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Pro-Republican writers have an edge over pro-Franco
writers in depicting an almost forgotten war that had been
overshadowed by subsequent wars. Writers who supported the
Republican cause were by no means a homogeneous group; they
reflected the loose and fractious Popular Front–particularly the
groupings on the left. But they appear to have achieved what one
called “historic memory.”
Only oldies like myself (save for
reader Alex Umali who faithfully provides me with leads about the
effects of the guerra civil in Manila) have memories about a war
that divided Philippine society–the local Falangists and oligarchs
with the Catholic Church versus the anti-fascists among
intellectuals and workers.
The names of Filipinos who fought
in that war are said to be inscribed at the Casino Español on a
plaque I have yet to see, I remember Don Luis Gonzalez, who told me
in the 70s in Montreal that he fought on the side of Franco. A
history of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas says at least sixteen
Filipinos or up to fifty fought on the Republican side.
The classic works by
pro-Republicans who were in Spain—Ernest Hemingway, Andre Malraux,
George Orwell, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, C. Day
Lewis and Pablo Neruda—are read in standard literature courses.
The are many others like Christopher Caudwell, Muriel Rukeyser,
Lillian Hellman, Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, John Dos Passos
and Herbert Mathews. Among the artists the best known is Pablo
Picasso, with his Guernica painting, and among the filmmakers Luis
Bunuel (España 1936).
Of the Franquista sympathizers,
the familiar names are Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Evelyn Waugh,
Hillaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot and other Catholic authors read in
Catholic schools. I have yet to read what they wrote about the war.
Salvador Dali the surrealist was on Franco’s side.
Most celebrated of the writers
killed by the Falangists was the poet/dramatist Federico Garcia
Lorca, and among the intellectuals harassed by Franquistas was the
Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (who wrote an essay on “Rizal
as the Tagalog Christ”), president of Salamanca University, who
died shortly after a confrontation with Franco’s officials.
Antony Beevor (author of the
excellent The Battle for Spain, Phoenix Books) who gives an
unromanticized account of writers (like Hemingway and Malraux)
writes: “The fascist and military attitude to intellectuals showed
itself to be one of deep distrust at the least, and usually
consisted of an inarticulate reaction mixing hate, fear and
contempt. This was shown in Granada where five university professors
were murdered.”
From Beevor we gather that Garcia
Lorca was seized a few hours after the murder of the mayor of
Granada (his brother in law) by a Falangist official who said that
Lorca “did more damage with his pen than others, with their
guns.” One of the assassins, a Falangist landowner, would also say
later: “We killed Federico Garcia Lorca. I gave him two shots in
the arse as a homosexual.”
Beevor tells us: “H. G. Wells,
president of PEN, demanded details on the fate of Lorca as soon as
the news reached the outside world, but the nationalist authorities
denied any knowledge of his fate. Lorca’s death remained a
forbidden subject in Spain until the death of Franco in 1975.”
Of Miguel de Unamuno’s fate,
Beevor’s account renders a bizarre scene of Falangist fanaticism
with a crippled Nationalist general, followed by the mob, screaming
“Muera la inteligencia! Viva la Muerte!” (Death to the
intelligentsia! Long live Death!”—after the university rector
gave a reasoned reply to a professor who had launched a violent
attack against Catalan and Basque nationalism which he described as
“the cancer of the nation” which “must be cured with the
scalpel of fascism.”
When threatened with guns,
Unamuno defiantly told his tormentors: “This is the temple of
intellect and I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred
precincts. You will win, because you have more than brute force. But
you will not convince. For to persuade you would need what you lack:
reason and right in your struggle. I consider it futile to exhort
you to think of Spain.” Then, resignedly, he finished with “I
have done.”
Generalissimo Franco wanted
Unamuno shot but “this course was not followed because of the
philosopher’s international reputation and the reaction caused
abroad by Lorca’s murder.” Unamuno died ten weeks after that
incident, “broken-hearted and cursed as a ‘red’ and a traitor
by those he had thought were his friends.” (Beevor)
The fate of Lorca and Unamuno had
become emblematic of the fate of writers and intellectuals during
the Spanish Civil War. Beevor portrays this tragedy in an
even-handed manner that shows the Nationalists’ ruthless execution
of captured Republicans and sympathizers (including Basque priests)
but he does not spare Republican atrocities and the senseless
sectarian struggle for dominance in a war against fascism calling
desperately for a united front. Inevitably Franco won and ruled for
almost 40 years.
When we visited the Valle de los
Caidos (the valley of the fallen) in 1967 it was a memorial for the
Nationalist dead (“for God and country”) and a tribute to a
fascist dictator. The socialist government today plans to make it
“a monument for Democracy” remembering all the “fallen.” 
eaordonez2000@yahoo.com
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