Ahí tenéis un buen rollo en inglés, para que lo disfrutéis los anglomorfos o angloides, yo no entiendo ni jota, supongo que pone a Moa a caer de un burro:
English Historical Review Vol. CXXII No. 496
© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
doi:10.1093/ehr/cem088
Review–Article
Moaist Revolution and the Spanish Civil War:
‘ Revisionist ’ History and Historical Politics
Los mitos de la guerra civil. By P ío M oa ( Madrid : Esfera de los Libros , 2003 ;
pp. 640. Eur 29 );
Franco — Un balance histórico. By P ío M oa ( Barcelona : Planeta , 2005 ;
pp. 180. Eur 19 );
Vivir en Guerra: Historia Ilustrada, España 1936 – 1939. By J avier T usell
( Madrid : Silex , 2003 ; pp. 224. Eur 19 );
El infi erno fuímos nosotros: La guerra civil española (1936 – 1942 ). By B artolomé
B ennassar ( Madrid : Taurus/Santillana , 2005 ; pp. 537. Eur 23.50 );
Los mitos de la represión en la guerra civil. By Ángel David M artín Rubio
( Madrid : Grafi te , 2005 ; pp. 283. N.p.);
Franco’s Justice: Repression in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War. By J ulius
Ru iz ( Oxford : Oxford U.P. , 2 005 ; pp. 269. £53 );
Republic of Egos — A Social History of the Spanish Civil War. By M ichael
S eidman ( Madison : Wisconsin U.P. , 2002 ; pp. 406. $55 ; pb. $24.95 ).
I
The Spanish general election of March 1996 was a close contest between
the centre-left Socialist party (PSOE) — in power for more than thirteen
years — and the centre-right Popular Party (PP). The previous decade
had seen the development of an underlying consensus, both of principle
and policy, between the main constituents of Spanish politics. During
this period a mixed economy, liberalised public culture, equality of
opportunity, progress towards social justice, and recognition of regional
autonomies, had moved to a secure zone beyond partisan dispute.
Despite — though also because of — the continuing depredations of the
Basque separatists of ETA, bridges were constructed over the turbulent
rivers of a deeply divisive past. In the solid centre of politics now lay a
lodestone of constitutional gravitas which seemed at once to be the
coping-stone of ‘ La Transición ’ — Spain’s slow and deliberate journey
from dictatorship to democracy, and from relative poverty to a consumer
society, to which many observers (the present writer among them)
wonderingly attached the word ‘ miraculous ’ .
The PP, under its charismatic young leader José María Aznar, won a
narrow election victory and formed a minority government. But this
443
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
demonstration of healthy democratic processes came at a price which
at the time aroused little comment. By unfortunate coincidence, the
election took place in the year which marked the 60th anniversary of the
civil war (1936 – 9) which brought General Franco to power: and with
him a dictatorship which lasted until his death in 1975. At the hustings,
the Socialist leadership accused the PP of being a creation (by extension,
a vehicle) of Francoism. In a surprising riposte, Aznar responded by
identifying his party with the legacy of Manuel Azaña, regarded by most
Spaniards as the exact opposite of Franco’s. Azaña was President of
the much-lamented Republic overthrown in 1939. Fifty years after his
death in 1940, he had achieved general recognition as the outstanding
protagonist in the tragic history of ‘ Spain’s fi rst democracy ’ .
For the fi rst time, but (as things have proved) irreversibly, the civil
war had been dragged into the arena of democratic politics. A tacit
moratorium between the parties— fundamental to the ‘ transition’ — was
thus annulled. Following Franco’s death, a ‘ Pact of Forgetfulness ’ (or
‘ Pact of Silence ’ ) placed limitations on public invocation of civil-war
memories. Of course, everyone knew that numberless grievances had
never been fully extinguished. But, like the ‘ disappeared ’ rivers of this
drought-ridden era in Spain’s climatic history, streams of resentment
had seemed destined to run a harmless subterranean course towards
oblivion. Now, suddenly, the bridges trembled and a warning roar was
heard from the foaming waters beneath. Many in Spain — not just PSOE
faithful — angrily rejected Aznar’s claims to be Azañista as a tendentious
re-writing of history. Yet the experience of the fi rst PP administration
went some way to justify these pretensions. Not long after Aznar’s
victory at the polls, for example, the Cortes voted unanimously to offer
honorary Spanish nationality to all foreigners still living who had fought
for the Republic in the International Brigades. It was strange, Spain
being a kingdom with no role for overt republicanism, that men who
had fought the monarchist Franco were now invited to become subjects
of his royal successor. Strange, too, that in these years of centre-right
government the cause of the Second Republic fi nally became the offi cial
(almost the constitutional) inscription of Spanish democracy. As late
as 2002, a PP-dominated Cortes adopted a formal resolution — again
unanimously — acknowledging that the Civil War was the result of a
military coup which was both illegal and unjustifi ed. Though neither
of these confessions was legally binding on Spaniards, taken together
there seemed to be a tacit implication that failure to subscribe to the
Republic’s left-liberal heritage was tantamount to a lack of patriotism.
Under Aznar, the economy fl ourished as never before, and standards
of living achieved parity with the affl uent elite of the EU. Spain emerged
from centuries of political decline and economic dependence. The PP
was duly rewarded with an overall majority in the election of 2000. The
sound of agitated waters receded to a murmur. In 1995, I queued with
hundreds of young people in Madrid, eager to see Ken Loach’s fi lm
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
444 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
‘ Land and Freedom ’ . Only three years later, amid the ruins of Belchite,
I encountered a group of teenagers on a school trip. 1 They told me not
only that they did not know anything about the civil war, but that
they positively did not want to know. Then came 9/11. Aznar lined up
unequivocally with Bush and Blair over ‘ the war on terror ’ , supported
the invasion of Iraq, and sent Spanish army units to bolster post-war
occupation forces. Party politics were convulsed, since the PSOE, along
with the left-wing Catalan government, bitterly opposed Aznar’s policy.
