¡Santiago y cierra, España!

¡Santiago y cierra, España! is a Spanish-language phrase. The invoking of the apostle's name (Santiago, James in English) is said to have been a common battle cry of Christian soldiers in medieval Iberia and beyond into the Early Modern Period.^[1] The full form, using a conjugated form of the verb cerrar,^{[n. 1]} is recorded since the late-16th and 17th centuries.^[1] It made a comeback in 1930s Spain as it became the motto of Ramiro de Maeztu's right-wing magazine Acción Española.^[1] As a reminiscence of a mythicized look on the middle ages, embedded in narratives of the "Recovery" of Catholic Spain against the [Muslim] Other-enemy-invader, it has thus been historically embraced as a political slogan by arch-conservative milieus of Spanish society.^[1] As a nationalist symbolic banner, the phrase has been a staple within far-right discourses in Spain, developed in war-related and national self-affirmation contexts.^[2]

Saint James, represented by 17th-century painter Francisco Camilo as a Moor-slayer and with the Cross of Saint James as an attribute.

Notes

1. According to Pedro de Ribadeneira, as a synonym of acometer (transl. assail).^[1]

References

1. Linares, Lidwine (2012). "¡Santiago y cierra, España!". Les Cahiers de Framespa. 10 (10). doi:10.4000/framespa.1552.
2. García García, Jesús (2023). "Ideología y exclusión. Nacionalismo antimusulmán de ayer a hoy". In Álvarez Díaz, Katia; Cotán Fernández, Almudena (eds.). Educar, comunicar, sociabilizar en la heterogeneidad. Madrid: Dykinson. p. 54. ISBN 978-84-1170-355-0.