social formations coming into being around the globe.3 But it seems clear that thanks to several factors— including the extraordinary impact of the end of the Cold War on Europe, the

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striking contrasts that still persist between the western and eastern and northern and southern parts of the rather small landmass, and the steadily mounting strength of the forces underlying the drive toward transnational integration and uniformity—it is in Europe that we witness the most startling array of varieties of liberalism, ranging from Thatcherite fundamentalism to democratic socialism, existing in the closest proximity and most intimate interaction with one another. As a result, since 1989, Europe has been a virtual hothouse of hybrid and sometimes rather exotic breeds of liberalism and of the identity politics that seems to be one of its prime manifestations. From this perspective, the Expo can largely be viewed as the product of the interaction between two of these interpenetrating and overlapping but still distinguishable varieties of proliferating liberalism: the emergent transnational hegemonic formation of cosmopolitan liberalism and the homegrown, locally rooted, contemporary version of Spanish political culture. Much has already been said here about both, but a few points are worth reprising in terms of this discussion. Although Europeanist cosmopolitan liberalism can be seen as just one of the many forms of proliferating liberalism, it has an encompassing and even universalizing dimension because of its emphasis on the domestication of all kinds of conflicts and differences through the devolution of power and the interlinkage of intermediary and coordinating agencies at different social levels, ranging from the global to the local. In other words, it is founded on the Durkheimian organic principle that intense interaction generates practical interdependency and integration as well as a sense of diffuse solidarity. As Robert Cottrell (1999:73) has said of the EU, “The ideal must surely be to achieve a distribution of loyalties and state power so wide that only innocuous quantities of either can collect in one place.” One of the ways this goal is accomplished is through a vision of political and economic order which is sufficiently general that it can be inflected in various ways so as to appear to be compatible with more familiar nation-state–based liberal ideologies and agendas. Thus, by emphasizing the elimination of barriers to the free play of market forces and by pointing to the competitive advantages that accrue from processes of economic integration, cosmopolitan liberalism can be given a neoliberal inflection; by emphasizing cooperation and negotiations among various interest groups, it can appear to be consistent with the neocorporatist traditions of Christian Democrats; or by stressing the need for the leveling of various playing fields and expanding the role of more open and responsive transnational institutions, it can be seen as consistent with the social democratic and “third way” projects of shaping a “people’s Europe” or creating fairer and more equitable meritocratic “opportunity societies.” Complementing this, another way in which cosmopolitan liberalism domesticates potential discord is by reducing broad political issues to narrower policy options and more manageable technical problems, so that responsibility for even extremely important decisions becomes diffused and difficult to

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assign. As many commentators have noted, this is one of the keys to understanding the increasing tendency for the EU to be a government by countless committees of experts.4 With this tendency comes an increasing bureaucratic capacity to transform ideological and even ethical dilemmas into so many instrumental difficulties that can be adequately dealt with by sound management practices and principles of efficiency and pragmatism. This tends to depoliticize even the more democratic dimensions of government and largely makes even elections and referendums into opportunities for politicians, political consultants, and public relations professionals to exercise their skills in managing consent, manufacturing legitimacy, limiting the range of choices, and reducing unpredictability. From this perspective, the widely recognized “democratic deficit” of the EU and, more generally, of contemporary liberal societies that are characterized by popular disengagement, apathy, and indifference is not so much a problem to be resolved as it is a product of the very logic of the system. It is not surprising, then, that there is talk of “the end of history,” “the end of ideology,” and “the end of politics,” for these lamentations reflect the expanded capacity of state and corporate elites to undermine popular political activism and social movements by turning adversaries into manageable interest groups and by transforming fundamental questions of value and principle into seemingly technical issues that are best decided by compromise, consultation, and negotiations among stakeholders, experts, administrators, and selected representatives of “the people.” For those who resist the normalization of these expanding networks of control and resist the penetration of technobureaucratic power of every aspect of life, there are always the police, tear gas, and the back of the hand. For everyone else, there is the promise of educational credentials, positions, vacations, palm pilots, grants, subsidies, and the occasional spectacle. Even though the dominant tendencies in contemporary Spanish political culture are in many ways compatible with and partly shaped by cosmopolitan liberalism, they still are in other respects distinctive. The legacy of the Civil War and the Franco regime led to a broad consensus about the importance of avoiding ideological polarization and to an equally strong desire to join “Europe” and the broader community of liberal, democratic nation-states. In tandem with this, regional claims to self-government, particularly among the Basques and Cataláns, along with a rejection of the conservative ideology of the Franco regime, led to a devaluation of traditional nationalism that persists to the present and is perhaps stronger in Spain than in any other western European country, with the possible exception of Germany. Despite the continual efforts of ETA to spark a nationalist reaction, invocations of nationalist values, so-called españolismo, and “statism” are usually avoided, at least rhetorically, even by the major national parties. Nevertheless, because of Spain’s goal of catching up with the leading countries of western Europe in terms of measures of social and economic

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development, there has been a great deal of centralized planning and interventionist, directive policy making, especially in the economic and financial spheres. Indeed, economics and other social sciences with claims to rigorous empirical methods and to efficient, ideologically neutral, instrumental rationalities have enjoyed unusual prestige and influence, partly because they seem to represent a stark contrast to the arbitrary and interested character of decision making and governance under the dictatorship. Moreover, as increasingly large numbers of university graduates (many of whom are endowed with the highly valued “master’s” in this or that specialized area) have entered the workforce, there has been mounting pressure to expand public sector employment as well as private opportunities, with the result that competition is now fierce for jobs in public institutions and administration for everyone from tax collectors to university professors. Although between 1982 and 1996, thanks to processes of regional devolution, the number of posts in the national bureaucracy fell, there was a huge increase in public employment within the autonomous regions themselves and therefore an overall expansion in the state bureaucracy as a whole (EP 21 Apr 1996:25). Thus, for a wide variety of socioeconomic and political reasons, the values and representations of cosmopolitan liberalism have found unusually fertile ground in Spain. What remains most distinctive about liberal politics in Spain, at least in its degree of salience and its influence on day-to-day practice and debate, is its intense personalism. This phenomenon is often represented as an unfortunate legacy of the Franco regime and also a fault of Socialist arrogance and the political style of “Felipismo” associated with Felipe González. However, it has deeper roots as well as more complex contemporary causes; and since El Partido Popular (PP) came to national power, there has been little indication that PP members are any less inclined toward personalism than are members of other political parties. Personalism flourishes partly because the so-called political class is small, rather inbred, and organized into parties of militants who lack a mass base but are closely tied to public and private institutions and interests. Consequently, despite some hesitant efforts at reforms, such as the institution of primary elections, political parties are still governed from the top down by national leaders and regional “barons,” and they are prone to splitting into opposing wings of technocrats interested in governance and populists interested in winning elections. Moreover, because most militants also hold positions in public institutions and parties and, indeed, because factions of parties have a strategic interest in dominating as many of these institutions as possible, the conditions are ideal for intense competition for resources and power. Thus, the perception and often the reality of bureaucratic obstructionism, amiguismo (cronyism), favoritism, behind-the-scenes deal-making, and backstabbing are widespread and are continually amplified by a seemingly unending stream of news stories about the latest scandal or scam. In turn, the general perception of an absence of openness among public officials and of a presence

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of barriers to democratic participation created both by the play of personal interests and the technocratic inclinations of those in power tends to generate popular skepticism and apathy. In addition, the resentments and intensity of day-to-day political life make it difficult to address or reach consensus on fundamental issues, the most important of which is the future form of the “state of the autonomies.” This issue is especially urgent to address because among other reasons, ethnonationalist violence represents the greatest threat to the current liberal democratic order. Even so, the personalism that pervades Spanish political culture is by no means a wholly negative force. It also partly reflects and is rooted in the intense attachments and loyalties that make so-called sociocentrism and local patriotism such strong factors in Spanish life. And such forms of interpersonal attachment and communitarian identity are among the strongest sources of democratic and egalitarian values and of sentiments of social and political solidarity in Spanish life. All of these aspects of contemporary Spanish political culture were clearly manifested in the tensions that existed between the state, the Expo, and Seville in 1992. And although the particular form that the politics of the Expo took was distinctively Spanish and even Andalusian in character, these political dynamics are relevant to understanding not just Spain’s manner of participation in Europe but important aspects of the political culture of the EU as a whole. For as Chris Shore (2000) has argued, one of the key features of the politics of the EU and especially of the European Parliament and the European Commission is a split between northern and southern political styles in which northerners typically accuse southerners of personalism and clientelism while southerners accuse northerners of rigid bureaucratic legalism. These tensions largely spring from the different functions, strength, and significance that meritocratic individualism and personalist loyalties have in the different political and institutional cultures of liberalism in contemporary Europe. And while personalism is officially disparaged as corrupt and backward, in practice it often appears that it has its own logic, ethics, and dynamics whose workings are not always manifestly inferior or less efficient than a universalizing individualism that often appears to insist blindly on uniformity and equal treatment of different kinds of persons and situations. The presence of such contradictory tendencies in European political cultures makes it all the more urgent to explore the emergent varieties of liberalism in Europe in order to better understand how notions of freedom, tolerance, equality, class, democracy, human rights, the individual, the community, civil society, and the state vary in expression and practice from place to place and from time to time. For in Europe, as elsewhere, exactly what these notions mean cannot simply be taken for granted. For the present, it is unclear whether the devolution of power from the nation-state to other transnational and subnational entities portends the emergence of new forms of polity that are more peaceful, prosperous, and just or the involution, refinement, and tightening of multiple,

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overlapping mechanisms of social control and discipline whose cumulative effects will be to reduce the exercise of autonomy to a shadow play occasionally interrupted by futile, intermittent flare-ups of defiance and disruption. In addition, the Expo and the emergence of a new form of transnational polity in Europe raise many questions concerning the relationship between this polity and the rest of the world. On the best reading, the EU can serve as a model of harmonious cooperation among democratic peoples and states and as a force for the defense and promotion of universal human rights, which other regions of the world are free to imitate and adapt to their own circumstances and traditions. Another possibility, however, is that the EU would serve as a vehicle for the reassertion and expansion of European power in the world and would represent one of the core institutional formations of a new kind of decentralized and boundaryless imperial system governed by cosmopolitan elites who share a relatively narrow range of interests and values—in somewhat the same way as the dominant elites of imperial Rome, who, though scattered among the provinces of the Mediterranean world, were linked to one another by extensive networks of cooperation, the privileges of Roman citizenship, and a common classical culture.5 If something like this develops, then the history of the present and the significance of the Expo may look somewhat different in a few decades than they do now. At the moment, the end of the Cold War tends to be understood in some countries, particularly the United States, as a victory of “the West” under firm American leadership or, alternatively, as a singular American triumph. But the end of the Cold War might equally well portend the end of a period in which European power and influence were only temporarily dwarfed by the ravages of two world wars, by the effects of decolonization, and by the struggles between the two superpowers in the second half of the twentieth century. Thus, it may be that the 1990s will eventually be seen as the decade in which the first decisive steps were taken in a strategic effort to reestablish European preeminence on a new basis in an increasingly interlinked but still highly competitive world. But would this be the preeminence and prestige of an association of cosmopolitan democracies or of a new form of cosmopolitan empire? What is perhaps most likely is a Janus-faced, quasi-republican hybrid of the two. Neither the values nor the political possibilities inherent in a liberal rhetoric of egalitarian pluralism and human and citizens’ rights should be underestimated as a persistent force against the concentration and abuse of power. Nevertheless, the tendency to define freedom narrowly in ways that support the smooth functioning of the political and economic status quo is troubling. And even more troubling, as the recent conflicts in the Balkans and elsewhere suggest, is the increasing ease with which the defense of universal human rights can be used to justify intervention in the affairs of others, direct and indirect domination, and outright coercive violence. Cosmopolitan liberalism, which rests on fundamental values of tolerance, pragmatism, and pluralism, often

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teeters on the edge of and too frequently falls into a paradoxical kind of antiessentialist essentialism—an ideology of intolerance for intolerance, which itself legitimates the suppression of political and cultural differences in the name of universal values that are often not as universal as they seem at first sight.6 Thus, in its most disturbing manifestations, cosmopolitan liberalism functions as a serviceable contemporary substitute for past imperialist ideologies that proclaimed the superiority of Western civilization and enlightenment and imposed them both with machine guns. The ease with which the symbols and values of liberalism can be transformed in practice into justifications for something disturbingly like their antitheses is a source of great moral and political ambiguity and uncertainty and confronts all people of good will and particularly those whose fortunes, accomplishments, and luck have placed them in relatively privileged positions with difficult choices. But despite the complexity and confusion that accompany the advent of new forms of culture, technology, transnational polities, and economies, the dilemmas are not altogether unfamiliar and are indeed deeply inscribed in the history of freedom. Should we as citizens serve and emulate our contemporary versions of guardians and philosopher-kings, or should we stand on the side of the plebs and their tribunes? If we choose the former, then we can close ranks with the noblest Romans of them all, can content ourselves with describing the wonders and miseries of the wide world to those burdened with the responsibilities of governance, and can occasionally hope to act as the voice of conscience whispering in the ear of authority. But if we choose the latter, then it is incumbent on us to cast a critical eye on some of our most deeply held convictions about freedom and tolerance, to ask always what these values mean in practice, and to take up and more actively dedicate ourselves to something like Claude Levi-Strauss’s (1976:272–74) vision of a new form of ethnological humanism that is counterhegemonic, truly pluralist and egalitarian, and based on transcultural principles of communicative and practical reciprocity. The aim of such an effort would be to explore pathways that enable us to transform formal rights and abstract values into the kinds of concrete capabilities that allow people to control their own destinies in ways consistent with their responsibilities to others. The evidence of the Expo suggests that one of the most promising paths toward greater democratization in a Europe of regions is the further development of a civic regionalism or cosmopolitan localism. The EU is not the best of all possible worlds, just as the Expo was not the best of all possible islands. But the EU exists, is still evolving, and is better by far than the European order of imperial nation-states that produced so much carnage in the twentieth century. And as the resurgence of ethnonationalist violence and terrorism since the 1990s reminds us, there are many far worse things that can befall a city and a country than hosting a universal exposition. Moreover, because the Expo embodied so many of the tensions and forces that

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shape the proliferating varieties of liberalism in the contemporary world, it was a worthwhile endeavor insofar as it invited and still invites serious reflection on the distance that looms between how we represent the world and how we actually live in it. At the end of the day and as a rule of thumb, it is important to bear in mind that helping one another to cultivate our gardens ought not to be confused with making a spectacle of ourselves before the world or making the world into an arena for our spectacles.

Notes to the Text

Chapter 1: The Best of All Possible Islands and the Miraculous Year 1. The figures are derived from the Memoria general de la Exposición Universal Sevilla 1992 (SEGA 1993:277–98). Readers should be aware that the figures cited in this official source for the number of visits and number of visitors have been contested. The source claims that there were 41,814,571 visits to the Expo (1993:281). Because the vast majority of people, including foreign tourists, visited the site more than once and because Sevillanos with season passes visited many times, the exact number of visitors is unknown, and estimates vary widely between about 9 million and 18 million visitors. See also ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:14–15. 2. Although Expo ’92 had fewer visitors than some earlier events (such as the 1970 exhibition at Osaka), it had more official participants than any previous universal exposition. For a comparative overview of Expo ’92 and its antecedents, see the Expo ’92 Official Guide (SEEUS 1992b:16–19).

Chapter 2: Possible Expos: Academic Meanderings from Tradition to Modernity and Beyond 1. For more on the relationship of tradition to modernity in Aracena, see Maddox 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1997. 2. For overviews of the history of Seville, see de Mena 1988; Domínguez Ortiz 1976–1984; and Montoto 1980. For anthropological perspectives on Andalusian culture, Flamenco, bullfighting, and related topics, see Brandes 1980; Douglass 1997; Fernandez 1983; Gilmore 1987; Mitchell 1990; Moreno Navarro 1982; and Rodríguez Becerra 1985. 3. For a groundbreaking anthropological study of Seville, see Press 1979. 4. For a range of approaches to urban studies in the Mediterranean, see Faubion 1993; Kenny and Kertzer 1983; Leontidou 1990; and McDonogh 1986. 5. There is a large and steadily growing literature on world’s fairs. For overviews of the history and multiple forms of international exhibitions, see Allwood 1977; Findling and Pelle 1990; and Greenhalgh 1988. For a sample of recent work on world’s fairs, see Peer 1998; Pred 1995; and Tenorio-Trillo 1996. 6. Similar points have been made by Harvey (1996) and Ley and Olds (1988).

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7. For a sample of recent work that deals with the politics of identity in contemporary Europe, see Goddard, Llobera, and Shore 1994; Jenkins and Sofos 1996; Keith and Pile 1993; and MacDonald 1993. 8. Rather than being guided primarily by general notions of the postmodern, my own approach to understanding the Expo is influenced by the Gramscian strains in cultural studies and anthropology, which stress the political character and dynamics of cultural phenomena in shaping particular aspects of complex ways of life (see, for example, Gramsci 1971; Hall 1980, 1988; and Williams 1977). Thus, in my account of the Expo, I pay primary attention to the specifically local and directly political Andalusian and Spanish context and significance of the event. For comparative purposes, readers should consult Harvey’s Hybrids of Modernity (1996:46ff.); this work on the Expo instead stresses the event as an expression of more “ubiquitous institutions and practices” that provide an opportunity for “auto-anthropology.” For a discussion of how the Expo fits into the other quincentennial events of 1992, see Williams and Summerhill 2000.