The early years of the present century were dominated by acrid disputes
over this issue. Party antipathy was compounded by the equally misconceived
government dedication to a gigantic project, intended to
redistribute the precious waters of the Ebro river to farms and other
enterprises in Aragon (a region of strong PP support) — to the perceived
detriment of Catalonia (which is not). For all their virulence, such
quarrels were not suffi cient to give the ‘ Pact of Silence ’ its quietus. From
the late 1980s onwards, it was being steadily undermined by local and
improvised groups engaged in the disinterment of human remains from
collective graves in various areas of Spain. Amateur archaeologists and
local historians, along with descendants of persons believed murdered
by Francoists during and after the civil war, set up an ‘ Association for
the Recovery of Historical Memory ’ . Sponsored by local authorities,
fi nancial institutions, and media sources, this grew into a powerful
lobby. When Aznar’s cabinet rejected its demand for government
support, a public outcry ensued. The murky waters of its history once
again threatened to inundate Spain.
Meanwhile, in 1999, almost unnoticed, an obscure librarian published
the initial volume of a fi ve-part history of the Second Republic (1931 – 6),
a subject more or less coterminous with that of ‘ the origins of the
civil war ’ . 2 This, and subsequent instalments of Pío Moa’s work, were
largely ignored by the press and scholarly journals, but brisk sales belied
the indifference of the professional intelligentsia. 3 In 2003, as the
eggshell surface of consensus politics began to show hair-lines of stress,
Moa produced Los mitos de la Guerra Civil. Here, the politically correct
line was characterised as a narrative construction, maintained in the
interests of a politico-cultural establishment which was leftist by its very
nature. Moa became a mouthpiece for those on the right who felt the
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
‘ peaceful co-existence ’ of the previous twenty years had been predicated
on their silence — indeed, that it was based upon denigration of the
Nationalist legacy, to the point that the very legitimacy of right-wing
democratic politics was denied.
II
The premiss of Moa’s history was announced in its opening pages: 4
‘ My basic thesis is that the insurrection [of October 1934] constituted,
literally and in the fullest sense, the beginning of the Spanish civil war. ’
This statement was a shell intended to open a breach in the walls of
orthodoxy. Moa attacked the framework of ‘ facts ’ supporting the quasioffi
cial historiographical consensus, seeking to demolish the belief that
the civil war began in July 1936, with a military rebellion against a moderate
government legally elected to power. In so doing, he switched the focus
from 1936 to 1934, and moral opprobrium over the civil war from right
to left. The original sin of betraying democracy, the treason from which all
Spain’s subsequent sufferings fl owed, was the responsibility of the parties
which governed during the opening phase of the Republic (1931 – 3), a
period dominated in parliamentary terms by the PSOE. Moa showed that
many of the Republic’s founding fathers refused to accept the verdict of
the December 1933 election which ejected them from power. Some fl irted
with the idea of rebellion, others contemplated unlawful demonstrations
of discontent. In particular, the PSOE espoused (overtly) the policies and
(secretly) the political tactics of violent workers’ revolution.
It is one thing to accept the case contained in the above paragraph. It
is another to endorse Moa’s more demanding proposition that what the
leftist enemies of the Republic consciously intended in 1934 was not a
successful revolution on the Bolshevik model, but rather a long and
bloody civil war, on the distinctly unmodelled lines of the Russian civil
war of 1918–21. 5 Yet Moa states unequivocally that ‘ the uprising
[ movimiento ] of October was explicitly designed as a civil war ’ , and goes
on to title a key chapter ‘ The Left declares a Civil War ’ . 6 The interpretation
seems to fl y in the face of reason and common sense. Can a
civil war be planned at all? Or, if this is not a valid history question, has
a civil war ever been deliberately planned before or since? Perhaps what
446 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
is happening in Iraq as I formulate these doubts should give me pause.
And Moa does not neglect to support his argument, going on to cite
ideas from Austria and the Soviet Union (along with the activities of
Comintern agents in Spain) which influenced the elaboration of
the conspiracy commissioned by Socialist leader Largo Caballero and
masterminded by his aides during the course of 1934. 7
Reservations about the ‘ planned civil war ’ hypothesis are important
because the notion contains nearly all the seeds of dissent from
conventional readings of the 1930s which Moa nurtured in subsequent
volumes of his history. If accepted at face value, there can be no further
debate about ‘ responsibility ’ for the Spanish Civil War (with its revised
dates of 1934 – 9). For Moa goes on to demonstrate exhaustively that the
rising of 1934, along with the simmering disputes and violent clashes
which followed its suppression, led to the disappearance of the political
centre-ground and the defi nitive division of Spaniards into two equal,
mutually fearful communities. This, in turn, leads Moa into two further
phases of his dialectic. First, that proper constitutional government
had effectively collapsed before the onset of the generals’ bid for
power in July 1936. Second, that after this event the left was defeated
in a promiscuously murderous conflict which it had deliberately
precipitated. Thus the Nationalist victors had been justifi ed: their
action was a principled rising, not a selfi sh rebellion. It follows, fi nally,
that they were also justifi ed in punishing their beaten enemies severely
on the basis of a ‘ Law of Political Responsibilities ’ back-dated to October
1934. In sum, the Nationalist Cause — a phrase which to the great
majority of interested persons, at least outside Spain, remains a
contradiction in terms — is elevated onto the high moral ground for so
long unquestioningly occupied by the Republic.
