Why is no one mentioning the Monarchy?
3
Whoever is America's "laureate of silence and denial" of our nation's past and ongoing crimes against non-white humanity, we desperately need to hear his or her voice loudly and clearly. Even an American novelist or other writer who doesn't possess the prestige of a Javier Marías, yet can write powerfully and passionately of the our nation's dark past and present need to repudiate Trumpism in all of its ugly forms and manifestations, would be a godsend.
I realize there are many very good columnists and other pundits who have long been undertaking this task. But no one to my knowledge has emerged to serve as a veritable voice of conscience of the nation, which is what we badly need. Maybe it's impossible to have one given the current state of polarization. How can someone speak for and to the people as a conscience does, helping us quietly to differentiate between right and wrong, truth and lies. It's too easier to fall into scolding and hectoring, as I and most others do too frequently.
I do believe everyone but the psychopath possesses a conscience, and that most of Trump's base aren't psychopaths. So how does one reach the consciences on people who don't seem to regard truthfulness, dignity and honor important in national leadership? Or who genuinely fear and/or dislike or even hate black and brown people, non-English speakers, and/or worshipers of Mohammad the Prophet? Or who conflate democratic socialism with totalitarian communism? I wish I or someone else knew.
11
As the writer Willian Faulkener had noted, writing around the time of the Spanish Civil War, "the past is never dead. It isn't past."
There is a whole lot of truth in that.
14
As previously mentioned, tourists should also visit the Museo Reina Sofia, which in a large gallery displays a single enormous painting, Pablo Picasso's Guernica. Everyone is silent, attentive, focused. Some are crying. No one is taking snapshots or photos of themselves. The painting depicts stark and violent acts of war, the bombing, by the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria in support of Franco's Nationalists, of the Basque town Guernica. Everyone in the gallery can project himself into the scene, feel the flames, hear the screams, and perhaps see the lights.
22
It was not just “silent Spaniards” who shrugged at Franco’s lengthy reign after the war. He became an “acceptable” member of the international community and even received millions in military aid. I was on the south coast of Spain for months at the end of the 1960s. And dictatorship was alive and well, in plain sight. At a local village party, I and friends had to “hide quickly” in a back closet beause the paramilitary Guardia Civil were on a raid to enforce the rule that no gathering could exceed 5 people. We escaped but an English friend was not so lucky. A vocal critic of Franco’s regime, he was drugged in a bar by mysterious men who followed him there. He woke up on a slab in the morgue a day later, very sick and disoriented. Assassination attempt or heavy handed warning? He didn’t stay to find out. As a very young traveler I learned what life is like under dictatorship. And how to recognize it.
40
@POV
August, 1969, my wife and I rented a house for a month from a British diplomat which overlooked the beach town of Fuengirola, just west of Torremolinos. The morning after our first night there, I saw two men inside our VW camper, in our driveway. Thinking they were thieves, I ran out to the van. They showed me ID's: Detectives, Guardia Civil. They told me they had never seen this vehicle in this driveway before, so they felt free to search it. Under Franco, the National Police felt free to do anything, and they were very efficient. Their treatment of your English friend was their idea of a good joke. Had he been Spanish, he may have been killed.
20
Spanish greatness and power took big hits with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the expulsion, forced conversion, and murder of its Jews, with the Inquisition of 1492! They have yet to recover.
26
@Counter Measures
I totally agree with this statement.
3
Marías has a tremendously tedious and repetitive style that, to my mind, works only in his best books, such as "A Heart So White." His more recent books have been a victim of that style. I haven't read it, but I suspect "Berta Isla" will be, too.
2
The Olympia Carrera De Luxe seems readily available used on eBay for around 100 USD. There are also supplies. If I were the author I'd splurge and stock up on four or five.
2
A thought provoking portrait-of-a-writer-as-an-old-man. Not conversant with him, his books, disagreeing with the idea that some evil is so horrible that it should be left to molder, forgotten, I look at the accompanying photo.
All those books. Will he ever re-read any of them? Ranting at the neighbor, comfortable in the curmudgeon image. The typewriter - retro-elitism, along with no email, texts.
I want to say (and do)- get a life, man! (I want to say ‘you’ll always have Paris, but...too ....trite, modern?!) Go down and watch those kids in the street. Talk to them. Travel- take e-cigarettes, or just smoke anyway (curmudgeons can get away with a lot). Come out west, ride a horse, try a zip line. ‘To work, to live’. And for heaven sakes, get an iPad- a freeing experience.
17
@Jo Williams,
You are missing so much by writing him off. I read him every day in El Pais for the 5 years I lived in Spain. His writing so much to understanding Spain, questioning assumptions and myself.
try a zip line?
16
I’m not writing him off so much as encouraging him to engage in the ....future, enjoy new adventures. Young people, zip lines (speedy incline ropes...you go down)- and horseback riding (time to see nature, talk with fellow riders)- and perhaps bring a new perspective to his writing.
We oldsters tend to .....wrap ourselves in the familiar, find comfort in routine. I want him to....break out. As he said- to work, to live. And as a smoker.....try e-cigs.
3
What a fascinating piece. Marias is an extraordinary, wonderfully digressive kind of author, whose rambles ultimately cohere. As I recall, he only disappoints in his portrayals of women who come perilously close to being object or mere ciphers. Sexuality in is books is just weirdly puerile like a teenage boy. Otherwise, he is fascinatingly intricate and complex, compelling and astute. I've always wished his newspaper columns were available in English. And I hope, schoolboy sexuality notwithstanding, that one day he wins the prize. He deserves it.
13
Franco may have been bad but the Nationalists were no saints. They could be just as cruel.
There are no 'good guys' here.
7
@Rocket J Squrriel Squirrel, Franco was the leader of the Nationalists. They were Fascists who allied with Hitler and Mussolini, as well as Spanish monarchists, to overthrow the elected Republican government.
Certainly both sides had people who did evil things, but the Fascist Nationalist project was evil from start to finish, in its intention. Like "Trumpism."
Where the Spanish Republicans fell short of their idealistic goals, the Fascists fulfilled their goals of dictatorship. To say, equivalent to Trump, "there were bad people on both sides of the Civil War" is to willfully abet the Fascists by the fake moral equivalence, "we didn't do anything others didn't do or might have done; we meant no harm." Yes. You did. As you intended from the start.
40
@Rocket J Squrriel, my in laws were rural people during the Civil War, my father in law was a POW after fighting for the republicans (not Franco's fascist nationalists). They left Spain as many did after the war because they knew they would always have to hide their opinions of the Franco's government and there was very little decent work.
Many people detest the memory of Franco in Spain to this day for the pain that he caused, his grandiosity for instance and the lack of reckoning for the dead during the war.
9
Although I’ve lived in Barcelona for 25 years, I must confess I have yet to settle down with Javier Marías’s novels. Perhaps I am put off by his columns in El Pais. A number of them insult anyone who believes that the Catalan independence movement has any historical or intellectual merit. He has gone so far as to question the Catalans' sanity and to compare the movement to Nazism. My goodness. I have been under the studied impression that the Catalan independence movement went mainstream in around 2010 to a great extent due to the frustration of dealing with a Spanish state that seems irrevocably mired in the very much living remains of Francoism.
Let’s take the legal system, for example. Last week, the CIS poll by the Spanish government put Spanish confidence in the independence of the legal system (the judiciary) at a breathtaking low. Catalan elected officials and civil leaders still languish in jail after 500 days, as a preventative measure. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN has called for their immediate release and has pointed out a number of violations of the Catalan prisoners' fundamental rights.