Chapter 3: A Pocket History of the Liberalization of Modern Spain, with Observations about Its Relevance for an Understanding of Expo ’92 1. For a comprehensive historical account of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain, see Carr 1982. 2. Indeed, the effective equation of liberalism with “Europe” is so pervasive in contemporary Spain that its influence on virtually every aspect of life and thought in the country can hardly be overestimated. The following are just three examples of many that suggest the increasing hegemonic authority but also the vagueness of this equation: In 1975, during his first major speech after the death of Franco, King Juan Carlos broached the dangerous topic of liberal political reforms by mildly suggesting that these reforms would be necessary for Spain “to join Europe.” In the mid-1980s, sociologist Victor Pérez Díaz assessed the vitality and prospects of Spanish democracy by invoking European liberalism as a model to be more fully emulated, and he described this model as a set of institutions and principles that include the rule of law, open markets, pluralism, a public sphere, a democratic polity, and a modern bureaucracy based on rational accountability. Pérez Díaz subsequently published these ideas in his highly influential work The Return of Civil Society (1993:48–50). By 1995, the outside observer Jonathan Story (1995:5) was representing Spain as a “new member of a western European society of states” whose organizing principles are “constitutional democracy, human rights, individual freedoms laced with social duties, and moderation in the collective right of national self-determination.” 3. See, for example, the work edited by Nelson, Roberts, and Veit (1992), which discusses the history of the relationship of liberalism and ideas about Europe. 4. For general accounts of the history of post–Civil War Spain and the transition from dictatorship to democracy, see Carr and Fusi 1981; D. Gilmour 1985; J. Gilmour

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1999; Gunther 1993; Gunther, Sani, and Shabad 1988; Hooper 1987; Hopkin 1999; Preston 1986; and Tuñon de Lara et al. 1992. 5. For a clear summary of this critical period in Spanish political history, see Julía 1992:88–98. 6. For brief discussions of the Constitution of Spain and the institutional structure of the new Spanish state, see Carr and Fusi 1981 and see Newton and Donaghy 1997. 7. For full accounts of the history of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), see Gillespie 1988 and de la Cierva 1983. 8. For numerous comparisons of Spain with other countries of western Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, see Zaldívar and Castells 1992:125ff. 9. For discussions of Spain’s place in the new international order and of Spanish foreign policy since the 1970s, see Barbado 1993; Gillespie 1999; Gillespie, Rodrigo, and Story 1995; Marks 1997; and Maxwell and Spiegel 1994. 10. For more information and extended discussions of contemporary Spanish social attitudes as revealed by public opinion surveys, see de Miguel 1992; Julía 1992; and Zaldívar and Castells 1992.

Chapter 4: Relocating the Subject: Macroethnography and Cosmopolitan Liberalism 1. About the same time, Appadurai (1991:192) also invoked the idea of “macroethnography” in the context of a discussion of deterritorialized cultural phenomena and the need for greater “ethnographic cosmopolitanism.” See also Marcus 1992. 2. I prefer the term “cosmopolitan liberalism” to other somewhat narrower alternatives, such as “technocratic liberalism,” “Europeanism,” or “Euronationalism,” because the tendencies to which the term “cosmopolitan liberalism” refers are by no means simply technocratic or exclusively European. 3. For a discussion that exposes the intellectual roots of contemporary cosmopolitan liberalism in the culture of early modern humanism and science in Europe, see Toulmin 1992. Even though, as Sahlins (1994:440) has observed, liberal views of human nature often amount to little more than representing persons as “pleasure/pain machines” that are endowed with emotional and rational capacities but are severely constrained and vulnerable to the desires and needs of bodily finitude, this universalizing vision has nonetheless served to justify (among other things) an at least nominally egalitarian ethics based on respect for individual autonomy, freedom, and dignity. Moreover, with its intellectual roots in a “natural philosophy of man,” cosmopolitan liberalism stresses that, over time, the employment of human rational capacities has resulted in the development of objectifying and scientific forms of knowledge which, whatever their limitations, provide the best basis and principles for common understanding because they appear to overcome

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at least some of the constraints imposed by nature and history on human wisdom and agency. Indeed, the close association of a minimalist humanist ethics with a maximalist objectifying rationalism enables philosophical liberalism, despite its clear origins in one of the particular traditions of the “West,” to present itself as a worldview that can in effect partly transcend the usual limits of orthodoxies, parochialism, and prejudice and lay claim to a sort of universal authority by transforming human beings, history, society, and culture into “natural” objects of rational knowledge, judgment, and governance. 4. For a progressive and highly legalistic vision of what principles should constitute a cosmopolitan polity, see Held 1995. From an historical perspective, the emergence of “interactive” cosmopolitan polities would inevitably entail an extension and transformation of the views of the relationship of the state to society, culture, and the nation embodied in the traditions of classic liberalism. Conservative laissez-faire versions of classic liberalism most often imagine the nation as a naturally existing organic community that is composed of free individuals who, for the most part, have a common history and share traditions and basic values. From this perspective, all that is really necessary for the national community to thrive and progress is for the state to protect its members from external threats and internal subversion and to guarantee the rights of its citizens within civil society. In keeping with this, the function of the state as a mediator need not extend much beyond the realm of providing the means (primarily legal means) for resolving mundane conflicts of interest. In contrast, however, the more progressive strains of classic liberalism tend to view the state not simply as a guardian and arbitrator of the natural liberties of members of the national community but also as an entity that is actively engaged in nation-building and in promoting modern, secular, political, constitutional, and ideological forms that broaden the scope of human freedom and community by overcoming the barriers to progress imposed by disparate parochial traditions. From this perspective, the state’s role as a mediator is part and parcel of its responsibility for creating the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that enable the complete participation of all citizens in all aspects of life and that forge national unity out of diversity. A cosmopolitan state would clearly represent an historical departure from classic liberalism because it would both attenuate the principle of unity and magnify the principle of mediation to a greater extent than either of the dominant tendencies within the traditions of liberal nationalism have envisioned. Instead of defining the nation-state as the ultimate guarantor of order and unity in the spirit of e pluribus unum, cosmopolitan liberalism would reduce the idea of national political unity to primarily one of functional integration and practical interdependency. It would do this by associating notions of solidarity, identity, consensus, and homogeneity at least as much with lower-level, particular regional and ethnic communities (such as Seville or Scotland) and with the general values of whole civilizations and ecumenical religious and ethical traditions (such as the “West” or “Islam”) and even with universal human values as with the nation-state. At the same time, it would augment the principle of mediation by construing it in the virtually transcendental political and ethical terms of domesticating cultural differences, rather than in the formally legalistic and narrowly functional terms of regulating divergences of interests or opinions and redistributing resources. Mediation in the extended sense would become the vital core of liberal political projects and practice at every level from the local and domestic to the international and global.

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327

5. As many investigators have observed (see, for example, Appadurai 1996; Featherstone 1990; Hannerz 1990; Kearney 1995; Lasch 1995; and Reich 1992), members of such elite groups tend to identify strongly with one another. This is because of the high value that they place on reason and on technical and organizational know-how; because of the pride that they take in their own experience, mobility, flexibility, and capacity to adjust to changing circumstances; and because they increasingly constitute a transnational community whose members share a broad set of understandings and knowledge, are in constant contact with one another, and tend to inhabit or frequent the same urban centers of communication. For these reasons, among members of cosmopolitan elites, it is not uncommon for ties and loyalties to a particular community, nation, and culture of origin to become weaker as the identification with transnational elites becomes stronger. 6. The development of a critical neo-Toquevillean ethnography is likely to require some rethinking of anthropology and particularly of the anthropology of Europe. Many readers may recall that not too long ago and apart from a few people working in city slums, in the mountains, or on the “Celtic fringe,” most anthropologists who studied in Europe thought of themselves as rural Mediterraneanists. Yet thanks in no small measure to Herzfeld (1987) and a few others (see Asad et al. 1997 and Parman 1997), anthropologists eventually became aware that the constitution of the Mediterranean as a culture area was problematic because representations of it were so heavily conditioned by processes involved in the consolidation of the urban, national, and European identities of northerners, who for the most part resided in one or another center of power. This was an insight of the first importance, and it was a key element in the emergence of a more diverse, critical, and self-reflexive, not to mention more geographically extended, anthropology of Europe. But ethnographic studies of the “new class” of cosmopolitan experts who wish to lead the way to the new Europe are few (exceptions include studies by Bourdieu [1988], Faubion [1993], Shore [2000], and Zabusky [1995]), and work focusing on the often tense relations between these new elites and ordinary citizens is virtually nonexistent. Indeed, there are relatively few in-depth studies devoted to popular liberalism. Now, however, with the rise of new forms of pan-Europeanism in the midst of processes of global restructuring, it is incumbent on us to think again about the relationship of anthropology to the new Europe and the new world order.

Chapter 5: Royal Patronage of a Noble Tradition: Madrid, Santo Domingo, Washington, and Paris, 1976–1982 1. For overviews of the life and career of King Juan Carlos, see Anderson 1998 and Powell 1995. For brief accounts of this crucial period in the transition to democracy, see Carr and Fusi 1981:207–17 and Preston 1986:85–95. 2. For the official version of the origins of the Expo, see the Memoria general de la Exposición Universal Sevilla 1992 (SEGA 1993:19). For other accounts of the early history of the Expo, see Cassinello (1992); the interview with Manuel Prado y Colón in DD-ex 27 Apr 1992:5; and the article by Luis Yáñez in ABC-ex 21 Apr 1992:80.

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3. This information and subsequent data in the text concerning international expositions are derived from Allwood 1977 and from Findling and Pelle 1990.

Chapter 6: Seville, the Socialist Party, and the Commissioner General, 1982–1987 1. For accounts of Seville’s exposition of 1929, see Lemus López 1987; Rincón 1992; and Trillo de Leyva 1980. 2. For general discussions of the politics of regional autonomy in Spain, see Brassloff 1989; Hernández and Mercadé 1986; Payne 1991; and Solé-Vilanova 1989. With respect to the Expo and the Olympics in the early 1980s, the PSOE could reasonably expect to garner the maximum advantage by employing the bureaucratic apparatus of the state to make both Catalonia and Andalusia more dependent on Madrid, even though the political dynamics in the north were quite different from those in the south. 3. For discussions of El Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA) and its successor party, El Partido Andalucista (PA), see Gillespie 1988:331; Jerez Mir 1985; and Teba 1981. Regionalist sentiment in Andalusia is relatively recent in origin, leftist in ideological persuasion, and strongest among the urban and rural working class. Indeed, the virtual patron saint and founding father of Andalusian regionalism, Blas Infante, was an avowed (though rather eccentric) Socialist who was murdered by reactionaries on the outskirts of Seville a few days after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. Because the PSA and its successor, the PA, lay claim to this heritage, these parties have represented at least potentially a more serious threat to PSOE political hegemony in Andalusia than have other parties. However, they could only really thrive through an ability to capture votes from the PSOE’s core constituency. The apogee of PSA political strength was in the period leading up to and just after the elections for the Cortes in 1979. Having taken an important role in orchestrating the massive public demonstrations in favor of Andalusian autonomy in December 1977, the PSA placed third behind the PSOE and La Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) in the 1979 elections. Indeed, in 1979, the PSA secured five seats in the Cortes in Madrid; won 11 percent of the vote in Andalusia and nearly 15 percent of the vote in Seville; and placed a member of the party’s inner circle in office as alcalde (mayor) of Seville. Riding the wave of popular enthusiasm for regional autonomy, the PSA seemed like a party on the rise at the expense of the PSOE, which had been represented as an overly cautious and lukewarm supporter of Andalusian self-government because of its concern for affirming the principles of national unity inscribed in the Constitution. Soon afterward, however, the PSA badly blundered by embracing the idea of negotiating with the UCD government in Madrid to “unblock” the autonomy process, which had become temporarily stalled. This had disastrous consequences for the party in the regional elections of early 1982. In the 1982 elections, the PSA received less than 6 percent of the votes cast. Nevertheless, its leaders vowed to continue their struggle and to resurrect their political project as a more popular and broadly based movement. 4. For more information on the legal foundations of the Expo project, see Legislación (Normativa “Expo 92”), published in 1990.

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5. For discussions of membership in the PSOE, see Camiller 1986:35 and Gillespie 1988:429. For other accounts of the PSOE, see Gillespie 1990, 1993; Martínez Alier and Roca 1987–1988; Petras 1993; and Share 1989. 6. Although the party apparatus of the PSOE in Seville was firmly under the control of Guerristas, PSOE control of the city government was much shakier. Before the 1983 elections, the alcalde (mayor) of Seville was Luis Urunuela, who was a regionalist Socialist of El Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA) and who (along with Manuel Prado y Colón) had been instrumental in bringing the Expo to Seville. In 1983, the PSOE Socialist Manuel del Valle replaced Urunuela as alcalde. 7. In July 1986, prizes for the competition to design the Expo were awarded to two groups, one headed by a Spanish engineer, José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez, and the other led by an Argentinean architect, Emilio Ambasz. Elements of both models and a number of others were subsequently incorporated into the “Master Plan” by Julio Cano Lasso and his associates on the prize jury, and this plan was eventually approved in early 1987 by the Expo organization and representatives of the governments of Seville and Andalusia (see SEEUS 1988c).

Chapter 7: The Voyages and Visits of the Commissioner General 1. For discussions of Spanish policies on Europe and Latin America, see Gillespie, Rodrigo, and Story 1995 and see Maxwell and Spiegel 1994. 2. Nearly eight hundred cases concerning regional matters were being adjudicated during this period (Morata 1993:190; see also Fusi 1994). 3. For discussions of Basque politics, see Clark 1991; Conversi 1993, 1997; Díaz Medrano 1995; Linz et al. 1986; and Sullivan 1988.

Chapter 8: The Island World Takes Form 1. See Fernandez 1986 for his illuminating guidelines on how to discern the “argument of the images,” and see Williams 1977 for his key discussion of the difficulties and importance of understanding emergent “structures of feeling.” 2. For valuable discussions of the possible future of nationalism in Europe, see Wicker 1997.

Chapter 9: The Two-Headed Monster 1. Manuel Olivencia admitted that he had little experience in dealing with the stratagems of the greedy. As he recalled in an interview (DD 25 Apr 1992:6), “I remember that a colleague told me one day that the smell of money will come to the

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Expo—something that scandalized me so much that I still remember it. Perhaps the particular conjuncture of speculation, of increasing prices, and of the merchandising of professional services made it inevitable that this fauna would be attracted, but I have to say that I tried to impede it.” 2. It is important to note that battles surrounding the themes of the Expo and the contents of its pavilions were not waged only between Manuel Olivencia’s team and the minions of Jacinto Pellón’s State Society. There were also many disputes between the Office of the Commissioner General and sectors of El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). For example, Alfredo Jiménez engaged in an extended polemic over the contents and design of the Spanish national pavilion with its director, Angel Luis Gonzalo.

Chapter 10: The Monster and Seville 1. For discussions of ETA’s recent strategies and Basque nationalist politics in the 1990s, see Douglass 1999. 2. The seriousness of the loss in Seville by El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) was compounded by the party’s defeats in Madrid, Valencia, and elsewhere. Indeed, the only major city that the PSOE won was Barcelona, the seat of the Olympics and the stronghold of the popular Socialist alcalde (mayor) Pascual Maragall.

Chapter 11: Here Comes Everybody 1. The Expo as a whole and the presence of the hundreds of Spanish and international dignitaries at the opening ceremonies are testimony to what Herzfeld (2001:252) has characterized as the essential power of the bureaucratic state to “present, over and over again, in the form of uniform spectacular performances, the classification of the world that best suits the interests of those in power.” For further discussion of this capacity, see Handelman 1990. 2. International press and television coverage of the Expo was greatest, most enthusiastic, and most enduring in Italy, France, and Portugal. Most initial reviews of the event were positive throughout Europe and elsewhere (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:54–55; EP 13 Oct 1992:24–25).

Chapter 12: War, Stalemate, and Cultural Politics 1. See Turner’s classic essays on structure, communitas, and antistructure in The Ritual Process (1969) and Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors (1974). 2. For a concise discussion of the complexities involved in the idea of subsidiarity, see Whitehead 1996:261–64.

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3. For an analysis of the transformation of politics into melodrama, see WagnerPacifici 1986. For a discussion of Spanish politics that stresses how “media events . . . rearticulate and reform cultural categories,” see Edles 1998:84.