Even without subscribing to the full Moaist agenda (and to the
present writer, the ‘ deliberate civil war ’ hypothesis is ultimately
implausible) many items remain worthy of serious consideration. Of
course, not everything was newly-minted. On the ‘ long civil war ’ issue,
some aspects were already familiar, though Moa fortifi ed the scenario
with fresh material, much of it quarried from the archives of the PSOE
itself. The importance of 1934 to the tragic dénouement of 1936 was
pointed out by Salvador de Madariaga, a celebrated non-aligned
intellectual, soon after the civil war ended. 8 As it happens, The Times’ s
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
correspondent with Franco’s forces had adumbrated this insight in a
fi nal (private) report to his editors. Though Harold ( ‘ Kim ’ ) Philby
believed the 1936 election was won ‘ fair and square ’ by the Popular
Front, he added that ‘ the Nationalist case becomes considerably stronger
when the subsequent record of [the new government] is examined ’ . The
violence of October 1934 now became endemic. Civil war was made
inevitable by ‘ a series of extra-parliamentary aggressions on the part
of the left ’ . Worst of all was the burnings of churches and convents,
by which ‘ the religious sentiments of a large part of the nation were
offended ’ . 9 In a retrospective context which is now rather less than
private, Philby’s account seems more like Moa than Moscow.
Some of Moa’s points are clearly intended to bear out justifi cations
issued at the time by leading conspirators of 1936. Relevant apologias
had been made since the 1970s by Nationalist historians of merit. In the
same era, only two non-Spanish specialists resisted a priori approbation
of the left-liberal consensus. 10 When he came to write Los mitos de la
guerra civil , Moa was ready to harvest his crop. In this book, sheaves
of arrows are launched against every major leftist shibboleth about
the Republic and Civil War periods. 11 Part One contains ten chapters
which examine the reputations of dramatis personae , from the Republic’s
aristocratic inaugural premier, Alcalá-Zamora, to the fi rst-ever anarchist
cabinet minister, García Oliver. 12 In Part Two, a further seventeen
chapters analyse some of the war’s most notorious events (such as
the massacre of clergy, and the atrocities of Badajoz, Gernika, and
Paracuellos) and other controversial topics (Franco’s relief of the Alcázar
of Toledo, Juan Negrín’s surrender of Spain’s gold reserves to Moscow,
the role of the International Brigades). The book is constantly enlivened
by the author’s magus-like revelations of hidden perspectives, often
introducing new, unfamiliar or previously under-employed material.
Although occasional concessions are made to conventional views, the
net result is almost always to throw them into serious doubt.
One essay places under the microscope the Republic’s claim to have
protected Spain’s incomparable artistic heritage. 13 President Azaña
decreed that this was ‘ more important than saving the Republic itself ’ .
The Prado’s collection of masterpieces ( inter alia ) was certainly given
priority over competing demands. Removed from Madrid in November
1936, it later arrived in Switzerland. In fact, the paintings were never in
448 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
serious danger from aerial or artillery bombardment. As Moa argues,
the operation provided endless propaganda copy for ‘ the civilised
world ’ about the allegedly contrasting priorities of ‘ fascist barbarism ’ .
Though this danger too was enormously exaggerated for propaganda
purposes, the non-combatant population of Madrid was certainly
more vulnerable. 14 Yet the Prado operation involved dozens of vehicles
desperately needed for evacuation of the aged and the sick, mothers
and children. While this went on, innumerable artworks of religious
signifi cance were being indiscriminately destroyed all over the Republican
zone. Later, in a panicky moment near the French border, retreating
Republican soldiers burned a consignment of many tons of ‘ minor ’
artworks. In other incidents, abandoned libraries were plundered of
rare books and manuscripts by intellectual opportunists, while items
suspected of ‘ Fascist ’ content were consigned to neo-inquisitorial fl ames.
Moa concludes by suggesting that Republican leaders came near to
auctioning off Velázquezs and Goyas, a scheme rendered attractive by
the need to purchase war munitions. His further suspicions that a closet
motive may have been to provide a fund for a post-war governmentin-
exile, or even for the private benefi t of prominent individuals, at
present lack solid foundation. 15
III
By the time Los mitos appeared, Moa had attracted attention not just for
his ‘ revisionist ’ arguments, but for the irresistibly newsworthy fact that
he was a convert from radical Marxism. Indeed, as a young man he was
arrested by the Francoist authorities for being a member of the terrorist
organisation GRAPO. He served a prison term, and later spent time
in (almost traditional) Parisian exile. 16 Moa’s spirited defence of the
despised dictator, and, above all, his strenuous projection of a moral
case for the Nationalist side in the Civil War, were thus all the more
surprising. Despite its apparent implausibility, typical journalistic
reaction was to associate Moa with ‘ bunkerista ’ writers such as Ricardo
de la Cierva, Franco’s court historian, who doggedly recycled pro-
Nationalist pot-boilers, based on little or no fresh reading, into the late
1990s. 17 But on the whole, Spanish scholarship simply ignored Moa’s
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
books, at least in terms of published reference or public discussion.
Indeed, so uniform was the moratorium that it seemed almost the
product of a self-denying ordinance adopted in common by university
historians. We can only guess at the extent to which senior fi gures in the
fi eld, Javier Tusell and Santos Juliá (for example), were involved in a
‘ policy ’ of asphixiating the maverick intruder with a blanket of silence.
At any rate, the professional ‘ guild ’ rigorously abstained from any comment
which might have implied recognition of Moa as a legitimate
historian. 18
Much the same attitude prevailed in academic circles outside Spain.
