tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/franco-10761/articlesFranco – The Conversation2022-12-15T13:04:21Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1941382022-12-15T13:04:21Z2022-12-15T13:04:21ZSpain’s new memory law dredges up a painful chapter of Spain’s often forgotten ties to Nazis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500828/original/file-20221213-22031-8iqefp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Plaques commemorating artists who were killed by the Nazis are marked with flowers in Austria in 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1228082555/photo/austria-germany-wwii-salzburg-festival-jews.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=g-1Nlh7mzS7sqGVFsvNVnvzQneKWKGI7oQ-n6_zUHqg=">Barbara Gindl/APA/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walking down a tree-lined street in the Poble Sec neighborhood of Barcelona, one might easily miss a small bronze square set into the sidewalk. Stamped into the metal in the regional language of Catalan are the words: “Here lived Francesc Boix Campo, born 1920, exiled 1939, deported 1941, Mauthausen, liberated.” </p>
<p>Holocaust memorials like this one – which honors a Spanish Nazi concentration camp survivor – are part of a project that started in Germany but has expanded over the past few years across Europe and the United States. </p>
<p>These unassuming memorials hide a mighty purpose – making the victims of a traumatic past a visible and permanent part of the modern landscape. </p>
<p>In October 2022, Spain’s current progressive government approved a new law – called the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/spain-passes-law-to-bring-dignity-to-franco-era-victims">Democratic Memory Law</a> – that recognizes Spaniards who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis. </p>
<p>Among other measures, the law will create a census and a national DNA bank to help people identify the thousands of Spaniards who were killed during World War II. </p>
<p>I am <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5ptshgYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">a scholar</a> of Spain’s role in World War II and the Holocaust. The way the country has faced this disturbing past has evolved considerably in recent decades. Spain has publicly avoided the history of Spaniards killed in Nazi camps, who were victims of Adolf Hitler, but also of Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator from 1939 to 1975. </p>
<p>This new law marks a shift, recognizing that the Spanish government has a role to play in reviving the memory of all of the victims of Spain’s dark years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three school aged blond girls sit and stand over cobblestones on a sidewalk and appear to place flowers there." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500830/original/file-20221213-18915-zrnofx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children place flowers at a Berlin memorial commemorating a Jewish family killed in World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1324757639/photo/locals-research-and-commemorate-a-jewish-family-murdered-in-the-holocaust.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=IbqLnLSWV-bwuA_yy5ZGDZk1xitY9gii1eaHo7z3kbI=">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>From the Spanish Civil War to World War II</h2>
<p>Spain underwent a civil war from 1936 to 1939, setting the stage for World War II. A band of military leaders headed by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francisco-Franco">Gen. Franco</a> rose up against the democratically elected Spanish government in 1936. Three violent years later, these fascist-leaning insurgents had won the war, and Franco was installed as dictator. </p>
<p>Spain’s allegiance with the Nazis began with the Spanish Civil War. Hitler sent <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Condor-Legion">Condor Legion</a> planes to bomb the northern city of Guernica – memorialized in a <a href="https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica">famous painting by Pablo Picasso</a> – in 1937. Hitler also helped arm the military uprising against the democratic government throughout the civil war. Just a few years later, during World War II, Franco would return the favor by sending <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/026569149502500103">raw materials</a> used to produce weapons of war to Hitler.</p>
<p>In the spring of 1939, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/09/franco-spain-refugees-haunted-by-the-past-retirada">half a million refugees</a> streamed over the border from Spain to France to escape the violence, including hundreds of thousands of veterans who had fought for Spain’s elected government in the civil war. </p>
<p>Forced into refugee camps with little access to food and clean water along the beaches in southern France, they were given a <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190209-france-spanish-civil-war-republican-refugees-la-retirada-80th-anniversary">choice</a>: Return to Spain, where they would be met with Franco’s violent revenge, or fight the Nazis. </p>
<p>Thousands enlisted as soldiers or manual laborers for the French army. Others joined the <a href="https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2016/10/11/inenglish/1476196791_317656.html">French Resistance</a>. </p>
<p>When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Franco disowned the Spanish refugees he considered traitors. Germany deported 10,000 to 15,000 Spaniards to Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis killed about <a href="http://pares.mcu.es/Deportados/servlets/ServletController">60% of these Spanish refugees</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people stand near white candles on a table, in front of a banner that says 'dia de la memoria del Holocausto' behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500833/original/file-20221213-25978-oz0t5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Israeli ambassador to Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordo, center, lights candles at a Holocaust commemoration day in January 2022 in Madrid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1367333987/photo/the-assembly-of-madrid-organizes-an-event-for-holocaust-remembrance-day.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=-uLHW19VbXzQ6PU8qVOJBpwGXWqaJhIggm_DgfCKlkw=">Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bringing WWII victims out of the shadows</h2>
<p>As many as 15,000 Spaniards were <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/spanish-civil-war">deported to Nazi concentration camps</a> during World War II. </p>
<p>But while politicians debate whether it is appropriate to remember Spain’s painful past or if the government is opening old wounds, groups of citizens have stepped in. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/">Stolpersteine Project</a>, a public art initiative started by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, memorializes Jews and other victims of the Nazis, like people persecuted for their political views, with a “stumbling stone” placed in the sidewalk outside the individual’s last known residence. </p>
<p>By recognizing non-Jewish political prisoners during World War II, Stolpersteine cements Spain’s partnership with the Nazis into the ground people walk on, demonstrating how a dark history can be brought into the light of day. The first memorials in Spain were placed in the small town of Navàs, about an hour north of Barcelona, in 2015. </p>
<p>The project has grown in the past seven years to commemorate more than 600 Spanish men and women in 96 cities and towns scattered across the country.</p>
<p>Sidestepping the political firestorm over Spain’s World War II history, Stolpersteine in Spain aims to bring victims out of the memory shadows. </p>
<p>The Stolpersteine project in Spain puts the names of people who suffered during each country’s violent past on public display. These plaques challenge people to consider who these victims were and what their own connection to this past might be. The Spaniards memorialized by Stolpersteine are not household names: They are men and women who fled Spain in 1939 and never returned.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two men in military clothing, with one doing a heil salute, next to a row of soldiers, some of whom hold a Nazi flag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500835/original/file-20221213-23347-cximvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A meeting between Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Spanish Gen. Francisco Franco in Basque Country, France, in 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1083751790/photo/spain.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=np-CIi9o33ttHtZmIQj1WSzOkdQqIRlNI7JZsGtP3YE=">adoc-photos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preserving the memory of a painful past</h2>
<p>Spain is now experiencing the rise of <a href="https://rosalux.nyc/vox-a-new-far-right-in-spain/">Vox</a>, a far-right political party. If Vox wins in the 2023 national elections, it will likely <a href="https://usercontent.one/wp/www.radicalrightanalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Xidias-2021.1-CARR-RI-Final.pdf?media=1628264068">roll back the Democratic Memory Law</a> – and the government’s initiative to reform historical education and map mass graves. </p>
<p>The Stolpersteine Project avoids the argument over who is responsible for remembering Spain’s past. Sticking to objective facts, every plaque contains the essential details of each individual political prisoner’s escape from Spain, journey through war-torn Europe and survival or death in a Nazi camp. The stone’s placement outside the prisoner’s last known home makes a connection with the street, city and region where they lived. </p>
<p>As Spaniards and tourists snap photos of the <a href="https://datos.madrid.es/portal/site/egob/menuitem.c05c1f754a33a9fbe4b2e4b284f1a5a0/?vgnextoid=d0802ea16a892710VgnVCM1000001d4a900aRCRD&vgnextchannel=374512b9ace9f310VgnVCM100000171f5a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default">bronze squares they encounter</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/IStolpersteine">share them on social media</a>, they begin a conversation about who these individuals were, what motivated them to leave Spain, and how they ended up in a Nazi camp. </p>
<p>Francesc Boix, for example, one of the people recognized with a <a href="https://www.elnacional.cat/es/barcelona/francesc-boix-fotografo-mauthausen-stolpersteine-barcelona_762966_102.html">memorial stone</a>, was a a Spanish Civil War veteran and Nazi camp survivor. After fighting fascism in two wars, Boix was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria for four years. While in the camp, Boix worked as an assistant in the photography lab, where he stole negatives from the Nazis and later used them in his <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/trial-testimony-against-albert-speer">testimony at the Nuremberg trials</a>. </p>
<p>Boix, who died in 1951, is one of the most <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6704776/">well-known</a> concentration camp survivors in Spain. His story illustrates the struggle against fascism, which he and his fellow Spanish Nazi camp prisoners fought on a daily basis.</p>
<p>Stolpersteine memorials in Spain are not only increasing the visibility of these largely unknown victims of Nazi violence. They are also connecting them to the residents and visitors who, decades later, walk along the same sidewalks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara J. Brenneis receives funding from UNH Center for the Humanities to support a public humanities study of the Stolpersteine in Spain. </span></em></p>Spain has long avoided addressing the fact that tens of thousands of Spaniards were victims of Nazis, who collaborated with Spain’s former dictator, Francisco Franco.Sara J. Brenneis, Professor of Spanish, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1789762022-03-17T12:12:12Z2022-03-17T12:12:12ZUkraine’s foreign fighters have little in common with those who signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452241/original/file-20220315-27-f7uz43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4037%2C3088&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman hugs a Polish volunteer before he crosses the border to go and fight against Russian forces.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PolandUkraineInvasion/c6f8da8c6dc449bf83ef64b729a3ec6e/photo?Query=volunteer%20fight%20ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=now-30d&totalCount=57&currentItemNo=41">AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When an aging <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">Abe Osheroff recalled</a> why, as a 21-year-old kid from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, he had volunteered to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he framed it as a personal, ethical decision.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some of my friends were already going over. Some of them had been killed and wounded. … Then I began to see pictures of what was going on. … Bombardments, civilians getting plastered all over the place. … I knew that if I didn’t go, I’d be ashamed all my life.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, his words seem to echo those of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">individuals from around the world</a> who are willing to risk their lives to help Ukraine in its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion.</p>
<p>“Sitting by and doing nothing? I had to do that when Afghanistan fell apart, and it weighed heavily on me. I had to act,” a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">U.S. veteran confessed</a> to a New York Times reporter before he headed east. </p>
<p>Encouraged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">volunteers are signing up</a> – according to some reports, by the thousands – to join the ranks of what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">The Guardian has called</a> “the most significant international brigade since the Spanish civil war.”</p>
<p>The Guardian is not the first to draw an analogy between 1930s Spain and today’s Ukraine. But tempting as it is to compare the two, doing so does more to obscure than to explain either of the conflicts.</p>
<p>In some instances, I see the analogy relying on distorted frames inherited from the Cold War; in others, it seems to be driven by blatant opportunism. </p>
<h2>Surface-level similarities</h2>
<p>The Spanish Civil War <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/scw/simpletimeline2/">broke out in the summer of 1936</a> after an attempted military coup, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, failed to overthrow the government of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10618-9_6">the Popular Front</a>, a liberal-progressive coalition that had been democratically elected to lead the Second Spanish Republic. But while the Republican government managed to hold on to Spain’s largest cities and about half of the national territory, the right-wing rebels took control of the other half. They proceeded to wage a bloody war.</p>
<p>Republican forces faced a well-equipped rebel army that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260240">had supplied with soldiers, planes, weapons and tanks</a>. By contrast, other democracies left the republic to fend for itself, with more than two dozen countries signing a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822037844834&view=1up&seq=1">nonintervention pact</a>. The republic was also shut out of the international arms market, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/177867/the-spanish-civil-war-by-hugh-thomas/">leaving only the Soviet Union and Mexico as sources of military support</a>. After the republic’s defeat in 1939, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/17/spain">a repressive military dictatorship</a> headed by Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years.</p>
<p>Osheroff was one of roughly <a href="https://alba-valb.org/who-we-are/faqs/">2,800 U.S. volunteers</a> – <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-civil-war-foreign-nationals-volunteer">and more than 35,000 from around the world</a> – who flocked to Spain to help fight fascism. These foreign fighters were largely recruited through communist organizations, although many were not communists. What they had in common was their <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">staunch opposition to everything fascism stood for</a>. Upon arriving in Spain, the volunteers became fully integrated members of the Spanish Republican Army, where most of them served in one of five International Brigades. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of men in suits pose on a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of the International Brigade that fought for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, on their way home from Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/veterans-of-the-abraham-lincoln-brigade-the-american-news-photo/3435272?adppopup=true">Keystone/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LngKgQEAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of the Spanish Civil War and its legacy</a>, I can see why many people would be tempted to read the war in Ukraine through a Spanish lens. </p>
<p>Much as in civil war Spain, Ukrainian cities are being bombarded and civilians are dying, while those attacked are putting up an unexpectedly persistent defense against a much stronger enemy. As in Spain, the war <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/opinion/ukraine-refugees-europe.html">is producing seemingly unending streams of refugees</a>. And, as in Spain, the war seems to reflect an unusual degree of moral clarity – “It’s a conflict that has a clear good and bad side,” one U.S. veteran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">told The New York Times</a> – while the fate of the world seems to hang in the balance.</p>
<h2>Motivated by class solidarity</h2>
<p>Yet historical analogies are never perfect, rarely useful and often misleading. For one thing, the geopolitics of today has little connection to the 1930s. In 1936 there was no NATO, only a weak and ineffectual <a href="https://www.ungeneva.org/en/history/league-of-nations">League of Nations</a>, and no threat of nuclear war.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the volunteers who joined the International Brigades in 1936 from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia have little in common with the combat veterans and Ukrainian nationalists who are signing up today, and whose politics, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084113728/a-closer-look-at-the-volunteers-who-are-signing-up-to-fight-the-russians?t=1647154946037">as NPR has reported</a>, are vague and may skew to the right or far right. While the Russian invasion clearly violates Ukrainian sovereignty, those defending Ukraine represent ideologies that cover the entire political spectrum. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in military fatigues walks through parking lot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A British combat volunteer heads toward the Ukrainian border from Poland to fight the invading Russian army in March 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-combat-volunteer-who-did-not-want-to-be-identified-news-photo/1382495979?adppopup=true">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>By contrast, very few of the volunteers in Spain had military training or experience. And if Osheroff knew that the Spanish war was also his to fight, it was, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">as he explained</a>, because he’d grown up steeped in progressive politics.</p>
