"Caudillo de Hispania". Viriatus in the national Spanish collective imagination

Abstract

In shaping national identities in some European countries once conquered by Rome, and with a history of resistance to military conquest, their pre-Roman past provides leading figures settled in to the national story, sometimes as prominently as Vercingétorix in France or Arminius in Germany. More than to the old city of Numantia as a whole, in Spain that role as symbolic hero has been assigned to Viriatus. This paper explores the ways in which this figure has been considered in a variety of Spanish cultural products (literary works, plays, historiographical texts), retaining some fixed meanings over the time.