Modern Spain
What to read (and watch) to understand contemporary Spain
Six books and two films on the civil war, the dictatorship and the years since
Free Way Bar, Calle Corredera Alta de San Pablo 17. Madrid, Spain.Credit: Lucas Vallecillos / VWPics / Redux / eyevineFor further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com
Nov 1st 2022
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Spain is visited by millions of English-speaking tourists every year, drawn by sun, sand, sangría and in some cases culture. Yet the modern country is oddly little-known. Outsiders’ views of it are often fixed by the writing of George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway about the civil war of 1936-39, which was not only part of a global struggle against fascism but also an especially bloody episode in a century-long domestic battle between conservatives and modernisers. The victor, Francisco Franco, ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975. Since then Spain has changed with extraordinary speed, becoming in many ways a “normal” western European democracy with a tolerant, free-wheeling society. That tolerance and the country’s political system have been tested over the past decade in several ways, including by an economic slump from 2008 to 2013 and by the rise of separatism in Catalonia. Both are proving resilient. This selection of books and films includes some gripping works on the country’s history as well as explorations of the present democratic period from different vantage points.
The New Spaniards. By John Hooper. Penguin; 480 pages; $18 and £10.99
First published in 1986 and fully revised in 2006, this is still the best general introduction to modern democratic Spain. Mr Hooper, who is now The Economist’s Rome correspondent, reported from Madrid during the transition to democracy. He writes perceptively about Spanish society and culture as well as politics and regional tensions.
The Forging of a Rebel. By Arturo Barea. Translated by Ilsa Barea. Steerforth Press; 768 pages; $19.95. Pushkin Press; £14.99
This panoramic autobiographical memoir in three volumes was originally published in English between 1941 and 1946, when the author was in exile in Britain, and not published in Spain until after Franco’s death. The first volume describes Barea’s childhood as the bright son of a washerwoman in Lavapiés, then as now a poor barrio in Madrid. The second finds him as a junior officer in a colonial war in Morocco in which the rottenness of the army is exposed by a catastrophic defeat. A Socialist, his initially enthusiastic commitment to the Republican cause turns to disillusion in the third volume, a searing personal account of the horror of the civil war in Madrid and the creeping Communist control that forced him into exile.
Blood of Spain. By Ronald Fraser. Vintage; 624 pages; £17.99
Fraser’s sweeping oral history of the civil war, published in 1979, is based on lengthy interviews with participants on all sides while they were still alive. The result is a vivid account of the course of the war and the social revolution on the Republican side which captures the hopes and fears of many before the outcome became inevitable.
The Anatomy of a Moment. By Javier Cercas. Bloomsbury; 416 pages; 18 and £10.99
This book is a compelling journalistic investigation by one of Spain’s leading contemporary novelists of the coup attempt of 1981, the failure of which helped to consolidate a young democracy. Mr Cercas explains the crucial role of King Juan Carlos in defusing the coup, debunking recent claims that he was involved in it. And his book is also a stirring defence of the necessarily messy compromises that secured the country’s successful transition from Franco’s dictatorship to a modern European democracy. (Read our full review.)
Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion. By J.H. Elliott. Yale University Press; 360 pages; $30 and £20
John Elliott, who died earlier this year, was one of the great historians of Spain. We called this comparative history of two cultural nations which have recently experienced drives for independence “pioneering and scrupulously even-handed”. It notes that common elements between Catalonia and Scotland include the exploitation of a mythologised past and mistakes by governments in Madrid and London. Its sad verdict on recent events in Catalonia is that “a prosperous, friendly and outward-looking society…turned inward and began to tear itself apart.” Read our full review.
After the Fall: Crisis, Recovery and the Making of a New Spain. By Tobias Buck. Orion; 320 pages; $17.99 and £10.99
A former Financial Times correspondent in Madrid reports in depth on the impact of the 2008-13 property bust and economic slump. Mr Buck chronicles the deep social scars left by large-scale unemployment, as well as the creation of Podemos, a new hard-left party, out of the anti-austerity protest movement of the indignados. Other chapters look at the rise of separatism in Catalonia and the end of ETA terrorism in the Basque country.
Volver. Directed by Pedro Almodóvar (2006).
This is perhaps the best film by Spain’s pre-eminent contemporary director, drawing on the enduring pull of the ancestral rural pueblo for modern urbanites and the continuing importance of the extended family, as well as the central role of women within it. It is all leavened with a characteristic streak of surrealism, the counterpoint to the deep hold that Catholicism has on Spain’s imagination, if no longer on its beliefs and behaviour.
Alcarràs. Directed by Carla Simón (2022).
An almost ethnographic film by an impressive young director that chronicles change in rural Spain, “Alcarràs” concerns the loss of a fruit farm near Lleida in Catalonia to the forces of modernisation, the strength of the family (once again) and the ghostly presence of African seasonal labourers, economically vital but ignored by society. It features a cast of locals who are not professional actors.■
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“Spain: the Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country”, by Michael Reid, our former Madrid correspondent, will be published by Yale University Press in March 2023. It explains how Spain’s democracy, previously seen as exemplary, suffered three waves of populism (Podemos on the left, Catalan separatism, and Vox on the right) after the economic slump of 2008-13 and how it survived them, not without scars.