The Valle de los Caidos is just the tip of the iceberg. Yesterday, for example, Javier Monzón, the president of Prisa, which publishes El Pais, was accused by the State Anticorruption Attorney of being part of a scheme of diverting funds to an illegal PP slush fund. For many, Catalan self-determination is a right and a solution.
11
@Mark I don't believe nationalism, and fragments of mini-nationalism, are a solution to anything, but a barren side step to a dead end. Brexit, and Catalan mini-Brexit, both, for example. Human safety and progress aren't in the exclusionary and conflicting fiefdoms of the belligerent past. As in most things, we need a balance between the overall and the parts, not a war against either, as we evolve. Honor to the Catalans, a center of resistance to Fascism, and relentlessly punished for it by Franco. And Viva la Republica.
7
@Russ A truly federal Spanish Republic (or a vote in that direction) could be a most interesting negotiated solution to the Catalan issue. Unfortunately, nothing resembling such a proposal is even close to being on the table. Quite the opposite. I really enjoyed your comments, though. Thanks and all best to you.
4
And Fascism in South America, an inheritance from Spain, still poking up wherever and whenever it can. It is funny, how Spain embodies the best and the worst of civilization. The sense of style -- in everything: poetry, speech, music, food, art, dress, architecture, dealings with the young -- is hard to beat. And then the other side of the coin: the barren religious intolerance, the narrow-mindedness, the authoritarian streak steamrollering anything fine or delicate, the vulgarity, the mendacity. Breathtaking, if you like. Are all countries like that? To some extent, I guess. But in Spain the extremes are really extreme!
27
@pedroshaio
Fascinating how Spain is responsible for Latinamerican evils even when they happened more than 100 years after they gained their independence.
In the 50s, when Colombia suffered a dictatorship, Spain was still devastated from the Civil War, isolated from the World and economically ruined. Before that, Perón's populism ruled Argentina. So, no, that was not our fault, although it must feel great to always have us to blame for everything bad that happened.
8
@Orlando
Ah, but Orlando, yes you are.
Spain (and Portugal, to a lesser extent) is fully culpable for the hundreds of years of colonial rule and despotism that has plagued its former colonies.
How soon you forget that you raped, stole, pillaged and took every single asset you could get your hands on, destroyed hundreds of indigenous communities through war, disease and terror and now pretend that you're not the perpetrators of perhaps one of the worst genocides in human history.
I've been to Spain. I've seen your golden altars that are, in fact, the melted down cultural and religious artifacts of the "Los Indios," as you like to call us. I've read the diaries of Fr. Bartolomeo de las Casas, Cortez and others who bore witness to your country's greed and avarice. I've watched as the countries in Latin America, like most colonial outposts, struggle after their colonizers either leave or are thrown out.
Whatever happened in the Spanish Civil War does not begin to compare to the damage Spain wrought on its colonies.
11
I spent a couple of weeks in Barcelona in 1966. For a young American seeing Guardia Civile on almost every street corner in their silly patent leather hats carrying machine guns was surreal, as were the bullet holes in so many buildings. Wandering the streets around Ramblas I looked up at a four or five story building that had had its back wall blasted off. And people were living in those apartments--I could see people cooking, watching television, going about their day to day lives as if they had four walls.
Later, talking to Spanish citizens they explained Barcelona's part in the Civil War and that Franco would not allot monies to repair Catalonia--he wanted them to live with their bullet pocked buildings. After thirty years that seemed incredibly cruel.
Later still when some wag at Saturday Night Live came up with the tag line "Francisco Franco is still dead." which was casually thrown into their news report in many episodes it made a lot of sense.
21
Scanning through the comments - I notice that the old ‘common sense’ lie that ‘bloodlust’ happened on both sides has reared its head again. Yes, there were massacres, rapes and so on both sides but the Francoist side instituted it as military and social policy from the off. One was vast in its scope, the other sporadic acts of violence by anarchists (including criminals freed from prison) and other extremists. This violence in turn was
stoked by the brutality of ruling groups long before the Spanish Republic came into existence.
Read Paul Preston’s - The Spanish Holocaust to get some perspective, please do. In particular, take note of his account of the Francoist Black Column murdering and raping a bloody path through Spain. Having said this, I think that the unfortunate pact made to get the transition to democracy was a sad but necessary action to avoid huge bloodshed. That does not mean that the memory projects underway now are some kind of titillation as the subject of the interview seems to suggest. It is long overdue and that famed Spanish writer is just a contrarian really?
22
The only constantly, perniciously and pervasively present ideology in Europe is communism. Most so-called "intellectuals" cannot see that because moles don't know they are blind.
6
@Crusca Ah, the Communist intellectuals, always a threat to the Nation. And to Fascism. Sounds familiar.
The Communist parties of Europe are tiny, powerless, nostalgic. So, resurrect them, by calling any pragmatic steps to improve the conditions of life "communist." Watch our Nationalist do exactly that in the coming campaign.
15
Spain's fascist past is thankfully gone, but its Communist past is very real. There is still a Communist Party, with members in Parliament. Socialism is even rearing its head in America again, of all places.
7
@mainliner Is this a bad thing?
2
When and where has communism ever turned out to be a good thing?
5
Spain has had such a long history of fascism under many names that this statement is no surprise. Particularly now, when leaders of western countries employ the same sentiments in barely disguised form.
9
I wonder if the existence of the fascist elements in contemproay Spain is less about not having dealt with the ending of the Franco regime and more about the rise of the far right throughout Europe. My wife and I love Spain and have taken several trips hiking in different regions. This past May we hiked the Camino Primitivo from Oviedo in Asturias to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The hike was wonderful and as hikers walking as pilgrims, we experienced the warmth of the Spanish people. Along the way we were shocked to find on two occasions swastikas painted on walls and the word "Kike" painted on the back of a large traffic sign. Throughout all of our years traveling in Spain we have never experienced such expressions of blatant anti semitism. It was quite disturbing. In addition that the images were allowed to remain, was even more unsettling.
17
brings to mind the line from Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live in the late '70s: " . . . Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is still dead"
7
Excellent profile: thank you for writing it.
I love the photo of him at his desk--the books!--the fact that he writes on a typewriter, that he smokes (shamelessly), that he complains about the stupidity of the idiotic world created by capitalism, that he loathes the butcher Franco, that he writes literate books on great themes and doesn't churn out pap about relationships or Jack Reacher, that he is a passionate, opinionated, and serious person is a world of fools and fascists.
31
"Marías enjoys a kind of cultural authority and prestige that makes even America’s most successful literary writers look like obscure hobbyists."
Let's just agree to disagree. I can think of at least a dozen writers from both Western Europe and the Americas who have far greater influence than Marias - namely, Native American writer Louise Erdrich.
If anyone deserves a Nobel Prize for literature, it's Erdrich - who is anything but an "obscure hobbyist."
9
@BothSides Why the off-topic plug for a writer like Erdrich, who does indeed seem like an obscure hobbyist? (I've read her most celebrated book, "Love Medicine"; I found it forgettable.)
4
@Luder
I find most modern French literature not worthy of France's great literary past and, in fact, boring. So I guess we're even.
3
It's truly sad that Franco's influence lives on and that there's currently a shift to revert backward as evidenced by the emergence of VOX. Things moved very quickly during the transition after Franco's death and issues that should have been dealt with were essentially buried instead. It also would have been a good thing to have set up a time frame to dissolve the royal family. I think Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas are right...at this point Spain needs a national psychologist.
