The Visualisation of the Others Throughout Spanish History: Utilities and Harm

Constructing identity has been, and still is, a continuous political and populist duty. Throughout history, societies have been established based not on anthropological factors, nor on conventional social contracts, but on fear of the other, which makes fear and othering substantive elements of society, social memory and identity. When these elements of fear and othering persist as a structural framework of the collective memory, becoming part of contemporary social dimensions, the condition transforms into a chronic social disorder. From a post-truth threat, when past representation of the othering persists into the contemporaneous social imagination, it becomes a hybrid threat against social peace and interpersonal cohesion. War triumphs and depictions of battles, persecutions or exclusions, which have been incorporated into heraldic representations, national anthems and even names of places and cities, have become a chronic symptom of social schizophrenia. This proposal will discuss the elements of national identity, following the Spanish example throughout history, by analysing today's living memory of Spanish heraldic symbolism, place names and other institutional elements of othering.