B1 · Intermediate
13 min
historyspanish culturepoliticseuropean identity
Eighty Years of Not Talking About It
Una herida que España no termina de cerrar
The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, but its consequences still run through the country's politics, families, and sense of identity. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why a conflict from nearly a century ago still divides Spain today.
La Guerra Civil española terminó en 1939, pero sus consecuencias siguen vivas en la política, las familias y la memoria colectiva del país. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué un conflicto de hace casi un siglo todavía divide a España.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el golpe de estado | coup d'état, military takeover | Los generales empezaron un golpe de estado en julio de 1936. |
| la fosa común | mass grave | Muchas familias todavía buscan a sus familiares en las fosas comunes. |
| pasar página | to turn the page, to move on from something difficult | Después de tantos años, es difícil saber si podemos pasar página. |
| el exilio | exile | Muchos republicanos vivieron en el exilio después de la guerra. |
| la dictadura | dictatorship | La dictadura de Franco duró cuarenta años. |
| la memoria histórica | historical memory, the collective remembrance of a nation's past | La Ley de Memoria Histórica ayudó a muchas familias a encontrar la verdad. |
There's a Robert Capa photograph from 1936, a Republican soldier at the exact moment a bullet hits him, and I've thought about that image probably more than any other photograph from the twentieth century.
It's the image that pulled me into the Spanish Civil War when I was about twenty-three, and I've never really climbed back out.
Esa foto es muy famosa en España, Fletcher.
That photo is very famous in Spain, Fletcher.
Pero fíjate que nosotros, los españoles, aprendemos la guerra de una manera diferente.
But you see, we Spaniards learn about the war in a different way.
No es una foto.
It's not a photograph.
Es una historia de familia.
It's a family story.
And that family-story dimension is exactly what I want to get into today, because I think that's what makes this different from, say, studying the Franco era in a textbook.
Before we go there, walk us through the basics.
What actually happened?
Bueno, en julio de 1936, un grupo de generales del ejército español empezó un golpe de estado contra el gobierno de la República.
Well, in July 1936, a group of Spanish army generals launched a coup against the Republican government.
El líder principal fue Francisco Franco.
The main leader was Francisco Franco.
Pero el golpe no funcionó completamente, y empezó una guerra civil muy brutal.
But the coup didn't succeed completely, and a very brutal civil war began.
And this wasn't a quick thing.
Three years, close to half a million dead, depending on which estimates you trust, and that's before you count the exile and the executions that came after.
Sí.
Yes.
Los dos lados tenían nombres: los Republicanos defendían el gobierno elegido, la democracia, y también las ideas de izquierda.
The two sides had names: the Republicans were defending the elected government, democracy, and left-wing ideas.
Los Nacionalistas, con Franco, querían un estado más conservador, con la Iglesia y el ejército en el centro.
The Nationalists, with Franco, wanted a more conservative state, with the Church and the army at its center.
What strikes me about this, and it struck me even as a young reporter reading about it, is how fast it stopped being just a Spanish conflict.
The outside world piled in almost immediately.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Alemania nazi e Italia fascista ayudaron a Franco con soldados, aviones y armas.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy helped Franco with soldiers, planes, and weapons.
Hitler usó España como un lugar para probar su nueva aviación militar.
Hitler used Spain as a place to test his new military aviation.
Fue un ensayo general para la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
It was a dress rehearsal for the Second World War.
A dress rehearsal, and nobody in London or Paris wanted to acknowledge what they were watching.
The western democracies had this non-intervention policy that was, frankly, a fiction.
Everyone was intervening except them.
Claro.
Right.
Y la Unión Soviética sí ayudó a la República, con armas y con asesores militares.
And the Soviet Union did help the Republic, with weapons and military advisors.
Pero Stalin también quería controlar la situación.
But Stalin also wanted to control the situation.
No fue una ayuda completamente generosa.
It wasn't entirely generous help.
So you've got Nazi Germany on one side, Soviet Russia on the other, and Spain is the board they're playing on.
That's a genuinely terrifying position for a country to be in.
Y lo peor es que los españoles no podían escapar de esa situación.
And the worst part is that Spaniards couldn't escape that situation.
Los dos lados usaron España para su propia política internacional.
Both sides used Spain for their own international politics.
Los españoles perdieron en los dos casos.
Spaniards lost either way.
Now, one of the things that makes this war so singular in history is the number of foreigners who came to fight for the Republic voluntarily.
The International Brigades.
About 35,000 people from 53 countries.
Writers, workers, idealists, communists.
Sí, y muchos de ellos murieron aquí.
Yes, and many of them died here.
Vinieron porque creían que España era la batalla contra el fascismo.
They came because they believed Spain was the battle against fascism.
Si España perdía, pensaban, Europa también perdía.
If Spain lost, they thought, Europe would also lose.
Y tenían razón.
And they were right.