13
I am 65 and grew up in Franquist Spain and was educated at an elite private Catholic school. Franco's legacy is controversial precisely because he died in bed with the Regime intact. Miraculously it transformed itself into today's democracy. The cruelty (Julian Marias was lucky; many supporters of the Republic were shot, imprisoned -and forced to work as slave labor on the Valle de los Caidos) or exiled; repression and fear were real. However, it was precisely fear of the Regime and of a new Civil War (which had been pitiless and destroyed a goodly part of Spain; it was the final chapter of the more than century old social and political division of Spain) and real economic progress after 1958 that led to the tacit support of most of the the population, although many would say now that they never supported the Regime; well, they certainly didn't oppose it. While it now has many critics, the Amnesty Law that paved the way to the Constitution of 1978 was necessary because the Armed Forces then would not have tolerated the prosecution of its officers, and everyone knew this then. Now, when most if not all of the actors of the Civil War are dead and even those who were part of civil and military administration of the Regime are very aged, it is becoming easier to deal with the past. The magnificent movie "The Silence of Others" (2018, Berlinale audience award winner) shows, however, still how difficult it is to deal with the dark legacy of the Civil War and Francoism.
46
"Spain’s most celebrated living novelist."
May I suggest amending "most celebrated" to "best known outside Spain especially in the English speaking world"?
One could provide a long list of contemporary authors who are as "celebrated" as Marías within Spain (Javier Cercas, Eduardo Mendoza, Rafael Chirbes spring spontaneously to mind).
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Shadow of the Wind) may well outstrip Marías in brand recognition and certainly in worldwide sales.
8
@liz It depends who reads what. The least intellectually advance may prefer other authors to Mr. Marias.
@liz It depends who reads what. The least intellectually advance may prefer other authors to Mr. Marias.
Several months ago I saw the 2018 documentary film “The Silence of Others” (executive producer Pedro Almodovar) about the extraordinary legal battle by some of Franco’s victims, survivors and their descendants for justice, after the Spanish government tried to stop their cases going to court. How they eventually succeeded by organizing their lawsuit through a court in Argentina is a magnificent story of courage, and the stories told by people involved will move you to tears.
32
Bloodlust was present on both sides.
Franco’s forces and the leftist Republicans each murdered thousands.
Read Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia.’
23
@EGD
Yes, and anarchists commied mass atrocities too.
But, Francos were the best.
1
@EGD
That's why it's called "The Spanish Civil War." But let's be clear that Franco was a brutal dictator who crushed republicanism, which I noticed that you couldn't resist inserting the adjective "leftist." Republicanism is not "leftist." It's better known as Democracy. But that's what fascists do: Blame "both sides" in order to justify their anti-democracy tendencies.
Read "How Democracies Perish," by Jean-Francois Revel.
20
@EGD. Gosh, echos of Trump. "There were bad people on both sides." But only Franco's Fascists overthrew a democratically elected government installing a dictatorship that lasted for 40 years, with help from the Western European countries and the USA, in the name of fighting communism.
23
The lack of justice or "reckoning" with fascism is true in all of Europe. The US created the West German regime and 'security' forces out of Nazis. France whitewashed the crimes of the Vichy regime and incorporated Vichy war criminals into all levels government, especially to murder Algerians and other anti-colonial independence fighters, trade unionists, communists etc. Vichy murderer, Maurice Papón, after deporting Jews in the Holocaust, was sent to Algeria for his torturing skills in a war that killed a million Algerians. For these good services he was then made police chief of Paris to carry out a massacre of hundreds of peacefully protesting Algerians right in downtown Paris in 1961. Most were clubbed to death with iron bars and dumped in the Seine River. The same was true in Italy where fascists were employed by American occupiers to kill communists, as they did across Europe. The entire post-WWII fiction of a cleansed fascism and democracy is a grotesque propaganda lie. The same is true for Japan where MacArthur protected Class A War Criminals like the Yakuza, Nobusuke Kishi and the head of biological warfare, General Ishii. The US later make Kishi the Prime Minister of Japan. In Spain, Franquista minister, Juan Antonio Samaranch was made President of the International Olympic Committee, where he appointed fellow fascists throughout the IOC. Stop pretending this is some unusual aberration. This was clear policy of the US, UK, France and all the governments of Europe.
70
@AR
Since we are on the topic of those who engaged in war crime coverups, let's not forget to add the Vatican/Holy See and the Pope who created ratlines for Nazis and fascists to escape to safety at the end of WW2. The Pope protected war criminals so they would not be held to account for their war crimes. The Pope was a complicit international power broker who hid the criminals and the full historical reference. Did the Pope proclaim an imprimatur to his corrupt decision?
9
@AR at least Papon was eventually tried and convicted of his war crimes.
4
@AR Who's pretending it's an aberration? What about this article suggests that anyone thinks it is?
1
Sadly it is more than just present. They are still worshipping fascism.
15
They?
2
Since when is he Spain's "most celebrated" writer?
Sorry, but no.
10
@sulumonkey So true, there is this guy Cervantes..
5
Cervantes is from the 16th century. I think the author is talking about someone a little more current!
25
It's commonly known that fascism is alive and well in Central Europe and, particularly, Spain. America maintains infantry troops in Germany and Italy for good reason(s). There are no secrets, only disinterest. The enemy of democracy walks among us in sheep's clothing!
11
.
@Dusty Chaps,
.
Not all nationalists are fascists, altho their political adversaries think its advantageous to defame them w/ that polemic
.
2
@Dusty Chaps
We have troops in Germany to prevent the rise of fascism? How are they suppose to do that? Threaten to take over the country?
3
@Dusty Chaps
"Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because the are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy. His aim of destroying democracy itself, of actively seeking and absolute monopoly of power, is shrewdly hidden behind the citizen's legitimate right to oppose and criticize the system. Paradoxically, democracy offers those seeking to abolish it a unique opportunity to work against it legally. They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract."
Jean-Francois Revel, How Democracies Perish - 1983
5
Franco's fascism in Spain was an awful episode that lasted far too long, apparently leaving some tracings of immortality...in spite of the horrors of immorality to satisfy a criminal despot. I hate to compare with these United States, but we have a dedicated demagogue, deeply ignorant and highly arrogant bully that, if it's democratic values weren't this strong (yet), he would have converted it into a pluto-kleptocracy, with violent repercussions. But I digress; Javier Mari'as is right of course, fascism is still awake in certain corners of Spanish society,in spite of all the evidence of the destruction left behind. As Franco's crypt, bouquet and all, attests.
24
@manfred marcus
Franco may have been bad but the communists in Russia, China, eastern Europe, etc are far, far worse.
2
Interesting that the % support for Franco in Spain (38%) is very similar to support in the US for Trump. Is this a social constant of some kind? An index of meanness and cruelty?
59
@Pete The 38% are those who oppose removing Franco´s remains from the Valle de los Caídos. There is a wide range of motives, not the least of which is indifference to the location of the tyrant´s bones in a Spain that faces economic and political problems of very great import.
In today´s Spain a new ultra-right political party, Vox, has a significant following and a minor participation in a handful of municipal and regional governments, including those of Madrid. Vox has in common with Trump the fact that it is reactionary and verbally incontinent. Like Trump, it may not have a terribly brilliant future.
