The Civil War for non-Spaniards
Spain is a nation-state embroiled in civil war. The problem is the Civil War. Clinging to the conflict like junkies. Pay attention to the latest narcotic. Congress has exploded. 1936: The War We All Lost. It wanted to be a sisterly hodgepodge of the war we all wagedThe writer David Uclés has said that he wouldn't sit next to Aznar and Espinosa de los Monteros. The two Spains, locked in a struggle with the sword and the bomb. Here's a microhistory of the War.
1936. "And let him think of the horrors we could have avoided if last July there had been a Catalan army to confront both the fascists and the anarchists at the same time..." "My uncle and his father-in-law were murdered, and if their children haven't suffered the same fate, it's because they couldn't fit in the car they were being taken away in. It seems they're in France now; if my cousins were to cross over, would there be anything incomprehensible about it after having seen their actions? Crossing over is a colossal mistake. Those on the other side, who are as barbaric as the anarchists, are going directly against Catalonia." "They are precisely the ones who have caused the tragedy. And if here we have the FAI, there they have the Falange; who knows if deep down both are but one and the same, and that those who have the most influence are those who speak of them." Falangists"
1937. "We can defend Catalonia from all ideological borders, from anarchist to Carlist; what a monstrous error, by the way, for our Carlists to make common cause with Castilian fascism, which represents the complete opposite of them. If the FAI disgusts me so much, it's not because it's anarchist, or not so much because of that, but because, like its precursors the Lerrouxists, it seems to be a murky anti-Catalan maneuver. How many parties, how many sects, how much of a mess! Who will remember in a hundred years all these parties that have sprung up like mushrooms in the rain, each with its infallible recipe for saving the world, when in fact they don't know how to save Catalonia?"
1938-1939: "Brilliant historian, don't invent a new method, that of 'historical bastardry'; "I am increasingly convinced of the role played in many events that would otherwise be incomprehensible by double agents, provocateurs, the most sordid and shady characters, all kinds of bastards, in a word." "The disaster surpasses anything we could have foreseen... Since July 19th, confusion and madness upon madness; that is why we now find ourselves facing the most incoherent tragedy our country has ever experienced... And the war we must wage against the advancing enemy is not so difficult if we do not add another against these criminals who are officially our allies and who demonstrate that they hate us as much as he does; they all hate us equally."
Joan Sales, a Republican officer, writer, and editor, lived through it and wrote about it. Like all Catalans. Against the red and black lies. Against all lies. He recalled it in 1978: "But they almost killed us?" Yes. And is this what they were looking for? Yes. And they're still looking for it! Always, like salt ham trapped between two slices, Catalonia.