Sant Miquel, enguany mullat.
Per l’altre costat, la serra Calderona amb núvols i boires pixaneres i a la plana algun bancal inundat. A dalt algun bassal entre les pedres.
Ha arribat el temps
Vos deixe la versió de Toni Subirana, de disc Toni Subirana canta Josep Maria de Sagarra.
….Quant ens adonem que també aquí, a Anglaterra, hi ha aquells que desitgen que aquesta nova edat fosca arribi aquí, la tragèdia espanyola esdevé un tragèdia humana, i la batalla que s’esta lliurant, no és tan sols seva, sinò tambè la nostra. Mirem humilment els pobres espanyols, republicans, comunistes, sindicalistes, anarquistes, que estan lluitant amb les mans nues i plens d’horror per impedir que s’apagui la llum. Ens adrecem amb ràbia a tots els que, a Anglaterra, voldrien que aquesta llum s’estingís, i criem les paraules a les quals Espanya ha donat un nou sentit: “No passaran”.
…….
“I així les dones dones es converteixen en espies dels contra els seus marits. No m’estranya que els capellans facin tot el que poden per evitar que tinguin educació. Tots els obrers que tenen una dona a casa que va a confessar-se saben que estan traïts”
No un creieu Tomás?
Deixeu-me citar el Nou Catequisme:
-Pregunta: Quin pecat cometen els que voten liberal?
-Resposta: Normalment, pecat mortal.
The plan of action had been settled well in advance. I had had my “briefing” in Paris and there had been discussions about the programme and the route. With guides from the Republican underground to lead me, I was to slip across the Pyrenees without arousing the suspicions of the frontier guards. As soon as I was safely inside Spain. I was to contact the chief of one of the clandestine organizations, and, with his help, travel across the country to the three main centres of political activity—Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid. In these cities I would meet the representatives and leaders of all the different democratic groups and parties, the heads of resistance movements, and the committees which they had set up to co-ordinate the work of all the active opponents of the Franco régime.
My journey and my identity while I was in the country were closely guarded secrets. Until I had left, only five men—three in Spain and two abroad—knew who and where I was. When, after my arrival back in France, the story broke, the Spanish Government was taken completely by surprise. A bribe of 200,000 pesetas (about £4,500) was offered to anyone who would give information about how I had crossed the frontier. It was never claimed.
THE survival of General Franco’s Government in Spain two years after the end of the world war against dictatorship and fascism, is a paradox which neither his friends nor his enemies expected while that war was being fought. Certainly he did not expect it himself. For six years Allied leaders had assured the peoples of the world that they were fighting not merely in self-defence, not simply against the armies of Germany, Italy and Japan, but against the system of government which those nations represented. The destruction of all traces of the fascist way of life was to be one of their chief peace aims. It was for this reason that, after the war was won, the defeated enemy nations were not only disarmed and subjected to military occupations, but their former political institutions were ruthlessly and methodically destroyed.
Today only Spain survives: the last fascist state in Europe. Her régime, modelled on Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, and brought to power by the efforts of these two dictators, is still free to practice an ideology which the rest of the Continent overthrew in 1945. Its declared loyalty to the fallen dictators, the help it gave them, the troops it sent to fight with Hitler’s army—all these things have gone unpunished.
The dictatorship in Spain is not simply a Spanish problem for two substantial reasons. First: it was installed not by the people of Spain themselves, but by the armed intervention of the Axis Powers. The Spanish war was an integral part of the dictators’ onslaught against the democracies of Europe. The Spaniards resisted until they were overwhelmed. In their defeat they rightly saw the first Axis victory in an international conflict which started long before the invasion of Poland in 1939. Second: from 1939, until the final defeat of the dictators became certain, the Spanish Government formally ranged its self at their side, and committed a series of openly hostile acts against the democracies, at moments when such acts were most likely to contribute to their defeat.
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No 5. Extracts from a confidential report on Spain submitted to a group of Members of Parliament.
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1. I entered Spain on the night of August . . . and recrossed the French frontier shortly after dawn on August . . . During the interval, I visited Bilbao, San Sebastian, Madrid and Barcelona, passing through several small towns (including Burgos and Saragossa) on the way. I completed the arranged programme without incident.