21
@Edward Baker Trump’s level of support is not unusual. Tyrants tend to get 30-40% approval in most cultures. It's a fairly constant constant. Hitler's best showing in a free election was about 37%, both in his race for German President against von Hindenburg in the spring of 1932 and in the Nazi party showing for Reichstag seats later that fall. Erdogan, Putin and Maduro are assumed to have similar true bases of support, now magnified into false majorities through all the various techniques of voter suppression, mandate magnification and press control. A typical polity under authoritarian attack might well see that a third of the country backs the goon, a third despises him and a third would prefer to talk about food or sports. Sad but true: across time and cultures, about a third of us like authoritarians. Including, we now know, Americans. And Spaniards.
8
@Pete Psychology informs us that about 1/3rd of a population WILL fall for authoritarians (and psychopaths). And more in chaotic times. I wrote about this in a Brexit article last week -
https://themoderatevoice.com/the-english-psycho-and-brexit-a-psychological-profile-extended-analysis/
It is terrifying that is the case. all the best, D.
1
I am Easter European. Before I studied in Spain, I though people like my family, the victims of communism, we especially cursed. Everyone around us seemed to want to move on from the injustices as fast as they possibly could. Leaders and politicians reinvented themselves from party apparatchiks to secret defenders of freedom overnight. And no one went to prison for the atrocities they committed. Instead, they bred another generation of corrupt governance under a new guise.
And then I studied in Spain around the time when the Law of Remembrance was being debated. I saw my classmates and their Spanish families only then begin to talk about what happened to their grandparents. I saw we were all going through the same process. I realized 3 things: 1. It takes more than 3 generations for the scars of oppression to begin healing; 2. The psychopaths almost always come out ahead in any large societal transition; 3. People who are weak of character enable those psycopaths by compromising their own morals, and then feeling ashamed of their compromises, and wishing to forget the whole thing ever happened.
92
@Isabel
I don't pretend to have your personal insight on such matters as politically opportunistic realignment, and the difficulty of group reconciliation after fascistic national socialism. However, I recently visited parts of the former Yugoslavia and heard much the same lament. However, I also heard that people there did not really view Tito as a psychopath with no conscience, just a crafty manipulator. My impression is that many Spaniards also don't view Franco as in the league of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Those latter dudes really were deap-seated fascists, sociopaths at least.
In the US, Antifa might be a good idea if it were not itself led by fascist thugs. I tip my hat to Gandhi, who said that "mad destruction" is to be quietly but resolutely resisted no matter who is carrying the banner justifying mad desctruction. Mad destruction is always, always evil.
7
@Isabel Some parallel and not-so-parallel observations: I am a Cuban-American. My father was a visceral enemy of Franco, a convinced non-communist supporter of the Republic, only to be killed in Cuba by the regime imposed by a fellow Galician whose regional origins are the same as Franco's. And the Castro family has been running Cuba twice as long as Franco did in my family's ancestral homeland: how many generations will be needed to begin healing even deeper scars of oppression??? Seeing how Argentina is still limping from Peron and peronistas, is the Cuban nation bound to wait until the XXIII century??
8
@Prof. Celestino Pena
I also recently visited Cuba on a "person to person" exchange through the Cuban countryside and smaller cities. Such "exchanges" were suspended by the U.S. in June. The Cuban government goon who supervised us was a relentless propagandist for the ongoing Revolucion, now 61 years in. The cupboards were bare, the people seemed depressed. Time for serious change in Cuba.
1
Don't stop writing. There are a number of Olympia Carrera De Luxe for sale on Ebay, as well as cartridges and other supplies.
15
I was an anti-francoist for all my life until the Socialists-Communists ruled Brazil for 16 years (2003-2018) and made such a damage to the country that I began to wonder: wouldn’t the same catastrophe happen to Spain if the Socialists-Communists had won the Spanish Civil War?
Spain was in shambles when Hitler invited Franco to join the Axis powers, in 1940. He refused. He needed to put the country back on track. Would the Socialists-Communists do the same if invited by Stalin to join? I doubt. They would probably push the country to a second brink, kill or send the francoists to Siberia, and at the end of the war Spain would have the same ugly fate of Romania, Bulgaria and the other satellite states.
Just look at what Franco did for his country and what the Socialists-Communist would do to it.
12
@Cesar Barroso Incorrect - " The Spanish State under Francisco Franco did not officially join the Axis Powers during World War II, although Franco wrote to Hitler offering to join the war on 19 June 1940. Franco's regime supplied Germany with the Blue Division to fight specifically on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, in recognition of the heavy assistance Spain had received from Germany and Italy in the Spanish Civil War. "
And of course the famous meeting .. "Hitler and Franco met only once at Hendaye, France on 23 October 1940 to fix the details of an alliance. By this time, the advantages had become less clear for either side. Franco asked for too much from Hitler. In exchange for entering the war alongside the alliance of Germany and Italy, Franco, among many things, demanded heavy fortification of the Canary Islands as well as large quantities of grain, fuel, armed vehicles, military aircraft and other armaments. In response to Franco's nearly impossible demands, Hitler threatened Franco with a possible annexation of Spanish territory by Vichy France. At the end of the day, no agreement was reached. A few days later in Germany, Hitler would famously tell Mussolini, "I prefer to have three or four of my own teeth pulled out than to speak to that man again!" "
5
@Cesar Barroso
There is one problem with your argument. The contradiction of "did" and "would".
1
@Cesar Barroso, I couldn’t agree with you more. My family and I arrived in Spain in 1971 as Cuban political refugees, and I remembered as communists would tell us about the “dictadura” they were living under, to what we would tell them, this is really a “dictablanda”. Dictatorship is what hundreds of thousands of Cubans left behind after the “robolucion” of the Castro brothers.
4
Fascism in Spain? Whoda thunk it?
1
I went to Barcelona for two weeks in 1962 before returning home to NYC after a 24 overseas military assignment in France. I saw how it was for people to live under Generalissimo Francisco Franco. There were Spanish soldiers everywhere in uniforms that looked like they slept in them. It was not a place where people could talk freely like we did in the USA. It was very depressing.
16
@Tonjo I lived my childhood and youth in Barcelona from '57 to '73. My first visit to NYC in '71 was during the Attica uprising. I was astonished that it was on TV. for everyone to see! Everything in Spain was censored which allowed corruption and oppression to run rampant and unchecked aided by the Catholic Church. At the time Barcelona was the cultural capital of Spain. Most people opposed the regime with it's one and only party, the fascist Falange yet in school we were made to take classes in "Falangismo" or whatever they called it. We looked more towards Europe than the rest of Spain. We would sometimes drive to the French border where there was a town that consisted of a street with movie theatres that played all the forbidden films. We were constantly being harassed and investigated by undercover police.
8
The Left is removing monuments to Franco and rewriting history, just as in the Spanish Civil War inspired novel "1984." But there are limits to reshaping history. I was in Spain last year and had a great time. Our tour guide in Valencia was a high school teacher making some extra money guiding us tourists. People asked him about the Spanish Civil War. He said they were instructed not to talk politics or religion. But then he allowed that his grandfather (Great?) fought during the war on both sides. He said he never talked about the war or any politics. But he did say that having seen both sides, "he was very grateful that Franco won." Family history and memory still matters.
13
@cleo
So he was from a fascist family
What exactly does that prove?
15
@Confucius Read what I wrote before making a reply. The government's effort to rewrite history is limited by real life memories. This guy's ancestor lived through the Civil war, saw both sides, and preferred Franco to the alternative. Does not mean it is a fascist family. Are you from a Communist family for preferring the Loyalists?
1
@Confucius If you don't get the point it is because you don't want to. An average citizen, a family member, with no political agenda, who lived through the war, prefers Franco to the alternative. Sounds like you have a political agenda.
