Resources to understand the Spanish Civil War (Review!)

This is a summary of all the novels, short stories and graphic novels about the Spanish Civil War that I showcased in previos posts. Naturally, there are many other texts and resources that we can use to introduce the topic of the Spanish Civil War in our programs.

Cielo Abajo, the battle of Madrid in a novel

Cielo Abajo by Fernando Marías

Fernando Marías is a writer  and  publisher. He has written novels, film screenplays and short novels for young adults. He has also received numerous awards among them: Anaya award for young adult novels 2005 and the National Award to the best Book for Children and Young Adults 2006 (Premio nacional de literatura infantil y juvenil), both awards for Cielo Abajo.

Plot
Joaquín Dechén has lived all his life in an orphanage in Ávila province. When students are 15 they leave the orphanage with a letter to either become a priest or join the army. Joaquín joins the army when Franco, with a part of the Spanish army, rise against the republican government. In the army Joaquín meets famous pilot Luis Cortés, who becomes his mentor. Luis sends Joaquín to Madrid to spy on Ramiro and Constanza, Luis' dearest friends before the war.

Joaquin discovers the terrible effects of the war on innocent people and realizes that Luis, a Francoist supporter, has not kept his word of defending the republic. Joaquín is torn between this harsh reality and his loyalty to Luis Cortés, the man who taught him everything. Things get more complicated when he falls in love with Constanza, a beautiful, sensitive woman expecting a child. Out of love he decides to help the republic but when both Costanza and Ramiro die in a bombing he joins the Francoist army again.  The couple leaves a daughter also named Costanza in the same orphanage where Joaquin lived.

After the war Joaquin is a respected pilot and spends time looking for the young Costanza. Joaquin tries to help her as much as he can but she disappears from his life again after having a daughter also named Costanza. When he is an old man, after the second Costanza´s death, he renews his relation with the third Costanza, a young independent woman who learns from Joaquín the passion for planes.

Joaquín writes his story in a book that he plans to give the third Costanza as a present. This story was discovered by a young unsuccessful writer who gets a  part-time job decorating old Joaquín's apartment. While he was painting, a book comes in the mail for Joaquin. As a young writer, he couldn't resist taking a look and we follow the story while he reads the book and tells us how he meets Joaquín and young Costanza. We realize that Joaquín is giving him a present too, a good story to write a book about it.

The book is beautifully written and introduces lots of themes that we can use for discussion in a novel study:

• Love (platonic, filial, admiration...)
• Loyalty and betrayal: Luis/Ramiro and Vicente Rojo
• Personal growth and the search for an identity. 
• The search for dreams
• Culpability
• Revenge
• Loneliness
• The evolution of the role of women in Spain

The novel depicts the so-called battle of Madrid in the fall of 1936. The Francoist troops were planning the assault to Madrid. Joaquín witnesses the meetings to coordinate the defense of the capital. Historical figures who took part in the battle appear in the novel such as Varela, Lister and Vicente Rojo. Joaquín is impressed by Vicente Rojo's integrity. He was a high rank military man but unlike Franco or Luis Cortés he remained loyal to the government because he had given his word to defend the Spanish republic. He organizes the defense of Madrid and coordinates all the different armed groups that existed at the time.

Cielo Abajo can be a good text to do a novel study with our advanced students. It portrays important historical facts very accurately but it also tells us a beautiful love story. 

More links
Author´s website
Anaya publisher study guide 

Webquest on the novel 

Interview in Canal Literatura  

La División Nueve enters Paris!! An unknown historical episode for the Spanish class

Some years ago we had one presenter in my school in Spain who was an an old man who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. His main aim was to share his life experiences during and after the civil war. It was the first time that I heard about the concentration camps in Southern France that held around half a million Spanish citizens in very harsh conditions in the beginning of 1939. When World War II broke out some months later, most of these people who fought for the Republican government in Spain were offered 3 alternatives: to be sent back to Spain and stand trial, to build trenches and walls to protect the  French borders in the Maginot Line or to join La Legion Étrangere and fight the Nazis as a separate unit.

