NATI VISM ANDTRANSNATIONALISM Code itself. But that was a problematic question because of social resistance which ranged fromnoble usages to peasant customs, passing through commercial and industrial interests, all of them opposed to a legal partition of inheritances. This concrete line of resistance constitutes in Spain one of the essential directions of nourishment and maintenance of the Derechosforales in opposition to the Civil Cocfe. After 1889 there is, in some territories, with the Dcrecho[oral, those st^cial traditions and new interests of successory disposition; in others, with the Civil Code, the regime of hereditary division. But we are not interested now in a geography but in a paradigm. The first system, the testamentary regime, is not maintained as mere rough usages, but under a mentality and a doctrine, according to what we already know. It could be understood that, whilst the Code represented an order of legislative imposition, the Derecho foral responded to an inspiration of liberty, a Libertad de testar (freedomof testation) which would be, in its turn, a manifestation of the Libertad civil (civil liberty), a more primarial, more important liberty, finally, than the political one.'^ We are in front of an expression of those ideas of autonomy and autodetermination which were confronted to the codification. To return to our point, what possibility of transnationalistic, not only nativist, elaboration was offered at the time? Of the culture of codification which was most available nothing could be expected; the freedom of testation was even taken to mean the restricted possibility of successory disposition allowed by the Code; thus liberty was not a principle of autonomy which would preside the regulation on the subject, but a result of the systemdecided and established by the law. This culture of codification being ruled out, what was left? England was looked at, but neither in the English legal precedents did a treatment of the successory matter exist under such principle of liberty; on the contrary, what was offered was an image of an order, although established by social usage rather than by statute law, the politically decided norm. The written works on Common Law, whether responding or not in a greater measure to a reality and inspiration of liberties than those of Civil Law, which is not the question now as stated above, was thus produced most refractorily to any possibility of communication. It is not a surprise that the traffic sign did not direct any traffic whatsoever. England was in an island with no bridge to any European shore. However some tunnel, some subterranean communication might exist, although not between liberties. From the Spanish side some resemblances are pointed out, but no approach is attempted. From the English side it was attempted in regard to the successory matter. I know of an attempt at least, a " Bartolomé Clavero, Formacion doctrinal contemporanea del derecho Catalan de sucesiones: La primogenitura de la libertad, in Catedra Duran i Bas, La reforma de la Compilaciö: El sistema successor!, Barcelona 1985, pp. 9—37. 33
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