Reading the Spanish Civil War – Wrap!

¡No pasarán!
They Shall Not Pass!

It’s a full three years since I decided to a challenge myself to read my way into this piece of history which has always been a large gap in my knowledge. Little did I know that just a few weeks later Covid would hit the world, one of its less important effects being to drive me into a major reading slump that came and went for the best part of two years. So despite the time it’s taken, I’ve only read thirteen books, a mix of fact and fiction, which is quite a bit less than I originally planned, but feels like enough – for now, anyway. My main purpose was to give myself enough background knowledge to stop avoiding novels about the Spanish Civil War on the grounds that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate them properly, and happily I feel I’ve achieved that aim, so challenge met!

If you want to see the full list of the books I read, you’ll find it here. I abandoned two of the books on my initial list of eight as I went along. On the other hand, I added seven – a combination of books that were recommended to me and books to which some other part of my reading led me.

In total, then, thirteen books, of which six are factual (three history, one biography and two memoirs) and seven fiction. Although I had an ongoing issue throughout with the persistent left-wing bias of pretty much all of the British and American novels I read, and with much of the factual stuff too, in the end I enjoyed the vast majority of them, with only a couple being quite disappointing. And I felt I learned a lot!  So to celebrate the end of this challenge, I thought I’d pick out what were the highlights for me – all books that I unreservedly recommend.

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HISTORY

The Spanish Labyrinth by Gerald Brenan

Brenan excels in his detailed breakdown of the background to the conflict, especially his explanation of why the various different regions in Spain developed differing political alignments dependant on local geographical, agricultural and industrial factors. While all were affected by the power plays amongst the monarchy, Church and military, he shows that the impact differed according to the economic and social history of each region. I found that I was gradually developing a map of the country in my mind, one that showed not simply where places were but what people did there – how they lived, were they wealthy or poor, who owned the land, was the land fertile, what were their local industries, and so on. I found this a fascinating and hugely informative read, that left me with a much better understanding of what led to the rise of the various factions, and why the drive towards war became seemingly unstoppable.

It is in the nature of revolutions to throw up moments when all the more brilliant dreams of the human race seem about to be realized, and the Catalans with their expansive and self-dramatizing character were not behind other peoples in this respect. Visitors to Barcelona in the autumn of 1936 will never forget the moving and uplifting experience and, as the resistance to the military rebellion stiffened, the impressions they brought back with them spread to wider and wider circles. Spain became the scene of a drama in which it seemed as if the fortunes of the civilized world were being played out in miniature. As in a crystal, those people who had eyes for the future looked, expecting to read there their own fate.

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MEMOIR

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Orwell’s memoir of his time in Spain, fighting for the Republican side in the International Brigades, is obviously a heavily biased account, which adds colour but doesn’t replace reading an actual history. It does however give a lot of insight into how the fractures and in-fighting among the factions on the left weakened the Republicans, leaving the door open for the much better disciplined Nationalists, especially once Franco took command. Orwell sees the conflict in terms of good and evil, which I found rather too simplified, but his honesty gives a very clear picture of his growing disillusion, not with the theories and ideals underpinning the revolution, but with the realities of it. Despite its bias, I enjoyed this much more than I expected.

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FICTION

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

In the pine forests high in the Spanish Sierra, a small band of Republican guerrillas is holed up, waiting instructions. Robert Jordan, an American who has volunteered, is sent to lead them in the blowing up of a bridge to prevent Franco’s Nationalists from bringing up reinforcements during a Republican offensive scheduled to begin in a few days time. Over the next few days as they prepare for their mission, Robert will learn the stories of these people and we will learn his, seeing what drives a man to participate in a war in a country not his own, and the effect it has on him. As the group sit in the evenings in the cave where they are living, they tell each other stories they have told many times before – stories of the days before war, of atrocities they have seen and participated in, of bullfighting and politics and love. A book of this stature doesn’t require a recommendation from me but it has it anyway – my highest. A masterpiece.

Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.

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FICTION

In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda

This is the story of Natalia’s marriage and life in Barcelona, before, during and after the war. The war happens mostly off the page, referred to but not visited. When her husband gets swept up and goes off to fight on the Republican side along with his friends, Natalia must fend for herself in a city full of shortages and suspicion. How to work and care for her children at the same time, how to feed her family when both money and food are scarce, how to navigate a city where the political allegiances of her husband can open some doors and close others – these are the things Natalia must grapple with in a world that, as a young housewife, she has barely known before. It is a fascinating picture of someone who has no interest in or understanding of politics – who simply endures as other people destroy her world then put it back together in a different form. Natalia – Pidgey, as she is known – has taken up permanent residence in my heart.

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FICTION

Nada by Carmen Laforet

The Civil War is over but Spain is still suffering its after-effects when Andrea comes to Barcelona from her provincial home to study literature at the University. She is enthralled at the idea of Barcelona, having only childish memories of earlier visits to her then wealthy relatives. When she arrives at her grandmother’s house in the middle of the night, she discovers the family is no longer wealthy – quite the reverse. The house is old, run-down, dirty and over-stuffed with furniture and trinkets, relics of when the family owned the whole house, before they had to divide it into two and sell the other half. The family are as Gothic as the house, with a general air of insanity hovering over the household. The book is considered a classic of existential literature, and part of the Spanish tremendismo style, which apparently was characterized by a tendency to emphasise violence and grotesquery. This gives Andrea’s Barcelona a kind of nebulous, nightmarish quality that somehow paints a clearer picture of the social dislocation caused by civil war than a more direct depiction might have done.

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So it’s a wrap!

Thank you for joining me on my journey and I hope you enjoyed at least some parts of my obsession with the Spanish Civil War, which may continue although the challenge has ended. I shall give the last word to Orwell…

In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.

¡España una, grande, libre!
Spain, one, great and free!