Elena BERBERANA and Nayib BUKELE – EL4DEV Hispanic Renaissance – Book analysis.pdf

Elena BERBERANA and Nayib BUKELE – EL4DEV Hispanic Renaissance – Book analysis

This book by Paul Elvere Valérien DELSART presents itself as a hybrid work: both a piece of social fiction staged
through a dialogued narrative and a civilizational manifesto proposing a model for political, cultural, and
ecological transformation based on citizen participation and technology. The author uses performative fiction,
that is, a narrative that does not merely describe a project but brings it into existence by telling it, in order to lay the
foundations for a possible future. The reader thus witnesses a meeting, debates, analyses, and strategic
projections in which a local elected official, a young woman from Generation Z, experts and analysts, a media figure, a
head of state, and a visionary entrepreneur become the characters of an operational utopia.

1. The Hispanic Renaissance: a cultural and civilizational reconfiguration

The text develops an ambitious vision of a Hispanic Renaissance that is neither nostalgic nor identitarian. Instead, it
refers to the regeneration of a transatlantic cultural space founded on shared values: solidarity, creativity, popular
sovereignty, cooperation, and social justice. The author evokes this renewal through the activation of a living Hispanic
world, not as a fixed essence but as a civilizational force in motion, carried by territories as different as a small town
in Spain’s Valencian Community (Torreblanca, Castellón) and Nayib BUKELE’s El Salvador. This Renaissance is
not about restoring an imperial past but about inventing a future in which Hispanic societies become laboratories of
social, ecological, and technopolitical transformation.

2. The “Reconquista” reinterpreted: a peaceful Reconquista of social territories

The book reclaims the term Reconquista, but radically repositions it. It is in no way a military reference: the author
describes it as a Reconquista of the territories of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, understood as a
citizen-led, ecological, and community-based reappropriation of public spaces, villages, the local economy, and
even the political future. This “Reconquista EL4DEV,” or “Reconquista 3.0,” or “Reconquista of Small Towns and
Villages,” fits within the logic of the EL4DEV program and aims to revive forgotten territories, revitalize social
bonds, rebuild popular sovereignty, and reconnect Spain and Latin America within a living network of local
experiments. It is therefore not a reconquest through domination, but a reconquest through cooperation and
participation.

3. A decentralized societal geopolitical alliance

The book proposes what could be called a decentralized societal geopolitical alliance: a network no longer built
around nation-states or their diplomatic elites, but around experimental territories, enterprising local communities,
influential and benevolent journalists, disruptive technological actors, courageous municipalities, and regenerative citystates. This alliance rests on three pillars:
1. Participatory technology, with the BIG SMART DATA EL4DEV, designed to measure and guide citizen
initiatives.