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Violence and Confrontation: Twentieth-Century Crisis in Spain. Spaniards entered the twentieth century without resolving the problems that had plagued them in the nineteenth century and even earlier: inequitable distribution of wealth, class con-flict, an as yet small middle class; a weak industrial sector - seventy per cent of the workers were agricultural workers; illiteracy - more than half the population was illiterate; military inter-vention in politics; religious intervention in politics, and regionalisms. The workers were beginning to demand the recognition of their political and labour rights and were resorting to violence to press these demands. Meanwhile, a minority composed of intellectuals - krausists, institutionalists, regenera-tionists - and the writers of the “Generation of ‘98" were studying the problem and suggesting possible solutions. In the First World War, although the Spanish government was officially neutral, Span-iards as individuals were not. The liberals who had been quite pro-England before the war, sided with the Allies whereas the conservatives and especially the monarchists supported Ger-many and Austria. Like the rest of the Western world, Spain suffered through the Great Depression that began in 1929 and which only served to exacerbate the existing problems that the Second Republic (1932-1939) tried unsuccessfully to resolve. Despite this situation, the first half of the twentieth century saw a flourishing of culture. People such as Manuel de Falla in music, Juan Gris and Picasso in painting, Federico García Lorca in literature, Luis Buñuel in film, and José Ortega y Gasset in philosophy, to name but a few, brought the world of Spanish culture to international notice. The Pre-War Period. The unborn child of Alfonso XII and María Cristina was crowned in 1902, at seventeen years of age, as Alfonso XIII. Unfortunately, this young king was not assisted by able political leaders. The political machine set up by Sagasta and Cánovas del Castillo was breaking down with nothing to replace it. The problems faced in the earlier century with the Catalans surfaced more forcibly over free trade vs. protectionism, as the state needed the taxation brought in by Catalan industries. In 1909, an anti-Spanish uprising in Morocco (a Spanish protectorate) was fought by an unusually high number of Catalan reservist soldiers. People in Spain saw this as a punishment for that re-gion’s opposition to the central government and the result were riots in the streets of Barcelona that became known as the semana trágica (tragic week) when workers were killed and their leaders were executed. This effort to control workers’ fury backfired because the people be-came even more militant and strongly criticized the government’s use of excessive force. So-cialist and radical leaders became more popular and, in the elections of 1910, the first truly “free” election in Spanish history, two socialist Members of Parliament (diputados) were elected.

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In 1913 the Ley de Mancomunidades was passed. In an attempt to pacify the Catalans, it allowed for more regional control over education and public works. It mandated the reorganiza-tion of the distribution of Members of Parliament and Senators and provided for some civil rights. The 1913 elections showed that these light reforms did not satisfy the Spanish people: of the possible 395 MPs to be elected, 156 were not conservatives. The opposition came from 7 parties, including a Catalan nationalist party. During the First World War (1914-1918), Spain was officially neutral and profited greatly from the export of food and war material - especially minerals - to both sides of the con-flict. For the first time in more than four centuries, the Spanish treasury was no longer in debt. This apparent prosperity brought other problems because the export cost of food became so high that Spaniards could not afford to pay the same prices at home. The increase in the cost of living was particularly hard on people with fixed incomes such as government employees and pensioners. The cost of living led to further unrest with strikes and street violence. In the first half of the twentieth century, Spain had not recovered from its earlier prob-lems and continued to suffer from economic underdevelopment. Although the steel industry in the Basque regions and the textile industry in Cataluña did see some improvement, agriculture was the most productive sector and employed the greatest number of workers. The state did not have the resources to construct the infrastructure - especially railroads - that might have as-sisted industry. Most of the state’s income was spent on administrative costs and on maintain-ing the armed forces. Social, political and labour conflicts were more acute as different classes sought power and were dragging the country to the edge of chaos and anarchy. Again, the army was used against strikers, emphasizing the input the military had in affairs of state. Two main unions developed, the Unión General de Trabajadores UGT (General Union of Workers) that reflected socialist politics, and the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores CGT (General Confederation of Workers) that was anarchist. In 1917 a particularly violent strike in the mining region of Asturias that lasted two months showed how weak the workers were when confronted by tanks and soldiers. This strike brought two leaders to public notice. One was Francisco Franco, a young officer who would eventually become Spain’s dictator from 1939 to 1975. The other was Dolores Ibarurri, a mi-nor’s daughter who managed to get a small amount of education. She led the strikers against Franco, she was elected to Parliament and became the leader of the Spanish Communist Party. Because of her fiery speeches, especially during the Civil War, she was known as La Pasion-aria (the passionate one). The poet and fellow combatant, Rafael Alberti, dedicated a poem to her:

