A Spanish Disquisition: How one European nation can distinguish itself.

The subjective Geiger counter registers a lessening of anti-American sentiment, if only by comparison with France and Germany and the green wastes of Scandinavia.

Thanks in part to the conservative government of President Jose Maria Aznar, which five years ago succeeded the dreary socialism of Felipe Gonzalez. Another leavening influence may be the presentiment among some Spaniards that the future of the peninsula rests with the United States and an imaginative expansion of NAFTA across the seas to the British Isles and Iberia. Yes, Spain and perfidious Albion, longtime rival powers, may be destined to become bosom trading pals. Should this happen, it will be thanks to the wisdom and prescience of Francisco Franco, an ogre to politically correct Spaniards, much as McCarthy is to the liberally correct in America.

On July 10, in the cultural section of Madrid's venerable ABC, a headline proclaimed: "United States May Be the Launching Pad of the Spaniard in the 21st Century, or His Cemetery." The sense of the headline is cryptic. The report was of the annual meeting of the Cervantes Institute, at which its director, Jon Juaristi, delivered an address in which he noted the burgeoning global economic importance of the Spaniard. Prof. Gonzalo Gomez Dacal of the University of Salamanca noted that Spaniards (meaning, Hispanics) in the United States are a "value in ascension," the population of 35.3 million Spanish-speaking immigrants displacing blacks as the most numerous minority and dominating the politics of such major cities as Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. The strength of this minority, declared Sr. Juaristi, resides not only in its numbers (which are projected to grow phenomenally), but in its manner of assimilation. The Hispanic immigrant "doesn't reject his roots, and the more cultured he is, not only the better does he speak English, but the more does he resist losing his maternal tongue." In "the near future," Juaristi predicts, the United States will provide (an unspecified) maximum potential for people of Spanish blood and become their "launching pad in the 21st century." Spain and (foremost) Mexico will play major roles in the political implications of this phenomenon, and must take advantage of it "from the point of view of cultural investment."

As reported, these are murky asseverations. Where the cemetery referenced to by the headline comes in, the article does not get around to. Explicit is the recommendation that Spain exploit the opportunity of furthering Spanish interests through the agency of Hispanic immigration into the United States, and plainly implicit is the heralding of an historical opportunity for Spain to serve as the New World's wedge in the European Union, the enchantment of which is fast tarnishing as the autocratic temperament of Brussels expresses itself more and more egregiously; by such, for a recent example, as its desire to slap a 2.5 percent surtax on member nations. (As commentator Jose Maria Garcia-Hoz wrote bitingly the other day, "The European Union can fail because Europe has no Europeans." He added, "The European voter doesn't want changes in his country or in his way of life . . . He invests his money yonder, where he sees the most future [for it]: on the other side of the Atlantic.")

Back in the 1960s, Franco's minister of foreign affairs, Fernando Maria Castiella, sedulously cultivated Spain's former colonies in the New World (not excluding Communist Cuba) while at the same time courting the favor of Morocco and other North African states (by, among other measures, declining to recognize Israel). Franco sought access to markets; but on the far horizon he envisaged an international role for Spain as broker for both North Africa and Latin America in Europe, a development logically evolving (in his mind) from historical connections reaching back to the 5th century in North Africa's case, to the 15th in the New World's. He relinquished Rio de Oro, former "Spanish Morocco," retaining just the two outposts of Melilla and Ceuta. In Latin America he sought to change Spain's image from detested tyrant to loving (and respectful) mother (which is why Fidel Castro and such as the Sandinistas of Nicaragua were not excluded from the maternal embrace). The stress of this policy was cultural: in the case of North Africa, acknowledgement of the vast inheritance by Spain in language, art, verse, customs, mysticism, and modes of intellection from the Berbers and their descendants; in the case of Latin America, the reverse: the obvious cultural descendancy of those nations, including language and religion.

Spain is European and supports the Union. But Spain is also Moorish, fiercely independent, indirect, labyrinthine, and canny. From the point of view of a panoply of interests, it would requite Spain to position herself independently and beneficially within the European Union by continuing to cultivate her special ties to Latin America and, through her Hispanic children, her growing cultural influence in the United States; and by joining a North Atlantic trading association that would include the British Isles and possibly Portugal . . . and might even cross the straits into North Africa.

And oh, wouldn't this give the likes of Jacques Chirac, Lionel Jospin, Gerhard Schroder, Joschka Fischer, and European Commission president Romano Prodi a fit!