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| Juan Vásquez de Mella y Fanjul (8 June 1861—26 February 1928) |
A people declines and dies when its internal moral unity is broken, and an entire generation appears—disbelieving—regarding itself as a broken link in the chain of the centuries, unaware that without the community of tradition there is no Fatherland; that the Fatherland is not formed by the soil we tread, nor the atmosphere we breathe, nor the sun that shines upon us, but by that spiritual patrimony which previous generations have fashioned for us over the centuries, and which we have the right to perfect, to expand, to ennoble; but not to squander, not to destroy, not to allow to reach future generations diminished or not at all; that tradition, in the final analysis, is identified with progress, and there is no progress without tradition, nor true tradition without progress. Tradition means the transmission of a wealth of ideas, beliefs, aspirations, institutions, from one generation to another, founded upon a right and a duty: the right of the generation that has produced the patrimony—or part of the spiritual and material patrimony—of a people, that it pass on to the generations to come; and the duty of the generation that receives it to develop it, not to diminish or destroy it, and thus deprive those who follow of it. Upon this right of the preceding generation and upon this duty of the generation that follows rests the juridical foundation of tradition, which cannot be denied without murdering the Fatherland.Translation my own. Speech delivered in Santander, September 1916; published in Juan Vásquez de Mella, Textos de Doctrina Política, Preliminary Study, Selections and Notes by Rafael Gambra (Madrid, 1953), p.28.
A progress that were an extraordinary invention and did not rely upon tradition to transmit it would die at the very moment of its birth; and a tradition that added nothing to the inheritance received, indifferent to the demands of new needs, would be something dead and petrified, which would have to be set aside so as not to obstruct the channel of history through which the life of a nation flows. Therefore, while applauding progress—which consists only in successive perfection—it is necessary to feel as the Fatherland feels, to think as the Fatherland thinks, to love as the Fatherland loves; and for this it is necessary not to detach oneself from the chain of generations and to affirm those characteristics that no politician, nor any warrior, has fashioned, but which many generations and many centuries have shaped in collaboration with different races and peoples and diverse historical influences, which a single belief—serving as a golden clasp—joined together so as to seal our spirit with indelible marks.