Who doesn’t see her? She is the soul of the northern mining people. So beautiful as if she were the soil and the sky of all Spain The north star of our war certain, saving star. Pasionaria, the new dawn …

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Until the Civil War, Spaniards lived in a permanent state of crisis and social conflict that was the result of the Restoration’s inability to propose valid solutions to the nation’s problems. Regionalisms caused continuing difficulties that were even more complicated to resolve without tearing the country asunder. Catalan, Basque, Galician and Andalusian nationalisms made cen-tralized government practically impossible. Centralized governments seemed to refuse to under-stand the issues and responded with violence even when some form of collaboration or “ sover-eignty association” was suggested by writers such as Soli Tura:

Catalan middle class nationalists did not want to destroy the monarchy, they did not seek independence but, rather, a profound reform of this government’s centralism - without rejecting the possibility of federalism - and modernization that would give the Catalan middle class some role in this government. The idea was to overcome the Resto-ration’s caciquismo in the name of a modern capitalist state, to decentralize so as to re-distribute political power. The Lliga (- the League - a middle-class political group in Cataluña) did not want independence but state reform; it did not want rupture but com-promise; it did not want a Republic but a Monarchy that was open to new ideas.(Nacionalidades y nacionalismos en España. Autonomías, federalismos, autodetermi-nación - Nationalities and Nationalisms in Spain. Autonomies, Federalisms and Self-determination).

Some members of the “Generation of ‘98" saw the history of Spain as a best for-gotten “black period”. Ignacio de Zuluaga’s El Cristro de la sangre - The Christ of the Blood, is an example of how historically Spain was divided into the clergy and the wealthy on the right of the cross and the people on the left. The walled city of Ávila is in the background.

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The church, which legitimized the conservatives, had not forgotten or forgiven the gov-ernment expropriations of its properties and was not prepared to listen to liberal solutions that included further agrarian reforms. The physical attacks on church buildings and against priests and nuns did not serve the cause of reform. The conflicts often led to violent revolutionary uprisings that were put down by military intervention. The military, despite its long tradition of liberalism, was now acting as the tool of the landowners and industrial owners and supported two military dictatorships, from 1923-1929 under General Miguel Primo de Rivera, and from 1939-1975 under General Franco. These ac-tions were previews of the tragedy to come. It seemed as if the army, and the oligarchy, in a last attempt at a Reconquista, wanted to restore the prestige it had lost in the defeats of last colonial wars in Morocco that cost thousands of lives and again put the Spanish economy in ruins. One of the aftereffects of the WWI was the partition of areas of the German Empire into countries along socio-linguistic lines. Cataluña appealed to the League of Nations for the same privilege but was denied. The success of the Russian and the Mexican revolutions by the use of force also made more people begin to think that that was the route to follow to achieve their de-mands. The final failure of Spain to control Morocco, and the loss of 15,000 soldiers, added to Spaniards’ disillusionment. The solution to Spain’s problems seemed to be either a dictatorship of the people or of the army. To reestablish some form of social order and maintain the monarchy, General Miguel Primo de Rivera formed a military government. To do this he abolished the 1913 Ley de Man-comunidades because of the civil liberties it had allowed, he also forbade the use of minority languages and censored the press. All strikes were outlawed and he established an industrial committee (similar to the method used in Italy by Mussolini) to determine union contracts. His own political party, the Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union) formed a Legislative Assembly of appointed members who were charged with drafting a new constitution and to prepare for a ref-erendum on it. Unfortunately, these suggested reforms satisfied no one. Ideally these measures would have led to economic security and then expansion but the atmosphere of prosperity he predicted was based on deficit financing that crashed when the Great Depression of 1929 hit the world economies. The treasury, which until 1918 was in excellent condition because of WWI, was in such a state that Calvo Sotelo, the Minister of Finance, resigned in disgust. The army rebelled because it had not been paid. Primo de Rivera could do nothing else but resign as well. He died a few months later. The municipal elections of 1931 revealed how the country had changed in a short time. Those elected to municipal offices all over Spain, predominantly liberal and republican, with a few socialist and Catalan nationalists, were definitely antimonarchical and not conservative. The elections also showed that Spain was profoundly divided along rural, conservative and monarchical lines vs. urban, republican, democratic lines. King Alfonso XIII feared that a civil war might break out over the issue of the monar-chy. To forestall this eventuality, he left Spain. While his departure did not prevent the war, it did demonstrate the political void in Spain at this time. It is important to not that Alfonso XIII never abdicated; his claim and that of his descendants to the throne of Spain never ceased. Al-