<p>He and his fellow brigaders were driven by the internationalist solidarity that’s the bedrock of the labor movement, but they also knew they had a personal stake in the struggle. <a href="https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/american-jews-spanish-civil-war/about-the-project/">Many of them were Jews and immigrants</a>; they belonged to a generation that, as the historian <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/they-went-to-spain">Helen Graham has written</a>, was resisting “attempts, by fascism, either alone or in coalition, violently to impose ethnic and class hierarchies both old and new across the whole continent.” </p>
<p>The analogy falters in other ways as well. The half-million Spanish refugees who fled Spain in the last months of the war were not welcomed with open arms. The French government put them in <a href="https://archive.org/details/surveygraphic28survrich/page/678/mode/2up">concentration camps</a>, while most countries around the world closed their borders, with some notable exceptions, such as Mexico. During Germany’s occupation of France, as many as 15,000 of the Spanish Republicans interned in France were deported to <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487521318/spaniards-in-mauthausen/">Nazi camps</a>, where some 5,000 died.</p>
<p>And yet in 1945, as Europe was liberated from fascism, the Allies decided to leave Franco alone and let him retain his grip on Spain. By the 1950s, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-04-op-meisler4-story.html">Franco had become a U.S. ally in the Cold War</a>. </p>
<h2>Distorting history</h2>
<p>That same Cold War reshaped how the story of the Spanish Civil War was told. In the U.S., it became common to paint the anti-fascist volunteers as communist dupes. In 1984, U.S. President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/10/world/remark-by-reagan-on-lincoln-brigade-prompts-ire-in-spain.html">Ronald Reagan famously said</a> the Americans in Spain had joined the wrong side. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Prompted by the Ukraine war, some of these Cold War clichés are slipping back into mainstream journalism. The New York Times reporter covering Zelenskyy’s international fighters, for instance, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">wrote that the adventure of the Americans in Spain</a>, “often romanticized as a valiant prelude to the fight against the Nazis,” had “ended badly.” In reality, many of those who fought fascism in Spain went on to join the Allied armies in World War II. Others <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">formed the backbone</a> of the resistance movements in Nazi- and fascist-occupied territories.</p>
<p>Invoking the Spanish Civil War to frame the invasion of Ukraine as a clash between fascism and anti-fascism, moreover, plays into the Kremlin’s narrative, which seeks to portray the “special military operation” as an effort to “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1083677765/putin-denazify-ukraine-russia-history">denazify</a>” its western neighbor. </p>
<p>Ironically, one of the most opportunistic invocations of the historical analogy occurred in Spain itself. In early March 2022, when Spain’s progressive governing coalition decided to send arms to the Zelenskyy government, the country’s largest newspaper, <a href="https://elpais.com/opinion/2022-03-03/la-legitimidad-de-las-armas.html">El País, ran a supportive editorial</a> stating: “Today, the weapons to defend Ukraine are the weapons that the Second Spanish Republic did not have 80 years ago.” In fact, the controversial decision to provide arms was dividing the governing coalition; the paper’s heartstrings-tugging invocation of the embattled Spanish Republic was an obvious attempt to end the debate.</p>
<p>If there is one way in which the Ukrainian analogy with Spain applies, it is the tragic way the country is being used as a proxy <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/5/22955197/russia-ukraine-war-europe-america-world-war-3">in a battle between the world’s great powers</a>.</p>
<p>In July 1937, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, journalist Martha Gellhorn and novelist Ernest Hemingway visited the White House to screen “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8q6VAyTi8">The Spanish Earth</a>,” Ivens’ documentary about the war. Gellhorn recalled <a href="https://alba-valb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Gellhorn_Letter.pdf">in a 1938 letter</a> that after President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the film, he remarked, “Spain is a vicarious sacrifice for us all.” </p>
<p>The same terrible fate seems to be reserved for Ukraine and its people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastiaan Faber chairs the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an educational nonprofit based in New York.</span></em></p>According to some reports, thousands of people from around the world are signing up to fight on behalf of Ukraine. But comparisons to the Spanish Civil War’s International Brigades are misguided.Sebastiaan Faber, Professor of Hispanic Studies, Oberlin College and ConservatoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1651152021-07-28T14:59:40Z2021-07-28T14:59:40ZSpain wants to fine Franco apologists – the latest example of using laws to address uncomfortable history<p>If you get to Spain this summer, watch your tongue. A careless word that could be construed as sympathetic to General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from his victory in the country’s civil war (1936-9) until his death in 1975, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spain-makes-it-a-crime-to-apologise-for-franco-or-glorify-civil-war-dmqr7k9qg">could land you with a hefty fine</a>. </p>
<p>The proposed <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-democratic-memory-bill-honour-dictatorship-victims-2021-07-20/">democratic memory bill</a>, which will honour people who suffered under Spain’s fascist dictatorship, also has sanctions for those who remember it fondly. Penalties range from €200 (£170), for a casual expression of admiration for the dictator, up to €150,000 if you destroy the evidence of the burial pits dug for his victims. </p>
<p>This is the latest in a series of moves by European states to outlaw the expression of inconvenient or unpalatable historical views. Poland, for instance, has criminalised any reference to Nazi death camps on Polish soil, such as Auschwitz, as “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1c183f56-0a6a-11e8-bacb-2958fde95e5e">Polish death camps</a>”. You can also fall foul of the law for suggesting that Poles supported or helped the Nazi persecution of the Jews. This, despite the fact that antisemitism was rife in Poland at the time of the German invasion, a point made in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-confusing-rules-on-swastikas-and-nazi-symbols/a-45063547">Nazi symbols may not be displayed</a> by law in Germany and, in 2006, the British historical writer and Nazi apologist David Irving was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/20/austria.thefarright#:%7E:text=2006%2013.42%20EST-,The%20British%20revisionist%20historian%20and%20Nazi%20apologist%20David%20Irving%20was,first%20day%20of%20his%20trial.">sentenced to three years in prison</a> for breaching Austria’s law banning Holocaust denial. And woe betide anyone who risks Vladimir Putin’s wrath by deploring Stalin’s atrocities, as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/10/vladimir-putin-russia-rehabilitating-stalin-soviet-past">human rights group Memorial found in 2016</a> when it was branded a “foreign agent” for doing just that.</p>
<p>This sort of approach is by no means confined to Europe. In Japan, controversy has long raged about the way school textbooks <a href="https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html">ignore atrocities</a> carried out by its soldiers during the second world war, such as killings and rape in China and the wholesale forcing of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops. The 1985 Argentinian film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089276/">La Historia Oficial</a> (The Official Story) tells of how memory of “disappearances” under the country’s former military regime was repressed and omitted from state textbooks.</p>
<p>At a time when the UK is gripped by arguments about statues to figures, heroic and otherwise, from Britain’s imperial past, these examples of the legal imposition of official historical versions are of increasing relevance.</p>
<h2>Uncomfortable heritage</h2>
<p>All states have aspects of their history which they find difficult to face up to and will try to suppress. It took the French state <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzyW53KsZF4">until the 1990s</a> to own up to the role that French functionaries and police officers willingly played in rounding up Jews, holding them in inhuman conditions and forcing them onto trains to German extermination camps in Poland. Until then, the most commonly expressed view was that the Holocaust was imposed on the French by the Germans and that any French involvement was entirely under duress.</p>
<p>The Irish still find it difficult to know how to deal with the memory of those Irish who <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/the-irish-world-war-ii-shame-irish-soldiers-faced-hostility-after-arriving-home-153574625-238132961">served in the British armed forces</a> in the two world wars. It is particularly difficult with regards the second world war because Ireland stayed neutral in that conflict and the Irish government was the only one to express its condolences on Hitler’s death.</p>
<p>It is absolutely right for governments to face up to such difficult histories, whether by erecting memorials or issuing apologies or simply enabling the truth to be taught. In 2013 William Hague, as UK foreign secretary, ordered the release of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13336343">thousands of documents</a> relating to the torture of Kenyans suspected of being part of the Mau Mau resistance group, that had been locked away for half a century. After the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mau-mau-apology-is-a-victory-50-years-in-the-making-14981">High Court ruled</a> that British camps in colonial Kenya did come under the jurisdiction of the UK’s legal system, Hague also announced a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22790037">payout of some £20 million in compensation</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/mau-mau-apology-is-a-victory-50-years-in-the-making-14981">Mau Mau apology is a victory 50 years in the making</a>
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<h2>Whose history</h2>
<p>But should the courts decide on matters of historical judgement? Professor Sir Richard Evans, who acted as an expert witness in Irving’s unsuccessful libel case in 2000 against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for labelling him a Holocaust denier, <a href="https://www.richardjevans.com/publications/telling-lies-hitler/">wrote in his account</a> of the trial that a law court proved an unexpectedly good forum for settling the historical points at issue. </p>
<p>But would a judge necessarily look kindly on anyone who might point out that the Spanish economy grew under Franco or that many Poles were happy to see their Jewish neighbours removed? </p>
<p>Most scholarly work on tackling difficult and sensitive histories has been in the context of the school history curriculum, though political scientists have also looked at the role history has played in the process of nation-building. Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian, the late <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Imagined_Communities/nQ9jXXJV-vgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=anderson+imagined+communities&printsec=frontcover">Benedict Anderson</a>, argued that it was shared but selective versions of the past which had originally helped create the modern nation state – and that they still play an important part in maintaining it. </p>
<p>So perhaps we should not be surprised to find states using their machinery of power to delete one version of the past and enforce another – it can be seen as a form of self-defence. Whether it’s a good idea is another matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spain has made it a punishable offence to praise the regime of General Franco.Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1258472019-11-08T14:24:06Z2019-11-08T14:24:06ZBerlin Wall: secret police files and the memories of two Germanies<p>Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the <a href="https://www.bstu.de/en/the-agency/future-of-the-stasi-records/">German government has confirmed</a> plans to incorporate the Stasi files into the Federal Archive. Many people whose lives were affected by repression at the hands of the Stasi – the East German secret police – are still alive and the memories of that repression are fresh and painful. </p>
<p>But for another generation, this is history and the way Germany handles the public archive of the Stasi files can provide a valuable object lesson in how to manage memory.</p>
<p>As they mark the anniversary on November 9, Germans will also remember how citizens stormed the offices of the hated State Security Service in 1989 and 1990, demanding “freedom for my file”.</p>
<p>Germany has ensured that victims, researchers and the media have had access to the Stasi files. Government bodies and other large organisations can also use them to check if their representatives or employees worked for the Stasi as informants. This came into action in 1992, following the regulations outlined in the <a href="https://www.bstu.de/en/access-to-records/">Stasi Records Law</a>, which was overseen by the commissioner of the Stasi files. Both the law and the commissioner were the first of their kind internationally. </p>
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<p>Now, the files will be incorporated into the holdings of the Federal Archive as a distinct body. The change will ensure the conservation of the files and allow their digitisation. The physical files will remain at the former headquarters of the Ministry for State Security and in five eastern federal states (Länder). Victims and researchers will also continue to have access to the material and some major institutions will maintain the ability to “check” their employees until at least 2030. </p>
<p>Alongside this, the commissioner for the Stasi files will become the commissioner for victims of the SED Dictatorship. The current post-holder <a href="https://thepearsoninstitute.org/faculty/roland-jahn-0">Roland Jahn</a> – a former journalist and East German dissident – supports the change, arguing that this “trophy of the Revolution” must be secured for the future. However, critics fear a line is being drawn under efforts to work through this part of Germany’s past.</p>
<p>On one side of this argument are those who value the symbolism of an institution conceived in the revolution; on the other, those who see the files principally in terms of a historical source to be passed to the next generation. In this sense, this is a debate about whether it is too soon to start thinking about East Germany as just another part of German history, to be approached simply as another historical exercise.</p>
<p>Some might say it is not soon enough. The history of the GDR has always been highly politicised. The German government spends a large amount of money on public remembrance of the former state (€100m a year, according to the Representative of the Federal Government for Culture, Bernd Neumann, in a <a href="http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/17/17232.pdf">parliamentary plenary discussion</a> in 2013). But, until quite recently, the focus of this activity was on oppression, the Stasi, the Berlin Wall, party leaders or prominent dissidents.</p>
<p>This prevailing narrative has left a large part of the former population of the GDR feeling misrepresented – those who had lived relatively “normal” lives, had not experienced state violence directly and enjoyed the benefits of living outside of the capitalist system. Some reacted with what has been termed an “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027218">identity of defiance</a>”, asserting the validity of their own memories. </p>
<p>Memory has thereby contributed to ongoing divisions between East and West, which can be seen in an <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/18/how-the-attitudes-of-west-and-east-germans-compare-30-years-after-fall-of-berlin-wall/">array of social attitudes and voting behaviour</a> – not least in the success of the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland) in the eastern states.</p>
<h2>Pact of forgetting</h2>
<p>While remembrance has proved divisive in Germany, if we turn to other contexts and countries we can see that an absence of memory does not heal divisions. In Spain, the <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/macq13&div=6&id=&page=">1977 Amnesty Law</a> meant that those responsible for crimes committed during the civil war and under Francoism could not be punished. The so-called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/03/comment.spain">pact of forgetting</a>” meant that public remembrance of victims was limited.</p>
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<p>Memories were, however, sustained by survivors and relatives of victims. As the amnesty has been challenged legally and politically, these memories have come bursting to the fore. The recent debate around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/exhumation-of-francos-remains-is-a-chance-for-spain-to-rest-in-peace-125762">reburial of Franco’s remains</a> provides clear evidence that Spanish society is not yet reconciled with its past and divisions remain within communities. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/exhumation-of-francos-remains-is-a-chance-for-spain-to-rest-in-peace-125762">Exhumation of Franco's remains is a chance for Spain to rest in peace</a>
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<h2>False public memory</h2>
<p>It is not only state institutions that can attempt to control the public narrative and collective memory of traumatic events. In April 1989 in Sheffield, England, 96 people were killed in the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19545126">Hillsborough disaster</a>. For decades, their relatives fought against the misrepresentation of their loved ones in the media and for the right to know what happened. A degree of justice was achieved in 2016 when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-inquests-jury-says-96-victims-were-unlawfully-killed">an inquest found</a> that the victims had been unlawfully killed and that failures on the part of the police and emergency services had contributed to their deaths. The fans had not been to blame.</p>
<p>The right to speak and give testimony about traumatic experiences can be understood in this way as a form of symbolic justice. Listening to survivors and acknowledging the particular truth of their accounts is a form of social recognition. Societies cannot and should not force survivors to speak, but neither can they insist that they are silent.</p>
<p>German memory culture has provided victims of the East German regime with many opportunities to tell their stories publicly through films, books and in memorials and museums. Access to the Stasi files was, and will continue to be, an important part of allowing victims to reclaim their pasts. But, if that same memory culture cannot also find space for voices who remember things differently – a normal life lived in a different kind of society – the risk is that these “ordinary” citizens will reject this memory culture. If this happens, the stories of victims of the regime will fall on deaf ears.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Jones has received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and Arts and Humanities Research Council for her work on testimony and the history and memory of Germany and Central and Eastern Europe.</span></em></p>The decision to move the Stasi files into the German national archive has sparked debate of how memories of life before reunification should be handled.Sara Jones, Professor of Modern Languages and German Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1257622019-10-24T14:54:56Z2019-10-24T14:54:56ZExhumation of Franco’s remains is a chance for Spain to rest in peace<p>After three days of national mourning, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was buried in a large crypt in the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/general-franco-grave-valley-tourist-holiday-site-fallen-spain-fascist-dictator-spanish-civil-war-a7652841.html">Valley of the Fallen</a>, a state mausoleum outside Madrid, in 1975. The location of his remains became a place of pilgrimage and fascist glorification for the next 44 years.</p>
