Qtd. Brennan 45 (orig.: Williams 180).

As Benedict Anderson remarks, the language of kinship and home «denote [s] something to which one is naturally tied [...] the family has traditionally been conceived as the domain of disinterested love and solidarity [...] Just for that reason [...] the state can ask for sacrifices» (144).

In Amor a la Patria love of nation over family is further emphasized when María kills Pedro, albeit in ignorance of the fact that he is her lost brother. Ramos signals that Acuña again privileges patriotic over maternal love in her subsequent drama, La voz de la Patria (1893), in which Aragonese women send their sons off to fight in the contemporary war in Morocco (87).

As José Luis Aranguren indicates: «Toda la oposición ideológica al Régimen isabelino, desde la extrema derecha del carlismo foralista hasta la extrema izquierda del federalismo cooperativista y anarquizante, pasando por el progresismo economista y por el krausismo, coincide en la lucha contra 'la fnesta centralización'... Por los más opuestos caminos, el del individualismo a ultranza y el del socialismo, todos tienden a esta común aspiración de descentralización» (114).

For the nineteenth-century Spanish liberals, the Comuneros are perceived as their forerunners and their struggle is «la lucha del pueblo contra la monarquía, de la libertad contra el absolutismo» (Pérez 237, 239). J. H. Elliott expresses similar sentiments, remarking that «something else had been defeated at Villalar which would not rise again: Castilian liberty, crushed and defenseless in face of the restored royal power» (163).

Described as «the last of the warrior-prelates of Castile, and the most formidable of them all», Acuña sided with the rebels after being expelled from the town by those who questioned his right to his diocese. He was captured after the defeat of the Comuneros at Villalar and executed five years later at Simancas (see Elliott 157-58). For a more detailed account of Acuña's role in the uprising of the Comuneros, see Pérez 114-20.

This notion is derived from Álvarez Junco's declaration that «[c]on Carlos V, la identificación entre los éxitos de la monarquía y 'España' se hizo más difícil. No sólo era el rey inconfundiblemente flamenco, sino que tenía en muy superior estima a la corona imperial que a las de Castilla, Aragón, Navarra y Granada» (52).

With regard to whether or not the conversos provoked the uprising of the Comuneros, see Pérez (195-209), who argues that there were were conversos both within the rebels and the supporters of Charles V, but that they motivated more by politics than by reasons associated with religion.

I place «race» within quotation marks to indicate that it is a racist, ideological construct. For a full explanation of this position, see Gerda Lerner (184-97).

Consequently, Sorolla declares to Cabanillas: «¡Si tenéis las entrañas de la fiera / y el alma por el vicio emponzoñada!» (46) and «del amor del tigre no me fío» (47).