"Squat and resist": You probably recognize this from my banner. It was taken from Montjuïc.

I just started reading George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia yesterday. The book details the British writer’s time fighting for the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) militia during the Spanish Civil War. And as you can tell from the title, much of this war memoir takes place in the Catalonia (Cataluña) region of Spain, whose heart is the city of Barcelona. Reading the book has gotten me romantically dreaming about the (way too short) visit I paid that city almost nine years ago.

*Side note: all these photos were taken with a cheap throwaway camera. Excuse the quality.

Graffiti outside my hotel.

Orwell writes at length about the political factions in the region. Various leftist groups, from Communists to Anarchists, held power in Catalonia at the time of the war, while the right-wing Nationalists were working towards control of the country as a whole. To me, the city seemed to still have strong political currents. Graffiti was everywhere, and it was often polemic: “The bosses are all thieves!” “Resist the global economy.” Beggars on the metro were apt to reference economic policies when asking for change. Leftist parties had booths along las Ramblas—including quaint seniors hawking hammer-and-sickle buttons. And every night seemed to bring a new protest march: gay rights, social reforms, vegetarianism, and so on.

Antoni Gaudí's still unfinished Sagrada Familia, parts of which were destroyed by Anarchists during the Civil War.

Culturally, the city has an interesting mix of architectural styles, museums, and venues. On the one hand, there is the highbrow modernist side: the Miro museum and Gaudí’s works. But then there is also the Erotica Museum in the heart of the city. And on the outskirts of town is Camp Nou, the home of Barcelona’s beloved football team. But my favorite place in the area is Montserrat, which is literally a “serrated mountain” that is conquered by a combination of cable car, funicular, and hike. The view is certainly worth the stomach-dropping ride up and calories burnt once on the ground.

Some of Montserrat's teeth.

But nothing in life is perfect. And whenever I get too misty about Barcelona I start to remember my last 24 hours there. It began with one last excursion to a Gaudí landmark. I don’t even remember which one. But on the way up the escalator from the metro, I was targeted by some pickpockets. In a flash, a commotion started and I quickly noticed a foreign hand in my pocket. Dashing away, I still had all my belongings. In fact, the thief would have only come away with the cruddy camera that I took these pictures with. But it was a definite mood damper. And arriving at the airport to find out that my flight home had been canceled didn’t improve things much.

Leon Trotsky:

A good review by Andrew Coates of Patenaude and Robert Service’s books, and a rather plodding defence of Trotsky from Service by Peter Taafe.

Ignazio Silone:

Silone on liberty. An interview with Tim Parks that touches on the “Silone question” (via The Perfect Package, see last quote). Any Persian readers reading this? Here’s some Silone in Farsi.

Albert Camus:

Coates on Camus in the Pantheon.

The Spanish Civil War:

Wilebaldo Solano on the POUM (more on this later). Review of An Anarchist’s Story: The Life of Ethel MacDonald.

Bertolt Brecht:

Excellent post by The Fat Man on a Keyboard, contra Nick Cohen on The Good Soul of Szechuan.

Kronstadt:

Finally, I am sad that I missed the New York Queer Film Festival, where I could have seen this:

Closing Night: Maggots & Men
Seeing Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men, you have nothing to lose but your perceptions of gender. This utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history’s first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints an idyllic portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.

Blessed Josè Otín Aquiluè, Salesian, Priest and Martyr
Huesca, Spain, December 22, 1901 – Valencia, Spain, November 1936

Roman Martyrology: At Valencia, Spain, Blessed Joseph Otín Aquila, a priest of the Salesian Society and Martyr, who, in the same persecution, reached the heavenly kingdom undefeated in the constancy of faith.

He was born in Huesca on December 22, 1901. He studied in the Salesian Schools. Soon he decided to go to Campello (Alicante), to give answer to his vocation. He was ordained a priest in 1928. His smile had attracted a character that easily linked with young people. Apart from studies in Carabanchel (Madrid), the rest of his life was spent in the province of Alicante: Villena, Campello and Alcoy. When civil war broke out he left for Valencia and found refuge in an inn. He stayed there until he was terminated, then disappeared and he sank into oblivion.

