SPAIN’S FORGOTTEN WAR

From time to time a stray hiker wandering about the ravines and crags of the sierras of Southern Spain stumbles across splinters of human bone bleached by the sun. These forgotten fragments and little else are what remain of a pitiless war which many Spaniards were hardly aware of and which was ignored by the world beyond the Pyrenees.
As a visitor you may well have heard older inhabitants reminiscing about the hard times of the 1940s and “la gente de la sierra”. They are talking of the time when parts of rural Spain were in a state of war because of an anti-Franco guerrilla movement. Several historians have investigated those terrible years, but now for the first time a book in English has been published on the subject.
Entitled “Between Two Fires – Guerrilla war in the sierras of Spain” it is written by journalist David Baird. And it has earned high praise from the historian Paul Preston and Lorca biographer Ian Gibson.
David centres his book on the village of Frigiliana in Malaga province. He sees it as a microcosm of what occurred in many parts of the country, but which went virtually unreported at the time. From a community of just over 2,000 inhabitants, 21 men fled to the mountains and joined the band led by Roberto, the nom de guerre of a legendary chief of the guerrillas.
Although, officially, the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939, armed resistance against Franco and his regime was not over. In the 1940s groups of guerrillas slipped out of their sierra hideaways to harass the dictatorship and try to create a climate of rebellion throughout the peninsula. The authorities regarded them as “bandits” but in Frigiliana, where virtually every family had some connection with the guerrillas, they simply refer to them as “the people of the sierra”.
There were acts of courage and of cowardice, of egoism and of selflessness, of tragedy and of treachery. And those who suffered for the sins of others were, as always, the innocent ones.
The author spent more than five years tracking down and interviewing survivors and scouring official records, from Madrid to Washington. He came across important new documentary evidence about American secret service involvement with the guerrillas and about the murder of three young villagers. Most of the protagonists have passed on, and one by one the witnesses are disappearing.
“In a way I wrote the book to pay a debt,” says David. “I felt I owed it to this community to record its recent history before those who lived through it had all disappeared.”

¿España es diferente?

Unos paises han hecho frente a su historia por vía de las llamadas comisiones de la verdad. Pero esto no ha occurrido en España.
Existe entre los jóvenes much ignorancia con respecto a la historia reciente de España — un conocimiento imprescindible para la construcción del porvenir del país. Pero cambiando tal situación no va a ser una tarea fácil.
Hay un muro de silencio con respecto a muchos incidentes durante los años de la dictadura. Mucho ha cambiado en España pero en algunos sentidos permanece una sociedad cerrada.
Un ejemplo: las barreras encontradas por los investigadores. El caso más llamativo es de los papeles de Franco en las manos de una fundación. Todavía no están disponibles para todos los historiadores.
Los que intentan averiguar los hechos acerca de la guerrilla antifranquista encuentran dificultades de sobra cuando acercan a los archivos officiales.
En unos casos se puede culpar sencillamente la burocracia y la desidia, pero en otros parece existir una determinación premeditada a obstaculizar cualquier investigación.
Muchos documentos se han esfumado.
Todavía no sabemos los destinos de mucha gente. Hay muchas cuestiones pendientes.
¿Es cierto que España es tan diferente?
¿Cuando va a asumir su pasado?
Todavía muchas familias no saben donde están enterados padres, abuelos, maridos… Vea:
http://www.publico.es/espana/235393/pruebas/adn/casi/restos/mayor/fosa/abierta/franco

