Ghosts of Spain Read Online Free

Civil War, was one reason for this silence. Another was not to upset those, especially in the army, who were amongst the biggest threats to the young democracy.
    It was unwritten, but known as
el pacto del olvido
, the pact of forgetting. Historians continued their work and, with sometimes limited access to documents from the time, dug and delved. In the early days of the transition there was a sudden thirst for books, in a country used to censorship, on what had really happened to Spain since 1936. But the Civil War and, to a certain degree, Francoism itself became unmentionable elsewhere – in politics, between neighbours and even, in many cases, within families themselves. A senior academic once suggested to me that the whole matter was best studied ‘
en la intimidad
’, in the intimacy ofone’s own home. It was, in the words of one parliamentarian of
la Transición
, a matter of ‘forgetting by everyone for everyone’.
    It was also a case of
tapando vergüenzas
– of covering up embarrassments . For, apart from a few Franco nostalgists, Spaniards felt, understandably, shame. They were ashamed of their Civil War and also about the mediocre dictator who emerged from it. Anyway , they said, what mattered was the present, the here-and-now, and the future. The latter was an argument that went down well with a nation bubbling over with optimism for tomorrow and with a hedonistic desire to make the most of today. Spaniards have settled down since the giddy days of Madrid’s 1980s ‘
movida
’. ‘Get stoned and stay with it,’ aged Madrid mayor Enrique Tierno Galván, affectionately known as ‘
el viejo profesor
’, had exhorted the city’s youth. Spaniards generally still believe it is their absolute right – even their obligation – to enjoy themselves. This, researchers have even suggested, may be the real reason why they live so much longer than other Europeans. It may also, however, be why they are Europe’s biggest consumers of cocaine.
    Once the silence began to break, however, it was unstoppable. Whole tables at El Corte Inglés, the ubiquitous department store, groaned with volumes with titles like
Franco’s Graves, The Slaves of Franco, Victims of Victory, The End of Hope, The Lost Children of Francoism
and
Chronicle of the Lost Years
. Spaniards, especially a younger generation whose grandparents and parents had often kept their own silence, suddenly wanted to know more.
    Soon, however, it became clear that the silence hid something other than just fear or shame. Spaniards, it turned out, did not agree on the past. History was a political Pandora’s box. Once the lid was opened, out flew ancient, hate-fuelled arguments.
    A new kind of book appeared. These ones had names like
The Myths of the Civil War, Checas of Madrid: Republican Prisons Revealed or 1934 – The Civil War Begins, The Socialist Party and Catalan Republican Left Start the Hostilities.
These were often pseudo-history, a prominent historian complained to me. He also believed they were a direct result of the graves being opened. They shot, however, to the top of the bestsellers list. These books, in thebroadest sense, accused the people lying in those graves of being guilty of the whole thing in the first place. The left had provoked the Civil War with swings towards extremism, attempted revolutions and leniency with church-burners. And then there were the
checas
, the left-wing prisons and torture cells, and the mass shootings of right-wing prisoners by the Republicans themselves. A left-wing revolution was gathering steam when General Franco and others rebelled, they argued. It was a new version of Franco’s old argument. He had saved Spain.
    This was the argument that had been disguised by the silence. Spain had two versions of who was to blame for the Civil War. There was one for the old right, and their new apologists, and one for the rest. There was