What Is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition
Nicholas Sambanis
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Spanish Civil War
Título:
Francisco Franco. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition,
Base de datos:
Literary Reference Center
Texto completo en HTML
Francisco Franco
Contenido
1. Bibliography
Escuchar Descargar MP3 Ayuda
Franco, Francisco (fränthēs′kō fräng′kō), 1892–1975, Spanish general and caudillo [leader]. He became a general at
the age of 32 after commanding the Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco. During the next 10 years he enhanced his
military reputation in a variety of commands and became identified politically with the conservative nationalist
position. In 1934 he was appointed chief of the general staff by the rightist government, and he suppressed the
uprising of the miners in Asturias. When the Popular Front came to power (Feb., 1936), he was made military
governor of the Canary Islands, a significant demotion. In July, 1936, Franco joined the military uprising that
precipitated the Spanish civil war. He flew to Morocco, took command of the most powerful segment of the
Spanish army, and led it back to Spain. He became head of the Insurgent government in Oct., 1936. In 1937 he
merged all the other Nationalist political parties with the Falange, assuming leadership of the new party. With
German and Italian help he ended the civil war with victory for the Nationalists in Mar., 1939. Franco dealt
ruthlessly with his opposition and established a firmly controlled corporative state. Although close to the Axis
powers and despite their pressure, Franco kept Spain a nonbelligerent in World War II. He dismissed (1942) his
vigorously pro-Axis minister and principal collaborator, Ramón Serrano Súñer. After the war Franco maneuvered to
establish favorable relations with the United States and its allies. He further reduced the power of the Falange and
erected the facade of a liberalized regime. The law of succession (1947) promulgated by Franco declared Spain a
kingdom, with himself as regent pending the choice of a king. Diplomatic relations were established with the United
States and other members of the United Nations in 1950, and as the cold war continued Franco secured massive
U.S. economic aid in return for military bases in Spain. From 1959 onward, Franco presided over governments that
were increasingly concerned with technological change and economic development. Very successful in these fields,
the regime was forced to grant even greater social and political liberties, except in the Basque provinces, where a
fierce struggle against separatists raged. The greater de facto freedom allowed growing vocal opposition to Franco's
regime, even from the Falange, whose exclusion from power was increased after the appointment of Luis Carrero
Blanco as vice premier. Franco, however, firmly maintained his position of power, even after the assassination of
Carrero Blanco in 1973. In 1969, Franco named as his successor the Bourbon prince, Juan Carlos.
Bibliography
See biographies by B. Crozier (1968), G. Hills (1968), and J. W. Trythall (1970).
Copyright of this work is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be copied without the
copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software
used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Número de acceso: 39007197
Multiperspectivism in the Novels of the Spanish Civil War.
Idioma:
English
Autores:
Hansen, Hans Lauge (1)
Fuente:
Orbis Litterarum; Apr2011, Vol. 66 Issue 2, p148-166, 19p
Tipo de documento:
Article
Descriptores:
COLLECTIVE memory
CIVIL war
MANICHAEANS
INTERNATIONAL law
SOCIAL impact
Términos geográficos:
SPAIN
Palabras clave proporcionadas por el autor:
cultural memory
multiperspectivism
restorative narrative
Spain
Spanish Civil War
Resumen:
Since the turn of the millennium, Spanish society has been engaged with an intense public and political
debate about the Civil War and the post-war period. The number of publications has exploded within all
genres, and narrative fiction clearly participates in the negotiation of the cultural memory of this period.
Taking its point of departure in Todorov's concept of restorative narratives, this article investigates whether
contemporary Spanish novels continue a Manichaean division between 'us' and 'them', and whether it is
possible to detect a difference in narrative patterns before and after the turn of the millennium.
[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Orbis Litterarum is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites
or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should
refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts)
Información del documento:
Essay last updated: 20110315
Afiliaciones del autor:
1
Aarhus University
ISSN:
01057510
DOI:
10.1111/j.1600-0730.2011.01017.x
Número de acceso:
59300796
Base de datos:
Literary Reference Center
Logotipo del editor:
The Memory That Will Not Die: Exhuming the Spanish Civil War.
Imágenes
Idioma:
English
Autores:
Purcell, Julius
Fuente:
Boston Review; Jul/Aug2009, Vol. 34 Issue 4, p31-34, 4p, 1 Black and White Photograph
Tipo de documento:
Essay
Información de la publicación:
Boston Review
Descriptores:
FIRST person narrative
ESSAY (Literary form)
SPAIN -- History -- Civil War, 1936-1939
Términos geográficos:
COLLIOURE (France)
FRANCE
SPAIN
Resumen:
This essay presents a personal narrative which explores the author's experience of going to the French town
of Collioure, north of Spanish border to meet his friend and talk about the events of the 1936 Spanish Civil
War in France.
Información del documento:
Essay last updated: 20090817
ISSN:
07342306
Número de acceso:
43730322
Base de datos:
Literary Reference Center
Imágenes:


panish civil war.
Idioma:
English
Fuente:
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition; 11/1/2011, p1-2, 2p
Tipo de documento:
Reference Entry
Información de la publicación:
Columbia University Press
Resumen:
Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and finally
overthrew the second Spanish republic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
Copyright of Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may
print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy.
Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts)
Información del documento:
Essay last updated: 20090507
Lexile:
1160
Recuento total de palabras:
912
Número de acceso:
39033288
Base de datos:
Literary Reference Center
Traducir el texto completo:
Texto completo en HTML
Spanish civil war
Contenido
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The Second Republic
Outbreak of War
Foreign Participation
Nationalist Victory
Influence
Bibliography
Escuchar Descargar MP3 Ayuda
Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and
finally overthrew the second Spanish republic.
The Second Republic
The second republic, proclaimed after the fall of the monarchy in 1931, was at first dominated by middle-class
liberals and moderate socialists, among them Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Francisco Largo Caballero, and Manuel Azaña.
They began a broad-ranging attack on the traditional, privileged structure of Spanish society: Some large estates
were redistributed; church and state were separated; and an antiwar, antimilitarist policy was proclaimed. With their
interests and their ideals threatened, the landed aristocracy, the church, and a large military clique, as well as
monarchists and Carlists, rallied against the government, as did the new fascist party, the Falange.
The government's idealistic reforms failed to satisfy the left-wing radicals and did little to ameliorate the lot of the
lower classes, who increasingly engaged in protest movements against it. The forces of the right gained a majority in
the 1933 elections, and a series of weak coalition governments followed. Most of these were under the premiership
of the moderate republican Alejandro Lerroux, but he was more or less dependent on the right wing and its leader
José María Gil Robles. As a result many of the republican reforms were ignored or set aside. Left-wing strikes and
risings buffeted the government, especially during the revolution of Oct., 1934, while the political right, equally
dissatisfied, increasingly resorted to plots and violence.
Outbreak of War
When the electoral victory (1936) of the Popular Front (composed of liberals, Socialists, and Communists) augured
a renewal of leftist reforms, revolutionary sentiment on the right consolidated. In July, 1936, Gen. Francisco Franco
led an army revolt in Morocco. Rightist groups rebelled in Spain, and the army officers led most of their forces into
the revolutionary (Nationalist or Insurgent) camp. In N Spain the revolutionists, under Gen. Emilio Mola, quickly
overran most of Old Castile, Navarre, and W Aragon. They also captured some key cities in the south.
Catalonia—where socialism and anarchism were strong, and which had been granted autonomy—remained
republican (Loyalist). The Basques too sided with the republicans to protect their local liberties. This traditional
Spanish separatism asserted itself particularly in republican territory and hindered effective military organization. By
Nov., 1936, the Nationalists had Madrid under siege, but while the new republican government of Francisco Largo
Caballero (to which the anarchists had been admitted) struggled to organize an effective army, the first incoming
International Brigade helped the Loyalists hold the city.
Foreign Participation
The International Brigades—multinational groups of volunteers (many of them Communists) that were organized
mostly in France—represented only a small part of the foreign participation in the war. From the first and
throughout the war, Italy and Germany aided Franco with an abundance of planes, tanks, and other materiel.
Germany sent some 10,000 aviators and technicians; Italy sent large numbers of "volunteers," probably about
70,000. Great Britain and France, anxious to prevent a general European conflagration, proposed a nonintervention
pact, which was signed in Aug., 1936, by 27 nations. The signatories included Italy, Germany, and the USSR, all of
whom failed to keep their promises. The Spanish republic became dependent for supplies on the Soviet Union,
which used its military aid to achieve its own political goals.
Nationalist Victory
As the war progressed the situation played into the hands of the Communists, who at the outset had been of
negligible importance. The Loyalists ranks were riven by factional strife, which intensified as the Loyalist military
position worsened; among its manifestations was the Communists' suppression of the anarchists and the Trotskyite
Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM). On the Nationalist side internal conflict also existed, especially
between the military and the fascists, but Franco was able to surmount it and consolidate his position. Gradually the
Nationalists wore down Loyalist strength. Bilbao, the last republican center in the north, fell in June, 1937, and in a
series of attacks from March to June, 1938, the Nationalists drove to the Mediterranean and cut the republican
territory in two. Late in 1938, Franco mounted a major offensive against Catalonia, and Barcelona was taken in Jan.,
1939. With the loss of Catalonia the Loyalist cause became hopeless. Republican efforts for a negotiated peace
failed, and on Apr. 1, 1939, the victorious Nationalists entered Madrid. Italy and Germany had recognized the
Franco regime in 1936, Great Britain and France did so in Feb., 1939; international recognition of Franco's
authoritarian government quickly followed.
Influence
For Germany and Italy the Spanish civil war served as a testing ground for the blitzkrieg and other techniques of
warfare that would be used in World War II; for the European democracies it was another step down the road of
appeasement; and for the politically conscious youth of the 1930s who joined the International Brigades, saving the
Spanish republic was the idealistic cause of the era, a cause to which many gave their lives. For the Spanish people
the civil war was an encounter whose huge toll of lives and material devastation were unparalleled in centuries of
Spanish history.
Bibliography
See F. Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit (1937); G. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938); G. Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth
(1943); H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961); R. Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left (1969); R. Carr, ed., The Republic
and the Civil War in Spain (1971); G. Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (1965).