Chapter 13: Media Agon 1. For valuable discussions of the role of mass media and cultural institutions in shaping contemporary Spain, see Holo 1999 and Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 2000. 2. Generally, there was little variation in the amount and kind of press coverage in the local Seville editions of ABC and Diario 16. Both newspapers boosted the Expo but were unsympathetic to both Jacinto Pellón and El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). However, the coverage in the Andalusian edition of El País was much skimpier and usually rather uncritical. The coverage in El Correo was almost indistinguishable from the coverage in Diario 16, but the former usually ran fewer daily stories. In this case, competition among the newspapers for readers seems to have resulted in homogenization, rather than differentiation, in the kind of information available to the public. Local television coverage of the Expo was dominated by government-run stations, and it was overwhelmingly banal. For some interesting discussions of the role of the media in Spanish politics and culture and related matters, see Edles 1998; Laitin and Rodríguez-Gómez 1992; Maxwell 1983; and Urla 1993.

Chapter 14: Varieties of Europeanism 1. The official name of the European pavilion was the Pavilion of the European Community. But by the time the Expo opened, everyone had begun to refer to the European Union, rather than the European Community, and I have followed this practice here with the exception of specific references to the pavilion and its programs. 2. On the Maastricht Treaty and its reception, see Baun 1996; Cafuny and Lankowski 1997; and Taylor 1996. 3. For accounts stressing either the play of interests or the force of idealism in the European Union, see Bance 1992; McCormick 1996; and Taylor 1996. 4. For accounts of the tensions in the various political cultures of the European Union, see Abeles 1993; Eatwell 1997; McDonald 1996; and Shore 1995, 2000. 5. For discussions of regional, national, and European identity in the 1990s, see Bellier and Wilson 2000; García 1993; Habermas 1992; Nelson, Roberts, and Veit 1992; Walker and Mendlovitz 1990; and Wicker 1997. 6. For discussions concerning the emergence of a trans-European popular culture and problems of equalization in Europe, see Borneman and Fowler 1997. 7. For some overviews concerning the multiplicity of the meanings of “Europe,” see Schlesinger 1994; Van Der Dussen and Wilson 1995; and Wilson and Smith 1992.

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8. For an analysis of the relationship between Europeanism and Hungarian nationalism, see Gal 1991. 9. The genocidal implications of the Yugoslavian conflict were not yet fully apparent to most visitors to the Expo in the summer of 1992. For analyses of the historical roots and cultural logic of ethnic cleansing and nationalism, see Denich 1994 and Hayden 1996.

Chapter 15: Davids and Goliaths of the New World Order 1. For an extended, critical discussion of the domestic cultural politics involved in Canadian identity at the Expo and at home, see Mackey 1999. 2. For an overview of Spanish relations with Latin America, see Wiarda 1996.

Chapter 16: The Many Spains 1. For discussions of the relationship between the Spanish regions and the national government and European Union, see Morata 1993 and Ramos Gallarin 1997. For some general accounts of regional and ethnonational culture and politics in Spain and Europe, see Bohlen and Díaz Medrano 1998; Ishiyama and Breuning 1998; and Llobera 1997. 2. Although the Spanish pavilions devoted a great deal of attention to the works of artists such as El Greco and Velázquez, it is important to stress that the artists were represented primarily as contributors to regional, European, and universal civilization, rather than as definitively Spanish. This is in striking contrast to the past, when such artists were seen as emblematic of a Castile-based national cultural identity. 3. For some less domesticated accounts of Basque culture and politics, see BenAmi 1991; Conversi 1997; Díaz Medrano 1995; Douglass 1985; Edles 1998:122–38; and Heiberg 1988. 4. For some less domesticated accounts of Catalonian culture and politics, see Brandes 1990; Conversi 1990; Laitin 1989; McDonogh 1986; and Pi-Sunyer 1985. 5. Although Juan Hormaechea was not wrong in his prediction that some prominent Socialists would end up in jail, he himself was sentenced to a jail term for the same sort of crime in the mid-1990s. 6. For examples of the martyred Blas Infante’s vision of Andalusian ethnicity and politics, see Infante 1984.

Chapter 17: Expo People and the Change in Spain 1. For an optimistic discussion of the relations between experts and just plain folks in the age of globalization, see Hannerz 1990. For a more critical view, see Said

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1994. Said laments the “hypertrophy of vision and will that the cult of expertise and professionalism is bringing into being” (1994:319) and observes that “over and above that trivialization [of consumerist commodification] is a steadily more powerful cult of professional expertise, whose main ideological burden stipulates that social, political, and class-based commitments should be subsumed under the professional disciplines” (1994:321). 2. For a discussion of the quite different role of the king and the royal family at the Barcelona Olympics, see Hargreaves 2000.

Chapter 18: Officials and Workers 1. Outsider criticism of domestic bureaucratic obstructionism will no doubt become an increasingly common theme in the politics of European integration in coming years, as foreigners gain more direct experience of their neighbors’ less than perfectly rational institutional practices. Even so, such criticism cut especially deep during the Expo in Spain, a country where, as Gibbons (1999:124) has observed, “even the Red Cross and the Spanish Organization for the Blind are government controlled.” 2. For accounts of the relationship between labor and the Socialist party in the 1980s and early 1990s, see Chari 1998 and Smith 1998.

Chapter 19: Visitors 1. For an overview of European tourism from anthropological perspectives, see Boissevain 1995. For an extended ethnographic account of the impact of tourism on a Spanish community, see Waldrin 1996. 2. Spain beyond Myths, the 1992 work by Zaldívar and Castells, is particularly valuable for its discussion of how processes of European integration were beginning to affect Spanish social attitudes and relations during the period of the Expo.

Chapter 20: Renouncers and Resisters 1. See Putnam’s Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), a highly influential book that attributes the weakness of democratic processes in much of Italy to the lack of local civic traditions. 2. The groups that protested the Expo were a loose coalition. They were clearly the forerunners of the more highly organized alliances of protesters who mustered tens of thousands of people to demonstrate against globalization and the policies of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and other international institutions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For a broader perspective on resistance to the commemorative events of 1992 in a number of countries, see Williams and Summerhill 2000.

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Notes to Chapter 22 Chapter 22: Wandering in the Wilderness: From Cartuja ’93 to Sevilla Technopolis

1. For discussions of Spanish government and policy making during the 1990s, see Gibbons 1999; Heywood 1995, 1999; and Pérez-Díaz 1999. On the restructuring of the Spanish economy during this period, see Martin 2000. On regionalism, see Balcello 1996; Bohlen and Díaz Medrano 1998; and Douglass 1999. 2. For an analysis of the post-Expo national elections, see Amodia 1994. Although El Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) suffered a decline in the elections of 1993, 1996, and 2000, there was little to distinguish its policies from those of El Partido Popular (PP) on a wide range of issues from health, education, and employment to regional government and European integration; see Gibbons 1999:124, 158ff. 3. A deal between El Partido Andalucista (PA) and the PSOE made it possible for Manuel Chaves of the PSOE to form a government in Andalusia following the regional elections of 1994. However, the PSOE lost its absolute majority in the regional legislature for the first time in twelve years. By 1996, only three regional governments in Spain remained in the hands of the PSOE.

Chapter 23: The Theme Park of Memory 1. For an account of the “real thing” (i.e., Euro-Disney), see Lainsbury 2000. 2. For recent perspectives on urban transformation in Europe, see Bastea 2000; Dannhaeuser 1996; Leontidou 1993; and Papadopoulos 1996. On Barcelona, see McNeil 1999.

Chapter 24: The Expo and the New Millennium 1. On the ups and downs of processes and attitudes toward European integration, see Burgess 1998; Cooper 1996; Cottrell 1999; Husbands 1992; and Zetterholm 1994. For a multiplicity of views on what the past and future of Europe may be and mean, see O’Neil 1996. For an especially stimulating discussion of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and the resurgence of nationalism in Europe, see Kaldor 1996. 2. For stunning evidence of growing global disparities, see the United Nations Human Development Report, 1999. 3. An investigation of proliferating forms of liberalism in the contemporary world need not, as it may at first seem, be “occidentalist” and parochial in either its subject matter or its intellectual presuppositions. Rather, such a project invites global comparison as well as critical reflection on the limits and scope of anthropology as a discipline (see Carrier 1995 and Coronil 1996). Indeed, the simultaneity of the development of different sorts of liberalism invites the “contrapuntal perspectives” that Edward Said (1994:73) has prescribed as necessary to move beyond classifications that are

Notes to Chapter 24

335

based on the assumption of Western difference and the assumption that where the West leads, others must sooner or later follow. For some recent suggestive work relevant to this theme, see Evans 1997; Ong 1999; and Robbins 1992. 4. For discussions concerning the problems involved in expert management and democratic participation from a wide range of perspectives, see Hayward 1996. See also Habermas 1992 and Hall and Held 1989. 5. The “imperialist” perspective on processes of globalization has been most eloquently advanced by Hardt and Negri (2000). 6. As Wicker (1997:27) observed, “Every kind of universalism eventually produces its own particularism.”

Official Documents and Publications Cited Spain Government of Spain 1990 Legislación (Normativa “Expo 92”). Seville: Imprenta Nacional del Boletin Oficial del Estado. OCGE, or Oficina del Comisario General de España para la Exposición Universal de Sevilla 1992 1987 Outline of Contents: Sevilla 1992 Universal Exposition. Seville: OCGE. 1989a Proclamación de la Sede de Sevilla: Discurso de S. M. el Rey en el acto conmemorativo del 12 de Octubre. Seville: OCGE. 1989b Tribunas de progreso: Intervenciones del Comisario General en San José de Costa Rica, Madrid, y Londres. Seville: OCGE. 1990 Expoforum 92: Umbrales de grandes descubrimientos, 1492, 1992. Seville: OCGE. SEEUS, or Sociedad Estatal para la Exposición Universal Sevilla ’92 1988a Contents Outline: Working Document 2. Seville: SEEUS. 1988b “General Regulations for the 1992 Seville Universal Exposition.” Appendix 2 in Contents Outline: Working Document 2, 18–21. Seville: SEEUS. 1988c The Master Plan: Working Document 1. 2d ed. Seville: SEEUS. 1988d A New Expo Approach: Working Document 0. 3d ed. Seville: SEEUS. 1989a Computer Science and Telecommunications Plan: Working Document 8. Seville: SEEUS. 1989b Expo ’92 Sevilla Projects and Works. Seville: SEEUS. 1991 Destination Seville: Newsletter for the Tourism Sector. July 1991. Seville: SEEUS. 1992a Arte y cultura en torno a 1492: 1992 Seville Universal Exposition Theme Pavilion. Seville: SEEUS. 1992b Expo ’92 Official Guide. Seville: SEEUS. 1992c Fifteenth Century: 1992 Seville Universal Exposition Theme Pavilion. Seville: SEEUS. SEGA, or Sociedad Estatal de Gestión de Activos 1993 Memoria general de la Exposición Universal Sevilla 1992. Seville: SEGA. United States of America Government of the United States 1976 Congressional Record, 2 June 1976:16196. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

337

338 1979

Newspapers Cited Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford. Book 2: 9 April to 9 July 1976. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Other United Nations 1999 United Nations Human Development Report, 1999. New York: United Nations.

Newspapers Cited In the text and notes, parenthetical references to newspapers—for example, (ABC-ex 13 Oct 1992:14)—indicate the source, day, month, year, and page number of the material cited. The following abbreviations are used: ABC

= ABC, Seville edition

ABC-ex

= ABC, Seville edition, special section on Expo ’92

DD

= Diario 16, Seville edition

DD-ex

= Diario 16, Seville edition, special section on Expo ’92

EC

= El Correo

EC-ex

= El Correo, special section on Expo ’92

EI

= El Independiente

EM

= El Mundo

EP

= El País, Andalusian edition

EPI

= El País, International edition

LG

= La Gaceta

LV

= La Vangardia

NYT

= New York Times

SJM

= San Jose Mercury News

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Index

Abeles, Marc, 331n4 Advertising, 79, 90 Africa: Expo exhibits of, 161, 167; Expo pavilion of, 73, 78, 187, 194, 202; and the media, 169; Spanish relations with, 61. See also individual African countries “Age of Discoveries”: choice of, as Expo theme, 3, 102–3, 108; definition of, 55–57, 160; and discoverers versus ordinary people, 226–29; exhibits about, 84–89, 160–61, 173, 207–8; and Magic Island, 307; and new millennium, 78; response of Expo audience to, 108; role of Spain during, 57, 207–8; and technology, 78, 80, 88 Aguire, Jesús (duke of Alba), 117 Alarcón, Ricardo, 248 Alberti, Rafael, 249 Alfonso XIII, 16, 37, 38 Alianza Popular (AP), 17–21 Allen, Ted, 130 Allwood, John, 323n5, 328n3 Amaikurko Quetzal, 285 Ambasz, Emilio, 329n7 America(s): and Asturias, 214; and Basque country, 210; and Columbus, 3, 38, 44; and Expo media coverage, 163, 277; Expo pavilions of, 187; Expo plaza of, 126, 194–97, 202, 206, 303; and Extremadura, 216; and Galicia, 212; and Native Americans, 188, 190; and Navarre, 213–14; and Seville, 44; Spanish discovery of, 55–56, 208; visit of Juan Carlos to, 38–40; and world fairs, 10, 42. See also Central America; Ibero-America; Latin America; individual American countries

Amiguismo (cronyism), 107–8, 121, 318–19 Amodia, José, 334n2 Amusement parks. See Magic Island; Metropolitan Space for Culture and Amusement; Park of Discoveries Anarchists, 283, 285–86 Anarchy, 31, 314 Andalucía. See Andalusia Andalusia (Andalucía): autonomy of, 53, 62, 271, 328nn2,3; and Blas Infante, 328n3, 332n6; and Cartuja ’93, 301–3; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 6, 112; culture of, 323n2; diversity of, 217–18; economic development of, 4, 49, 63–64, 76, 110–11, 301; elections in, 115; and ethnographic studies, 323nn2,3; and Expo closing, 291–94; and Expo commissioner general, 52–55; Expo day of honor of, 220, 291; Expo exhibits of, 101, 219; and Expo investment, 55; Expo pavilion of, 205, 217–19, 268; and Expo planning, 55–56, 97–98, 124; gold medal of, 140; incomes of, 205; as link to New World, 82, 131, 218–19; and new Andalusia, 270; outsider attitudes toward, 241–42, 260–61, 264–65; political significance of, 47–49, 104, 110–11; politics in, 18, 26, 47–49, 52–53, 150–51, 334n3; population of, 47; regionalist sentiment in, 328n3; subsidies to, 70, 110, 204; and Tierras del Jerez pavilion, 268; traditions versus modernity of, 218, 221, 260, 270–72; unemployment in, 47–48, 248. See also Autonomous regions of Spain; Junta de Andalucía; Seville

357

358

Index

Andalusians: and anti-Expo protests, 283–85; attitudes of, toward Expo, 28, 135, 148, 152, 154, 164–65, 218–19, 253, 281; complaints of, about Expo funds, 127; contributions of, to Expo, 147; cultural identity of, 154, 218–19; diversity of, 217–18; Expo attendance of, 230, 236, 253, 273–74; Expo performances of, 219; impact of Expo on, 112; incomes of, 205; in middle class, 112; outsider attitudes toward, 260–61, 264–65; as victims of ETA, 178; in working class, 111, 192 Andean Pact, 33, 198 Anderson, John Lee, 327n1 Angola, 202 Anguita, Julio, 129 Anthropological studies. See Ethnographic studies Antiterrorist strategies, 69, 128, 211, 283, 298 Aparicio, Ginés, 99 Appadurai, Arjun, 314, 325n1, 327n5 Arab League, 201–2 Arab nations, 201–2 Aracena: and civic culture, 280–81; and cosmopolitanism, 273, 279–81; economic effects of Expo on, 274; “El Castillo” church of, 278–80; and European integration, 277, 279–80; and Expo attendance, 28–29, 273–81; politics in, 277–80; population and location of, 7, 273–74; research in, 7, 273; and traditions, 7, 275–81 Aragon, 57, 62, 214–15. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Aranguren, José Luis, 166 Ardanza, José Antonio, 69, 134, 210, 213 Arenas, Javier, 292 Argentina, 67–68 Arias Navarro, Carlos, 37, 40 Arroyo, Antonio, 101 Asad, Talal, 327n6 Asia: Expo participation of, 73, 78, 167, 187, 194; and globalization, 315. See also individual Asian countries

