Women, Basques, patriots, heroines: 'Interior service', by Katixa Agirre

Until you see a person live through an extreme situation, you don't really know what they are like. History and the present are full of braggarts who, in a comfortable and safe situation, have filled their mouths with brave words and heroic proclamations, but later, at the moment of truth – a war, a demanding historical crossroads – have settled into cowardly and petty cynicism. But history is also full of humble and discreet people who, in terrible situations of threat and danger, demonstrated unheard-of courage, an unbreakable strength of spirit, a generosity and an audacity that do not seem of this world. This is the case of the protagonists of Internal Service, the new novel (although it would be more accurate to describe it as a fictionalized historical reconstruction) by Katixa Agirre (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1981).At first glance, Itziar Mugika, Bittori Etxeberria, Tere Verdes, and Delia Lauroba may seem like four unlikely anti-fascist heroines, but that is because the official narrative of anti-fascism in Spain has been monopolized by the Spanish left, which tends to ignore or minimize the national character that the civil war had, a conflict made up of three conflicts: the class, the religious, and the identity-national one. Basque patriots, fervent Catholics, and militants of the Basque Nationalist Party, the four protagonists of Agirre's novel formed, expanded, and operated, in the darkest period of the history of Spain and Europe, an information network at the service of the PNV, the Basque government, and, by extension, at the service of the Republic and anti-Francoism. That network, which passed on information, documents, and reports, spread between the Basque Country, Burgos, and Paris, and for some years involved hundreds of people and helped save thousands of lives. The price paid by the four protagonists, just like the one paid by many other men and women who were part of the network—christened by historiography as the Álaba network—, was extremely high.Katixa Agirre, who is also a doctor in Audiovisual Communication, chooses to approach the historical materials she works with using cinematic technique and terminology. I mean that, literally, she introduces the characters to us, announces flashbacks, warns us when a double scene will be explained through the resource of parallel editing... All of this refers to the tone, style, and manners with which Laurent Binet worked on the figure of Reinhard Heydrich in the novel HHhH, in which the French writer constructed a historical account while showing the explicit self-awareness of constructing a historical account. It is a narrative maneuver that, in both Binet's and Agirre's cases, serves above all to expose complex and tangled facts in an understandable and thrilling way, but which at times removes drama – the sophistication of the artifice dampens the human intensity – from what is being explained.It is also true that the story is so dramatic (war, prisons, exile) that there is no need to amplify or underline the drama. The action takes place between 1937, when Franco's troops have occupied the Basque Country, have murdered and imprisoned thousands of Basque nationalists and republicans, and Lehendakari Aguirre has already left for exile, and 1942, when Hitler already dominates all of Europe and Franco has already brutally consolidated his power in Spain. Katixa Agirre, with her novel, shows a world where repression, misery, summary trials, and executions are omnipresent, but she also shows how four simple and brave women stand up to terror, injustice, and evil, all out of loyalty to their country, anti-totalitarian conviction, and pure faith in God and human goodness. Honor and glory.