Eric Blair’s (aka George Orwell) masterpiece “1984” is suddenly the flavor of the month again, with good reason. But one can’t fully understand the motivations and experiences that led him to write it without having also read his unforgettable memoir from his time fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War– “Homage to Catalonia.” Late in life he wrote: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.”
Released in January 1943, when the most important battle of the war, the battle of Stalingrad, was still raging, with Normandy still a year and a half in the future, and the tide not yet turned against Hitler’s war machine. Most of Europe and North Africa was under the jackboot of Nazi tyranny. Many of the actors in the scene were actual refugees who had fled from the Nazis, so the emotions were real. This celluloid moment may capture the spirit of hope and resistance better than any other. It is a true testament to the power of movies.
In real life Jean Moulin, murdered by the Gestapo in 1943, became the symbol of the French Resistance.
The XV International Brigade, nicknamed Brigada Abraham Lincoln, fought against Franco for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Composed primarily of volunteer battalions from Britain and America, but also Canada, Ireland, the Balkans, France and Cuba, the 15th fought valiantly, and suffered heavy casualties, at Jarama, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro River. Here is the Christmas greetings card sent out by the XV International Brigade and comrades in the Republican Army in 1937….
Del Berg, a 100-year-old veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who was its last known survivor, passed away on February 28, 2016. NY Times Obituary
This is the day that rabid futbol fans look forward to all year. The UEFA Champions League Final is the culmination of a season long tournament between the best clubs from the best leagues from across Europe. This year’s tournament has seen some big surprises— the two favorites (reigning champ FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich) were both eliminated by an under the radar Atletico Madrid club. One thing that is not a surprise though is the total dominance of Spain’s La Liga. In fact both finalists in today’s big match are from Madrid! Later today scrappy Atletico Madrid will try to keep long-time powerhouse Real Madrid from taking a record 11th European championship. Sevilla has already won the Europa Cup (which might be compared to the NIT tournament in American basketball for reference). Amazingly Barcelona, arguably the best club in the world, winner of La Liga and the Copa Del Rey, is out. So how did Spanish futbol become so powerful?
Soccer has the unique ability to represent and strengthen different cultural identities and ideologies throughout the world. Perhaps nowhere can this be seen more prominently than in Spain. Importantly, many of Spain’s soccer clubs reflect the politics of the region they represent. The story really begins with the Generalisimo– Francisco Franco. It centers around what might be the most hated rivalry in sports, known as el clasico,between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. A rivalry that has at times seen such brutality, including state-sponsored murder and imprisonment, that to this day it is as much political, maybe more so, as it is sporting (see Catalonian separatist movement).
The Spanish Civil War has been described as the warm-up for the Second World War. The end came in 1939 when the insurgent rebel Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco finally defeated the army of the popularly elected Republican Government to take control of the country. The unmerciful civil war, fueled by political, religious and sectarian hatred, had dragged on for three terribly bloody years. Franco’s allies in the war had been Mussolini, Hitler and the Catholic Church. When Franco’s troops captured Madrid on March 28th to end the war his primary task, after executing tens of thousands of his enemies, many in Barcelona, was to forcefully unify his new Spanish state. A long campaign of murder, torture and political oppression ensued leading to decades of fascist-style dictatorship. Separatists from previously autonomous regions, especially those in Catalonia and Basque country, came in for extra harsh scrutiny. Both fought Franco’s policies very bitterly, so his gaze was squarely fixed upon them.
From the start the Generalisimo brilliantly co-opted the beautiful game as one of his most successful propaganda tools. He had seen how his benefactors, Mussolini and Hitler, had manipulated the sport in their own countries to great advantage and quickly followed suite. Immediately he adopted Real Madrid as his, and hence the nation’s, club. He then used the club masterfully to build domestic support for the Falangist state, to build positive exposure for the regime in the eyes of the world, to divert domestic attention from the economic dislocation and bankruptcy that plagued the regime, and most importantly for this discussion, as a vehicle to crush the persistent Catalonian resistance and suppress Catalan language and culture. He did this in part by stigmatizing (criminalizing?) support for the other great Spanish club, FC Barcelona, the symbol of Catalonian pride. Barca, in turn, would become arguably the single most important symbol of republican resistance against the regime for decades to come. The rivalry was quite literally about life and death, and it escalated accordingly over the years with each side always striving to outdo the other.
Today most of the clubs competing professionally in Spain are listed under the legal status of sports companies, whose ownership is in the hands shareholders. With the appearance in recent years of mega-dollar private television deals many clubs have drastically increased income, allowing for the hiring of many of the best players in the world. But as these things go many clubs over-spent and with the collapse of the world economy in 2009 many have fallen into financial turmoil. The two powerful clubs, Real and Barca, have weathered the storm with great success, but many others have not been so lucky. Atletico Madrid, Sevilla (and occasionally Valencia) continue to be very competitive but have tiny war-chests by comparison.
So in a few hours from now, at San Siro stadium in Milan, built by the industrial kingpin Pirelli during Mussolini’s fascist rule, Atletico Madrid will try to derail another title bid by Franco’s club, the world’s most valuable sports franchise. GO ATLETICO!
Check out this excellent BBC documentary on these times:
Parallel Narratives 