Copyright of this work is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be copied without the
copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software
used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Número de acceso: 39033288
Spanish civil war
Contenido
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The Second Republic
Outbreak of War
Foreign Participation
Nationalist Victory
Influence
Bibliography
Escuchar Descargar MP3 Ayuda
Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and
finally overthrew the second Spanish republic.
The Second Republic
The second republic, proclaimed after the fall of the monarchy in 1931, was at first dominated by middle-class
liberals and moderate socialists, among them Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Francisco Largo Caballero, and Manuel Azaña.
They began a broad-ranging attack on the traditional, privileged structure of Spanish society: Some large estates
were redistributed; church and state were separated; and an antiwar, antimilitarist policy was proclaimed. With their
interests and their ideals threatened, the landed aristocracy, the church, and a large military clique, as well as
monarchists and Carlists, rallied against the government, as did the new fascist party, the Falange.
The government's idealistic reforms failed to satisfy the left-wing radicals and did little to ameliorate the lot of the
lower classes, who increasingly engaged in protest movements against it. The forces of the right gained a majority in
the 1933 elections, and a series of weak coalition governments followed. Most of these were under the premiership
of the moderate republican Alejandro Lerroux, but he was more or less dependent on the right wing and its leader
José María Gil Robles. As a result many of the republican reforms were ignored or set aside. Left-wing strikes and
risings buffeted the government, especially during the revolution of Oct., 1934, while the political right, equally
dissatisfied, increasingly resorted to plots and violence.
Outbreak of War
When the electoral victory (1936) of the Popular Front (composed of liberals, Socialists, and Communists) augured
a renewal of leftist reforms, revolutionary sentiment on the right consolidated. In July, 1936, Gen. Francisco Franco
led an army revolt in Morocco. Rightist groups rebelled in Spain, and the army officers led most of their forces into
the revolutionary (Nationalist or Insurgent) camp. In N Spain the revolutionists, under Gen. Emilio Mola, quickly
overran most of Old Castile, Navarre, and W Aragon. They also captured some key cities in the south.
Catalonia—where socialism and anarchism were strong, and which had been granted autonomy—remained
republican (Loyalist). The Basques too sided with the republicans to protect their local liberties. This traditional
Spanish separatism asserted itself particularly in republican territory and hindered effective military organization. By
Nov., 1936, the Nationalists had Madrid under siege, but while the new republican government of Francisco Largo
Caballero (to which the anarchists had been admitted) struggled to organize an effective army, the first incoming
International Brigade helped the Loyalists hold the city.
Foreign Participation
The International Brigades—multinational groups of volunteers (many of them Communists) that were organized
mostly in France—represented only a small part of the foreign participation in the war. From the first and
throughout the war, Italy and Germany aided Franco with an abundance of planes, tanks, and other materiel.
Germany sent some 10,000 aviators and technicians; Italy sent large numbers of "volunteers," probably about
70,000. Great Britain and France, anxious to prevent a general European conflagration, proposed a nonintervention
pact, which was signed in Aug., 1936, by 27 nations. The signatories included Italy, Germany, and the USSR, all of
whom failed to keep their promises. The Spanish republic became dependent for supplies on the Soviet Union,
which used its military aid to achieve its own political goals.
Nationalist Victory
As the war progressed the situation played into the hands of the Communists, who at the outset had been of
negligible importance. The Loyalists ranks were riven by factional strife, which intensified as the Loyalist military
position worsened; among its manifestations was the Communists' suppression of the anarchists and the Trotskyite
Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM). On the Nationalist side internal conflict also existed, especially
between the military and the fascists, but Franco was able to surmount it and consolidate his position. Gradually the
Nationalists wore down Loyalist strength. Bilbao, the last republican center in the north, fell in June, 1937, and in a
series of attacks from March to June, 1938, the Nationalists drove to the Mediterranean and cut the republican
territory in two. Late in 1938, Franco mounted a major offensive against Catalonia, and Barcelona was taken in Jan.,
1939. With the loss of Catalonia the Loyalist cause became hopeless. Republican efforts for a negotiated peace
failed, and on Apr. 1, 1939, the victorious Nationalists entered Madrid. Italy and Germany had recognized the
Franco regime in 1936, Great Britain and France did so in Feb., 1939; international recognition of Franco's
authoritarian government quickly followed.
Influence
For Germany and Italy the Spanish civil war served as a testing ground for the blitzkrieg and other techniques of
warfare that would be used in World War II; for the European democracies it was another step down the road of
appeasement; and for the politically conscious youth of the 1930s who joined the International Brigades, saving the
Spanish republic was the idealistic cause of the era, a cause to which many gave their lives. For the Spanish people
the civil war was an encounter whose huge toll of lives and material devastation were unparalleled in centuries of
Spanish history.
Bibliography
See F. Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit (1937); G. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938); G. Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth
(1943); H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961); R. Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left (1969); R. Carr, ed., The Republic
and the Civil War in Spain (1971); G. Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (1965).
Copyright of this work is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be copied without the
copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software
used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Número de acceso: 39033288
Título:
Carlists. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition,
Base de datos:
Literary Reference Center
Texto completo en HTML
Carlists
Contenido
1. Bibliography
Escuchar Descargar MP3 Ayuda
Carlists, partisans of Don Carlos (1788–1855) and his successors, who claimed the Spanish throne under the Salic
law of succession, introduced (1713) by Philip V. The law (forced on Philip by the War of the Spanish Succession to
avoid a union of the French and Spanish crowns) was abrogated by Ferdinand VII in favor of his daughter, who
succeeded him (1833) as Isabella II. Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, refused to recognize Isabella and claimed the
throne. A civil war followed (First Carlist War, 1833–40), and in the hope of autonomy, most of the Basque Provs.
and much of Catalonia supported Carlos. The Carlists' conservative and clericalist tendencies gave the dynastic
conflict a political character, since the upper middle classes profited from the sale of church lands and supported
Isabella. The Carlists enjoyed many early successes, especially under their great general, Tomas Zumalacarregui.
After he was killed (1835) in battle, the greater strength of the Isabelline forces gradually made itself felt. In 1839 the
Carlist commander Rafael Maroto yielded, but in Catalonia the Carlists under Ramón Cabrera continued the
struggle until 1840. Don Carlos's son, Don Carlos, conde de Montemolín (1818–61), made an unsuccessful attempt
at a new uprising in 1860. Montemolín's claims were revived by his nephew, Don Carlos, duque de Madrid (1848–
1909), after the deposition (1868) of Isabella. Two insurrections (1869,1872) failed, but after the abdication (1873)
of King Amadeus and the proclamation of the first republic, the Carlists seized most of the Basque Provs. and parts
of Catalonia, Aragón, and Valencia. The ensuing chaos and brutal warfare of this Second Carlist War ended in 1876,
over a year after Alfonso XII, son of Isabella, was proclaimed king. Don Carlos escaped to France. In the next half
century many defected from Carlist ranks, and several rival groups formed. Pressure against the church by the
second republic (1931–39) helped revive Carlism, and the Carlists embraced the Nationalist cause in the Spanish
civil war (1936–39). Under the Franco regime Carlism was for many years an obstacle to plans for restoring the
main branch of the Bourbon dynasty, but in 1969, Franco overrode Carlist objections and named the Bourbon
prince Juan Carlos as his successor.
Bibliography
See E. Holt, Carlist Wars in Spain (1967).
Copyright of this work is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be copied without the
copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software
used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Número de acceso: 39050515
876 Reviews of Books and Films
This lengthy (744 pages of packed text plus 2,550
footnotes) but highly readable and authoritative study
could be the definitive work on an important incident
in the history of Spain under Bourbon reformer
Charles III (1759-1788). Authoritative Spanish academics
like Vicente Rodriguez Casado and Carlos
Corona and the distinguished French historian Pierre
Vilar have all studied the three-day popular riot or
motín against the policies of Charles's Italian (Neapolitan)
Minister of Finance and War, Leopoldo di Gregorio,
better known as the Marquis of Esquilache.
They have disputed the extent to which the Á4otín de
Esquilache was the result of economic problems, especially
inflationary pressures linked both to erratic
weather patterns and to Esquilache's decree of free
trade in grain. The new policy and the weather had
raised prices beyond the reach of commoners and
many others, producing shortages of wheat and bread
in many towns and villages. Other scholars have argued
that the riot was the product of a well-planned
conspiracy of antiliberal aristocrats alienated by the
bourgeois-friendly policies of the reformist Esquilache
and represented a challenge to the traditional prerogatives
of the clergy and nobility. As José AndrésGallegos shows, the reality was a little bit of both.
The Motín de Esquilache has elicited debate and
academic attention not only because popular riots
generally fascinate historians and sociologists, exposing
important dynamics in the processes of statebuilding
and collective action and even at times revealing
the course of international geopolitics. This
particular riot, which occurred during Holy Week in
1766, was particularly significant to contemporaries
and later generations of scholars because it was linked
to an event with major historical consequences: the
expulsion of the Jesuits from the domains of the
Spanish monarchy in 1767, followed by the confiscation
of all of their valuable properties. Observers at the
time alleged that the Jesuits had instigated the riot, in
which large crowds raided military garrisons and
seized weapons; vandalized the homes of Esquilache,
the controversial Italian architect and urban designer
Francesco Sabatini, and a high-ranking government
officer in the Council of Castile; and destroyed valuable
public works. To the cry of "long live the king and
death to Esquilache and bad government," the masses
stoned and destroyed thousands of expensive crystal
lamps newly installed along Madrid's central streets.
They forced people in nearby areas, among them
merchants whose goods were allowed into the city tax
free, to enter Madrid. The mob released prisoners
from the local women's jail and confronted the city's
royal troops, in the process causing and suffering
several casualties. The corpses of some royal guards
were dragged through the streets and burned. The
tearful king swore that Esquilache would be expelled,
promised to appoint only Spaniards to all future
ministerial posts, and granted a general amnesty.
Unknown to the crowd, the king was so alarmed that
he and his entire entourage fled the royal palace.