George Orwell was one of them.
He wrote Homage to Catalonia about his experience fighting in Barcelona, and it's still one of the most honest books ever written about war, partly because he didn't go there as a journalist.
He went as a soldier, and he got shot in the throat for his trouble.
Orwell también escribió sobre algo muy importante: la división dentro de la izquierda republicana.
Orwell also wrote about something very important: the division within the Republican left.
Los comunistas, los anarquistas, los socialistas, todos luchaban contra Franco, pero también luchaban entre ellos.
The communists, the anarchists, the socialists, they were all fighting against Franco, but they were also fighting each other.
Fue una tragedia dentro de la tragedia.
It was a tragedy within the tragedy.
And now we have to talk about Guernica, because you simply cannot discuss this war without it.
April 26th, 1937, a Basque market town, civilian population, a Monday so the weekly market was full.
Los aviones alemanes de la Legión Cóndor bombardearon la ciudad durante horas.
The German planes of the Condor Legion bombed the town for hours.
Murieron muchos civiles, mujeres y niños.
Many civilians died, women and children.
Fue uno de los primeros bombardeos masivos contra una ciudad civil en la historia moderna.
It was one of the first mass bombings of a civilian city in modern history.
And Pablo Picasso was commissioned to paint a mural for the Paris World's Fair that same year.
He'd been given a blank canvas and no real brief, and then Guernica happened, and he had his brief.
El cuadro Guernica es increíble porque no usa colores.
The painting Guernica is incredible because it uses no colors.
Todo es negro, blanco y gris.
Everything is black, white, and gray.
Y eso hace que las imágenes sean más fuertes: los caballos, los cuerpos, la madre con su hijo muerto.
And that makes the images stronger: the horses, the bodies, the mother with her dead child.
El dolor es universal.
The pain is universal.
Picasso refused to let the painting go back to Spain while Franco was alive.
It lived in the Museum of Modern Art in New York for decades.
It only came home in 1981, six years after Franco's death.
That exile of a painting is its own kind of story.
Franco ganó la guerra en 1939.
Franco won the war in 1939.
Y entonces empezó la dictadura.
And then the dictatorship began.
Cuarenta años.
Forty years.
Cuarenta años sin libertad de prensa, sin partidos políticos, sin sindicatos.
Forty years without press freedom, without political parties, without trade unions.
España fue un país cerrado por mucho tiempo.
Spain was a closed country for a long time.
And the repression after the war was systematic.
Franco didn't just win militarily.
He pursued the defeated side for years.
Mass executions, forced labor, prison camps.
Historians estimate somewhere between 30,000 and 150,000 people were executed after the war ended.
Y muchas familias no sabían dónde estaban los cuerpos de sus padres o abuelos.
And many families didn't know where the bodies of their fathers or grandfathers were.
Los enterraron en fosas comunes, en los campos, en los bordes de los caminos.
They were buried in mass graves, in fields, at the edges of roads.
Esas familias esperaron décadas para encontrar a sus muertos.
Those families waited decades to find their dead.
Franco died in 1975, and Spain did something that historians still debate.
The transition to democracy, the Transición, was built around a kind of deliberate silence.
A tacit agreement not to dig up the past, literally and figuratively.
They called it the Pact of Forgetting.
Sí.
Yes.
Los políticos de los dos lados decidieron que era mejor mirar hacia el futuro.
Politicians on both sides decided it was better to look toward the future.
Era una decisión práctica, quizás necesaria en ese momento.
It was a practical decision, perhaps necessary at that moment.
España necesitaba estabilidad.
Spain needed stability.
Pero también fue una decisión dolorosa para muchas familias.
But it was also a painful decision for many families.
I've covered countries coming out of dictatorships.
Argentina had its truth commissions.
South Africa had Mandela and the TRC.
Germany built a culture of remembrance around the Nazi period.
Spain chose a different path, and I've always wondered about the cost of that choice.
El coste fue real.
The cost was real.
Las familias guardaron silencio.
Families kept silent.
Los niños no hablaban con sus padres sobre la guerra.
Children didn't talk with their parents about the war.
Había vergüenza, miedo, y también dolor.
There was shame, fear, and also pain.
Eso creó una herida que no cerró bien.
That created a wound that didn't heal cleanly.
Y ahora, cuarenta años después, esa herida todavía existe.
And now, forty years later, that wound still exists.
In 2007, the Socialist government passed what became known as the Law of Historical Memory.
The idea was to formally acknowledge the victims on the Republican side, to help families find the mass graves, to remove Francoist symbols from public buildings.
Esa ley fue muy importante para muchas personas, pero también fue muy polémica.
That law was very important for many people, but it was also very controversial.
El Partido Popular, la derecha española, no la apoyó.
The People's Party, the Spanish right, didn't support it.
Dijeron que la ley abría viejas heridas en lugar de cerrarlas.