2
A great great writer.
His best: the trilogy "Your Face Tomorrow."
8
An important correction: "the Valley of the Fallen, a colossal memorial to the victims of the Spanish Civil War."
The monument memorialized Franco's victory and not to the victims of the war.
36
In the end Fascism is a way of being not a political credo.
Look what is happening in Italy, today. The situation is by far much more dangerous and developed if compared to what is happening in Spain.
I'm surprised that the "Anglo press" which often thinks is worth reporting about Italy only when it comes to the tragic or the picturesque does not focus more on the country where Fascism was invented(that is Italy). People tend to forget that by 1922, way before Germany and Spain, Mussolini had practically seized power. Hitler first and Franco later took him as a role model.
Umberto Eco pointed out how Fascism is first and foremost a way of being in his short essay Ur Fascism, a seminal piece everybody who is truly interested in understanding what Fascism is really about should read. It was written for NY book review way back in 1995:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
In any case keep an eye on Italy. After the war and well in to the Seventies despite all it's short coming, the country could boast to be the only democracy (being also the only industrial power) among the four Southern Europe countries.
Portugal, Spain and Greece were under the heel of dictatorship with the blessing of the US. With Berlusconi "telecracy" in the 80's and social media politics of Five Star Movement and Salvini Italy today became again a political lab... to the point that Steve Bannon spent a lot of time there in the last two years. "Anglo press" please take notice.
41
Javier Marías is "Spain's most celebrated writer" because he belongs to a media conglomerate (Grupo PRISA) that guarantees him good reviews, a weekly column at El País, a seat in the Royal Academy... But he's a mediocre writer and nobody will read him when he passes away, plus his "grumpy grandpa" act (he's against everything, from recovering women writers from the past to banning smoking in public places) is getting tiresome.
17
@Joseph
Are you kidding??? He is so very far from mediocre. I hope no one takes this post seriously. You must have some kind of axe to grind.
10
At first, I concede that there are many who swear by Javier Marias as the greatest living author today of “all” languages. I respect them. However, I would like to sneak in Perez-Reverte and Zafon. But, despite what other readers have said, Lorca, Cervantes, Unamuno, Galdos etc. are no longer living.
However, you did an excellent interview and study of Javier Marias. Yes, it may be wanting in some areas but overall you did show how his thoughts and ideas formed. The influence of being a son of an academic hounded by the nationalists, was really strong.
In “A Heart so White”, the protagonist was initially silent and did not want to act. Was this influenced by the desire of “not to exhume the past” like the Spanish society at large, as the reporter says? The protagonists of Zafan’s cemetery of forgotten books series were zealously searching for the past!
There is a cold civil war raging in Spain today. You can sugar-coat it by calling it a “culture of silence” but it is a cold civil war.
Till last year, one side demanded investigation of missing persons and other side did not want to “exhume the past”. Last year, the left wing government went ahead with the investigations. A judge has ordered the opening of mass graves of the Franco era.
This will help Spanish integration because, substantial portion of the missing persons are from Catalonia and Basque. [ETA was originally constituted to fight for Basque independence from Franco’s Spain]
8
@Deep Thought "[a] substantial portion of the missing persons are from Catalonia and [the] Basque [Country]".
This is utter nonsense. There was repression and missing people EVERYWHERE in Spain, because the country was politically torn before the war, and everywhere people took advantage of its outbreak to settle scores (as well as, obviously, for political reasons). And from both sides of the political divide, because both sides committed atrocities during the war. (The difference is that the winning side was allowed to mourn its dead, while the losing side was not).
Go to any town, any village, any family anywhere in Spain, and you will hear stories about people being marched out of their homes in the middle of the night and shot by the church wall, or in the fields, or just disappearing. Anywhere, from Galicia to Almería, from Huelva to Girona.
5
Among the preoccupations that inspire Javier Marías’s writing, this profile names one also behind the ambivalence Spaniards feel about Franco’s legacy: Where to fall silent?
I learned this when I lived, off & on from 2014 to 2017, in Valencia. In late 1936 it became capital of Republican Spain. The Italian Navy shelled the city; flyers trained by Germany’s Condor Legion (responsible for destroying Guernica) bombed it. Nationalists finally took it on Mar. 30, 1939, ending the Civil War.
Valencia’s defiance earned it Franco’s undying enmity; rightist politicians still disdain it. When conservative parties rule in Madrid, Valencia receives the lowest share of central government aid & investment among 17 autonomous regions. Demanding evenhandedness spurs conservatives to stint it even more in the next budget. Where to fall silent?
On trips to market, I took Avenida Barón de Carcer. The baron was a perfervid Nationalist, so Franco made him Valencia's mayor from 1939 to 1942. He died in 1985; the street name with its fascist overtones changed in 2017. Most Valencians still use the old name, to avoid address & postal mix-ups & ideological spats with some of its residents. Where to fall silent?
Sometimes exhibits appear in Valencia with films of huddling war refugees and burning buildings; there are casualty lists, ration cards, & anti-fascist combat posters. But visitors are few. Memories of death & dictatorship remain too fresh to stir without deep pain. Where to fall silent?
15
@EuropeanSkeptic
I thought the following passage in the article especially thought-provoking:
"Of course, Marías is not advocating outright ignorance; he is inviting us to consider the tension that exists between memory, which can be stifling and constraining — a form of perpetuating grievance or division — and forgetting, which can be a form of liberation."
And the later passage:
“Some things are so evil that it’s enough that they simply happened,” he said. “They don’t need to be given a second existence by being retold.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “That’s what I think on some days, anyway,” he went on. “Other days I think the contrary.”
2
I am Spanish born, 66 yr old, liberal, a cigar smoker and with a history of fighting against Franco from abroad and trouble with Francoist authorities within Spain.
Having grown up near El Escorial and the Valley of the Fallen I visited that monstrosity a few times. It is a monstrosity.
Franco should be exhumed and the place made a museum to both sides of the civil war victims.
Interested in Spanish literature I do not consider Mr Marias "the greatest contemporary writer".
Give me Manuel Vazquez Montalban any day and twice on Sunday. But he is dead ...
One thing I strongly disagree with is VOX being a bastion of Francoist nostalgia.
It is a populist right wing party.
Just as Unidas Podemos is a populist Chavez/Maduro oriented left wing party.
The difference is that UP will govern with the help of the socialists.
Hard to choose what is worse.
14
@Lau Ma As to choosing what is worse why not take some empirical evidence? Cuba has been in the hands of a political ideology that enacted a system similar to what Pasionaria, Lister, and Carrillo would have established in Spain had they won the war. Chile, on the other hand, went through a period similar to the Franco years in Spain.
Same dichotomy: fascism/communism, i.e., AIDS or congestive heart failure. What is worse?
3
@Prof. Celestino Pena
I fully agree with you on the dichotomy.
Knowing Cuba and conditions there under that dictatorship fairly well it would be the worst model - just as bad as the Chavez/Maduro model that UP helped erect.
I disagree about the Chile analogy - there was no civil war in Chile and that dictatoship didn't last almost 40 years as it did in Spain.
As Cubans like to say : No es facil ...
1
@Lau Ma . Don Quijote’s answer to the Knight of the Mirrors: “Facts are the enemies of truth !!”.
On these diverging roads, fascism/communism, let’s take the facts going beyond Spain's Civil War,
in a simple comparison on where Cuba and Chile were in the late 50’s and early 60’s, and where both
countries are now. After checking that both countries have gone through harsh dictatorships, what objective and dispassionate judgment would reach a conclusion in favor of Cuba?