Belatedly realizing he had departed, the riot's leaders
sent envoys and sabotaged food and water supplies to
coerce him, his family, and associates to return to
Madrid from their place of escape, the nearby town of
Aranjuez. They impeded the departure of anyone else
from Madrid, detaining coaches headed to Aranjuez or
suspected of transporting the royal servants. Esquilache
resigned from the government and rushed back to
his native Italy, joined by several other Italian families
who resided in Madrid.
Since his appointment in the early 1760s, Esquilache,
a liberal-minded aristocrat, had promoted a number
of urban, fiscal, and sanitary reforms. In early 1765,
he enforced a longstanding prohibition against the
wearing of long capes and a type of round hat known
as the sombrero gacho or chambergo. According to the
decree, these capes and hats violated standards of
decency and sanitation and defied the three-point hat
(sombrero de tres picos), a key symbol of status. Esquilache
also supported other bureaucrats who challenged
the Catholic Church's control over real estate and
imposed long-overdue taxes on church-owned property.
He went on to restrict the further acquisition of
property by the church and its officials.
Andrés-Gallego describes these and other events in
solid prose based on information gathered in numerous
libraries and dozens of secular and ecclesiastical
archives in Spain, Italy, France, and Latin America.
Consulted by the author over the course of two
decades, these archives afford exciting new evidence
that, contrary to previous interpretations, the riot was
neither merely an economic (bread and tax) riot nor a
preordained and reactionary clerical and aristocratic
plot but instead combined features of both. The book
also provides a comprehensive assessment of related
riots all over Spain as well as in Spanish America. A
tour de force, this entertaining work should set to rest
one-dimensional interpretations. It should be obligatory
reading for anyone interested in the Spanish
Bourbon reforms, church history, popular rebellions,
and what could be seen more generally as the early
antecedents of the Age of Revolution.
VICTOR M. URIBE-URAN
Florida International University
STANLEY G. PAYNE. The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet
Union, and Communism. New Haven: Yale University
Press. 2004. Pp. xiv, 400. $35.00.
Shortly after it broke out in July 1936, the Spanish
Civil War developed into something more than just a
domestic affair. The intervention of Italy, Portugal,
Germany, and the Soviet Union inevitably widened the
significance of a struggle that aroused intense passions,
not just among politicians and diplomats but also
among actors, artists, poets, and writers as well as
ordinary men and women across Europe and the
Americas. After being locked in a brutal and devastating
war for nearly three years, Spain succumbed to a
right-wing military dictatorship, a tragic outcome that
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW JUNE 2005
Europe: Early Modern and Modem
would haunt the country long after the fighting had
ended.
Efforts over the years to interpret what happened in
Spain during the most tumultuous period of its recent
past have produced an immense and highly contentious
historiography. In Francisco Franco's era (19391975), for example, the war was portrayed as a modernday crusade that pitted the forces of Christianity
and Western civilization against those of the godless
communists or rojos. The political right was not alone
in viewing the struggle in Manichean terms. Many of
the supporters of Republican Spain have long insisted
on seeing the war as the last great attempt to halt
fascism before it was too late. It was, in this sense,
regarded as a prologue to World War II. The dichotomous
nature of Civil War historiography was reinforced
by the polarized political climate of the Cold
War (1948-1989), and, with few exceptions, it continues
to define the terms of the scholarly debates and
discussions about the subject.
The latest contribution to Civil War literature is by
Stanley G. Payne, a scholar who has long studied the
military, ideological, and political history of modern
Spain. The generally neutral tone of his contributions
in these areas—largely a product of the influence the
social science model of "objectivity" has had on his
historical approach—has meant that no serious scholar
can legitimately accuse him of being an apologist for
either the Nationalists or Republicans. Yet his wellknown
antipathies toward the Spanish left in general
and toward the communists in particular will no doubt
cause some to classify this book as another contribution
to the partisan literature on the subject. This
would be a pity, as Payne's latest work is neither
ideological nor polemical. Rather, it is a judicious and
diligently researched study that has important and new
things to say about a well-worn dimension of the
conflict.
The most provocative thesis advanced by Payne is
his argument that the Spanish Communist Party (PCE)
and the Soviet communists did not, as so often is
assumed in Civil War historiography, play a counterrevolutionary
role in Republican Spain. This is because
Payne insists that most historians have either
consistently overlooked or misread the communists'
own strategy for pursuing revolutionary goals in the
era of the Popular Front. The author points out, for
example, that it was the particular circumstances of the
mid-1930s that impelled the communists to jettison
their highly unsuccessful, head-on confrontational tactics
of the so-called "Third period."
The outbreak of civil war in Spain in July 1936 was
neither anticipated nor welcomed by the communists.
Yet, according to Payne, it provided them with a rare
opportunity to put their Popular Front strategy to the
test. In the aftermath of the military rebellion and the
massive anticapitalist popular revolution that swept
through much of Republican Spain, the communists
were convinced that the conditions existed for the
emergence of a so-called "democratic republic of a
new type." What this meant in the Spanish context was
not fully understood by critics on the left or the right.
For the right, it was simply a Trojan horse tactic meant
to conceal the real intention of establishing a communist
dictatorship behind the façade of a "liberaldemocratic"
government. The anarchists and other
anti-Stalinist revolutionaries also got it wrong when
they accused the communists of being "counterrevolutionary"
in their alleged attempts to resuscitate the
largely moribund "bourgeois" Republic. What the
communists really aimed to do, according to Payne,
was to construct a sort of hybrid "Popular Front"
regime, one that was nominally pluralistic and devoid
of its principal capitalist underpinnings. The resulting
"Third Spanish Republic" they envisaged was to be
used to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a
Leninist/Stalinist type of political and economic system.
The parallel between this type of "transitional"
revolutionary government and the "People's democracies"
that emerged in Eastern and Central Europe
following World War II is no mere coincidence. Indeed,
as they looked back on the Civil War some years
later, communists like La Pasionaria and Georgy Dimitrov
characterized the communist-dominated Spanish
Republic as the first example of a people's democracy
(p. 303). However, Payne avoids the pitfall of reading
the present into the past by pointing out that the
historical circumstances that gave rise to the "Sovietized"
Spanish Republic were very different from those
that allowed for the formation of "democratic" communist
regimes in a prostrate postwar Europe. Even
so, Payne tells us that the communists learned a great
deal from their experiences in Spain, and that there
can be no doubt that the republic they sought to
transform according to the Popular Front formula
furnished them with a prototype for the "revolutionary"
people's democracies they established on a much
wider scale less than ten years after the Spanish Civil
War had ended.
Payne's reading of the communists' role during the
Civil War is both bold and compelling. Yet, in making
his case for interpreting their strategy as "revolutionary,"
the author does not fully account for the fact that,
in context, communist policies and practices could
legitimately be interpreted as counterrevolutionary.
During the 1930s, for example, the term "revolution"
was defined in different ways by different political
groupings. Because the anti-Stalinist left strongly believed
that the inherent dogmatism and autocratic
nature of the Moscow-dominated communist movement
rendered it incapable of leading a genuine
working-class revolution, it is hardly surprising that
they would regard the "revolutionary" language embedded
in Popular Front propaganda as being little
more than ideological window dressing. Their judgment
in this regard was reinforced time and again
during the Civil War by the antirevolutionary behavior
of the communists themselves. Besides pursuing a
political agenda that sought to divest ultra-leftists of
the power and influence they wielded in the military
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW JUNE 2005
878 Reviews of Books and Films
and in the numerous collectives scattered throughout
the republican zone, the communists did not shrink
from using violent and repressive measures to stifle the
revolutionary forces that opposed them. Thus it was
not just their political naïveté that caused the anarchosyndicalists
and anti-Stalinist Marxists to characterize
communist policy during the Civil War as counterrevolutionary.
What they failed to see, at least as far as
Payne is concerned, was that the communists were
opposing a "bottom up" popular revolution over which
they had no real control in order to promote their own
"top-down" (read Stalinist) revolutionary agenda.
While Payne's study does not fully resolve the
historiographical issue of whether the communists
played an antirevolutionary role during the Civil War,
we have him to thank for drawing our attention to the
fact that the question is far more complicated than
most histories have allowed. No less noteworthy is the
fact that Payne's book provides the first comprehensive
historical analysis of communism in Spain to be based
on the recent discovery of archival and other hitherto
inaccessible documents relating to the Comintern and
the Soviet Union. The conclusions Payne draws from
his careful collation of these with older, more established
sources on the history of Spanish communism
forcefully challenges revisionist studies (which began
appearing in the declining years of the Cold War) that
have portrayed the communists as progressive forces
who ought to be remembered as heroes of the twentieth
century's most memorable contest between democracy
and fascism. Rather than reinvigorate old political
myths and clichés about the war, Payne's book goes a
long way toward debunking them. As such, this is a
book on Spain's Civil War that should not be ignored.
GEORGE ESENWEIN
University of Florida
CRISTINA PALOMARES. The Quest for Survival after
Franco: Moderate Francoism and the Slow Journey to
the Polls, 1964-1977. (Sussex Studies in Spanish History.)
Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic Press. 2004.
Pp. X, 271. $69.50.
This book is about the role of reformist Francoists in
Spain's remarkably peaceful transition from authoritarianism
to democracy. Cristina Palomares's main
point is that the reformist Francoists were a critical
bridge between the most conversative members of the
Franco regime and leaders of the democratic opposition.
Palomares begins with a brief review of the
historical divisions among Francoists. She then turns
to explaining the emergence and impact of two longawaited
but disappointing Francoist laws: the 1964
General Law of Associations, and the 1967 Organic
Law of the State. Next Palomares focuses on the role
played by two key reformists between 1969 and 1973:
Manuel Fraga, minister of information and tourism
from 1962 to 1969, and King Juan Carlos, who was
appointed as Francisco Franco's successor in 1969. She
then reviews the critical events occurring between 1973
and 1976, focusing on two major reformist political
groups: the Gabinete de Orientación y Documentación
(GODSA), led by Fraga, and Tácito, led by a group of
young reformists of Christian Democratic background.
Palomares concludes with an examination of the pivotal
period between Franco's death in November 1975
and the first democratic elections in 1977, paying
particular attention to Fraga's performance as interior
minister. She also provides a short epilogue covering
the period from the first democratic elections to the
1996 general election and the success of the conservative
Partido Popular.
