Cure for Amnesia

Civil War legacy divides Spain

By Danny Wood  BBC News, Madrid

Spain is marking 70 years since the start of the Civil War.

The military uprising against the democratically elected government on 18 July 1936 led to three years of war and then four decades of fascist dictatorship under Gen Francisco Franco.

The anniversary of the beginning of the conflict comes as Spain's government prepares to approve a law designed to rehabilitate the victims of the Franco regime.

Some historians say there is a strange amnesia in Spain when it comes to seriously coming to terms with the Civil War. Seven decades later, Spaniards are still very divided about the causes of this conflict and how to deal with its consequences.

This three-year struggle is often regarded as a rehearsal for World War II.

Nazi Germany helped the Spanish generals attack their government, while Soviet Russia came to the aid of Spain's democratically elected administration. Thousands of foreign volunteers fought on both sides. About 250,000 people died during the conflict.

For Spain's military, backed by conservative political forces and the Roman Catholic Church, the Civil War was a battle against communism. For the Republican government the conflict was a struggle against fascism.

Historical amnesia

But despite the importance of this Civil War, one survey shows that 50% of Spaniards have not talked about it at home. And 35% say they were never taught what happened in 1936, at school.

This amnesia has been actively encouraged at a political level.

Thirty years ago, Spain's emerging new democracy felt so threatened by the ghosts of the Civil War and the recently defunct Franco regime that there was a 'Pact of Silence' between the left and the right of politics not to raise the issue or seek reparations for crimes committed by the dictatorship.

But now attitudes are changing. On the streets of Madrid, many people think its time to seriously debate this important part of their history, but with concern for the sensitivities on both sides of the political fence.

Meanwhile, Spain's government is about to approve legislation that will recognise the victims of the Franco regime.

Our transition from dictatorship to democracy is an example in Europe and we've got to cherish this and not re-open wounds that have healed  Gustavo de Aristegui  Popular Party spokesman

But even just before it gets a tick of approval, it is still not clear what exactly is in this law. According to critics, the government is running scared about the possible right-wing backlash this initiative might cause.

The way this legislation - called The Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory - has been drafted, has also angered those on both the left and the right of politics. The content has been decided by members of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government in consultation with academics.

There is a feeling from other left-wing political parties that an important law like this should have been drafted more collaboratively.

The conservative Popular Party refused to participate at all and is against the legislation. For supporters of the conservatives, introducing this sort of law is unnecessary meddling with the past.

We have to talk about our past to be a healthy society  Emilio Silva

"Our transition from dictatorship to democracy is an example in Europe and I think that we've got to cherish this and not re-open wounds that have already been able to be cured, wounds that are healed," said Gustavo de Aristegui, a spokesman for the Popular Party.

"You know, leave things be, it's not an issue any more, I mean people on the street are not worried about these things any more."

But the families of many thousands of people, victims of Franco's authoritarian government who still lie in unmarked mass graves across Spain, would disagree with the Popular Party.

"If we look at the past and we know the past we can be more free," says Emilio Silva, the head of a group that six years ago started locating and exhuming these bodies for reburial.

"I think it's like a psychoanalysis because we have to talk about our past to be a healthy society and I think it's very important."

The legislation will provide compensation for those who suffered under the dictatorship and is also expected to makes changes to General Franco's most imposing legacy: The Valley of the Fallen, the former leader's colossal burial chamber on the outskirts of the capital.

One suggestion is to convert part of the monument into an education centre about fascism. And, for the first time, the local authorities are expected to have guidelines to help people locate the bodies of family members, still missing, who were murdered during the Franco regime.

The government says its Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory is not about rewriting history, or making people responsible for crimes of the past. But for many Spaniards it represents a new willingness to examine the truth about their history.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5192228.stm

Published: 2006/07/18 17:21:22 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

General Francisco Franco

 General Francisco Franco

General Franco was born in 1892 and he died in 1975. Franco is the man most linked to the army’s victory in the Spanish Civil War.

