The Truth About Spain - Literal Magazine - 2007

6/12/2015
TheTruthaboutSpain:AmericanHispanism,theSpanishCivilWar,andtheCrisisofAcademicLegitimacyLiteralMagazine
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INISSUE:LITERAL9
THETRUTHABOUT
SPAIN:AMERICAN
HISPANISM,THE
SPANISHCIVIL
WAR,ANDTHE
CRISISOF
ACADEMIC
LEGITIMACY
SEBASTIAANFABER
Almost from the moment of its outbreak in July 1936, the
SpanishCivilWarsparkedintensepubliccontroversyinmany
different countries, not least in the United States. For some,
the embattled Republican government represented the last
bastion of democracy against fascism on the march. For
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others, the military rebels led by Franco were Christian

crusadersfightinggodlessCommunism.Throughoutthethree
yearsthatthewarragedon,intellectuals,politicians,religious
leaders, and activists in Europe and the Americas violently
disputedeachothersversionsofthetruthaboutSpain.
byJosAntonioManzanilla
Madrid
COLUMNISTS /
Seventy years later, surprisingly little has changed. The
disagreementsoverwhatreallyhappenedbetween1936and
1939 seem just as intense, and just as intractable, as during
the war itself. In March 2007, the opening in New York of an
exhibit showing how the Civil War was experienced and
perceivedbythecityanditsinhabitantsaboutathousandof
whom joined the Republican army as international volunteers
gave rise to some testy exchanges among scholars,
journalists,andveteransrelatives.RecentworkbyAmerican,
British,andSpanishhistoriansoftheCivilWarhascomeinfor
sharp criticism and praise from academic colleagues. And in
Spainitself,theanniversaryyearof2006hashelpedreviveor
intensify decadeslong disagreements that show no signs of
abating. The Spanish disputes are particularly significant
because conflicting interpretations of the war are directly
linked to the much wider debate about the legacy of
Francoisma debate that was skirted in the countrys
transition to democracy in the late 1970s, but that has now
comebacktohauntitwithavengeance.
In all three of these recent polemics, the dissenting parties
tend to accuse each other of political bias while claiming for
themselvesapositionofsoberobjectivity.Inpractice,noone
iswillingtogivetheoppositesideaninch.This,too,hasbeen
a general pattern in seven decades worth of discussions
aboutthetopic.Itseemsthattoomanygroupsandindividuals
have too much invested, personally or politically, in particular
versions of the Spanish war. The result is a continuous,
tiresomeand ultimately erosivestalemate. Since the
mutual charges of political bias have proven utterly
unproductive, it might be time to rethink the implicit
assumption that the Civil War can or should be approached
from an objective or neutral position. Perhaps the never
ending debates over the Spanish war even provide a useful
starting point for a more general reflection on the role of
affective and political investments when it comes to
establishing a consensus about historical truth. This is not a
new issue, of course. But I would argue that it is closely
relatedtoapressingprobleminourcurrent,mediasaturated
world: the waning legitimacy of scholarship and journalism,
two discourses that ground their institutional authority in
COLUMNISTAS
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particularnotionsofrigorandobjectivity.
ItiswellknownthateventsinSpainbetween1936and1939
mesmerized large sections of the American and European
public. For Western intellectuals, in particular, the Spanish
CivilWarquicklyturnedintoamoraltestcase:givenwhatwas
at stake, many thought, it was impossible not to take sides.
And many intellectuals, activists, religious or civic leaders
indeedtookapublicpositiononthewaralthoughitissafeto
say that most of them were not, by any measure, experts of
thingsSpanish.
But what impact did the outbreak of the war have on those
who did know Spain? What was the reaction from foreign
scholarsofSpanishlanguage,literature,culture,andhistory?
The available evidence suggests that their reactions varied
widely.Somejoinedthefiercepublicdebateonthewar.This
wasthecaseofProfessorAllisonPeers,oneofBritainsmost
prominentHispanists,whopublishedalargenumberofbooks
and articles on the topic, in which he tended to favor the
Franco side. In the United States, however, only a handful of
Hispanistsdecidedtospeakoutpubliclyonthewar.Thelarge
majority of Spanish teachers and professors, including the
fields institutional leadership, were extremely hesitant to
comment on contemporary Peninsular politics. In December
1936, the edi tor of Hispania, the journal of the American
Associated of Teachers of Spanish, wrote that he had
receivedalargeamountoflettersandarticlesaboutthewar,
butthathethoughtitbestnottopublishanythingonthetopic
that could be considered as biased. Other journals adopted
a similar attitude. In practice, American Hispanists all but
ignored the war in their professional journals and meetings.
(Hispania would publish nothing of consequence on the
subjectfordecades.)
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WhywereAmericanscholarsofSpainsoreluctanttojointhe
debate on a topic so close to their professional and personal
interests? For one, they felt that, as academic experts of
language, literature and culture, they had no business
commenting on politics. More important, they feared that any
association with controversial issues of the day would have a
disastrous effect on the public image and legitimacy of their
profession. This, at least, was the argument made by the
prominentHispanistHenryGrattanDoyle.Wemustallwatch
ourstep,hewroteinlate1939Thefutureofoursubjectsis
largely in our own hands. To be sure, Doyle wrote, faculty
serve as interpreters of the culture of the nations whose
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languagetheyteach.Butthatdoesnotmeanthatweshould
let ourselves become in the slightest degree political
apologists orworse stillconscious or unconscious
propaganda agents for any foreign nation (93): Even if the
Spanish struggle had presented a clearcut issue of
dictatorshipversusdemocracy, it would have been important
tofollowthedictatesofgoodsenseandkeeptheteachingof
Spanish free from confusion with the political claims of one
side or the other in the minds of our fellowcitizens (95).
Ironically, then, it was exactly when a large number of public
figures in the United States joined the intense public
discussion on the situation in Spain that the topic became
somethingofataboofortheacademicexpertsonthecountry.
Things today, of course, have changed. American Hispanists
arenolongerafraidtoaddresstheSpanishCivilWarintheir
classes. In fact, for Iberian Studies the war has become a
central topic, particularly attractive from a culturalstudies
standpoint. After all, few episodes in twentiethcentury Spain
presentsuchanintricatecombinationofpoliticsandhighand
lowcultural forms, or so many opportunities for
interdisciplinary,transnational,andtransculturalresearch.The
large majority of American Hispanists who work on the Civil
War, moreover, make little attempt at political neutrality
almost as a matter of course, most assume some level of
solidarity with the Republic. It is with this solidarity, however,
that some conservative American scholars and intellectuals
take issue. Hence the continued controversy around the
Spanish Civil War in the American public sphere. The turmoil
aroundtheNewYorkexhibitprovesthispointoncemore.
Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War
openedonMarch23,2007,organizedbytheMuseumofthe
CityofNewYorktogetherwiththeInstitutoCervantes,NYUs
TamimentLibrary,andtheAbrahamLincolnBrigadeArchives.
(Disclosure: I sit on ALBAs board of governors.) The exhibit
andanaccompanyingcollectionofessaysaimtoillustratethe
citys multiple reactions to the outbreak of violence in Spain.
Even before the show opened, however, it drew sharp
criticism. On March 22, the New York Sun published a
scathing review in which Ronald Radosh, emeritus professor
of history at CUNY, accused the curators of presenting an
outdated,romanticized,andpoliticallydisingenuousversionof
the war. Radosh was particularly dismissive of the way the
exhibit described the role played by the American volunteers
in Spain. For him, the exhibits evident purpose is further
glamorizinganddistortingtherecordwithabiasedaccountof
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the issues, an account that represents the events of the

