"Top 10 neglected books about the Spanish Civil War"

 

 The Guardian recently published an article by Sarah Watling with [arguably] lesser-known books about the Spanish Civil War that are available in English. 

Literary Rambles blog recommends the ones by Rukeyser, Cercas, Laforet and Rodoreda.

"Why Read Homage to Catalonia By George Orwell? A Short Review"

 

Rightly describing George Orwell as "one of the great commentators of his own era." Personally, I'd go further and say of any era in the English language. 

Orwell had an ability to get to the visceral in a way that few have. Shakespeare regularly did. James Baldwin also did.

"The way we are" - My latest article in the 10th Anniversary edition of Catalonia Today

I was a reader of Catalonia Today before I was a writer for Catalonia Today. 

My first memory of it (at that time published as a weekly newspaper) was being impressed by (now Editor) Marcela Topor's wonderful interview with the Catalan novelist Vicenç Pagès Jordà in an edition from October 2006. 

"Bad readers make incomplete citizens" was the title of the article and I kept it filed away. I also continued archiving all the editions when my own work began to be published. 

Last week, at random, I pulled out a copy and, as it it turned out, this one from November 2008 was the final weekly edition before the newspaper became a monthly magazine. 

In it I had an article about Barcelona teenagers addictions to mobile phones (which is maybe even more timely today) but it is the content of the other pieces in this thirty two page publication that really impresses me still. 

Catalonia Today then had such a great variety of voices, news stories and current information. In that particular issue a reader could open up the paper and be greeted with 'Long Term Resident' Matthew Tree railing against Franco or caressed with a softer story about the comeback of local Catalan donkeys (and here the focus was the beast of burden, not any political asses.)

Flicking through "The Week" section, anyone with decent English could learn about the situation of homeless people here or they might also read an update on the saga of Judge Garzon and his efforts to allow the opening up of mass graves from the Civil war times. 

Equally, this issue also gave the opportunity to get well-informed about pollution and Co2 emissions in the Tarragona region or to try and understand the reasons for 30,000 Valencians taking to the streets over the use of English in schools there. A special double-page report by Gabe Abeyta Canepa delved into the world of the Mormon church in this part of the world and detailed the work of the 132 missionaries who walk their shiny black shoes across Barcelona's streets.

Towards the back of the newspaper in the Review section Joseph Wilson did some fine work in the arts, culture and language areas. Apart from the original interviews also there, I was always struck by the page which gave a round-up of the fairs, festivals and other events across the whole of Catalonia. 

This made an impact on me because it showed that there was life (and even cultural life) outside Barcelona - a fact that is largely overlooked by both visitors and English language media. Catalonia Today was, and still is, the only print publication that routinely acknowledges the existence of a wider Catalonia outside the capital. It does this in a magazine that you can touch. 

It was the first Catalan newspaper in English and I am proud to be a regular part of it. Catalonia Today deserves at least another ten years,...if not more.

Review of "Between Two Fires" by David Baird

This book is exactly the kind of thing you would hope to find when you are aimlessly looking through the shelves in that slowly dying place called a bookshop.


Focusing mainly on the area around his adopted home town of Frigiliana, David Baird has used immaculate research to write in compelling detail about the "people of the sierra" - those who took to the mountains, some to escape, some because they had little choice and some because they had strong political opinions that could then only be expressed in a way that led them to be tagged by Franco's cronies as "bandits."


Here, we find a Spain that is almost impossible to recognise in the modern version of this country. As Baird points out, at the start of the 20th century the average person there lived not much longer than 30 years. 

It was an almost feudal land where even subsistence farming was only for the lucky ones. There was no public hospitals or public transport and mules and donkeys were the only way of getting any distance without walking in bare feet or simple shoes. 

It was a time of smugglers, travelling repairmen, mass illiteracy and child labour (often starting at 6 years of age.) Progress took the form of a single 30 watt bulb being installed in a house. After Franco's victory this part of the country also became the land of night-time curfews where anyone found in the streets after dark was automatically arrested.