Up to the late 50’s Chile had had one dictator, Carlos Ibáñez, who, incidentally, was later elected
President of the Republic in a national election, and served his full term in office. Cuba, in the same
period had gone through Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, both despicable dictators. Once
Batista’s satrapy was destroyed, Cuba, if given the non-coerced choice to freely determine its future,
Cuba could have looked south and follow the route Chile was taking: free democratic elections with
Alessandri, Frei, and Allende offering clearly different solutions. Under the binomial Castro-Guevara charioteers the republic turned in the direction of Moscow and not only implanted marxism-leninism in its crudest forms, but tried to infect Chile as well, later metastasizing into Venezuela.
Ask the Knight of the Mirrors: let him show you the realities of Cuba (and Venezuela), and contrast
them with Chile’s open and transparent reality. I rest my case.
1
Among preoccupations inspiring Javier Marías’s writing, this profile names one also behind the ambivalence Spaniards feel about Franco’s legacy: Where to fall silent?
I learned this when I lived, off & on from 2014 to 2017, in Valencia. In late 1936 it became capital of Republican Spain. The Italian Navy shelled the city; flyers trained by Germany’s Condor Legion (responsible for destroying Guernica) bombed it. Nationalists finally took it on Mar. 30, 1939, ending the Civil War.
Valencia’s defiance earned it Franco’s undying enmity; rightist politicians still disdain it. When conservative parties rule in Madrid, Comunitat Valencia receives the lowest share of central government aid & investment among 17 autonomous regions. Demanding evenhandedness spurs conservatives to stint it even more in the next budget. Where to fall silent?
On trips to market, I took Avenida Barón de Carcer. The baron was a perfervid Nationalist, so Franco made him Valencia's mayor from 1939 to 1942. He died in 1985; the street name with fascist overtones changed in 2017. Most Valencians still use the old name, to avoid address & postal mix-ups & ideological spats with some of its residents. Where to fall silent?
Sometimes exhibitions run in Valencia with films of huddling war refugees and flaming buildings, and old casualty lists, ration cards, & anti-fascist combat posters. But visitors are few. Memories of death & dictatorship remain too fresh to stir without deep pain. Where to fall silent?
10
@EuropeanSkeptic Well thought out and written. Thanks
4
Well, in fact at the far interior of the basilica at the Valle de los Caídos there are two marble slabs. While Franco lies under one, José Antonio Primo de Rivera lies under the other. Other comments here have noted that Mr Harvey is in over his head in trying to write about Mr Marías. Another aspect of his neglect of context is his failure to note the sociological dimension of the current appeal of the “secular religion” of not forgetting in Spain. It is impossible to understand that appeal without reference to the unemployment and precarity that affect the lives of so many Spaniards. Even the late Adolfo Suárez would have found these a formidable challenge.
6
This is simplifying I admit. Spain though is a perfect example how if it doesn't directly affect me, I am not going to rock the boat. I cannot help but think of our condition in The United States where a certain segment of our population not only feels the same but seems to be gleeful and eager to prosecute, demonize and in some case kill those not like themselves. Truly a sad and ugly chapter in our history. Thank god for all the Fascists before so that in this instance we are prepared. Personally I am looking forward to the day these collaborators are made to answer. Hopefully we will still have a Constitution and will be able to punish those who abandoned their oath to upholding The Constitution above self interests.
17
Nobel, please.
6
Well, no, there are actually two marble slabs at the end of the basilica at the Valle de los Caidos. One marks the crypt of the Franco, and the other that of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. But why bother with such details in an article distinguished by such vapidity and lack of historical perspective? Mr Marias deserves a far more astute and serious interpreter than Mr Harvey. For the point that Mr Marias is making about the "secular religion" of not forgetting is, in a country so long obsessed with its own identity, a very complex one. It has, for example, a pronounced sociological dimension. When Spaniards fight to preserve the memories of the Civil War and ensuing decades of dictatorship, they are also challenging the social order of the present, which sees so many of them in situations of unemployment and precarity. Would Adolfo Suarez been able constructively to address this challenge? Very possibly not, alas. And so, despite his great courage, one wonders if Suarez is relevant to the present, to the concerns of those determined to see Spain's national identity include them. Mr Marias almost certainly understands all this. Mr Harvey? Very possibly not, alas.
1
Amusing how chasing the latest shiny object on the part of the journalist (Franco's exhumation) did not engage Marías' attention. Distracting people with fear and hope, Spanish politicians passed a makeshift constitution that has provided them with a good living and inflated their number. Price to live in a normal country paid. The next generation fomented hyperpartisanship, neglected civic virtue and education, and tugged at the foundations of their own building. Now they seem unable to get together to make the system work. Unfortunately, this is becoming an universal evil. I sympathize with many of Marias' comments as reported here and enjoy his work, including his newspaper column.
5
I am woefully ignorant of most Spanish literature and unfamiliar with Marias' work, but the italicized outtake from his most recent novel brought me up short; thinking this is almost exactly what Toqueville said about American Democracy, albeit without the bile. Of course Tocqueville spent most of his time with Whigs, and absorbed their view of Andrew Jackson as a tyrant carried by a mob. The prominence of Jackson's portrait in the current occupant's oval office probably has more resonance than even he realizes. Marias' contemplation of the natures of democracy and it's closeness to fascism rings harmonics here, and is certainly now on my reading list. Excellent article.
11
Why all the negative comments about "Spain's most celebrated writer"? The author obviously was referring to living writers, and that description is accurate. And why didn't anyone mention how intelligent and beautifully composed his novels are?
9
As an American living in Spain I have to say that I am tired of the drivel that is put out by writers who have little knowledge of modern Spain. The Republican forces killed many Nationalist supporters as well as monks, nuns, priests and catholic laity simply because they were Catholics. And now there are leftist political parties in Spain who regularly call for the burning of churches. Civil Wars are bloody affairs that result in the unjust killing of many on all sides of the conflict, and so it happened here in Spain. The revisionist history of the left here in Spain and in the US is not helpful.
11
@Joseph Alvarez Oh, so to paraphrase our wonderful president "There were good people on both sides," eh? While there were doubtless excesses and atrocities among the Republicans, I think I'll still hold with those who were fighting against an ally of Mussolini and Hitler...
29
Those same people who fought against the fascists in Spain also did the bidding of Stalin whose communist region murdered 20 million before WWII.
2
@Don Carleton. And I will stick with the side that was democratically elected, and not with the side that overthrew them.
4
The article nails it when it points out that many in Spain would have been content to let Franco’s regime continue for another decade. Now everyone is against Franco but back in the day most had accommodated the regime. It is easy to criticise the transition to democracy but it was largely peaceful and that is an accomplishment in its own right.
Like the confederate flag Franco belongs in a museum.
14
"The 2007 Law of Historical Memory not only officially condemned the Franco regime for the first time, it also provided state assistance to those seeking to trace, exhume and formally rebury relatives who perished under the dictator, many of whom were buried in mass graves."
This is a very optimistic description of the actual situation. The law is part of the continuing whitewash that characterizes the "Transition to Democracy" of which Marías is rightly skeptical. The Spanish government has done little to accomplish such remedies as are described in the law, not providing the necessary funds, for example. The private groups and families trying to deal with the overwhelming number of mass and/or unmarked graves of the executed (second only to those of Cambodia in their numbers) have an uphill battle and are treated as an inexcusable embarrassment by much of Spanish nationalism.