One of the Blessed Spanish Salesian Martyrs of Valencia, he was beatified on March 11, 2001 by Pope John Paul II with 201 other victims of the same persecution.

Source: Salesians

source: Santi e Beati

This was tweeted by @BBHLabs earlier today (via @brainpicker).

The original painting has been a favourite of mine since I first discovered it about 15 years ago.

Visiting the original in Madrid back in 2007 was pretty mindblowing and emotional, I was overwhelmed by its scale and force.

This 3D interpretation presents a even more graphic reality.

Amazing. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Parque del Retiro

After inhaling our burger and fries at Burger King JC and I took a long stroll through Parque del Retiro. It was built by King Philip IV for the royal family. This enormous park is the most popular park in Madrid. It’s dotted with beautiful fountains and filled with lush green gardens. It even has an artificial lake and street performers for the children. The lake is called the Estanque del Retiro. Rowboats can be rented during the weekends.

The Parque del Retiro isn’t far from the Museo Del Prado and both JC and I were extremely eager to see some of the most famous pieces art in history. These were works of art I’ve only seen in book so to be able to see them in person with my own eyes was so surreal. The Prado Museum was packed with tourists and why wouldn’t it be? It’s the most famous museum in Madrid. In order to avoid the masses and losing time, we strategized our museum visit by mapping out every single piece of work we wanted to see. This way we were able to see where each piece was clusters on the map. Instead of having to scramble all over the museum to beat the crowds, we were able to see the ones that were closest together before moving on to the next section of the museum. The Museum Del Prado currently holds:

• Hieronymus Bosch’s Table of The Seven Deadly Sins
• Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden Of Earthly Delights
• Caravaggio’s David Victorious Over Goliath
• Diego Velazquez’s The Family of Felipe IV (Las Meninas)
• Francisco de Goya’s The 3rd of May 1808
• Francisco de Goya’s Saturn Devouring One of His Sons

The visit was a quick 1-2-3. Mission accomplished. We didn’t linger or stroll around. It wasn’t such a good idea with it being the weekend and all. Plus, we were eager to visit the Museo Reina Sofia

Guernica at the Museo Reina Sophia

The Museo Reina Sofia is located directly across from the Atocha train station. We went to see Pablo Picaso’s most famous piece, Guernica. Even though I was exhausted, jet-lagged and reeked of that stale airplane stench I stood in front of the painting and stared at it for at least half an hour. It is now forever branded in my mind. The mural depicts the bombing of Guernica, an aerial attach by the Germans and Italians during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world’s attention. – Wikipedia

At the end of our museum visit, we walked across the street to the Atocha train station, bought round trip tickets for Toledo and called it a day – a very long day. As I was getting ready for bed that night, that last thought that popped into my head before I fell asleep was, “Oh man, this is only day 1. Yes!”

The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War

Peter Carroll, 440 pg.

The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade is the definitive account of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, not only during the war, but the before and after. The book is also a labor of love and it some times colors the otherwise solid writing in the book. Carroll clearly loves his subject and it shows in the lengths he goes to show the veterans as committed anti-fascists. Yet as a true believer he is blinded to a few contradictions that should have been addressed in his book.

The book is roughly divided into three parts: before the war; in combat; and after the war. In part one Carroll shows that most of the veterans were already radicalized workers, many who were already communists or labor activists. Many had spent time in jail during labor unrest and were politically aware of what was going on in Europe. There were some college graduates, but most were workers. As the call for volunteers went out, the Communist Party organized the recruitment and because of fears of spies primarily communists were sent to Spain. Others such as socialists were excluded for lack of commitment. What is clear is that most volunteers believed in the party.