Asturias, 62, 70, 214, 220. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Atahualpa, 82 Atomium, 159 Australia: Expo pavilion of, 73, 77, 126, 187, 202; world fair in, 64, 73, 77 Austria, 182, 242, 285, 313 Authority. See Cultural authority Autonomous regions of Spain: categories of, 62–63, 204–5; constitutional basis of, 17, 46; creation of, 20, 22, 62, 69; differences and inequalities of, 47–48, 62–63, 204–6, 210–13, 217, 221, 265–66; and “Europe of the autonomies,” 133; and Expo cooperation, 60–63, 68–72, 74, 204; Expo pavilions and ceremonies of, 3, 69, 134, 203–7, 210–22; and folkloric image during Expo, 162, 204, 207–8, 211, 214, 220; and foreign policy, 204, 212–13; and “historic nationalities,” 62–63, 205, 212, 213, 215; map of, 7; number of, 3; and other subnational entities, 33, 193, 319–20; and politics, 20, 46–48, 53, 69–72, 265–66, 328nn2,3; and public employment, 22–23, 318; and regional identity, 204–5, 210, 271; and “Spain of the autonomies,” 204, 210, 213, 221, 222, 319; and state centralism, 22, 46–47. See also individual autonomous regions Autonomy: and individual freedom, 14, 228, 235, 236, 251, 273, 325n3; of King Juan Carlos, 38, 40; of Latin American states, 194, 199; and mass society, 272–73; of Puerto Rico, 193; of Seville, 34, 112, 125, 148, 151–52, 272; of Spain in international affairs, 20, 23; of states versus corporations, 90 Ayuntamientos (governing councils), 48 Aznar, José María: and Expo ceremonies, 130, 133, 214; and Expo criticism, 292; and Fraga, 21, 133; and 1990 party leadership, 21; and 1996 elections, 24, 298; and 2000 elections, 24–25, 298

Index Balaguer, Joaquín, 38–39 Balcello, A., 334n1 Balearic Islands, 62, 70, 205, 215. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Ballester, José Luis, 97, 100, 106, 123 Bance, A., 331n3 Banks: and Expo, 72, 100, 244; power of, 33, 52; and Spanish economy, 22; and transnational corporations, 22, 33, 100 Barbado, Amparo Almarcha, 325n9 Barber, Benjamin, 314 Barcelona: and Castellano books, 212; and competition, 33; and cosmopolitanism, 44, 334n2; as host of Olympics, 5, 33, 47, 49, 68, 330n2; and Olympic ceremonies, 149, 308, 333n2; and politics, 44, 47–49, 330n2; and terrorism, 114; and tourism in Spain, 253; and world fairs, 38, 44 Barnes, Samuel H., 18 Basque country: and the Americas, 210; and attitudes toward Europe, 21; autonomy of, 62, 69, 317; budgets and functionaries of, 22; and condemnation of ETA violence, 113–14; culture of, 62, 210, 265, 332n3; elections in, 24; and Expo ceremonies, 134, 210–11, 213, 214; and Expo participation, 69–70, 204; Expo pavilion of, 69–70, 205, 210–11; political demands and parties of, 17, 24; politics in, 18, 329n3, 330n1, 332n3; regionalist views of, 21. See also Autonomous regions of Spain; ETA terrorism Basque Nation and Liberty. See ETA terrorism Bastea, Eleni, 334n2 Bastin, Richard, 147, 191 Baun, Michael J., 331n2 Becerril, Soledad: and coalition with Rojas Marcos, 122, 124–25, 136, 299; and criticism of Expo organizers, 139, 150; and 1991 elections, 119, 121, 122, 150; and 1995 elections, 299; political background of,

359

118; and rift with coalition partners, 293–94; and Seville’s day of honor, 292, 293 Belgium, 126, 181–82, 186, 203 Bellier, Irene, 331n5 Ben-Ami, Shlomo, 332n3 Bendala, Rosa, 118, 121, 139 Benedict, Burton, 10 Benjamin, Walter, 10, 41 Bennett, Tony, 10 Blanco, Jaime, 71 Bofill, Ricardo, 53–55 Bohlen, Kenneth, 332n1, 334n1 Boissevain, Jeremy, 333n1 Bolivia, 197 Bono, José, 70, 215 Borneman, John, 34, 331n6 Bosnia: and EU policy, 171, 297, 312; impact of, on Spain and Expo, 24, 169, 184, 297 Bourdieu, Pierre, 327n6 Brandes, Stanley, 323n2, 332n4 Brassloff, Audrey, 328n2 Brazil, 67–68, 187, 197, 199 Breuning, Marijke, 332n1 Brotherhoods, religious, 8, 144, 149, 261 Bruton, Kevin, 22 “Bullfights” (corridas de toros), 207, 253, 323n2 Bureaucrats: and “bureaucratic clientelism,” 49; and cosmopolitan elites, 33–34, 109, 314, 320, 327nn5,6; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 33, 265, 318; and democratic society, 13, 118; and EC/EU, 317; and Europeanization, 9, 222; and Expo, 30, 118, 125, 162, 165, 227–28, 238–44, 251; and Maastricht Treaty, 24, 222; as mediators of cultural differences, 33–34; and the new Europe, 171, 319; new generation of, in Spain, 9, 318–19, 333n1; tastes of, 9. See also Cultural authority; Experts and advisers Bureau of International Expositions (BIE): background of, 41–42; and categories of world fairs, 41;

360

Index

Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) (continued): and Expo inaugural address, 130; and Expo in Seville versus Chicago, 7, 42; and Expo theme, 3, 46, 49, 55–56, 66–67, 74; and Latin America, 42, 66, 67; membership of, 42, 66; and Paris, 41; regulations of, 41–42, 46, 49, 75, 96 Burgess, Adam, 334n1 Bush, Frederick, 190 Bush, George, 190 Businesspeople: and Expo experiences, 238–39, 242–51, 264; and Expo investments, 55, 101–2, 244–45 Cafuny, Alan W., 331n2 Calvo Sotelo, Leopoldo, 18–19 Camacho, Ignacio, 150 Camiller, Patrick, 17, 20, 329n5 Canada: and Cartuja ’93, 302–3; cultural identity of, 332n1; Expo ceremonies of, 192; Expo pavilion of, 166, 187, 191–92, 202, 258; Expo site of, 77; world fair in, 64, 73, 77 Canary Islands, 62, 215. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Candide, 6 Cano Lasso, Julio, 206–7, 329n7 Cantabria: autonomy of, 62; Expo participation of, 70–72, 204, 215–16; Expo pavilion of, 70–72, 126, 215–16; and Pellón, 58–59. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Capel Sáez, Horacio, 105 Cape Verde, 202 Capitalism: and liberalization, 15; and world fairs, 10, 11, 41, 81, 234 Caribbean islands, 73, 78, 194 Carillo, Santiago, 17 Carr, Raymond, 14, 324nn1,4, 325n6, 327n1 Carrero Blanco, Admiral, 16 Carrier, James, 334n3 Carrillo Salcedo, Juan Antonio, 105 Cartuja. See Cartuja ’93; Expo site; Monastery of La Cartuja

Cartuja ’93: administration of, 299–303, 311; and economy of Spain, 110–11, 132, 297–301; goals of, 297, 301; participants in, 299–300, 302–3; and Sevilla Technopolis, 303–4; and theme parks, 303–4, 306–8; transformation of Expo into, 4, 30, 76, 102, 132, 297–304 Caso Expo, 301 Cassinello, Emilio: appointment as Expo commissioner general, 117, 124, 126; appointment as president of State Society, 60–61; and autonomous regions, 210–11; background of, 60–61; and Council of Direction, 100, 106; and Expo closing, 291–93, 295; and Expo days of honor, 161–62, 174, 181, 183, 186, 190, 193, 200, 210–11, 291–93, 305; and Expo goals, 83, 295–96; and Expo history, 327n2; and Expo opening, 130, 133, 134; and Expo passes, 129, 137; and Expo time capsule, 305; and Peruvian government, 196; preExpo work of, 60–61, 67, 73, 98, 116; and Seville, 291–93 Castells, Manuel, 205, 262, 314, 325nn8,10, 333n2 Castile. See Castilla–La Mancha; Castilla y León Castilla–La Mancha, 62, 70, 205, 215, 220. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Castilla y León, 62, 70, 133, 215. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Castro, Fidel, 65, 212–13 Catalonia: and attitudes toward Europe, 21; autonomy of, 62, 204; budgets and functionaries of, 22, 242; cultural identity of, 62, 135, 149, 211–13, 308, 332n4; and Expo appointments, 53–55; Expo day of honor of, 135, 211; and Expo participation, 68, 149, 166, 220; Expo pavilion of, 205, 211–12, 220; income and wealth of, 205; political demands and parties of, 17, 24, 47, 298, 328n2, 332n4; and PSOE, 48, 328n2; regionalist views of,

Index 21, 317. See also Autonomous regions of Spain; Barcelona Catholicism, 82 Cazorla, José, 112 Central America, 67–68, 196 Cerezo Galán, Pedro, 105 Chamorro, Violeta, 189 Chari, R. S., 333n2 Chaves, Manuel: and Andalusia’s day of honor, 220; and election as president of La Junta de Andalucía, 115; and 1990 elections, 115; and 1994 elections, 334n3; and Expo opening, 131; and Expo passes, 137, 140–41; and Expo politics, 123, 178, 299; and mayor of Marbella, 231; and Mitterand’s visit, 178; and post-Expo crisis, 299 Chicago, 7, 41–42, 65, 188 Chile, 67, 68, 258 China, 166, 187, 200, 202 Ciudad Expo (Expo City), 239 Civilization(s): clash of, 314; convergence of, 85, 207–8, 209; cosmopolitan and transnational, 89, 91; and cultural achievement, 3; European, 64, 83, 178–79, 187, 203, 208, 312, 332n2; global, 3, 25, 83, 179, 203, 332n2; non-Western, 41, 201; Western, 10, 41, 171, 321 Civil society, 13, 34, 151, 152, 155, 319–22, 326n4 Civil War, Spanish, 14, 16, 37, 82, 137, 317 Clark, Robert, 329n3 Class: and audience responses to Expo, 235–39, 251–53, 259, 272–74, 287–88; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 34, 175, 327n6; and culture, 109–10; and EC/EU, 175, 320; and gender, 168, 235; and globalization, 332n1; and information age society, 227; and liberalism, 319–22; and the new Europe, 319–20, 327n6; politics of, during Expo, 33–34, 45, 109–10, 168, 205, 227–28, 249–50; and Russia, 201; and Spain’s “political class,” 26, 107, 129,

361

151, 294, 318. See also Middle classes; Upper-middle class and elites; Working class Coad, Emma Dent, 300 Cold War, end of, 6, 170, 188, 312, 315, 320 Colombia, 169, 196–97 Colomé, G., 18 Colón, Cristóbal. See Columbus, Christopher Colonialism: Expo view of, 65, 193, 308; and postcolonial states, 192–93 Columbus, Christopher (Colón, Cristóbal): banishment of, from Expo, 82, 281; commemoration of voyage of, 3, 5, 55; and Expo exhibits, 82, 86, 179, 226, 281; and fourth centenary in Barcelona, 44; and Italy, 41; and Prado y Colón, 40, 44–45, 307–8; and Santo Domingo, 38; and Seville, 44, 45, 89 Commissioner general of the Expo. See Cassinello, Emilio; Olivencia, Manuel Ruiz Commodification, 10, 12, 32, 332n1 Communism: alliances against, 15; and Expo, 184, 283 Communists: alliances against, 15; and anti-Expo actions, 283; and Aracena, 279; during 1970s, 17, 38; and Europeanization, 22; and IU, 22; and Moncloa Pact, 17; and PCE, 17; and “red scare,” 18; and wages, 17 Community: and cosmopolitan elites, 327n5; and Expo themes, 56, 209; Expo versus, 118; and international cooperation, 3, 87; and liberalism, 319–22, 326n4; and local traditions, 280 Confederación Nacional de Trajabadores (CNT), 285 Congo Republic, 202 Congress of Deputies: and Constitution of Spain, 18; in 1977 elections, 17; in 1986 elections, 21; in 1989 elections, 23; and Expo losses, 300; and Maastricht Treaty, 23–24; and Tejero incident, 42–43

362

Index

Conquistadors, 8, 65, 307 Consejero delegado (chief executive officer) of Expo. See Pellón, Jacinto Constitution, of Spain: and autonomous regions, 46, 69, 221; and 1981 coup attempt, 42–43; discussion of, 325n6; 1977 drafting of, 17–18; and PSOE, 24, 132, 328n3; 1812 version of, 13 Consumption: and Expo, 79–81, 226, 252, 262; and identity, 171, 226; and imports into Spain, 22; and Magic Island, 308; and the media, 165; and popular culture, 91, 135, 171; and Seville, 8–9, 112, 137, 311; and Spaniards, 22, 262, 263–64; and world fairs, 10 Convergencia i Unió (CiU), 298 Conversi, Daniele, 329n3, 332nn3,4 Cooper, Robert, 334n1 Coral, bankruptcy of, 244 Corcuera, José, 211, 286 Córdoba, 130, 217, 254 Coronil, Fernando, 334n3 Corporatism, societal, 49 Corridas de toros (“bullfights”), 207, 253, 323n2 Cortes: of 1812, 13; during 1977, 17; during 1979, 328n3; during 1982, 20; and Expo, 130; under Franco, 16; and Tejero incident, 19 Cortés, 82, 216 Cosmopolitan liberalism. See Liberalism, cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan populism, 155, 280 Costa del Sol, 114, 253–54 Costa Rica, 66 Cottrell, Robert, 316, 334n1 Coup attempt, in Spain, 18–19, 42–43 Crystal Palace, 9, 41, 64, 159 Cuba, 65, 67, 68, 212, 248–49 Cultural authority: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 31, 155; and Europe, 171–72; and Expo, 13, 43, 109–10, 165, 227, 287–88; and globalization, 314; and hegemony, 13, 110; and the media, 165, 167–68; and science, 87–88. See also Bureaucrats; Experts and advisers

Cultural differences: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 316, 320–21, 326n4; and globalization, 314–15; and hierarchies of authority, 227–28; mediation and domestication of, 32–34, 316; and Spain, 204–5. See also Cultural diversity Cultural diversity: and banishment of national identity from Expo, 30, 62–63, 74, 90–91; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 31–34, 63, 326n4; and Expo themes, 87, 89, 132–33, 151, 206, 295–96; and liberalism, 14–15; and regionalism, 90–91, 172, 221; and “unity in diversity,” 172, 182, 186, 199, 205, 217, 222 Cultural identity: of Andalusia, 154, 218–19; and banishment of national identity from Expo, 30, 62–63, 74, 90–91; of Basque country, 210; of Canada, 332n1; of Catalonia, 62, 135, 149, 211–12, 308, 332n4; and cosmopolitanism, 225–26; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 32, 155, 204, 316, 326n4; of Europeans, 11, 316, 324n7, 331n5; and Expo, 11, 34, 155, 159, 163, 225–38, 252–53; of Galicia, 212–13; and geocultural identity, 252–53; and globalization, 314–15; of Japan, 199–200; of Latin America, 38, 57, 66, 194, 197–98; and modernity, 9; multiplicity of, 225–26, 238; politics of, 11, 34, 324n7; and regional identity, 155, 204–5, 210, 212–13, 221, 270–71, 331n5; of Seville, 11, 112, 142–55, 272, 310–11; of Spain, 9, 38, 57, 62–63, 68, 154, 204–5, 225, 253, 261–62, 318–19, 332n2; of Spain and Latin America, 38, 57, 66; and world fairs, 11, 41 Cultural olympics: and competition among Expo participants, 30, 157, 165–70; and cosmopolitanism, 91, 166, 205; criteria for judging, 165–69; and diversity management, 91; and Eurocentrism of the press, 165, 166, 168; gold medalists of, 169, 177, 191, 205,

Index 209–10; and media coverage of Expo, 30, 165–70; and structures of common difference, 32, 159, 163 Cultural politics: of daily life, 223–88; and Expo, 11–13, 34, 45–60, 108–10, 136–55, 160–70, 237, 291–97; and Expo origins, 3, 37–38, 42–43, 45–46; of Spanish pavilions, 204 Czechoslovakia, 184 Dannhaeuser, Norbert, 334n2 De Bord, Guy, 10, 234 de Certeau, Michel, 234–35 Decretazo (arbitrary decree), 248, 282 de la Cierva, Ricardo, 325n7 de la Cruz, Rafael, 301, 303 de la Rosa, Javier, 308 de las Casas, Bartolomé, 131, 284 Delors, Jacques, 174 del Valle, Manuel, 58, 114, 116, 118–20, 329n6 de Mena, José María, 323n2 de Miguel, Amando, 325n10 Democracy and democratic processes: and cosmopolitan populism, 155; versus cronyism and personalism, 107–8, 121, 293–94, 318–19; and “democratic deficit” in Europe, 151, 281, 317, 333n1; and Expo, 30, 33–34, 57, 95, 321–22; and liberalism, 14, 33–34, 319–22; in Spain, 5–6, 15–26, 37, 40, 42–43, 61, 221, 225, 324nn2,4, 327n1; versus technobureaucracy, 105, 118, 155, 171, 317, 318–19, 335n4 Denich, Bette, 332n9 Denmark, 24, 182, 241 de Rivera, Primo, 46 Díaz Medrano, Juan, 329n3, 332nn1,3, 334n1 Dictatorship, in Spain. See Franco regime Díez Hochleitner, Ricardo, 105 Disenmascaremos ’92, 283–87 Djurfeldt, Goran, 48 Documents, 27, 29, 337 Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio, 323n2 Dominican Republic, 38–39, 67, 187 Donaghy, Peter J., 325n6