<p>But now those remains have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2019/oct/24/spain-exhumes-franco-remains-in-pictures">exhumed and moved</a> – to a public cemetery near Madrid. His new resting place, where Franco’s wife was buried in 1988, is a far cry from what the dictator himself <a href="https://www.boe.es/datos/pdfs/BOE/1940/093/A02240-02240.pdf">described</a> as “a grandiose temple for our dead, in which, for centuries, people will pray for the souls of those fallen for God and their Fatherland”.</p>
<p>Built after the end of the Spanish Civil War by up to 20,000 political prisoners in the mountains of Guadarrama, the Valley of the Fallen took 18 years to complete, and sits dramatically under the shadow of a 152 metre Christian cross.</p>
<p>Inside the basilica rest the remains of the fallen during the civil war, from both sides. With 33,847 people buried there, transported from all over the country between 1959 and 1983, it is one of the biggest mass graves in the world, with more than 12,400 corpses still unidentified.</p>
<p>Franco called the burial site a place of “atonement and reconciliation”. But the truth is that it has never been a symbol of unity. Instead it became a monument of fascist propaganda. </p>
<p>From its opening in 1959, burying murdered republicans under the same roof as their enemies was a permanent act of political humiliation. Doing it under a religion which many of them explicitly fought against simply added insult to injury.</p>
<p>This is why the monument continues to be controversial in contemporary Spain. When the socialist government passed its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/03/comment.spain">Historical Memory Law in 2007</a>, the future of the Valley was one of the items in the agenda. </p>
<p>That law explicitly condemned Franco’s regime, and promised to finally recognise the victims of the war. It also promised state aid to help identify and exhume those victims, the removal of Francoist symbols from public spaces, and the prohibition of celebratory fascist events in the valley. </p>
<p>Then in 2011, a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dig-up-franco-to-let-victims-rest-in-peace-says-spanish-commission-6269719.html">Commission for the Future of the Valley of the Fallen</a> was created, which recommended that the valley should become a place to commemorate the dead of the civil war. This would include setting up an educational centre to set the valley in its historical context – and crucially, <a href="https://theconversation.com/digging-up-franco-why-spain-still-cant-decide-what-to-do-with-the-dictators-body-100781">the removal of Franco’s remains</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/digging-up-franco-why-spain-still-cant-decide-what-to-do-with-the-dictators-body-100781">Digging up Franco: why Spain still can't decide what to do with the dictator's body</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.elindependiente.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/informe_expertos_valle_caidos.pdf">The report</a> they produced was published on November 29 2011, nine days after the conservative party PP had won the elections. This meant in practice that the application of the Historical Memory Law, including any recommendations for the Valley, would become frozen for almost a decade. </p>
<p>The PP party had always been reluctant to condemn Spain’s Francoist past. Its (lame) excuse for this view was that the country should look forward rather than backwards, and that dealing with such issues would merely serve to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14189534">reopen old wounds</a>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until 2017 when the Socialist party filed a non-binding motion to exhume the body that won the support of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/its-shameful-for-francos-victims-spanish-mps-agree-to-exhume-dictator">large majority of Parliament</a> that progress was made.</p>
<h2>A fresh start</h2>
<p>After a motion of no-confidence that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/world/europe/spain-mariano-rajoy-no-confidence.html">ousted the conservative leader, Mariano Rajoy, in 2018</a>, socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced the government’s intention to resume work and exhume Franco’s body in an attempt to comply with the law and recommendations, and to “<a href="https://www.telam.com.ar/notas/201909/395001-pedro-sanchez-exhumacion-franco.html">symbolically close the circle of Spanish democracy</a>”. </p>
<p>Despite fierce opposition from the Franco family and the Benedictine community in the valley, the Supreme Court finally <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49807372">gave permission to exhume the body</a> in September 2019.</p>
<p>With a general election fast approaching, the socialist government has been accused from both sides for using “Franco’s mummy” for political gain. The leader of anti-austerity party Podemos claimed <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/politica/Iglesias-Sanchez-electoralismo-Cataluna-helicoptero_0_955055390.html">it was a distraction</a> from Sánchez’s failed policies on Catalonia. </p>
<p>But in terms of popular support, the issue does not seem to bother most Spaniards, with <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/politica/espanoles-muestran-exhumar-Franco-frente_0_952955653.html">42% approving the removal</a> of the dictator’s remains.</p>
<p>And so finally, after 44 years, Franco is finally denied his own state-run mausoleum at one of the largest basilicas in the world. And 44 long years for Spaniards to finally see the dictator denied the privilege of lying in a place built on the blood and suffering of republican prisoners.</p>
<p>Franco’s ghost has been haunting Spain for decades. It is now time for the country to rest in peace. Hopefully this powerful act will just be the beginning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Federico López-Terra received funding from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). </span></em></p>Spanish dictator Francisco Franco no longer has a place in the Valley of the Fallen.Federico López-Terra, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101222019-01-28T13:33:56Z2019-01-28T13:33:56ZDRC musicians, patronage networks and the possibility of change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255105/original/file-20190123-135148-glbkmy.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lexxus Legal is a hip-hop artist and at the forefront of the activist movement in the DRC.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/lexxuslegal/photos/a.10152059106112445/10156225003507445/?type=3&theater">Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Popular musicians in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), like many of their compatriots, have often been forced to depend on political patronage networks for their livelihoods. It dates back to colonial times, but has lived on through the country’s nearly six decades of independence.</p>
<p>The nature of the networks may not change after <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/felix-tshisekedi-is-sworn-in-as-congolese-president-11548356987">the inauguration</a> of Félix Tshisekedi as president. That question depends largely on whether or not Tshisekedi is able to take control of the most strategic appointments in the federal bureaucracy and security services. If he does – and it’s a big if – musicians will be faced with a rare moment in their history: a substantial change in the shape of the DRC’s patronage networks. </p>
<p>There have only been three such changes. The first, from the colonial era under the Belgians to the short period of instability after independence in 1960 marked by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination">assassination</a> of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Next was to the long period of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ll2z5">Mobutu Sese Seko’s</a> dictatorship from 1965 to 1997. This was followed by the establishment of new networks of patronage by the Kabila family until today.</p>
<p>These latest networks may yet endure if the Kabila family remains in <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2019/01/10/drc-election-results-analysis-implausible/">effective control</a> through a cohabitation arrangement with a Tshisekedi presidency. Either way Congolese musicians are likely to be faced with the same invidious choice: accept the patronage of the powers that be, or face the consequences. </p>
<p>Under the Belgians and Mobutu the choice was stark: toe the line if you want to make a living as a professional musician. Conformity determined access to government controlled media and public space. As Congolese soukous musician <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kanda-bongo-man-mn0000303409/biography">Kanda Bongo Man</a> told me, in Nigeria <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fela-kuti-mn0000138833">Fela Kuti</a> might openly protest and survive, but under Mobutu he and his family would be tortured, murdered and thrown from a helicopter into the Congo river. </p>
<p>That control has loosened under the Kabilas. But it has by <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2018-12-10-anti-govt-rapper-abducted-as-dr-congo-vote-tensions-rise/">no means disappeared</a>.</p>
<h2>The colonial period</h2>
<p>After the Second World War Greek and Jewish entrepreneurs, who were outsiders to the Belgium political establishment, were the first to invest in music. They imported rudimentary recording facilities, public address systems, guitars, drums and brass instruments. </p>
<p>They also used their family networks of shops across Africa to sell records elsewhere on the continent. This partly explains how the beautiful and popular music of Leopoldville (the capital of the Belgian colony of Congo, before it was renamed Kinshasa in 1966) and Brazzaville across the Congo River, spread through the colony as well as the continent.</p>
<p>Tanzanian musician <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/remmy-ongala-mn0000190008">Remmy Ongala</a>, who has been part of the Congolese soukous scene since the 1980s, told me in a 2002 interview that he first heard the popular music of the Congolese capital performed in the third largest city Kisangani during colonial times. </p>
<p>It was the Belgian government that paid the transport and provided the public space for the Greek owned company Ngoma to promote their young stars Wendo and Bowane.</p>
<h2>Mobutu’s way of doing things</h2>
<p>Mobutu introduced the cultural policy of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10464883.2014.937235?mobileUi=0"><em>authenticité</em></a>, which was aimed at combating a colonial mentality denigrating African culture and language and casting it as inferior to Europes. In practice, however, it was harnessed to building Mobutu’s personality cult.</p>
<p>The dominance in cultural life of the <em>Mouvement Populaire de La Révolution</em> the political party <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Democratic-Republic-of-the-Congo/Political-process#ref467764">he founded</a>, was implemented in ways that mimicked the kind of imposition formerly associated with the colonial authorities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/congolese-musicians-rarely-provide-a-critique-but-continue-to-provide-solace-80201">Congolese musicians rarely provide a critique, but continue to provide solace</a>
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<p>His favoured bands, especially <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tpok-jazz-mn0000955002">TPOK Jazz</a>, benefited the most, and were given both direct patronage and control of the nationalised record plant as part of “Zaireanisation”. The band’s leader Franco Luambo Makiadi was a member of Mobutu’s party. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_k349KCe0qY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Franco’s song ‘Tailleur’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8300170.stm">King of Rumba</a>, as Franco was known, is also famous for composing metaphorically ambiguous songs. One of the most celebrated is <em>Tailleur</em> that’s about an unnamed tailor and an unnamed owner of his needle that captures the nature of patronage networks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How is the tailor going to operate if the owner of the needle takes it away?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>During the Mobutu era Congolese musicians created a musical genre that came to known as Rumba. Very little, if any, “resistance” Rumba was composed. As part of <em>authenticité</em>, Mobutu demanded that popular music turn to indigenous influences and languages for inspiration. </p>
<p>Franco responded enthusiastically deepening his relationship with those sources and composing songs in KiKongo. But Lingala, the language of the capital and of the <em>force publique</em> under the Belgians remained the national language of power, government and the army under Mobutu. Despite the “authenticity” policy Lingala remained the predominant language of popular song even for Franco. </p>
<p>This may help explain why the most outspoken musical critics of the corruption and violence in Congolese politics has still not come from the Lingala speaking capital , with some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/28/political-soundtrack-drc-uneasy-mix-of-music-and-power-elections-congo">notable exceptions</a> such as Lexxus Legal, but from the east of the vast country, and is expressed in Swahili rather than Lingala.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-drcs-flawed-election-means-for-emerging-democratic-culture-in-africa-109410">DRC protest music</a> , is mainly expressed in East African <a href="http://afropop.org/audio-programs/congo-goma-music-conflict-and-ngos">versions</a> hip-hop, particularly from Goma. Musically it is more derivative than Rumba, being heavily indebted to US hip-hop. The protest is not against the power of the US culture industries but against violence, and the lies that foster violence.</p>
<h2>Dependent musicians</h2>
<p>The 1990s was a decade of change. Late in the decade there was a general weakening of state institutions in the post-Mobutu era with no sign of a return to secure government sponsorship for musicians or of regular salaries for public servants.</p>
<p>Another dramatic shift was that musicians became more dependent on live performance and transient commercial and political sponsorship with the advent of cheap cassette tapes and even cheaper digital recording technology.</p>
<p>This intertwining of the market, state and society has continued to see itself expressed through music in the DRC. A well-loved dance of 2005, <em>Kisanola</em>, (literally meaning a comb) is associated with the moment when one of the country’s best-known stars, Werrason, shifted commercial allegiance from one beer brand, Skol, to its popular rival Primus, with lucrative consequences for Werrason. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Werrason’s dancers doing the ‘Kisanola’ dance.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255404/original/file-20190124-135154-ly7too.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Werrason’s election poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the <em>Kisanola</em> dance, also involves a movement representing the shaving of one’s hair to the bone – a metaphor for how people in the DRC have had everything taken from them. </p>
<p>In the past commercial imperatives and political censoring have not entirely prevented challenging songs slipping through the net. Remmy Ongala told me how even Wendo in the 1950s, under the patronage of the Belgian colonists, sang songs he and his Congolese audience understood as a call for independence and as a challenge to the colonial regime:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one fine day this country will change, you will see it yourselves. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a call that remains tragically resonant today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Salter received funding from the ESRC for his PhD on the spread of Congolese popular music in Africa</span></em></p>The intertwining of the market, state and society has continued to see itself expressed through music in the DRC.Thomas Salter, Musician, Academic, Consultant, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007812018-07-31T13:09:17Z2018-07-31T13:09:17ZDigging up Franco: why Spain still can’t decide what to do with the dictator’s body<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229980/original/file-20180731-136673-kfp06w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Franco777.jpg/1024px-Franco777.jpg">Wikipedia </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story of Spain during the 20th century is a complex one. The last remnants of the once-great Spanish empire were slipping away. The Second Spanish Republic was declared in April 1931 and King Alfonso XIII was forced into exile. In 1936 the country fell into a bloody civil war which lasted until the beginning of World War II. Francisco Franco held the nation under his dictatorship for almost four decades, shaping the country’s future for generations. And even in death, he continues to divide the nation, as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/19/spain-to-exhume-francos-remains-and-turn-site-into-place-of-reconciliation">debate</a> over his final resting place flares up once again. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, the majority on the right think that Franco’s significant role in modern Spanish society should allow his remains to stay within the national memorial site. Most on the left, however, see this as a barrier to reconciliation and want the body moved to a less ostentatious location.</p>
<p>Thousands died and many were exiled during the civil war and the early years of the dictatorial regime. The death of Franco in 1975, however, offered hope. Spain began its transition to democracy, seeing its first real elections in a generation.</p>
<p>Until relatively recently, political power in Spain has generally swung between two main parties. They often disagree over how the country remembers the past; one side wants to commemorate a significant period in the country’s history while the other wants a more balanced recognition of violent atrocities.</p>
<p>At a local level, something as everyday as the names of public buildings or <a href="https://theconversation.com/catalonia-makes-up-with-salvador-dali-after-a-turbulent-relationship-33564">streets</a> can fluctuate depending on the parties in or out of power. In Madrid, the name of the Plaza del Caudillo (The Leader’s Square, in reference to Franco) was changed to refer <a href="https://www.abc.es/espana/madrid/abci-52-calles-cambian-nombre-madrid-memoria-historica-201704280027_noticia.html">only to the geographical area</a> – the Plaza de El Pardo.</p>
<p>Now, little over a month after seizing the country’s presidency from his rival, the Spanish socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez is suggesting that the body of the former dictator be exhumed from the Valley of the Fallen. This is the national site dedicated to those who died in Spain’s recent periods of unrest.</p>