Once in Spain the Brigade was not well trained and suffered high losses from initial lack of leadership, training, and bad strategic decisions. Never equipped adequately, the Brigade did their best but suffered high losses. Carroll notes that several times the men expressed discontent with the war and there were some desertions, but in general the men continued to believe in the war and follow the leadership. Carroll goes at great length to show that the men were brave and good soldiers. It often seems that he is determined to show that despite any myths people have heard, they were brave men. He also wants to show that the men were committed and few wanted to desert. While from his numbers that seems to be true, he repeats this several times and one gets the impression this was more than a fact but a detail personally dear to him.

Once the war ends the veterans return to the US where they try to support the defeated republic, a commitment that would follow them throughout their lives. The biggest controversy in this period is when the veterans follow the party line after the Soviet-German non aggression pact and say that it is no longer their business to be anti-fascist. It is here that Carroll doesn’t really examine the case particularlly well. If they were anti-fascist they should have continued with that line, but instead they changed, and Carroll suggests that it was natural, that it wasn’t their fight any more. It is not exactly an apology, but it is a soft peddle that underscores the weaknesses of the book: the soldiers were brave and fought the good fight, therefore, criticism should be kept to a minimum. For Carroll the important thing is to restore the honor of the Brigade, not to find the mistakes they made.

His coverage of the McCarthy era is solid and shows some of the excess of the period quite well. Yet he would have done well to have explained a little better how some veterans were not a threat, while in one case one was a spy for the Soviet Union. He is a little quick on passing over that veteran. And while the McCarthy era was excessive, he needed to better explain what the veterans were and were not. Just because the supreme court found that the enemy agent laws were illegal and suppressed free speech, doesn’t explain the history of the veterans.

Overall, the book is an important resource for the era, but has some weaknesses. I find it hard to imagine that many of the veterans he wrote about in the book would have ever agreed with Antony Beevor that the battles on the Elbro were mostly pointless political theater, and not of strategic value. Nor would Carroll, I suspect.

Ya Sabes Mi Padadero:  La guerra civil a través de las cartas de los que la vivieron

Javier Cervera Gil, 483 pg.

Ya Sabes Mi Padadero:  La guerra civil a través de las cartas de los que la vivieron is a book that will never be translated into English, but for those who are interested in the the Spanish Civil war it is a shame, for the book is window on the everyday experience of soldiers and civilians during the war. Using the letters and journals of around 35 people, Javier Gil Cervera shows the war as it was, with its boredom, fanaticism, and quotidian.

At its strongest Ya Sabes shows the war at its most extreme. Many times a fascist soldier would write that they brought back a mortally wounded soldier and as they were dying they would kiss the crucifix and shout VIVA ESPAÑA and VIVA CHRISTO REY. It was even more impressive to the letter writers if a Republican soldier did this because it only confirmed the righteousness of the cause. Along similar lines there were several letters from men condemned to die who wrote about their undying faith in God and the cause which God had blessed and they would become a martyr. At its most extreme one letter writes about  a mass he attends that should rightly be called a fascist mass, the disturbing mix of religion and militarism.

A field mass. A magnificent altar, a its base the church of San Salvador de Oña that reminds one of the mercenary abbots of El Cid, and the mountains of Castilla that the Lord gave us which with its blue sky like those of our heroes and the cloaks of our statues of the Virgin Mary form the best canopy for the Christ’s sacrament that from these steps blesses perhaps all these soldiers.

Misa de campaña. El altar magífico, por fondo la iglesia de San Salvador de Oña que recuerda los Abades mesnaderos de Mío Cid, y los montes de esta Castilla que el Señor nos dio, que con su cielo azul como las camisas de nuestros héroes y los mantos de nuestras Vírgenes forman el mejor dosel a Cristo Sacramentado que desde esta escalinata bendijo quizás a tantos caballeros.

His description goes on for quite sometime and gives one some the source of the savagery of the war.

On the Republican side there are few examples of the fascist style ideology. Only one Republican, a French communist, talks of the war in those terms, and even he is more interested in the failures of the government to carry out the revolution than thinking about ideologies. Perhaps the letters were lost or destroyed, but the Republican side had its committed followers, too.