In Britain (up to the time of writing) the Spanish practice has been
observed almost unanimously. In one remarkable exception, Helen
Graham, historian of the wartime PSOE and advocate of Juan Negrín,
sallied forth to defend La Niña Bonita against the dragon. 19 Professor
Graham’s review of Los mitos had elements of diatribe, accusing
Moa of ignoring ‘ historical analysis ’ in favour of ‘ a crude repackaging
of Francoist propaganda ’ . In her view, Moa ‘ presents no new evidence ’ .
Furthermore, ‘ his arguments do not count as serious history ’ and
represent ‘ a meretricious concoction ’ aimed at combining ‘ unreconstructed
Francoism’ with ‘ commercial success’. 20 Given this comprehensive
rejection, and the overall context of mute outrage manifested by
indigenous experts, even more striking was the response of Stanley
Payne, a Hispanist of unassailable credentials, whose contributions
(during a research career spanning four decades) are notable for their
objectivity. Payne declared himself broadly satisfi ed with both Moa’s
methodology and his conclusions. 21
In Spain, the phenomenon of Moa’s ‘ box-offi ce ’ success rolled on.
Early in 2003, Moa’s appearance on a popular TV magazine programme
appears to have been the last straw for Javier Tusell. He now spoke out,
sending a letter to the centre-left newspaper El País which lamented the
‘ shameful ’ publicity accorded a writer whom he characterised, if not in
quite so many words, as a dangerous charlatan. 22 Tusell asserted that
Moa’s work ‘ does not merit one line of review ’ ; referring to the author
as ‘ an ex-terrorist translated to the shores of extreme Francoism ’ ; and as
‘ this amateur who has read a few books, on the strength of which he
450 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
questions our professional consensus ’ . Not unreasonably, Moa was riled
at calls for his censorship by the man who — as head of history at the
Universidad de Distancia 23 — was ex offi cio the most familiar face of
Spanish history. He wrote in reply to El País, the editors of which
resolutely refused to print his letter. 24 The fall-out from this incident,
which included an abortive attempt by Moa to invoke anti-censorship
laws against El País , stimulated public attention. Then, out of the
blue, a further unlooked-for impetus was given to what had been a
comparatively esoteric escándalo . On 11 March 2004, terrorists killed
almost 200 commuters on trains heading into Madrid. The disturbing
events surrounding the general election held over the following weekend
led observers to recall allegedly analogous circumstances in 1936. 25
Irrigated by the rising waters, new websites sprouted on all sides, some
exclusively devoted to debating the civil war. Existing sites were inspired
to feature ‘ blogs’, ‘ forums’ and plain old-fashioned reviews of relevant
material. Via the internet pages of Catoblepas , Libertad Digital and
Satiria (to name but a few) the fl ow of opinion now seems endless. 26 The
case of Pío Moa has been fi rmly woven into current politics. It has
consequently provided the world’s fi rst open online debate over a major
historical issue which fl ourishes independently of academic mediation.
The author himself contributes effusively to this phenomenon, employing
nimble gifts of dialectic to instruct, offend and entertain an incalculably
large and promiscuously ‘ interactive ’ readership. Democracy — or at least
a productive demotic current of it — has made a belated (but irreversible)
debut in history, for so long the secluded scriptorium/auditorium of
full-time academics. But before we assume all this is good for business, a
sober note is necessary. Polemic is part of history, sometimes a duty,
frequently a pleasure. In order for the part not to substitute for the
whole, it demands to be written with discipline and read with caution.
IV
Moa’s Franco: un balance histórico is an example of his talent for
combining history and polemic to challenging effect. Since Franco’s
death, apart from the occasional ex-voto offering, biographical analysis
(especially when made by professional historians) has generally been
severe. In an editorial ostensibly devoted to celebrating ‘ thirty years
without Franco ’ , El País actually concentrated on excoriating Moa’s
book, copies of which were stacked to precarious heights on the tables
of Madrid’s best-known bookshops. 27 Here, Moa again draws on his
earlier work for evidence which is used to re-focus controversial issues.
He begins (pp. 17 – 33) with the question of whether Franco traduced the
Republic by plotting its downfall in defi ance of his juramento militar
(loyalty oath). He argues that the rising star’s attitude was impeccable,
and in a characteristic coup de l’épée contrasts this with the behaviour
of politicians, who — except for a handful of honourable exceptions,
not including Manuel Azaña — habitually intrigued against the
Republic. Persuasive in most other departments, Moa’s case is partly
spoiled by his failure to explain Franco’s intervention (when Head of
the Armed Forces) over the election of February 1936. Was he trying
to annul the Popular Front victory, or even seeking support for a
golpe de estado ? The evidence is equivocal over the former and does
not support the latter. But Moa’s contention that, in attempting to
delay declaration of the results, Franco’s overriding concern was to
safeguard public order from the ‘ legitimate rejoicing ’ of the people
also seems unconvincing. Elsewhere, Moa re-examines Franco’s
comportment during the Second World War (pp. 101 – 14). He does
not deny that the caudillo would have preferred a German victory,
nor that the Nazi war-effort was aided in various marginal ways. But
contemporary records of the celebrated encounter between Franco
and Hitler in 1940 are (in Moa’s view) entirely consistent, both within
themselves and with the pragmatic line of policy actually followed
in 1940 – 44. 28 Not even Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the
overthrow of which was in ideological terms devoutly to be wished,
altered the fact that, for Spain, war with Britain was strategically
inconceivable.
