The Spanish Civil War Read Free Page B

the 1970s. By the time of Franco’s death, the appetite for all books previously prohibited was voracious, especially when they treated such sensitive questions as the war which had brought Franco to power. However, the success of all these publications-not just mine but that of other historians, Spanish as well as English, French as well as American-played a part in the success also of the transition to demcracy alter Franco. The recovery of knowledge of why the previous demcracy in Spain went wrong in the 1930s was a help in the 1970s. The recollection in tranquillity of just how horrible a failure the civil warhad been helped those concerned to make a new Spain to avoid destructive rhetoric. By suggesting that the responsibility for the conflict was not easily decided, and the guilt for the most odious actions widely spread, vengeance was avoided-a fact not wholly to be expected when it is recalled how many people who had played a part in the civil war were still alive. ‘Poetry,’ said Shelley, ‘is capable of saving us.’ Cannot the same claim be made for history?
    Perceptions of the Spanish war differ from one period of ten years to the next. It now appears to have been Spain’s contribution to the continent-wide breakdown which occurred between 1914 and 1945: not a specifically Spanish descent into barbarism and certainly not a characteristic one. In past centuries no one thought that nations engaged in war could survive when they ran out of money The events of 1914 showed that to be false. No one supposed in the last Century that civil wars would go on if the two sides ran out of arms: in Spain it was shown, as many conflicts since then have shown, that other countries can furnish the war material to enable the fighting to go on indefinitely. Many were killed in Spain: but since my first edition questioned, I believe for the first time, in a historical work, the reliability of the estimate of ‘a million dead’, and suggested that 500,000 might be a maximum, the estimates for casualties have dropped and dropped. Now it would be perfectly admissible to argue that Spain lost fewer people dead in acts of violence than any other major European nation in this Century.
    That is an important reflection. Spain, little understood and often privately disliked by patronizing northern peoples (‘an old Spanish custom’ in London means the habit of being paid for work that is not done), is frequently held to be a more violent nation than it is. Isolated by good fortune and by geography from the ‘world’s game’ of great power rivalry since 1815, it has more lessons to offer other peoples than it has to learn: above all, it has grasped more successfully than other nations the art of combining progress with the persistence of tradition. Its recent achievement of delegating authority to autonomous regions is not universally popular in Spain because the central government continues as expensive as before. But I suspect it is the way that all advanced countries should go if they continue to wish half their economy to be managed by the State. These are grand issues: no doubt their chronicling in future works of history will exert an influence in the future if people are to go on living as happily in Europe as, despite everything, most of us are now.
    During the years that I have been interested in the Spanish Civil War, I had interviews with or correspondence with numerous survivors of that time. Those from Spain who assisted me have included:
    Don Víctor Alba; Don Julio Alvarez del Vayo; Don Pablo de Azcárate; Don Cayetano Bolívar; Don Juan de Borbón; Professor Bosch Gimpera; Don Beitrán Domecq; Don Manuel Fal Conde; Don Melchor Ferrer; Don Andrés García Lacalle; Don José García Pradas; Don José María Gil Robles; Don Julián Gorkin; Don Juan Grijalbo; Don Vicente Guarner; Cardinal Angel Herrera; General Emilio Herrera; Don Martín de Irujo; Don José María de Leizaola; Don Salvador de Madariaga; Don Ignacio de