Outside of the ideologues, the book splits its time between describing the conditions on the front: letters about the cold in Tuerel and the trenches and the bombings. The descriptions are not too detailed because the information was intended for those at home and were probably going to be censored by officers so the letter limit themselves to generalities. For those not at the front the letters are a mix of deprivation, logging for those who are not at home and for the things they have lost in the displacements of the war.

While letters to give one an insight to what people are thinking, they are also an insight into what people want to obfuscate so the letters can be very cursory, telling you only what the writer was choosing to write. The result are letters that might have best been omitted. Case in point: how many times do you need to print letters that say I miss you? Unfortunately, there is a series of letters between a couple that is like that and becomes quite repetitive, which is the problem of reading letters. Perhaps if the book was trimmed down a hundred pages it would have been a little less repetitive. And while having the author explain the context of the war, the book would have been more interesting to read full letters, not snippets here and there.

In all Ya Sabes Mi Paradero is a good insight into the Spanish Civil War even if it is a little slow at times.

A few links before the weekend:

• The Wall Street Journal interviews Cormac McCarthy about film adaptations of McCarthy’s books, the end of the world, and various other things you’d expect McCarthy to talk about.
• The Daily Beast interviews Matthew Weiner about the end of Mad Men’s third season and where the show goes from here.
• Oxford University has digitized a collection of Siegfried Sassoon’s papers compiled from various archives.  Fittingly, the material went live on Armistice Day.  (For anyone interested in Sassoon and the war poets, it is worth checking out the other collections in Oxford’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive.)
• In a not too surprising revelation, the daughter of author James Jones writes that Scribner’s requested Jones to edit From Here to Eternity for both profanity and depictions of gay sex among soldiers at Pearl Harbor.
• Christopher Borelli lists “10 underrated depictions of the apocalypse,” if that’s your thing.
• And, because I can’t let this Spanish Civil War stuff drop, Michael Portillo’s recent article on why Spain should not exhume bodies from its civil war is thoughtful and well-reasoned, although I disagree with a lot of what he says.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the efforts of the Spanish government to locate the body of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by Francoists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.  Now, Jerome Socolovsky brings us the story of Fausto Canales, who is trying to have the body of his pro-Republican father moved out of the Valley of the Fallen.  Located near Madrid, the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caidos) was constructed by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to commemorate the Nationalist dead, and now contains the bodies of between 40,000 and 60,000 Republicans and Nationalists killed during the war.  When Franco died in 1975, he was buried there as well.  The monument took over twenty years to complete and was built using forced labor of Republican political prisoners.

Although the story is relatively brief, it is filled with tidbits that reveal what the war means in contemporary Spain.  For someone who has studied commemoration of the American Civil War, the passages describing the Valley of the Fallen are particularly striking.

“Come in and discover one of the most awesome and breathtaking sites the Patrimonio Nacional directs,” urges an audio guide provided by the Heritage Authority. It doesn’t mention the forced labor that was used to build the monument, which is presented as a memorial to the fallen from both sides, whose coffins are stacked in vaults deep inside the basilica.

In the Chapel of the Sepulcher, there is a locked wooden door under an inscription that reads “Caidos por Dios y por Espana” — those who died for God and Spain. In Spain, it is a slogan closely associated with the fascists.

Although Franco intended the monument to honor the Nationalists killed during the war, he ordered Republican bodies to be exhumed from mass graves in order to fill the mausoleum to capacity.  Among those moved was Valerico Canales.  Of course, the inclusion of the dead from both sides doesn’t change the pro-fascist sentiment of the monument, as evidenced by the inscription on the wooden door.  Likewise, the two most prominent graves in the Valley of the Fallen are those of Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the leader of the fascist Felange Party killed by Republicans in 1936.  No Republican leaders are buried there.  The monument’s continued association with Franco and the fascists has prompted Fausto Canales and other descendants of Republicans to push for the exhumation of their relatives.