Javier Tusell’s decision to condemn Moa openly in 2003 was partly
motivated by the latter’s overt appeals to Spanish youth. 29 His own
textbook on the civil war, intended for students at senior institute and
early university grades, had just appeared. Yet, very curiously, Vivir en
Guerra turned out to have a much more irenic cast than might have
been expected in the circumstances. On several contentious issues,
Tusell himself seems to be reaching for a balanced conclusion rather
than reiterating the clauses of what (in the pages of El País ) he
452 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
simultaneously characterised as ‘ our professional consensus ’ . 30 Wartime
atrocities are a striking case in point. The approach adopted by leftliberal
historians had always been that, while offences did occur in the
Republican zone, they were of diminished moral obloquy because (to
paraphrase the poet) they were a spontaneous overfl ow of communitarian
feeling, whereas Nationalist crimes were an intrinsic feature of their
war-effort. Moa seeks to annihilate the extenuating circumstances of
‘ difference ’ , by pointing out that mass murder of clergy, Catholic
families, small landowners and businessmen, and an indiscriminate
variety of other ‘ fascists ’ , was, more often than not, organised by offi cial
representatives of local government, political parties and trade unions.
In his new book, Tusell accepts that the old rationalisation is no longer
tenable (p. 48): further, that the Republic’s persecution of the Church
was intolerable and that civil war had a powerful (if not defi nitive)
religious character (pp. 49, 62). His pages on the bombing of Gernika
are also instructive. These culminate with recognition that the offi cial
fi gure of 1,654 dead may represent a tenfold exaggeration. En route ,
Tusell suggests that the bombing was not approved by Franco’s
headquarters; that Burgos sincerely believed the Basques themselves
had fi red the town; and that the Gernika operation arose from military
decisions of a type which frequently confronted both sides rather than
a determina tion to terror-bomb civilians (pp. 100 – 01).
Tusell’s last published work may be taken as a ray of hope for the
future of civil-war studies. 31 Moreover, there has subsequently appeared
a general study of the war by Bartolomé Bennassar, a hugely distinguished
scholar of early-modern Spain. Bennassar’s book is much more ambitious
in scale. 32 It also advances some surprising conclusions. Bennassar
argues, for example, that the democratic experiment of the Second
Republic had defi nitively failed even before the generals’ rising (p. 52). 33
It may be deduced from this that Hitler and Mussolini bear diminished
responsibility for the death of Spanish democracy. But, in any case,
their military intervention on Franco’s behalf was matched almost
throughout by French and Soviet assistance to the Republic, which
Bennassar states did not seriously falter until the fall of Catalonia in
January, 1939 (pp. 126ff.). Like Tusell, he defi es established interpretations
of the Gernika issue (pp. 196 – 8). But Bennassar’s most valuable dicta come
in the area of general ethics. With a handful of particular reservations,
he recognises not only that the Nationalists fought for ideals worthy of
respect, but also that there was little difference in the extent to which
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
both sides compromised their ideals under the pressures of a mutually
murderous war (pp. 72, 157, 189).
The presentation of such a perspective by a major scholar has, in the
present writer’s view, been overdue for decades. Bennassar seems to
have been drawn irresistibly (even malgré lui ) to such conclusions
during years of teaching and research. 34 Perhaps he was inspired by the
example set by Tusell — though, if so, his ‘ Prólogo ’ carries no relevant
acknowledgement. 35 On the other hand, Pío Moa’s output is referred
to in a strangely pejorative and dismissive manner. Yet the notion
that Bennassar has been infl uenced by the output of Moa and other
‘ revisionists ’ is encouraged by the chronological circumstances of his
book’s production. Otherwise, it would seem curious in the extreme
that such an elder statesman among Hispanists could have adopted
unexpected propositions in such key areas and in such a manner as to
alarm and dismay the orthodox. 36
V
The tendency to gloss over or even ignore Republican war crimes, which
vitiates vast stretches of civil-war bibliography, came to a defi nitive end
with the publication of a worthy compendium edited by Santos Juliá. 37
Several other contributors have taken this further in work which broadly
supports Moa’s revisionism. 38 Prominent in research terms are a series
of monographic studies by Angel Martín Rubio, whose new ‘ revisionist ’
survey, Mitos de la Represión, incorporates a useful account of the
secondary literature, supported by the most comprehensive statistical
analysis yet conducted (pp. 77 – 105). Though it must be borne in mind that
human remains are still being disinterred, it would surely take discoveries
of post-Soviet dimensions to justify reference (popular in some quarters)
to ‘ a Spanish Holocaust ’ . 39 Yet perhaps the only major question on
which it remains diffi cult to dismiss the conventional view of Francoism
is the contingent one of its record of repression following victory in
454 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
1939. Moa himself sees this as ‘ the darkest stain ’ , 40 a phrase which hints
at a more trenchant act of acknowledgement to the other side.
Julius Ruiz’s stimulating study of post-war repression provides frequent
illustration of Nationalist vindictiveness. His estimate, based on
abundant archival materials, is that at least 3,113 people were executed
for war crimes in Madrid and its province (Spain’s most populous) in
the period 1939 – 44, but also that the number of deaths diminished
dramatically after that date (15 – 24). Franco and his general staff
perceived repression as the last campaign of the civil war, to which all
the due military considerations were to be applied. Though feelings of
righteous revenge were strong at the grass roots of Francoist support,
there is little evidence that the policy responded to them (170ff.).
The Falange were fi rmly excluded from the business, indeed at times
appearing almost as much victims as victimisers (21 – 2 and passim ). Few
will be surprised by Ruiz’s citations of illogical and corrupt judgements.