<p>Sánchez’s party was behind a 2007 historical <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spanish-memory-law-reopens-deep-wounds-of-franco-era-394552.html">memory law</a> that was designed to reconcile various factions by recognising past conflicts and encouraging dialogue. It provided an acknowledgement of wrongdoing to those disadvantaged by the conflict, on both sides of the divide. Historically controversial images, such as the Francoist flag bearing an eagle, statues of Franco, and other memorials to nationalists were also removed.</p>
<p>The socialists now believe the removal of the dictator’s body from a site intended to be a place of national reflection – but which is sometimes seen as a shrine for right-wing pilgrims – would be a major step towards reconciliation.</p>
<p>The new PM is supported in his proposal by other left-wing and regional nationalist politicians. But the Popular Party of ousted premier Mariano Rajoy is firmly against any immediate exhumation attempts, despite unopposed parliamentary consensus in 2016 (when they abstained from the vote). </p>
<h2>Disputed memorial site</h2>
<p>The valley – Spain’s largest mass grave – is a controversial site. It was described by Franco himself as a memorial to end all wars, yet the question of what its future should be has caused decades of dispute. There are two right-wing Spanish leaders buried in the crypt there (José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Franco) and it is said that most of the other bodies in that section are from the nationalist side. A number of republican prisoners were involved in the building of the monument.</p>
<p>However, the wider mass burial ground includes the remains of victims from all sides. There are around 34,000 identified in total, although with a lack of clear records, the figure is estimated to be as high as 50,000 if you include unidentified victims. Bodies from other exhumed graves have also been relocated to the valley, accounting for a small proportion of the identified bodies there.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229983/original/file-20180731-136667-1wpn2mp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Valley of the Fallen is a disputed site of enormous significance for both sides.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mlibrarianus/3709228817/in/photolist-6DLLuZ-3X1QJp-ejuv6E-6nyeLK-23UzfZc-ojAzWR-6Zny4t-4nWgHv-euHX2o-3pZz3J-8aQXST-h56NvZ-6pfsbM-euEKsc-h56MRH-3pZzh1-6z5ZB8-dghwaL-2JaYub-6z2JVo-h571P5-dhnx3p-dghvR7-dghwrs-KMQkW6-LFPgdm-LBNT4v-LijMWu-euEQhp-fGEt7-6Znyw2-9exqd-7QjKLz-7mhbX-6ZryfU-5jbUTq-7Qo775-ejoMzt-6oMH5D-euHYY3-hj82xf-ejusKA-ejurR1-5X52Qp-v1sUp-23SCECk-ejoL8t-ejutBw-6DQF8Q-cy2N1">Beth Tribe</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Popular Party argues that the nation needs to look to the future. It says focusing on issues like the economy and national unity would be a better use of time than talking about the past. Socialists have retorted that acting on the Franco question is precisely what is needed in order to look to the future. The position of the church will also be paramount, given that the tomb lies within the basilica on site. In a potential sign of things to come, a confraternity in Seville recently ended a three-year dispute by deciding to relocate the remains of the Francoist general, <a href="https://elpais.com/politica/2018/07/16/actualidad/1531763422_811016.html">Gonzalo Quiepo de Llano</a>, albeit to a more discreet location within the temple.</p>
<p>Time is of the essence politically. Before taking power, Sánchez was promising to hold elections within months. Any progress on memory issues such as what to do with Franco will depend almost entirely on the outcome of that election and legal findings. With the threat of legal challenges from the courts and those vehemently opposed to the exhumation, the government may be forced to change the law to <a href="https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2018-07-20/moncloa-decreto-ley-exhumar-franco-valle-caidos_1595109">prevent legal opposition</a> from all but the highest courts in the country.</p>
<p>And in practical terms, the site is currently in a state of significant disrepair. It has been <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/Sacar-Franco-avispero-Valle-Caidos_0_783921862.html">completely closed</a> several times. Experts have suggested the exhumation could be done at minimal cost and completed in only one morning. However, it could cost tens of millions of euros to repair the Valley.</p>
<p>Exhumation or repair may come at significant political cost – or benefit – to any party taking action. But inaction comes with a bigger cost for Spanish society. If no change in mindset can be achieved, the country can’t hope to move on from the divisions of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark McKinty previously received funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>New prime minister Pedro Sánchez wants to move the remains from a national memorial site. But not everyone agrees.Mark McKinty, Early Career Researcher in Spanish Studies, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998602018-07-13T12:18:02Z2018-07-13T12:18:02ZThe ‘stolen babies’ trial in Spain finally shines a light on a scandal that cannot be forgotten<p>It is June 6 1969 and Spain is living through the final years of Franco’s dictatorship. At a clinic in Madrid, a woman gives birth to a baby girl she will never see again. Little is known about what happened to that mother – but almost 50 years later, her daughter Inés Madrigal has just given evidence in <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/06/26/inenglish/1530014788_044674.html">a shocking trial</a>. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/spanish-doctor-eduardo-vela-trial-franco-era-stolen-babies">dock was Dr Eduardo Vela</a>, an 85-year-old former gynaecologist accused of stealing Inés from her biological mother. Vela is alleged to have given the baby as a “gift” to a couple, the Madrigals, who were unable to have their own children. He denies the charges.</p>
<p>Despite the cinematic plot, this is not an isolated case. A network of baby trafficking is believed to have involved a vast network of doctors, nurses, nuns and priests. Although there is no official figure, the <a href="http://www.sosbebesrobados.es">SOS Stolen Babies association</a> estimates that as many as 300,000 babies were taken from their parents in Spain between 1939 and the 1990s. </p>
<p>Now 49, Inés Madrigal works for the association and is the first “stolen baby” to successfully take an alleged perpetrator of one of these crimes to court. </p>
<p>The roots of these crimes date back from the origins of Francoism when Spanish fascists were trying to prove eugenic theories of dissidents’ mental inferiority. It was a thesis defended by the military psychiatrist Antonio Vallejo-Nágera – aka “the Spanish Mengele” – who led Franco’s office of psychological research. <a href="https://www.britac.ac.uk/blog/spains-lost-children">He argued</a> that political beliefs promoted in left-wing families could “intoxicate” children and “damage the mental health of future generations”.</p>
<p>Vallejo-Nágera also believed that women had an “atrophied intelligence” and their sole life purpose was to procreate. This ideological context helps explain the profile of the “adopters” of the stolen babies – affluent married women raised in a Catholic country who were unable to have children of their own. Social pressure was extreme (male sterility wasn’t even considered back then) and having children equated to fulfilling their role in a devoutly Christian society.</p>
<p>Yet what started as an ideologically driven plan to purge Spain of an inferior race (the Marxists) turned into a lucrative business. Newborn children were taken away from their mothers without consent. They were told the child was born dead or had died soon after. </p>
<p>Most of the time, children would be registered as the biological child of the adopting family, who would pay large sums of money for them. (Some adopting families were also deceived and believed they were legally adopting children in need of a home.) </p>
<p>These acts represent one of the darkest chapters of Franco’s dictatorship. But its ideological roots share similarities with cases in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, when children of dissidents (prisoners, murdered or “disappeared” people), were given to supporters of the regimes in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/us/children-of-argentinas-disappeared-reclaim-past-with-help.html">Argentina</a>, <a href="https://books.google.es/books/about/The_Feathers_of_Condor.html?id=1uj6DAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Chile and Uruguay</a>.</p>
<p>But, as with many other originally Francoist crimes, in Spain the illicit network outlived the authoritarian regime. After Franco’s death in 1975, many perpetrators are believed to have <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15335899">continued their practices</a> during Spanish democracy in the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<h2>Franco’s legacy</h2>
<p>Among the many problems victims face, the lack of institutional support in Spain is probably one of the most serious. Evidence of the extent of the network is still unclear, and the Spanish Catholic church has so far denied access to its files. </p>
<p>Earlier suspicions over the scandal were previously never taken forward and police dropped the cases given the repercussions and the people involved: politicians, lawyers, doctors – a sinister network of crime. But despite recent public promises very little has been done to support the cause. </p>
<p>Something as simple as a DNA database to help clarify heritage is still overdue in Spain. The lack of documentary evidence and the statute of limitations has resulted in most of the cases being shelved. </p>
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<p>Campaigners say at least 2,000 complaints have been filed, but none has gone to trial. But the presence of Vela in court in June 2018 marks a milestone in Spanish justice. Many of the “frozen” cases now could stand another chance. For Vela, prosecutors are seeking an 11-year jail term for unlawful detention of a minor, falsifying official documents and certifying a non-existent birth. A date for the verdict has not been set.</p>
<p>So far, the only person convicted in relation to these cases is Ascensión López – herself one of the alleged “stolen babies” – who was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40447215">prosecuted for slandering a nun</a>. A court ruled she had wrongly accused the nun of taking her from her biological mother and handing her to ageing adoptive parents in 1962. </p>
<p>The newly established <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics/spanish-socialist-sanchez-succeeds-rajoy-as-prime-minister-idUSKCN1IX3XO">Spanish socialist government</a> has promised to create an “attention plan” for victims of the stolen babies. Yet it is just one element of Spain’s recent history which many are now seeking to tackle. </p>
<p>The proposed <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/19/spains-new-government-remove-general-francos-remains-mausoleum/">exhumation of Franco’s remains</a> from the Valley of the Fallen as one of their first gestures seems to show an intention to address difficult elements of the country’s past. But it remains to be seen whether this is just a gesture – or the beginning of a long neglected policy on righting historical wrongs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Federico López-Terra received PhD funding from the Spanish National Research Council.</span></em></p>As many as 300,000 babies were taken from their families for political gain.Federico López-Terra, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866512017-11-19T20:20:35Z2017-11-19T20:20:35ZTerrorism, radicalisation and Islam: Michel Wieviorka in conversation with Marc Sageman<p><em>Michel Wieviorka and Marc Sageman, leading specialists in terrorism, political violence, radicalisation and their impact on our societies, exchange views for The Conversation France ahead of a <a href="http://www.fmsh.fr/fr/recherche/28833">conference</a> at the Fondation Maison Sciences de l'Homme within the framework of the <a href="http://www.fmsh.fr/fr/recherche/24279">“Violence and Exit from Violence”</a> program.</em></p>
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<p><br><strong>1. Is it possible to propose a concept of terrorism that is scientifically valid?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Marc Sageman:</strong> Terrorism is a legal rather than scientific concept derived from a compromise among jurists in the 1930s to create a new category of international crime in order to facilitate extradition of perpetrators. It referred to endangering a community or creating a state of terror – itself a controversial compromise at that time. Scientists have used it to study different but related phenomena dealing with political violence. It needs to be reflexive, for, as the quip goes, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. I have adopted this reflexivity in my new definition of terrorism, the “categorisation of out-group political violence during domestic peacetime.” Since the concept will still be used according to scientists’ true interest, I do not expect them to agree on a common definition for future research.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192680/original/file-20171031-18693-1k36hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michel Wieviorka has published several pioneering works on terrorism since the 1980s. <em>Evil</em> (Polity Press, 2012), looked at the issue of violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.laffont.fr/site/michel_wieviorka_&181&33154.html">Robert Laffont</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Michel Wieviorka:</strong> The word <em>terrorism</em>, like many others, has a shared meaning in political contexts and in the media. It is difficult to use in a conceptual way, as confusion is always a risk. Moreover, as Marc Sageman is right to point out, the law needs a definition that makes it possible to sanction certain facts and, in international law, reach consensus.</p>
<p>Sociologically, terrorism has two key aspects. First, it is instrumental: for those using it, terrorism is a resource with limited costs and huge potential benefit. A single bomb, for example, or the use of a firearm could lead to profound changes in the life of a country. Second, terrorism has to make sense for its protagonists, with this particular fact that it combines a loss of meaning – it speaks artificially in the name of a class, a people, a nation, a community that does not recognise itself in its violence – and at the same time is overloaded with meaning – ideology, religion. Terrorism is therefore a calculation and strategy on the one hand and simultaneous loss and overload of meaning on the other. I demonstrated this in my 1988 book <a href="http://www.fayard.fr/societes-et-terrorisme-9782213022062"><em>Societies and Terrorism</em></a> (Fayard). For example, extreme-left Italian terrorism spoke in the name of a working-class proletariat that did not support its crimes, or that of ETA in Spain, which became increasingly violent as it expressed a national and popular myth that was becoming untenable.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192678/original/file-20171031-18720-18dwu1g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Marc Sageman is an independent scholar (Phd. in political sociology and forensics psychiatry) and founder of the intelligence agency LLC. A former expert for the US Army and US intelligence services he has recently published <em>Turning to Political Violence : The Emergence of Terrorism</em> (2017, University of Pennsylvania).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Sageman</span></span>
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<p><br><strong>2. From a historical perspective, how is contemporary terrorism breaking with or, on the contrary, continuing a trend started in the 1960s and ‘70s?</strong></p>
<p><strong>M.S.:</strong> Contemporary terrorism results from a certain form of political violence dating back to the French Revolution, as illustrated in my new book <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15638.html"><em>Turning to Political Violence</em></a> (University of Pennsylvania, 2017). Over the past two centuries, this type of political violence has evolved to become more professional and indiscriminate, targeting civilians. It often used newly available technology of the times. The first suicide bomber was a clock-maker in the French town of Senlis, who blew himself up in December 1789 and killed 25 other people, a record that stood for over a century.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192481/original/file-20171030-18735-1sfwgni.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘December 13, 1789: the horrific revenge of a watchmaker named Billon, in Senlis’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b69442531/f1.item">J.F. Janinet/Bibliothèque nationale de France</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The first bomb attack was the <em>machine infernale</em> used in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_of_the_rue_Saint-Nicaise">assassination attempt against Napoleon Bonaparte on Christmas Eve 1800</a> in the Rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris. Terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s was more focused on capitalists or the state – in the case of leftist violence – and on targeted populations – in the case of right-wing supremacist violence. The fact that the present wave of terrorism came from outside the West makes the West as a whole a target of this violence. This was not the case 50 years ago.</p>
<p><strong>M.W.:</strong> There are important differences between the terrorism of the 1960s and 1970s, which itself is already a renewal of that of the late 18th century, Russian populists and other social revolutionaries of the late 19th century, and the contemporary phenomenon. The turning point came in the mid-1980s. Previous we have experienced internal terrorism, from the extreme left- or right-wing extremists, or separatist terrorism, as with the <a href="http://conflits.revues.org/2045">ETA in the Basque region</a>; and international terrorism, starting with the one claiming to be for the Palestinian cause.</p>
<p>Now we have global terrorism, which combines internal and geopolitical dimensions, such as the crisis in France’s suburban zones and conflicts in the Middle East, which are often religious and focus on <a href="http://www.cairn.info/revue-critique-internationale-2003-3-p-117.htm">martyrdom</a> – all of which have profoundly renewed this extreme form of violence. The old ways have not disappeared, as there are still right-wing and separatist terrorists, and violence fuelled by religion is not the monopoly of radical Islam – there is, for example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-cow-as-hindu-nationalism-surges-in-india-cows-are-protected-but-minorities-not-so-much-76632">Hindu terrorism</a>.</p>
<p><br><strong>3. How is terrorism affecting France and America today, both in the short and long run?</strong></p>
<p>One cannot study terrorism by focusing only on “terrorists”. Political violence is a dialectical phenomenon, a conflict pitting the state against a political protest community. The greatest impact of the current wave of terrorism in French and American societies is their respective countries’ similar responses, leading to the emergence of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/etat-durgence-etat-dalerte-79460">security state</a>. This type of response is more common in international war, to guard against enemy infiltration. This is worrisome because sophisticated surveillance technology could be used against any political dissenter. In the long run, after this wave of terrorism fades, this capability will remain, threatening privacy. I suspect that state overreach and scandals will curb this threat, as societal discussions will eventually reach a balance between security and privacy. This balance will shift according to society’s feeling of insecurity.</p>