22
From the horse's mouth:
'The budget assigned to The Law of Historical Memory in the five years of this government is zero, with an average of zero, zero every year. Zero . . . and it isn't a big deal.'
— Mariano Rajoy, prime minister of Spain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpps3-YDTuU
4
Exhuming the remains of Franco would be warranted only if they were stuffed into a cannot and blasted to smithereens. The man was a monster.
39
Good writer, but by no means "Spain´s most celebrated writer."
5
@morenom Most celebrated living writer. And he is. Or should be.
6
Fascism has never gone away it is with us today. The unholy alliance between Government, Business and the Church.
48
@piet hein
Let's just look at our country! The US will one day be the beacon of fascism thanks to the indifference of the masses and the malignant devotion of our people to our people in uniform and our third world approach to religiosity.
23
Can you imagine if Germany had a Valley of the Fallen and a crypt with Hitler’s remains still being honored? It makes me ill to think about it. If Franco isn’t exhumed, perhaps some members of ETA can come out of retirement and blow the Valley of the Fallen up.
61
Great idea, and the members if ETA can blow themselves up with it too, the atrocities they made were no different than Franco’s and their “people” see them as heroes...
6
@Maurie Beck...Yep, I have a very low opinion of ETA. But if they did that, they would score some points.
2
Spain's most celebrated writer? What say you of Federico Garcia Lorca, Miguel de Cervantes and Miguel de Unamuno?
I'd ask young journalists to gain perspective in their headlines before making them.
27
@Maura M. Kennedy
I must amend an earlier reply to your comment.
In fact, one does not need to imagine (as I proposed) that Giles Harvey may have meant to say Marías is Spain's most celebrated "contemporary" writer, thus not overlooking Lorca, Cervantes, and Unamuno.
In opening his third paragraph, Giles calls Marías Spain's most celebrated "living" writer, clearly not qualifying him as the greatest of all time.
Another important point: journalists seldom have liberty to write their own headlines - these are composed by editors whose overriding goal not communicating nuance, but succinctness in the service of saving space.
Thus the article's title, "Spain's Most Celebrated Writer," is not categorical evidence, as you take it, that Harvey is ignorant of history. Nor that millennials in general suffer this "disease," disparagement expressed in another comment you made.
6
@Maura M. Kennedy
Obviously "the most celebrated Spanish write ALIVE."
The context of the article makes it clear.
12
@Maura M. Kennedy He meant of those still living, and narrowed it down to novelists...though there are those that would still contest the claim.
3
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
-William Faulkner
42
I fear Giles Harvey may suffer the disease of a "Millenial": History begins when I was born. With seemingly no knowledge of Spain's centuries of literary contributions, Mr. Harvey embarrassingly cites Javier Marias as "Spain's most celebrated writer". Miguel de Cervantes, Federico Garcia Lorca, Miguel de Unamuno and Lope de Vega be forewarned.
18
@Maura M. Kennedy
The sub-editor should have read the article - which refers to Marias as Spain's most celebrated LIVING writer - more carefully. Regardless,, Marias is a truly wonderful and profound writer, and easily deserves a large audience outside Europe where he is revered. His work is perhaps too thoughtful for a mass audience but it is addictive and, despite its constantly reworked obsessions, completely original, which is more than can be said of so many novels published these days. He is a true artist and thinker.
5
@Maura M. Kennedy Relax, he is refering, obviously, to "Spain's most celebrated writer ALIVE".
1
@Maura M. Kennedy...I understood he meant the most celebrated among the living....
2
. . . yet here is a talented and articulate man using an undeniable vice—drug addiction (cigarettes)—to add his considerable clout to that segment of Spanish society who share his scorn that bicycle lanes "have mortally wounded" Madrid.
I think: What more could he add to his already wonderful "oeuvre" if he were to rise early to take in the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions offered up by this magnificent city in perhaps the best way that modern mankind has devised for doing so—by bicycle?
He might even then desire to perhaps live a little longer (by giving up the addiction), attempt to write an e-mail, and maybe even learn how much better the modern world is because so many others fought long and hard for smoke-free airline cabins, hotels, and theaters.
Only sixty-seven, Javier Marías? You could still be a kid out there on your bicycle riding through the lovely streets of early morning Madrid—safe in your own bicycle lane!
4
wonderful way of entirely missing the point of the article by latching onto an entirely insignificant part of it and using that to advance an entirely irrelevant point
41
@Tom Wilde
I think the point of the writer is to mock the obsession we have with certain rules that we think are making our lives better. People invest so much energy in small fights that we forget the real ones. I wish all these people so devoted to fight smoking, for example, or any other minor social cause, would dare to fight to change the brutal and violent way of our empire and the oligarchy that controls it. And yes, I am a progressive who also hates bike lanes. They have also destroyed my city, NY!
7
@Tom Wilde
It's annoying in the extreme to read an American in Santa Monica commenting about the smoking habits of Javier Marias on a day there are 19 dead in a shopping mall gun massacre in Texas.
Best leave Mr. Marias to his beautiful writing in Madrid where the biggest threat to his comfort is bike lanes.
Marias would probably feel less strongly about bike lanes if he lived in the U.S. and had to fear eating in restaurants, shopping or going to a cinema in Madrid because he might get shot by a maniac with an assault rifle.
At 67, Javier Marias is considerably luckier than 6 year old Stephen Romero of San Jose, who was fatally shot at California's Gilroy Garlic festival 2 weeks ago.
Get some perspective, Mr. Wilde.
7
This man is much resented, primarily because he isn't "the Spain's most celebrated writer", many others are in the contest like Antonio López Molina or Arturo Pérez Reverte to quote only two of them. This lack of total recognition brings bitterness and intolerance, hence the now famous "imbecil" neighbour. So in defending democracy, the real one according to him, behaves in remembrance of the old regime fellows in power. Solitary as he is, has no better political contribution to the country that setting on a destructive thrust to national convivence. Very sad.
6
@Cuchillero Some, or many, may agree with your point regarding Muñoz Molina (not "López Molina"). But Arturo Pérez Reverte is mostly a popular writer -- middle-brow, as they used to say. I cannot imagine any serious critic or expert in Spanish lit. who would put Marías and Pérez Reverte in the same category. (And I myself find Reverte's work quite entertaining, but these authors inhabit different literary worlds.)
5
@Cuchillero
Bitterness? Sad indeed.
@Cuchillero
López Molina??? Perhaps try some other Molina. As for Pérez Reverte one may have doubts.
'Most celebrated "contemporary" writer' would be better or at least acceptable. From his colums one can identify two Marías. One is a stimulating observer. The other one is obsessed with Javier Marías.
1
About 10 years ago, I spent an afternoon in the Madrid military museum. The room devoted to the 1930's was divided in half. On one side was the Fascist interpretation. On the other was the Loyalist. Both the same size, but neither addressed the propaganda across the room. This article reminded me of that afternoon. I wonder if the two sides will ever reconcile. I fear they will not.
16
@hiuralney
I would ask a simple question, why is the confederate flag still alive through much of the US South, more than 160 years after the Civil War? And this was a much more civilized war that the Spanish one was.
24
@pablo i agree. The reconciliation of North and South during Reconstruction failed, and is still incomplete. Passing of state Jim Crow laws and erecting statues of Confederate generals peaked 30-50 years after the end of the Civil War. If Spain follows a similar trajectory, a Fascist revival is a real possibility. What say you?
3
@pablo
A much more civilized war?????? Do we have civilized wars???? Didn't know that.
