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Jean Pierre Barou (1940, Paris) Editor and writer.
He now publishes
The War in Spain: Reconciling the Living and the Dead
(Harp), in which he analyzes what this conflict meant for intellectuals such as Thomas Mann, André Gide, Albert Camus and George Bernanos.
Why were various intellectuals, of different ideologies, concerned about the Spanish civil war? Some intellectuals, intellectuals of a very special category like Thomas Mann, André Gide, Albert Camus or George Bernanos, intellectuals not dominated by an ideological vision, were very interested in consciousness. They did not enter into the political or ideological considerations about the Spanish civil war, they were interested in how that conflict affected the conscience. Thomas Mann, for example, wrote in 1936 from his exile in Zurich a six-page text entitled
Spain
in which he said that the Spanish civil war went against "the demands of conscience."
His book takes the title of a phrase by the Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, who said: "The reconciliation of the living is only possible after the reconciliation of the dead."
Have we carried out that reconciliation?
Not enough.
But reconciliation is not just a problem for Spain.
I believe, for example, that France has not carried out this reconciliation either.
We Europeans need to reconcile.
It all started with the Spanish civil war, the first war of ideologies, but reconciliation is something that belongs to all of Europe.
Bernarnos said that the Spanish war was the anticipation of a universal drama, and he was right.
The European democracies at that time, led by England and France, decided not to intervene in the Spanish war.
You say that your decision not to intervene turned out to be a policy of intervention ... That's right.
While Hitler and Mussolini armed Franco and the URRS the republicans, the democracies decided to abandon Spain to their fate.
It was something very serious.
Because let us remember that Hitler was not a man of the right: he was the man from the concentration camps, the man who most attacked the conscience, the person responsible for a genocide.
The decision of the European democracies not to get involved in the war in Spain was very serious, especially in the case of Léon Blum, French Prime Minister and a man on the left.
He was a coward, he did not put his ideas into practice.
When, for example, he received a request from the Spanish Prime Minister, José Giral, asking him to please send them arms, Blum ignored it.
In your book you say that there is a Spanish "exception".
What do you mean?
I mean women.
But I would like to go back to Gregorio Marañón to explain it to him.
While the civil war looms, Marañón said that you had to be careful when interpreting the Spanish conflict, that to understand what was happening in Spain you had to go back to Lope de Vega and read
Fuenteovejuna
.
In that play, in which the protagonist Laurencia exhorts her sisters to combat, perhaps one can find the description of what Spanish culture is, a culture in which women play a key role.
The Spanish exception in the civil war occurred because women rebelled, but not for ideological reasons.
They rebelled in Castilblanco, in Casas Viejas and in Arnedo, as in 1476 they had rebelled in Fuente Obejuna against Commander Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, events that Lope de Vega narrated in a work that García Lorca later adapted.
In the civil war, the women of Castilblanco, Casas Viejas or Arnedo rebelled against poverty, against misery, against a life expectancy that in those areas was 50 years old for the poor.
It was not an ideological or political rebellion, but of conscience, against the offense against conscience.
Antonio Machado himself, already exiled in the French town of Collioure, said: "I am over 60, which is many years for a Spaniard."
You maintain that the murder of Federico García Lorca was a crime against humanity.
Why?
It is very important to differentiate a crime against humanity from a war crime.
It is not the number of deaths that characterizes a crime against humanity, but the intention behind those deaths.
And when the intention is to attack the essence, the nature of the human being, it is a crime against humanity.
Hiroshima, for example, is a war crime.
The Shoah, the Holocaust, is a crime against humanity because its intention was to destroy the entire Jewish people.
García Lorca personified a new humanity. What new humanity did Lorca personify?
Lorca supported women and vindicates their sexual desire, their bodies, as he makes clear in
La casa de Bernarda Alba
and especially in
Yerma
.
In addition, he defended the culture of the gypsies, the Andalusian culture and was homosexual.
