“We study History,” remarked the Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, “not to know what success is or how to master the future, but to understand who we are”. If he was only half-right, Kolakowski would be ideally placed to judge modern Spain. Well over thirty years since the death of General Franco in 1975, and over 20 years since Spain’s entry in the European Union in 1986, the nation remains puzzled and at times even tortured by its past. Today, as just another middle-ranking European state, Spain faces serious challenges. With the exception of Latvia, it has the highest unemployment rate within the Euro area. Nationalist egotism still makes centralised administration difficult, and cultural division atomises society. These issues were created, distorted and magnified under Franco’s regime, and their continuance represents the collective failure of Spaniards to come to terms with their past.
To understand Spanish the divisions within Spanish culture, one need only consider the nation’s women. Spain’s twentieth century was marked by the new freedoms rightfully gifted to women in 1931, and then cruelly removed by Franco’s state. These liberal reforms were then reinstated under the new constitution in 1978. Equal rights were politicised, both through the Republican’s desire to have women fight alongside men during the civil war, or through the Nationalists’ attempt to confine women to the home. Spain traditionally was a country where men walked on the left of their wives – the better to attack them with their sword. As late as 1975 women could not use contraception, open a bank account, or own property.
If people make history, then history makes people and Spain is no exception. While travelling through the rural north last summer, this dichotomy within the female species was still evident. I met thirty year old farmers who were ‘mothered’, in every sense of the word, by doting wives to-be. One beautiful ‘full-time mum’ informed me that in her village, frequenting bars and cafes alone was an action left to prostitutes. Some women are complicit in their own subjugation. Others in the village, as though to make up for the philistinism of their peers, were assertive to the point of violence. A stocky teenager, spying my slight build, spotted an arm-wrestling challenge she couldn’t resist.
Spain’s press, like its women, is also still trying to come to terms with the nation’s fascist past. Open El Pais, the leading quality daily, on any week-day, and it is likely you will find a comment piece on the fate of Garcia Lorca. A left-wing poet killed by Franco’s death squads, Lorca’s body was ditched in a mass grave, but its location is still unknown and recent scientific testing of one site yielded negative results. Lorca is the most translated and internationally renowned poet in Spain’s history, and so his planned extermination at the hands of fellow countrymen now appears as an act of self-harm on a grandiose scale. Watching the country’s best scientists and historians dig suspected sites and retrace past journeys is like watching a nation seek reprise, as though the discovery of an eighty year old corpse will constitute a closure. Of course, digging holes in wintry earth will never resuscitate the past. Spaniards did not just watch Spain die; they also perpetrated the murder.
The shadow Franco casts over Spanish life has dissipated over the forty years since his death, yet the reactions to his rule and the spirit of freedom which exploded once the lid of oppression was removed, continue to this day. The assertiveness of the nationalist movements running counter to El Caudillo’s policy of centralisation remain virulent. Indeed, whilst Basque nationalism has its roots in the late 19th century, its violent manifestation in the form of ETA began in 1955. The movement’s verve is a historical product of alliance with other anti-Franco groups. In a strange twist of fate which, today, baffles historians, the nationalist movements worked side-by-side with the left-wing elements forced underground. Whilst a marriage of convenience, the relationship proved successful: in 1973, ETA assassinated the grandee and Franco’s preferred successor, Carrero Blanco, in a car bomb.
The thin veneer which separates democratic civilisation from the barbarity of militarism is nowhere more evident than in Spain. As late as 1981, a military coup attempted to oust the elected government. In scenes reminiscent of a Charlie Chaplin film, parliamentarians stayed seated and smoked whilst bullets rained overhead. Few in Spain today want a repeat of this sort of protest. To the contrary of all other middle sized European states, Spain can claim to hosting the most liberal and left-leaning middle class. When surveying opinion in a Barcelona bar on whether the European Human rights convention was a good thing I received the answer, pues hombre, como no? Of course, why not?
Even so, Spain’s politics are not akin to other European democracies. No other elected leader is forced to construct policy according to what will satisfy multiple groups of devolutionists. When producing economic policy, Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero, has to appeal to both Catalan free traders and Cantabrian protectionists. Even the allocation of regional budget funding remains contentious; despite its relative economic security the Basque region still receives more social security and infrastructure hand-outs than any other part of the country.
These injustices would be difficult to maintain in normal times, but in Spain, these are not normal times. National unemployment is creeping close to 20 per cent, a figure which reflects a structural hang-over from a nation which was drunk on bricks and mortar before the property bubble burst. Such frustrations are compounded by a vicious two-tier labour market system; this makes one fifth of those in work immune to being fired and the bulk of those without jobs unemployable. If Spain wants to meet these challenges and prepare for the future, it first needs to come to terms with its past.
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