Finally, Socolovsky quotes a right-wing political leader, who doesn’t quite seem to understand the battle of memory currently raging in his country:

“It [turning the Valley of the Fallen into a memorial of Francoist repression] would reopen old wounds from the civil war just when we Spaniards have overcome them,” says Miguel Bernard Remon, the secretary-general of the right-wing labor union Manos Limpias. “What kind of country is this, where parts of the left are refighting the civil war and distracting attention from our real problems?”

Remon misses that the left in Spain is “refighting the civil war” because of Franco’s attempts to create a particular national memory of the war.  I don’t see any way that Spain can move past its civil war, until both sides have had their say in this uncomfortable, but necessary, conversation.

I think I’ll start sharing a couple interesting news items from around the web related to poetry and, to a lesser extent, writing in general. Cheers.

• Federico Garcia Lorca was buried in a mass grave in 1936 as merely one result of the Spanish Civil War. Seems the family has agreed to allow excavations of his presumed burial site. Can you say “Zombie Lorca”?
• The IMPAC longlist is now available. Some Canadian talent in here. I draw your attention to Patrick Lane here.
• xkcd is a brilliant web comic that posts a couple times a week on both random and currently significant topics. Here’s one for fans of LOTR, Star Wars, and a couple other big name movies.

This photo is of the statue commemorating all those who went and fought (and died) in the Spanish Civil War. It is on the Clyde walkway, between the railway bridge and the footbridge I was showing earlier last week. The quote above is at the foot of the statue, which is called ‘La Pasionaria’ and is of Dolores Ibarurri, a heroine of the anti-fascist movement in Spain. It was made by Arthur Dooley of Liverpool and had quite a controversial and troubled history (there are some details here). The plaque underneath the statue reads:

The City of Glasgow and the British Labour Movement pay tribute to the courage of those men and women who went to Spain to fight fascism 1936-39. 2,100 volunteers went from Britain, 534 were killed, 65 of whom came from Glasgow.

In other news, today is this blog’s 2nd birthday! It is also the first day of my new job, and so as good a time as any to think about what to do with the blog. My job involves a lot of home visiting, and is, it has to be said, not in the most photogenic part of the city, and so it will be very inappropriate for me to carry a camera around. In the evenings I will be working on my PhD, which is still (still!) being written up, so I’m not going to have a ton of time for photography, and so I’m probably going to slow down a bit on the blog. I’ve still got some old photos from the last few years that I could use, but not loads, so probably will run out reasonably soon. I don’t want to stop the blog completely, but it will become considerably more “occasional” than “daily” in the coming weeks. My other daily photo blog (Sibiu) still has enough photos to probably last till the end of the year, but that always was going to be limited as I’ve not been back there for a couple of years now.

I’m thinking when life is a bit less manic, some time next year, I might start another photography blog, that’s a bit less location-specific, but I think I’ll need a break. Well, and a camera as well, as mine broke a while back and I’ve been using my husband’s for the last couple of months. We’ll see how it goes. For now though hopefully I’ll keep this one daily for a couple more weeks before slowing down a bit. Thanks for all the visits and comments though, I do read every one and really appreciate them

This week the Spanish government began exhuming a grave believed to hold the remains of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered in 1936 by the Fascist forces under General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.  While many are focused on simply finding the body of the martyred poet, I wonder what impact this will have on the broader issue of the memory of the Spanish Civil War.  Will the discovery of Garcia Lorca’s body, assuming it is found, affect the way Spain remembers the war and the Franco regime?

Spain has had difficulty dealing with the legacy of the war:

After Franco’s death in 1975, Spain introduced an amnesty law and maintained a ‘pact of forgetting’ about atrocities committed by the Nationalist and Republican forces during the Civil War.

But last year, Spain’s Socialist Government passed the controversial Law of Historic Memory.

The law sought to offer some justice to Franco’s victims by granting them official recognition, by removing Francoist monuments, and pledges some support to associations that have dug up the remains of some 4,000 people from mass graves.