In his
Romance of the Spanish Civil Guard he
condemns, for example, the brutality of the Civil Guard against a woman, he says verbatim: "Rosa la de los Camborios, / moans sitting at her door / with her two breasts cut off / placed on a tray".
Lorca personified the possibility of a new humanity, a humanity in which women could express their sexuality, in which peasants, gypsies, homosexuals were respected ... I believe that Lorca's was not a murder strictly political, it was something else.
In fact, there was a relative of his in the squad that executed him.
The relationship with the Spanish Civil War of writers such as Hemingway or John Dos Passos is well known.
Why are the reflections on this conflict by Thomas Mann, André Gide, Albert Camus or George Bernanos not so great?
For whom the Bell Tolls
it is a good novel, but it is an ideological novel, in it Hemingway openly supports the communist cause.
Dos Passos also saw the Spanish war from an ideological point of view, and also wrote things based on false rumors spread by the Republican government in Madrid.
On Casas Viejas, for example, he distorted the facts, wrote things that were false.
André Malraux also approached the Spanish civil war from an ideological point of view.
However, Thomas Mann, André Gide, Albert Camus and George Bernanos analyzed the Spanish civil war from the point of view of conscience, not from the ideological point of view, in that sense they were freer, they sought the truth.
Thomas Mann picked up in his diaries when he was young a phrase pronounced by the poet Louise Colet, lover of Gustave Flaubert, in which he said that being a genius is something very common, what is not common is having a free conscience capable of seeing things. facts as they are, without doing it from an ideological perspective.
And there is still more ... What?
I believe that ideology is a matter for men, not women.
And that is why the ideological vision of men like Malraux, Dos Passos or Hemingway prevails.
The position of the communists, the anarchists, the Francoists and the republicans are all ideological positions that suppose a fragmentation of consciousness and are neither complete nor free.
Do you think that today we continue to make the mistake of looking at civil war ideologically rather than from the point of view of conscience?
Yes, and I think it is a monstrous error, because in doing so one acts against reconciliation, the reconciliation of the living and the dead.
Europe should carry out this reconciliation, but unfortunately it is still dominated by ideologies.
In France we have the same problem.
France was involved in the Nazi genocide, it collaborated with it probably more than Mussolini.
Hannah Arendt herself said that Mussolini had been better than the French.
And yet we have not done an exercise in reconciliation. There are those who think that it is not good to rethink the civil war, that by doing so old wounds are reopened.
Do you agree?
No, I'm not, not at all.
When our publishing house published Stéphane Hessel's book
¡Indignaos!
, in which he calls for a peaceful insurrection of conscience, he was very successful in Spain, and he was not talking about Spain.
I asked myself why and I believe that a large part of its success is due to the demand in Spain for a peaceful revision of the past.
It is not about recreating hatred, but about decontaminating the past, knowing what really happened and coming together from there on different bases.
In writing this book,
The Spanish War: Reconciling the Living and the Dead
, I have dug through the rubbish of history, among all those things that people did not want to hear.
Why who talks about Thomas Mann and his position on the Spanish civil war?
Who talks about the position of André Gide, Albert Camus or George Bernanos?
Do you think that intellectuals, and not politicians, should lead the review of our history and specifically of the civil war?
Yes. Intellectuals tend to be less dominated by ideologies than politicians.
All the references that I have used in my book are not political, they are intellectuals such as Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, Gregorio Marañón, Ortega y Gasset, José Bergamín ... Intellectuals have a broader perception of things, not generally be contaminated by political positions.
And those intellectuals of the past that I have just quoted you already said that you had to be careful and not analyze the Spanish civil war from an ideological point of view.
What you have to do is search for the truth.
My book is not an opinion book and it is not about the entire Spanish civil war, but only about the truth of some forgotten events.
But I have not written this book to give lessons to the Spanish or to awaken feelings of hatred or revenge, quite the opposite.
Because, as Camus said, "What would prestigious Europe be, indeed, without poor Spain?"
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