They may feel less comfortable with evidence of more bizarre — even
grimly amusing — aspects of the subject. Many ‘ fi fth columnists ’ who
helped the victors’ cause behind enemy lines were later punished for
their offi cial adherence to the Republic rather than rewarded for their
heroism in saving Nationalist lives, despite the fact that the former
was a condition of the latter. More than twice as many falangistas as
rojos were convicted under the infamous ‘ Law for the Repression of
Freemasons and Communists ’ (212 – 17). 41 The author neatly reveals
how both the principle of military justice and the enabling decree of
repression (the ‘ Law of Political Responsibilities ’ ) had conscious
precedents in Republican security legislation introduced and applied by
Azaña and others before 1936 (20, 78). On the whole, the operation was
conducted with ponderous propriety. There was a respectable incidence
of acquittals. As the campaign was wound down in the mid-1940s,
thousands had death sentences commuted, gaol terms drastically
reduced, and/or obtained conditional release. But as Ruiz argues, these
were concessions to pragmatic necessity rather than motivated by mercy,
rehabilitation, or (far less) any sense of reconciliation. In another
innovation he exposes the extent of ‘ minor ’ repression, ignored by
previous writers in favour of a more politically profi table litany of death
and martyrdom (165 – 91). Here lies an odious underworld of sackings,
bannings, fi nes, repeated arrests and harassments, which aggravated the
already miserable existence of millions of ‘ excluded ’ Spaniards in the
grisly years of the posguerra. Dr Ruiz’s compelling book has placed
study of his subject on new foundations.
Michael Seidman is among the most accomplished of non-native
younger historians currently working on Spain’s Civil War. His latest
book has had a rough ride from some reviewers. At one level this is
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
understandable. The author goes his own way, accumulating four huge,
unsectioned chapters, and the single guidance he accepts is that of
following his nose. The only categories allowed are the amorphous
concepts of his chapter-headings: Militancy, Opportunism, Cynicism,
Survival. Though broadly infl uenced by the political economy of the
Reagan-Thatcher generation, Seidman has no truck with any modern,
leave alone postmodern, methodology. It shares the esprit of Richard
Cobb, especially its insatiable appetite for archival anecdotes. This is
history aspiring to the condition of the (Russian) novel, promiscuously
crowded with stories and protagonists. 42 Many will be initially
bewildered, but rich rewards await those who persevere. 43 On every
page Seidman encapsulates the sheer chiasma of the war, manifesting
Bennassar’s title ( ‘ We ourselves were the Hell ’ ) better than Bennassar
himself. But this is not quite ‘ una locura común ’ (a common insanity),
as the war was characterised during the later Franco years. Seidman
concentrates mostly on the Republican side, and on the ‘ quiet fronts ’ ,
as John Cornford, who fought in Spain with the International Brigades,
once described the situation in Aragon. In ‘ Opportunism ’ (pp. 73 – 154)
the chronic inadequacy of the Republic’s war-effort is profusely
illustrated. Profi teering was endemic even in the trenches, likewise
desertion, self-mutilation, shirking, plunder of civilians, and petty theft
(even by hospital staff ). A catatonic degree of incompetence was often
achieved by intendencia , leading to shortages in every frontline necessity,
including food, and worst of all, tobacco. In absorbing Seidman’s
episodios de la guerra, one starts to wonder, like Paul Preston (though for
different reasons), why the Nationalists took so long to win the war. At
the same time, the apprehensions of foreign volunteers about fi ghting
alongside indigenous units are candidly explained. To put things crudely,
when the going got tough, only Communist fi ghters — units of the Fifth
Regiment and their affi liates, the International Brigades — got going.
One result was the emergence of another confl ict in a parallel
dimension to that of ‘ the front ’ . This was the war of eternal internal
vigilance, fought by a bloated security apparatus. The octopus grew so
many tentacles that it became a vast, inert knot choking to death on its
own slime . Yet Seidman concludes not that the Republic was too brutal
and ruthless, but that it was not brutal or ruthless enough (pp. 238 – 9).
Just as Moa demonstrates the case as regards the pre-1936 period,
Seidman relentlessly exposes how the wartime Republic also encompassed
its own destruction. Yet, in so doing, he tends to the hypothesis that the
456 MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
political entity which fought the war was a different animal, a ‘ Third
Republic ’ born when Communists and Anarchists joined Largo
Caballero’s ‘ Government of Victory ’ in November 1936. Defying no
less an authority than Pierre Vilar, who (with reservations) stressed the
organisational effi cacy of communitarian resistance in 1936, 44 Seidman
argues that systemic incapacity was a function of basic realities
determined during the war’s fi rst year. The regions gained by the rebels
produced most of Spain’s bread, but also regular harvests of volunteer
militiamen dedicated to the point of fanaticism. The Nationalist
army was never the simple mix of domestic professionals and foreign
mercenaries that historians like to picture. But it was better supplied,
led with greater expertise, and superior in areas such as ‘ group dynamics ’
and morale, crucial to a war won by a myriad small, improvised defensive
engagements more than up-to-date equipment or carefully-planned
offensives (pp. 111ff., 237). By the end of 1936 the Republic had lost
the important food-producing zones; six months later they lost the
outstanding industrial region as well. The campaign on ‘ the Basque
front ’ was a disaster, partly through internecine squabbles between
political, syndical and ethnic ‘ allies ’ of the pro-Republican coalition
(pp. 91ff.). As Seidman states in a well-weighed sentence: ‘ The way the
north was lost, especially the lack of commitment by the rank and
fi le to the grand causes of the revolution or the Republic, anticipated
the rest of the confl ict’ (p. 154). Thousands of activists were dedicated to
victory, but even here personal qualities such as fanaticism and altruism
were more important than ideology (pp. 14 – 73 passim ). Elsewhere, the
individual triumphed over the group, village over city, regiment over
army, region over Republic. The book stands deterministic theories
about large-scale social function on their heads — but then, war is the
acid test of all societies and civil war burns deeper still.