Franco had been born into a military family. From 1907 to 1910, he was educated at Toledo Infantry Academy and he served in Spanish Morocco from 1910 to 1927. He made a name for himself leading attacks against Moroccan nationalists and in 1927 was promoted to full general and made principal of Saragossa Military Academy.

He stayed out of politics until he was ordered to put down a strike by coal miners in the Asturias. Here, the miners had created a soviet – a word that struck fear into many western Europeans. Franco suppressed the coal strike with efficiency but very ruthlessly. This one incident sealed his reputation for brutality though Franco saw it as he and his army simply carrying out an order to the best of his efficiency.

By 1936, Franco was chief of staff for the military. In July 1936, Franco lead a revolt against the Popular Front. It started in the Canary Islands, where Franco was governor and spread to Morocco where he had made many contacts in the 17 years he was based there.

In October 1936, Franco was appointed generalissimo of Nationalist Spain and head of state. This had the support of all those various factions on the right. In November 1936, Nazi Germany and Fascist Spain recognised Franco as the legitimate ruler of Spain. His government was recognised as legitimate by the French and the British in February 1939. In April 1939, America recognised Franco as head of Spain.

Why did Britain, France and America recognise a man associated with brutality and right wing politics? First, the Nationalists had won the civil war by April 1939 when Madrid surrendered to Franco’s authority, so Franco as leader of Spain was a fait accompli. Second, the Popular Front was seen for right or wrong, as being associated with communism and the fear of this belief was still rampant in Europe. Franco was seen as the better bet of the two.

In 1940, Franco declined Hitler’s request to join the Axis in World War Two.

From 1939 on, Franco was a dictator. His rule was law. Franco’s Spain displayed all the usual characteristics of a right wing dictatorship. All opposition was ruthlessly dealt with; the nation had to endure the activities of a secret police force; all the aspects of politics that would have been taken

for granted in Europe, such as fair elections and political opposition, were not tolerated in Franco’s Spain. In July 1947, a law was passed that made Franco head of state for life.

Opposition did occur. Students protested about a lack of personal freedom. The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church also complained about his dictatorship and Basque separatists were a constant problem.

Despite this, Franco was not a political pariah. In 1955, John Foster Dulles, America’s highly influential Secretary of State, visited him. During the Cold War, Franco was seen as a safe bet against any spread of communism in western Europe.

When he died in November 1975, the monarchy was restored when Prince Juan Carlos became head of state, as Franco had decreed.

The Valle de los Caídos (in English: Valley of the Fallen) is a monumental memorial in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, erected at Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, conceived by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to honour those who fell during the Spanish Civil War. (Of course to honor those who fell on his side of the war).However, only two names are commemorated— those of José Antonio Primo de Riveraand Franco himself. It was also claimed by Franco that the monument was meant to be a "national act of atonement". As a surviving artifact of Franco's rule, the monument and itsCatholic basilica remain controversial, especially due to the manner and circumstances of its construction (forced labor from political prisoners).

Guernica

Further blog arising from my reading of Victoria Hislop's 'The Return'.

Guernica (painting)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Guernica

Pablo Picasso, 1937

Oil on canvas

349 × 776 cm, 137.4 × 305.5 in

Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid

Guernica is a monumental painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Nazi Germanbombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured.

The Spanish government commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair inParis). The Guernica bombing inspired Picasso. Within 15 days of the attack, Pablo Picasso began painting this mural. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour brought the Spanish civil war to the world's attention. Guernica epitomizes the tragedies of war and the suffering war inflicts upon individuals. This monumental work has eclipsed the bounds of a single time and place, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.

Guernica is of remarkable size, solely black and white, 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas painted in oil. Picasso's purpose in painting it was not to create the non-representational abstraction typical of some of his contemporaries, such asKazimir Malevich. Guernica presents a scene of death, violence, brutality, suffering, and helplessness without portraying their immediate causes. The choice to paint in black and white conveys the chronological nearness of a newspaper photograph and the lifelessness war affords.