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though his son, Don Juan de Borbón, never became king of Spain, his grandson was crowned King Juan Carlos. In June 1931, a federal election followed that confirmed the message conveyed by the municipal ballots: 318 socialists and liberals were elected in the 395 member Cortes. The Sec-ond Republic was declared. The Second Republic. The elections in 1931 that elected the Second Republic was a triumph of the liberal mid-dle classes. The republican government, led by President Alcalá Zamora, passed a Constitution that recognized the power of the people by declaring Spain to be a republic of workers. It granted the separation of powers, it removed the connection between church and state, it gave powers to the regions - including autonomy to Cataluña and the Basque region it allowed for the nationalization of public utilities, it guaranteed individual rights and freedoms, and gave the vote to all men and women. The Second Republic very ambitiously and idealistically set out to correct centuries of

The village of Soria is captured in the poetry of Antonio Machado.

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problems. The solution to agrarian reforms was drastic expropriations paid for with letters of credit that were impossible to exchange. In many cases the expropriations were simply land grabs by the destitute. In 1930, for example, there were two million agricultural workers and only twelve thousand landowners. In the province of Cadiz, for example, fifty-eight per cent of the land was in the hands of large landowners. One major disadvantage when the land was ex-propriated was that often the workers did not have tools or seeds, much less the credit with which to buy them and in some cases the knowledge or experience, to work the land. The same sort of situation developed when industrial workers took over their factories but failed to make them work properly. To remedy the illiteracy rates, hundreds of informal schools were estab-lished and idealistic young teachers were sent out into the hinterlands to teach both the adults and the children. Unfortunately, often there were no suitable buildings or textbooks available, much less a salary for the teachers. Despite these drawbacks, university reform did take place, making Spain’s universities some of the best in Europe. Unfortunately, the Spanish people did not give the Republic time to resolve the prob-lems caused by their idealism. Immediate answers, especially in the worst years of the Depres-sion, were just not possible. The result was disappointment and disillusion as the workers took to the streets seeking further drastic measures and political radicalism. Ironically, in some cases, they joined with the dispossessed upper class, the church and the army in protest against the government. The 1933 election were the first time women could vote in Spain - was a disap-pointment if not a surprise: the right wing, centre coalition party won a minority government. Its first action was to repudiate the 1931 laws. A new party began to be felt: José Antonio Primo de Rivera - the son of the military dictador in 1923 – created his own opposition group, which eventually became an official party, called the Movimiento (Sindicalista Nacional) Nacional Sindicallst Movement), better known as La Falange. Although this group had no formal con-nection to German fascism until 1936, its goal was to meet violence with violence in an effort to maintain trade. Another miners’ strike in Oviedo again brought out the army; 1400 workers were killed and another three thousand were wounded, thanks to the government’s use of tanks, machine guns and bombs. As earlier, the only real result was the loss of government prestige. It was obvious that the minority government was not functioning. The 1936 elections confirmed the doubts and ambivalence felt by most Spaniards: the Frente Popular, a socialist party led by Azaña, won 49 percent of the seats and Gil Robles, leading the conservative Frente Nacional, won the other 49 percent. Like other leaders before him, Azaña could not control the people: some 1400 people died in street violence and political assassinations and there were 340 strikes in the four months after his election. The membership in the Falange doubled before it was made illegal in March 1936 and its leaders were arrested. José Antonio Primo de Rivera was killed in jail in November, 1936, thereby making him a martyr to his cause. The expected outcome was the military coup organized by a group of disaffected gener-als on 18 July, 1936. The military intervention was nothing new in Spain because such pronun-ciamientos (pronouncements) had happened before. Well before the elections of 1936, this group and others had been planning to overthrow the government. This time, however, the dec-ades of accumulated tensions led to a civil war that would last for three years and take the lives of more than two million men, women and children. The Spanish Civil War was a tragic histori-cal defeat for all Spaniards.

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A photo of José Ortega y Gasset taken in 1931.