363

Dondelinger, Jean, 78 Douglass, Carrie B., 323n2 Douglass, William A., 330n1, 332n3, 334n1 Dragados y Construcciones, 59, 101 Dumont, Louis, 227 Eatwell, Roger, 331n4 Eco, Umberto, 6 Ecological Pacifist Confederation of Andalusia, 283, 286, 287 Economic development: of Andalucia, 4, 6, 47–48, 57–58; of Seville, 4, 6, 110–11, 297–304; of Spain, 61 Ecuador, 73, 195, 196 Edles, Laura Desfors, 331nn2,3, 332n3 Education: and Andalusia, 47–48; and Expo, 102, 105, 109; and PSOE, 20 Eguiagaray, Juan, 293 Egypt, 201 Eiffel Tower, 159 Elections, in Spain: during late 1970s, 16–18, 19, 48, 277–78, 328n3; during 1980s, 19–21, 23, 48, 119, 122, 328n3; during 1990, 115; during 1991, 108, 115, 117, 119–22, 150, 299; during 1993, 24, 298–99, 334n2; during 1994, 334n3; during 1995, 299; during 1996, 24, 298, 334n2; during 2000, 24–25, 298, 334n2 El Espacio Metropolitano para la Cultura y el Esparcimiento, 303 Encuentro Internacional de Solidaridad, 284 Entrepreneurs. See Businesspeople Equality, and liberalism, 14, 34, 319–22 Escuredo, Rafael, 52–53 ETA terrorism: and Amaikurko Quetzal, 285; and Andalusia, 178; Basque condemnation of, 114; clandestine government war against, 24, 298; and death of Carrero Blanco, 16; during 1970s, 16, 18, 113; during 1980s, 22, 42, 113; and Expo, 47, 69, 113–14, 127–28, 134, 204, 210–11, 265, 282–83; and France, 178, 211; impact of, on Basque country, 47, 134, 210;

364

Index

ETA terrorism (continued): versus legitimate protests, 284–86; and nationalist reaction, 317; and Olympics, 47, 69, 113–14, 127–28; and 1992 protests, 284–85; and Seville, 113–14, 127–28; strategies against, 69, 128, 211, 283, 298; strategies of, 330n1 Ethnic diversity. See Cultural diversity Ethnicity. See Cultural identity Ethnographic studies: and Andalusia, 323nn2,3; and anthropology of Europe, 8, 34, 324n7, 333n1; and approach to investigating Expo, 26–30, 34, 330n1; and macroethnography, 29–30, 325n1; and neo-Toquevillean projects, 34; and the new Europe, 6, 25, 327n6, 331nn3–7, 332nn8,9; and the new Spain, 25, 332nn3,4; and the new world order, 6, 25, 327n6, 332n1, 334n3; and pitfalls of studying world fairs, 10–11; of traditions and modernity, 7, 10, 323n1; of urban environments, 8, 323nn3,4; and world fairs, 6, 7, 9–11, 25, 324n8 Ethnonationalism: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 221, 312–13; and “Europe of the regions,” 171, 332n1; in Spain, 205, 211, 212, 332n1; and violence, 312–13, 319, 321. See also Cultural diversity; Cultural identity; Nationalism Europe: central and eastern Europe, 6, 63, 78, 170, 176, 182–84; cultural identity of, 11, 170–87, 324n7, 331n5; and power, 78; western Europe, 15. See also New Europe; individual European countries European Community/Union (EC/EU): and Austrian right-wing politics, 313; and bureaucrats, 317; and central and eastern Europe, 63, 170–71, 176; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 33–34, 155, 312–13, 316–22; and crisis in Bosnia, 171, 312; and crisis in Kosovo, 312; decision making of, 312, 316–17, 319–20; and defense issues, 23, 312, 319–20; and “democratic deficit,” 151, 317; expansion of, 312–13; and Expo

funding, 67, 73, 204; Expo participation of, 26, 60, 63–65, 141, 170–87; Expo pavilion of, 64–65, 77, 78, 90, 173, 195, 331n1; and imperialism, 320–22; influence of, on Expo, 25; interests and idealism in, 331n3; and Maastricht Treaty, 170–71, 172; and monetary union, 23, 24, 170, 298, 312; names of, 331n1; and nationalism, 170, 173; political tensions in, 319, 331n4; popular attitudes toward, 313; presidency of, 23; and Single European Act, 21, 61; and single European market, 21, 63, 284, 297; and Spain’s autonomous regions, 216–17, 221, 332n1; Spain’s integration into, 15, 63–64, 74, 237, 324n2; Spain’s membership in, 20, 22–23, 61, 178, 277; Spain’s role in, 21, 23–25, 61, 199; and world fairs, 63–64 Europeanism: versus Americanism, 191, 192–93; and cosmopolitanism, 63, 175, 201, 203, 204, 237, 316–22; versus cosmopolitan liberalism, 325n2; and Spain, 22; varieties of, 170–87 Europeanization, of Spain: and Expo, 74–75, 221, 237; and foreign investment, 22; and liberalization, 14–26, 46, 317–22, 324nn2,3; processes of, 34; and PSOE, 46 European liberalism. See Liberalism, European European monetary union, 23, 24, 170, 297, 312 European Parliament: and Expo, 64, 141, 174, 319; and the “new Europe,” 171, 174, 319; and politics, 174, 319; and Spain, 23, 319 European Union. See European Community/Union (EC/EU) “Europe without borders”: and anti-Expo protests, 286; and Cartuja ’93, 297; and Expo images, 237, 312; and migrants, 170; Spanish attitudes toward, 24, 237, 312 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). See ETA terrorism

Index Evans, Peter, 334n3 Everflora, 246 Exhibitions. See Universal expositions and world fairs Experts and advisers, 33–34, 52, 104, 109–10, 226–28, 250–51, 317. See also Bureaucrats; Cultural authority Expo: and banishment of Columbus, Franco, and nationalism from Expo site, 82–83, 281; and consumption, 79–81, 226, 252, 262, 264; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 26, 27, 30–34, 43, 89, 102, 109, 110, 130, 151, 170, 201, 235, 237, 243, 265, 273, 287, 313–22; dates of, 3; fieldwork and research concerning, 27–30; and globalization, 313–22; interviews concerning, 27–28; little versus big worlds of, 29, 187; macroethnographic approach to, 29–31; and the nation-state, 77, 80–83, 89–91; overview of, 3–6; significance of, 6, 25–26, 29–31, 34, 43, 60, 81, 225 Expo aims and functions: as an arena for bureaucratic and political struggles, 12–13, 30, 43, 58–60, 81, 95–96, 107–8; as “best of all possible islands,” 3–6, 13, 25, 172, 253, 321; as a celebration of cultural and political pluralism, 63, 68, 83, 95, 130–31, 221–22; as a celebration of modernity, 49, 57, 80; as a commemorative event, 3, 7, 34, 37, 43, 49, 57, 74–75; as a cultural olympics, 30, 91, 157, 165–70, 191, 205, 210; as an Ibero-American enterprise, 65–66, 104; as a laboratory of processes of liberalization, 13, 25–26, 30–31, 321–22; as a new approach to global cooperation, 83–84, 132, 312–22; as a nonpartisan project of the Spanish state, 26, 30, 37, 43, 49–51, 68, 74–75, 95–96, 292; as an open window to Europe, 73; as an opportunity to change Spaniards’ perceptions, 225–38; as a partisan project of the Socialists, 26, 30, 43, 45–46, 49, 50–51, 59–60, 74, 96, 292; as a prism for

365

viewing Spain’s political culture, 30, 43; as a product of liberalization, 25–26, 30–31, 74, 95, 321–22; as a project of modernization and socioeconomic transformation, 49, 57–58, 61, 63–64, 110–11, 129, 296; as a project reflecting European liberalism, 34, 57, 80–81, 164–87, 203–22, 273, 321–22; as a public and media event, 26–27, 30, 78–79, 154, 159–70; as a reflection of world power distribution, 74, 75, 77–78, 90–91, 169–70, 187; as a showcase for multinational corporations, 72, 74, 79, 90; as something for everybody, 3, 74, 80, 95, 109, 169; as a spectacle or grand fiesta, 10, 81, 102–4, 110, 135, 234, 254, 288, 322; as a utopian campsite, 3; as a vehicle to change image of Spain, 5–6, 57, 82–83, 132–34, 159, 163, 169–70, 203–22, 225 Expo art exhibits: “Art and Culture around 1492,” 72, 85–86, 165; “Caminos de España,” 207–8; “Gold of America,” 195; “Magna Hispalensis,” 144, 232; “Passages of Spain,” 207; “Treasures of Spain,” 207, 259 Expo attendance: dubious accounting of, 229–30, 323n1; during opening day, 129; during opening week, 135; during April and May, 138–39, 229; during June, July, and August, 163, 229, 257; during September and October, 229, 257–58; during entire 6 months, 3, 229–30, 244, 245, 323n1; and La Noche de San Juan, 146–47; predictions about, 187, 229, 230, 245; of Spaniards versus others, 230 Expo bureaucratic groups: Centro Oficial de Distribución y Almacenamiento (CODA), 241–43, 247, 302; Committee of Direction of the College of Commissioners General of the Universal Exposition, 96, 113–14; Committee of Experts, 84, 97, 104, 124; Council of Administration of the State Society, 98, 116, 122–23; Council of Direction, 100;

366

Index

Expo bureaucratic groups (continued): High Foundation for the Commemoration of the Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America, 49, 53; National Commission of the Fifth Centenary, 41, 44, 49, 96, 119; Office of the Commissioner General of the Universal Exposition, 50, 59, 96–97; Office of the Director General of the Commission for the Fifth Centenary, 49–50; State Society for the Universal Exposition of Seville (State Society), 50, 59, 60, 98–99, 240–51, 300–304 Expo bureaucratic struggles and rivalries: and appointment of Expo commissioner general, 51–60, 96; and cultural values, 102–10, 203–5, 206, 250–51; and Expo season passes, 12, 115–18, 136–55; and Expo versus Seville, 30, 108–26, 136–55, 291–97; negative effects of, on Expo, 107–9, 240–51; and Olivencia’s team versus Pellón’s team, 95–110, 118, 122–24; overview of, 29–30, 81; and politics of center/periphery, north/south, city/country, 46–59, 127; and recruitment of autonomous regions, 68–72; tactics of, 107–8 Expo City (La Ciudad Expo), 239 Expo commissioner general. See Cassinello, Emilio; Olivencia, Manuel Ruiz Expo communications and technology, 3, 78–91, 129 Expo concessionaires, 72, 79, 242, 245–49 Expo consejero delegado (chief executive officer). See Pellón, Jacinto Expo corporate pavilions and sponsors: Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, 100; Banco Central Hispano, 72; Banco Hispanoamericano, 100; Banesto, 255; Cruzcampo, 79, 146, 268; Fujitsu, 72, 166, 199, 302–3; IBM, 72; number of, 3; Rank Xerox, 72, 256; Retevision, 78; Siemens, 72, 90, 101, 176; Sony, 80, 130, 146, 161, 199, 268; Tierras del Jerez, 146, 153, 268

Expo Día (“daytime Expo”), 135, 147, 149 Expo employees, 126, 128, 238–51, 288 Expo events: and closing ceremonies, 209, 291–97; and conferences, 104–5, 124, 209; and days of honor, 161–62, 164; number and types of, 3, 162; and opening ceremonies, 129–34; and opening week, 128–36; and preparations for opening day, 124–55 Expo finances: and award of contracts, 100–102, 111; and bankruptcy of Coral, 244; and budgeting, 56, 73, 209; and costs to autonomous regions, 70–72, 215–17; and costs to corporations, 72, 74, 79; and costs to EC/EU, 67, 73, 204; and costs to foreign governments, 64, 67; and costs to Spanish government, 73, 99, 100, 111; and costs of superpavilions, 73; and funds for Seville, 125–26, 148, 291; responsibility for, 50, 59; scandals concerning, 100–102, 300–301 Expoforums, 104–5, 124 Expo goals: for Andalusia, 4, 58, 74, 76, 111; for international community, 66, 83, 104; for Seville, 4, 110–11, 143–44; for Spain, 5, 30–33, 57, 74, 81–82, 104, 204, 221–22, 225–26 Expo guides (cicerones), 144, 297 Expo impact: on Andalusia, 26, 271–74; and cultural politics of liberalism, 27, 34; on non-Spanish countries, 27, 30; on Seville, 8, 26, 27, 30, 108–24, 271–73, 297–311; on Spain, 26, 30, 271–73; on visitors, 30, 75, 234–73 Expo international pavilions: number of, 3; Pavilion of the Arab Countries, 201–2; Pavilion of the Caribbean Islands, 73, 78, 194; Pavilion of the Commonwealth of Independent States, 200–201; Pavilion of the Holy See (Vatican), 64, 267; Pavilion of the Pacific Islands, 73, 78, 126, 168; Plaza of Africa, 73, 78, 187, 194, 202; Plaza of the Americas, 67–68, 126, 194–97, 202, 206, 303

Index Expo mascot (“Curro”), 103, 113, 146, 256, 262 Expo media coverage, 129, 135, 154, 159–70, 231–34 Expo memories, 30, 305–11 Expo national pavilions: of Argentina, 67–68; of Australia, 73, 77, 126, 187, 202; of Austria, 182, 242; of Belgium, 126, 181–82, 186, 203; of Bolivia, 197; of Brazil, 67–68, 187, 197, 199; of Canada, 166, 187, 191–92, 202, 258; of Chile, 67, 68, 258; of China, 166, 187, 200, 202; of Colombia, 169, 196–97; of Cuba, 67, 68; of Czechoslovakia, 184; of Denmark, 182; of the Dominican Republic, 187; of Ecuador, 196; of Egypt, 201; of Finland, 182; of France, 77, 126, 160, 177–78, 209; of Gabon, 187; of Germany, 175–76, 177, 259; of Greece, 182; of Holland, 126; of India, 187, 202; of Indonesia, 187, 202; of Ireland, 126, 182; of Israel, 201–2; of Italy, 126, 177, 179–81, 186, 209; of Japan, 77, 187, 199–200, 209, 254, 262; of Kuwait, 201; of Mexico, 67, 68, 77–78, 126, 187, 194, 195; of Monaco, 231; of Morocco, 202, 239; of Netherlands, 182; of New Zealand, 167–68; number of, 3; of Oman, 126; of Pakistan, 167, 202; of Peru, 195–96; of Poland, 184; of Portugal, 77, 181–82; of Russia, 77, 187, 200–201, 202; of Saudi Arabia, 77, 201; of South Korea, 187, 202; of Spain, 61, 77, 107, 134–35, 160, 203–22, 308; of Sweden, 182; of Switzerland, 184–86, 241–42, 259; of Syria, 201; of Thailand, 187, 202; of the United Kingdom, 175, 176–77, 179, 186; of the United States of America, 73, 77, 187–91, 192–93, 233; of Venezuela, 67, 68 Expo Noche (“nighttime Expo”), 145–47, 149, 245, 274 Expo officials and workers, 238–51 Expo organizational pavilions: number of, 3; Pavilion of the Arab League,

367

201–2; Pavilion of the EC/EU, 64–65, 77, 78, 90, 173, 195, 331n1; Pavilion of the Inter-American System, 195; Pavilion of La Promesa, 126; Pavilion of the Red Cross, 126; Pavilion of the United Nations, 77, 90, 240 Expo organizers: appointment of, 49–60, 84, 95–96, 122–24; clash in values of, 100–109; criticisms of, 240–51 Expo origins: cultural politics of, 3, 37–38, 42–43, 45–46; and Juan Carlos, 25, 26, 37–38, 56, 57; and nationalist liberalism, 40; and Prado y Colón, 40–41, 44–45; and Socialists, 46; and Spanish state, 26, 42–43 Expo parade (cabalgata), 149, 166–67, 214 Expo participants: entrance passes for, 129; licenses for, 125, 148; number of, 3, 73, 75, 79; recruitment of, 26, 60–74. See also Expo employees Expo pavilion attendants (azafatas and pupis), 233, 249–50, 256 Expo pavilions, 157–222. See also Expo corporate pavilions and sponsors; Expo international pavilions; Expo national pavilions; Expo organizational pavilions; Expo Spanish regional pavilions; Expo thematic pavilions Expo performances, 3, 80, 102–3, 138, 157–222 Expo politics. See Expo bureaucratic struggles and rivalries Expo prices, 12, 115, 136, 153, 255–56, 263–64 Expo renouncers, 28, 273–88 Expo resisters and protesters: from Andalusia, 28, 273–88; from Aracena, 28–29, 273–81; from autonomous regions, 68–72, 273–74; from Latin America, 65, 66–67, 128, 283–84; from Middle East, 73; and protests against Expo policies, 34, 53–54, 112–13, 115–16, 139–41, 149, 291; and protests against 1992 commemorations, 190, 236, 273, 281–88, 333n2