1930s as a simple morality play of good guys versus bad
guys. While the exhibit claims that the New Yorkers who
joinedtheCivilWarwenttodefenddemocracyagainstfascism
Radoshwritesinrealitytheinternationalvolunteerfighters
were a Comintern directed army, meant to help Stalin
achieve his goal of establishing a Sovietstyle peoples
republicontheIberianPeninsula.[T]hefairytalesoftheold
left,Radoshconcludes,onceagaintakeholdasthetenured
radicals of academia advance their campaign to resurrect
myths with a public exhibit. The New York Times soon
followedwithasimilarlyskepticalpiece.[T]hisshowdeviates
little from what would have once been called the party line,
reviewer Edward Rothstein noted The real situation is far
morecomplicatedthananythingsuggestedhere.
Thereviewssparkedaseriesofcriticalresponses.Professor
Radoshs attack on this book and exhibition seems
unfortunate, unfair, and misplaced, wrote James Fernndez,
professor of Spanish at NYU and coeditor of the book
accompanying the exhibit. According to Fernndez it is
Radoshwhopresentsasimplified,tendentiousreadingofthe
war, partially based on falsehoods and distortion. The exhibit
and the book, by contrast, aim precisely to reaffirm
complexity and to challenge received ideas, to abandon
simplistic paradigms. Jim Skillman, an Atlantabased activist
associated with the ALBA, sent a parodic letter to the Sun in
which he applied for a reviewers position: I have recently
been made aware that actually attending the events and
exhibitionsIwouldwriteaboutisnotarequirement,andthatit
isonlynecessaryformysubmissionstoreflectyourrightwing
reactionary neocon political line. Dan Watt, in turn, son of
LincolnBrigaderGeorgeWatt,wrotetotheTimesstatingthat
its review was blatantly unfair to the men and women of the
Lincoln Brigade who risked their lives to fight for the
democraticallyelectedSpanishgovernment.
Asthisexchangeshows,mostoftheCivilWarpolemicsinthe
AmericanpublicspherecenterontheroleofCommunismand
theSovietUnioninthe1930sandafter.Thesamecanbesaid
ofrecentdiscussionsamongprofessionalhistoriansandhere,
too,thetonehasbecomeunusuallysharp.Inareviewessay
for the Journal of Contemporary History, the British historian
ChrisEalhamdismissedthetwolatestbooksbyStanleyPayne
with Gabriel Jackson one of the two most prominent
American experts of Spanish Civil War historyas politically
motivated distortions of the historical record: a simplistic
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narrativeofleftistmisdeeds.Paynesallconsumingdesireto
attack the twisted logic of the left, Ealham writes, means
thathecansustainhiscentralargumentonlybysystematically
omitting conflicting material and/or by adopting outlandish
views. Payne himself, meanwhile, has been equally
dismissive of fellow historians more sympathetic to the
Republic, denouncing what he sees as the predominance of
leftist views among Spanish academic historians and, more
generally,astiflingregimeofpoliticalcorrectness.
In Spain, the disagreement is less sharp among academic
historians than between academic historians and intellectuals
writingaboutrecentSpanishhistoryforalarger,layaudience.
ParticularlynotoriousinthisrespecthasbeenPoMoa,whose
Losmitosdelaguerracivil(2004)becameabestseller.While
Moa claims to present new and revealing facts about the
responsibilityoftheSpanishleftfortheoutbreakofthewar
theoriginofwhichheplacesinthegeneralstrikeof1934the
academic establishment dismisses his work as a tendentious
andunrigorousrecyclingofFrancoistinterpretationsthathave
long been discredited by meticulous research. Still, the
academichistoriansareatalosstoexplainMoastremendous
popularity, and are not quite sure if and how to counteract
whattheyseeasacampaignofmisinformation.
It seems, then, that the tensions between politics and
academic rigor remain as unresolved as they were in the
1930s. This is not only true for Spain but also for the United
States, where conservative intellectuals have been
complainingabouttheliberalbiasoftheAmericanuniversity,
especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Publicists
like David Horowitzsomething of an American Moahave
decried what they see as the overwhelming presence, at
universities and colleges all over the country, of leftleaning
scholarswhoplacepoliticaladvocacyabovethedisinterested
pursuit of truth. Horowitz claims to fight for intellectual
diversity, and invokes notions of propriety, professional
conduct, and scholarly norms. Professors, he says, should
strictlylimitthesubjectmatterdiscussedintheirclassestothe
area of their scholarly expertise and the topic of the course
politics have no place in a literature course. Moreover, when
addressing controversial issues within their scholarly field,
teachersshouldbesuretoseparatefactfromopinion,present
morethanoneviewpoint,andnotprivilegetheirownposition.
Stanley Fish has similarly urged his fellow academics not to
confuseyouracademicobligationswiththeobligationtosave
theworldandnottocrosstheboundarybetweenacademic
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work and partisan advocacy. For Fish, the true task of