<p><strong>M.W.:</strong> Terrorism today combines internal dimensions, which are rooted in the political and social life of a society, and others related to defence and diplomacy. Its impact is immediate and, as Marc says, it encourages measures such as the French state of emergency or the US Patriot Act. These weaken democracy by granting the executive branch the right to bypass justice in the name of security, a necessity, but with the risk of abuses. Terrorism undermines the legitimacy of political authorities, which are still suspected of failing to do everything necessary to ensure the security of citizens, and it reinforces mistrust, weakens confidence and creates concerns about the future. </p>
<p>It also has economic impacts – for example, scaring away tourists at least temporarily, and requiring increased public spending on <a href="https://theconversation.com/securite-les-lecons-distanbul-61997">security mesures</a>. It can influence international relations, encouraging certain alliances, for example. And in the longer term, it raises serious questions that call for renewed public policies in education, employment and the fight against discrimination.</p>
<p><br><strong>4. Marc Sageman, you identified the concept of <a href="https://theconversation.com/expliquer-la-radicalisation-portrait-robot-du-djihadiste-maison-53770">“home-grown terrorists”</a>, men and women who left to fight for “jihad” in Syria and now returning to their home countries. Are we observing a new phenomenon and a change in the way terrorism might spread?</strong></p>
<p><strong>M.S.:</strong>. No. This has been a common phenomenon since the 18th century, which opened up the political arena to ordinary citizens’ participation. Some went to fight abroad for universal ideals of the French revolution – in fact, Americans owe their independence in part to French “foreign fighters”.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192621/original/file-20171031-18689-17vxpzm.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, is the emblematic figure of a ‘warrior’ who left his homeland to fight in the name of an ideal (represented in 1791, painted in 1834).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gilbert_du_Motier_Marquis_de_Lafayette.PNG">Joseph-Désiré Court (1797–1865)/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were also the Greek war of independence from 1821 to 1829, the struggle against fascism in Spain in the 1930s and against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the <a href="https://etudesgeostrategiques.com/2013/01/07/mercenaires-etou-volontaires-engagements-de-combattants-francais-de-la-rhodesie-a-la-yougoslavie-1976-1995/">Yugoslavian conflict in the 1990s</a> as well as <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/foreign-fighters-9780199939459">broader-based conflicts</a>.</p>
<p>All <a href="https://theconversation.com/les-revenants-pour-comprendre-les-djihadistes-francais-70567">these returnees</a> were viewed with suspicion, but with rare exceptions, the expected waves of political violence never occurred. They need to be monitored but it should not be assumed that they would necessarily carry out terrorism at home. If the Western powers defeat the Islamic State in a fair way, I do not anticipate a wave of terror in the home countries. The process is like demobilisation after an international war. The demobilised soldiers often go back to the lives they had before the conflicts.</p>
<p><strong>M.W.:</strong> There have <a href="http://www.regards.fr/acces-payant/archives-web/brigades-internationales,1085">occasionally been comparisons</a> of French youth going to Syria to join Daech with those who joined the International Brigades in Spain in 1936. But there’s no similarity in the sociology of those who supported the Republican Brigades in 1936 and those who went to fight for Daech. Today, in some cases at least, one cannot dissociates internal and foreign factors – action allows the two to be combined, to allow young people from a working-class area of France – or from a village in Normandy, for that matter – to give a meaning to their existence by joining a conflict taking place in the Middle East. That is why we need to talk about global terrorism – that is to say, terrorism that combines local, national and international meanings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192620/original/file-20171031-18735-1eomqn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bulgarian members of the International Brigades who fought alongside the Spanish Republicans during the struggle against Franco, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Bulgarian_interbrigadiers_in_1937.jpg">'Under the Red Banner' photo album, 1973</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br><strong>5. What do you think of the term <em>radicalisation</em> ? Is it still relevant or shall we change the vocabulary? What is the impact of such vocabulary in our societies.</strong></p>
<p><strong>M.S.:</strong> At this point, I do not believe that the word <em>radicalisation</em> can be salvaged. It means different things to different people. We need to be more precise in what we mean. Is it the acquisition of ideas that reject those of mainstream society, something that does not require violence; or is it turning to political violence, which doesn’t necessarily need to be accompanied by “radical” ideas. We need to have different words for these two processes, which are very different. Most commentators used these meanings interchangeably, often in the same sentence, leading to confusion and preventing clear thinking about this important topic.</p>
<p><strong>M.W.:</strong> The word was useful, emphasising the uncompromising nature of the phenomenon in question. But <em>radicalisation</em> does not necessarily mean entering into terrorist, or even violent behaviour, and its use risks disqualifying or stigmatising individuals or groups who act uncompromisingly within a democratic framework. Moreover, in France a longstanding, rather centrist political tradition often uses the adjective <em>radical</em>.</p>
<p><br><strong>6. There is currently a <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/04/14/olivier-roy-et-gilles-kepel-querelle-francaise-sur-le-jihadisme_1446226">debate that opposes two theses</a>, briefly summed up as: That radicalisation comes first and then religion, and that’s how it should be analysed. Or that religion comes first and then radicalisation. Which of these two analyses would you chose?</strong></p>
<p><strong>M.S.:</strong> Both theses greatly simplify the situation and are based exclusively on one of the current waves of political violence. In my <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15638.html">most recent book</a> I outline a process leading to political violence that transcends this dichotomy. I interviewed at length several dozen of neo-jihadis in several countries, and was surprised at their relative lack of religiousness or even radicalism.</p>
<p>Instead, they identified with the victims of the Assad regime on the basis of a common religion and felt they couldn’t stand by and do nothing. In essence, the “radicalisation” and “Islamisation” were concurrent and two inseparable dimensions of the same process driven by the moral outrage they felt at the massacres of members of their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24276722">imagined community</a>, the neo-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummah">Ummah</a>. Of course, I simplify young but complex lives, but the point is that they were neither pious nor radical. In fact, they were not intellectual at all, and did not read much religious material – as was the case with scholars postulating these separate processes. They watched videos and read tweets especially of people they knew, and fantasised about themselves as being glorious fighters saving their self-referential community. While controversy is entertaining, I would urge journalists and opinion makers not to get hung up on pointless debates about gross oversimplifications. Nothing comes from them, not even better understanding of the processes at hand.</p>
<p><strong>M.W.:</strong> I would slightly disagree here, Even if this debate is simplistic and awkwardly formulated, it obliges us to reflect on a major question: what is the status of religion in <a href="https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01232429/document">Islamic terrorism</a>? Empirical observations – for example, those of <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/06/15/olivier-roy-les-terroristes-ne-sont-pas-l-avant-garde-d-une-communaute-musulmane-en-voie-de-radicalisation_5145280_3232.html">Olivier Roy</a> – often show that at some point late in the process Islam comes to animate the consciousness of the actors. But this does not prevent us from noticing that without Islam – even as it’s poorly understood by those involved – they don’t take action, as that would have no sense.</p>
<p>This obviously does not prevent an analysis of the way in which “radicalisation” takes place based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/fabien-truong-je-refuse-de-considerer-les-attentats-islamistes-en-ne-raisonnant-qua-travers-le-prisme-de-la-religion-86126">social processes</a> on which working-class suburbs and the second-generation immigrants do not have a monopoly.</p>
<p>There is not a single model for explaining terrorist acts, but a certain diversity, with the particularity that they require a religious sense for action to take place. It should be added that this debate leaves no room for other hypotheses, and in particular the idea, dear to some psychoanalysts, that there may also be pathological dimensions in at least some cases, flaws that would also be <a href="http://www.cairn.info/revue-figures-de-la-psy-2017-2-page-51.htm">related to psychiatry</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Together with Jean-Pierre Dozon, Michel Wieviorka leads the International Panel on the Exit from Violence (IPEV). The main supporter is the Carnegie Corporation of New York.</span></em></p>Contemporary terrorism is rooted in a form of political violence dating from the French Revolution. It is rooted in social facts and is now evolving on a global scale.Michel Wieviorka, Sociologue, Auteurs historiques The Conversation FranceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859432017-10-25T10:23:17Z2017-10-25T10:23:17ZHow the Catalan economy benefited under Franco – and what this means for the ongoing stalemate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191690/original/file-20171024-30605-kc6g7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franco_BCN.jpg">Franco visits Barcelona in 1942. Carlos Pérez de Rozas</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Spanish central government has temporarily <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-catalonia/spain-to-suspend-catalonias-autonomy-in-response-to-independence-threat-idUKKBN1CO0Z8">suspended Catalan autonomy</a> using Article 155. This <a href="https://theconversation.com/spains-hard-line-on-catalonia-is-no-way-to-handle-a-serious-secession-crisis-86243">unprecedented and controversial measure</a> enables the Spanish government to take over running of the region and to trigger regional elections to the Catalan parliament. The outcome of such elections may likely be a balance of power between separatist and anti-separatist forces very similar to the current one. This move, therefore, is little more than a way of buying time – it is by no means a way out of the Catalan stalemate.</p>
<p>Any long-term solution requires a deep understanding of the issues at stake, but the each day the situation is more puzzling to observers at home and around the world. Spaniards living abroad, like me, are often asked by friends and colleagues: what’s going on in Catalonia? Is the imposition of Article 155 a dictatorial move? Was independence declared? Why is there no dialogue? Who started it? And, the most feared of all these questions: what do you think is going to happen? </p>
<p>The easiest way for me to begin responding to these questions is by relating a personal story. I tell my friends that as a Seville-raised son of a proud Catalan who supported the equality of all Spanish citizens through his work on public health, I refuse to imagine a day in which I’ll need a passport to go to Barcelona. Catalonia, I continue to these friends, is among the richest regions of Spain, has participated for centuries in the political and economic life of the rest of the country, and has a diverse population largely made of Castilian last names and immigrants from all over – Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, to just mention a few. That is one of the reasons why <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-catalonia/thousands-protest-in-barcelona-against-catalan-independence-idUSKBN1CD0ES">about 50%</a> of Catalans are not for independence. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191661/original/file-20171024-30561-1aygazp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catalonia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cataluna_in_Spain_(plus_Canarias).svg#/media/File:Cataluna_in_Spain_(plus_Canarias).svg">TUBS/Wikimedia.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Past abuses?</h2>
<p>Familiar with the narrative of victimisation that the separatist intelligentsia has crafted for itself, my interlocutor may ask: “Yes, but as a historian of Spain, and of Francoism in particular, you surely admit that Spain has abused its power against the Catalan people many times in the past?” </p>
<p>This is where things get interesting because Catalan nationalists argue that their economic progress <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/01/30/spain-catalonia-independence-taxes-economy/">is</a> and <a href="http://www.sapiens.cat/ca/300-anys-d-espoli.php">has been</a> hampered by the rest of Spain for at least 300 years, and particularly from Francoism onward. But the fact is that Spanish politics has actually benefited the Catalan economy in the past. </p>
<p>There are two oft-cited examples of this from the period before Francoism. First, from the late 18th century to the late 19th century, Catalan owners of plantations in Cuba could use black slave workers even after slavery was official banned. This enabled the accumulation of capital, then <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/apr/13/barcelona-slave-trade-history-new-walking-tour-catalonia-spain-ramblas">reinvested in industries back home</a>. Second, for most of the 19th century and well into the 20th, the Spanish state <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/Moler_tejer_y_fundir.html?id=1RO4AAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">imposed protectionist laws</a> against imports of cheaper textiles from England, thereby taxing all Spanish consumers to favour the booming industries that were situated in the Barcelona area.</p>
<p>Then we come to Franco. General Franco rose to power after the civil war (1936-39) that his army had initiated against the Republican state (established in 1931). This was not a war of “Spain against Catalonia”, as separatist propaganda <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/21/catalan-leader-accuses-spain-worst-attack-since-franco/">reconstructs it</a>. The new dictatorial regime violently repressed political enemies and suppressed political autonomy everywhere, not only in Catalonia. It is true that the regime forbade the use of Catalan in official documents and in education. But from the perspective of the economy, Francoism benefited the development of Catalonia over other Spanish regions.</p>
<h2>Cement and dams</h2>
<p>About ten years ago, when I started my investigations on the role of science and technology in the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10193593/Engineers_and_the_Making_of_the_Francoist_Regime_MIT_Press_2014">building of the Francoist regime</a>, something caught my eye. I found that for most of the 1940s – a time of scarcity – each year Barcelona received consistently much more cement than the next city on the list, and sometimes twice as much as Madrid or Valencia. As one of Spain’s industrial strongholds, it was key for the regime to keep the factories running and the <a href="http://www.barcelonalowdown.com/francesc-cambo-catalan-nationalist-who-supported-franco/">Catalan economic elite loyal</a>.</p>
<p>Francoist support for industrialisation in Catalonia also showed in plans for hydropower production. The Pyrenees, the mountains dividing Spain from France, had for some decades attracted private investors interested in the potential of its rivers to produce electricity. After the civil war, the National Institute for Industry developed <a href="https://www.academia.edu/6576963/Frankie_the_Frog_the_total_transformation_of_a_river_basin_as_totalitarian_technology_Spain_1946-1961_">12 dams in 15 years</a> designed to maximise energy production as water flowed downstream the Noguera Ribagorzana river. The goal was to feed the national electric grid as well as to fuel heavy industries in the Barcelona area. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191659/original/file-20171024-30590-12o18xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canelles dam on the Noguera Ribagorçana river.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/xaf/1761671147">xaf/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Catalonia grew richer faster. This was by no means a product of Francoist policies alone. But the regime did provide opportunities, resources and cheap labour that it took from other regions. As thousands of blue collar workers flew in from more depressed parts of Spain <a href="https://www.casadellibro.com/libro-els-altres-catalans/9788499306445/2091543">attracted by booming industrialisation</a>, the Catalan bourgeoisie masked class struggle with nationalism.</p>
<h2>Political economy today</h2>
<p>Catalans for independence argue that they, as a region, <a href="https://theconversation.com/catalonia-spain-and-the-economic-consequences-of-a-split-85557">pay more taxes</a> than poorer parts of the country. This argument misses the fact that in a system of redistributive taxation it is citizens, not regions, who pay taxes. </p>
<p>Catalan riches developed through a shared history of economic interaction, territorial transformations and population movement and exchange. The comparison to California is inevitable: while according to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-california-s-economy-maybe-moves-to-1465940673-htmlstory.html">some estimates</a>, its economy is around the fifth largest in the world, it is so only <a href="https://books.google.es/books?id=Tsy_zy8cLckC&printsec=frontcover&dq=federal+landscape&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjml9j8_ITXAhUQahoKHSNmCbkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=federal%20landscape&f=false">within the United States</a>. Californian riches are the product of a <a href="https://books.google.es/books?id=Tsy_zy8cLckC&printsec=frontcover&dq=federal+landscape&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjml9j8_ITXAhUQahoKHSNmCbkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=federal%20landscape&f=false">shared national political economy</a>. While Angelinos may be at times too fond of themselves, they generally admit that fact.</p>
<p>The same is true for Catalonia, which is why in the past two weeks around 1,300 companies <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/10/16/inenglish/1508139705_469301.html">have moved their legal headquarters out of Catalonia</a> to other parts of Spain. The list includes the most important banks, international companies, and companies indexed in the Spanish stock market. </p>
<p>The economic consequences of this stalemate for Spain’s fragile economy, but particularly for Catalonia, are hard to exaggerate. In a country which is just starting to emerge from economic recession, it is puzzling to see how both the right and the left forget political economy in favour of the politics of regional identity – this is true not only for Catalonia, but for other regions governed by conservative and progressive parties as well. </p>