368

Index

Expo season passes: conflict over, 12–13, 115–18, 136–55; and Expo attendance figures, 230, 266–67, 323n1; number of sold, 136; and security, 145; and Seville’s alcalde, 12, 136–37, 139–40, 141 Expo security, 114, 127–28, 145, 196, 240–41, 254–55, 282–87, 295. See also Antiterrorist strategies Exposición Universal Seville 1992. See Expo and other Expo entries Expo site (La Cartuja): accidents on, 126; as “best of all possible islands,” 3, 5, 13, 25, 321; choice of Seville for, 43–45, 47–48; closing of, 299–300; components of, 3, 75, 76; development of, 9, 45, 56, 74–78, 126; Disneyfication of, 11, 103, 307–8; fires on, 89, 126; general description of, 3, 4, 75–76, 254–55; location of, 3, 5, 44–45; maps of, 5, 76; microclimate of, 103; post-Expo uses of, 25, 76, 296, 297–304, 306–9; protection of, 114, 128, 144–45, 241; spatial organization of, 56, 76–78, 159–60, 187; State Society offices on, 98; as a utopian campsite, 3 Expo Spanish regional pavilions: of Andalusia (Andalucía), 205, 217–19, 268; of Aragon, 214–15; of Asturias, 214, 220; of the Balearic Islands, 215; of the Basque country, 69, 205, 210–11; of the Canary Islands, 215; of Cantabria, 70–72, 126, 215–16; of Castilla–La Mancha, 70, 215, 220; of Castilla y León, 70, 133, 215; of Catalonia, 205, 211–12, 220; of Extremadura, 101, 216–17; of Galicia, 205, 212–13; of La Rioja, 214; of Madrid, 215, 220–21; of Murcia, 215, 220; of Navarre, 213–14; number of 3, 203; summary of, 203–22; of Valencia, 215 Expo sponsors. See Expo corporate pavilions and sponsors Expo structure: and architecture, 159–60, 162–63, 187, 205–6; and cultural

order, 26, 74, 77, 205–22; as a reflection of world power distribution, 74, 75, 77–78, 90–91, 187, 199–203, 205–6; and themes, 74–91 Expo technology and communications, 3, 78–91, 159–70 Expo thematic pavilions: number of, 3; Pavilion of the Arts, 165; Pavilion of Discoveries, 84, 88–89, 106–7, 126–27; Pavilion of Energy, 87; Pavilion of the Environment, 79–80; Pavilion of the Fifteenth Century, 72, 82, 85–86; Pavilion of Nature, 87; Pavilion of Navigation, 82, 87, 101, 166; Pavilion of Telecommunications, 87–88; Pavilion of the Universe, 88; Plaza of the Future, 87–88, 308; rationale of, 3, 56 Expo themes: and the BIE, 3, 46, 55–56, 66, 67, 74; and Expoforum ’92, 104–5; and globalization, 89, 221–22; goal of, 26–27; and international cooperation and progress, 3, 83–91; and pavilion contents, 56, 159–61, 162; and structure, 74–91; and subthemes, 56; and “unity in diversity,” 172, 175, 179, 182, 186, 199, 205, 217, 222. See also “Age of Discoveries”; Expo aims and functions; Expo thematic pavilions Expo visitors: and celebrities, 3, 229, 231–34; changing perceptions of, 225–38; and cultural identity, 225–38; and employees, 126, 128, 238–51, 288; expectations of, 252–55, 258–59; and heads of state or government, 3, 129–30, 138–39, 148–49; interviews with, 27–28, 230; media influence on, 164–70, 233–34, 252; and opening week, 129–30, 135–36; opinions of, 230–31, 235–75; and pavilions visited, 209–10, 215–17, 235; and praise for Seville, 147–48, 239; varied experiences of, 27, 30, 95, 219, 234–38, 250–73, 288 Extremadura, 62, 70, 101, 205, 216–17. See also Autonomous regions of Spain

Index Fabius, Laurent, 64 Fairs. See Universal expositions and world fairs Faubion, James, 323n4, 327n6 Featherstone, Mike, 327n5 Feijoo, Fernando, 101 Felipistas, 19, 134, 298–99 Ferdinand and Isabella, 57, 82, 86, 214 Feria (annual fair): and Andalusian cultural identity, 143, 218–19, 267, 268, 279, 310; in Aracena, 276, 279; defined, 128; and Expo crowds, 136, 137, 138; and Expo inauguration, 128, 135–36 Fernandez, James, 323n2, 329n1 Fernández, Matilde, 216 Fernández Ordóñez, José Antonio, 329n7 Ferrer Salat, Carlos, 114 Fiesta Nacional, 295 Filesa, 100 Findling, John E., 323n5, 328n3 Finland, 182, 242 Flamenco, 8, 146, 219, 268, 323n2 Folk traditions. See Tradition Ford, Gerald, 39 Foucault, Michel, 10 Fowler, Nick, 34, 331n6 Fraga, Manuel, 17, 21, 133, 212–13 France: and cultural traditions, 200, 203; and EC/EU, 61, 170–71, 178; and ETA terrorism, 178, 211; and Expo participation, 64, 107, 178–79, 186, 209, 230, 330n2; Expo pavilion of, 77, 126, 160, 177–78, 209; and Maastricht Treaty, 23–24; and nationalism, 170, 179, 186; and tourism, 253–54 Franco, Francisco: banishment of, from Expo, 82; death of, 5, 16, 37; dictatorship of, 14, 16 Francoists, 16–17, 21, 37–38 Franco regime: as antithesis of liberalism, 14; decline of, 5, 14, 16–17; during 1950s, 15; during 1960s, 15–16; during 1970s, 15, 16, 17, 286; elections after, 48, 277; Europeanization after, 14, 25, 30–31, 317; and Expo silence concerning, 82; and La Fiesta

369

Nacional, 295; labor unrest and strikes during, 16, 17; legacies of, 16–17, 317, 318; “new Spain” after, 5; and “organic democracy,” 40; and personalism, 318; politics during, 15; relations with other powers during, 15; religion during, 15; and ruptura pactada, 16, 38; and socioeconomic liberalization, 15–17, 25; and Spanish society, 15–16; and tourism, 253; transition to democracy after, 5, 16–17, 19, 37–38, 42–43, 324n2; and United States, 15 Freedom: and consumer choice, 226, 251–52; and liberalism, 14, 31–34, 319–22; and politics of daily life, 223–88; and resistance, 278–88 Fujimori, Alberto, 196, 198 Fusi, Juan Pablo, 14, 324n4, 325n6, 327n1, 329n2 Gabon, 187 Gal, Susan, 332n8 Galicia: autonomy of, 62; cultural identity of, 212–13; Expo participation of, 68–69, 133, 212–13; Expo pavilion of, 205, 212–13; foreign policy initiatives of, 204; incomes in, 205. See also Autonomous regions of Spain García, Caterina, 204 García, Soledad, 331n5 García Cotarelo, Ramón, 18 Garrido, Alfonso, 284, 286 Garzón, Baltazar, 301 Gender, 11, 168, 235–36, 250, 270 Generalitat, 135, 211 Germany: and EC/EU, 20, 61, 170–71, 176, 186; Expo participation of, 175–76, 239; Expo pavilion of, 175–76, 177, 259; nationalism of, 170, 317; and protests against Expo, 285; reunification of, 23; world fair of, 312 Gibbons, John, 333n1, 334nn1,2 Gil, Jesús, 231 Gil, Juan, 86 Gillespie, Richard, 20, 325nn7,9, 328n3, 329nn1,5 Gilmore, David, 323n2

370

Index

Gilmour, David, 324n4 Gilmour, John, 324n4 Giner, Salvador, 18 Globalization, 73, 89, 313–15, 332n1, 333n2, 335n5 Goddard, Victoria, 324n7 González, Filipe: and actions against ETA, 24, 298–99; and Cartuja ’93, 132; during 1970s, 17, 19; during 1980s, 20, 21, 23, 51; during 1990s, 24–25, 298; and EC/EU, 20–23, 174; and election loss, 298; and Expo ceremonies, 132, 134, 293, 295–96; and Expo goals, 54, 83; and Expo leadership, 45, 50, 54, 117, 127, 292; followers of, 52; and Ibero-American summit, 198–99; and modernization, 20; and NATO, 20–21; and Olivencia, 54, 58, 96, 106, 116–23; and Pellón, 116, 117–18, 141; and personalism, 318; popularity of, 51–52, 298; as president of EC, 23; and Rojas Marcos, 125–26, 291; and Seville, 148, 292, 293; and unemployment, 20; and Yáñez, 121 Gonzalo Pérez, Angel Luis, 206, 330n2 Gooch, Anthony, 20 Goytisolo, Juan, 262 Gramsci, Antonio, 324n8 Granada, 254 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Greece, 182 Greenhalgh, Paul, 323n5 Grugel, Jean, 61 Guardia Civil, 19, 128 Guatemala, 42, 67, 196 Guerra, Alfonso: and Aznar, 130; and corruption, 100, 119; and Expo ceremonies, 130; and factionalism, 52; and Olivencia, 116; replacement of, 119, 123; and Seville, 52, 55; as vicepresident of Spain, 19–20, 45, 51–52, 119 Guerra, Juan, 100 Guinea-Bissau, 202 Gulf War, 23, 169, 188, 201, 312 Gunther, Richard, 18, 324n4

Habermas, Jurgen, 331n5, 335n4 Haider, Jorge, 313 Hale, Charles R., 65 Hall, Stuart, 324n8, 335n4 Handelman, Don, 330n1 Hannerz, Ulf, 327n5, 332n1 Hardt, Anthony, 335n5 Hargreaves, John, 287, 333n2 Harvey, David, 314, 315 Harvey, Penelope, 81, 323n6, 324n8 Hayden, Robert, 332n9 Hayward, Jack, 335n4 Hegemony and hegemonic processes: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 6, 205, 237, 316; and Expo, 13, 81, 110, 169; and liberalism, 324n2; and PSOE, 20, 81, 328n3; and United States, 202 Heiberg, Marianne, 332n3 Held, David, 326n4, 335n4 Hernández, F., 328n2 Hernández-Requant, Ariana, 65 Herr, Richard, 13 Herri Batasuna, 285 Herzfeld, Michael, 234, 243, 252, 327n6, 330n1 Heywood, Paul, 334n1 Hispanic culture, 39, 41, 44, 50 Hispanidad, 39, 56, 295 Hohenlohe, Alfonso, 231 Holland, 126 Hollings, Ernest, 188 Holman, Otto, 21, 49, 101, 102 Holo, Selma, 331n1 Holy Jubilee, 212 Holy Week (Semana Santa): and Andalusian cultural identity, 143, 279, 310; in Aracena, 276, 279; brotherhoods of, 8, 144, 149, 261; and Expo inauguration, 128, 135; and local color, 112 Hooper, John, 324n4 Hopkin, Jonathan, 324n4 Hormaechea, Juan, 71–72, 215–16, 332n5 Hughes, Robert, 44 Human rights, and liberalism, 14–15, 319–22

Index Huntington, Samuel, 314 Husbands, Christopher, 334n1 Ibense, 246 Ibero-America: heads of, at Expo, 148–49, 198–99, 294–95; heads of, at summit in Madrid, 198–99, 212; institutes of, 50; proposed 1992 exposition of, 39–41, 65–66; unity of, 65–66. See also America(s); Central America; Latin America; individual Ibero-American countries Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929, 46, 82, 144, 295, 328n1 Identity. See Cultural identity Imperialism: banishment of, from Expo, 81–82; and Europe, 319–20, 321; and Seville, 7; and Spain, 39; and world fairs, 10 India, 187, 202 Individualism, and liberalism, 319–22 Indonesia, 187, 202 Infante, Blas, 220, 328n3, 332n6 Institute of Hispanic Culture, 41, 44, 50 Institute of Ibero-American Cooperation, 50 Inter-American Development Bank, 195 Inter-American Institution for Cooperation in Agriculture, 195 Interdependency, and cosmopolitan liberalism, 32, 33, 314–22 International Monetary Fund, 315 International Olympic Committee, 46–47, 308–9 Iraq, 201 Ireland, 126, 128, 182 Irish Republican Army, 128 Isabella and Ferdinand, 57, 82, 86, 214 Ishiyama, John T., 332n1 Isla de la Cartuja. See Cartuja ’93; Expo site Isla Mágica. See Magic Island Islamic Mediterranean region, 6 Islamic traditions, 73, 85, 91, 201, 214–15 Island of La Cartuja. See Cartuja ’93; Expo site

371

Israel, 201–2 Italy: and EC/EU, 181; and Expo attendance, 230; and Expo participation, 180–81, 186, 200; Expo pavilion of, 126, 177, 179–81, 186, 209; and Expo press coverage, 330n2; and 1992 plans, 41 Izquierda Unida (IU): and Andalusia, 127, 220; and Aracena, 279; and Bendala, 118, 139; and communism, 22; and demonstrations, 286; and 1989 elections, 23; during 1990s and 2000, 24, 118, 122; and Europeanism, 22; and Expo attendance, 229; and focus on PSOE corruption, 24; and labor strikes, 248; and Seville, 118, 121, 122, 139, 309 Jameson, Fredric, 79 Japan: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 200, 202; cultural identity of, 199; and Expo participation, 73, 107, 166, 199–200, 242; Expo pavilion of, 77, 187, 199–200, 209, 254, 262; world fair in, 64, 73 Jenkins, Brian, 324n7 Jerez de la Frontera, 119, 268 Jerez Mir, Miguel, 328n3 Jiménez Núñez, Alfredo, 97, 104, 106, 330n2 Jordan, Barry, 331n1 Juan Carlos I (Juan Carlos de Borbón): career of, 327n1; and Cartuja ’93, 296–97; and Expo closing, 294–97; and Expo goals, 83, 132, 296; and Expo leadership, 50; and Expo opening, 132–34; and Expo visits, 231–32, 234; installation of, to throne, 16, 37; and Magic Island, 307; and Olivencia, 54–55, 60; and Olympics, 333n2; and Pellón, 142; and post-Franco transition to democracy, 16, 17–19, 37–43, 324n2, 327n1; power of, 17; and Prado y Colón, 40–41, 44, 274, 306, 308; and proposal for 1992 celebration, 25, 26, 37–43, 56–57; and PSOE, 25, 42–43, 45–46;

372

Index

Juan Carlos I (Juan Carlos de Borbón) (continued): and Queen Sofía, 133, 197, 232, 294; and ruptura pactada, 16, 38; and Seville, 132–33, 134, 297; and Suárez, 16, 25, 42; and ties to the Americas, 38–40, 198–99, 295; and UCD, 25, 42–43; and visit to United States, 38–40 Julía, Santos, 325nn5,10 Junta de Andalucía, 52–53, 101, 115, 117, 123, 131, 140, 220, 303 Kaldor, Mary, 334n1 Kangaroo Pub, 146, 242, 246 Kaplan, Robert D., 314 Kearney, Michael, 314, 327n5 Keith, M., 324n7 Kenny, Michael, 323n4 Kenya, 202 Kertzer, David, 323n4 King Juan Carlos. See Juan Carlos I Kissinger, Henry, 39 Klepsch, Egon, 174 Kosovo, 312 Kuwait, 201 Labor. See Labor strikes; Unemployment; Unions; Wages Labor strikes, in Spain: during 1960s and 1970s, 16, 17; during 1980s, 23, 248; and Expo, 141, 247–50, 282–83; and Moncloa Pact, 17 La Ciudad Expo (Expo City), 239 La Exposición Universal Sevilla 1992. See Expo ’92 and other Expo entries La Fiesta Nacional, 295 Lainsbury, Andrew, 334n1 La Isla de la Cartuja. See Cartuja ’93; Expo site La Isla Mágica. See Magic Island Laitin, David, 331n2, 332n4 La Mancha. See Castilla–La Mancha Lancaster, Thomas, 24 Lankowski, Carl, 331n2 La Rioja, 62, 214. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Lasch, Christopher, 327n5

Latin America: and anti-Expo protests, 65, 66–67, 128, 283–84; and anti-U.S. sentiments, 42, 65, 198; and Bureau of International Expositions, 41–42; cultural identity of, 38, 66, 194, 197–98; and early involvement in Expo, 60, 65–67, 77–78; and EC/EU, 6, 23, 61, 193, 198; Expo pavilions of, 67–68, 77–78, 146, 193–99, 206; and globalization, 315; heads of, at Expo, 148–49, 197–99, 294–95; heads of, at summit meetings, 65–66, 67, 198, 212; image of, at Expo, 193–97, 206; and Institute of Hispanic Culture 41, 50; and Institute of IberoAmerican Cooperation, 50; Spanish policies on, 329n1; and ties with Spain, 6, 23, 38–41, 50, 57, 61, 66, 193, 198–99, 203, 205–6, 294–95, 312, 332n2; visit of Juan Carlos to, 38. See also America(s); Central America; Ibero-America; individual Latin American countries Lavoie, Luc, 192 Lemus López, Encarnación, 328n1 León. See Castilla y León Leontidou, Lila, 323n4, 334n2 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 321 Ley, D., 323n6 Liberalism, classic: characteristics of, 14–15, 228, 326n4; versus cosmopolitan liberalism, 31–34, 228, 326n4; and Spain, 13–26 Liberalism, cosmopolitan: versus classic liberalism, 31–34, 228, 326n4; and cosmopolitan elites, 34, 109, 320, 327nn5,6; versus cosmopolitan populism, 155, 280; and cultural authority, 31, 155; and cultural differences, 316, 320–21, 326n4; and cultural diversity, 31–34, 63, 326n4; and cultural identity, 32, 155, 204, 316, 326n4; defined, 31–32, 320–21, 325n2; and domestication of discord, 315–17; and EC/EU, 33–34, 155, 312–13, 316–22; and Europe, 175, 203, 204, 312–33; and Europeanism, 63, 175, 201, 203, 204, 237, 315–22; and Expo, 26, 27, 30–34,