Guernica depicts suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos.

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to theSecurity Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. Commissioned and donated by Nelson Rockefeller, it is not quite as monochromatic as the original, using several shades of brown.

Lorca

My interest in the subject of this blog derives from my reading of 'The Return' by Victoria Hislop.

Federico Garcia Lorca

POET AND PLAYWRIGHT (1898 - 1936) Federico Garcia Lorca is not only Spain's most universal poet, but he is also a universally recognised symbol of Spain - and especially Andalucia - itself. His poems paint a vivid and intrinsically poetic portrait of this fascinating region, with its stark landscapes of olive groves and fig trees, its moonlit nights among whitewashed walls and Moorish towers, its bullfighters and, above all, its gypsies with their free-roaming ways and fierce codes of living and loving. The fact that Lorca was summarily executed at the onset of the Spanish Civil War has to some extent increased his fame, but the reverse side of the coin is that the political implications of the tragedy have eclipsed his worth as one of the 20th century's most brilliant and innovative poets. Buy Now Born near Granada in 1898 to a prosperous farming family, Lorca was strongly influenced by his cultivated mother, who taught him to play the piano and sing, two skills which he put to good use later in life. During his student years in Madrid he made friends with Surrealist luminaries such as Salvador Dali and pioneer movie-maker Luis Buñuel, using their often outrageous techniques in his own work, but without compromising his own childlike, ingenuous style, full of lyrical freshness and spontaneity. He achieved instant celebrity both in Spain and in Latin America, as well as, later and through translation, in France and the United States, with his collection of poetry "The Gypsy Balladeer", in which he drew upon his boyhood contacts with the gypsies of the town of his birth, Fuente Vaqueros, to concoct a bewitching blend of social commentary and dreamlike fantasy. The best known poems from this period are the "Ballad of the Sleepwalker" (famous for the haunting refrain, "Green, green, how I love you green") which tells the tale of a gypsy smuggler who is killed by the police before he can rejoin his mistress, and the "Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard", in which he recounts, in a mesmerising display of metaphor, a police raid on a gypsy community, with the burning of houses and the murder of the inhabitants. Another Lorca classic is his ode to the death of bullfighter Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, perhaps the most enduringly successful surrealist poem ever written in any language. Lorca was a man of the theatre and roamed Spain in a truck with a troupe of actors called "La Baraja", staging farces and tragedies in village squares in the backwaters of Andalucia. He created many enemies among Spain's traditional right-wingers with his trilogy of plays dwelling on the plight of women in Andalucía's villages - "Blood Wedding", "Barren" and "The House of Bernarda Alba" - and this controversial stance undoubtedly went against him when political scores were settled later on. An extended stay in New York and Cuba produced a book of surrealistic verse, "Poet in New York", in which Lorca expressed his horror at the harshness and materialism of American life in the 1930's. When General Franco launched his overthrow of the Republican Government, in 1936, Andalucia was the first region to fall. As each town and village was taken, a witch-hunt of the leading leftists took place followed by mass executions, in the name of the nationalist's "crusade" to rid Spain of the followers of Karl Marx. While not a political man himself, Lorca was inextricably associated with the libertarian movement, and his sister was married to Granada's Republican mayor, putting him high on the Fascist hit list. It is also possible that his thinly disguised homosexuality may have added to the antagonism of the conservative set; in any case, Lorca was one of the 30,000 inhabitants of Granada to pay with their lives for having supported Spain's fledgling democracy and attempt to break the stronghold of the Church and bourgeoisie over the dirt-poor peasantry of Andalucia. The above text was kindly provided by Lawrence Bohme.

Lorca family to allow exhumation

The family of the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca have dropped their long-standing objection to the excavation of his grave.