Judge Baltasar Garzon, who order the exhumation, has done as much as anyone to push these issues to the forefront.  Last year, he indicted Franco and 34 subordinates for perpetrating crimes against humanity, and he began an investigation into their atrocities.  It was to be the first criminal investigation into Franco’s actions during the war.  However, he dropped the charges and discontinued his probe when his jurisdiction was questioned.

The issues facing Spain remind me of the difficulty the U.S. has had with the legacy of its own civil war.  However, two major differences prevent the two from being analogous.  The first is the brutality of the Spanish Civil War.  With the exception of the limited guerrilla war in the border states, the American Civil War was fought by formal armies.  In comparison with civil wars around the world, few civilians were killed.  In Kentucky, for example, families and friends, who were divided over the war, often succeeded in maintaining close personal relationships.  The brutality of the war in Spain precluded such behavior.  Spanish civilians were frequent targets, including Garcia Lorca’s murder and the infamous 1937 bombing of Guernica.  Over 100,000 pro-Republican civilians died at the hands of Franco’s Nationalists, and the Republicans killed at least half that many Franco supporters.

The second major difference was the treatment of the defeated in the aftermath of the wars.  Following the American Civil War, the federal government by and large pursued policies that encouraged reconciliation.  Within twenty-five years of the end of the American Civil War, Union and Confederate veterans held joint reunions.  By the end of the nineteenth century, the two sections harbored little residual bitterness.  In contrast, Franco’s government repressed those Republicans who remained in the country.  Even if reconciliation was possible despite  the atrocities on both sides during the war, Franco’s authoritarianism suppressed discussion of the war and provided little opportunity for reconciliation between the former Republicans and Nationalists.  Upon his ascension to king in 1975, Juan Carlos I wanted to move beyond the war, but in doing so, he also limited the debate necessary to come to an understanding about the meaning of the war.

After only 70 years, the wounds of the war are still fresh, particularly since the discussion over the meaning of the war has been squelched for so long.  In many ways, the country has escaped Franco’s shadow, but in others, it is clear that it is still coping with his legacy.  Americans are still fighting over the legacy of their civil war, but the nature of the debate is much different than it is in Spain.  Except for a few on the neo-Confederate fringe, Americans see the war as belonging to the past.  In Spain, the war is still very much of the present.  I wonder how the Spanish will remember their civil war when they are as far from it as Americans are from theirs.

A new movie about Saint Josemaria Escriva’s early years placed during the Spanish Civil War has been produced and will be released in 2010 A.D. titled, There Be Dragons.

Saint Josemaria Escriva was born in 1902 A.D. in Barbastro, Spain.  Later at the age of 26 in Madrid Saint Josemaria started the apostolate that would eventually be called the Work of God, or simply Opus Dei, in pre-Civil War Spain in October of 1928 A.D.  Opus Dei would experience delays in progress with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 A.D.  This is the period that the setting of the movie is placed in.

The movie mixes jealousy, hate, love and redemption.  Featuring Saint Josemaria and his friend Manolo whose paths diverge when the Civil War breaks out in Spain.  Throw in a love interest for Manolo and the saints pursuit of faith and you have for an interesting amalgamation for a movie plot.

The film was directed by Roland Joffe, previously directed The Mission with Robert DeNiro which was nominated for seven secular academy awards.  The cast includes, Charlie Cox (Stardust, Casanova) as Saint Josemaria, Wes Bentley (American Beauty, Ghost Rider) as Manolo, and Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace, Max Payne) as Manolo’s love interest.

I haven’t seen any trailers, which none have been released yet, and I’ve only read the synopsis of the movie.  But with the information I have I look forward to watching the film.  Mainly because Saint Josemaria is one of my favorite saints and the Spanish Civil War is also of great interest and personal fascination.

_._

To learn more about Saint Josemaria Escriva click here.

To learn more about Opus Dei click here.

To learn more about the movie, There Be Dragons, click here.

To read a highly recommended book based on the early years of Opus Dei during the Spanish Civil War titled “Uncommon Faith” by John F. Coverdale, click here.

To read an excellent synopsis of the movie, There Be Dragons, by the Catholic News Agency, click here.