academicworkisthesearchfortruthandthedissemination
ofitthroughteaching:ourjobisnottochangetheworld,but
to interpret it. Curiously, Fish and Horowitz thus end up
proposing something similar to Henry Doyle in 1939:
professorial neutrality and selfrestraint, based on a sharp
distinction between the search for truth, on the one hand,
and politics or advocacy on the other. As we have seen,
this distinction is not really helpful when it comes to resolving
theSpanishCivilWardebates,inwhichthedistinctiontendsto
serve as little more than a rhetorical strategy to reject
opponentsargumentsoutofhand.
In Spain, the tension between scholarly expertise and control
of the public sphere has been particularly vexing. The
tremendouscommercialsuccessofrevisionistslikePoMoa
has in part been possible because they fill a void. The
successive governments of postFranco Spain never dared
establish anything resembling a national consensus on the
historicalnarrativeoftheCivilWarandFrancoism.Whilethere
issomedegreeofconsensusamongmainstreamscholarsof
Spanish history, nothing of the kind exists among the
population at large, many of whom were barely taught about
the1930sinschool.ItisoftensaidthatSpainstransitionwas
basedonacollectiveformofamnesia.Thisisnotentirelytrue:
much has been written and published in postFranco Spain
about the 1930s. Given the particular dynamics of the
countrys transition to democracy, however, most of these
writings were never allowed to gel into any coherent general
picture that could serve as the basis of, for instance,
secondaryschooltextbooks.
To make matters worse, all parties involved like to link points
of historical interpretation directly to the fraught political
present,whichisentirelydominatedbytherivalrybetweenthe
ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) and the oppositional Partido
Popular (PP). The populares accuse the current Prime
Minister, Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, of pursuing a
radical agenda that threatens Spanish peace and territorial
integrity.Forthesocialistas, in turn, important sections of the
PP still represent an atavistic, authoritarian conservatism that
is out of step with the European right and maintains
dangerous connections with neoFrancoist currents.
Moreover, the three main points of conflict between the PP
andthePSOEaredirectlyrelatedtothelegacyofFrancoism
orcanbeconstruedasrepeatsoftheideologicalstrugglesof
the 1930s: the Socialists push for social liberalization and
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secularization (legalization of gay marriage, stricter