Lorca was killed in the Spanish civil war and buried alongside other victims.

Families of some of the others want their relatives' remains to be exhumed, identified and given a proper burial.

Lorca's family have always resisted the digging up of the grave, but now say they will not stand in the way of the other families' desires.

Lorca was shot dead alongside a teacher and two trade unionists by General Francisco Franco's nationalists at the start of the civil war in 1936.

The four bodies are believed to lie close to an olive tree in a gorge in southern Spain - though others claim their grave is 400m away.

To open just one of the graves there and distinguish some of the dead above the others demeans the virtue of the place as a historic legacy Laura Garcia Lorca Lorca's niece

Judge Baltasar Garzon is considering a petition by two of the families to open the presumed grave.

"We will accept whatever decision is taken without objection," said Laura Garcia Lorca, the poet's niece.

"We understand the desire of a family to recover the remains of their relatives and give them proper burials," she told the Associated Press.

"[But] for our family it is preferable that he (Lorca) stay there. He is in good company."

She said the family thought the gorge - where thousands of other bodies are also believed to be buried - "should be protected for the cemetery that it is, a testimony to the terrible crimes committed under Franco and the repression".

The case reflects a growing desire in Spain to come to terms with the civil war, which for decades was barely talked about, correspondents say.

Judge Garzon has asked local government and churches to open their files on the thousands of people who disappeared during the 1936-1939 war, and under the dictatorship of Gen Franco until 1975.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7624887.stm

Published: 2008/09/19 09:52:35 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The Return

I have started to read this second novel by Victoria Hislop. Once again a holiday visit today is the door to the history of an earlier period.

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The Return

by Victoria Hislop

432pp, Headline Review, £17.99

The Return offers welcome evidence that women's fiction is getting more ambitious, marching into the realm of big events traditionally colonised by men, in particular military action. Rosie Thomas's Iris & Ruby, which won last year's Romantic Novel of the Year award, featured second world war Egypt; Emma Darwin in The Mathematics of Love dramatised Waterloo. Now Victoria Hislop's new offering, belying its dreamy sepia-tinted cover of a couple close-dancing, revisits the gruesome arena of the Spanish civil war.

This notable documentary undertow was a feature of Hislop's debut, The Island, a multigenerational narrative centred on a leper colony off Crete. After becoming Richard and Judy's top Summer Read in 2006, it went on to sell an astonishing 1 million copies in this country alone. Thousands this summer will read The Return while sunning themselves on Spanish beaches and learn some unpalatable history about their holiday destination.

It opens in the present with a more light-hearted subject: dancing. Thirty-five-year-old Londoner Sonia and her wild-child schoolmate Maggie have taken up salsa. They head to Granada to attend a course, much to the disapproval of Sonia's "dusty" husband James, who reckons she should concentrate her energies on hosting dinner parties and providing a son and heir. While Maggie throws herself into the holiday pleasures of drink, dance and dalliance, Sonia is beguiled by the city's brooding sense of past secrets and by its own dancing tradition, the fiendishly difficult Gypsy art of flamenco. Hislop describes the moves of the dance with a knowing eye, her evocation of its intense dark drama and the close partnership of dancer and guitarist cleverly foreshadowing the central love interest of the book.

Sonia's fascination with the city's history intensifies. She frequents a cafe where the elderly owner, Miguel, displays old posters of bullfighters and dancers; he whets her appetite with tales of Lorca and days gone by. Less convincingly, we discover that Sonia lost her invalid mother, Mary, when young and has learned little about her from her father. When Miguel finally tells the story of the Ramirez family, who once owned the cafe, the mysterious English Mary will be brought to life as her younger self - a 1930s Spanish dancer, Mercedes. The ground for this transformation is insufficiently prepared, and the large generation gap unexplained until the end, which tests our credulity.