GHOSTS THAT WON’T GO AWAY

WHILE thousands of families wait anxiously for the chance to give a dignified burial to their loved ones, the drive to investigate Spain’s thousands of mass graves has bogged down in a legal quagmire.
Seventy years have passed since the end of the country’s civil war and 34 since Franco died, but Spain still finds it painful to come to terms with its recent history.
Not everybody wants the victims of executions during the Franco era to be exhumed. Some claim that it will only open old wounds and that the dead should be allowed to rest in peace.
But the real problem is the lack of will on the part of politicians and judicial institutions to tackle the problem. Years of haggling and foot-dragging have delayed a full-scale investigation.
Associations formed by the families “para la recuperación de la memoria histórica” have been labouring to open some of the graves and have the remains identified via DNA tests. But they are often working in a legal limbo and receiving little official support.
They took their case to Spain’s High Court, furnishing details of 143,000 persons executed and tossed into mass graves during and after the Civil War.
Judge Baltasar Garzón, always ready to stick his neck out, gave the interminable legal process a sharp kick, ordering the opening of a case against the Franco regime of crimes against humanity and that 19 graves should be investigated.
But he ran into a brick wall when his fellow judges rejected the case and blocked the exhumations. Garzón reacted by retiring from the case and turning the matter over to courts in the districts where the graves are located.
However, the local courts are proving reluctant to act. Spain’s national government has asked regional governments to take responsibility but most have declined.
Meanwhile, many of the relatives of the victims are old and failing in health. Their hopes of at last seeing their fathers, uncles, mothers interred in properly identified graves fade by the day.

INTENSE LIGHT ON A FORGOTTEN WAR

Ian Gibson, respected biographer of García Lorca, Antonio Machado and Salvador Dalí, comments:

THE FOREIGN TOURISTS who flock every summer to the pretty village of Frigiliana, situated in the hills behind Spain’s Málaga coast, cannot be expected to know what happened in this region (known as the Axarquía) during the 1936-1939 Civil War and during the subsequent years of the Franco dictatorship. Nor to be aware of the movement now afoot in Spain, after the long silence imposed by the regime, which favours investigating in the greatest possible depth every aspect of those agonising years.
For such visitors this book will come as a revelation, for Frigiliana and its surroundings were the scene of an epic, bloody struggle between the Civil Guard and the guerrilla. A struggle hardly mentioned in the official press, almost unreported outside Spain and today, so long afterwards, difficult to research in sufficient detail.
The experienced British writer and journalist David Baird has been living for years in Frigiliana and knows its people well. There could be nobody better suited to tell this story, and he has done so magnificently, devoting years to interviewing survivors and their families and burrowing into the archives. Local history? Yes, but local history that sheds intense and necessary light on the larger issues.

The above words form part of the introduction to the award-winning book “Between Two Fires – Guerrilla war in the Spanish sierras”, published by Maroma Press. It’s available by mail order through this website or from English bookshops in Spain. Editorial Almuzara, of Córdoba, has published the Spanish edition, “Historia de los maquis”, on sale at good bookshops throughout Spain.

AUTHOR HONOURED

David Baird, author of Between two fires – Guerrilla war in the Spanish sierras, has been honoured by an international association of journalists and media representatives in southern Spain.

The Costa Press Club has presented the investigative journalist with its Communicator Award 2009 in recognition of his work on a book which throws fresh light on a virtually forgotten area of recent Spanish history.

Baird spent more than five years researching his book on the anti-Franco guerrilla movement and its impact on a rural community. He interviewed scores of people who lived through the guerrilla war of the 1940s, people of all political persuasions and also those with no particular ideology but who were caught up in the tragic events.

He also scoured all available archives, from Madrid to Washington. He dug up new information about the involvement of the British and American secret services in training and arming Spanish exiles to infiltrate into Spain during the Second World War.

And in the files of Franco’s military authorities he discovered shocking details of how three young men were murdered and of the cover-up that followed.

Baird’s book, published in English by Maroma Press and in Spanish by Editorial Almuzara, has proved to be a best-seller, winning high praise from critics and hispanists like Paul Preston and Ian Gibson.

He comments: “I felt I had to put on record what occurred in those terrible years before it was too late. More than a dozen of the people I interviewed have since died and with them have gone their memories and a part of Spanish history.”

