Nativismandtransnationalism 31 be seen that other similar and none the less significant cases exist. Above all reference is made to the English and Swiss cases. It was a sort of commonplace; in spite of the Napoleonic appearance, Spain woulcf be a nation whose Law would resemble the less codified case, the British or Anglo-saxon one, the Common Law, also with its Statute Law and, at the American variant especially, with its Constitutional Law. But as far as substantive effects are concerned, these are mere references. There are some attempts to receive an English and American influx in the political field, but in the civil case the indication of any parallelismgoes no further. In spite of the conscience and the purpose, what did not exist then, within the first decades after the Code, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, was the development and elaboration of such a possibility, that of an effective approach of the Spanish legal order to cases alien to the Napoleonic model. This other paradigm is not built here but with the most nativist materials. Nativists are aware of others, but no profit is obtained out of them. Such a transnationalismwas a traffic sign for a road with no transit. Given that the blockade is a general phenomenon instead of the diagnosis of any particular author, some questions arise: Why did it happen? Why couldn’t an advance from an introspection of liberty to an extraversion of Law be achieved? Why was this overcoming of nationalismimpossible? I think I could suggest some reply. The codification was locked within the nation, but none of this was its effect. Transnationalism, that traffic sign, was not. It is known that codes create their own internationalism, not only their formulas of mutual acknowledgment, but their basis of common understanding, of sharing a culture, but all this precisely on the basis of the nationalism, the general authority and the sufficiency of the national legislations, which was not our case. Besides, since nativism was not confined to the codification, its blockade could not be caused by this. We have been situated in other coordinates. The answer may prove to be quite more simple. The only foreign, contemporary juridical culture that was known was that corresponding to codification, essentially the French one,*’ and that was precisely what was rejected. The aim was for a change of culture, but no alternative was really known. The knowledge existed that the Swiss political structure or the English private Law was something different, but such experiences were not known enough to make them become something of its own, to make use of them. But this was not so excessively easy either. Let us put ourselves in such a situation. There is indeed a proven ignorance, but also a proven difficulty. How could such an effective separation with the culture of codes and such a Manuel Torres Campos, Bibliografia contemporanea espanola del Derecho y de la Poh'tica [ 1800-1896], Gui'a de los juristas y politicos, Madrid 1883-1897.
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