Would you like to share with us anything that you enjoy in your mother tongue?
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2020 9:40 pm
I've seen that this forum is full of people from various parts of the world, so I was wondering if you'd like to share with us which kind of media (ranging from books and podcasts to social media accounts) or topics do you usually enjoy and find interesting in your mother tongue.
In my case, I'd like to talk about a topic I've been very interested about for a while: the so called memoria histórica, that is to say the people's history of Spain in the twentieth century. I hope this will be of some interest to you too.
La memoria histórica.
As you may know, here in Spain we lost the war against fascism during the late 30s and only after roughly 40 years of dictatorship we had a peaceful transition to democracy orchestrated by the own institutions. This means that it was them, the fascist politicians, the ones who directed the shift to democracy. As a result, there was not a replacement of civil servants and other vestiges of the dictatorship, and it was promoted by all means a "Pact of Forgetting" and an official version of the historical facts which more or less equate the role of the republican faction and the "Nationalist" (fascist) faction in the Civil War, and also presents Franco as a sort of benign (or not-that-bloodthirsty) dictator. You can read about this official, supposedly "impartial" version in the short book "La Guerra Civil Contada Para Jóvenes", by Arturo Pérez-Reverte [1].
I've read and listen to hundreds of testimonials about these years, including from people who are still alive today. They usually talk about the poverty, the unemployment, the extremely low salaries, the slave labor of imprisoned people (mostly because of political reasons), the extreme kind of violence perpetrated by the fascists, the unequality, the continuous calls to the fascist authorities made by malicious neighbors and, especially, the starvation, so I don't have words to express my indignation. Here in this blog you can read some of those: https://viajandoentrelatormenta.com/. They're also available in the website of the non-profit organization Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. Many of them leave you speechless.
The starvation was a direct consequence of voluntary economic policies adopted by the fascist regime, as it's analyzed in this article by a researcher of the University of Granada. In school textbooks, however, they say that it was a natural consequence of the war. The starvation and the poverty forced millions of people to migrate to Latin America and Europe, and to those who stayed and didn't own any land to chase cats, doves and rats, and to look for food in the garbage so they could survive. You can hear about this from almost anybody who is today 80-90 years old, maybe 70-80 in some regions. Here an example.
They only ones who benefited from this regime were the big landowners, bankers (like Juan March), ecclesiastical authorities, high-ranking military officials and businessmen, and all those people closely allied to their interests. The pretended impartiality is nothing but a desire to dillute this simple fact.
If by any change you're also interested in this topic, I'd suggest to:
- Read the books "Historia de España" and "La Guerra Civil Española" by Pierre Vilar (I can share them).
- Read the novel "Los Santos Inocentes" by Miguel Delibes, or watch its adaptation to the screen in Youtube.
- Read poems by Miguel Hernández, Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado and Gabriel Celaya.
- Watch "Plácido", by Luis García Berlanga.
- Read the Memoria Histórica's section of the alternative newspaper Kaosenlared, particularly the articles by Manuel Márquez Berrocal.
- Listen to any of these songs: Asturias by Víctor Manuel (Pedro Garfias' poem), Fidelidad by Luis Pastor, Todos Repiten lo Mismo by Labordeta, Emigrante by Pablo Guerrero, La Poesía Es un Arma Cargada de Futuro by Paco Ibáñez (Gabriel Celaya's poem), Uno de Aquellos by Joan Manuel Serrat (Miguel Hernández's poem), Al Alba by Aute and Cuervo Ingenuo by Javier Krahe.
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[1] A big majority of the current Spanish intellectuals are quite conservative, specially those related with La Real Academia de la Lengua Española.
In my case, I'd like to talk about a topic I've been very interested about for a while: the so called memoria histórica, that is to say the people's history of Spain in the twentieth century. I hope this will be of some interest to you too.
La memoria histórica.
As you may know, here in Spain we lost the war against fascism during the late 30s and only after roughly 40 years of dictatorship we had a peaceful transition to democracy orchestrated by the own institutions. This means that it was them, the fascist politicians, the ones who directed the shift to democracy. As a result, there was not a replacement of civil servants and other vestiges of the dictatorship, and it was promoted by all means a "Pact of Forgetting" and an official version of the historical facts which more or less equate the role of the republican faction and the "Nationalist" (fascist) faction in the Civil War, and also presents Franco as a sort of benign (or not-that-bloodthirsty) dictator. You can read about this official, supposedly "impartial" version in the short book "La Guerra Civil Contada Para Jóvenes", by Arturo Pérez-Reverte [1].
I've read and listen to hundreds of testimonials about these years, including from people who are still alive today. They usually talk about the poverty, the unemployment, the extremely low salaries, the slave labor of imprisoned people (mostly because of political reasons), the extreme kind of violence perpetrated by the fascists, the unequality, the continuous calls to the fascist authorities made by malicious neighbors and, especially, the starvation, so I don't have words to express my indignation. Here in this blog you can read some of those: https://viajandoentrelatormenta.com/. They're also available in the website of the non-profit organization Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. Many of them leave you speechless.
The starvation was a direct consequence of voluntary economic policies adopted by the fascist regime, as it's analyzed in this article by a researcher of the University of Granada. In school textbooks, however, they say that it was a natural consequence of the war. The starvation and the poverty forced millions of people to migrate to Latin America and Europe, and to those who stayed and didn't own any land to chase cats, doves and rats, and to look for food in the garbage so they could survive. You can hear about this from almost anybody who is today 80-90 years old, maybe 70-80 in some regions. Here an example.
They only ones who benefited from this regime were the big landowners, bankers (like Juan March), ecclesiastical authorities, high-ranking military officials and businessmen, and all those people closely allied to their interests. The pretended impartiality is nothing but a desire to dillute this simple fact.
If by any change you're also interested in this topic, I'd suggest to:
- Read the books "Historia de España" and "La Guerra Civil Española" by Pierre Vilar (I can share them).
- Read the novel "Los Santos Inocentes" by Miguel Delibes, or watch its adaptation to the screen in Youtube.
- Read poems by Miguel Hernández, Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado and Gabriel Celaya.
- Watch "Plácido", by Luis García Berlanga.
- Read the Memoria Histórica's section of the alternative newspaper Kaosenlared, particularly the articles by Manuel Márquez Berrocal.
- Listen to any of these songs: Asturias by Víctor Manuel (Pedro Garfias' poem), Fidelidad by Luis Pastor, Todos Repiten lo Mismo by Labordeta, Emigrante by Pablo Guerrero, La Poesía Es un Arma Cargada de Futuro by Paco Ibáñez (Gabriel Celaya's poem), Uno de Aquellos by Joan Manuel Serrat (Miguel Hernández's poem), Al Alba by Aute and Cuervo Ingenuo by Javier Krahe.
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[1] A big majority of the current Spanish intellectuals are quite conservative, specially those related with La Real Academia de la Lengua Española.