It is unsurprising then that there was a significant level of support for the men who fought against authority. While some townspeople were kidnapped for ransom by the rebels it was the civil guard who were more hated but both sides were feared, and for good reason. 

To help the guerrillas, such as providing them food or clothes, was enough to be thrown in prison but to not help them at times meant to the outlaws that you were collaborating with their enemy and could then be a target for recriminations. It is in this sense that ordinary people were caught "between two fires."


Apart from the clarity of Baird's writing and his even-handed approach (which is a relatively rare thing in the highly-politicised arena of Spanish history) half of the book is given over to those who were intimately involved in the events of the time to simply tell their own versions. Their first-hand accounts are vivid, illuminating and often poignant.


In short, this book plays a crucial part in making sure that this war is not a forgotten one, at least to English language readers. 


This review was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2014.

[...and also published at Good Reads and Amazon books.] 

"Goodbye Barcelona"

Goodbye Barcelona is a new musical about a British mother and child who both get caught up in the Spanish Civil War. It is inspired by the lives of men and women around the world who joined the International Brigades to fight fascism.

Now, after two years [ruuning in London] the Teatre del Raval in Barcelona has offered to mount a brand new production of the musical in Catalan. But in order to initiate this production, with a new cast, band, creative and technical team, they need your support.

The Catalan production of "Goodbye Barcelona" needs 6,000 euros to balance the budget, which they are requesting through Verkami, and which will be used to pay the team.


Read more here.

“The Spanish Earth”

What I notice from this film is the other-worldliness of Spain at that time. 

The buildings are vaguely recognisable but the men ride donkeys like timeless, rural Africans and the women sweep dirt streets with bent backs because their brooms do not even have such a thing as a simple long handle.

Their faces generally show hardship (something that has recently returned here with the “crisis,”) while skinny dogs scuttle around.

Later, we see teams of men working in the country with hand-held hoes and when a man speaks on the telephone it is surprising because the mental atmosphere of the film could have been almost medieval. 

The war scenes reinforce how empty war always is. The attempts to glorify it with stirring music are hollow only partly because we know that the end result is a stifling dictatorship, four decades long.

In another scene, now in Madrid, ragged children play in the street and in the next frame a man hurriedly carries a seemingly empty coffin over one shoulder. 

Food cues (for some people this is a reality again today) crowd next to destroyed buildings and a single corpse lies in the gutter. (We are told that the body is that of a book-keeper on his way to work at eight in the morning.)

After more battle scenes and shots of noble-peasant types the film, now clearly a piece of propaganda, ends with a man's voice singing a very moving a capella song, ruined somewhat by Hemingway's voice-over.

For a detailed explanation of the making of “The Spanish Earth” see Open Culture here.

"My name change saved my life." - The last British soldier to fight Franco dies at age 94

On his 18^th birthday David Lomon (real name David Solomon) left the UK to join the Republicans in the fight against Franco.

 

"They advised me to change my last name to one less Jewish because to go fight the fascists, if I had the misfortune to be caught, it could help me to survive," he wrote in a memoir only a month ago.

After the Battle of the Ebro, Solomon was captured by Italian troops and sent to a POW camp in Palencia, mostly populated by the international brigade [of which George Orwell was also a member.]

 "The Gestapo came every few weeks to take German citizens and especially Jews away. My name change saved my life. " 

As a result of his altered name Solomon was put on a list of prisoners for exchange and release. He then went on to have a very long life, dying only last week.

Solomon was one of the few international brigades still alive, and the last of the British. In total, there were 35,000 “brigadistas internacionales” who came from 55 countries and  from a wide range of jobs including miners, lawyers and even leftist politicians such [German] Willy Brandt.

When Solomon first left home he believed that Spain would win the war.

 "We were good," he recalled with a smile. But once here he discovered that it was in fact the weaker side he had chosen. 