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In 1938, Fernando de los Ríos, Spanish ambassador to Cuba, and a well-known liberal, made a speech in which he said:

In Spain freedom is an ancient concept whereas absolutism is modern and for-eign. A people cannot fight against that which is a substantive part of its historic charac-ter, as is happening now. They are fighting against subtleties but they represent those very subtleties whereas we represent the substance. A monarchical writer said that in Spain freedom is ancient whereas absolutism is modern and foreign. In the sixteenth century we had two attempts at totalitarianism: one, begun a century earlier, was unity of faith; the other was unity of blood that Felipe II tried to impose for fifty years but was defeated. Those who tried to unite Spain through faith by imposing the Inquisition and through purity of blood lines - consider the drama! - only divided it further for cen-turies and was the cause of three civil wars over freedom and tolerance. We are witness-ing and participating in the last of these civil wars now.

The “Generation of ‘98": This loosely knit group of writers who reached the peak of their professional lives around 1898, shared, like their predecessors, a deep concern over Spain’s future, the problema de España. They wanted to review traditional value structures and try to discover the essence of Spain. They believed that knowing Spain’s history - or intra-history, that is the anonymous common memory in which, they believed, true Spanish values and guarantees of continuity in the future were to be found - would illuminate Spain’s future. A member of this group, Miguel de Unamuno said: ... the future of Spanish society is latent in our historical society, in our intra-history, in the unknown people, and it will not surface until the winds or storms of a European spirit awaken it. (En torno al casticismo - About Castilianism, Miguel de Unamuno.) Although all very different as individuals and writers, they shared the pessimism over contemporary Spain and denounced the social reality they saw around them. For some the solu-tion was in becoming more European. Unamuno added: “We must Europeanize Spain” and his contemporary, Ramón María del Valle Inclán said: “Spain is a grotesque deformity of European civilization.” For others the answers - or the defects - were in Spain’s history but they needed to be sought out. Juan Martínez Ruiz, who wrote under the pseudonym Azorín, sought to describe the scenery and the psychology of his characters in his novels with a careful eye to detail. Miguel de Unamuno was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist who considered the contradiction of faith in a hereafter and reason which rejected such a possibility. Pio Baroja was the most out-standing novelist of this group. In his work his knowledge as a trained medical doctor and inter-est in detailed descriptions combines with his attention to action and use of language. Valle Inclán, also a novelist, is a well-known although controversial dramatist of this group. He created a literary style called esperpento which relied on the deformation, exaggera-tion and caricature of reality. His play, Divinas palabras (Divine Words), shows how religion, when abused, can deform a community and fail to protect the needy. His novel, Tirano Ban-

9 deras, about a tyrant politician influenced Spanish American authors such as Miguel Angel As-turias, Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Márquez. His tyrant might apply to all dictators:

After having killed the revolutionaries of Zamalpoa, the little general arrived with some battalions of Indians. Immobile and taciturn, standing in a distant window, watching the changing of the guard in the muddy courtyard of the convent, he looked like a skull wearing black sunglasses and a clerical collar. In Peru he had waged war against the Spaniards and from those campaigns he had acquired the habit of chewing coca leaf that made a greenish spittle trickle through his cracked lips. (Tirano Ban-deras, Ramón del Valle Inclán.)

Jacinto Benavente was considered the best dramatist, although less confrontational, of the generation of ‘98. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922. Although not as problematic as his contemporary, Valle Inclán, Benavente’s plays were technically perfect and entertaining while they criticized Spanish society. His many plays continue to be performed to-day. In poetry, the Generation of ‘98 is well represented by the two Machado brothers. Anto-nio Machado focused especially on the Castilian countryside where he found respite from his metaphysical preoccupations:

I have walked many roads, I have opened many paths; I have sailed a hundred seas, and moored to a hundred shores. Everywhere I have seen caravans of sadness, proud and melancholy men, drunk with black shadow And offstage pedants who watch, say nothing and think they know, because they don’t drink the tavern wine. Evil people who walk about corrupting the land… And everywhere I have seen those who dance and play when they can, and till their small parcels of land.

A photo of Vicente Aleixandre.

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Modernist Poets. Modern poets returned to the subjectivity of the Romanticism and the Baroque use of language and metaphors better to express an ideal beauty, colour or rhythm. While not born a Spaniard, the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío was the first modernist poet who proclaimed his faith in Spain and its culture after the defeat of 1898. Juan Ramón Jiménez was also a modernist poet in his youth but, in his Diario de un po-eta reciencasado (Diary of a Newlywed Poet), he leaned more towards a deeper and classical lyric. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. His novel, Platero y yo (Platero and I), where he expressed his lyricism and sense of beauty is one of the most beautiful expressions of poetic prose in Spanish:

Platero was little and furry; soft; so soft on the outside that he seemed made of cotton, without any bones. The only hard parts were the jade black mirrors of his eyes that were like two black crystal beetles. When I let him loose, he wanders through the prairie, and with his muzzle he gently caresses, barely brushes, the little pink, blue, and purple flowers ... I softly call him: “Platero?” and he comes to me with a happy little trot that he seems to be laughing about some unknown ideal tinkling ... (Platero y yo - Platero and I, Juan Ramón Jiménez.)