To read The American Catholic’s “50 Best Catholic Films of All Time” by Christopher Blosser, click here.

To read the Wikipedia entry for Roland Joffe’s excellent film titled, The Mission, click here.

For my previous entry on The American Catholic of this film click here.

At the head of everything is God, the Lord of Heaven.
Everyone knows that.
Then comes Prince Torlonia, lord of the earth.
Then come Prince Torlonia’s guards.
Then come Prince Torlonia’s guards’ dogs.
Then, nothing at all.
Then, nothing at all.
Then, nothing at all.
Then come the peasants. And that’s all.

~ Ignazio Silone, Fontamara (1931). (via @ndy)

Debates and arguments: David Cesarani, Marek Edelman and Michal Kaminski - click the link from Engage, then return to read the comment thread.

From the magazine rack: 1989 Timothy Garton Ash (NYRB); What Is to Be Learned? Thinking about 1989 Mitchell Cohen (Dissent); The Memory That Will Not Die: Exhuming the Spanish Civil War Julius Purcell (Boston Review); 100 Years of Servitude: Gabriel García Márquez’s Infatuation With Castro and Other Dictators Enrique Krauze (New Republic); Terry Teachout on the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Commentary).

Book reviews: John Gray on Robert Service’s Trotsky; Jonathan Yardley on Kati Marton’s Enemies of the People; DG Myers on two Lionel Trilling biographies; Colm Toibin on Sheila Rowbotham’s Edward Carpenter.

Some Irving Kristol obits I missed: Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks, Myron Magnet,  Eric Alterman , Michael Lind, Justin Vaïsse, Kevin Mattson, Seth Lipsky, John Guardiano, Christopher DeMuth, Mary Eberstadt, Joseph Epstein, Danny Finkelstein.

Archival: Walter Lacquer on Why the Shah fell (1979).

Blessed Jose Ruiz Bruixola, Priest and Martyr
October 28

Roman Martyrology: In the village of vest in the same territory in Spain, Blessed Joseph Ruiz Bruixola, Priest and Martyr who deserved the same occasion to bring before God Almighty the palm of victory.

One of 233 Spanish Martyrs Beatified on March 11, 2001 by Pope John Paul, II, part of the group known as Jose Aparicio Sanz and 73 companions, Priests and Laity of the Archdiocese of Valencia.

Source: Santi e Beati

I spent some time at the British Library today, and popped into The Sound and the Fury exhibition (free entrance; turn right after coming through the main doors). The exhibition is a show case of the British Library’s sound archives, mostly speeches and debates. You can sit yourself at a computer screen, put on the headphones and listen away to whatever takes your fancy.

I was most moved by the retelling of the memories of a not-so-well known speaker, 101 year old Lou Kenton. Born in Stepney to Jewish parents who had fled Ukraine during the tsarist pogroms, Kenton joined the Communist Party of Great Britain after noticing the widespread antisemitism in London. In 1937, when right-wing general Franco staged a coup against the democratically elected government of Spain, Lou Kenton joined the International Brigades and headed to Spain to fight fascism.

Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists

The audio clip in the exhibition though tells us of an earlier, lifechanging moment, which perhaps turned him into a fighter against fascism. The year was 1934, and Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists held the largest fascist rally ever held in Britain at Olympia, a large exhibition hall in West Kensington. Lou Kenton and around 40 to 60 other anti-fascist activists smuggled themselves into Olympia to heckle and disrupt the meeting. Kenton describes the stirring music, black uniforms and the stomp of jackboots as Mosley and his entourage entered the hall. The anti-fascists sat separately in pairs around the hall and took it in turns to heckle as Mosley began his speech. Kenton described jackbooted stewards pulling the hecklers out as each rose in turn to shout down Mosley. Kenton turned to his comrade and asked, “Who’s first,” and his comrade decided to go first. As Kenton’s comrade heckled, the stewards moved along the row from both ends, pulled the comrade out onto the gangway and began to give him a serious beating right there in the exhibition hall. Kenton watched this and said to himself, “Right, it’s me next!” He stood to heckle, knowing the consequences.