<p>Spanish politicians and administrators are obsessed with local politics and rarely discuss common plans regarding inequality, growth, industry, or unemployment. Devoting all energies to fight over an imaginary new border between Spaniards curtails urgent discussions about how to find new solutions to old problems in the current era of economic globalisation and climatic challenges. Meanwhile, we can only ask <em>¿Cui bono?</em>: who benefits?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lino Camprubí does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Devoting all energies to fight over an imaginary border deflects attention from the real issues.Lino Camprubí, Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/830472017-08-25T11:42:51Z2017-08-25T11:42:51ZHow a remarkable novel is helping Spain come to terms with the Basque Country’s violent past<p>Western Europe’s last remaining home-grown terrorist organisation finally ceased operations in 2011 when Basque separatist group <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/10/eta-declares-permanent-ceasefire">ETA declared a permanent ceasefire</a>. And yet the decades of violence continue to cast a long shadow over Basque society and political life. As politicians on both sides remain as antagonistic as ever, novelists and other writers are taking on the challenge of tackling the subject with far more eloquence and nuance, telling stories that could provide a much-needed form of remembrance, catharsis and understanding.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31842429-patria">Fernando Aramburu’s novel Patria</a> (“Fatherland”) is a stellar example – and sets the bar high for others to follow. First published in Spanish in September 2016, it has reached a wider audience than novels on the subject written in Basque, and it has topped the bestseller lists – not only in the Basque region, but also in Spain every month so far this year. This is the novel that Spaniards are reading on the metro or bus on their way to work and packing in their suitcases to take on holiday. Translations into several other languages are now underway, including an English edition set for publication in 2019, the author told me.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183421/original/file-20170825-1005-7hw15s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patria.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the past decade, Spain has been coming to terms with its 20th-century history of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/history/roadwar/spancivil/revision/1/">civil war</a> and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/general-franco-forty-years-after-his-death-spain-is-still-coming-to-terms-with-the-painful-legacy-of-a6741191.html">dictatorship</a>, ever since the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/9989965">historical memory law of 2007</a> put an end to the unwritten agreement known as the “pact of forgetting” that had facilitated the transition to democracy. </p>
<p>Now, Aramburu has recognised that in the wake of ETA’s permanent ceasefire, there is another story that needs to be told and remembered in a sensitive and reconciliatory fashion. This cannot be achieved by politicians fighting over how best to facilitate ETA’s disbandment and address the legacy it leaves. It must be writers and other cultural practitioners who do that.</p>
<h2>A history of violence</h2>
<p>Originally founded in 1959 in opposition to Spanish dictator Franco’s suppression of regional identities, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11183574">ETA persisted</a> with its campaign of violence well into the 21st century, long after Spain’s transition to democracy. The separatist group has not killed since 2010, but its disarmament was protracted until April this year and its full disbandment remains pending. Moreover, politicians and society remain divided over controversial issues such as the treatment of ETA prisoners, who under Spanish law have their rights reduced and are subject to policies such as dispersion.</p>
<p>For too long, the Basque “conflict” was primarily portrayed, in a misleadingly simplistic fashion, as pitting Spain (or “the Spanish state”, as Basque nationalists put it) against the Basques. ETA itself, and the wider social and political movement linked to it, was responsible for propounding this vision to justify its existence. But sectors of the Spanish right then compounded the error by associating all Basque nationalism with ETA for their own political motives. In reality, however, one of the biggest tragedies caused by ETA is that it also pitted Basques against Basques.</p>
<p>Patria eloquently draws attention to this through its depiction of the impact on a typical small Basque village (which could be any one of many), focusing in particular on two once closely knit families that are torn apart when the father of one family ends up an ETA target while the eldest son of the other joins the terrorists. It is not only the relationship between the two families that suffers, but relations among parents and siblings within each individual family, too.</p>
<p>Aramburu is sensitive and sympathetic towards ETA’s victims and their families, and he conveys their suffering with tremendous poignancy. His real achievement, however, is to do so without descending into facile moralising or politicising. He shows the full complexity of the tragedy by seeing things from different perspectives. </p>
<p>This includes reflecting the way in which many naïve young Basques, brought up in pro-ETA towns and villages and subject to intense peer pressure, ended up buying into ETA’s ideology and somewhat unthinkingly obeying its orders.</p>
<p>Terrorism is unacceptable in any circumstances, but Spain’s way of dealing with it has not always been appropriate either – and Aramburu does not shy away from depicting the torture used on ETA prisoners or the violence wrought by the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/141720.stm">GAL, Spain’s covert paramilitary death squads</a> back in the 1980s.</p>
<h2>Family tragedies</h2>
<p>This is first and foremost a novel of excellent literary quality that the reader is compelled to keep reading to find out what happens to the two families and whether there is any hope of reconciliation after ETA’s reign of devastation. The novel starts with ETA’s ceasefire and then darts back and forth to different periods of time in each chapter, telling snippets of the story in a non-chronological and non-linear fashion, keeping the reader waiting until the very end to get the complete picture.</p>
<p>Aramburu never intended for the novel to be political or didactic, but precisely for that reason, the end result can actually serve a much better purpose than most intentionally didactic novels. Propagandistic Basque novels portraying ETA terrorists as heroes or martyrs have tended to be intensely bad literature. But a brilliantly written novel such as Patria provokes the reader to think and reflect without him or her necessarily realising it.</p>
<p>For Basque citizens, the novel provides a sensitive portrayal of their community and its recent history. Perhaps even more significant, however, is the way in which the novel can contribute to an understanding in wider Spanish society of the complex social situation in the Basque Country prior to, and in the wake of, ETA’s ceasefire – something which is often quite misunderstood, due in part to Spanish politicians’ simplification of issues for electoral purposes. Once translations of the novel start to appear they will promote understanding even beyond Spain’s borders, while also providing a compelling read.</p>
<p>Through its popularity, Patria has far surpassed the author’s own expectations. Aramburu himself has aptly <a href="https://www.canarias7.es/hemeroteca/aramburu_y-8216-patriay-8217-_se_ha_convertido_en_algo_no_previsto_un_fenomeno_social-ADCSN458190">described</a> this work as escaping his creative control as it becomes a social phenomenon with a life of its own. </p>
<p>Spain may have been rather late in confronting the ghosts of the civil war and Franco period after years of attempting to brush them under the carpet, but lessons have been learned. Patria provides a healthy dose of understanding and remembrance about the Basque Country’s violent past by a writer who is well aware of the need to talk of the past sensitively, all the more so when politicians remain at loggerheads.</p>
<p><em>This article was first published before Patria was translated into English under the title</em> Homeland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83047/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Gray has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the BritishSpanish Society.</span></em></p>While politicians remain at loggerheads, the arts bring resolution to the Basque Country’s long history of violence.Caroline Gray, Lecturer in Politics and Spanish, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656832016-09-20T13:35:25Z2016-09-20T13:35:25ZHard right, soft power: fascist regimes and the battle for hearts and minds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138443/original/image-20160920-16646-1knzkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josef Jindřich Šechtl</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c20d03e2-2fa6-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153">global “soft power” ranking</a> recently reported that the democratic states of North America and Western Europe were the most successful at achieving their diplomatic objectives “through attraction and persuasion”. </p>
<p>Countries such as the US, the UK, Germany and Canada, the report claimed, are able to promote their influence through language, education, culture and the media, rather than having to rely on traditional forms of military or diplomatic “hard power”. </p>
<p>The notion of soft power has also returned to prominence in Britain since the Brexit vote, with competing claims that leaving Europe will either <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-05/brexit-killed-britain-s-new-vibe">damage Britain’s reputation abroad</a> or <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rio-2016-team-gb-meals-brexit-soft-power-after-leaving-eu-a7192181.html">increase the importance of soft power</a> to British diplomacy.</p>
<p>Although the term “soft power” was popularised by the political scientist <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2004-05-01/soft-power-means-success-world-politics">Joseph Nye</a> in the 1980s, the practice of states attempting to exert influence through their values and culture goes back much further. Despite what the current soft power list would suggest, it has never been solely the preserve of liberal or democratic states. The Soviet Union, for example, went to great efforts to promote its image to intellectuals and elites abroad through organisations such as <a href="http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/mp-denied-bail-over-shooting-child-156181">VOKS</a> (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries).</p>
<p>Perhaps more surprisingly, right-wing authoritarian and fascist states also used soft power strategies to spread their power and influence abroad during the first half of the 20th century. Alongside their aggressive and expansionist foreign policies, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and other authoritarian states used the arts, science, and culture to further their diplomatic goals.</p>
<h2>‘New Europe’</h2>
<p>Prior to World War II, these efforts were primarily focused on strengthening ties between the fascist powers. The 1930s, for example, witnessed intensive cultural exchanges between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Although these efforts were shaped by the ideology of their respective regimes, they also built on pre-fascist traditions of cultural diplomacy. In the aftermath of World War I, Weimar Germany had become adept at promoting its influence through cultural exchanges in order to counter its diplomatic isolation. After 1933, the Nazi regime was able to shape Weimar-era cultural organisations and relationships to its own purpose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138453/original/image-20160920-11134-1lybxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s film-maker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bundesarchiv Bild</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This authoritarian cultural diplomacy reached its peak during World War II, when Nazi Germany attempted to apply a veneer of legitimacy to its military conquests by promoting the idea of a “New Europe” or “New European Order”. Although Hitler was personally sceptical about such efforts, Joseph Goebbels and others within the Nazi regime saw the “New Europe” as a way to gain support. Nazi propaganda promoted the idea of “European civilization” united against the threat of “Asiatic bolshevism” posed by the Soviet Union and its allies.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138458/original/image-20160920-11131-mwmgb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As seen in Poland: a BNazi anti-Bolshvik poster.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the lack of genuine political cooperation within Nazi-occupied Europe, these efforts relied heavily on <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674545748">cultural exchange</a>. The period from the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 until the latter stages of 1943 witnessed an explosion of “European” and “international” events organised under Nazi auspices. They brought together right-wing elites from across the continent – from women’s groups, social policy experts and scientists to singers, dancers and fashion designers. </p>
<p>All of these initiatives, however, faced a common set of problems. Chief among them was the challenge of formulating a model of international cultural collaboration which was distinct from the kind of pre-war liberal internationalism which the fascist states had so violently rejected. The Nazi-dominated <a href="http://jch.sagepub.com/content/48/3/486.abstract">European Writers’ Union</a>, for example, attempted to promote a vision of “völkisch” European literature rooted in national, agrarian cultures which it contrasted to the modernist cosmopolitanism of its Parisian-led liberal predecessors. But as a result, complained one Italian participant, the union’s events became “a little world of the literary village, of country poets and provincial writers, a fair for the benefit of obscure men, or a festival of the ‘unknown writer’”.</p>
<h2>Deutschland über alles</h2>
<p>Despite the language of European cooperation and solidarity which surrounded these organisations, they were ultimately based on Nazi military supremacy. The Nazis’ hierarchical view of European races and cultures prompted resentment even among their closest foreign allies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138441/original/image-20160920-11123-l1cr8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jesse Owens after disproving Nazi race theory at the Berlin Olympics, 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bundesarchiv, Bild</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These tensions, combined with the practical constraints on wartime travel and the rapid deterioration of Axis military fortunes from 1943 onwards, meant that most of these new organisations were both ineffective and short-lived. But for a brief period they succeeded in bringing together a surprisingly wide range of individuals committed to the idea of a new, authoritarian era of European unity.</p>
<p>Echoes of the cultural “New Europe” lived on after 1945. The Franco regime, for example, relied on cultural diplomacy to overcome the international isolation it faced. The Women’s section of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange, organised “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlNiekJq8_s">choir and dance</a>” groups which toured the world during the 1940s and 1950s, travelling from Wales to West Africa to promote an unthreatening image of Franco’s Spain through regional folk dances and songs. </p>
<p>But the far-right’s golden age of authoritarian soft power ended with the defeat of the Axis powers. The appeal of fascist culture was fundamentally undermined by post-war revelations about Nazi genocide, death camps and war crimes. At the other end of the political spectrum, continued Soviet efforts to attract support from abroad were hampered by the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_2739000/2739039.stm">invasion of Hungary in 1956</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2008/aug/21/1968theyearofrevolt.russia">crushing of the Prague Spring</a> in 1968.</p>
<p>This does not mean that authoritarian soft power has been consigned to history. Both <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/russian-chinese-soft-power-booms-turkey-wanes-report-470381?rm=eu">Russia and China made the top 30</a> of the most recent global ranking, with Russia in particular leading the way in promoting its agenda abroad through both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/02/russia-today-launch-uk-version-investigations-ofcom">mainstream</a> and social media. </p>
<p>The new wave of populist movements sweeping Europe and the United States often also put the promotion of national cultures at the core of their programmes. France’s <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20140528-france-national-front-policy-eu">Front National</a>, for example, advocates the increased promotion of the French language abroad on the grounds that “language and power go hand-in-hand”. We may well see the emergence of authoritarian soft power re-imagined in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brydan receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>How Hitler’s Germany, fascist Italy and other authoritarian states tried to win friends and influence people.David Brydan, Postdoctoral Researcher, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/495502016-04-05T11:39:25Z2016-04-05T11:39:25ZExhibitionism: why the Stones are still the greatest rock'n'roll brand in the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117143/original/image-20160401-6809-292j1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Saatchi Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A week after The Rolling Stones played their <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/26/rolling-stones-enjoy-historic-cuba-gig-havana-obama">first concert in Cuba</a>, <a href="http://www.saatchigallery.com/current/rolling_stones.php">Exhibitionism</a>, a major show giving testament to the band’s iconic prowess and financial muscle, opened at London’s Saatchi Gallery.</p>
<p>The notoriously <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/mick-jagger-remembers-david-bowie-he-would-share-so-much-with-me-20160126">competitive</a> Mick Jagger is likely not to have been best pleased that David Bowie pipped them to the post with 2013’s hugely successful <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/">V&A retrospective</a>, but then this Dartford lad must be pleased that Exhibitionism will be undertaking an international tour of major cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. From their drugged-up years in tax exile, cash has always been a crucial concern for the world’s greatest rock and roll band, who increasingly seem like the British equivalent of Coca Cola. </p>
<p>The UK is no longer the prime market for Jagger and co: their cultural significance is arguably greater abroad. Their recent Latin American concerts saw a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbugUWgFHm8">frenzied response</a>, whereas their headline performance at Glastonbury in 2013 was <a href="http://www.digitalspy.com/music/summer-festivals/news/a494566/rolling-stones-at-glastonbury-digital-spy-readers-split-over-veterans/">somewhat underwhelming</a>.</p>