Palomares provides a thorough, if not particularly
groundbreaking, account of the evolution and impact
of reformism within Francoism. However, her assertion
that reformist Francoism is a "hitherto neglected"
topic in the literature on the Spanish transition is
somewhat misleading. Since the transition, a number
of political scientists, sociologists, and historians have
emphasized that the transition was a success precisely
because of the moderation that emerged from all
sides—including an important sector of the Franco
regime. At the least, I would have liked Palomares to
specify exactly what was "hitherto neglected" in the
existing literature by and about reformist Francoists,
and/or explicitly state what new details and insights
regarding the role of moderate Francoists in the "slow
journey to the polls" she is illuminating.
Nevertheless, this book aims to provide a side of the
story that is less told. Except for the extensive accolades
heaped on King Juan Carlos, there has been
more celebration of the democratic opposition than of
the reformist Francoists in the literature on the Spanish
transition. To the extent that the author focuses on
the role of the latter factions, her account offers a
welcomed balance to the subject. But Palomares's
"central hypothesis—that the role played by the regime
moderates (especially the reformists) during the
transition process was largely the result of their early
awareness and advocacy (either genuinely or as a mere
strategy of political survival) of the need for political
reform" (p. 9) is frustratingly unambitious. A stronger
statement revealing the dynamism of reformist Francoism
is needed. Time and again. Palomares simply
retells the standard historical, political science narrative
of the transition, neglecting to dig deeper into the
events . For instance, although I enjoyed Palomares's
discussion of the private meetings and dinners that, to
me, epitomized the spirit of the Spanish transition, it is
not clear how her analysis clarifies, challenges, or
otherwise enhances our understanding of these pivotal
moments. I was especially disappointed that her personal
interviews did not bear more fruit. Instead of
using her interview data to expand our understanding
of the transition. Palomares settles for confirming
existing information. She provides few new insights
into the personalities and motives of the key reformist
Francoists. Indeed, Palomares relies principally on
secondary sources, including published memoirs written
by the main protagonists (most importantly Fraga),
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528 journal of social history winter 2004
the lives and mentalites of the dachniki and the peasants who profited by renting
to them during the late imperial dacha boom. While I agree with Lovett
that "if the tag 'middle-class' refers to anyone in Russia, it is to the dachnik,"
he could engage more explicitly with contemporary debates about the defining
characteristics of the Russian middle class. This book certainly contributes
to an understanding of a middle-class identity that, however fragile, has been
expressed by social and cultural rather than political behavior. A stronger comparative
framework that relates the discussion to the concept of the dachnik in
central and western Europe might make what is distinctively Russian about the
dacha phenomenon clearer. Claude Miller's recent film La petite Lili, for example,
transfers the country house setting of Chekhov's The Seagull to France without
difficulty. Nonetheless, Summerfolk is a fascinating book and a pleasure to read.
Lovett has succeeded in giving us both a history of the dacha and a sensitive,
nuanced exploration of its meanings in Russian and Soviet society. It is essential
reading for anyone interested in Russian culture.
University of Essex Anthony Swift
Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War. By Michael
Seidman (Madison: The Utiiversity of Wisconsin Press, 2002. xi plus
304 pp.).
In Republic of Egos, Michael Seidman offers a new take on the Spanish Civil
War. Seidman decries the excessive historiographic emphasis upon the force
and extent of formal ideological beliefs in driving the conflict; he argues that
individualism, in various guises, shaped military and civilian behavior on both
sides to a much greater degree than the collective identities of class and gender.
Seidman offers a detailed chronological account of the war while remaining
focused on the relative successes and failures of the Republican and Nationalists
governments in providing basic biological necessities such as food, clothing, and
medical care. Though acknowledging the better known causes of the Republican
defeat, he convincingly argues that the Nationalists' superior ability to provision
military and civilian populations, its much greater respect for private property,
and its success in maintaining monetary stability ultimately proved decisive
to the outcome. Explicitly comparative in its analysis—and drawing examples
from the seventeenth century civil wars on the British Isles, the U.S. Civil War,
the Russian Civil War, as well as other conflicts—Seidman concludes that the
Republicans proved incapable of waging an industrial war against an insurgency
with a much stronger and more stable agrarian base.
TTie book begins with a hearty and rousing call to avoid the pitfalls of social
historical research that privileges group over individual, and often anonymous,
experiences. Seidman writes: "The emphasis on the collective experience of a
class or a gender assumes and even encourages the discovery or invention of a
community or commonality that may not have existed" (page 5). Instead, Seidman
focuses on that which limited social integration. He offers up three types of
REVIEWS 529
individualism: acquisitive, entrepreneurial, and subversive. Rather than simply
assigning such behaviors just to the bourgeoisie, Seidman provides exhaustive
evidence of individualism all around. Soldiers and civilians. Nationalists and
Republicans, rural and urban populations in the north, the south, the periphery
and the interior all increasingly held immediate self interest above the various
intermingled causes of class, ideology, nation, or region as the struggle wore on.
The strength of Seidman's argument rests in his accounts of the material conditions
faced by the forces on both sides and of soldiers' and villagers' responses
to deprivations of multiple varieties. He shows how desertions, profiteering,
hoarding, and plunder were widespread. His attention to urban expressions of
individualism, while compelling, is less detailed. But the broader picture he offers
is crisp and tremendously important. The attention he pays to food production
and distribution is especially illuminating. Erom early on in the war, the Nationalists
enjoyed an advantage in controlling the bulk of wheat producing and
cattle grazing territories. The Republicans' initial control over the main olive
oil, wine, and citrus growing regions proved less advantageous in the challenge
to keep soldiers and cities fed, despite the fact that these commodities served as
vital exports. While the Nationalists moved away from food expropriation more
quickly and proved more able to control soldiers' plundering of the countryside,
the Republicans imposed tasas (price controls) that favored urban consumers but
that had the effect of discouraging production and encouraging hoarding and
black marketeering. Seidman emphasizes the diverging interests of rural versus
urban populations on the Republican side and contrasts these with the more
effective agrarian and provisioning policies of the Nationalists. He holds that
material privations, and especially hunger, were at the center of the Republic's
defeat. By the end of the war, cynicism had eclipsed ideology on the Republican
side and the social order had devolved into a simple division between those who
had access to food and those who did not.
There is little doubt that this book will contribute to the already contentious
historiographic debates surrounding the Spanish Civil War even though (and,
perhaps, precisely because) it is much more about what united than what divided
Spaniards. Though individuals rather than groups are the purported units of
analysis, what emerges is nonetheless an expansive portrait of the strength of
patria chica bonds, that is, personal commitment to family, friends, and village.
Those things presumed by historians to chronically and pathologically divide
Spain and Spaniards—class, political ideology, nationalism(s), etc.—are shown
here to have had less force during the war, when push came to shove, than simple
forms of pervasive cantonalism.
Likewise, while Seidman sets out to show the limitations of standard conceptions
of collective identity, he also freely explores their strengths. With respect
to gender, in particular. Republic of Egos offers more examples of women acting
collectively to further common interests, especially in terms of food rioting
and participation in clandestine black marketing and barter networks, than of
women acting in individualist capacities to undermine one another's' survival.
And tantalizingly, Seidman alludes to the significance his work bears to the later
emergence of consumer society in Spain. Though this part of the argument does
not receive the attention it warrants in the conclusion, it is not implausible
that the loaded emotional values associated with food in the second half of the
530 journal of social history winter 2004
twentieth century in Spain are linked to the intense caloric deprivations that
many suffered in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Still, it is more likely that
acquisitive, entrepreneurial, and subversive individualisms during the Spanish
Civil War reflected the strength of an already existing consumerist culture and
were popular expressions of frustration with the breakdown of the systems that
brought food, tobacco, coffee, alcohol and other consumer commodities into the
marketplace. Seidman appears overly convinced that consumer culture did not
take hold in Spain until the onset of economic recovery in the 1950s. Though
very little scholarship traces the earlier phases of consumerism in Spain, there
is abundant evidence suggesting a periodization for the emergence of Iberian
consumer culture in line with that most of Western Europe.
Seidman has raised provocative questions while also offering what is perhaps
the best account in print detailing why the Loyalists lost the war. An absolutely
indispensable source, no scholar of Spain in the twentieth century should go
without reading this book.
Marshall University Monserrat Miller
Images of the Outcast: The Urban Poor in the Cries of London. By Sean
Shesgreen (Manchester University Press, 2002. 228pp., 157 b&w illus.
10 colour illus. $30.00).
Pictures of street sellers, with their shouts or trade recorded in captions of poetry
or prose, are known as 'Cries' and appeared first in Paris in 1500. Fifty years
later, they were established as a genre across Europe and America, featuring the
hawkers of major cities. London Cries, depicting the lower orders of the capital,
survive in three formats: as broadsheet panels of engravings, as ensembles of
individual prints, and as illustrated books. Cries ranged in price from a halfpenny
a sheet to half a guinea for a set of fine prints and were bought by the upper and
middling classes, interested in the subjects depicted, how society was organized,
or in artistic technique.
Images of the Outcast offers the reader a feast of reproductions from these
broadsheets, ensembles and illustrated books, many published for the first time.
Shesgreen examines their creation and production, considers the interests and
motives of buyers, and questions the status and identity of those portrayed. He
traces the development of prints over four centuries and examines their imitation,
plagiarism and re-working, and their extension into drawings, lithographs
and oil paintings.
He leads us from the static anonymous tableaux of the sixteenth-century to
the lyrical ensembles of the continental artists, Marcellus Laroon and Jacob
Amigoni. We see shoeblacks and lamplighters with their tools and utensils;
and milkmaids, fruit sellers and prostitutes touting their wares. He shows us
the eighteenth century satire and English realism of William Hogarth and the
watercolourist, Paul Sandby; and he contrasts the coarse burlesques of TTiomas
REVIEWS 133
Pevsner with contributions from Joseph
Sharpies. Yale University Press. £29.95.
ISBN 0-300-10910-5. This latest addition
to the famous Buildings of England series
is a revision, in part, of Pevsner's 1969
South Lancashire and North Lancashire.
