Madrid will have a new monument called the Thirds, a sculptural group of about three meters high that will remind the popular Army units of the House of Austria dissolved in 1704, sculpted by Salvador Amaya on the sketch of the painter Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.The initiative emerged from the 31 of January Association, formed by young people passionate about the history of the thirds, has taken strength to be sponsored by the newly created art and history Ferrer-Dalmau and has the approval of the Madrid City Council, whichHe is looking for accommodation.Probably in the surroundings of the Paseo de la Castellana.

The loan monument could be framed in a movement for the nationalist statute in Madrid that has developed in recent years, as we will see later, and responds at the same time to a recent fashion for the history of thirds.They can be found in the market novels - many more than the Alatriste de Pérez Reverte–, comics (for example, Alonso de Contreras, edited by AwakeThirds are fashionable and very present in certain corners of last minute popular culture.

Recently, the doctor in contemporary history Daniel Aquillué promoted a survey from his Twitter account in which he asked, what armed force has had more influence on the configuration of what is now the Spanish state-nation?The thirds of Flanders were the most voted option, with 33.2%of the 2,226 votes harvested, followed by the Civil Guard (32.7%), the Bourbon Army of the 18th century (20.9%) and the national militia(13.2%).

The result surprised the historian himself from a historiographic point of view, since the existence of thirds during the 16th and 17th centuries does not coincide with the training process of Spain as a nation-state.As explained by Aquillué himself, they were a unit of dynastic loyalty, which served a king and not a nation.

The electoral victory of the image of the thirds as a valid of the Spanish, however, is not strange to the present, by the fashion of the spicy, the arcabuz and the sword with Rodela that we referred to before;nor totally novel, as a depositary of the Hispanic honor of the Austrias, as opposed to a theoretical bourbon decay.

The interest in thirds is evident and is finding institutional accommodation in Madrid of the PP.The January 31 Association, which promotes this date as the day of thirdnext Friday 28 (where the latest news about the monument will be reported);A historicist recreation in the Plaza de la Villa on Saturday, and the second edition of the History Days of the Thirds, which will take place between January 31 and February 3, with the assistance of numerous specialists in the field.The statutes of this association, explain from the same to this medium, deny any political use of history.

Urban Geography of the New Nationalist Monumental Policy

An analysis of the monuments inaugurated by the Madrid City Council in recent years teaches us that the Popular Party did not show much attention to the stone policy during the mandates of Alberto Ruiz Gallardón and Ana Botella, although under the journey of the latter oneIt inaugurated what we could consider the first milestone in the nationalist turn of the Madrid monumental politics: the statue dedicated to Admiral Blas de Lezo in the Plaza de Colón.

This monument begins some constants that we will see repeated from now on: the name of a sculptor (Salvador Amaya, which would later be associated with the painter Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau as a bitter);The claim of a name that was not among the traditional sanctuary of Spanish nationalism to date, but whose figure had obtained great popularity recently in a public sphere formed by avatars in social networks and demonstrations of popular culture, and its impulse throughA popular lobbism, since the promotion of projects will be carried out through citizen entities and popular questions.

It is a presence in the public space that is born from the cultural debate of the right and is well received in its institutional representation, which goes beyond what researcher Michael Billig called banal nationalism - the presence already naturalized, subtle, of symbols of symbolsand habits of national identity.The deployment in the space of a proposal on the national identity that combines classic themes of Spanish nationalism with new candidates of old flavor, which emphasizes the imperial past and the desire for its reflection in our globalized world.

The urban geography of the new nationalist statute is not casual either.If the trend was inaugurated in the Plaza de Colón, central stage on the right in recent years - Guinness, Masses and Unitary Manifestation in 2019 -, the location of other sculptural projects in preeminent places of the city, with color inaugurations included, they also draw a significant line.

It happened with the armed statue to the last of the Philippines in Chamberí, the giant legionary announced for the Plaza de Oriente (at the initiative of the Army Museum Foundation and promoted through a crowdfunding), or the statue in the retirement dedicated to JuanaI of Castilla, who initially wanted to pass as a tribute to the community members.In the absence of the exact location, there is talk of the Paseo de la Castellana for the group dedicated to the thirds.

The cartographic journey of this patriotic hyperrealism is consistent with the traditional that of the right of the second half of the twentieth century towards the Prado-Recoletos-Castellana axis and its escape from the old Madrid, except in the case of the iconic Plaza de Oriente.It is also, if you want, a tour that reuses the bourgeois widenA Madrid that has become a worldwide tourist city.

As at the right -wing meeting in Columbus, the national element - with its different intensities and sensibilities - acts as a vertebrate element in this motionless staging on public space.As it happened with the reddish flag, the increasingly present Cruz de Burgundy, so attached to the imaginary about thirds, can mean different things according to those who carry it.For some, it can only be a historical reference, for others, to move a patriotic feeling in the wake of the monumentalism to which we are referring.Somewhere in the environment of this characterization of the cross of San Andrés and the thirds, we will also find the land where the different members of the extreme right are shown with the chest.

The Cross (or Aspa) of Burgundy is a variant of the cross of San Andrés, present in arms shields and in the flags of Spain since the beginning of the 16th century.He disappeared from the coat of arms of the King of Spain in the reign of Felipe VI, although he remained for a long time the emblem used by the army and even today is present in various military flags, such as the Royal Guard.

The symbol was used by the Carlist Requeté during the War of 36 - if in this characterization the blades are symmetrical - and in the transition by new force.During the pandemic, it has become relatively common to see masks with the Burgundy cross drawn on white fabric and has been very present in manifestations of the right and the extreme right, which has appropriated the emblem quite evident.

In the thirties, some fascist elements made the statue of Quijote in the Plaza de España, meeting place because it seems that he raised the arm to La Romana, according to Ramón J. Sender in a 1933 article entitled The greeting of Don Quijote and The researchers Ana Fernández Cebrián and Víctor Pueyo explain. The Cervantino text was then an element of national construction of the State and, even though it did not touch the usual genealogy of gestures and conquests, it was tried to instrumentalize by the extreme right groups, in full boiling. That of thirds is, without a doubt, a story that can be understood and analyzed from many points of view in historiography, and an issue that has penetrated the interest of many history fans. A statue of third instrumentalized by the extreme right?