Index 89, 102, 109, 110, 130, 151, 170, 201, 235, 237, 243, 265, 273, 287, 313–22; and Expoforum ’92, 104–5; first war of, 312; hegemony of, in post–Cold War period, 6, 205, 235–37, 313–22; and human rights, 14, 319–22; intellectual roots of, 325n3; investigation of, 334n3; and Japan, 200, 202; and macroethnography, 26–34; and the nation-state, 33, 316, 325n3; and the new world order, 30–34; versus other forms of liberalism, 30–34, 228, 315–22, 326n4; principles of, 31–32; and professionals, 33–34, 151, 155, 317; and Seville, 6, 26, 30–31, 110, 135–36, 143, 147, 155, 310–11; and Spain, 6, 30–34, 203–4, 243–44, 273, 315–22; and Spanish regionalism, 205, 221; in tension with local traditions, 30–31, 155, 276–80 Liberalism, European: characteristics of, 14–15; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 30–34, 201, 203–4, 237, 308; and Expo, 80–82, 89–90, 191, 201, 203, 221; and Paris, 41; varieties of, 34, 170–87, 315–16, 319–22; and world fairs, 11, 41 Liberalism and liberalization, Spanish: and cosmopolitan liberalism, 30–34, 203–4, 243–44, 273, 315–22; and the monarchy, 37–40, 42–43; and nationalism, 40; phases of, 15–25; pocket history of, 13–26; and PSOE, 46, 52, 198; and regionalism, 205, 221; and relevance for understanding Expo, 13, 25–27, 30–31, 34, 46 Linz, Juan, 329n3 Llobera, Josep, 212, 324n7, 332n1 London, 9, 41, 64, 159 López Gay, Mario, 101 López Gay, Pina, 101 López Nieto, L., 18 López Palanco, Rafael, 97 López Pina, Antonio, 18 Maastricht Treaty: and Denmark, 23–24, 182; and Expo, 25, 169, 170–73, 312;

373

and France, 23–24; and monetary union, 23, 24; reception of, 23–24, 182, 331n2; and Spain, 23–24, 170–71, 215, 222, 237; and “spirit of Maastricht,” 25, 171, 183, 222, 312 McCormick, John Spencer, 331n3 McDonald, Maryon, 331n4 MacDonald, Sharon, 324n7 McDonogh, Gary, 323n4, 332n4 McDonough, Peter, 18 Mackey, Eva, 332n1 McNeil, Donald, 334n2 McNeill, William H., 314 Macroethnography. See Ethnographic studies Maddox, Richard, 323n1 Madrid: autonomous region of, 47, 62, 205, 215, 220–21; as 1992 “Cultural Capital” of Europe, 5; and ETA terrorism, 113; Expo pavilion of, 215, 220–21; as possible Olympic site, 47, 309; as protest site, 283; summit meetings in, 148–49, 198–99, 212. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Magellan, 86 Magic Island, 307–8 Málaga, 217, 231, 301, 302 Malaysia, 73 Maragall, Pasqual, 330n2 Marchena, Manuel, 311 Marcus, George E., 325n1 Marks, Michael P., 325n9 Martin, Carmela, 334n1 Martínez Alier, Juan, 49, 329n5 Marxists, 19, 227 Mass (popular) culture: and Expo, 91, 166, 228; and Spain, 16; and world fairs, 9–10, 234–35 Matesa, 100 Maxwell, Kenneth, 43, 325n9, 329n1, 331n2 Memory, 305–11 Mendlovitz, Saul H., 331n5 Mercadé, F., 328n2 Mercosur countries, 198, 315 Metropolitan Space for Culture and Amusement, 303

374

Index

Mexico: and Expo media coverage, 163; and Expo participation, 167, 191, 199; Expo pavilion of, 67, 68, 77–78, 126, 187, 194, 195; summit conference in, 65–66 Middle classes: and Expo, 95, 112, 228, 236, 238, 274; identification with, 22; political leanings of, 19; and PSOE, 52, 55; in Seville, 112; technocrats of, 52 Middle East, 73, 78, 201 Military: and Expo ceremonies, 130, 295; and Expo security, 128; and Germany, 176; and La Fiesta Nacional, 295; and Spain, 15, 17, 57, 174; and Spanish coup attempt, 18–19, 42–43 Milosevic, Slobodan, 312 “Miraculous year” (1992), 3–6, 25, 144, 170 Mitchell, Timothy, 323n2 Mitterand, François, 177, 178–79, 199, 231 Modernization: and Aracena, 7; and class relations, 23; and consumerism, 8–10, 11–12, 22; ethnographic study of, 7, 10–11, 323n1; and Expo, 49, 211, 214, 221; and liberalization, 13–26; and PSOE, 46, 49; and Seville, 8–9, 49, 108–13, 297–304, 310; and Spain, 61, 163; and tradition, 7–13, 211, 214, 218, 221; and world fairs, 9–10 Monaco, 231, 232–33 Monarchs of Spain. See Alfonso XIII; Ferdinand and Isabella; Juan Carlos I Monastery of La Cartuja: ceremonies of, 129, 133, 198; contents of, 82, 85; history of, 45, 89; location of, 75; role of, 89, 129 Moncloa pacts, 17, 19 Montaner, Jaime, 303 Montaño, Ignacio, 123, 154 Montero, Rosa, 262 Montezuma, 82 Montoto, Santiago, 323n2 Montreal, 6 Moors, 82, 207 Morata, Francesc, 329n2, 332n1 Moreno Navarro, Isidoro, 323n2

Morgan-Tamosunas, Rikki, 331n1 Morocco, 202, 239 Morrison, Samuel Eliot, 44 Mozambique, 202 Multiculturalism, 11, 191–92, 209, 308, 326n4 Murcia, 62, 215, 220. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Muslims, 73, 131, 201, 239 Naruhito, Prince, 200 Nationalism: banishment of, from Expo, 30, 62–63, 81–91, 193; and domestic politics in Spain, 43, 45–46; and early Spain, 157; and ethnographies, 29; and 1992 Europe, 170, 183, 184; and liberalism, 40, 105; and world fairs, 10, 11. See also Cultural diversity; Cultural identity; Ethnonationalism Nation-state: alternatives to, 105, 313–14; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 33, 325n3; and early Spanish history, 57; and ethnographies, 29, 34; and Expo, 77, 80–83, 89–91; power of, 33–34, 105, 319–20; and world fairs, 80–81 Native Americans, 188, 190 Navarre, 62, 213–14. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Negri, Toni, 335n5 Nelson, Brian, 324n3, 331n5 Neo-Francoists, 17 Netherlands, 148, 182 New Andalusia, 270 New Europe: and Andalusia, 64; and cosmopolitan experts, 327n6; different versions of, 171–73; and EC/EU, 173, 186–87; and ethnographic studies, 6, 25–26, 327n6, 331nn3–7, 332nn8,9; and European Parliament, 171, 174, 319; and Germany, 177; and role of Expo, 25, 61, 63–64, 171, 251, 260, 271, 287–88; and Spain, 204–5, 222, 251; and Spain’s autonomous regions, 221 New millennium, and role of Expo, 78–79, 83–84, 104, 319–22

Index New Spain: and Andalusia, 17, 148; and autonomous regions, 17; and Cartuja ’93, 102; citizens of, 225; and ethnographic studies, 25–26, 332nn3,4; and Expo media coverage, 128–29; poorer regions of, 217; and role of Expo, 5, 25, 64, 102, 148, 225, 232, 238–44, 246–47, 251, 253, 260, 271, 287–88, 296 Newspapers: abbreviations for, 338; and Expo coverage, 27, 163–65, 331n2; and macroethnography, 27, 29 Newton, Michael T., 325n6 New World: and Andalusia, 82, 131, 218–19; booty from, 44; discovery of, 55–56; and Europe of the East, 174; and Magic Island, 307; and Spanish monarchy, 40; visit of Juan Carlos to, 40 New world order: and Cartuja ’93, 281; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 30–34; Davids and Goliaths of, 187–203; and ethnographic studies, 6, 25–26, 327n6, 332n1, 334n3; and European liberal society, 14–15, 34; and globalization, 314; and image of Spain, 5–6, 30, 253, 296; and the nation-state, 83; and processes of Europeanization, 23, 34; and role of Expo, 25, 30–31, 75, 187, 202, 250–51, 312; Spain’s role in, 75, 78, 325n9; and Spanish liberalization, 14–26, 30; and transnational elites, 314 New York, 41 New Zealand, 167–68, 241 Nigeria, 202 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 19–21, 25 North-South inequalities, 46–47, 49, 51, 171, 187, 296, 319 Ochoa, Severo, 84, 124 Olds, K., 323n6 Olivencia, Manuel Ruiz: appointment as Expo commissioner general, 54–55; background of, 54–55; and Cassinello, 60–61, 98; and clash with State

375

Society values, 102–10, 152–55, 209; colleagues of, 96–98, 124; dismissal of, 123–24, 126, 152–55, 209; early criticism of, 57–60; and ETA terrorism, 113; and Expo site design, 56–57, 58, 73–74, 205–6; and Expo themes, 55–58, 73–74, 83–85, 102–10, 206, 209, 330n2; and González, 54, 58, 96, 106, 116–23; and Guerra, 116; and Juan Carlos, 54–55, 60; and negotiations with Expo participants, 60–74, 75–76; and Pellón, 58–59, 96, 100, 115–24, 126, 153, 300–301; postdismissal activities and stance of, 124–25, 129, 152–55, 301, 329n1; public gratitude toward, 152–54, 293; responsibility of, 59, 96–98, 100; rumored resignation of, 58, 116–17, 123; and Spanish politics, 54–60, 96–124 Olympic Games: and autonomous regions, 68, 69, 71, 216; and bid of Seville for future games, 306, 308–9, 311; and Catalonian participation in Expo, 211; and choice of Barcelona as 1992 site, 47, 49, 328n2; and ETA terrorism, 47, 69, 113–14, 127–28; and 1992 events in Spain, 5–6, 46–47; and image of Spain, 5–6, 46, 253; and International Olympic Committee, 46–47, 308–9; and labor strikes, 248; and nationalism, 287; and Olivencia, 153–54; organization of, 242; and post-Olympic period, 297–98, 308–9; and PSOE, 46, 49, 122, 216, 298, 308–9, 328n2, 330n2; and Rojas Marcos, 149; and Spanish royal family, 333n2; and structures of common difference, 32; and tourism, 27, 199–200, 253–54, 265 Olympics. See Cultural olympics; Olympic Games Oman, 126, 161 O’Neil, Michael, 334n1 Ong, Aihwa, 334n3 Organization of American States, 195 Ortega, Andrés, 24 Otherness, 31–32, 168

376

Index

Pacheco, Pedro, 119, 268 Pacific islands, 73, 78, 126, 168 Padró-Solanet, Albert, 18 Pakistan, 167, 202 Pan American Health Organization, 195 Papadopoulos, Alex G., 334n2 Papua New Guinea, 32, 168 Paris, 41–42, 159, 177–79, 188 Park of Discoveries, 306–7 Parman, Susan, 327n6 Partecsa, 306–7, 308, 309 Partido Andalucista (PA): and Blas Infante, 328n3; and Cartuja ’93, 302; during 1980s, 48–49, 119, 121, 122; during 1990s, 122, 150, 299, 334n3; former name of, 48, 119; and labor strikes, 248; and regionalist sentiment, 328n3; and Rojas Marcos, 119, 121, 122, 141, 150, 291–93, 299; and Seville’s bid for Olympics, 308; and tensions with Expo, 141, 150, 268, 291–94 Partido Comunista de España (PCE), 17, 19 Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), 69 Partido Popular (PP): and Andalusia, 118–19; and Aznar, 21, 24, 130, 133, 292, 298; and Becerril, 118–19, 122, 124, 136, 292, 299; and 1989 elections, 21–22, 23; during 1990s and 2000, 24, 119, 121–22, 298–99, 334n2; and focus on PSOE corruption, 24, 298, 301; former name of, 21; and Fraga, 21, 133; and personalism, 318; and Seville, 118–22, 124–26, 136–39, 292, 299–301 Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA): and Blas Infante, 328n3; during 1970s, 18, 119, 328n3; during 1980s, 53, 119, 328n3, 329n6; new name of, 48, 119; and regionalist sentiment, 328n3 Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE): and Andalusia, 47–48, 110–11; and appointment of Expo officials, 49–60, 96; and autonomous regions, 69, 70; and “bureaucratic clientelism,” 49; and Catalonia, 48,

328n2; characteristics and organization of, 51–52; and Constitution of Spain, 24, 132, 328n3; criticism of, from Rojas Marcos, 118–19, 149–50, 293; during 1970s, 17, 18, 19, 48; during 1980s, 19–23, 43, 45–60; early attitude of, toward Expo, 45–46, 48–49; early priorities of, 46, 48–49, 52; and elections in 1990s, 24, 115, 118–24, 150–55, 298–99; and elitism, 151; and impact on Expo, 26, 46, 96; and Latin America, 50; and the monarchy, 25, 43, 45–46; versus old-guard Socialists, 52; and Olympics, 46, 49, 122, 216, 298, 308–9, 328n2, 330n2; and personalism, 151; and Prado y Colón, 50, 137; rumored corruption and graft of, 23, 24, 100–101, 121, 298, 301; and rural votes, 47–48; and “societal corporatism,” 49; and unemployment, 17, 20, 48 Patio de la Asociación por Derechos Humanos de Andalucía, 283 Payne, Stanley, 13, 328n2 Peer, Shanny, 323n5 Pelle, Kimberly D., 323n5, 328n3 Pellón, Jacinto: appointment as consejero delegado (CEO) of State Society, 58–59, 60; appointment as president of the State Society, 124; authoritarianism of, 98–99, 124; and award from PSOE, 127, 140; background of, 58–59; and Cassinello, 60–61; and clash with commissioner general’s values, 102–10, 152–55; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 102; and criticism from concessionaires, 241, 245–46; cronies and colleagues of, 99–100, 122–23; and Dragados ties, 59, 101; and Expo attendance figures, 229, 230, 245, 257–58, 291; and Expo budget, 99–102; and Expo closing, 292–93; and Expo construction, 76, 126; and Expo fires, 126; and Expo opening, 130, 133; and Expo passes, 129, 136–46; and Expo themes and goals, 102–10, 330n2; and financial gains

Index from Expo, 101–2; and González, 99, 116, 117–18, 141; and Guerra, 116; and Juan Carlos, 142; and labor strikes, 248, 282; and Olivencia, 58–59, 96, 100, 115–24, 126, 153, 300–301; responsibility and decisions of, 58–60, 96, 98–100, 115–16, 124; versus Sevillanos, 113, 115–16, 118, 121, 135–46, 257–58, 291, 331n2; and Spanish politics, 110–24 Perestroika, 200–201 Pérez Arroyo, Salvador, 160 Pérez de Cuellar, Javier, 294–95 Pérez Díaz, Victor, 48, 324n2, 334n1 Personalism: and Expo, 151, 251, 294; and Spanish political culture, 107–8, 151, 251, 318–19 Peru, 195–96, 198 Petras, James, 329n5 Philipson, Ole, 241 Pike, Ruth, 44 Pile, J., 324n7 Pi-Sunyer, Oriol, 332n4 Pizarro, 82, 216 Pluralism: and Expo, 11, 30, 195, 203, 225–26; and liberalism, 14. See also Cultural diversity Poland, 184 Political parties and groups in Spain. See Alianza Popular (AP); anarchists; Communists; Convergencia i Unió (CiU); Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA); Francoists; Herri Batasuna; Izquierda Unida (IU); Marxists; Neo-Francoists; Partido Andalucista (PA); Partido Comunista de España (PCE); Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV); Partido Popular (PP); Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA); Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE); Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) Politics in Spain. See under the names of individual politicians and political parties; see also Cultural politics; Elections Politics outside Spain. See under the names of individual politicians and countries

377

Poltoranim, Mikhail, 201 Populism, cosmopolitan, 155, 280 Portugal: and EC/EU, 174; and Expo attendance, 230; and Expo media coverage, 330n2; and Expo participation, 64, 181–82; Expo pavilion of, 77, 181–82; and Spain, 181; and world fairs, 182, 312 Powell, C. T., 327n1 Power: and “democratic deficit,” 281; world distribution of, and Expo, 74, 75, 77–78, 90–91, 187–88, 227–28; and world fairs, 10, 187. See also Cultural authority; Hegemony and hegemonic processes Practices, and politics of daily life, 223–88 Prado y Colón, Manuel: background of, 40, 44–45, 50; as candidate for Expo commissioner general, 117; and choice of Expo site, 44–45, 329n6; as descendant of Columbus, 40, 44, 307; and early Expo advocacy, 40, 306, 327n2; and Expo passes, 137; homes of, 274, 276; indictment of, 307–8; and Juan Carlos, 40, 44, 274, 306, 308; and Magic Island, 307; as member of the Council of Administration of the State Society, 137; as president of the Institute of Hispanic Culture, 44, 50; as president of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary, 41, 50; as president of Partecsa, 306; and private gain from Expo site projects, 306; and PSOE, 50, 137; rumored Swiss bank accounts of, 276, 308 Pred, Allan, 323n5 President of Partecsa. See Prado y Colón, Manuel; Sainz, Jesús President of the National Commission of the Fifth Centenary. See Prado y Colón, Manuel; Yáñez, Luis President of the State Society. See Cassinello, Emilio; Pellón, Jacinto Press, Irwin, 323n3 Preston, Paul, 324n4, 327n1