Early Twentieth-Century Writers. At the beginning of the new century, a new group of prose writers who shared the goal of wanting to bring current European cultural and scientific ideas to Spain appeared on the scene. They approached this goal through the university classes they taught, the newspaper articles they wrote, the essays they published and the public lectures they gave. In 1923, José Ortega y Gasset established the journal Revista de Occidente as a vehicle to accomplish this. Ortega y Gasset is perhaps the best internationally known Spanish twentieth-

A drawing by Federico García Lorca.

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century thinker. His view on the problema de España was that one could not speak of deca-dence but rather of deficiency because Spain had always suffered from a lack of a skilled ad-ministrative class to govern the country. Further, Ortega y Gasset refused to consider any con-flict between idealism and realism. In his theory of “Yo y mis circunstancias” (Me and my cir-cumstances), he claimed that human nature cannot be considered without also considering the circumstances in which the individual exists. He expressed the idea that, thanks to perspective, all concepts about the world are valid because each had currency at some historical moment and, therefore, all contribute to the truth. On the monarchy, he simply commented in Latin: “Delenda est Monarchia.” (The monarchy is dead) but he was equally clear about the failures of the Republic: “No es esto, no es esto!” (This isn’t it, this isn’t it!) Ortega was as critical about the art of his time as he was about politics. He thought it elitist and lacking in transcendence. Conversely he was himself elitist when it came to practical politics because he bemoaned the lack of a ruling class that would provide much needed leader-ship to the working classes. In his influential La rebelión de las masas (The Rebellion of the Masses) he explains that the main cause of the problems of the modern world was the dema-goguery of the masses:

All knowledge comes from and because of the fundamental and original perspec-tive that is the simple act of living. All knowledge originates from, is based on, and is justified by the act of living. In the last instance, it transfers us towards that reality that is our life. The human reality, that radical reality that belongs to each of us. If I call the reality that is my life radical - and every person may call theirs whatever they wish - it is not because I consider it to be the only reality nor, much less, the best reality but simply because, for me, it lies at the root of all others, which, to become realities for me, must be apparent in some way in my life. (Una interpretación de la historia universal - An Inter-pretation of Univer-sal History, José Ortega y Gasset.)

Many other critics were part of this group of turn-of-the-century authors. Salvador de Madariaga, like Ortega y Gasset, was deeply concerned about the past and future of Spain. Gregorio de Marañón, a medical doctor and psychologist, used his scientific training to consider traditional iconic figures such as Don Juan and Don Quijote. Eugenio d’Ors’ Tres horas en el Museo del Prado (Three Hours in the Prado Museum) is an invaluable tool for appreciating the artistic treasures in that museum and understanding the genius of the Spanish who produced such works of art. Two Views of Spanish History. Two historians, Américo Castro and Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, despite their shared Europeanizing approach, interpreted Spanish history from quite distinct perspectives and led to a lengthy debate that Spanish historians are only now overcoming. For Castro, Spain only exists because of the Muslim invasions and the seven hundred years of convivencia. To speak of Spain before at least the year 1000 is an absurdity for, as Cas-

