For many generations, and slightly today, the Commonwealth has viewed English culture as refined. Did any Latin America Latin American countries feel the same way about Spain or Portugal?

by facadesintheday
Funes1942

Well, I'm not an expert on the issue, so I'll be speaking as a common Latin American on this matter. I'm also a Chilean, so most of my examples will be limited to my country or the Southern Cone.

The relationship between Spain and Hispanic America is very peculiar, and I don't think that it is easily comparable to the one between England and the rest of the English speaking world. A key difference is that by the time the independence process began, Spain was a declining power; a mere shadow of its former greatness and power. This expressed itself both in economic and cultural contradictions. Economically, although Spain did not allow the production of manufactured products in the colonies, they did not have the industrial capacity to cover the demand for them. Naturally, this resulted in widespread smuggling, and the theoretically Spanish dominated America, ended up depending more on its trade with France, England and Holland than Spain.

Culturally, the situation in Spain seemed lackluster as well. The colonial elites started to distance themselves more and more from the 'Motherland', and to look to France and, to a lesser extent, England for new ideas. For example, Camilo Henríquez, one of leading intellectuals of the independence in Chile, was heavily influenced by Voltaire, Rosseau and other thinkers of the French Enlightenment. So were other Latin American intellectuals of the time, like Andrés Bello in Venezuela and Sarmiento in Argentina.

In this way, the independence processes of many South American countries can be understood as modernizing projects, that could only be achieved (or at least they thought so) by breaking, not only politically and economically but also culturally, with Spain. Accordingly, a particular kind of anti-hispanism developed in South America, or at least in the Southern Cone. Lastarria and Sarmiento are fine examples of this, and they constantly blamed the backwardness of the spanish heritage for all the continent's woes (unjustly in my opinion). While other authors (eg. Bello) had a more nuanced view on this, even they agreed on the need of America to find its own way away from Spain. As you'd imagine, this view only got worse after the defeat of Spanish in the American-Spanish war of 1898.

The fact that Spain remained economically backwards, with a level of development not very different to the South American average, and politically unstable, did not help much to improve the image of the former metropolis. This began to change, however, in the 70s, when Spain experimented a economic and cultural bloom following the fall of Franco.

edit: spelling

GeneralLeeFrank

In a sense, yes. In the old colonial caste system, it was the pure Spanish that held the top of the hierarchy, even to the peninsulares (Spanish-born but moved to the Americas). They [the Spanish] viewed americanos as tainted in a sense, even the pure blood Spanish over there were affected to their minds.

Granted this changed over time, as by the nineteenth century during the wars of independence in Latin America, many Latin American countries turned their attention towards Great Britain, France, and even the US. I would say that many wanted to be broadly more "European" rather than simply Spanish. Look at the "whitening" that happened in Argentina. That's a little more "racial" that what your question was asking for, but the sentiment is there: that they wanted more Europeanness in their country. I cannot tell you what the outlook is for the present though, I never really studied contemporary events.