378

Index

Protests: against Cartuja ’93 policies, 302; and university unrest, 16. See also Expo resisters and protesters; Labor strikes Puerto Rico, 146–47, 191, 192–93 Pujol, Jordi, 135–36, 211, 213 Putnam, Robert, 333n1 Quayle, Marilyn, 190–91 Quincentennial events, 5, 7, 324n8 Quintana, Ignacio, 106 Race: and Expo, 168; and speeches against racism, 174, 284; and world fairs, 10 Radio Expo, 163 Ramos Gallarin, Juan Antonio, 332n1 Rationalism, and liberalism, 31, 227, 325n3 Recio, Pablo, 101 Red Cross, 126, 333n1 Regionalism. See Autonomous regions of Spain Reich, Robert, 327n5 Religion: and Expo, 82, 207, 214–15, 239; status of, under Spain’s Constitution, 17–18 Resistance. See Labor strikes; Protests Rincón, Manuel Alfonso, 328n1 Rivases, J., 100 Robbins, Bruce, 334n3 Roberts, David, 324n3, 331n5 Roca, Jordi, 49, 329n5 Rodrigo, Fernando, 325n9, 329n1 Rodríguez Almodovar, Antonio, 114–15, 218 Rodríguez Becerra, Salvador, 323n2 Rodríguez Borbolla, Francisco, 117 Rodríguez-Gómez, Guadalupe, 331n2 Rodríguez Ibarra, Juan, 217 Rojas Marcos, Alejandro: as alcalde of Seville, 122, 124–26; and Andalusian regionalism, 119; background of, 118–19; and Becerril, 119, 122, 124–25, 136, 293–94, 299; and bid for Olympics in Seville, 308; and Cartuja ’93, 303; as challenger and opponent

of PSOE, 118–19, 150, 293; and characterization of Seville and Sevillanos, 119–20, 121, 130–31; during 1970s and 1980s, 118–19; and 1991 elections, 119, 120–21, 150; and 1995 elections, 299; and Expo officials, 125–26; and Expo opening, 130–31, 133–34; and Expo passes, 136–50; as founder of El Partido Socialista Andaluz (PSA) and El Partido Andalucista (PA), 119; and González, 125–26, 291, 293; and greeting of dignitaries, 148–49, 178; and Juan Carlos, 297; and Pellón, 136–55, 291, 292; and Seville’s compensation for Expo, 125–26, 136–37, 141, 291; and Seville’s day of honor, 291–93; as vice-alcalde of Seville, 299; and Yáñez, 119–22 Romerías (pilgrimages), 276 Rosenburg, Robin L., 61, 65 Ross, John, 65, 193 Rubio, Javier, 207 Rueda, Francisco, 99 Ruesga, Juan, 219 Ruiz de la Prada, Agatha, 233 Ruptura pactada (negotiated break), 16, 38 Russia, 77, 187, 200–201, 202. See also Soviet Union Rydell, Robert, 10 Sahlins, Marshall, 314, 325n3 Said, Edward, 332n1, 334n3 Sainz, Jesús, 308 Salinas, Carlos, 194 Salmon, Keith, 17, 22, 47 Sánchez, Alfredo, 304 Sani, Giacomo, 18, 324n4 Santiago de Compostela, 69, 86, 212 Santo Domingo, 38–40, 45, 82 Saudi Arabia, 77, 201 Scalfaro, Oscar, 181 Schlesinger, Philip, 331n7 Schmidt, Helmut, 209 Schumann, Robert, 173 Second Republic, 17, 37

Index Security. See Antiterrorist strategies; Expo security Semana Santa. See Holy Week Sendero Luminoso, 128 Senegal, 202 Seoane, Alfonso, 306, 309 Serra, Narcis, 123, 124, 181–82 Sevilla. See Seville Sevilla Guzmán, E., 18, 47 Sevilla Technopolis, 303–4, 306, 308, 311 Sevillanos: attitudes of, toward Expo, 27, 34, 108–13, 135–36, 144–55, 266–73, 305–11; characterization of, 111–12, 119, 121–22, 147–55; contributions of, to Expo, 121, 125, 144–48; cultural identity of, 11, 142–55, 272–73, 310–11; and disputes with Expo officials, 12–13, 136–55; Expo attendance of, 12, 146; hospitality of, 144, 296; incomes of, 111–12; and memories of Expo, 30, 305–11; in middle class, 112; tradition-based localism and regionalism of, 110, 112–13, 135–36, 155; as victims of terrorism, 113–14, 127–28; in working class, 8–9, 111–12, 137, 192. See also Andalusians Seville: archbishop of, 130, 149; barrios (neighborhoods) of, 8, 111–12, 119, 144; as capital of Andalusia, 8, 44, 310–11; as capital of southern Europe, 134; and Cartuja ’93, 297–304; as choice for Expo site, 3, 7, 9, 29, 39, 42, 43–49, 131–32; and compensation for Expo costs and inconveniences, 12, 111, 113–15, 125–26, 139, 142–43; complaints of, about Expo funds, 111; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 6, 26, 30–31, 110, 135–36, 143, 147, 155, 310–11; and cosmopolitan populism, 155, 280; culture of, 6, 7–8, 131, 142–44, 310–11; economic development of, 4, 6, 110–11, 297–304; elections in, 108–9, 114–15, 118–24, 299; and Expo closing ceremonies, 291–97; and Expo commissioner general,

379

52–60; and Expo construction, 4, 111, 113; Expo day of honor of, 291–97; and Expo opening ceremonies, 131; Expo pavilion of, 144; and Expo season passes, 12, 115–18, 136–55, 266–67, 291; and folk traditions, 7–8, 30, 135–36, 155; history of, 4, 44; and 1929 Ibero-American exhibition, 46, 144; impact of Expo on, 8, 26, 27, 30, 108–24, 271–73, 279–311; as link to New World, 44; and modernization, 8–9, 49, 109–13, 297–304, 310–11; and new jobs, 9, 126, 128; outsider attitudes toward, 147–48, 239–40; politics in, 26, 30, 52–53; and population growth, 8; post-Expo plans of, 305–11; regionalist sentiment in, 110; Socialist leaders from, 45–46; and tensions with Expo, 12–13, 108–24, 136–55, 291–97; and tourism, 4, 8–9; and trade, 7–8; traditions versus modernity of, 7–11, 110, 112, 155, 260; and unemployment, 8, 111, 292, 298, 310. See also Andalusia; Sevillanos Shabad, Goldie, 18, 324n4 Share, David, 52, 329n5 Shore, Chris, 172, 319, 324n7, 327n6, 331n4 Shubert, Adrian, 13 Single European Act, 21, 61 Single European market, 21, 63, 284, 297 Smith, M. Estellie, 331n7 Smith, Neal, 188 Smith, W. Rand, 333n2 Soares, Mario, 181–82 Social classes. See Class; Middle classes; Upper-middle class and elites; Working class Socialists. See Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) Society: and civil society, 13, 34, 151, 152, 155, 319–22, 326n4; and “societal corporatism,” 49 Sofos, Spyros A., 324n7 Solana, Javier, 294 Solchaga, Carlos, 214 Solé-Vilanova, J., 328n2

380

Index

Solidarity: and anti-Expo protests, 284; and Cartuja ’93, 296; and Expo, 33, 83, 85, 88–89, 132, 134, 288, 296; and liberalism, 14, 316, 326n4; and personalism, 319; and Poland, 184, 288; and Seville, 272–73 South Korea, 73, 187, 202 Soviet Union, 63, 73, 169, 184. See also Russia Spain: and age of discoveries, 3, 57, 203, 207–8; and central and eastern Europe, 6; change in, 225–38; and classic liberalism, 13–26; and cosmopolitan liberalism, 6, 30–34, 203–4, 243–44, 273, 315–22; cultural identity of, 9, 38, 57, 62–63, 68, 154, 203–22, 225, 253, 261–62, 318–19, 332n2; and EC/EU, 5–6, 15, 20, 22–23, 60–61, 63–64, 74; economy of, 61, 110–11, 132, 205, 217, 296, 297–301; ethnonationalism in, 205, 211, 212, 332n1; as Europe’s Europe, 203, 221; and European Parliament, 23, 319; and Expo goals, 5, 30–33, 57, 74–75, 81–82, 104, 204–5, 221–22, 225–26; image of, 5–6, 29–30, 57, 63–64, 74, 81–83, 203–22, 225; and imperialism, 39; integration of, in EC/EU, 15, 63–64, 74, 237; and links with Islamic Mediterranean, 6; and links with Latin America, 6, 23, 38–41, 50, 57, 61, 66, 193, 198–99, 203, 205–6, 294–95, 312, 332n2; and links with United States, 15–16, 39–40, 61; and Maastricht Treaty, 23–24, 170–71, 215, 222, 237; membership of, in EC/EU, 20, 22–23, 61, 178, 277; as a microcosm of European cultural pluralism and diversity, 203, 222; and the military, 15, 17, 57, 174, 295; and modernization, 61, 225; and nationalism, 30, 43, 45–46, 57, 62–63, 81–91, 317; and the new Europe, 204–5, 221, 222, 251; and the new world order, 5–6, 23, 30, 74, 75, 78, 253, 296, 325n9; “political class” of, 26, 107, 129, 151, 294, 318; political culture of, 150–51, 318–20; and

religion, 17–18, 82; role of, in EC/EU, 21, 23–25, 61, 199; and tourism, 253–54; and transition from Franco to democracy, 5, 18–19, 34, 37–38, 40, 42–43, 225, 317; unemployment in, 17, 24, 47, 298. See also New Spain Spanish-American Development Bank, 67 Spanish liberalism and liberalization. See Liberalism and liberalization, Spanish Spiegel, Steven, 43, 325n9, 329n1 State. See Nation-state Stolcke, Verena, 170 Story, Jonathan, 324n2, 325n9, 329n1 Suárez, Adolfo, 16–17, 25, 40 Sullivan, John, 329n3 Summerhill, Stephen J., 324n8, 333n2 Sweden, 182, 233, 285 Switzerland, 184–86, 203, 241–42, 259 Syria, 201 Taylor, Paul, 331nn2,3 Teba, Juan, 118, 328n3 Tejero, coup attempt of, 18–19 Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio, 323n5 Terrorism: versus legitimate protests, 284–86; strategies against, 69, 128, 211, 283, 298; threats of, 127–28, 204, 210, 321. See also ETA terrorism Thailand, 73, 187, 202 Theme parks. See Magic Island; Metropolitan Space for Culture and Amusement; Park of Discoveries Tolerance: and Expo, 11, 192, 281–88; and liberalism, 14, 34, 319–22 Toulmin, Stephen, 325n3 Touraine, Alain, 142, 227 Tourism: and Expo, 102–3, 163, 251–66, 272; in Seville, 4, 8–9; in Spain, 253–54 Tovias, Alfred, 22 Tradition: and Aracena, 7, 276–80; ethnographic study of, 7, 10–11, 323n1; and Expo, 90–91, 162, 211, 214, 220–21, 253–54; and modernity, 7–13, 211, 214, 218, 221, 253–54, 276–80; and Seville, 7–9, 10–11; and

Index tensions with cosmopolitan liberalism, 30–31, 155, 276–80; and transnationalism, 91; and world fairs, 9–10 Trillo de Leyva, Manuel, 328n1 Tuñon de Lara, Manuel, 324n4 Turkey, 285 Turner, Victor, 330n1 Unemployment (para): in Andalusia, 47–48, 248; and decretazo, 248, 282; and PSOE, 17, 20, 48; in Seville, 8, 111, 292, 298, 310; in Spain, 17, 24, 47, 298; and strikes, 23, 247–50, 282–83 Union(s): and Expo accidents, 126; and labor strikes, 23, 247–50, 282–83; and Spanish Constitution, 17 Unión Centro Democrático (UCD): during 1970s and 1980s, 17–20, 25, 42, 97, 118; and Expo, 25, 42 Unión Temporal de Empresas (UTE), 101 United Kingdom: and EC/EU, 20, 63–64, 174, 186; and Expo attendance, 230; Expo pavilion of, 175, 176–77, 179, 186; and Expo support, 63–64 United Nations, 77, 90, 134 United States: and aid to Spain during Franco regime, 15; and Canada, 191–92, 202; and Chicago bid for 1992 celebrations, 7, 41–42, 65, 188; and end of the Cold War, 320; Expo participation of, 188–91, 202, 221; Expo pavilion of, 73, 77, 187–93, 233; and globalization, 315; and Latin America, 42, 198; and Puerto Rico, 192–94; and Spanish liberalization, 15; and tourism, 253; visit of Juan Carlos to, 38–40 Universal expositions and world fairs: in Australia, 64, 73, 77; in Barcelona, 38, 44; in Calcutta, 42; in Canada, 64, 73, 77; and capitalism, 10, 11, 41, 81, 234; categories of, 3, 41–42, 55; in Chicago, 7, 41–42, 65, 188; and consumerism, 10, 41, 81; and Europeanism, 63–64, 312; in Germany, 312; in Guatemala, 42; in Hanoi, 42;

381

and imperialism, 10, 42; in Japan, 64, 73, 200; in Lisbon, 312; in London, 9, 41, 64, 159; and mass culture, 9–10, 234–35; in Montreal, 6; and nationalism, 10, 81; in New York, 41; in Osaka, 42; in Paris, 41–43, 159, 177; and politics of culture and identity, 11, 41; in Portugal, 182, 312; and power, 10, 41, 187; and racism, 10; social and cultural significance of, 10, 41, 187–88; study of, 6–7, 9–11, 25–26, 324n8; in Tasmania, 42; and technology, 10, 78–79; in Vancouver, 61, 192; and Western civilization, 10, 41. See also Bureau of International Expositions (BIE); Expo Upper-middle class and elites: economic conditions of, 47–48; and Expo, 95, 97, 228, 236, 238, 244, 261; and 1929 exposition, 46 Urla, Jaqueline, 331n2 Urunuela, Luis, 329n6 USSR. See Russia; Soviet Union Valencia, 62, 215, 242, 330n2. See also Autonomous regions of Spain Vancouver, 61, 192 Van Der Dussen, Jan, 331n7 Vatican, 64, 267 Veit, Walter, 324n3, 331n5 Venezuela, 67, 68, 77 Verdery, Katherine, 34 Verdú, Vicente, 81 Voting. See Elections Wages, 17, 247–48, 249 Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, 331n3 Waldrin, Jacqueline, 333n1 Walesa, Lech, 184, 199, 231 Walker, R. B. J., 331n5 Washington, D.C., 38–40 Whitehead, Alan, 330n2 Wiarda, Howard, 332n2 Wicker, Hans-Rudolf, 329n2, 331n5, 335n6 Wigg, Richard, 21 Wilk, Richard, 32

382

Index

Williams, John A., 324n8, 333n2 Williams, Raymond, 324n8, 329n1 Wilson, Kevin, 331n7 Wilson, Thomas M., 331nn5,7 Working class: economic conditions of, 47–48; and Expo, 95, 111–12, 137, 235–38, 274–75; and 1929 exposition, 46; and PCE, 19; and PSA/PA, 119, 328n3; and PSOE, 48–49, 52, 249, 328n3; in Seville, 8–9, 112, 137, 192 World Bank, 15, 315, 333n2 World fairs. See Universal expositions and world fairs World order. See New world order World Track and Field Championships, 309 World War I, 259 World War II, 259 Yáñez, Luis: background of, 50; and candidates for alcalde of Seville, 119–22; and candidates for Expo commissioner general, 50, 53, 55, 117; as director

general of fifth centenary, 50, 57–58, 119, 121–22, 124; and Expo closing ceremony, 294–95; and Expo history, 327n2; as head of Institute of IberoAmerican Cooperation, 50; and Olivencia, 54–55, 57–58, 117; as secretary of state for international cooperation, 119; and Sevillanos, 113 Yeltsin, Boris, 201 Zabusky, Stacia, 171, 327n6 Zacarías, devotion to, 79 Zaldívar, Carlos Alonso, 205, 262, 325nn8,10, 333n2 Zamora, Paz, 197 Zapatero, Virgilio: and Andalusia, 220, 291; and Expo closing ceremonies, 291, 292; and Expo finances, 300; and Expo passes, 141; Expo responsibilities of, 71, 96, 291, 300; and Olivencia, 96 Zetterholm, Staffan, 334n1 Zimbabwe, 202