VI
Pío Moa, and his work in altering perceptions of the Spanish Civil
War, have an undeniable signifi cance in the history of historiography.
This has happened despite, perhaps partly because of, the disdain with
which he has been treated by many academics. Indeed, the carapace of
wilful ignorance adopted by the profession has exposed it to ridicule. 45
Moa’s books do not pretend to monographic status. Yet, his history of
the Second Republic is replete with analysis and argument to a degree
which subordinates (without eschewing) textbook-style narrative. It
belongs broadly to the genre of multi-volume synthetic survey which,
largely moribund elsewhere, continues to fi nd a place in Spanish letters.
Here, too, the tradition of the non-academic intellectual subsisting
as a freelance writer has retained vitality, a function of the fact that
universities are managed by the state to an extent which many
fi nd diffi cult to negotiate. Moreover, like other foreign hispanists, the
present writer has long been concerned at the lack of rigour which besets
Spanish historiography, especially the low priority given to archival
investigation. 46 By these standards, Moa is no amateur. He follows
required procedures in terms of source apparatus. Not only are his
arguments more solidly set on archival foundations than the work
of many ‘ professionals ’ , but he also writes better than many of his
prominent critics — a point conceded even by Professor Graham.
Finally, there is a deeper and more lasting element to the shame of the
specialists. Moa’s most trenchant pages expose the mental torpor which
underpins orthodoxy. It seems that no one in the academic establishment
was equipped to provide a convincing response to his challenge.
Few could grasp the ethical basis of Moa’s mission, any more than they
could conceive of an ethical basis for Francoism. These things are at the
centre of the whirlpool, and it will be long before the swirling waters
subside. In a manner which, as a young revolutionary, he could never
have imagined, Pío Moa may have launched a revolution.
Penarth ROB STRADLING
1. Belchite, not far from Zaragoza, was destroyed during the battle for its capture by Republican
forces in 1937. Franco ordered it left in ruins as a monument to the ‘ war of liberation ’ , and a new
village was built alongside the rubble.
2. This essay foregrounds recent examples of Luis ( ‘ Pío ’ ) Moa’s work. But of equal relevance is
the above-mentioned sequence, appearing in the following order: Los orígines de la guerra civil
(1999); El derrumbe de la Segunda República (2001); Los personajes de la Segunda República visto por
ellos mismos (2002: all Madrid, Encuentro); 1934: Comienza la guerra civil (2004); and 1936: El
asalto fi nal a la República (2005, both Barcelona, Altera).
3. Exceptions were the centre-right newspaper El Mundo , which gave Moa generous coverage (see,
for example, the review of Los Mitos in its supplement Crónica, 12 January 2003 [also available at
el-mundo.es/cronica/2003/377/1042458345]); and a few academics (notably E. Moradiellos and A. Ferrary)
whose interventions were posted on website magazines such as those referred to later in this essay.
445
4. Los orígenes , 9. Moa’s fourth volume ( 1934: Comienza ) is largely devoted to providing
documentary illustration of this thesis.
5. ‘ Why [Moa asks] did the PSOE choose the path of civil war? ’ . But his answer does not meet
the question: ‘ because they believed historical conditions for … the socialist revolution had
matured ’ ; Los orígines , 10, see also 44.
6. Los orígines , 9 – 13 & 43 [my emphasis]. But, if a state of civil war existed from October 1934, there
is no point in the ethical question ‘ which side was more guilty in bringing about the crisis of July 1936?’,
to which Moa frequently returns (see Los mitos , e.g. 105 – 32 , and much of 1936: El asalto fi nal ).
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
7. Los origenes, 43ff. & 272ff.
8. S. de Madariaga, España: Ensayo de historia contemporánea (Buenos Aires, 1942), esp. 526 – 35.
These pages may well have stimulated the original manifestation of Moa’s muse. Madariaga
pointed (for example) to ‘ the rebellious and unconstitutional attitude of the socialists ’ in events
leading up to October (517); referring to the rebellion itself as ‘ unforgivable ’ , not least because
it meant that ‘ the Spanish left relinquished in perpetuity any moral authority to condemn
the rebellion of 1936 ’ (526 – 7). A later monograph expounds a similar thesis: E. Barco Teruel,
El ‘ Golpe ’ Socialista del 6 de octubre de 1934 (Madrid, Ediciones Drysa, 1984). The case for the
PSOE’s culpability is summarised at page 158 of A. Shubert, The Road to Revolution in Spain:
The Coal Miners of Asturias, 1860 – 1934 (Urbana, 1987).
447
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)9. Report dated February 1939, Philby File, Archive of The Times Newspaper, London.
10. I refer to R.A.H. Robinson, The Origins of Franco’s Spain : The Right, the Republic and the
Civil War, 1931 – 1936 (Newton Abbot, 1970); and to S.G. Payne, whose relevant publications are too
numerous to cite, but include most notably Spain’s First Democracy (Madison, 1993). Contributions
to his overarching thesis by these and other precursors are acknowledged ( passim ) by Moa.
11. These are cogently presented by S. Payne in a review of Los mitos in Revista de Libros ,
accessible online and gratis at http://www.revistadelibros.com/Editions/Detail.asp?IdNews=3042 .
12. Many vignettes are based on Moa’s collation of dozens of published memoirs and
autobiographies, already deployed in Los personajes .
13. Los mitos , 447 – 72.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
14. See R. Stradling, Your Children Will Be Next: Bombing and Propaganda in the Spanish Civil
War (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, forthcoming).
15. These are derived from memoirs and published correspondence of principal actors, notably
Juan Negrín, the Republican prime minister, and his rival Indalecio Prieto.
