Tag Archives: Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War and Iconoclasm

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Hello Reader! While doing some research on the web, I came across a recent article related to what was discussed in class today, the Spanish Civil War. More specifically, we discussed the destruction of key religious symbols and artifacts during this tumultuous time. The Spanish leftists keenly destroyed churches and symbols of religion. Meanwhile, the German Nazis did the same thing in Spain, a tactic which would continue well into WWII. There are likely many articles destroyed that are destroyed forever, badly crippling Spain’s cultural heritage. However, one of the artifacts, while lasting until the 1990s in pieces, has just finished being restored. What makes this piece of architecture special is that it was crafted by the famous Michelangelo himself. Check out the article for a quick, yet informative read.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/michelangelo-work-destroyed-in-spains-civil-war-unveiled-after-restoration

 

 

Kassam, Ashifa. “Michelangelo Work Destroyed in Spain’s Civil War Unveiled after Restoration.” The Guardian, April 2, 2015. Accessed April 6, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/michelangelo-work-destroyed-in-spains-civil-war-unveiled-after-restoration.

A Lesson in Charity

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Hywel Davies’s book Fleeing Franco is a touching account of the lives of the Basque refugee children who were displaced from their homes during the Spanish Civil War and taken in by various humanitarian groups in Wales.  Although Davies does present pithy summaries of the political and social events surrounding the period, the text is primarily composed of several detailed vignettes that follow the lives of individual refugee children and the characteristics of the Welsh communities that came to their aid.  Consequently, Freeing Franco presents a moving portrait of Welsh charity across national and party lines, solidifying their endearing inclination “to be on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor.” (Davies, 19)

The most universally significant point that Davies makes in this book can be found early on in his response to the idea that Welsh charity during the Spanish Civil War has been exaggerated due to sentimentality and the use of a narrow historical lens: “Incredulity is not the same as insight. Scepticism is not converted into truth by nature of its novelty alone.” (Davies, 27)  This statement provides an important caveat to readers of any genre of criticism.  It is important to be able to discern the validity of any author’s thesis based on their synthesis and analysis of supporting evidence rather than their ability to create a facile and contradictory series of allegations against a popularly held belief.

Do you feel that Davies himself reveals any particular biases in Fleeing Franco?  If so, what are they?

Bias in Fleeing Franco

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Hywel Davies’ Fleeing Franco is a study of Spanish refugee children who were sheltered in Wales during the Spanish Civil War.  Davies examines how the cultural and geographic similarities between the Welsh and Basque people led to a connection that resulted in the Welsh providing more effort toward supporting the Republican army than the rest of Britain.  He also shows how the Welsh peoples’ more left leaning politics played a role in their willingness to provide aid.

While the stories of the children who the Welsh refugee programs saved from the atrocities of the war could be heartwarming, Davies’ book is not without bias.  Davies has lived in Wales his entire life, and the book was published by the University of Wales press.  When describing the characteristics of the Welsh  that led to their emphasizing with the Basque children, Davies uses words such as “us” and “our,” aligning himself with the Welsh and implying his great pride in his people.  Details such as these lead one to believe that his arguments hold a bias in favor of the Welsh by slightly exaggerating their contributions.

An example of this bias in effect is when Davies is describing the routines of the children when they first arrived at the shelters.  He goes into great detail about the sports teams, dances, and magazine fundraisers that distracted the children from the horrors in their home country while at the same time, winning the hearts and support of the Welsh people.  Davies portrays their experience through rose-colored glasses.  While the traumatizing effects of the war on the children is briefly touched upon, it is overshadowed by these stories about the welcoming nature of the shelters and their staff.  This is in part due to the nature in which the shelters reported on the state of the children, however the emotional struggles the children faced could have been elaborated upon more.

 

Basque and Wales during the Spanish Civil War

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Wales and the Basque region of Spain have many similarities. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, bringing violence to the Basque lands, the Welsh felt a heighten sense of solidarity with the Basque people. In “Fleeing Franco” Hywel Davis examines how the Welsh showed their support for the Basque by sheltering Basque children during the war. He argues that many factors led to the Welsh taking in these children and that it was a result of the overall Welsh response to the Spanish Civil War.