<p>This thrust beyond Britain’s borders began early on. Some 40 years before their landmark concert in Cuba, their canny ability to translate rock and roll rebellion into emerging markets was in evidence when they played Spain less than a year after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The Beatles may have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0lOv19tUCk">toured Spain in 1965</a>, but it was the arrival of the Stones in Barcelona in June 1976 that marked the beginning of the country as a major stopping point on European tour itineraries.</p>
<h2>Rock ‘n’ roll hits Spain</h2>
<p>There were a number of Spanish rock and roll bands in the 1960s; Los Bravos even reached number two in the UK pop charts with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGeFf_rIAVQ">Black is Black</a>, an English-language composition clearly in thrall to local hit-makers such as the Beatles or The Dave Clark Five. But the biggest live draws in Spain continued to be melodic balladeers and folkloric stars such as Lola Flores, Raphael and a young Julio Iglesias. </p>
<p>More cerebral and politicised singer-songwriters found receptive audiences among students, especially in Catalonia, although their lyrics and public proclamations were frequently targeted by the regime and its censors. Joan Manuel Serrat pulled out of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968, when the regime refused to let him perform <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se24_GEA8vc">La, la, la</a> in Catalan. The backlash was completely out of proportion, and he was forced to go into exile in Latin America (where he made his millions). </p>
<p>After the death of Franco, a young man new to Spain set out to revolutionise Spain’s music scene, thinking the politicised protest song movement boring. This was Gay Mercader, who would become Spain’s first professional promoter. He set himself the task of importing the Dionysian excess he had witnessed at live rock and roll concerts growing up in Paris by effectively creating an infrastructure and industry from scratch. The young impresario opened Barcelona’s first specialised music store, not knowing how else to advertise shows, while venues remained unearthed. </p>
<p>The Stones’s debut wasn’t expected to make a profit. It was instead designed to tempt other artists to follow in their wake. The strategy worked, and pay day arrived when the Stones returned in summer 1982 just before Felipe González and the young left-of-centre <a href="http://www.psoe.es/">PSOE</a> government rode into power with an overwhelming majority. Municipal and regional governments began to sponsor concerts by local and international bands: European tours by The Ramones and Iggy Pop were effectively subsidised. Meanwhile, the ready availability of cheap heroin made the country particularly attractive for some touring musicians. </p>
<p>It was in this fertile environment that Bob Dylan, Michel Jackson and Bruce Springsteen became part of Mercader’s impressive roster of clients. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117450/original/image-20160405-13536-1tq7hkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Britain’s Coca Cola?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Saatchi Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Freedom</h2>
<p>Rock and roll has long been romantically thought of as the lingua franca of freedom. Following Bowie’s death, the German Foreign Office <a href="https://twitter.com/GermanyDiplo/status/686498183669743616">tweeted</a> their gratitude for him helping to bring down the Berlin wall. Platitudes of this kind conceal as much as they reveal in the Spanish context. The principal opponents to popular music in the 1970s were not the Francoist die-hards, but those on the left who construed it a lethal combination of bourgeois deviationism and cultural imperialism. </p>
<p>Cartoons of the time depicted Mercader as a vampire prying on the young. Protesters stormed the gates of a Santana concert, proclaiming that live music ought to be free. Blondie were booed for being too posh and good-looking. But tempting as it is to be cynical about rock and roll’s revolutionary potential, it undoubtedly performed an important role in fostering peaceful conviviality. </p>
<p>Extant footage of the Beatles concert at Las Ventas bullring from 1965 shows an uptight well-to-do audience unaccustomed to experiencing live music or spontaneous outpourings of personal freedom. Understandably: the spectre of violence and conflict was ubiquitous in mass gatherings until the early-mid 1980s. The Stones’s debut was no exception: only 6,000 tickets were sold for this stadium show. But this was a blessing in disguise, because the unprovoked charge of riot police armed with tear gas would otherwise have resulted in casualties. </p>
<p>Franco’s longevity cannot be understood without taking into account a widespread fear that the absence of a strong leader would precipitate a descent into chaos. Irrespective of its many limitations, it was a democratic triumph that the transition exposed the fictitious nature of this ingrained belief and that live concerts have become increasingly hedonistic and aggression-free. In a situation that would be unthinkable in the UK or US, I was served my beer in a real glass at a concert in Madrid by hardcore punk group The Outlaws last summer as a swirling mosh-pit erupted within spitting distance. I maintained my distance, but offered a silent toast to organised chaos and Spanish democracy. As Jagger recently sang in Havana: “It’s only rock’n’roll (but I like it)”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duncan Wheeler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A long time before their recent landmark concert in Cuba, The Rolling Stones played Spain: less than a year after the death of General Franco.Duncan Wheeler, Associate Professor in Spanish Studies, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/493102015-10-23T13:13:59Z2015-10-23T13:13:59ZFlashmobs and flamenco: how Spain’s greatest artform became a tool for political protest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99097/original/image-20151020-32252-av1qra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flashmob Flo6x8 taking their flamenco protest to the bank.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flo6x8</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Flamenco is perhaps Spain’s most alluring cultural phenomenon, characterised by the stereotypes of sun, passion and tumbling black hair. Political protest and social activism are less likely to come to mind when thinking of flamenco, but for some performers it has always been a powerful tool for voicing political protest. </p>
<p>Never more so than today. Spain has suffered immensely in the global economic crisis – especially Andalusia, the southernmost region of the country most associated with flamenco. Neoliberalism has taken its toll on the Spanish people, who are suffering one of the highest levels of unemployment in Europe. In 2011, this led to the infamous <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18070246">15M (<em>indignados</em>) protest</a> movement that mobilised millions of citizens across the country to challenge policies of austerity following the banking crisis. </p>
<p>On the back of this movement, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22174456">flashmob group Flo6x8</a> has rebranded flamenco as a powerful political weapon. This anti-capitalist group has been well publicised for its political performances that have taken place in banks and even the Andalusian parliament. Using the body and voice as political tools, the group carries out carefully choreographed <em>acciones</em> (actions) in front of bemused bank staff and customers. These performances are recorded and then posted online, attracting a huge number of views. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dq8Q7lZuMsk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Through explicitly political lyrics, Flo6x8 denounces the banking crisis and the austerity measures resulting from European bailouts. By claiming public, capitalist spaces the performers give a powerful political message that challenges the status quo. But these performances also break with typical gendered stereotypes in flamenco. The exotic, seductive and “oriental” image of the female dancer is turned on its head. Instead the female dancers in these performances become powerful, political figures. </p>
<p>The group believes it is repoliticising flamenco, returning to its <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Flamenco#cite_ref-4">historical origins</a>. Nowadays flamenco is closely associated with the world music industry and tourism. Yet the origins of flamenco tell a different story. Flamenco was born among socially marginalised communities such as Gypsies, miners and other disadvantaged Andalusian groups. Lyrics from the 18th and 19th centuries tell tales of poverty and social hardship. </p>
<p>True, the flamenco we know today owes much of its legacy to the commercial theatres (<em>cafés cantantes</em>) of mid-19th century Spain. But its political side has come out during times of social upheaval. Republicans during the Spanish Civil War sang ideological messages. And singers of the 1960/70s such as Manuel Gerena and José Menese challenged the Franco regime in pursuit of democracy and equality. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nFBhoofZvH4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fandangos republicanos sung by Manuel González “El Guerrita”.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p><em>I want to say with passion, this fandango that I sing, Spain is Republican. And this is from the heart, down with the law and tyranny.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flo6x8 see themselves as the continuation of this political legacy, where flamenco becomes a catalyst for social change as can be seen by this <a href="http://www.flo6x8.com/node/78">anti-austerity flashmob</a> in the Andalusian parliament in June 2014.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Flo6x8 anti-austerity protest at the plenary session of the Andalusian parliament in June 2014.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The controversial new <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/spain-security-law-protesters-freedom-expression">gag law</a> introduced by the Spanish government in 2015 has restricted the activities of Flo6x8. Yet members remain committed to flamenco as a political weapon against continued social and economic inequalities in Spain. </p>
<h2>Confronting racism</h2>
<p>The history of flamenco has also been used to promote tolerance. Flamenco is said to have links to Spain’s Islamic past a period when Christians, Jews and Muslims allegedly coexisted in peace (<em>convivencia</em>). Although criticised by some as a utopian myth, <em>convivencia</em> carries a message of tolerance for today. Many argue that flamenco emerged from an amalgamation of cultural influences in southern Spain: Arabs, Jews, Gypsies, African slaves, Andalusian underclasses and so on. The belief, then, is that flamenco is born of intercultural dialogue.</p>
<p>However, Spain’s relationship with its Islamic past is problematic. In some quarters it is celebrated – in others it is shunned. Since the 1980s, increasing immigration into Spain, particularly from Morocco, has complicated matters. Like in many countries across Europe, racial tensions and Islamophobia have increased. Here flamenco has been used to confront racial tensions and promote tolerance. </p>
<p>In 2003, the dancer Ángeles Gabaldón and her company premiered the show <a href="http://www.angeles-gabaldon.com/ing/inmig_ing.htm">Inmigración</a> (Immigration), which was also broadcast online to more than 50,000 people. <em>Inmigración</em> raised awareness of the humanitarian issues surrounding migration across the Strait of Gibraltar: human trafficking, migrant deaths, immigrant sex work and racism. </p>
<p>The show, which featured a multiracial cast, sought to raise awareness of the social reality of immigration – and, interestingly, also presented Spain’s own history of emigration before it became a country of immigration. But the most powerful element of Inmigración was how the past and the present were joined together in musical performance. Flamenco was combined with musical styles believed to have originated in Islamic Spain that now exist in North Africa. </p>
<p>The cast included Jalal Chekara, a Moroccan performer who has lived in Spain for many years. He is known for his collaborations with flamenco musicians, promoting tolerance through the musical re-imagining of a shared cultural history. </p>
<p>Since 2003, the situation across Spain and Europe has deteriorated. The current migrant crisis is maybe the most difficult challenge facing Europe and <em>Inmigración</em> is perhaps even more relevant today than when it was first performed. It shows the capacity of flamenco as a form of social criticism that can give power to the powerless and voice to the voiceless. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Joshua Brown, a lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Chapman University and Juan Pinilla, flamenco singer and writer in Granada, assisted with research for this article. The author will be appearing at the <a href="http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events">Cambridge Festival of Ideas</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Machin-Autenrieth receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>A group of performers is using music and dance to highlight inequality, austerity and racism in Spain.Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/475872015-09-24T11:00:18Z2015-09-24T11:00:18ZThe rebirth of Catalan: how a once-banned language is thriving<p>Barcelona is one of the best-known cities in the world, yet visitors expecting to practice their Spanish can often be surprised when they hear Catalan spoken in the streets. The language has had a troubled history, but is a key marker of identity in Catalonia, a region where many hope for independence from Spain. The outcome of regional elections on September 27 means the current Catalan president Artur Mas may now <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/28/catalan-separatists-win-election-and-claim-it-as-yes-vote-for-breakaway">seek to declare independence</a>. </p>
<p>Attempts to suppress the Catalan language and culture have deep historical roots but were intensified during the era of Francisco Franco. The dictator banned the Catalan language from public spaces and made Spanish the sole language of public life. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95238/original/image-20150917-7545-18iul4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lluis Companys, leader of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llu%C3%ADs_Companys#/media/File:Lluis_Companys.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For 40 years under the dictatorship, Spain tried to present itself as an ethnically and politically homogeneous state. The execution of Franco’s opponents continued after the end of the Spanish Civil War. One prominent victim was the former Catalan president, <a href="http://www.catalangovernment.eu/pres_gov/AppJava/government/president/presidents/companys.html">Lluís Companys</a> who was deported from Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and then executed in Barcelona. </p>
<h2>Cultural repression</h2>
<p>After the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, the repression was not only political but cultural too. Catalan institutions were suppressed and Catalan was banned in the school system. Indicative of the new political order were statements from the authorities, the police in particular, such as “<em>Hable el idioma del imperio</em>”: use the language of the empire.</p>
<p>The immediate consequence was that Catalonia lost many of the material resources for the production and reproduction of its culture. The Catalan language lost prestige in comparison with Spanish, and some upper-class Catalans began to start speaking more Spanish. </p>
<p>At the same time, between one and two million people from the south of Spain moved into Catalonia after the 1950s. These migrants were sometimes prejudiced against the Catalan language, not least because many of them did not even know about its existence before coming to Catalonia. Some felt no need to learn Catalan. This is the kind of problem which faces all stateless nations.</p>
<p>Despite this, most Catalan people went on using their language at home and the language has survived against the odds. Paradoxically, other languages such as Irish have had a state to protect them in the 20th century and yet it has proved difficult to <a href="http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/06/15/irish-language-decline">stop the erosion</a> of the language. </p>
<p>With the death of Franco in 1975, and once democratic freedoms had been recovered, the 1978 constitution recognised linguistic plurality and established that Spanish languages other than Castilian could be official languages of the state. Catalan is now <a href="http://www.gencat.cat/culturcat/portal/site/culturacatalana/menuitem.be2bc4cc4c5aec88f94a9710b0c0e1a0/en_GB/indexd8f5.html?vgnextoid=4a2a5c43da896210VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4a2a5c43da896210VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=detall2&contentid=a0e6edfc49ed7210VgnVCM1000008d0c1e0aRCRD&newLang=en_GB">compulsory</a> in Catalonian schools.</p>
<h2>A living language</h2>
<p>Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, but also in the Balearic Islands, in parts of Valencia, in Andorra, in the French province of Roussillon, and in the Italian city of Alghero. Overall, it is spoken in a territory that contains over <a href="http://llengua.gencat.cat/permalink/91192f76-5385-11e4-8f3f-000c29cdf219">13m inhabitants</a>. </p>
<p>More than 150 universities in the world teach Catalan and more than 400 journals are published in the language. Ironically, Catalan studies are only weakly represented in Spanish universities, reflecting both the historical discrimination against Catalan and contemporary concerns about the drive for independence in Catalonia. Only seven universities in Spain (outside Catalonia) <a href="http://www.llull.cat/english/aprendre_catala/mapa_llengua.cfm">teach and research Catalan</a>, whereas 22 universities offer courses in the UK, 20 French higher education institutions offer Catalan Studies, as do 24 in the US. </p>
<p>Catalan is the <a href="http://llengua.gencat.cat/permalink/91192f76-5385-11e4-8f3f-000c29cdf219">ninth language in Europe</a> in terms of number of speakers – more than Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Greek. More than 80 television channels and more that 100 radio stations are broadcast daily in Catalan and there is a long publishing tradition. Each year in Spain almost 6,000 books are published in Catalan, some 12% of the total number of books published in the country.</p>
<h2>More a passion than a language</h2>
<p>What the Catalan experience seems to demonstrate is that banning a language may be an effective way of preserving it. Speakers of a banned language feel resentful and resist authoritarian reach into their culture. This Catalan emotion was picked up nicely by the <a href="http://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/4203144/20140711/colm-toibin-its-very-difficult-to-dilute-national-identity-under-pressure.html">Irish writer Colm Tóibín</a> while living in Barcelona in the 1970s. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People lived in a private realm. The parents had moved into that realm at the end of the Civil War, and they had remained in that realm … But what was also interesting was that Catalan, the language, was considered a way of being free … No one was talking about history. No one was talking about politics. But people were talking in Catalan. And they considered that a fundamental way of resisting, or being apart from official Spain, or the regime. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This Catalan reaction is also expressed by a Catalan writer exiled in Mexico, Pere Calders, in his 1955 short story, “<a href="http://www.escriptors.cat/autors/caldersp/pagina.php?id_text=2421">Catalans in the World</a>”. A Catalan traveller in the Far East, at an evening party encounters a parrot which, to his surprise, utters Catalan phrases. He was overcome by emotion: “Many were the things which made us different but there was a language which made us one… Early that morning, when I left, I had a softer heart than the day I arrived.” </p>