Our presenter in the school, as most of the Spanish refugees, joined the L E. He told us what it was like to be in a second war. Some months later, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis and sent to a work camp in Central Europe. Conditions were terribly harsh and the prisoners had to work long hours producing boots and uniforms for the German army. There are two things that stayed in my mind about his experience: one was the extremely harsh treatments that people of other races received (since they were deemed even more 'inferior' than the Spaniards). He recalled how the Hungarian gypsies in the camp were treated with particularly harsh methods. Another memory was that it took him two years after leaving the camp to start gaining weight, because his body had been so worn out.

When they were set free in 1944, he returned to his old battalion and continued fighting until the end of the war in 1945. It was the first time I heard about the stories of the Spanish exiled in Europe after the war and their involvement in World War II.  After Hitler´s defeat, they were ignored by the Allies, by France and naturally, by the Francoist regime in Spain. To make things even more devastating, the Allies' promise to rid Spain of Franco was never fulfilled. For 60 years their story was forgotten and they never got any recognition. People from lots of nationalities fought against Hitler but the Spanish republicans were the only ones who had no country to go back to.

In the 1990's people in Spain started to wonder about the fate of these people and their role in World War II. This way, to the astonishment of many Spanish people, we discovered that the Spanish soldiers from la Division Nueve were the first allies to enter  Paris and reach Paris city hall.

In 2010 French film director Alberto Marquardt produced a documentary about two of the last survivors from la División Nueve, Manuel Fernandez and Luis Royo. In the documentary, both remember their incredible experience as teens living in the Spanish republic to becoming adults through the turbulent Second World War. Through this short time span, they lived through the Spanish Civil War, being exiled in early 1939, being imprisoned in the concentration camps in France or in Northern Africa, and entering Paris as the liberators in August 1944.

In the Instituto Cervantes' website in Paris we have the opportunity of following the division Nueve's footsteps and experiencing their entrance into the city hall in Paris on August 24, 1944. It was the Guadalajara tank that reached city hall first. The website also includes links to websites and articles related to this historical events. Rutas Cervantes

A novel that recreates all this historical period very accurately is the best seller, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis in its English version) by university lecturer and writer Javier Cercas. The author mixes fact and fiction to recreate the life of Antonio Miralles, a fictional Republican soldier who saves the life of Sanchez-Mazas, one of the founders of the Falange political party. Sanchez-Mazas recalled this episode in his life years later when a republican soldier spared his life .

After the war, Miralles would follow the same fate as our aforementioned heroes: living in concentration camps, and 5 more years of war in campaigns in Northern Africa and  with La Nueve against the Nazis. 50 years later a journalist (the novel´s author) contacts him to learn more about his episode with Sanchez-Mazas. Miralles is now an old man who lives in a seniors' home in France and he recalls his experiences to the author. Although this story is similar to the story of  Manuel Fernandez and Luis Royo depicted in the documentary produced by Alberto Marquardt, the novel depicts these experiences through the author's eyes. As this novel is fictional, the different layers that the author adds to the story may make history even more multidimensional to young people.

The novel´s language is quite complex for secondary students, this should not be a mandatory reading but to be recommended to students with a good command of the language to enhance their learning. No matter if you read the Spanish or English version of this novel, it will prove very fascinating if you are genuinely interested in the Spanish Civil War. We can also show the adapted film produced in 2003. There are quite a lot of activities available online about the film that we can use:

• Activities about the novel and film
• Activities in Revista Tecla, Ministry of Education
• Activities from Spanish film festival in Nantes 2012

In my next post I will speak about the recently published graphic novel, Los surcos del azar, by Paco Roca . The story goes back to the same events and shows the life of another of the republican soldiers who took part in the liberation of Paris.

Spanish Civil War 4, The Photojournalists

The Spanish Civil War was unique in many ways. It was the first war that was fully covered by journalists with their camera at hand. Photojournalism was born during the Spanish Civil War in the sense we understand it today. Nobody better than Robert Capa, David Seymour, aka Chim and Gerda Taro can embody the ideal of the journalist who gets involved in conflicts to show the world the tragedy of wars. The three of them committed their lives to show what was happening in the wars and especially the suffering of civilians.