6
My parents came to this country from Northern Spain and escaped the horrors of the Civil War. I grew up thinking Franco was wonderful. At the age of 14 my parent shipped me off to my relatives in Gijon Spain to attend el Colegio de la Asuncion. It was an abrupt change for an American child. The nuns took us on a trip on the school bus which broke down while climbing the Puerto Pajares in the Pyrenees. They took us to the Valley of the Valley which was being built. What did a 14 year old know? I still have the pictures of that day. I lived 2 years in Franco's Spain and loved every minute of it I lived in a world of Catholicism.
Some years ago I picked up for $2 a biography of Franco, quite an eye opener. But it was my cousin Ovidio who told me how Franco bought his Moroccan troops to slaughter the Asturias miners who stood up to him.
It was thanks to a series on Spanish television RTVE ,"La Republica" that I learned about the other side. What turned me against the Catholic church forever was knowing that they supported this monster for 40 years and that after the Civil War Franco continued to kill those who were against him in the war.
130
Just to point out that those “Asturian miners who stood up to him” is not quite accurate is it? If you are referring to the 1934 uprising that Franco suppressed bloodily, it would be more accurate to say that the miners rose up against the legitimate and democratic CEDA (conservative) government, who called in the army to suppress the rebellion.
Franco has many things to answer for but let’s not whitewash history please.
5
Your cousin failed to tell you that Franco was faithfully serving the Republic when he was sent to crush the uprising against the Republic by the miners.
5
@Observer you two are halfway correct. The uprising took place before the Civil War BUT Franco led the military forces that repress the miners. Horrifically repressed I should say the miners revolution.
3
Why did the author use the Italian instead of the Spanish spelling for the dictator's self-designation?:
"Generalissimo Francisco Franco, one of the few Fascist dictators to die peacefully in his bed…"
The term in Spanish is "Generalísimo".
Marías was a translator in his youth, so I'm surprised he'd approve...
21
@Miguel
I noticed that, too, don Miguel. And I fear that the answer is easy: the author does not know what he is doing. Note that he also writes Franco's party was called the Falange, rather than the FET y de las JONS.
10
@Miguel Because the word came to English through Italian, not through Spanish. And we use that word to describe all the generalissimos, not just Franco. I'm not sure why we should stress about honoring a dictator's true title against linguistic conventions.
7
Some former ETA (Basque extinct terrorist group) criminals were recently released after some decades in prison. They will probably die in bed, like Franco: however, Franco did not serve a minute in jail for the crimes he promoted.
ETA members’ followers celebrating their return home are greatly criticized by Fracoists who hail the dictator whenever they wish.
13
@Manuel GL I am not sure who are the Francoists you refer to that hail the dictator? After 40 years, I am not sure there are many alive or that they manifest themselves in any possible way...But I guess this does not matter...I hope you are not implying that it is fine to have ETA celebrated because Franco did not serve a minute in prison.
10
@pablo
You’re right assuming I don’t find fine ETA supporters’ celebrations.
Your question on who are the Francoists: from my point of view, those denying the post-civil war Spanish Holocaust fall under that definition, as well as those promoting forgetness of the crimes.
1
@pablo There are many alive indeed. They have a party called VOX, and some 6-10% of votes. Celebrating ETA terrorists is disgusting. Celebrating Franco is disgusting.
1
"altogether fitting and proper"...where did I read that exact phrase before?
1
...and if the Stalinist bossed Republicans had won where would Spain be today?
14
@Boils Well, if Franco and his sponsors, Hitler and Mussolini, had been defeated, if Britain and France had helped defend the democratically elected Spanish Republic, then where would Europe be today? Maybe with no legacy of the Second World War, maybe with no Holocaust.
84
@Boils
Stalin's Spain might have unraveled faster than Hitler's Spain, but I doubt the poor would have been as poor as the Spaniards I saw in l964 when I was a student there.
The Spanish fascist economy wasn't dynamic but static.
Suppressing lower classes for the sake of the oligarchy
has consequences, as can be seen elsewhere.
64
@Boils There were some “Stalinist-bossed” republicans to be sure, but there were many republicans who were anti-communist democrats. Indeed, a “republic” is a form of democratic governance in which the people rule through their elected representatives rather than directly (which is difficult in a mass society). To paint all of Spain’s republicans of the period as “Stalinist” is to argue in bad faith.
Moreover (to answer your question of where would Spain be now etc.), though atrocities were committed by both sides in the Civil War, the ascertainable facts and thus the overwhelming historical consensus (the consensus among the vast majority of historians as opposed to tendentious polemicists) clearly show that the fascists side was responsible for many more of them (atrocities) than their democratic opponents. Indeed, many of those detained by the fascists ended up in Nazi concentration camps
76
Very interesting, informative article. However, you say that he has a "thoughtful mouth?" Huh? Saying he has thoughtful knees would have added as much to your description.
13
@LBarkan A “thoughtful mouth” is merely a metaphor meaning “the words coming out of his mouth are thoughtful”. The metaphor may have been awkward, but the meaning was clear — no need for head-scratching.
17
@LBarkan A “thoughtful mouth” is merely a metaphor meaning “the words coming out of his mouth are thoughtful”. The metaphor may have been awkward, but the meaning was clear — no need for head-scratching.
3
I wrote a novella about Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's Man of Letters, who was assassinated by the Fascists in Spain in August of 1936. I wondered what Lorca would say if he had an additional day of life, and so I gave this to him.
I researched the book in Granada, Spain, where he was raised, and ultimately executed. The general who signed his death warrant said he was doing so because Lorca's words were "more powerful than ten thousand guns", a harbinger of the way that autocratic regimes treat writers of conscience, like Lorca, like Jamal Khashoggi.
Spain has the dubious distinction of being second to Cambodia alone in terms of the number of unmarked graves left to be uncovered. Healing can only occur when this period of history is faced.
It was not the Fascists alone that waged this war, it was a vendetta of brother against brother, family against family, and of the utter complicity of the Catholic Church. Armaments were hidden under the cloak of sanctity. If one visits the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid to view Picasso's Guernica, for instance, one would also see other drawings by Spanish artists of the same period, showing bishops with military helmets atop their mitres, and holding machine guns.
If we don't acknowledge history, if we turn a blind eye,then we give licence for the demons to rise again.
193
@Jennifer
I could tell you 1.000 stories (literally) of the atrocities committed against members of the church at the outbreak of the Civil War that would make the ISIS terrorists pale in comparison. All this martyrs have been documented too if you care to read, Many Republicans hated the church and did all they could to destroy it in Spain (before & during the war), so no wonder they later supported Franco.
As for your "unmarked graves", I would use a famous quote from Jesus himself - "if you are free from sin, throw the first stone". I am sure that in Vietnam, in Corea, in Iraq, in Syria, in many of the conflicts America has generously embarked itself on or supported over the last 70 years there are also many unmarked graves...
You should be very careful of commenting on a conflict you have very little knowledge about - going to Granada for a couple of weeks and reading a couple of books counts for little in this regard. As I would not comment on the American Civil War.
17
@Jennifer
"if we don't acknowledge history, if we turn a blind eye,then we give licence for the demons to rise again."
The demons are beginning to rise again in Spain, summoned by tribalism.
9
@pablo
Well said, Pablo. As a friend of mine here in Seville says, "it's not a matter of Angels and Demons"; History and even current events, when seen through Only one perspective is distorted, and a few weeks in Granada and reading a book or two does not make one an authority on a subject. Lorca is a sacred cow here and, unfortunately, that inhibits a clear look at that unfortunate episode.
8