enforcement of churchstate separation) its willingness to
negotiate about increased regional autonomy, and its
consequent openness toward peace talks with ETA and its
wishtorevisitorevenredressSpainstransitiontodemocracy,
allowing for a more explicit condemnation of the Franco
regime and for statesponsored forms of recognition of its
many victims. By now the rivalry between the PP and PSOE
has led to a serious breakdown of public discourse, as the
Spanish media has become almost completely politicized
alongpartylines.
Drawn into this political maelstrom, journalism and academic
discoursehaveahardtimeholdingtheirown.Theirtraditional
claimstotruth,basedonastrictadherencetostrictnormsof
rigor and objectivity, are constantly being questioned and
undermined. The confused reactions from established
historians in the face of Po Moas popularity illustrate this
dilemma well. What do you do when badly researched lies
receiveamuchwidercoveragethanwhatyouknowtobethe
scholarlytruth?Historiansresponseshavevaried:somehave
chosen to ignore Moa altogether others have tried to refute
his theses. Julin Casanova, one of the most prominent of
Spanish historians, has chosen to delegitimize pseudo
historians like Moa by invoking the institutional authority of
professional historians, who fuel new research and take
their teachings to classrooms and scholarly conferences.
Casanovas appeal to institutional power is a weak defense,
though, in part because it implies a blanket disqualification of
amateurs.SpanishCivilWarhistoriographywouldnotbewhat
it is today without the contribution of aficionados like Gerald
Brenan, Hugh Thomas, or Herbert Southworth, a Texasborn
librarian for whom the war would become a lifelong
obsession.
TheworkofSouthworth,infact,mightpointtoawayoutofthe
politicsversustruth dilemma. Southworth (19081999) spent
most of his life in search of the truth about Spain,
meticulously demolishing the myths that in Francos Spain
passedforofficialCivilWarhistoriography.Southworthwasa
rigorous historian if there ever was one, yet he was also an
amateur, a Hispanophile, and deeply committed to the cause
of the Republic. His work shows that rigor and political
commitmentdonotonlynotexcludeeachother,butthattheir
combination can be mutually reinforcing. The energy needed
forSouthworthsdecadeslongsearchforthetruthisprovided
by his political outrage over the Republics defeat. For
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Southworth, moreover, rigor an unconditional commitment

totruthandscholarlyintegrityisnotthesameasneutralityor
impartiality. Perhaps, he wrote in 1963, impartial students
ofaconflictcannoteludethenormaltendencytoaccuseand
defend each side in equal measure, dividing up the
responsibilityandwarcrimesintwoequalpartsandgiveone
to each side. But this implies an erroneous vision of the
Republican camp, which doubtlessly had the law and justice
onitsside(146).Thetruth,inshort,isneverneutral.
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6/12/2015

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others, the military rebels led by Franco were Christian

the issues, an account that represents the events of the

work and partisan advocacy. For Fish, the true task of

secularization (legalization of gay marriage, stricter

Southworth, moreover, rigor an unconditional commitment

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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