Memories of the Spanish Civil War: Conflict and Community in Rural Spain - Hardcover

Sabido, Ruth Sanz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783483687 ISBN 13: 9781783483686

Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

The Spanish Civil War left a legacy of destruction, resentment and deep ideological divisions in a country that was attempting to recover from economic stagnation and social inequality. After Franco's victory, the repression and purge that ensued immersed Spain in a spiral of fear and silence which continued long after the dictator's death, through 'the pact of oblivion' that was observed during the transition to democracy.

Memories of the Spanish Civil War: Conflict and Community in Rural Spain attempts to break this silence by recovering the local memories of survivors of the Civil War and the early years of Franco's dictatorship. Combining oral testimony gathered in one Andalusian village, with archival research, this ethnographic study approaches the expression of memory as an important site of socio-political struggle.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ruth Sanz Sabido is Reader in Media and Social Inequality at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

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Memories of the Spanish Civil War

Conflict and Community in Rural Spain

By Ruth Sanz Sabido

Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 Ruth Sanz Sabido
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-368-6

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
List of Tables, 
Acknowledgements, 
Participants from Arroyomolinos de León, 
1 Introduction: Memory, Conflict and the Rural Context, 
2 Memory, Politics and Lived Experience, 
3 Critical Ethnography of Memory, 
4 'There Was No War Here': Repression and the Civil War, 
5 Class, Ideology and Local Community, 
6 Rojas: Women and the Anti-fascist Struggle, 
7 Final Remarks: From Local Memories to Spain's Politics of Oblivion, 
References, 
Index, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Memory, Conflict and the Rural Context

On 24 August 1944, General Leclerc's command, the Ninth Company of the Second Armoured Division (commonly known as la Nueve, or 'the Ninth'), was the first military formation to enter Paris after the Nazis had vacated the city. Newly liberated Parisians watched as armoured columns passed through their streets, led by a vehicle that carried the Spanish Republican flag. The tanks that followed were marked with the names of famous battles from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), like Madrid, Brunete, Guadalajara and Teruel (Mesquida 2014; Pons Prades 1975; Pons Prades 1985).

This landmark event has not, however, passed unaltered into the History books. According to accounts that have prevailed until very recently, Paris was not liberated by the Ninth as such, but simply by the Second Armoured Division. Of course, the Ninth was just one component of a much larger army, but its near disappearance from the narrative can be explained by two inconvenient realities. The first is that the Ninth, led by Captain Raymond Dronne, was composed for the most part of Spanish rather than French combatants. These men – almost exclusively members of the CNT and FAI– were just some of the thousands of Republicans (anarchists, communists and socialists) who had fled their homeland in 1939. The Second Armoured Division as a whole, however, contained a majority of French soldiers: therefore, any reference to the Division would inevitably reinforce the notion that the liberation was an exclusively French affair. The second reason for this neglect relates to a shameful episode in the history of France itself. Having suffered for three years at the hands of a right-wing military insurgency, thousands of displaced Spanish men, women and children made the arduous climb across the Pyrenees to escape persecution (Matthews 1939). Edouard Daladier, the French premier, closed his country's borders to avoid the avalanche of refugees, but had to reopen them when Franco, the victorious Nationalist dictator, refused to countenance the creation of neutral zones. Although masses of refugees continued to arrive in France, they were not received with compassion. Most of them ended up in concentration camps, where they were imprisoned and forced to live and work in horrific conditions (Caamaño 2015; Macciuci 2006; Mesquida 2014; Rafaneau-Boj 1995; Riera 2016; Vilanova 2003). The testimonies of the survivors help to illustrate the situation. For example, Fermín Pujol, who would later become part of la Nueve, recalls his experience:

When we arrived, they disarmed us. They took everything away from us, rings, jackets, wallets, everything, and they sent us to a beach, in the open air, with no protection, surrounded by a wire fence and guarded by armed soldiers. Scabies and lice soon became our companions. If anyone escaped, the Senegalese colonial troops would shoot to kill. (in Mesquida 2014, my translation)

More than 15,000 refugees died within the first few weeks, and many more would never be able to return home. Despite the treatment they received, many of the adult males volunteered to continue the struggle against fascism by joining the French army, taking part in numerous battles and fighting alongside other foreigners during World War II. The Ninth, with its contingent of 146 Spaniards from a total of 160 men, were for the most part barely out of their teens when they first took up arms in Spain in 1936 (Mesquida 2014). Such was the preponderance of Spaniards in the company that all commands were given in Spanish. Their character was depicted by Captain Dronne, who described this group of fighters as

individualists, idealists, courageous, showing an almost foolish bravery. They did not have a military spirit, they were even anti-militarists, but they were magnificent soldiers, brave and experienced fighters. ... If they embraced our cause voluntarily, it was because it was the cause of freedom. They really were fighters for freedom. (Dronne 1984, 262–63, my translation)

As Mesquida (2014) points out, had la Nueve been comprised of Americans, dozens of films would have been made about them, because they exhibited extraordinary dignity, courage and solidarity. Yet, the significance of their struggles and achievements was not only underplayed, but also progressively forgotten, starting from the very day after the liberation of Paris, when Charles de Gaulle, speaking at the Hôtel de Ville, announced that Paris was

liberated by herself, liberated by her people with the help of the armies of France, with the help and support of the whole of France, that is to say of combatant France, the only France, the true France, eternal France. (de Gaulle 1944, my translation)

From this moment, the version that prevailed was that Leclerc's Division had freed the French capital. De Gaulle's statement sought to foster a patriotic sentiment among the French population, one that would serve to unite France, which was characterised at this critical time by division and instability. The problem was that, in doing so, the contribution that non-French fighters made to History was obscured. As Beevor and Cooper note,

There was not the slightest mention of American or British help in the Liberation. In the eyes of the Allies, this was a churlish and grotesque rewriting of history; nevertheless, it was an inspired message, creating an image of national unity where none existed and binding the sorely wounded pride of the country. (Beevor and Cooper 2004, x)

The attempts of the French to nationalise the victory, Mesquida points out, meant that the foreigners were marginalised and made to disappear from History and from Memory (with the capital 'H' and 'M' denoting that these are official, state-sanctioned versions of the past). In this respect, Beevor and Cooper's assessment, by focusing on American and British aid alone, also fails to acknowledge the active contribution of Spanish men to the liberation of Paris and, more broadly, to the fight against fascism. This process of forgetting was exacerbated further by the campaign of repression and 'memory management' within Spain itself, through which the dictator, Franco, attempted to erase all traces of his enemies' existence. Yet, the worst form of insult inflicted upon these Spanish soldiers was not the fact that their efforts had become invisible: it was the fact that France and the other Allies would not assist them in their fight against Franco's regime, even though the Spaniards had been instrumental in the Allies' struggle against the Nazis. After World War II, Spanish ex-combatants, unable to return to their country, had to remain in France, while fascism in Spain became more...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783483687
• ISBN 13: 9781783483686
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 210
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland