The herd, once roused, can be far more destructive than the beast on its own

From Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett an account of Spain's efforts to come to terms with its 1936-39 Civil War.

The poet Machado had written: 'Little Spaniard who is coming into this world, may God protect you. One of the two Spains will freeze your heart.' Now, some people claimed, the two Spains were beginning to reappear. Ideas of 'them' and 'us,' of 'if you are not my friend, you are my enemy' were becoming increasingly powerful. Aznar, especially, seemed to encourage them. There were many on the other side of the political barricades who were happy to return the treatment.

Old fault lines re-emerged. Travelling back to Barcelona or talking to some people in the Basque Country, especially, was becoming increasingly strange. It was not so much a question of entering a different country, as of finding oneself in a different mental space. Opinions rarely heard in Madrid were commonplace in Catalonia and the Basque country - and vice versa. Spain felt not just divided, but schizophrenic.

Las Dos Espanas, the Two Spains, seem to have something to do with the Spanish love of forming groups and clans. Spaniards like to move en masse, to belong to large gaggles. They celebrate, they demonstrate, in huge throngs - their enjoyment increased by the numbers with them. It is one of the great and enviable things about Spain to an outsider. This is a country where no politician, from left or right, would dream of echoing Margaret Thatcher's words that 'there is no such thing as Society.' Where anglosajones do things on their own or with their families, Spaniards often do them by the coach-load. They like the warmth, the solidarity, the sense of belonging that groups give them. That, perhaps, is why their towns and cities pack people together, ignoring the acres of open space around them. Individuality, I discovered when my own children reached school age, can be viewed with suspicion. There is something potentially dangerous, however, about these groups. Individual squabbles can turn into group squabbles. The herd, once roused, can be far more destructive than the beast on its own.

This is my concern in the US. Advocates for various groups with some sense of historical injustice, often attempt to build coalitions through emphasis on the group and the idea of Us versus Them. Intellectually it is understandable but I think, as Americans, they lack a sense of world history that so powerfully speaks against such divisionalism.