Peter Hegarty
The 40-year ordeal of civil war and dictatorship left a deep imprint on Spanish culture and the Spanish collective memory. What Spain remembers – and forgets – are the subjects of a profound and elegant book informed by its author’s deep familiarity with the country’s language, art and culture, which he zealously wishes others to share.
Jeremy Treglown, now Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, is an accomplished critic and biographer. One of his book’s many strengths is his emphasis on the complexity of Francoism: he continually reminds us of aspects of Franco’s rule that are often overlooked. Franco usurped power and his soldiers massacred tens of thousands of defenceless people and dumped their corpses in the mass graves their grandchildren are now excavating – that much is common knowledge.
But Treglowen also asks us to consider Franco’s achievements. He presided over an economic miracle for one thing: by the mid-1960s Spain numbered among the 10 richest countries in the world. But perhaps his greatest legacy was the construction of dams and reservoirs that improved and safeguarded the supply of water to a parched country.
Treglowen also takes a nuanced view of the role of the Spanish Church under Franco. With the exception of the Basque clergy, the Spanish Church supported him, some clerics even allowing their churches to be used as munitions stores. But the Church arguably had nowhere else to go: it considered socialism unacceptable while neutrality was impossible in a deeply polarised society.
The author also reminds us that the Spanish Church paid a heavy price for the choice it made: around 6,000 priests and nuns died at the hands of furious Republicans in the early months of the war. Some chose martyrdom over flight, like the Bishop of Almeria, who stayed put until his killers came for him.
Franco’s regime was repressive and strait-laced, but much less censorious than we suppose: art and cinema thrived during the dictatorship; books critical of it were published. Works that would certainly have been banned in democratic Ireland were freely available in Spanish bookshops. Among those was Martin Santos’ grim novel Time of Silence. Set in a desperate shantytown on the edge of Madrid, it includes descriptions of a backstreet abortion, and references to the sexual abuse of children.
Post-war Spanish literature is a repository of memories of dark decades, of daily life in a country of traumatised, immiserated, broken people. To read Carmen Laforet’s Nada, or Camilo Jose Cela’s La Familia de Pascual Duarte, is to experience the hungry, cold 1940s.
Franco was arguably the most influential Spaniard in history. He shaped the cities and landscapes of Spain; he had a profound influence on its politics and culture; he divided families. Yet many – perhaps most – Spaniards would prefer to forget about him. Unlike Hitler, Franco does not fascinate. He lacked the German dictator’s depraved imagination and vaulting ambitions. People don’t mind that the statues are gone, that the streets have been renamed.
At the close of an intriguing book Treglowen wonders who will look after Franco’s crypt. It’s a question he has raised with various Spanish intellectuals. Most replied that they couldn’t imagine anyone being interested in looking after it.
