McGuigan is just like everybody else in his casual “Spain is not real Europe” approach. In a discussion of free and cheap higher ed in Europe he even mentions fucking Schleswig-Holstein, but not Spain.
Africa Begins in the Pyrenees
Opinions, art, debate
Clarissa's Blog 
Africa is a better continent than Europe anyways. This is especially true regarding Spain. When Spain was part of Africa under the Moors it was far more advanced than the countries to its north east. When it was part of Europe it had Franco and Civil War.
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It’s absolutely true that Muslim Spain was the high point for the Iberian peninsula. I gave a public lecture on just that subject yesterday.
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“Muslim Spain was the high point for the Iberian peninsula”
Was it though? It’s my understanding that a lot of claims about Muslim Spain aren’t supported by the archeological record (recently confirmed to me by a young specialist in Iberian archeology). How much was PR and how much was genuine?
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This is not the purview of archeology.
Plus, who’d be doing the PR? In Spain, it was downright dangerous to mention it and since then nobody has cared or had the money. Outside of Spain, nobody but a couple of American medievalists have worked on the subject.
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“This is not the purview of archeology.”
Physical remains are the purview of archeology and it’s my understanding that texts describe specific conditions in specific places (the PR, maybe) that cannot be verified archeologically.
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So Africa begins at the Pyrenees and Asia begins at the East gates of Vienna. Europe is pretty small.
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Europe is England, Germany, France, and the rest are just wannabes.
I hate this approach.
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“Europe is England, Germany, France, and the rest are just wannabes.”
I thought that steretotype was the German, French, Dutch and Italian speaking parts and maybe Denmark.
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Do t forget Germans are Huns too.
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