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tro explains, “that name was given to them [Galicians, Portuguese, Leonese, Castilians, Navarese, Aragonese and Catalans] ... because there was a need to call them all something ...” Spain’s later attitude to the manual and commercial labour of Muslims and Jews led to the de-valuation of mercantile and craft activities which in turn meant that Spain failed to develop properly. Sánchez Albornoz saw Spain as a continuum in which clues to her nature and to the per-manent characteristics of the Spaniards throughout history can be seen. In his España, un enigma histórico (Spain: A Historic Enigma), he says that three salient events in Spanish his-tory are the arrival of the Muslims who established their presence in the Peninsula and sepa-rated Spain from the rest of Europe; the reign of Carlos I that initiated Spain’s continental ac-tivities in defense of the Catholic church and drained the country of economic resources; and Columbus’ voyages that emphasized heroic rather than pragmatic, commercial activities that would have been more in line with the middle class, bourgeois and European mentality of the time. Others contributed to the study of social history in Spain. Juan Díaz del Moral in 1929 published his Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas (History of the Andalusian Ag-ricultural Workers’ Uprisings). Pascual Carrión’s Los latifundios en España (The Latifundios in Spain) which appeared in 1932, documented that only seven thousand large landowners (latifundistas) owned most of the best and most productive land in southern Spain. Both these authors, trained at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, one a sociologist and the other an engi-neer, revealed aspects of life in southern Spain that the world of official history had forgotten or overlooked. The Poets of the Generation of ‘27. The 1920s was the period of “-isms” when artists all over the world tried new forms of expression. In Spain, a productive group at this time that again brought international recognition to Spain was called the Generación del ‘27. Some of these artists continued to produce well into the late twentieth century. The poet Vicente Aleixandre, for example, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. A surrealist poet, Aleixandre saw love as the means by which man could identify with the cosmos and overcome the hostility of the world that surrounds him. Like the modernist poets before them, and especially in the work of Juan Ramón Jimé-nez, the poets of this new generation were attracted to the use of metaphor, harking back to Góngora. Nevertheless, other poets, such as Miguel Hernández, preferred simple, traditional verse and language, rather than the aesthetic formalism of his peers, to express his deeply emo-tional poems that revealed the torment he felt over the circumstances he witnessed in Spain. The most famous poet of this group was Federico García Lorca. Although deeply rooted in traditional Spanish verse, Lorca was also in the vanguard when it came to the use of symbols and metaphors. Of all his collections of poems, his Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads) is both the most traditional because it was modeled on and influenced by the gypsy tales and poems he heard as he was growing up outside Granada, yet it is also very modern, especially in his social and cultural criticism. In the following example, the poet describes the national police force, the

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Guardia Civil, that was known for its cruelty towards gypsies and other minorities. Playing on the word and idea of charol (patent leather) of which their famous three sided hats were made, he says that they have patent leather souls “alma de charol.”

Black are the horses, the horse-shoes are black. Glistening on their capes are stains of ink and wax. Their skulls– and this is why they do no cry– are cast in lead. They ride the raods with souls of patent leather. Hunchbacked and noturnal, they command, where they appear, the silence of dark rubber and fears of fine sand. They go as they will, and hidden in their heads is a vague astron-omy of phantasmagoric pistols.

Manuel de Falla by Daniel Vásquez. This now hangs in the Royal Conservatory, Madrid.

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A rather unrecognized skill of García Lorca’s was as an artist. His drawings, especially those he did for the sets and costumes for his plays and those that appear in the margins of his manuscripts, are very interesting and reveal a great deal about the man himself. García Lorca also wrote music, again to accompany his plays. Rafael Alberti’s poetry, although full of surreal symbolism, was also inspired by Span-ish traditions. Alberti’s memoirs, La arboleda perdida (The Lost Orchard), while written in prose, is the best example of his lyricism. He was also a very original dramatist. Gerardo Diego was perhaps the best in this group in his use of form and language. He also had more thematic variety and was more adventuresome in his use of free verse and other stylistic innovations. Dámaso Alonso, the commentator of Góngora, was also a prolific poet. His Hijos de la ira (Sons of Ire), published in 1944, in the early years of the repression of the dictatorship, was the most important Spanish book at that time because of his rebellion against the miseries of the reality he faced daily. Madrid is a city of more than a million corpses (according to the latest statistics). Sometimes at night I turn over and I curl up in this

Manzanares del Casón del Buen Retiro -The Manzanares River seen from the Casón del Buen Retiro, by Aureliano de Beruete. This now hangs in the Prado Museum, Madrid.

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nook in which I have been rotting for forty-five years, and I spend long hours listening to the groans of the hurricane or the barking of the dogs, or the gentle flowing of the moon. And I spend long hours groaning like the hurricane, barking like a furious dog, flowing like the milk of a warm pot of a large yellow cow. And I spend long hours asking God, asking him why is my soul slowly rotting, why are more than a million corpses rotting in this city of Madrid, why are a billion corpses rotting slowly in the world? Tell me, which orchard do you want to fertilize with our putrefaction? Are you afraid that your great rose bushes will dry up during the day or your noxious lilies at night? (Insomnio in Hijos de la ira -Insomnia in Sons of Ire, Dámaso Alonso.)

Oil by Juan Gris. This now hangs in he National Mu-seum of Contemporary Art in Madrid.

