Spanish Civil War

In an illuminating review in TLS (June 2), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto summarizes the evidence that the Spanish Civil War was, as it turns out, thoroughly Spanish. He debunks the myth that Spain never participated in European cultural movements, pointing out that “liberal” is derived from a Spanish word, that Spain was one of the first nations to adopt a “genuinely democratic franchise,” and played an important role in urbanization, industrialization, socialism and anarchism, and so on.

The Spanish Civil War, by contrast, is seen as a microcosm of European and even global conflicts, but this is a mythical retelling of the reality. It was instead a uniquely “Spanish tragedy”: “Foreigners who, at the time, saw it as their war, were deluded by propaganda - whether they were German or Italian ‘volunteers’ against Bolshevism, or Catholic ‘crusaders’ against atheism and secularism, or freedom-loving fighters against Fascism, or anti-Communist capitalists or anarchists, or anti-Stalinists Trotskyists or anti-Trotsky Stalinists.” The conflict was not a simple Left-Right battle: “Until the war stimulated recruitment, fortified identities, and demonized foes, there were virtually no Fascists and few Communists in Spain.”

Fernandez-Armesto summarizes hsi view of Franco’s conversion to Catholicism with “L’Espagne vaut bien une messe,” and he notes that the wider alliances did not follow ideological lines: “Stalin . . . sold weapons to both sides. Goering was implicated in clandestine and exploitative arms deals with Republicans. Neither Hitler nor Moussolini had much fellow-feeling for Franco, whom they supported partly to give their armies and aircraft an airing.”