 Some rights reserved by xornalcerto

There are many parallelisms in the life and works of the three journalists, not in vain they worked together in different periods of their lives, shared a deep friendship and, in the case of Taro and Capa, they were romantically involved. The three of them were born in a convulsive time in different parts of Central Europe into Jewish families. A time that saw changes in borders, the fall of empires and the rise of anti-Semitism in most  European countries.

Following their wish for freedom they spent their lives taking pictures as photojournalists in numerous wars and military conflicts in the 20th century. A life that any Hollywood star would have signed for a movie. The parallelism continued up to the end of their lives. The three of them died very young while working as reporters in a war: Gerda Taro in July 1937 near Madrid during the Spanish Civil War; Robert Capa on May 1954 during the first Indochina war and Chim in November 1956 in Egypt during the 1956 Suez War.

The website by Magnum Photos offers a great collection of photos by these 3 journalists. In these collections we can have a look at photos from the Spanish Civil War but also other armed conflicts where they were sent as reporters. There are also other collections of  politicians or even movie stars. Magnum Photos was created as an international cooperative in Paris in 1947 by photographers. Among those photographers were Capa and Chim. The images below belong to their funds that can be visited in the provided links.

  

 Some rights reserved by tiganatoo

Another good source of graphic information is provided by the website of the Ministry of Education of Spain. The Junta de Defensa de Madrid, the organism that centralized the defence of Madrid after the coup d'etat in July 1936 created a photo archive. The idea was to show the world the disasters of the war and the suffering of the civilians. During the years of Franco's regime in Spain the archive was not available for political reasons. Today the collection is accessible online as an homage to the victims of the war.

For over 60 years most of the negatives taken by Capa, Chim and Taro during the Spanish Civil War were lost. After the ending of the Spanish civil war in April 1939 the negatives were kept in 3 small cardboard suitcases made by Chim. Then they went through an incredible journey until they were put under the custody of General Francisco Aguilar González, the Mexican ambassador to the Vichy government in 1941–42.  It is unclear  how this happened but the negatives were kept at Mr. Aguilar´s home until 1995.  After not less vicissitudes, they were placed at the International Centre of Photography with most of the rest of the works by the three photographers. We can learn about this almost unreal story in the ICF website.

A documentary that recalls the story of the 3 photojournalists in Spain and the journey of the 3 cardboard suitcases was produced in 2011, La Maleta Mexicana by director Trisha Ziff. The fate of the thousands of Spanish refugees after the war and their struggle for surviving in the concentration camps in France until Mexico opened its doors to receive them is well portrayed and documented with real testimonies of the refugees. The documentary offers a great deal of valuable information for our Spanish class. The trailer of the documentary:

And here we can see an interview to the director:

ENTREVISTA CON LA DIRECTORA TRISHA ZIFF from AMBULANTE on Vimeo.

I would not like to finish this post without mention Agustí Centelles. He was a photojournalist before the war and he showed what life was like in Barcelona in the years prior to the Spanish Civil War. When the war started he continued taking pictures of Barcelona during the first days after the coup d'état. He also covered several battles with his cameras commissioned by the Republican government. After the war, he left for France carrying a suitcase full of negatives and his photography gear. His life in France was like the lives of the Spanish refugees depicted in the documentary La Maleta Mexicana. He spent several months in two concentration camps where despite the harsh conditions, he managed to build a photography lab and to continue with his work.

After the break of the Second World War he collaborated with the French resistance returning to Spain in 1946. He was never allowed to be a photojournalist any more for political reasons and he focused his work as a photographer on making portraits and working on publicity. In 1976, one year after Franco´s death, he went back to France to recover his old negatives. An outstanding selection of his photos is available on this Link offered by Faximil edicions Digitals. Going through them we can say that he definitely had the knack of being at the right place, at the right time.

His sons, Sergi and Octavi, have taken care of Agustí Centelles' work. They donated the funds to the Spanish state and in Octavi's flickr website most of his work is also accessible.

All rights reserved by Octavi Centelles

The life and work of the photojournalists who worked at the Spanish Civil War can be a good research project for a bilingual or IB Spanish program. Students can integrate themes from Social Studies, Art, Film Studies, and so on to create their project.