2. The object of my journey was to talk to the leaders (or their representatives, where the leaders were in prison) of the various democratic opposition groups in Spain. I therefore did not see either monarchists or communists. I was careful throughout to make it clear that my mission was exclusively personal and informative, and that no member of the Government had any knowledge of my presence in Spain.
3. Almost all the representatives I met emphatically stressed the necessity of avoiding further bloodshed in Spain. They affirmed that, even were it a feasible proposition (which, owing to the strength of the army and police, it was not), they would still rule out any action that might precipitate a second civil war… .
9. It is my impression that unco-ordinated British contact with Republican groups and with royalist and military elements (sometimes by official or semi-official persons, sometimes by unofficial British citizens in Spain) has, in the past, sown mutual distrust among them. It has confused and hindered their attempts to reach agreement. I could find no evidence of any British “plan” to bring these people together.
10. On the other hand, recent British statements and actions have done much to stop the disintegration of the various elements now supporting the régime. There are potential quislings in the Government, the administration, the police, and even the Falange, as well as in the army. British policy since March 1946 has helped to unite rather than divide them.
11. For example: in my view, it was not primarily the closing of the French frontier which “solidified” the generals last spring, but their belief that the western allies had decided not to express their dislike of Franco in anything stronger than words. All those whose loyalty to the régime had wavered at the time of the allied victory and of the result of the British elections, now became convinced that there was no need, after all, for them to find a way of detaching themselves from the dictator.
12. British diplomatic intervention against police terrorism seems to have been very ineffective. During my own journey, 1 was personally (though indirectly) affected by a case where the police so tortured a member of one of the Republican organizations, that his removal to Madrid from San Sebastian gaol (which had been ordered by the Security Department “for further interrogation”) could not be carried out. This was not an isolated occasion. My impression is that police brutality is if anything getting worse, although our Embassy and Consulates ought now to be able to use their influence to protect Franco’s political opponents, at least from those “security measures” which even contravene present Spanish law.
13. These two practical complaints (i) that Britain is hindering rather than helping the achievement of unity against Franco, and (ii) that British protests against the police terror are weak and ineffective), together with a number of specific political disappointments, have resulted in increasing bitterness and disillusionment among Spanish democrats of all parties. British prestige has fallen very low. Though as yet Communist influence is extremely weak, there is a growing current of pro-Russian feeling, inspired by the (misguided) belief that Russia is the only great power actively friendly to the Republic.
14. Great harm has been done by two British arguments (used in various forms by His Majesty’s Government) which have been enormously exploited by Spanish Government propaganda: (i) That it is “for the Spaniards to solve their own internal problem”; (ii) that “economic sanctions would hurt the Spanish workers”. Almost every person I met protested hotly against both.
15. Without some outside advice, encouragement and help, the Spanish people cannot overthrow Franco’s police terror, any more than the Germans and Italians unaided could overthrow Hitler or Mussolini once they were firmly in the saddle. His Majesty’s Government, the Republicans believe, cannot be unaware of this elementary and obvious reality.
16. As for economic sanctions, I am personally convinced that the great majority of Spanish working people would gladly endure still further privations if they were the prelude to their liberation from the dictatorship… .
18. The 1946 Spanish harvest is the best for many years. Owing to the way in which food is distributed in Spain, however, there will probably not be much improvement in the diet of the working family. The black market—largely supplied from army sources-sells at prices well above their reach, and official rations cover only a small proportion of their weekly needs. Conditions in the Madrid slums reminded me of Greece just after the occupation.
19. I am at a loss to explain recent reports of Franco’s increasing popularity in the provinces. At San Sebastian l was able to observe at close quarters the fantastic security precautions taken to ensure his personal safety, and I can vouch for the utter inaccuracy of Spanish newspaper stories of his “enthusiastic reception by the population”… .