<p>As a Catalan myself I have experienced this emotion. After years of teaching Spanish in Queen’s University, Belfast, last year I offered a course in Catalan for the first time. Standing in front of my students on that first day, I had to try hard to avoid tears.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Boada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The language survived against the odds and is now a central part of Catalan identity.Irene Boada, Lecturer in Spanish and Catalan, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431482015-06-12T10:04:09Z2015-06-12T10:04:09Z‘Strangling angel’ of diptheria caught Spain off guard – here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84740/original/image-20150611-11427-apng62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C1000%2C694&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is a vaccine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vaccination by Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The return of diphtheria in Spain after nearly three decades highlights the challenges posed by infectious diseases that had been mostly eliminated from Europe. </p>
<p>Falling vaccination rates, complex population movements, and the disappearance of international health practices perceived as redundant, all contribute to the emergence and spread of infectious diseases that were thought forgotten. At the same time, such public health crises throw light on the delicate relationship between state and citizens, and competing concepts of responsibility for health.</p>
<p>A six-year-old boy from the Catalan town of Olot was admitted to hospital suffering from <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/06/02/inenglish/1433262397_622650.html">diphtheria</a> last week. This was the first case of the disease recorded in Spain for 28 years. The boy, who is in a critical but stable condition in a Barcelona hospital, had not been vaccinated due to his parents’ concerns about the safety of the vaccine. They now say <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/06/05/inenglish/1433512717_575817.html">they feel tricked</a> by the anti-vaccination groups which had originally stoked their fears.</p>
<p>Diphtheria, now a rare disease in Europe, is a serious, potentially fatal disease caused by bacteria that can cause heart failure, pneumonia and paralysis of the muscles used for swallowing. Up until the 1920s it was one of the leading cause for death in children, sometimes referred to as “strangling angel”, because the bacteria can create a pseudo-membrane in the airways, causing death by choking. </p>
<p>It was widespread in Spain during the first half of the 20th century, particularly following the physical and economic devastation caused by the Spanish Civil War. <a href="http://www.msssi.gob.es/ciudadanos/proteccionSalud/vacunaciones/docs/recoVacunasAdultos.pdf">Over 27,000 cases</a> of diphtheria were recorded in 1940 alone. Improving infant health was officially a priority for the new Franco regime, and cases did reduce significantly in the post-war era. However, Spain’s impoverished and fragmented public health system failed to make the rapid progress towards eradication achieved by its western European neighbours, with almost 250 new cases a year still reported in the late 1960s. A comprehensive vaccination programme was finally implemented in 1966 and until last week, there had been no diphtheria cases recorded since 1987.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84819/original/image-20150612-1456-1dfgyad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franco meets nurses in 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/49093093@N02/4638912322/in/photolist-84VD1W-f27S4e-g5MR5K-eyNSen-84SvZT-7UaYLq-nd2UNi-nd3dt6-25xKXF-7VpvSe-2ezD3N-nd3dZt-c8mc6d-7VsLiN-8FDcjq-8FDcUs-sLHYoD-su8HHh-sLJpt2-su8E1s-8FHnvV-m5tzpR-5LBtKA-cj71N5-sbWRpC-dET2wS-86iFw6-7UaYN5-2UrYXZ-64kATp-2UrYXM-sJoQZ5-sJoMb3-sLwios-su9zoS-sLwnob-rPV192-sLwLHY-8qRfKU-nX9XGN-9UAQ9w-6qP5Hb-7eh9Lj-bJADqk-2bQY2D-2kmPqQ-2kmgHU-romPP5-djqs9Q-7UdtjX">Teresa Avellanosa</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Russia to the rescue</h2>
<p>As diphtheria had been eliminated in Spain for the last three decades, stocks of the anti-toxin needed to treat the disease are no longer available in the country. This anti-toxin, listed as an “essential medicine” by the World Health Organisation, is increasingly unavailable due to the disease’s rarity and because, as a blood-derived product, its production is highly regulated. </p>
<p>For instance, in the US there are <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/diphtheria/downloads/protocol.pdf">no licensed anti-toxin products available</a> in the whole country, and in case of diphtheria an unlicensed Brazilian product is used by the CDC under investigational new drug status, which basically provides an exemption from federal regulation. In Europe, <a href="http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20830">some public health experts have called</a> for the establishment of a central EU stockpile that all countries can access in times of emergency.</p>
<p>This time, Spanish health authorities were forced to look abroad for supplies, which were personally flown in from Moscow by the Russian ambassador to Madrid. The difficulties in locating and supplying the relevant anti-toxins highlight how quickly international structures can break down once a disease has been eliminated in a particular country and has disappeared from the authorities’ radar. </p>
<p>The recourse to diplomatic channels and the ad hoc supply of medication echoes the chaotic situation more usually associated with times of war and international emergency. A look into the Spanish government archives reveals that during the World War II, for example, Spain’s small West-African colony in what is now Equatorial Guinea faced a dangerous outbreak of Yellow Fever. Facing the collapse of its economy and wartime disruption to international supply, the Spanish government struggled to secure basic medication and to distribute the relevant vaccines both at home and in its overseas colonies. </p>
<p>Help eventually arrived from the local British Consul who agreed to fly to Lagos and bring back supplies of the vaccine in thermos flasks. While these kind of ad hoc solutions may have been a necessary during a time of international conflict, they seem profoundly out of place in today’s apparently more orderly international system.</p>
<h2>A lingering presence</h2>
<p>It was no coincidence that the anti-toxins were available in Russia. Diphtheria cases had begun to fall in the Soviet Union following the introduction of universal childhood immunisation in 1958. By the mid-1970s they had plummeted to an all-time low, approximately the same level as the US. However, changing immunisation schedules contributed to a rise in diphtheria in the 1980s, partly because of reduced levels of public support stoked by <a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/4/4/98-0404_article">a strong anti-vaccination movement</a> that channelled distrust in the state during the period of perestroika. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and much of its public health services, especially in the newly independent states, a severe epidemic broke out in 1993. </p>
<p>Shortages in vaccine supply, economic hardship and mass population movements all contributed to the outbreak and the difficulties authorities faced in controlling it. Eventually diphtheria in Russia and the former Soviet states was brought under control through international cooperation between governments, NGOs and UN agencies. Since then, the former Soviet republics and Russia have remained the only area of Europe where diphtheria is still a public health concern. Although no longer in epidemic proportions, the lingering presence of the disease led Russian authorities to keep stocks of diphtheria anti-toxin readily available.</p>
<h2>Spain’s fascist past complicates the debate</h2>
<p>Long-forgotten diseases that make a comeback also bring to light problematic relationships between citizens and the state. Recent American anti-vaccination movements <a href="https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/neoliberal-mothering-and-vaccine-refusal/">highlight conflicting ideas of individual and public health</a>, while Spain’s authoritarian legacy has coloured the vaccination debate in the country. This week Luis Garciano, economic spokesman for Spain’s new centrist party Ciudadanos (Citizens), said that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2015/06/03/garicano-vacunados_n_7502664.html">unvaccinated children</a> should be withdrawn from school and their parents fined and stripped of benefits. </p>
<p>Garciano’s comments have been denounced as “neofascist”, and <a href="http://antivacuna.blogspot.co.uk/">anti-vaccination campaigners</a> have frequently drawn parallels between the idea of obligatory vaccination and Spain’s fascist past. For them, the right to reject vaccination is a freedom that should be protected in the era of democracy.</p>
<p>The return of diphtheria to Spain mirrors the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/official-warning-measles-endemic-in-britain-851584.html">measles</a>, <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/12December/Pages/tb-tuberculosis-cases-rise-london-uk.aspx">TB</a> and other <a href="http://time.com/27308/4-diseases-making-a-comeback-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers/">infectious diseases</a> in Europe and the US. When diseases disappear due to high vaccination coverage, the national and international public health infrastructures needed to deal with them often also whither away. </p>
<p>When distrust in public health organisations and practices or the break-down of relationship between state and citizens give way to faltering vaccination rates (whether through anti-vaccination movements or through lack of access to vaccines), forgotten diseases can make a quick comeback. The case of diphtheria reminds us of the very real stakes at hand when infectious diseases re-emerge and throw light on the personal, national and international consequences of declaring the end of a disease.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dora Vargha receives funding from the Wellcome Trust</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Bryan receives funding from the Wellcome Trust</span></em></p>Spain’s fascist past has complicated the state’s relationship with anti-vaccination groups, now a rare disease has appeared again after 28 years.Dora Vargha, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Birkbeck, University of LondonDavid Brydan, PhD Candidate, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/274972014-06-02T21:20:01Z2014-06-02T21:20:01ZCan Spain’s monarchy survive the abdication of Juan Carlos I?<p>The Spanish monarchy has been thrown into crisis after the king, Juan Carlos I, announced his decision to abdicate the throne after 39 years in favour of his son Felipe. The news was conveyed via the <a href="https://twitter.com/CasaReal/status/473383285486546944">royal household’s Twitter account</a> and confirmed by a <a href="http://twitter.com/CasaReal/status/473383285486546944/photo/1">letter signed by Juan Carlos</a> and posted shortly afterwards. He then made a televised address to the nation thanking the Spanish people for their support.</p>
<p>But the smooth succession from father to son was put in doubt after thousands of people <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/king-juan-carlos-spain-protests-referendum-monarchy">took to the streets</a> to call for a referendum on the future of the monarchy and more than 70,000 people signed an online petition urging Spain’s politicians to use this “historical opportunity to promote a public debate that will help regenerate democracy and determine the future of the monarchy”.</p>
<p>Whatever else may be written about Juan Carlos, his four-decade rule has enabled Spain to transition from the right-wing dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco to a modern pluralistic social democracy. In the course of his reign the king has been one of Europe’s most popular monarchs, although scandals in recent years have tarnished his record somewhat and are probably partly behind the popular demand for a constitutional debate.</p>
<p>Born in Rome on January 5, 1938, Juan Carlos moved to Spain aged ten where he was groomed by Franco as a successor. In 1969 Franco named him as his heir, giving him the title of Prince of Spain. At this stage Juan Carlos publicly supported Franco, even acting as proxy head of state for Franco during the dictator’s final days – but all the while he was holding secret meeetings with reformist politicians.</p>
<p>He became king on November 22, 1975, two days after Franco’s death. It was a time of uncertainty and flux in Spanish politics. Many questioned the role Juan Carlos would play in Spain’s fledgling democracy and he immediately found himself at odds with right-wing politicians for not continuing Franco’s authoritarian policies, instead looking to left-wing, republican parties for support. </p>
<p>An early defining moment came during the abortive military coup of February 1981 when, as captain-general of the armed forces, in full uniform, he addressed the nation in a television broadcast to support the democratically-elected government <a href="http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/fue-noticia-en-el-archivo-de-rtve/archivo-mensaje-del-rey-juan-carlos-tras-intentona-golpista-del-23/393739/">during a TV broadcast</a>. He used this to contradict claims by the coup leaders that he supported their actions. The coup failed and his popularity soared – even Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the just-legalised Communist Party who had dubbed the king “Juan Carlos the brief” in reference to what he presumed would be a short reign – expressed his admiration for the king’s decisive action.</p>
<p>Despite some remaining republicanism and independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque region, public support for Juan Carlos remained strong for the next three decades. Juan Carlos travelled the world as an effective ambassador for Spain and Spanish interests and the weddings of his three children were celebrated as major international events. In 2007 he became a YouTube sensation in the Spanish-Speaking world when, at an Ibero-American Summit in Chile, he interrupted the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez by asking him “why don’t you shut up?” (<em>¿Por qué no te callas?</em>). This phrase was picked up by the Spanish public and soon featured in the press, in jokes, on t-shirts and on social media.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a-GemVG_6Ec?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Why don’t you just shut up?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Scandal and crisis</h2>
<p>But the economic crisis in 2008 brought a change in public perception of the monarchy, particularly their use of public money to fund an extravagant lifestyle. A biography of Queen Sofía reported her views against gay marriage, and the king’s eldest daughter, <a href="http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/200911262481/infanta-elena/divorce/spain-royal/%3E/">Infanta Elena, divorced in 2009</a> – the first child of Spanish royalty to do so.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Juan Carlos’ personal popularity took a dive in April 2012 when a photograph was published showing him posing with a dead elephant during a hunting trip to Botswana. The expensive trip was perceived as a slap in the face of crisis-hit Spaniards, even though the royal household insisted it had not been paid for with taxpayers’ money. In addition, as honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature, the king’s behaviour was criticised as irresponsible. The WWF responded by <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18942736">removing him from his post as honorary president</a> and the king <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17752983">issued a rare apology</a>. What made it worse was that it emerged that he had not been travelling with Queen Sofía, but with German aristocrat Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. It later transpired that she had accompanied him on several trips. The press, who had always respected the privacy of the royal family, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9949809/The-lonesome-king-of-Spain-how-Juan-Carlos-fell-from-grace.html">began to print stories about alleged infidelities</a>.</p>
<p>The royal family was further rocked by the revelation that Infanta Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarín, was under investigation for an alleged embezzlement of millions of euro of public money. He was later charged. Cristina was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/princess-cristina-spain-scandal-court">formally named as a suspect in 2013</a> and charged early in January this year. </p>
<p>The growing sense of scandal and waste has taken its toll on his popularity – his approval rating fell to 41% and there were further calls for his abdication, even from people who had previously supported him. His health has also been poor: he has undergone a series of hip operations after several falls. In January this year Juan Carlos made his first public appearance in two months for the “Pascua Militar”, the opening of the military year. Looking frail, his speech was hesitant and he stumbled over his words, which prompted renewed talk of abdication.</p>
<h2>Can the monarchy survive?</h2>
<p>In his abdication statement, Juan Carlos referred to Prince Felipe, 46, as “the incarnation of stability” – and he is well prepared for the job, having studied in Canada and the US as well as completing his military training in Spain. He has stood in for his father on several occasions and his personal popularity has remained strong with an approval rating of about 66%. </p>
<p>Felipe VI will bring a new style to the Spanish monarchy, with his wife, former news anchor Letizia Ortiz, styled as “<a href="http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/06/02/actualidad/1401702757_497884.html">the first middle-class queen</a>”. The couple is generally well-liked, but the institution of monarchy has suffered in the last few years – and Felipe won’t have the opportunity, like his father did, to appear as the saviour of democracy. </p>
<p>The revisionists are already at work. Despite all the recent criticism, the Spanish media are falling over themselves to praise Juan Carlos and his many achievements. And when the dust settles, Felipe will have to face some difficult challenges: Spain is still deeply in economic crisis with high unemployment and a political class dogged by accusations of corruption. As for Felipe, all eyes will be on his investment ceremony (there will be no coronation as the king of Spain doesn’t wear a crown) and how much public money is spent on it. </p>
<p>Meanwhile he will have to weather the storm of his own sister’s trial. Regardless of her guilt or innocence, if she is cleared, the public will assume preferential treatment. If Cristina is found guilty and sentenced, all eyes will be on how she is punished. The outcome of the trial, and Felipe’s reaction to it, will be a key point of reference for how he is perceived by Spaniards and perhaps the future of the Spanish monarchy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fernando Rosell-Aguilar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Spanish monarchy has been thrown into crisis after the king, Juan Carlos I, announced his decision to abdicate the throne after 39 years in favour of his son Felipe. The news was conveyed via the royal…Fernando Rosell-Aguilar, Lecturer in Spanish, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.