Once the war began, children could no longer attend school and resources, like food and medicine, became scarce. Parents did not want to send their children away, but it was better than keeping them in a dangerous and possibly deadly environment. The Welsh welcomed these children as members of a fellow “ancient and honoured community” (p.9). When the Basque children arrived in Wales, it gave the Welsh a chance to “transform passive sympathy into a real opportunity to do something”(p.27). Also, there were already Spanish speaking communities in Wales, which made the transition somewhat easier for the children. These people had come as a result of trade between Wales and Basque, another factor that strengthened the feelings of camaraderie between the two communities.

The children were inspected upon arrival, and then shipped to different places. Once they settled in, they were always busy with school and other activities. They became healthier, putting on weight and becoming fit. “Little by little the sobbing died down and the daily rhythms of life were restored, but a dreadful numbness remained”(p.49). Even though the children were treated well, most were still in shock and could not easily recover.

To tell the story of the Basque children in Wales, Davies uses individuals’ stories. For example, he focuses on the stories a few children, such as Alvaro Velasco and Paula Felipe Gomez to explain what occurred (p.37).  His sources include primary sources, such as articles and speeches, as well as secondary sources, which are mainly books. His writing is clear and easy to understand. My only criticism is that the stories of the Basque children, the main focus of the book, do not begin until chapter five, on page 37. I understand the necessity of background information, but there seemed to be a little too much.

Even though Wales and Basque are in similar situations, their cultures are very different. So why was there such a sense of solidarity between them?

Fleeing Franco

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Fleeing Franco is a book written by Welsh historian Hywel Davies in 2011. It deals with the Welsh repatriation of Basque children during the Spanish Civil War. While the book is well researched, and presents an uplifting thesis about the largely uniform acceptance of the Spanish children in an already poverty-stricken nation, Davies does seem to present a slightly biased view on the matter. For example, he makes a point of vilifying the leading Welsh politicians, by stating their pro-Fascist attitudes, in favor of returning the children to Spain after the War, while stressing his opinion that those working with the children were following a humanitarian call rather than a political opportunity. However, Davies’ hero Maria Fernandez, an extraordinary warden at a childrens home, quotes that her political support of the Spanish Republic played a large role in her decision to join the cause (140). While this does not mean that she would have turned her back on the orphans had the Spanish government not been socialist, Davies’ lack of analysis and research into this statement raises questions about his own objectiveness.

Additionally, in my opinion Davies’ structure is not very good. He starts coherently with a description of the similarities of Wales and the Basque region, but seemingly continues neither thematically nor chronologically. He describes the good sentiment of the Welsh, a few examples of bad behavior by the Spanish children, then continues with the good sentiment of the Welsh. All the while his chronology floats between before and after the fall of Bilbao. While his thesis is fairly clear, I found his structure to be slightly confusing.

Spanish Children Refugees…Future of the Soviet Union?

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In the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Prats-de-Mollo_Children's_HomeStalin and the Soviet Union played an important role in supporting the Spanish Republic. Most directly, Stalin supported the relocation of 3,000 Spaniard children to the Soviet Union. Although this was a move to support the Spanish Republic, Stalin also did this for the benefit of the Soviet Union. By placing these children in the care of members of the Soviet Union, Soviet values were instilled in them, while still maintaining a veneer of their Spanish culture.

When Spain was in turmoil, children were not able to study in Spain so their parents sent them to the Soviet Union. There are not many sources on this subject; if there are, they are oral which can be unreliable sources. Some sources say people in Leningrad greeted them nicely, while others had negative experiences. Many children recall their experience being one of stripping them of their belongings, the only things that they had from home. One woman recalls being stripped of her dress from home and dressed as everyone else in the Soviet Union. Another woman recalls her bible being thrown out, symbolizing how her past religion would not be a part of her new life in the Soviet Union.

Children’s values and ideas are not concrete, they are easily transformed; their minds are like sponges, absorbing all they hear. This is why these children were such great additions to the Soviet Union. They were “specimens of socialist internationalism in practice.” The children had high discipline in their schooling, but that discipline never led to violence. The State believed that positive role models were the only way children would learn Soviet values. Although teachers taught students of their Spanish heritage, Soviet values were the main focus. The Spanish teachers were often seen as less serious, shedding better light on the Soviet teachers, thus shedding better light on the State. This “hybridity” of Soviet-Spanish cultures further reinforces the concept of “nation in form, socialist in content” that we have discussed as a theme in class.