"We had to make do with old weapons, mostly from before the [first world] war and with old Russian machine guns. The food was not much better: donkey-meat, sardines and beans were our staple diet. But we were so determined to overcome all the difficulties that we just accepted what they gave us and we carried on. After all, we had not come to Spain to eat, but to fight. " 

Solomon was impressed by the Spanish: "I was fascinated to see people so poor and yet so proud," he said.

He fought in the Battle of Teruel and the Aragon offensive against Franco. A bomb just about killed him and the explosion left him unconscious for no telling how long. When he woke up, he realised he was a prisoner in a truck guarded by the Italian division of Blue Arrows. It was March 1938.

He and others were taken to the former monastery of San Pedro de Cardena. Crammed in the basement, many of his comrades died from a lack of medical care and food.

"It was awful. When you get into a place like that it’s as if you have left the world, "he recollected.

Solomon was proud of the Spanish passport he obtained due to to the ‘law of historical memory’ which granted citizenship to those from the International Brigades. Losing the Civil War was "a blow" for him but he claimed that it also served as an "inspiration" because when he returned to England, after being swapped for four prisoners Italians, he joined the Army and fought against Hitler after.

 "We won that war" he stated.

A month ago he came to Madrid (for the final time as he was) invited by the Friends of the International Brigades to participate in events for the 76th anniversary of the defense of the capital city.  

Almudena Cros, from that association, recalled how he walked "with admirable verve" along the same streets that he had marched in…76 years ago when he first joined the XI International Brigade.

[My translation from an article by Alvaro Garcia in El Pais.]

75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica

"Last Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing was carried out by Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe at the behest of general Francisco Franco. It is regarded as one of history’s first air raids on a defenceless civilian population. Guernica was far from a military target; it was a town of 5,000 civilians, attacked on market day, when the number of casualties would be highest. Franco hoped the attack would break the morale of his enemies, the Republicans. For Adolf Hitler, the bombing was a chance to test the capabilities of his Luftwaffe."

Less help for Spanish Civil War victims' families

Yesterday, the new PP Prime Minister Rajoy closed the office of “attention to victims of the Civil war and the dictatorship.”

This action, taken as part of a reorganization of the Ministry of Justice by the Spanish Government, gets rid of the public body which was created in 2009 by the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Its aim had been to provide advice to victims of the Franco regime, on issues such as the mass graves.

Now, the functions of this former office will supposedly be “diluted” into another pre-existing section of the Justice department.

JOAN RUSIÑOL’S article for ara.cat here.

The Spanish Civil War as local (recent) history

Yesterday I visited an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War specifically relating to the area of the Penedès that I live in.

What affected me even more than the old hand-grenades and rifles inside the glass displays or the photo of the victors making the fascist salute behind a smug Franco was seeing images of familiar landscapes.

Except these scenes showed uniformed soldiers in places I go through often. I also saw maps showing sites where bombing took place on roads I use every day.

It is the sense that history here is so near, so close behind you. These horrific events of the recent past give me a stronger feeling of connection with this land in the present.

"Francoism isn't over in Spain"

91 year-old Galician man who as a youth lost both parents to the extremes of the era asks "...What can you expect from a country that does not even dare say that Franco was a dictator?"

He is here refering to the recent controversy over a biographical dictionary published by the Royal Academy of History that only mentions Franco as "head of state."

A photograph (of what is there)

(Photo: Javier Berasaluce Bajo)


In this diary entry Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina makes the crucial observation that "often literature does not consist of inventing but in telling clearly what one has seen with one's own eyes."

Another great writer, George Orwell who spent time here (fighting against Francoism in the 1930's) said a similar thing. "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

A view of Barcelona in the 1930's

It was five years since I had been in Barcelona. In 1932, the revolution had already been in progress two years. Yet the changes to be observed in the externals of its life were few. The native bootblack who had shined my shoes as I stepped off the train then had expressed it succinctly: "The revolution? The king is gone, yes, but otherwise what is changed? Nada, nada."

Albert Weisbord was a Jewish American activist who visited Catalonia a number of times and wrote about the class struggle in particular.