They said the law was reopening old wounds instead of closing them.
El debate todavía no terminó.
The debate still hasn't ended.
And then there's the Valle de los Caídos.
The Valley of the Fallen.
Franco had it built using the forced labor of Republican prisoners, tens of thousands of them, to create this enormous monument in the mountains near Madrid.
Es un lugar muy difícil.
It's a very difficult place.
Hay una basílica enorme dentro de la montaña, con una cruz gigante encima.
There is an enormous basilica inside the mountain, with a giant cross on top.
Allí estaba enterrado Franco hasta 2019.
Franco was buried there until 2019.
Y también están enterrados miles de víctimas de la guerra, de los dos lados, pero sin el permiso de sus familias.
And also buried there are thousands of war victims, from both sides, but without the permission of their families.
The exhumation of Franco's body in 2019 was one of the more extraordinary political acts I've watched a European democracy carry out.
The government literally dug up a former dictator and moved him to a civilian cemetery, over the objections of his family.
That took political courage.
Sí, pero para muchos españoles fue un momento muy importante.
Yes, but for many Spaniards it was a very important moment.
Las familias republicanas dijeron: por fin.
Republican families said: finally.
Ya era hora.
It was about time.
Pero otras personas, especialmente en la derecha, dijeron que fue una provocación política.
But other people, especially on the right, said it was political provocation.
And while that debate was happening at the symbolic level, something much more intimate was also going on.
Forensic teams were still, and still are, opening mass graves across the country.
Villages where men were taken out and shot in 1936 and never came home.
Conozco familias que esperaron ochenta años para saber dónde estaba el cuerpo de su abuelo.
I know families who waited eighty years to find out where their grandfather's body was.
Ochenta años.
Eighty years.
Eso es algo muy difícil de explicar a alguien que no vivió esa historia.
That is something very difficult to explain to someone who didn't live through that history.
Which brings me to the political dimension right now, in the present tense.
Because this isn't just history.
Vox, the far-right party, has explicitly rehabilitated certain aspects of the Franco era.
They've called the exhumation of Franco a humiliation.
This is a live political argument.
España está muy dividida políticamente en este momento, y la Guerra Civil es parte de esa división.
Spain is very divided politically right now, and the Civil War is part of that division.
Algunos dicen que los partidos de la izquierda usan la guerra para atacar a la derecha.
Some say left-wing parties use the war to attack the right.
Y los de la izquierda dicen que la derecha nunca aceptó completamente el fin del franquismo.
And those on the left say the right never fully accepted the end of Francoism.
And I think that's the part that makes this relevant far beyond Spain.
Because we're watching this pattern in a lot of places right now: countries that didn't fully process an authoritarian chapter in their past, and finding that past suddenly very present in their politics.
La lección de España es que el silencio no cura las heridas.
The lesson from Spain is that silence doesn't heal wounds.
Puedes pasar página, como decimos en español, pero las páginas anteriores todavía existen.
You can turn the page, as we say in Spanish, but the previous pages still exist.
Y si no hablas de ellas, alguien las usa más tarde para hacer política.
And if you don't talk about them, someone will use them later to make politics.
Pasar página.
Turn the page.
That phrase keeps coming up in everything I read about the Transición, and it's doing a lot of work in that sentence you just said.
Because the metaphor itself is interesting, isn't it?
You're not erasing anything.
You're just choosing not to look at it.
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y en español usamos mucho esa expresión, 'pasar página', para decir que queremos olvidar algo difícil y continuar.
And in Spanish we use that expression a lot, 'pasar página', to say we want to forget something difficult and move on.
Puedes decir: 'ya es hora de pasar página' o 'no podemos pasar página si no sabemos la verdad.' Los dos usos existen.
You can say: 'it's time to turn the page' or 'we can't turn the page if we don't know the truth.' Both uses exist.
So the same phrase can be either a call for healing or an attempt to avoid accountability, depending on who says it and when.
That's a lot of political weight for three words to carry.
Eso pasa mucho en español, que una frase muy simple tiene un significado más complejo en la realidad.
That happens a lot in Spanish, that a very simple phrase has a more complex meaning in reality.
'Pasar página' parece fácil, pero cuando lo dices en el contexto de la Guerra Civil, todo el mundo entiende que hay una decisión política detrás.
'Pasar página' sounds easy, but when you say it in the context of the Civil War, everyone understands there is a political decision behind it.
No es solo una metáfora.
It's not just a metaphor.
I feel like that's the perfect note to end on, actually.
A language where even the phrase for moving on contains an entire argument about the past.
Octavio, it's been a pleasure to not move on from this topic with you.
Y tú pronunciaste 'pasar página' bastante bien, Fletcher.
And you pronounced 'pasar página' quite well, Fletcher.
Mejor que 'muy embarazado', por lo menos.
Better than 'muy embarazado', at least.