Sovietization of Spanish Niños

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During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Stalin decided to test the influence of the Soviet state by providing some “assistance” to the warring nation. He did this in several military and political ways, but the focus of our class reading this week was on the nearly 3,000 Spanish children that the Soviet Union took in as refugees from the war.

There was an ulterior motive, however, that wasn’t too surprising given the Stalin’s history. While promoting Communist ideals in Spain itself via propaganda, Stalin saw these child refugees as tools. The state would educate them in Soviet ways and make them into the perfect hybrid of Spanish-Soviet culture. The children’s acceptance of communist ideology would prove its universal appeal while symbolizing the selfless and altruistic nature of Soviet society. It was a win-win.

The niños were taught camaraderie, respect for authority, independence and discipline in addition to their academic undertakings. This was done by adult role models that perfectly embodied Soviet ideals. If the designated teachers were later deemed “politically illiterate,” meaning they did not embody and teach Soviet values with enough conviction, they were removed from their posts (usually under the guise of some other complaint against them.) Although these subpar instructors were not labeled “political enemies” of the Soviet state, the process did help identify them as weaker members of Soviet society and the government preferred to keep tabs on such citizens.

The refugee program for the Spanish children is yet another example of the creative and guileful policies of the Soviet Union. You would be hard-pressed to find a political leader as detail-oriented, goal-driven and determined as Stalin. His desire to transform the Soviet Union into the perfect communist state knew no bounds.

The Shift From Material to Psychological Humanitarian Efforts in Post-war Europe.

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Tara Zahra’s book, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II is a heartbreaking account of displaced and impoverished children lacking national identities. In the introduction and first chapter, parallels are drawn between both the physical reconstruction of post-war Europe and the reconstruction of childhood identity. These children were at the center of political conflicts and were the social problem that dominated Europe from the onset of World War I. The state of Europe’s children represented the civilization itself in chaos. Organizations after World War 1 sought to supply these children with immediate material needs. After the Spanish Civil War and World War II, however, humanitarian efforts were ideologically transformed. While some intense nationalistic and political goals still lay underneath the surface, the primary function of these social organizations were now to serve the psychological needs of a child with an incomplete family, empty stomach, and no national identity.

The responses to World War 1 and the Armenian Genocide set the stage for future humanitarian endeavors. These interwar campaigns focused on the obvious immediate needs to a child. Food, shelter, water, and so on. However, they also largely focused on reuniting parents with their children that were sent away for their safety. With this came a larger issue; the denationalization of children. Children that were sent away during the Armenian Genocide were largely sent to to Turkey and learned Muslim practices. Efforts to reclaim these children and to “renationalize” them were crucial to these international organizations. After World War 1, children were exiled and then reclaimed again for “their own good”. However, “all the improvements in a child’s life may dwindle down to nothing when faced with the fact that it has to leave the family to get to them”. (18) This was the major issue governments were missing. People believed that the memories and possible psychological traumas would be minimal as long as the were physically safe and healthy, but we know today that that is not true.

This idea changed dramatically after the Spanish Civil War. While the aftermath left the Spaniards wanting their children back from exile in France to be reassimilated back into Spanish culture, the individual’s psyche was beginning to be taken into account. These loyalist approaches to repatriation wouldn’t go away until well after World War 2 when identities were no longer defined by where they came from, but rather where they called home. Still, strides were being made to get these “lost” children psychological help along with their material needs. Light was now shedding on the moral and social risks of a divided family and after World War II, in an effort to move forward from the depths of depravity found in the Nazi Regime, and to reclaim democracy, the child’s individual welfare was now being focused on far more than the countries desire for a unified nation. Each war and genocide set the the foundation for new improvements in humanitarian efforts.

Much of this content relates to Hoffman’s ideas on social welfare and the modern state. Children were the objects of popular politics all throughout the first half of the 20th century. After they were exiled for their safety, the children were sought after to become assimilated members of a homogenous society. Hoffman’s main idea is that social welfare is for the good of country far more than for the good of individual. The countries wanted a healthy person to increase economic output in an industrial society. Industrial society was the modern state. In the book the reader learns that the countries sent away their children and then brought them back for family stability which was a core value of Europe at this time. Leaders believed that children wouldn’t grow up to be functioning members of society if they don’t have a normal family upbringing. Eventually, they moved to a practice in which these agencies and governments did what was psychologically best for the child. This reconstruction of childhoods mimicked the reconstruction of Europe itself.