21. I have tried to confine this report to comments on what I saw during my visit. I left Spain even more anxious about British policy than when I arrived. I believe that if we took an initiative now, we could help to produce the necessary degree of unity among the elements of opposition and potential opposition to Franco to make possible, without bloodshed, a transition to democratic government. But if the present hesitation continues, His Majesty’s Government will not only lose whatever remains of its prestige among non-fascist Spaniards, but also make inevitable an eventual extremist solution, with all the dangers to the Spanish people and Great Britain which that implies.
F. N-B
Bé, ja sabem que no es va fer res.
Catalonia, on the other hand, is a country where oppression has provoked violent extremes. By language and culture she was originally an extension of southern France rather than part of Spain. In the 14th century she built up an extensive Mediterranean empire of her own, and her merchant seamen compiled Europe’s first code of maritime law. Prosperous as a trading nation, she had few contacts in mediaeval times with her semi-pastoral neighbours on the interior plateaux. But when she was united under the crown of Castile early in the 15th century her first decline began. The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 had made the Mediterranean unsafe for Christian ships, and wrecked her maritime trade. With the discovery of America the primacy of Spanish ports passed from Barcelona to Seville. Catalans were excluded from transatlantic commerce. At the same time extensive peasant troubles did temporary damage to her agriculture.
But it was not till the 17th century, when royal efforts at centralization became stronger, that the first big Catalan revolts began. In 1640, while Spain was in the middle of a war with France, the Catalans rebelled and placed themselves under the protection of the French king. This was the signal for a number of other provincial risings, in one of which Portugal won her final independence. Barcelona only submitted after 12 years to the King’s forces, and Catalan guerillas in the countryside kept up the fight for seven more. Forty years later—during the War of the Spanish Succession—the Catalans rebelled again. After a fearful siege of Barcelona the King regained control in 1714, abolished the remains of Catalonia’s political independence, closed the Catalan universities and started a new period of repression.
At the beginning of the 19th century the Peninsula War was the signal for a general disintegration of Spain. Until the arrival of British forces under Wellington, operations against the French invaders were carried out on a regional and local basis, and some 20 impromptu committees in various parts of the country declared their independence. Catalonia was occupied by French troops for five years.
There was another Catalan revolt in 1823, and then, under a “liberal” Government in Madrid, a further period of repression, in which Catalonia lost her few surviving local rights—her commercial and penal law, her special tribunals, the use of her language in schools, her coinage, and her local administration. But this was only the signal for a new revival: particularly a linguistic and cultural revival. The Catalan nationalist movement in its present form first began to organize itself about a hundred years ago.
At first it was not predominantly a movement of the left. The big Barcelona rising against the Central Government in 1842 was organized by a combination of factory owners and workers. As industrialization increased the Catalan industrialists and the prosperous bourgeoisie took the lead against the centralism of Madrid. Allied to them at first were the Carlists, who, though reactionary and pro-clerical, also stood for local liberties and interests. After the second Carlist war ended in 1876, the Church herself still supported the autonomists in both Catalonia and Euzkadi. But as the industrial proletariat grew stronger, and as wave after wave of terrorism and repression swept the country in the early 1900s, the leadership of the nationalist movements passed gradually to the people. In 1909 the oppressive policy of the Central Government provoked wild riots which were followed ten years later by the first big general strike. Well organized and relatively peaceful, it paralysed Barcelona and caused the fall of two successive governments in Madrid. This time Government repression was more ferocious than ever before. Upheavals, atrocities and assassinations continued without a pause until 1923, when Primo do Rivera, then Military Governor of Catalonia, made his successful coup d’état.
During his dictatorship, Catalan nationalism was driven deep underground. This, and the declared anti-Catalan sentiments of King Alfonso XIII, made it more than ever republican and left wing. Only after the coming to power of the Republic of 1931, which was actually preceded by the declaration of a Catalan Republic, did Catalonia regain her freedom of expression, her local autonomy, and the right to remember her individuality and her own traditions. The story of the Generalitat of Catalonia, of the autonomous government of Euzkadi, and of how, during the last civil war, the age-old Spanish regionalist tendencies came once again to life, belongs to recent history. But local nationalism and the problems of Catalonia and Euzkadi are not new. They have deep roots in the past. They can never be extinguished by passing wars or military dictators.