The post-civil war

Spain remains at a crossroads when debating the Civil War. Arturo Pérez-Reverte has organized a series of debates in Seville with the less-than-ideal title 1936: The war we all lost (In the end, they put the slogan in question marks to soften the blow of criticism.) The writer David Uclés, who had committed to attending, withdrew upon learning that José María Aznar and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros would be participating. And the inevitable backlash on social media, including threats of boycott, precipitated the cancellation of the conference. Pérez-Reverte lamented the lost opportunity for the "reconciliation" of Spaniards. But the best way to come to terms with the past is to accept it, and accepting the Civil War means admitting that there were victors and vanquished, and that the victors behaved as such long after the guns fell silent.

However, if the argument is that the Civil War was a national failure, then I agree with Pérez-Reverte. Because in 1939, with General Franco's victory, not only did the Republic and the left lose, but also the most serious and laudable attempt to transform Spain into a modern, pluralistic democracy. And it is true that this defeat cannot be blamed solely on those who instigated the 1936 coup with their fellow travelers (Falangists, monarchists, the upper classes, and also a large segment of the Catholic population). Those who took advantage of the chaos to promote a communist or anarchist revolution, disregarding the limits of legality and democracy, are also responsible. In defense of the latter, it must be said that the violence they unleashed in the Republican rearguard, in an atmosphere inflamed by the rise of fascism in Europe, was preceded by more than a century of social exploitation. But this matters little to the victims of a fury that was often indiscriminate.

But the debate Spain must confront is not that of the war—where violence permeates and obscures everything—but rather that of its consequence: Francoism. For four decades, despite its victory on the battlefields, Francoism continued its slow and persistent work of repression, purging, and division among Spaniards, converting the defeated and bringing them into the public eye until the Transition and beyond. This is the scar that still tears at Spain today. Half the country repudiates the memory of the war but whitewashes the legacy of Francoism and considers itself its heir, however reluctantly. The rise of Vox confirms this sad reality, which also affects younger generations who did not suffer under the dictatorship.

In contemporary Catalonia, the influence of the left and Catalan nationalism, coupled with the convergence of the mainstream right into democratic nationalism, clearly tilted collective memory toward the Republican side, since the Generalitat and Catalan nationalism were also among the defeated in 1939. The subsequent repression was not directed solely against the left, but also affected all expressions of Catalan identity, including the language, even if its speakers were Catholic and/or right-wing. However, acknowledging the national defeat—embodied in the execution of the democratically elected president—should not prevent us from recognizing the pain inflicted by revolutionary fury on thousands of Catalans for being Catholic, bourgeois, wealthy, members of the League, and even right-wing democrats and Catalan nationalists. Having said that, I have no doubt that Catalonia, and its national identity, are among the defeated of 1939. And I have no doubt because we still suffer the consequences of this defeat today.