The revision, when complete, will include
three volumes of which this is the second.
Lancashire presents complex problems to
those setting out to describe a county's
'built environment' because of its wide
diversities and recent economic decline.
While cities such as Liverpool and Wigan
dominate both the county and this volume,
the rural areas in between are given the
attention they deserve. As is customary,
there is a long introduction that gives readers
the historical and geological background
along with discussions on church
and domestic architecture, the achievements
of the eighteenth century, the role
of the industrial revolution, the Victorian
expansion and more recent building. After
this come the detailed and careful survey
of buildings which, as one expects in this
series, is of a high quality. (C.W.)
Why Was Charles I Executed? Clive
Holmes. Hambledon Continuum. £25.00.
XV-I-244 pages. ISBN 1-85285-282-8. This
book's format - a series of eight questions
- looks at first like headings for essay
topics. In the event they are invitations for
readers to reconsider the history of the
1640s and 1650s. At issue are the differing
views among historians regarding 'the
competing views of the structure of society,
of national identity and political culture,
[and] of the role of the church'. The chapters
look at Charles I's relations with Parliament
and the military, at the Parliamentary
victory, at the judicial murder of the
King, at the dissolution of the 'Rump Parliament',
and at the offer of a crown to
Cromwell. Finally it looks at that most perplexing
question: 'was there an English
revolution?' To this the answer is 'no' but
there was 'a significant acceleration in the
. . . development of a distinctive English
polity and political culture'. This book will
certainly not end the debate but it will help
its participants to clarify their thoughts and
views. (E.B.)
The Oxford Companion to English Literature.
Margaret Drabble, editor. Oxford
University Press. £29.99. xi + 1172 pages.
ISBN 0-19-861453-5. This new edition of
the Oxford Companion is an updating of
the sixth, published in 2000. There have
been 'very substantial additions and some
deletions, and some different guidelines
have been introduced'. For the first time
there is no 'cut off' date for those included:
in the last edition those born after 1939 were
excluded. Therefore contemporary writers
are included as are foreign writers whose
works merit a place in a guide to English literature
(not literature in English as the editor
makes clear). There are more women
writers and more writers from immigrant
backgrounds to fit in with currently
accepted views and there are small essays
on special topics, e.g. Gothic fiction. The
aim overall is to be 'descriptive rather than
prescriptive or judgemental'. Contributions
vary as always: that on Anthony Trollope is
balanced and fair while, for example, that on
Tolkien is surprisingly brief and bland. {Ed.)
The Battle for Spain: the Spanish
Civil War 1936-1939. Antony Beevor.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. £25.00.
xxxiv + 526 pages. ISBN 0-2978-4832-1.
Prof. Beevor is an artist who likes a big
canvas. After Crete, Paris, Stalingrad and
Berlin we have Spain in a volume set to
rival Hugh Thomas's. In the event this is
a 're-write' of the author's 1982 book.
The Spanish Civil War, in which he makes
use of the work of historians since that date
and of new material from German and
134 CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
Soviet archives. The new, expanded text
follows the basic format of the earlier version
but benefits from greater detail and
newer insights. Lucky is the historian
whom a publisher (in this case a Spanish
publisher) asks to look again and to rewrite
an earlier text. Prof. Beevor is such a lucky
historian. This new version has a subtlety
missing in the earlier text and in many
volumes on the war. (T.B.)
The Ambassadors: From Ancient
Greece to the Nation State. Jonathan
Wright. HarperCollins. £20.00. xiii -f 336
pages. ISBN 0-00-717343-1. Ambassadors
were 'throughout history ... in the vanguard
of cultural discovery'. They were in
their own way adventurers as brave as
Marco Polo or Columbus. Ambassadors
went out for their rulers to facilitate trade,
get brides, set up military alliances and to
get information about foreign parts. They
also returned with new fashions, plants,
foods and ideas or, in the author's words,
'allowed the world to meet itself. This
book's aim is to show 'how influential
ambassadors have been in the encounters,
collisions and rivalries' from ancient
Greece to the Enlightenment. It is centred
on Europe. While this well organised and
equally well written book may only be
'a sampler of ambassadorial endeavour' it
is a representative one and gives readers
a solid introduction to an aspect of history
often under-valued. (A.C.T.)
Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in
the Teutoburg Forest. Adrian Murdoch.
Sutton Publishing. £20.00. xiv-I-234
pages. ISBN 0-7509-4015-8. Mr Murdoch's
aim is to give readers a detailed account of
the greatest single defeat suffered by the
Empire's troops in A.D. 9. In September
that year an army of German tribesmen,
led by a man who had served in the Roman
army, met and defeated roughly half of
Rome's troops in the western empire. Even
though the defeat was later avenged, it
shaped subsequent imperial policy in northem
Europe. The author uses the surviving
literary records but also makes considerable
and telling use of archaeological discoveries
to give the fullest account yet of
the battle and its consequences. He is also
anxious to trace the battle's legacy in both
Rome's history and in Germany's and to
show how such military confrontations
tend to undermine imperial assumptions
throughout history. (T.B.)
The Oxford History of English. Lynda
Mugglestone, editor. Oxford University
Press. £30.00. xii-t-485 pages. ISBN 0-19924931 -8. This collection of fourteen essays
emphasises 'pluralism and diversity, and . . .
the complex patterns of usage which' have
been the English language. English is a 'heterogeneous'
language and always has been,
as are, presumably, other languages which
exist over large areas. Having said that, a
'standard English' has emerged as have
'dual standards' among writers who knew
both. It is a language always in transition.
Chapters deal with the pre-history of English,
Old English, the influences of Latin,
Norse and French, the dialects of Middle
English, the transition from Middle to Early
Modern English, the rise of 'Renaissance
English (two chapters)', changes during
the Tudor period, the growing desire in the
eighteenth century for a standard English,
the developments in English in the nineteenth
century, modem regional English in
the British Isles, the interactions between
English and other languages between later
Renaissance and modem English, the nature
of English as the first intemational language,
and finally the future ofthe language.
As the editor writes, the collection's purpose
is to invite readers 'to rethink various
aspects of the history of the English language'
and it does so by offering contributions
of a high quality. (R.G.C.)
Título:
MUST READS Sunday Times, The, Feb 26, 2012
Base de datos:
Newspaper Source
Traducir el texto completo:
MUST READS
Region: eire Section: Features Edition: 01
The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston (HarperPress £30): affecting history reveals the suffering and shocking
cruelties incurred during during the Spanish civil war Michelangelo: Volume I: The Achievement of Fame, 14751534 by Michael Hirst (Yale £30): paints an outstanding picture of the artist as being driven by very earthly
concerns Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn (Union £20): quirky account of a trip to learn the fate of 28,800 bath toys
that spilt into the Pacific in 1992 The Rise of Female Kings in Europe by William Monter (Yale £25): explains how
female monarchs dealt with power and with the men who tried to thwart them
Source: Sunday Times, The, Feb 26, 2012, p44, 1p
Item: 7EH57064424
Título:
De: Matt Schudel, Washington Post, The, 02/22/2012
Base de datos:
Newspaper Source
Traducir el texto completo:
Ronald Fraser, 81, a British writer who expanded the range and depth
of oral history with his elegant chronicle of the Spanish Civil War,
"Blood of Spain," died Feb. 10 in Valencia, Spain. He had cancer, said
a friend, writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali.
Mr. Fraser worked as a journalist before he began writing about his
adopted homeland of Spain, where he had lived since the 1950s. He
artfully wove together first-person accounts to create oral histories of
the people who lived through the tumultuous events of the Spanish
Civil War.
Mr. Fraser's first book about Spain, "In Hiding: The Life of Manuel
Cortes" (1972), told the story of a barber who had been the socialist
mayor of his village during the civil war, which lasted from 1936 to
1939.
With the help of his wife, Cortes managed to hide inside his house for
30 years, avoiding retribution by authorities loyal to Gen. Francisco
Franco, who seized control of Spain after the civil war and ran the
country as a military dictatorship until his death in 1975.
Only when Franco issued a general amnesty in 1969 did Cortes feel
free to come out into the light of day. Because he had worn slippers for
decades, he could no longer walk in a pair of shoes.
In the 1970s, Mr. Fraser began to interview hundreds of people who
lived through the Spanish Civil War. An avowed leftist, Mr. Fraser took
an evenhanded approach in "Blood of Spain" (1979), allowing voices
from all sides of the conflict to speak freely. Critics found his book a
sensitive portrait of the age, drawn with the humanity, depth and
sweep of a novel.
"For nearly 40 years," historian Bernard Knox wrote in The
Washington Post's Book World, "no Spanish voice was raised to talk
about the war except the strident official voice of the regime. In this
book the silence is broken; people who held their tongues in fear for
decades here pour out their memories, their sorrows and fears, their
judgments ."
Mr. Fraser chronicled the war in the cities and in the countryside,
portraying intellectual skirmishes, battlefield casualties and families
torn apart by the war, which killed hundreds of thousands of
Spaniards.
"He has not only achieved an awesome feat of scholarship," critic Eve
Drobot wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail, "he has also created an
astoundingly three-dimensional chronicle of human beings in
conflict."
In one of the most affecting passages in "Blood of Spain," Mr. Fraser
presented the memories of a man who was 5 when his father, a
supporter of Franco, was executed by a left-leaning Loyalist firing
squad in 1938:
"We were going to spend his last night on earth with my father. . . . My
father was perfectly calm. He embraced us, we sat down, we watched
brother trying to walk, playing, and it made us all laugh a bit. . . . At
five o'clock in the morning they came for him. As he got up to leave,
he took his watch off and gave it to me."
Ronald Angus Fraser was born Dec. 9, 1930, in Hamburg, to a Scottish
businessman and an American mother. When Hitler came to power in
1933, his family moved to an estate in the English countryside, where a
small army of servants ran the household.
Mr. Fraser described his privileged but emotionally bleak childhood in
a 1984 memoir, "In Search of a Past: The Rearing of an English
Gentleman, 1933-1945," combining his own recollections with
interviews with cooks, gardeners, nannies and other servants who
helped raise him.
