While at war: courage in admitting you were wrong

Picture a lecture theatre in an old and prestigious university. You know, wooden panelling, a lofty ceiling, rows of wooden benches reaching up to the top and back of the hall, where the students sit.

Karra Elejalde as Miguel de Unamuno

But these aren’t students. There are some teachers and local worthies, mixed with armed soldiers and Fascist Party storm troopers. For this is 1936 at the university of Salamanca in Spain. Specifically, it is the 12th of October, and the military uprising that is going to lead to three years of civil war and the overthrow of the second Spanish Republic, is a few months old.

The 12th of October. That’s no random date. Even today, it’s Spain’s national day. It was chosen to mark the moment that Spain, through Christopher Columbus, ‘discovered’ America. That’s not an event much celebrated by the descendants who were already there and quickly learned to regret being discovered.

Back in 1936, it had been baptised the ‘Day of the Race’. That’s nothing to do with trying to run faster than others. It’s to do with celebrating the Spanish race above all others. If it weren’t so ugly, and hadn’t cost so many lives, this notion of race would be laughable: the Spanish are descendants of Celtic Iberian villagers, mixed with Carthaginian traders, followed by Roman legionaries, and then Germanic tribesmen who came marauding and stayed to settle before being overrun in turn by Arab adventurers; somewhere Jewish merchants and administrators joined the mix, along no doubt with Catholics from England and Ireland or exiles from Italy, to say nothing of the many ‘Indians’ from the Americas who came back along the shipping lanes that Columbus opened in the other direction.

In other words, the Spanish even in 1936 were about as racially pure as any street mongrel. Just like the English, with their Celtic roots, their smattering of Latin speakers, overrun by Anglo-Saxons and later by Norsemen of various types, to which have been added Jews from all over Europe and North Africa or Indians – not the American variety, but the kind that includes the whole of the Asian subcontinent covering Pakistan too – Nigerians, Jamaicans, Poles and Russians, and a glorious, rich mix of every nation on earth.

Still, to Spanish Fascists of 1936, the race was something to celebrate. And they did so in the great lecture theatre of the University of Salamanca.

One of those present that day was Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher, writer, poet and then rector of the University. He had been disgusted with the disorder and chaos of the Republic and had welcomed the military uprising as a way to bring back peace and order to his country. The Republic dismissed him. The rebellion restored him.

For a while he thought he could count on Franco’s support, if only to save the lives of friends of his who had been arrested. It was a vain hope. Two of his closest companions were murdered despite his entreaties.

On the 12th of October, he wasn’t due to speak. So he listened to speeches extolling the greatness of Spain, and of the holy war now being fought to save it.

Finally, he could stand it no more. He rose and began to speak:

I know you must be expecting my words, because you know me and you know that I am incapable of remaining silent in the face of what is being said. Saying nothing can, sometimes, mean acquiescing… I had said that I didn’t want to speak, because I know myself. But… I have to. There has been talk here of an international war in defence of Christian civilisation… But this one is only an uncivil war… To win is not to convince, and above all one has to convince. But there is no convincing through hatred that leaves no place to compassion…

Another presence on the platform was that of General Millan Astray, founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion. After Unamuno spoke, there were cries from the audience of the Legion’s slogan, “¡Viva la Muerte!”, “Long live Death!” Unamuno replied:

I have just heard the cry “long live death!” That sounds the same as “death to life!” And I, who have spent my whole life creating paradoxes that annoyed those who didn’t understand them, have to say to you, as an expert in the matter, that this paradox strikes me as ridiculous and repellent… Whatever the proverb may say, I have always been a prophet in my own country. You will win, but you will not convince. You will win because you have superior brute force, but you will not convince because convincing means persuading. And to persuade you need something that you are missing in this struggle, reason and right.

The words “you will win but you will not convince” work better in Spanish: “Venceréis, pero no convenceréis”.

This is the scene to which Alejando Amenábar’s latest film, While at War, builds.

There’s controversy about the film. It’s far from certain that the words traditionally attributed to Unamuno are exactly the ones he spoke: there’s no recording or transcript available. There is even a school of thought that suggest the words were embellished by a left-wing Spanish journalist who took refuge in London after the war, Luis Portillo. In a neat irony, he had a son in Britain, Michael, who became a Conservative politician and a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.

There are also mixed views of the film. Amenábar has a tendency to distance himself perhaps a little too much from his characters, and that makes it difficult to empathise with them, and to feel their tragedy ourselves, viscerally. I did, but my two companions, one of my sons and my daughter-out-law, didn’t: the film left them cold and unengaged.

