The War and Its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century

268 Pages·2012·2.255 MB·English

by  Helen Graham

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In Spain today the civil war remains ‘the past that will not pass away’. The long
shadow of the Second World War is now also bringing back centre frame its
most disquieting aspects, revealing to a broader public the stark truth already
known by specialist historians – that in Spain, as in the many other internecine
wars soon to convulse Europe, war was waged predominantly upon civilians –
millions were killed not by invaders and strangers, but by their own compa-
triots, including their own neighbours. Across the continent, Hitler’s war of
territorial expansion after 1938 would detonate a myriad ‘irregular wars’, of
culture as well as of politics, which took on a ‘cleansing’ intransigence as those
driving them sought to make ‘homogeneous’ communities, whether ethnic,
political or religious.
So much of this was prefigured with primal intensity in Spain in 1936,
where, on 17–18 July, a group of army officers rebelled against the socially-
reforming Republic. Saved from almost certain failure by Nazi and Fascist
military intervention, and by a British inaction amounting to complicity, these
army rebels unleashed a conflict in which civilians became the targets of mass
killing. The new military authorities authorized and presided over an exter-
mination of those sectors associated with Republican change – especially those
who symbolized cultural change and thus posed a threat to old ways of being
and thinking: progressive teachers, self-educated workers, ‘new’ women. In the
Republican zone, resistance to the coup also led to the murder of civilians. This
extrajudicial and communal killing in both zones would fundamentally make
new political and cultural meanings that changed Spain’s political landscape
forever.
Helen Graham explores the origins, nature and long-term consequences
of this exterminatory war in Spain, charting the resonant forms of political,
social and cultural resistance to it and the memory/legacy these have left behind
in Europe and beyond. Not least is our growing sense of the enormity of what,
in greater European terms, the Republican war effort resisted: Nazi adven-
turism, and the continent-wide wars of ethnic and political ‘purification’ it
would unleash.
Cover illustration: International Brigaders and Spanish Republican soldiers. Le
Barcarès internment camp, France March 1939 (Robert Capa: Magnum/ICP).
Helen Graham is Professor of Modern European History at Royal Holloway
University of London and was Visiting Chair in Spanish Culture and
Civilisation at the King Juan Carlos Centre, New York University. She has
published widely on the Spanish civil war, and co-edited (with Jo Labanyi) the
Oxford University Press volume Spanish Cultural Studies.
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The Cañada Blanch / Sussex Academic
Studies on Contemporary Spain
General Editor: Professor Paul Preston, London School of Economics
Richard Barker, Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Ground: Repression,
Victimization and Humiliation in a Small Andalusian Town – The Human
Consequences of the Spanish Civil War.
Germà Bel,Infrastructure and the Political Economy of Nation Building in Spain,
1720–2010.
Gerald Blaney Jr., “The Three-Cornered Hat and the Tri-Colored Flag”: The
Civil Guard and the Second Spanish Republic, 1931–1936.
Michael Eaude, Triumph at Midnight in the Century: A Critical Biography of
Arturo Barea.
Francisco Espinosa-Maestre, Shoot the Messenger?: Spanish Democracy and the
Crimes of Francoism – From the Pact of Silence to the Trial of Baltasar Garzón
Soledad Fox, Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile: International Voice for
the Spanish Republic.
Helen Graham,The War and its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long
Twentieth Century.
Angela Jackson, ‘For us it was Heaven’: The Passion, Grief and Fortitude of
Patience Darton – From the Spanish Civil War to Mao’s China.
Gabriel Jackson, Juan Negrín: Physiologist, Socialist, and Spanish Republican
War Leader.
Sid Lowe,Catholicism, War and the Foundation of Francoism: The Juventud de
Acción Popular in Spain, 1931–1939.
Olivia Muñoz-Rojas, Ashes and Granite: Destruction and Reconstruction in the
Spanish Civil War and Its Aftermath.
Linda Palfreeman, ¡SALUD!: British Volunteers in the Republican Medical
Service during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.
Cristina Palomares, The Quest for Survival after Franco: Moderate Francoism
and the Slow Journey to the Polls, 1964–1977.
David Wingeate Pike,France Divided: The French and the Civil War in Spain.
Hugh Purcell with Phyll Smith, The Last English Revolutionary: Tom
Wintringham, 1898–1949.
Graham 5 - Phoenix 01 - index 07/07/2013 14:27 Page iii
Isabelle Rohr, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898–1945: Antisemitism and
Opportunism.
Gareth Stockey, Gibraltar: “A Dagger in the Spine of Spain?”
Ramon Tremosa-i-Balcells,Catalonia – An Emerging Economy:The Most Cost-
Effective Ports in the Mediterranean Sea.
Dacia Viejo-Rose, Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after
Civil War.
Richard Wigg, Churchill and Spain: The Survival of the Franco Regime,
1940–1945.
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To the memory of
Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1942–2011
and
David Vilaseca, 1964–2010
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Graham 5 - Phoenix 01 - index 07/07/2013 15:48 Page vi
Copyright © Helen Graham, 2012, 2014.
Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2014.
SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS
PO Box 139
Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK
and simultaneously in the United States of America and Canada
Published in collaboration with the
Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism
and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graham, Helen, 1959–
The war and its shadow : Spain’s civil war in Europe’s long twentieth
century / Helen Graham.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84519-510-6 (h/b : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-84519-511-3 (p/b : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-78284-082-4 (e-pdf)
ISBN 978-1-78284-083-1 (e-pub)
ISBN 978-1-78284-084-8 (e-mobi)
1. Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939—Influence. I. Title.
DP269.8.I5G73 2012
946.081’1—dc23
2011051609
This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including
tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to
electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.
Graham 5 - Phoenix 01 - index 14/04/2012 11:17 Page vii
Contents
The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies viii
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
1 A War For Our Times 11
The Spanish civil war in twenty-first century perspective
2 The Memory of Murder 25
Mass killing and the making of Francoism
3 Ghosts of Change 51
The story of Amparo Barayón
4 Border Crossings 75
Thinking about the International Brigaders before and
after Spain
5 Brutal Nurture 97
Coming of age in Europe’s wars of social change
6 Franco’s Prisons 103
Building the brutal national community in Spain
7 The Afterlife of Violence 125
Spain’s memory wars in domestic and international context
Glossary 153
Notes 157
Bibliography 215
Index 241
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The Cañada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies
In the 1960s, the most important initiative in the cultural and academic
relations between Spain and the United Kingdom was launched by a
Valencian fruit importer in London. The creation by Vicente Cañada Blanch
of the Anglo-Spanish Cultural Foundation has subsequently benefited large
numbers of Spanish and British scholars at various levels. Thanks to the
generosity of Vicente Cañada Blanch, thousands of Spanish schoolchildren
have been educated at the secondary school in West London that bears his
name. At the same time, many British and Spanish university students have
benefited from the exchange scholarships which fostered cultural and scien-
tific exchanges between the two countries. Some of the most important
historical, artistic and literary work on Spanish topics to be produced in
Great Britain was initially made possible by Cañada Blanch scholarships.
Vicente Cañada Blanch was, by inclination, a conservative. When his
Foundation was created, the Franco regime was still in the plenitude of its
power. Nevertheless, the keynote of the Foundation’s activities was always
a complete open-mindedness on political issues. This was reflected in the
diversity of research projects supported by the Foundation, many of which,
in Francoist Spain, would have been regarded as subversive. When the
Dictator died, Don Vicente was in his seventy-fifth year. In the two decades
following the death of the Dictator, although apparently indestructible,
Don Vicente was obliged to husband his energies. Increasingly, the work
of the Foundation was carried forward by Miguel Dols whose tireless and
imaginative work in London was matched in Spain by that of José María
Coll Comín. They were united in the Foundation’s spirit of open-minded
commitment to fostering research of high quality in pursuit of better
Anglo-Spanish cultural relations. Throughout the 1990s, thanks to them,
the role of the Foundation grew considerably.
In 1994, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, the
Foundation established the Príncipe de Asturias Chair of Contemporary
Spanish History and the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish
Studies. It is the particular task of the Cañada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies to promote the understanding of twentieth-
Graham 5 - Phoenix 01 - index 14/04/2012 11:17 Page ix
The Cañada Blanch Centre ix
century Spain through research and teaching of contemporary Spanish
history, politics, economy, sociology and culture. The Centre possesses a
valuable library and archival centre for specialists in contemporary Spain.
This work is carried on through the publications of the doctoral and post-
doctoral researchers at the Centre itself and through the many seminars and
lectures held at the London School of Economics. While the seminars are
the province of the researchers, the lecture cycles have been the forum in
which Spanish politicians have been able to address audiences in the United
Kingdom.
Since 1998, the Cañada Blanch Centre has published a substantial
number of books in collaboration with several different publishers on the
subject of contemporary Spanish history and politics. A fruitful partnership
with Sussex Academic Press began in 2004 with the publication of
ChristinaPalomares’s fascinating work on the origins of the Partido Popular
in Spain, The Quest for Survival after Franco: Moderate Francoism and the Slow
Journey to the Polls, 1964–1977. This was followed in 2007 by Soledad Fox’s
deeply moving biography of one of the most intriguing women of 1930s
Spain, Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile: International Voice for the
Spanish Republic and Isabel Rohr’s path-breaking study of antisemitism in
Spain, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898–1945: Antisemitism and
Opportunism. 2008 saw the publication of a revised edition of Richard
Wigg’s penetrating study of Anglo-Spanish relations during the Second
World War, Churchill and Spain: The Survival of the Franco Regime,
1940–1945 together with Triumph at Midnight of the Century: A Critical
Biography of Arturo Barea, Michael Eaude’s fascinating revaluation of the
great Spanish author of The Forging of a Rebel.
Our collaboration in 2009 was inaugurated by Gareth Stockey’s incisive
account of another crucial element in Anglo-Spanish relations,Gibraltar. A
Dagger in the Spine of Spain. We were especially proud that it was continued
by the most distinguished American historian of the Spanish Civil War,
Gabriel Jackson. His pioneering work The Spanish Republic and the Civil
War,first published 1965and still in print, quickly became a classic. The
Sussex Academic Press/Cañada Blanch series was greatly privileged to be
associated with Professor Jackson’s biography of the great Republican war
leader, Juan Negrín.
2011 took the series to new heights. Two remarkable and comple -
mentary works, Olivia Muñoz Rojas, Ashes and Granite: Destruction and
Reconstruction in the Spanish Civil War and its Aftermath and Dacia Viejo-
Rose, Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after Civil War,
opened up an entirely new dimension of the study of the early Franco
regime and its internal conflicts. They were followed by Richard Purkiss’s