Mr. Fraser was a journalist before settling in Spain in 1957, helped by
an inheritance from his wealthy mother.
His first marriage, to Fern Fraser, ended in divorce. Survivors include
his wife of 25 years, Aurora Bosch; a son from his first marriage; and
two children from other relationships.
In the 1960s, Mr. Fraser helped found the New Left Review, a British
intellectual journal in which he published a series of 50 oral history
interviews about the lives of the British working class. He collected the
interviews in two books called "Working" in the late 1960s.
His final book, "Napoleon's Cursed War" (2008), explored Napoleon's
half-forgotten war with Spain from 1808 to 1814, in which French forces
were driven from the country by the guerrilla tactics of a shadow army
of what Mr. Fraser called "rogues and troublemakers and the lawless."
schudelm@washpost.com
Source: Washington Post, The, 02/22/2012
Item: wapo.f6736b18-5cbe-11e1-8c28-8f1c9e65d2ac
Britons in the Spanish Civil War
The British Battalion of the International Brigades, formed to defend the Spanish Republic against the forces of
General Franco, first went into battle at Jarama in February 1937. It was the beginning of a bruising, often
dispiriting campaign, as Christopher Farman explains
In the chilly dawn of February 11th, 1937 around 500 men from Britain, armed with rifles and machine guns, began
clambering up a ridge overlooking the River Jarama, a few miles south-east of Madrid. For seven months Spain had
been embroiled in a brutal civil war, sparked by an uprising of right-wing generals against the country's elected
government. The British were there as part of the International Brigades, a force of foreign volunteers who had
come to fight for the Spanish Republic. Although some Britons had been involved in earlier battles, this would be
the first action by a fully-fledged British Battalion and most of its members had never been under fire before.
The troops advancing towards them in the valley below were all battle-hardened veterans belonging to General
Francisco Franco's Army of Africa and were made up of 600 Moorish Regulares, colonial troops from Spanish
Morocco with a fearsome reputation for close-quarter butchery. They were joined by 1,300 members of the Spanish
Foreign Legion, whose motto was: 'Viva la Muerte! - Long live Death!'. The British, by contrast, had received little
training and were short of both weapons and equipment.
Jason Gurney, a young sculptor from London who was one of those on the ridge, summed up the odds: 'It was a
formidable opposition to be faced by a collection of city-bred young men with no experience of war, no idea how to
find cover on an open hillside, and no competence as marksmen.'
The war in which they were now caught up was the culmination of years of political turmoil. Spain had long been a
divided society, where the gulf between haves and have-nots, landless peasants and landlords, workers and factory
owners, secular and religious, left and right was marked by frequent bloodshed. A republic had been declared in
1931 and a Popular Front coalition of left-wing parties had won a narrow election victory in February 1936, but the
violence continued. On July 18th the generals launched their uprising.
They claimed to be rescuing the country from chaos and Communism and were supported by the Catholic Church,
most of the middle class and Spain's own blue-shirted Fascist party, the Falange. They also had the backing of some
70 per cent of the army, though many conscripts turned against their officers rather than join the revolt and
throughout Spain left-wing political organisations mobilised their own militias. What the generals had intended as a
swift coup d'etat was now to become a bloody and prolonged civil war.
Franco, quickly emerging as leader of the Nationalists, appealed to Hitler and Mussolini for help. They responded
with generous supplies of guns, tanks and planes as well as 'volunteers'. To the dictators Spain was a useful testing
ground for new weapons and tactics. The Spanish government also sought foreign aid, but the western democracies,
urged on by Britain, tried to contain the conflict by denying arms to both sides. Initially 'non-intervention' was
supported by the opposition Labour Party, but liberal sentiment became increasingly outraged at the prospect of a
democratic government being overthrown by an unholy alliance of reactionary generals and Fascist dictators. As
Denis Healey, then a Communist undergraduate at Oxford, put it: 'Spain was so real that it hurt.'
Second best in supplies
A number of volunteers, including some from Britain, enlisted in the left-wing militias almost as soon as the
uprising began. One of these early recruits was Felicia Browne, a 32-year-old painter and sculptor and committed
Communist, who was shot dead on August 28th while trying to blow up a rebel ammunition train, the first British
fatality of the war. But it was not until September, when Stalin decided to back the Republic, that it began to receive
arms and equipment, though never in such quantities as to match the aid sent by Hitler and Mussolini to the
Nationalists. At the same time the Communist International (Comintern), the Moscow-based bureaucracy that
dictated policy to Communist parties outside the Soviet Union, initiated the recruitment of the International
Brigades.
Eventually some 35,000 volunteers, mainly from Europe, the United States and Canada, would serve in the
Brigades, with most of the organisation coming from the Comintern, which furnished the Brigades with the bulk of
their senior officers. Recently declassified MI5 files list the names of 4,000 British and Irish volunteers, but the
security service seems to have included sympathisers, as well as combatants, and a more likely figure is around
2,500. In almost two years of fighting about 500 would be killed and 1,200 wounded.
The vast majority of the British volunteers were working class, though with a sprinkling of middle-class intellectuals,
and came predominantly from London and the industrial regions of the country. They were mainly in their 20s and
well over half were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). A few had military experience and
some of the ex-public school recruits had been in the Officer Training Corps (OTC), but the only fighting most of
them had done was in street battles with Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists.
The usual procedure was for would-be recruits to be vetted by an official at the CPGB offices in King Street, near
London's Covent Garden. Those selected would be given rail tickets to Paris, where they would receive a final
vetting and a medical examination, before embarking on the final stage of the journey to Spain. In January 1937 the
British government made it an offence to fight for either side in the Spanish conflict, so the volunteers were advised
to proceed with caution. Some were, indeed, stopped and questioned by Special Branch detectives at Victoria
Station or the steamer terminal at Dover, though no one was ever arrested, probably because a court case would
have been politically embarrassing for the government.
Until February 1937 the volunteers crossed the border into Spain by train or bus, but the French authorities then
began to apply the non-intervention rules more rigorously, so that the volunteers had to be smuggled on foot across
the Pyrenees, a journey that was not without its dangers, especially in winter.
The first volunteers arrived at the International Brigades training base at Albacete in October 1936. They had been
there barely four weeks when they were rushed north to join in the desperate defence of Madrid. The British
volunteers, still too few at this stage to form a unit of their own, were divided between French and German
battalions. Among those who joined the Germans was 18-year-old Esmond Romilly, the maverick nephew of
Winston Churchill. He had decamped from Wellington College at the age of 16 and spent the previous two years
running a left-wing bookshop in London's East End.
The French Battalion included the young Marxist poet John Cornford, a great grandson of Charles Darwin and son
of a Cambridge professor, who was grazed in the head by a piece of shrapnel during the fighting in Madrid's
academic enclave, the University City. But he had recovered sufficiently to join the newly formed British No. 1
Company, 150 strong, when it took part in an abortive attempt to capture the village of Lopera, near Cordoba, at
the end of December. Here he was shot dead on the day after his 21st birthday by a Moorish sniper who targeted
the white bandage he was still wearing. The CPGB secretary Harry Pollitt is supposed to have joked to the poet
Stephen Spender that, if he went to Spain and got himself killed, it would give the party its Byron. The party now
had its Byron.
No. 1 Company was rushed back from Lopera to Madrid to help contain a major rebel offensive that had been
launched to the north-west of the city, at Las Rozas. Of the 150 volunteers who had left for Lopera on Christmas
Eve only 67 returned to Albacete in January. However a fresh influx of volunteers soon pushed the numbers up to
450, enough to form a battalion. Its first commander was Wilfred McCartney, a former army officer and left-wing
journalist, who had just been released on parole from Parkhurst prison, after having served 10 years for passing
military secrets to the Russians.
Bolshy Brits
McCartney's tenure was not a success. Many of the volunteers had little respect for military authority and spent the
nights in wild drinking bouts in Madrigueras, the new base for the British. There were few weapons available and in
training exercises large wooden rattles were used to simulate the sound of machine-gun fire. Military training was
interspersed with lectures by political commissars (PCs). Following the example of the Red Army, the PCs were
Communist stalwarts who operated at all levels of the Brigades and were responsible for discipline, morale and
political education. The British, often more bolshy than Bolshevik, nicknamed them 'political comic stars' and
usually preferred a game of cards to a discourse on the class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat.
Another problem for McCartney was the disaffection of Irish members of the Battalion. Most of them had been in
the IRA and suspected that two senior British officers, including McCartney himself, had served with the Black and
Tans. Eventually, after a near-riot, the Irish were allowed to leave the British Battalion and join the Americans of
the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, training in nearby Villa-neuva de la Jara.
The final calamity for McCartney came one evening as he and Peter Kerrigan, a senior PC at Albacete, were
comparing revolvers. Kerrigan's gun went off, wounding McCartney in the arm. The shooting, though bizarre, was
almost certainly an accident, but some suspected that it was designed to get McCartney out of the way. Whatever
the truth of the matter, he was forced to relinquish his command and the Battalion was taken over by Tom
Wintringham, a Great War veteran and founder member of the CPGB, whose quiet authority had won him wide
respect and who was known as 'the English Captain' (see page 16).
Wintringham had little time to lick the Battalion into shape. Only four days after his appointment, it was ordered to
the River Jarama, which the Nationalists had crossed on February 11th, intending to cut the Madrid-Valencia road,
the besieged capital's only lifeline to the rest of Republican Spain. The Republican command was determined to
prevent this at all costs and a large force, including the newly formed 15th International Brigade, to which all the
English-speaking volunteers were attached, was thrown into the attack.
A losing battle
The British ordeal began at about noon on February 12th, when the advancing rebels opened up with artillery and
machine-gun fire on two low hills which the British had occupied. After about five hours of intensive fire and with
casualties steadily mounting the volunteers were forced to retreat across the valley and back to the top of a nearby
ridge. The Battalion's own machine-guns were set up here, but had remained unfired throughout the day because
they had not been provided with the correct ammunition. It was not until almost sunset that this finally arrived just as the Moors were massing for an assault on the ridge. Caught totally unawares as they charged across the open
valley, they were 'mown down', in the words of one volunteer, 'as if a scythe was going through them'.
