Breath of fresh air

Wednesday, 08 September 2010 14:20

Written by Editor

Muriel Pilkington The Local Voice

In his review of “The Myths of the Civil War” by controversial historian Pio Moa,  (right), who wrote the definitive book on fascism, says that what matters is not that Moa was correct on every issue – no historian can be, Payne says – but that his “critical, innovative” work brings a breath of fresh air to a vital area of contemporary Spanish history that has long been stultified by stereotypes and a “long dominant political correctness”.

He particularly hits the nail on the head when he advises those who disagree with Moa to “demonstrate their disagreement in terms of objective research and serious analysis that takes up the serious issues that he raises, rather than seeking to suppress his work through a kind of censorship of silence or denunciatory diatribes more worthy of Fascist Italy or the Soviet Union than of democratic Spain”.

Payne accuses contemporary Spanish historians of avoiding the issues raised by the civil war or acting as if they had already been resolved – which is far from the case. For Payne, the Spanish Civil War will be debated for a long time, like the French and Revolutions. He praises Moa because his quartet of books about the war – its origins (1999), its Republican protagonists in their own words (2000), the downfall of the Republic (2001) and its myths (2003) – is “the most important endeavour by any historian writing in any language during the past two decades to reinterpret the history of the Republic and the Civil War”.

The public responded enthusiastically to The Myths of the Civil War - it sold more than 150,000, making it a bestseller by Spanish standards. However, Payne notes that with very few exceptions the response from historians and reviewers – when they didn’t ignore it or dismiss it as unworthy of consideration - was an icy hostility. Payne gives at least three reasons for this extremely negative response. One was the fantasy that it broke a "pact of silence" about troublesome issues relating to the Franco regime during the 1976-78 transition period. Payne says this pact did not exist, that the one adopted at that time had to do instead “with renouncing the politics of vengeance and beginning democracy for all with a clean slate”. In recent years, the Left has been very vocal about the sins of the Franco regime – no pact of silence for them – but when anyone on the Right mentions the sins of the Second Republic, the Left immediately invokes this pact. Do as I say not as I do.

The second reason is that contemporary critics of the long Franco dictatorship concentrate on the more sensationalist aspects, rejecting any serious historical analysis which makes it harder to understand how franquismo came about in the first place.

The third reason is the current domination of "politically correct" attitudes among intellectuals, the universities and the media in western countries, Payne says, noting that political correctness varies from country to country. In the United States, for example, it has concentrated on issues of race, resulting in what he calls "victimophilia". In Spain, he says, this has recently taken the form of highlighting the victims of the Franco regime, but there is little or no concern for victims of the Left. In recent years, this has led to what Payne calls a “mountain” of works on the iniquities of the Franco regime - many of which are genuine enough, but others are sometimes imagined or exaggerated - and a huge void on the other side of the political equation.

If they are only too eager to ignore the Republic's sins, contemporary left-wingers are even more eager to forget shortcomings of the leaders of the Republic, especially Azaña, Alcalá Zamora, Prieto and Largo Caballero, which Moa sets out – mainly in their own words – in his second book. Payne says that rarely has a political regime in the history of modern Europe had a more self-destructive group of political leaders than those of the Second Republic: “By comparison, the leaders of the Weimar Republic in Germany were much of the time a seasoned group of wise democratic statesmen. With leadership such as that enjoyed by the Second Republic and policies as destructive as those of the leftist and revolutionary parties, to attribute its downfall to the conspiracy of a handful of wealthy reactionaries may make a good fairy tale or political fable, but has nothing to do with serious critical political history.”

Fortunately, a degree of objectivity has been achieved in recent years, thanks to historians like Moa and Payne and Hugh Thomas, whose objective 1961 book on the civil war laid the groundwork for future historians. More and more historians are coming round to the idea that both sides were "almost equally" responsible for originating the conflict, and were almost equally atrocious in its prosecution.

I shall now try to track down historians who can write objectively about the Franco years.