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Pedro Salinas shared Dámaso Alonso’s view of the world. His poetry illustrates modern man’s anguish and recalls Spain’s best love poems. Luis Cernuda’s work is also romantic and melancholic. Unlike their work, Jorge Guillén’s poetry, seen in Cántico, for example, is a glori-fication of the universe and life. The Twentieth-Century Novel. After the great novelists of the Generation of ‘98 it was hard for younger novelists to make their way. Some attempted new modes of expression in this genre. Gabriel Miró’s prose, for example, was more interested in description than action or dialogue whereas Ramón Pérez de Ayala’s prose is precise and intellectual. Ramón Gómez de la Cerna created his own genre, called greguerías, which he defined as “the flower of everything, that which lasts, that which lives, that which grows out of disbelief, acidity and corrosion, that which lasts the longest.” These epigrammatic sentences or ideas can be funny, sad, or often impossible to decipher: On the distant ice there is an echo of broken mirrors. *** A file is a toothbrush for metals. *** In the depths of a well you can hear the disk of the moon. *** Do you hear that smell? She asked me in the garden. *** A record is the permanent oscillation of music. (Greguerías, Ramón Gómez de la Cerna)

El fin del mundo - The End of the World-by José Gutiérrez Solana. This painting is in a private collection in Madrid. It is reminiscent of paintings by El Greco and Goya.

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A detail of Las Meninas by Pablo Ruiz Picasso. It was common for this artist to do a series of studies before undertaking the whole painting. Here Picasso was copying Velásquez’ great painting in his very own cubist style. It now hangs in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

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Manuel Azaña, who had been President of the Second Republic, is a novelist whose work has only recently been rediscovered. El jardín de los frailes (The Garden of the Monks) is an autobiography of his youth spent as a boarding student at El Escorial. He is also the author of a pseudo biography of the dictator Francisco Franco. In La velada en Beniscarló (The Evening in Beniscarló), in his characteristic elegant and intellectual prose, he analyses the confrontation between the many political factions at the turn of the century: Spanish society has been looking for more than a hundred years for a firm foundation. It can’t find it. It doesn’t know how to build it. The political expression of this failure can be seen in the coups d’etat, the pronouncements, the dictatorships, the civil wars, the abdications and restorations of our nineteenth century. The current war, insofar as its internal aspects are concerned, is a grandiose product of that history. It will not be the last. In its short life, the Republic has not invented or given rise to the forces that are destroying it. For years the native Spanish reality has been suffocated or obstructed. In any case, we pretended not to recognize it. The Republic, by overcoming the lies, has brought them to light. It has not overcome them and, from the beginning, it has been caught up by them. (La velada de Benicarló -The evening in Benicarló, Manuel Azaña.)

La Masovera by Joan Miró. This painting is in a private collection.

Muchacha de espaldas (Girl with her Back Turned) by Salvador Dalí. As this painting shows, Dalí was a classically trained artist. In the Na-tional Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid.

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Drama and Music. The many innovative stylistic techniques and approaches in all artistic fields were also felt on Spanish stages. The main authors were García Lorca, Jacinto Benavente and Valle In-clán. Lorca’s drama, after his untimely death at the hand of a firing squad in the early hours of the Civil War, gained him an international reputation. Its themes were essentially traditional, usually based on local current events, presented in an innovative fashion. Lorca also criticized his society’s rejection of the marginalized. He was especially concerned about the limitations put on women. His ‘rural trilogy’, composed of Yerma (Barren), La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) and Bodas de Sangre (Blood Weddings) are his best known plays. In the years since his death, other plays have been discovered that provide new insights into this author’s work. In Yerma, the barren woman talks to her pregnant friend: Maria: I’m sad that you’re jealous of me. Yerma: I’m not jealous; I’m poor. Maria: Don’t complain. Yerma: How can I not complain when I see you and the other women full of flowers on the inside whereas I see myself useless amongst so much beauty. Maria: But you have other things. If you’d only listen to me, you could be happy. Yerma: A peasant woman who doesn’t have children is as useless as a handful of net- tles, and even bad, as though I’ve been abandoned by God. ... Many twentieth century authors will look for humour, or costumbrismo, in their work, whereas others used historical themes, returning to the medieval epic for inspiration. Some his-torical legends lent themselves to different political interpretations in the hands of different au-thors. Such is the case, for example, with Ramón Cue’s Y el imperio volvía (And the Empire Returned) which is like a Siglo de Oro autosacramental, modeled on Calderón, where the Cid with Franco fight the forces of evil, represented as republicans, and El amor es un potro desbo-cado (Love is an Open Well) in which Luis Escobar revisits the love story of El Cid and Jimena that Guillén de Castro and Corneille had popularized centuries earlier. The twentieth-century Jimena follows the dictates of her heart as she demands freedom. One of García Lorca’s music teachers was the great composer Manuel de Falla. His work gave an international and classical dimension to popular, traditional Spanish music and also brought Spanish music to the symphonic orchestras of the world. Falla had a profound in-fluence on other younger Spanish composers, many of whom studied with him. His best known work is Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain). Joaquín Turina and Joaquín Nin, representatives of Spanish cultural nationalism, were also composers who based their work on traditional forms. As in the previous century, the zarzuela continued to be popular and many composers and librettists, such as A. Vives, J. Serrano, F. Alonso, and F. Torroba wrote for the musical stage.