On the British side the dead included the Marxist writer Christopher Caudwell and his friend, the speedway rider
Clem Beckett. Also killed was George 'Lofty' Bright, a carpenter from London, who, in his 60s, was the oldest of
the volunteers. Among the injured was the youngest of the volunteers, 17-year-old Ronnie Burghes, who had been
shot through the left arm. The minimum age for recruits was officially 18, but Ronnie's mother was Charlotte
Haldane, who for a time had acted as the staging officer for the British volunteers passing through Paris and she
had insisted on her son's right 'to fight for Spain and freedom'.
The battle for the ridge resumed on February 13th and was almost lost in the afternoon when Bert Overton, the
commander of the company protecting the right flank of the machine-gunners, panicked and fled through the olive
groves with most of his men. What happened next is not entirely clear. According to the version that has become
part of Jarama folklore, the machine-gunners were tricked into surrendering by Nationalist troops who advanced on
their unprotected flank singing the Internationale and giving the anti-Fascist clenched fist salute. Some volunteers
have confirmed the story, while others have dismissed it as myth and it may be a classic product of the 'fog of war'.
Either way, the loss of the machineguns was a devastating blow and Wintringham led a bayonet charge of 40 men including a now chastened Overton - in an attempt to retake them. The Nationalist troops simply cut them down
with the guns they had just captured. The English Captain received a serious leg wound and only six of the 40 men
made it back to the British line. The rebels renewed their attack on February 14th, this time supported by captured
Russian tanks. The 160 men who remained of the British Battalion began streaming away from the front.
With the Nationalists now poised for a final breakthrough the shattered Battalion was rallied by its new commander,
Jock Cunningham, a former sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who had been the ringleader of a
mutiny over poor pay and conditions while serving in Jamaica in the 1920s. Inspired by Cunningham's dynamic
leadership the men fell into step behind him and marched back the way they had come, joined by stragglers from
other units. This time there was no mistaking the strains of the Internationale, belted out as they approached the
enemy lines. The Nationalists, convinced that they were being attacked by a much stronger force, fell back and both
sides resumed their original positions. With the collapse of a Republican counter-offensive on February 27th the
whole of the Jarama front settled into a stalemate that was to last for the rest of the war. Of the 500 British
volunteers who had gone into action on February 12th, about 150 had been killed and a similar number wounded.
About 30 had been captured.
Hero and villain
On March 17th Cunningham was wounded and replaced as commander of the British Battalion by the huge and
intimidating Fred Copeman. A former heavyweight boxer in the Royal Navy, Copeman was a fearless and energetic
figure with a propensity for self-aggrandisement. Soon after taking over the battalion he managed to acquire his own
car, together with a driver, and with machine-guns mounted fore and aft. The driver was Alexander Foote, who
would later become the key radio operator with the Lucy network, the Soviet espionage ring based in neutral
Switzerland during the war.
To some volunteers Copeman was something of a hero, but not to Gurney, who described him as 'a great bull of a
man', who 'charged around the place threatening to beat everybody's brains out, and looking as if he was quite
capable of doing it'. It was under Copeman's command that the British Battalion went into action in July 1938 as
part of a Republican offensive to capture the heights around Brunete and encircle the Nationalist forces besieging
Madrid. At first good progress was made, but poor planning by Republican commanders and the overwhelming
firepower of the Nationalists led to yet another stalemate. After two weeks of fighting in the scorching heat of
midsummer, the British Battalion was reduced from 331 men to 42.
The disaster prompted bitter recriminations. Many on the Republican side had fled during the fighting, including
members of both the International Brigades and the Republican army. But there was a widespread feeling among
the volunteers, including the British, that the Spanish troops were cowardly and unreliable. The volunteers also
resented the way in which they had been flung into battle without proper preparation or support. Wally Tapsell,
political commissar of the British Battalion, openly declared that the commander of the 15th Brigade, Colonel Gal,
'isn't fit to command a troop of Brownies, let alone a People's Army'. Gal threatened to have him shot for
insubordination and it was only the intervention of the belligerent Copeman, backed up by the British machine-gun
company, that prevented Gal from carrying out his threat.
As viewed from Moscow the real reason for the Brunete debacle and, indeed, for most of the Republic's military
reverses, was the deliberate sabotage of Trotskyist' Fifth Columnists. This obsession with spies and traitors was
described by a German volunteer as 'the Russian syphilis' and nowhere was it more virulent than in Barcelona,
where in June Communist-controlled security forces had suppressed the revolutionary but anti-Stalinist POUM
(Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) and imprisoned its leaders. One of those caught up in the crisis was George
Orwell, who had enrolled in the POUM militia and was forced to flee the country with his wife and two
companions.
Political witch-hunting did nothing to improve morale among the volunteers, who continued to desert at an
alarming rate. The problem was exacerbated by a government decree incorporating the International Brigades into
the Republican army, which meant the volunteers were obliged to stay in Spain until the war was over. Desertion
was rife throughout the Brigades, but a report from Albacete at the end of July 1937 singled out the British
Battalion for particular criticism. The battalion, it noted, 'has fallen victim to a wave of collective desertions, which
has begun to effect (sic) the American battalions. The officers are not excluded from this process of
demoralization'. Some men simply wanted a break from the bloodletting; others were desperate to escape the war
altogether and descended on one or other of the Republican ports in the hope of finding a British ship that would
take them home. According to one estimate almost 300 men succeeded in returning to Britain without permission.
Hundreds more tried to escape but were recaptured.
In some battalions captured deserters were shot, but the death penalty was applied only rarely in the British
Battalion and then only when lives had been put at risk. The usual punishment for absconders was up to 90 days in
a labour battalion, digging trenches or latrines. Bill Overton, who had disgraced himself at Jarama, was one of those
set to work in a labour battalion, though he was blown up by a shell before he could complete the punishment. The
suspicion among the British was that he had been deliberately placed in a dangerous part of the line.
Beginning of the end
The rout at Brunete was just the start of the Republic's misfortunes. At the end of October 1937 Franco captured
the Asturias and Basque regions, giving him control of all of northern Spain. The following April his troops, using
flame-throwers for the first time and strongly supported by the Germans and Italians, reached the Mediterranean,
driving a wedge between Catalonia and the rest of the Republic. Among the many British casualties of the April
fighting was Wally Tapsell, gunned down and killed by an Italian tank that he had mistaken for one from his own
side.
In July 1938 government forces launched what would be their final offensive, attacking across the River Ebro and
aiming to reunite the two Republican zones. As so often before, the attack at first made good progress but was then
beaten off by the superior firepower of the Nationalists. On September 23rd, after five hours of relentless air and
artillery attacks, the British positions were overrun by tanks and infantry and the remnants of the battalion were
withdrawn.
It was the British Battalion's last action. Two days earlier the Spanish premier, Juan Negrin, had announced the
Republic's intention to repatriate all foreign combatants in the forlorn hope that the League of Nations would be
able to persuade the Nationalists to do the same. In military terms the withdrawal of the International Brigades
would have little effect since the influx of new volunteers had virtually ceased and a majority of members of the
Brigades were now Spanish. In the British Battalion they outnumbered the British by more than two to one.
On December 6th most of the British volunteers, 305 in total, left Spain. Arriving at Victoria Station the following
evening they were greeted by a crowd of some 20,000, including the Labour Party leader Clement Attlee. For the
volunteers it was a time of mixed emotions. Their joy at being home could not disguise the fact that the cause they
had given so much for was clearly doomed. Franco's moment of triumph came on March 28th, 1939, when his
troops paraded through Madrid. For two-and-a-half years the battlecry of the beleaguered city had been: 'No
paseran - They Shall not Pass!' Thousands of Nationalists now came on to the streets, shouting: 'Han pasado!- Have
passed!'
However the much bigger war against Fascism was soon to begin and many of those who had fought in Spain were
keen to join in. Some found they were not welcome in His Majesty's Forces, but others were allowed to play their
part. Tom Wintringham established a guerrilla training school for members of the Local Defence Volunteers, the
forerunner of the Home Guard, though he was later eased out as chief training instructor and joined the Home
Guard as an ordinary recruit. Orwell also joined the Home Guard, serving as a sergeant in the St John's Wood
Battalion. Esmond Romilly, who had been invalided home from Spain with dysentery and had later eloped with the
young Jessica Mitford, became a navigator in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was shot down and killed over the
North Sea in 1941, aged 23. Ronnie Burghes served in the infantry and received a piece of shrapnel through one
lung at the Battle of Caen in 1944. Fred Copeman ran the Air Raid Precautions in Westminster, giving several
lectures to the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace. He was awarded the OBE in 1948.
Like many who had fought in Spain, he became bitterly disillusioned with the Communists. For some the final
break came with the Soviet-German Pact of August 1939. For Copeman it occurred in November 1938, a few
months after his return from Spain, still suffering the effects of a stomach wound picked up at Brunete. Working at
the CPGB's headquarters in London, he was infuriated when an official refused to pay a tailor's bill of £3 10
shillings for suits purchased by former Brigaders. True to form, Copeman 'tore into him like a thunderbolt' and the
man ran from the building with a bloody nose. Harry Pollitt refused to back him and Copeman 'decided there and
then that this was the end of the Communist Party for me'.
No regrets
No matter how drastically their political views may have changed few veterans regretted the time they had spent in
Spain. Jason Gurney, who had been shot through the hand with an explosive bullet and was unable to continue his
career as a sculptor, tried to make sense of it all in his memoir, published in 1974, the year after his death at the age
of 63: 'Even at the moments of the greatest gloom and depression, I have never regretted that I took part in it. The
situation is not to be judged by what we now know of it, but only as it appeared in the context of the period. And in
that context there was a clear choice for anyone who professed to be opposed to Fascism. The fact that others took
advantage of our idealism in order to destroy it does not in any way invalidate the decision which we made.'
Further Reading
Jason Gurney, Crusade in Spain (Faber & Faber, 1974).
Richard Baxell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: The British Battalion in the International Brigades
1936-1939 (Warren & Pell Publishing, 2007).
Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006).
Ben Hughes, They Shall Not Pass! The British Battalion at Jarama: The Spanish Civil War (Osprey Publishing,
2011).