Hearing Lou Kenton describe this brought a tear to my eye. When one is convinced that evil is upon us, one cannot sit idly by while the defenceless are carried off, one can but oppose it whatever the cost.

The blackshirted and jackbooted BUF may seem such an age away today, but its noisome stench remains. The mass of the movement’s media support was provided by the Daily Mail, which responded to the Olympia rally with the front page headline “Hurrah for the blackshirts!” The proprietor of this hate-rag, Harold Harmsworth, wrote an editorial earlier that year that said the BUF were “a well organised party of the right ready to take over responsibility for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed”. The previous year, Hitler had written to Harmsworth to thank him for his favourable coverage. Oddly, the Mail has tried its best to hide all of its pro-fascist history. If you know anyone who is stupid enough to read this hate-rag, please tell them that their ‘newspaper’ was the foremost pro-fascist British media outlet before the Second World War.

After the war, released from house arrest Mosley became a great pro-European (the Right were all for it after the War apparently; Churchill even advocated a ‘United States of Europe’), and eventually stood for Parliament in 1959 with a one issue campaign on immigration. He called for the ‘assisted repatriation’ of immigrants, and flavoured his policies with scaremongering about black criminals raping white women. Mosley’s party at the time was called the Union Movement (seeing as the word ‘fascist’ was out of favour). It was a prominent local organiser of the Union Movement, John Bean, who founded the first British National Party. The BNP turned into the National Front, which after going into decline at the end of the 70s, left the way open for its members, including Bean, to found today’s British National Party, of which Nick Griffin is now the leader. The bloodlines flowing from the BUF to the BNP are clear, they belong to the same vein of fascist hate. Griffin is on the record for saying that he wanted the BNP to “put the boots away, and put on suits”, as part of a process of decoupling itself from its past and trying to pass as a mainstream political party offering an ‘alternative’ .

What would Lou Kenton, East-End Hero, do? Stand up and say, “Right, it’s me next!”

The Capital Times
By JOHN NICHOLS  jnichols@madison.com | Posted: Monday, October 26, 2009 6:00 am

Spanish Civil War veteran Clarence Kailin places a red carnation at the memorial to Wisconsin volunteers who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in a Memorial Day ceremony at James Madison Park in 2002. Photo by: CRAIG SCHREINER Wisconsin State Journal

Read my Feature on Helium.

Spain is not like most countries in Europe. There are many different territories, all with their own culture, tradition, and government. Some regions even have their own language. Although this concept is not uncommon in Europe, it is more extreme  in Spain. Some people in the country do not even think of themselves as Spaniards, but instead just as members of their territory.

Over the years, there has been a lot of political tension between Catalonia and the official Spanish government, causing the Catalonians to be oppressed. Catalonia fought for their independence during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1939. When they were defeated, Franco banned all political and cultural autonomous Catalan activities. It was only after Franco’s death is 1975 that Catalonia recovered their political and cultural autonomy.The history of catalan culture contributes to the territory’s undying pride in their culture. From La Merce festival to their own language, Catalans stand proud of their culture.

Each territory in Spain has their own flag. This is the Catalan Flag. It is well represented all over Catalonia, especially during festivals and futbol matches for FC Barcelona.

Catalonian Flag

This is a map of all the territories in Spain. Some have more individualistic cultural traditions than others. Each has the right to have an autonomous government.

While all Catalans have pride, this video represents a very extreme view of Catalan independence. Do you think this view is too extreme?

La Merce is an annual Catalan festival the occurs at the end of every September. The festival celebrates the end of the summer  months and the welcoming of autumn. Traditional activities include human pyramids, street parades, firework shows, live music and dancing. During this time, Catalans come together and celebrate their culture.

I interviewed my professor, Ariadna Olive, to get a more personal understanding of the Catalan culture. After getting to know her through out the past few weeks, I can better understand why Catalans have such pride in their culture. Take a look at what she has to say about Catalonia: