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.

The writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte and the journalist Jesús Vigorra, organizers of the conference 1936: The war we all lostThe conference, which was scheduled to take place from February 2nd to 5th at the Cajasol Foundation in Seville, has been postponed until autumn. "The intention expressed on social media by far-left groups, proposing violent demonstrations in front of the venue, has led us to advise Cajasol to postpone the announced debates," Pérez-Reverte and Vigorra said in a statement reported by EFE. The conference made headlines a few days ago when writer David Uclés withdrew upon seeing that former PP president José María Aznar and one of the founders of Vox, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, were among the speakers. "Aznar is one of the people who has done the most physical harm to the Spanish people recently, and Espinosa de los Monteros co-founded a party that denies my freedom of expression and my right to exist, and that defends values ​​I do not share and against which I fight," said Uclés, the author of the novel The peninsula of empty houses and thelatest winner of the Nadal Prize by The City of Lights.