Vincent Brome, The International Brigades: Spain 1936-1939 (William Heinemann, 1965).
Tom Wintringham, English Captain (Faber & Faber, 1939).
* For more articles on this subject visit ww.historytoday.com
From the Archive
* Uncivil War: The Military Struggle
Michael Alpert chronicles the ebb and flow of battle between Republicans and Nationalists in the Spanish Civil
War.
www.historytoday.com/archive
British prisoners captured at Jarama on February 13th, 1937. Harold Fry, seventh from right, the company
commander, was sentenced to death, but exchanged for a Nationalist prisoner and repatriated to Britain. He
returned to Spain only to be killed in combat.
A blouson badge worn by the International Brigades incorporating a map of Spain, cannons and a clenched fist.
Felicia Browne's drawing of a militiawoman. In August 1936 Browne became the first Briton to be killed in the
conflict.
Moorish soldiers fighting for Franco keep watch with a machine-gun outside Madrid, 1937.
British volunteers with clenched fists gather in Barcelona, December 1936.
Claud Cockburn (left), the Daily Worker correspondent in Spain, with Fred Copeman, commander of the British
Battalion.
A wounded officer lays twigs on the mass grave of volunteers of the XV International Brigade killed at Jarama. The
memorial and graves were later destroyed.
Labour Party leader Clement Attlee visits British volunteers defending Madrid, December 1937. Bill Alexander, who
succeeded Copeman as battalion commander, stands behind him.
The British Battalion line up in Mondejar to welcome the delegation of Labour MPs in December 1937.
Wally Tapsell, political commissar with the British Battalion, in a peaked cap, waiting for food. He was killed at
Calaceite in April 1938.
~~~~~~~~
By Christopher Farman
Christopher Farman is a journalist and writer with a particular interest in Britain between the wars. He is the author
of The General Strike: May 1926 (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972).
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Basques.
Idioma:
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Fuente:
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition; 11/1/2011, p1-2, 2p
Tipo de documento:
Reference Entry
Información de la publicación:
Columbia University Press
Resumen:
Basques (băsks), people of N Spain and SW France. There are about 2 million Basques in the three Basque provs. and
Navarre, Spain; some 250,000 in Labourd, Soule, and Lower Navarre, France; and communities of various sizes in
Central and South America and other parts of the world. Many preserve their ancient language, which is unrelated to
any other tongue. They have guarded their ancient customs and traditions, although they have played a prominent role
in the history of Spain and France. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
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Basques
Contenido
1. History
2. Bibliography
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Basques (băsks), people of N Spain and SW France. There are about 2 million Basques in the three Basque provs.
and Navarre, Spain; some 250,000 in Labourd, Soule, and Lower Navarre, France; and communities of various sizes
in Central and South America and other parts of the world. Many preserve their ancient language, which is unrelated
to any other tongue. They have guarded their ancient customs and traditions, although they have played a
prominent role in the history of Spain and France.
The origin of the Basques, almost certainly the oldest surviving ethnic group in Europe, has not yet been
determined, but they antedate the ancient Iberian tribes of Spain, with which they have been erroneously identified.
Genetically and culturally, the Basque population has been relatively isolated and distinct, perhaps since Paleolithic
times. Primarily free peasants, shepherds, fishermen, navigators, miners, and metalworkers, the Basques also
produced such figures as St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and Francisco de Vitoria.
History
Before Roman times, the Basque tribes, little organized politically, extended farther to the north and south than at
present. But the core of the Basque Country resisted Romanization and was only nominally subject to Roman rule.
Christianity was slow in penetrating (3d–5th cent.). Once converted, the Basques remained fervent Roman
Catholics, but they have retained a certain tradition of independence from the hierarchies of Spain and France.
The Basques withstood domination by the Visigoths and Franks. Late in the 6th cent. they took advantage of the
anarchy prevailing in the Frankish kingdom and expanded northward, occupying present-day Gascony (Lat.
Vasconia), to which they gave their name. The duchy of Vasconia, formed in 601 and chronically at war with the
Franks, Visigoths, and Moors, was closely associated with, and at times dominated by, Aquitaine. In 778 the
Basques, who had just been reduced to nominal vassalage by Charlemagne, destroyed the Frankish rear guard at
Roncesvalles, but they subsequently recognized Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, as their suzerain.
The duchy of Gascony continued, but the Basques early in the 9th cent. concentrated in their present habitat and in
824 founded, at Pamplona, the kingdom of Navarre, which under Sancho III (1000–1035) united almost all the
Basques. Although Castile acquired Guipúzcoa (1200), Álava (1332), and Vizcaya (1370), the Castilian kings
recognized the wide democratic rights enjoyed by the Basques. Guernica was the traditional location of Basque
assemblies.
With the conquest (1512) of Navarre by Ferdinand the Catholic, the Basques lost their last independent stronghold.
After the 16th cent., Basque prosperity declined and emigration became common, especially in the 19th cent.
Basque privileges remained in force under the Spanish monarchy, but in 1873 they were abolished because of the
Basques' pro-Carlist stand in the Carlist Wars. To regain autonomy, the Basques supported nearly every political
movement directed against the central authority.
In the civil war of 1936–39, the Basque provs., not including Navarre, defended the republican government, under
which they had autonomous status; the Basques of Navarre supported the Franco forces. The Franco government,
once in power, for the most part discouraged Basque political and cultural autonomy, but Basque nationalism
retained its appeal to the Basques, and they continued to wage their fight for self-determination.
Following Spain's return to democracy, limited autonomy was granted to the region, and in 1980 the first Basque
parliament was elected. Nonetheless, terrorist activities by the Basque separatist organization, Basque Homeland
and Freedom (Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna; ETA), which had begun in 1968, continued, ultimately killing about 800
people by the end of the 1990s, many of them police officers and soldiers. From 1983 to 1987 a secret governmentsponsored death squad killed 27 and wounded about 30, most members of the ETA.
Basque nationalism, often involving unrest and violence by and against the ETA, has continued, but Basque
terrorists and a separatist party lost some popular support in the 1990s. In 1996, Spanish and French officials agreed
on joint measures to crack down on the terrorist group; a cease-fire (1998–99) by the ETA failed to lead to a peace
accord. In 2001, Basque nationalist candidates won more than 50% of the vote in the regional parliamentary
elections, but only about 10% supported the party aligned with the ETA. In 2002 that political party, then called
Batasuna, was accused of collaborating with the ETA and suspended for three years; it was permanently banned the
following year, and its leaders arrested in 2007. The ETA announced a "permanent" cease-fire in Mar., 2006, and
the government subsequently agreed to talks. Few talks and no progress had occurred when a Dec., 2006, bombing
in Madrid ended the talks, and six months later the ETA officially ended its ceasefire.
Moderate Spanish Basque nationalists have sought even greater autonomy for the region. The Basque parliament
approved a plan for "free association" with Spain in 2004, but it failed to win the approval of the Spanish Cortes. In
2009 Basque nationalists failed to win a majority in parliament, and the Socialist and Popular parties formed the
regional government. There is also strong support among French Basques for political automony.
Bibliography
See R. Gallop, A Book of the Basques (1930,repr. 1970).
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Catalan literature
Contenido
1. Bibliography
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Catalan literature, like the Catalan language, developed in close connection with that of Provence. In both regions
the rhymed songs of the troubadours flourished as an art form from the 11th to the 14th cent. In the 13th cent.
court chroniclers gave a fixed form to Catalan prose, and the language became an expressive literary medium in the
works of the great Ramón Lull. At the end of the 14th cent. the art of the troubadours began to wane, and in the
15th cent. the influence of Dante and Petrarch was strong, particularly on the work of the poet Auziàs March. Tirant
lo Blanch (1490), the chivalric novel of epic scope written primarily by Jeanot Martorell (and partially by Johan Martí
de Galba), represents a high point of Catalan literature's golden age, which lasted through the mid-16th cent. From
the rise of Castile during the Renaissance, Catalan literature was eclipsed until the 19th cent., when it experienced a
marked revival. The great writers of this period were the dramatist Angel Guimerà and the poet Mosèn Jacinto
Verdaguer. In the first part of the 20th cent. Catalan literature flourished. The realistic regional novel had first-rate
exponents in Narcis Oller (1846–1930), Joaquim Ruyra (1858–1939), and Prudenci Bertrana (1867–1941). Joan
Maragall (1860–1911) was regarded by Miguel de Unamuno as the best lyric poet of the Iberian peninsula. A unique
and exotic note was the aesthetic dilettantism advocated by Eugenio d'Ors. After the end of the Spanish civil war
the Franco regime persecuted Catalan authors and imposed a ban on Catalan books and publications. Although
Catalan literary life proceeded underground, it was not until well after World War II that normal activity was
resumed, reflected in the establishment of awards such as the City of Barcelona Prize for Catalan Poetry. Notable
postwar poets include J. V. Foix, Maria Manent, Salvador Esprin, and Carles Riba. With the return of Spanish
democracy, Catalan literature revived more markedly, attracting worldwide attention with the novels of Mercè
Rodoreda (1909–83) and Terenci Moix (1943–), the plays of Jordi Teixidor (1939–), and the poetry of Pere
Gimferrer (1945–).
Bibliography
See A. Terry, Catalan Literature (1972); D. Rosenthal, ed., Modern Catalan Poetry (1979); M. J. Schneider and I. Stern,
Modern Spanish and Portuguese Literatures (1988).
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Guernica
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Guernica (gārnē′kä), historic town (1990 pop. 16,422), Vizcaya prov., N Spain, in the Basque region. It has
metallurgical, furniture, and food manufacturers, and some tourism. The oak of Guernica, under which the diet of
Vizcaya used to meet, is a symbol of the lost liberties of the Basques. In Apr., 1937, German planes, aiding the
insurgents in the Spanish civil war, bombed and destroyed Guernica. The indiscriminate killing of women and
children aroused world opinion, and the bombing of Guernica became a symbol of fascist brutality. The event
inspired one of Picasso's most celebrated paintings. Guernica is also called Guernica y Luno.
Copyright of this work is the property of Columbia University Press and its content may not be copied without the
copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software
used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Número de acceso: 39010065