Miguel's third-person account, which ranges from the halcyon beginnings of Spain's Second Republic to the aftermath of the civil war, takes up virtually the rest of the book. Mercedes was the only daughter of the Ramirez family, ominously divided by their political beliefs. While Hislop struggles to explain to a lay audience the complexities of Spanish politics, Mercedes' nascent passion for a visiting guitar prodigy called Javier provides engaging relief. Only after Franco's Nationalist army invades Spain does the narrative really pick up pace and confidence.

Because Miguel's account follows the disparate fortunes of the entire family, Hislop is able to dramatise many different aspects of the war. Granada itself is a crucible of conflict, claiming several Ramirez victims. The eldest brother, Antonio, fights for the Republic in Madrid and Barcelona. Mercedes sets out for Malaga to find Javier just as it's razed to the ground by Franco's foreign allies. She joins the lines of escaping survivors, eventually travelling to Bilbao and beyond in her increasingly desperate search. The descriptions of war-ravaged Spain, of hand-to-hand fighting, bombardment of civilians, brutal atrocities by both sides and Europe's cold reception of refugees are very powerful.

The quest for Javier never sinks into sentimentality. Hislop avoids, too, the temptation of a chocolate-box ending. Less successful is Sonia's too-hurried assimilation of everything she has learned from Miguel, given that it leads her to change her life completely. Perhaps warmer memories of her mother are needed, a stronger sense of connection to both mother and father. Our parents' lives, before they had us, can seem like another country, and it requires a deep longing to reach out across the years in understanding to give the quest real meaning. As the novel ends, Sonia's voyage of discovery has maybe just begun.

The Art of Spain

Something to look forward to this evening.

Look beyond Italy to the glories of Spanish art, broadcasters urged.

From Kenneth Clark's Civilisation to Alan Yentob on Leonardo da Vinci, when it comes to great art, television keeps on returning to the Italian Renaissance.

Now, the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon has accused broadcasters of ignoring the artistic masterpieces of Spain in their focus on its Mediterranean rival.

In a new series, The Art of Spain, which starts on BBC4 next week, Graham-Dixon redresses the balance by introducing viewers to a rich cultural heritage ranging from the Moorish architecture of the south to baroque paintings inspired by a fanatical Catholicism and some of the most important modern art of the twentieth century.

"There has been very little about Spanish art on television. TV has rather been subject to an innate conservatism in its commissioning patterns," he argued.

"There's an element of, 'let's commission another series on the Italian Renaissance because we know that people like that'," he added.

The presenter revealed that he once heard a head of commissioning for arts programmes at the BBC say: "We do the 10 artists everybody has heard of and then when we've finished we do them again."

That may be an exaggeration, but there is little doubt Italian art has seized the imagination of programme makers for decades.

In his classic 1969 series on Western civilisation, Kenneth Clark devoted whole programmes to the flowering of the renaissance in Urbino and Mantua, and to the work of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.

More recently, Alan Yentob explored the life and work of Da Vinci for the BBC in the 2003 series Leonardo, followed in 2004 by a series on Michelangelo.

Part of the problem, according to Graham-Dixon, is the lack of books on the subject compared to the Italian Renaissance.

"One of the ambitions of this series is to say to people you can go to Spain in the same way as you go to Italy, not just in search of topless bars, beer and Benidorm," said Graham-Dixon. "If you're looking up general histories of Spain in the Golden Age a lot of the books are written by the same few people."

In The Art of Spain, Graham-Dixon divides Spain geographically and historically. The first programme looks at the impact of Moorish culture in southern Spain.

The second looks at Spain's Golden Age of arts and literature in the 16th and 17th centuries – when its empire was at its height, following a path through the mysticism of El Greco, and Ribera's paintings of suffering martyrs, to the apparent lack of religious belief of Velázquez.

Northern Spain, home to Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali, is the focus of the third programme, which looks at the artists' reaction to the fascist regime of General Franco, and explores the work of post-Franco architects such as Santiago Calatrava.