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> Poles, Hungarians and Spaniards share a thousand-long common history of being part of Christian Europe, under Roman Christianity Not at all. That's a mirage in which some people want to believe. Spain went through the gothic kingdoms, the emirate of Granada, the Reconquista, the Habsburg dynasty, to name a few. Poland saw nothing of that, and was not even part of the Roman Empire in the first place. They went through various wars and conquests with theirs own neighbours, some of the various bits of the Holy Roman Empire, the various baltic and Russian states, and Sweden, but there is almost no overlap with what was going on in Spain. Hungary was a very fringe frontier province in the Roman Empire and the cultural consequences are very different. And again, they were in very different situations, being much closer to the Ottoman Empire for a while and having to deal with the various bits of what is now Romania. Russia is a European country, but again the local culture looks very different. On the other hand, Spain has a couple of centuries of history in common with North Africa. Ties between Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia on one side and France on the other are strong because of the shared history and the number of binational individuals and families. This is the same everywhere: countries have strong ties with their neighbours, and this does not stop at the EU's boundaries. Even the supposedly close religious beliefs created a deep chasm in most of Europe. Large regions of Europe are muslim, there always has been a Jewish minority across the whole continent, and even amongst Christians, how many wars fo religions were fought over the centuries? Europe makes no sense from an ethnic point of view. It is a collection of very diverse people even though there are some cultural and historical aspects in common, and a belief that the future is better if we stop fighting each other. This is why European nationalism is not a thing. |