It didn’t leave me cold. I was fascinated by its depiction of Franco as a truly little man, in moral as well as physical stature, worming his way towards power. Millan Astray came across as just the monster I’ve always believed he was. But I was particularly fascinated by the depiction of Unamuno, as a man who got the politics wrong at the beginning and had, slowly and with enormous pain, to admit his error and put it right with what was, after all, an immensely courageous public statement repudiating the Fascists and all they stood for.

It didn’t happen exactly as in the film. The audience didn’t mob him or threaten to lynch him. He wasn’t rescued by Franco’s wife. But it’s true that immediately afterward, he was dismissed as rector for the second time and definitively. He was also placed under house arrest. He died two months later.

The aftermath of Unamuno’s speech was no lynching
He’s surrounded by Fascists, but Millan Astray is shaking his hand

There’s plenty wrong with the film, but plenty right too. I enjoyed it, partly because it’s the first time I’ve seen a film in Spanish without subtitles. It means I shall watch it again as soon as I can, if only to be able to say again and again, “oh, that’s what he was saying.”

I will, however, also be watching it again because for me, at least, it’s well worth seeing twice.

The pride and the shame of the Richmond Nimby

What a lovely place Richmond is. I was there yesterday; the view across the Thames as you drive from the high point of the town to the centre is breathtaking, and of course the park is one of the most beautiful and extensive in England. As for the houses, they’re nothing short of magnificent: Richmond isn’t a neighbourhood for the poor or disadvantaged.

Despite all this beauty, I did end up metaphorically screaming at the place before I left it, crawling through the centre of town at less than a walking pace. Travelling around England underlines just how crowded a country it is. That’s been a much-debated theme recently, with all sorts of exciting initiatives by our bright new government to restrict immigration into this country. This could keep potentially several hundred thousand people away, and not all of them will be tortured or die of hunger in their home countries. Of course, this would barely scratch at the surface of the problem of overcrowding. To start to solve that, we need to reduce the population by many millions, and for that limiting immigration isn’t enough, we’d need to encourage a lot of Englishmen to move away too. Incidentally, looking out of my window on a ‘flaming June’ day of grey skies and drizzle, I can assure you that this Englishman wouldn’t take much persuading.

Have you noticed how often a mention of something you haven’t heard or thought about for years is followed by your coming across it again within twenty-four hours or so? You know – you may not have heard a word for ages and then stumble across it by happy chance, perhaps a word like lexicographer, or meet it when there’s no-one around who can give you a definition of it, say a term like serendipity, and then you hear or read it again shortly afterwards.

Yesterday was the first time I’d been in Richmond for ages and it was mentioned on the radio news this morning. Another smart new initiative of the government has been to put an end to a Labour measure which allowed building on areas previously used for gardens. The new government is giving local people the right to challenge this kind of development.

Sounds wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to protect gardens? But is that really what we’re protecting or is it more a matter of upholding the rights of those who live in pretty areas? People who would say ‘I’m keen on cheap housing, but not in my back yard?’ The ‘not in my back yard’ specialist or Nimby favours a policy and is happy to see society sacrifice to achieve it, as long as the sacrifice is made by someone else, generally someone much less well placed to bear the cost.

And this morning there it was: a woman who has lived in Richmond for years but by her accent seemed to be of German extraction (which has a certain irony), claimed ‘I’m proud to be a Nimby.’

This is a brilliant debating device. You take something most people regard as a ridiculous contention and then align yourself with it – you state something like ‘I don’t care what people say, but I think Sarah Palin has a working intellect.’ This apparently legitimises the previously illegitimate and shifts the burden of proof to your opponent who has to start by demolishing a position that he thought had already been overthrown.

Of course, we can follow the same policy as I recommended in my last post and test the validity of this device by replacing a key word or two. ‘I’m proud to be a homophobe.’ Not quite so effective is it? ‘I’m proud to be a racist.’ Lacking a certain charm, wouldn’t you say?

In the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno spoke in a public debate in which the Fascist General Millán-Astray, of the particularly feared Foreign Legion, also took part. Some of Astray’s supporters shouted out their slogan ‘Viva la Muerte’, ‘long live death’. Unamuno replied ‘I, having spent my life writing paradoxes that have provoked the ire of those who do not understand what I have written, and being an expert in this matter, find this ridiculous paradox repellent.’

It would be massively immodest for me to claim to resemble Unamuno – perhaps a more reasonable comparison is with the Modern Major General in The Pirates of Penzance who claimed to have ‘a pretty taste in paradox.’ But where I’m with Unamuno is in not finding every paradox attractive. Taking pride in your own shamelessness, in particular, leaves me distinctly cold.