16. Information from various autobiographical reminiscences published by Libertad Digital
[ libertaddigital.com ].
17. ‘ El bunker ’ was the collective media term for prominent diehards among the establishment
of late Francoism — another example of a subtle vocabulary intended to link the regime with
Nazism.
449
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
18. See, however, above, n. 4.
19. The Second Republic liked to be known and depicted as ‘ The Good-Looking Girl ’ .
20. ‘ New myths for old ’ , TLS , 11 July 2003. Professor Graham’s negative formulations echoed
those made a few months earlier by Javier Tusell, and cited below (n. 22).
21. Payne’s review of Los mitos (see above n. 11). The distinguished American scholar has also
written a prologue for Moa’s 1934: Comienza la Guerra Civil . His even-handed approach to
relevant contemporary quarrels in Spanish politics was publicly instanced by his support of the
(recently realised) Catalan campaign for the ‘ restoration ’ of papers stored in the National Civil
War Archive at Salamanca: see The archives Franco stole from Catalonia: The campaign for their
return (Editorial Milenio, Lleida, 2004), p. 95.
22. ‘ Bochornosa televisión ’ , El País, 22 Feb. 2003. Professor Tusell later added a more maturely
considered resumé of his objections to the work of ‘ revisionists ’ such as Moa and César Vidal; ‘ El
Revisionismo histórico español ’ , ibid, 8 July 2004.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
23. That is, the Spanish equivalent of The Open University.
24. Moa’s reply, ‘ El espíritu democrático de El País ’ was posted in the ‘ Foros ’ (debating) section
of the web magazine Libertad Digital on 5 March 2003. To date, El País has scorned every attempt
by Moa to answer Tusell’s indictment. This attitude may be contrasted with that of the Times
Literary Supplement , which gave his response to Graham’s review a prominent place; 19 September
2003, 20.
25. See A. Feros, ‘ Civil War still haunts Spanish Politics ’ , New York Times , 20 March 2004,
along with countless opinions and readers’ responses printed in Spain’s newspapers in the course
of that spring.
26. In addition to those for El Mundo and Libertad Digital , already cited above, the following
websites may be noted: www.nodulo.org ( Catoblepas, Revista Crítica del Presente ); www.galeon.
hispanista.com ( Razón Española ).
451
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
27. El País , 20 Nov. 2005. For a similar state of alarm, see G. Tremlett, ‘ Pro-Franco history tops
bestseller list ’ , The Guardian , 15 Nov. 2005.
28. Moa thus rejects P. Preston’s argument ( Franco: A Biography [Collins 1993], 394 – 400) that
Franco’s reputation as ‘ the man who stood up to Hitler ’ was a propaganda myth.
29. ‘ Is this what we want our young people [to whom Moa dedicates his book] to learn? ’ ;
‘ Bochornosa televisión ’ , loc cit .
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
30. See above, n. 22.
31. The points highlighted here run so counter to Tusell’s former views that they might even be
regarded as a sort of apostasy. The book was commissioned by the Ministry of Education under
Aznar’s government (Professor Tusell died in February 2005).
32. First published in French as La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains (Paris, Perrin, 2004).
33. This section concurs with Moa that the Republic was violently subverted by the left parties
not the Falange, a point on which Paul Preston is specifi cally contradicted (59 – 72 & 503).
453
34. This (if a personal note will be forgiven) is exactly what happened in the case of the present
writer.
35. An omission which seems anomalous when the names of Tuñón de Lara, Angel Viñas
and Santos Julià are honourably invoked.
36. The latter impression was left on the present writer by curricular debates and private
conversations held during the three-day Conference ‘ War Without Limits ’ held at Bristol
University in July 2006.
37. Víctimas de la Guerra Civil (Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1999).
38. See, inter alia , recent books by C. Vidal ( Checas de Madrid: las cárceles Repúblicanas al
descubierto , Barcelona, 2003); C. Alcalá ( Checas de Barcelona: el terror y la represión estalinista en
Cataluña durante la Guerra Civil al descubierto , Barcelona, 2005); and J. M. Zavala ( Los horrores de
la Guerra Civil , Barcelona, 2003).
39. Terms like ‘ genocide ’ and ‘ holocaust ’ were apparently inspired by G. Jackson’s guesstimate
of 200,000 Francoist executions during the decade 1936 – 45: see The Spanish Republic and the Civil
War, 1931 – 39 (Princeton, 1965), esp. 538 – 9.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
40. ‘ la mancha más negra ’ ; Franco , 91.
41. One hearing was abandoned in confusion when the accused revealed that Nicolás Franco —
the caudillo ’ s brother — was a Mason (213).
455
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
42. Overlap of theme and illustration between chapters makes citing meaningful page sequences
diffi cult. Also, treatment sometimes cries out for a lighter touch. For example death in action did
not conform to the horario of the mortuaries. Ambulancemen sometimes dumped bodies outside
locked doors. Seidman comments that ‘ this display of piled-up corpses did not hearten new
arrivals ’ (85).
43. One aspect is the author’s regular inter-textual references to other great civil wars which
are both stimulating and instructive.
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
44. P. Vilar, La Guerra Civil Española (Barcelona, Ed. Crítica, 1986), 61 – 2.
45. In 2005 a compendium of research by ten younger experts contrived not to mention the
name of Pío Moa: C. Ealham & M. Richards (eds.), The Splintering of Spain: Cultural History and
the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 (Cambridge U.P.).
457
EHR, cxxii. 496 (April 2007)
MOAIST REVOLUTION AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
46. A disturbingly low proportion of history published in Spain evinces experience of more
than the local archives where the author studied for a higher degree.
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