You know you have read too much on the Spanish Civil War when the above, and below, makes perfect sense to you. Hattip to my fellow Spanish Civil War scholar, Dale Price.
Cast of Characters
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“They called us fascists. We called them communists. Really, the world was much more complicated than that. But many preferred to see it in those simple terms.”
– “There Be Dragons” (2011)
I have, at base, always believed that a primary cause of the Spanish Civil War, technically a rebellion, was that Spain itself was put together on a piecemeal basis over the centuries with a common enemy, Islam, but without a common purpose. Hence, the regional, religious and political rivalries. The components of the causes were not so simple but the actions were pretty reductive. In fact, we can see outbreaks of division reemerging today in geography in Catalonia and political in the reimaging of the Valley of the Dead as well as lesser cracks in society. Hemmingway chronicled the facts pretty well in some of his writing but was never able to get far enough beneath the surface to give a full understanding of Spain and how and why it looks at itself the manner in which it does.
Correction: Valley of the Fallen
that Spain itself was put together on a piecemeal basis over the centuries with a common enemy, Islam, but without a common purpose.
Spain had by 1934 been under a common government for 440 odd years. Nations do not have common purposes. They just are. Rulers, governments, and political factions have common purposes.