THE FRANCO LEGACY

Es una contradicción muy rara. It’s strangely ironic. Los hombres y las mujeres que lucharon en la Resistencia Francesa contra los Nazis han sido reconocidos como heroes. En Francia han colocado monumentos en su honor. Pero los guerrilleros que lucharon en Espana contra la dictadura franquista todavía no han sido aceptados oficialmente como combatientes contra el fascismo.

The men and women who fought against the Nazis in the French Resistence are hailed as heroes. There are monuments in their honour. But the guerrillas who fought against Franco’s dictatorship in Spain have still not been officially recognised as combatants against fascism.

The organisation La Gavilla Verde is collecting signatures for a petition which seeks to rectify this anomaly. La Gavilla Verde recoge firmas para presentar un manifesto pidiendo la rectificación de esta anomalia. More information on their website (www.lagavillaverde.org).

WOUNDS THAT NEVER CLOSED

AFTER DECADES of fearful, enforced silence, an attempt is being made to redress the balance. This is what Spain’s Law of Historic Memory seeks to do. Finally, justice may be done and the remains of those executed during the Franco years will be identified and given dignified burial.

Some just can’t get their heads around this. They voice their opinions in both the English and Spanish media, claiming that the recent past should be forgotten, that the current debate is only opening old wounds.

But this ignores the fact that the wounds have never been closed. Those who were on the losing side in Spain’s terrible Civil War have never had a chance to honour their dead. Those on the Nationalist side who died have been remembered, often glorified, and their names have been etched on walls and monuments around the country. For victims on the Republican side there has been only silence.

LA GUERRA DESCONOCIDA

Hace más de 50 años muchas zonas de España fueron azotadas por una guerra, una guerra de que el público no fue informado, ni dentro del país ni afuera. Cada día hay menos gente que vivío en su propria carne la lucha por grupos de guerrilleros contra el regimen de Franco. Uno por uno, los testigos se van desapareciendo.

El libro “Historia de los maquis – Entre dos fuegos“ deja constancia del impacto terrible de aquella guerra desconocida en la comarca malagueña de la Axarquía en los años 40. Recoge el testimonio — apasionante, espeluznante y emocionante — de los campesinos. Y también de los guerrilleros y de la Guardia Civil.

Ya el libro ha sido presentado y recibido con entusiasma en Andalucía. En las presentaciones ha explicado el autor, David Baird, experimentado periodista, como llegó a investigar el tema y por que cree que es importante no perder esta parte de la historia de España.

Entre dos fuegos está disponible en inglés y en castellano. Tan grande es la demanda que ya ha sido necesario pedir una segunda impresión de las dos ediciones.

La edición española ha sido publicado por Editorial Almuzara (www.editorialalmuzara.com).

OUT NOW – NEW BOOK ON SPAIN’S GUERRILLA WAR

 

 Spain is still arguing about the bitter legacy from the Franco years. Passions are aroused about events during the long years of dictatorship. A new law, the Ley de la Memoria Histórica, aims to heal some of the lingering wounds but has only succeeded in exacerbating the fierce debate.

Thus, Between Two Fires could not be more timely. This important new book throws fresh light on a forgotten war, which raged years after Spain’s Civil War and went largely unreported.

Author David Baird has scoured official archives from Barcelona to Washington and interviewed scores of survivors to dig out the true story behind the anti-Franco resistance movement. 

Now — after more than five years’ research — his book, Between Two Fires — Guerrilla war in the Spanish sierras, is out. 

This is the true story of what happens when humble country folk find themselves in the front line in a secret war. Leading the guerrillas against Franco’s Civil Guard was a legendary figure, Roberto, a veteran of the Civil War and the French Resistance, charismatic but doomed.

Guerrilleros, villagers, Civil Guards give a moving account of bloodshed and betrayal,  courage and heroism. Little did they know that as the guerrilla war raged, politicians as far apart as London and Moscow were pulling the strings.

In the words of noted British historian Paul Preston: “As exciting as any thriller, yet deeply moving, it deserves to be read by everyone concerned with the history of contemporary Spain.” 

See the pages of this Maroma Press website for more details and how to order this fascinating and significant book.