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Visual Arts. Modernism, traditional regional tastes and monumentalism are all characteristics of Spanish architecture until the 1920s. Later, in the same way that other artists were looking for innovations, architects sought new methods and new materials and tried to be responsive to so-cial needs in their structures. Some formed an organization called Grupo de Artistas y Técnicos Españoles para el Progreso de la Arquitectura Contemporánea (Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for Progress in Contemporary Architecture) that produced work such as the Uni-versity City in Madrid and the residential area around the Diagonal in Barcelona. In sculpture, modernist idealism connected to classical figures continued, especially among some Catalan masters such as Josep Llimona and Josep Clara. Realism reappears in the colossal and muscular figures of Victorio Macho. Both these tendencies will be replaced by new approaches after the 20’s, especially by cubism represented by the pioneers Pablo Picasso, Pablo Gargallo and Julio González who introduced the use of steel in his sculptures. Impressionism did not attract many Spanish artists but a few, such as Aureliano de Beruete, Santiago Ruisiñol, and Ramón Casas, gained international reputations. Cubism also figured in Spanish painting. Victoriano González, known by his pseudo-nym Juan Gris, created original combinations of planes and volumes, of light and colours that, despite their innovative spirit, reflect the influence of Spain’s great Baroque masters. Expressionism, as in the novels of Baroja and Galdós, was widely appreciated all over Spain because it allowed artists to comment on their world: Isidro Nonell painted the suburbs of Barcelona; Ignacio Zuloaga concentrated on Castilian countrysides; and José Gutiérrez Solana displayed the spiritual life of Spaniards. José María Sert, who was responsible for the decora-tion of the Rockefeller Centre in New York and the Council Chamber at the United Nations Building in Geneva, as well as the cathedral in Vic in Spain, was an internationally known art-ist. Pablo Ruiz Picasso. The most famous modern Spanish artist, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, was born in Málaga in 1881 into an artistic family that encouraged his interests. In October 2003 the impressive Museo Picasso Málaga was opened, thanks to the influence and pressure brought by malagueño artists such as José Guevara. The young Picasso quickly grew away from his father’s early teachings of the traditional style and became fascinated with innovation. The family lived in different parts of Spain during his adolescence but, as a young man, he left to go to Paris where he came in contact with the most advanced painters of the day. Although his style remained relatively classical, he relied on colour for his expressionism; in his blue period he concentrated on ex-pressing the melancholy he found around him, especially at the death of a dear friend. In his later pink period it is obvious that he had overcome his sadness. After 1906, following Cé-zanne’s interest in expressing geometric volume, Picasso painted his pioneer cubist piece, Les demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) which, despite its title, was a painting of a group of prostitutes in Barcelona. Both the technique and the theme caused some dismay

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but Picasso continued in this vein in which he represented forms in geometric figures although he adapted it somewhat so as to include distorted figures that added dramatic tension to his work. In 1937, the Spanish Republican government asked him to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris fair. Picasso chose as his topic the bombing of the Basque town of Guer-nica by the fascist forces using German bombers and German pilots. The tragedy of this event can be seen in the painting. Picasso foreshadowed the bombings that were to destroy a large part of Europe in the Second World War. Salvador Dalí Surrealism, a style or way of looking at the world which allows for the manifestations of the unconscious, was brought to fruition in the work of Joan Miró and, especially, Salvador Dalí. Dalí, like Picasso, although trained in a classical fashion, soon turned his original ex-pression and superb technical qualities to surrealism. One art critic said that his work represents reason applied to irrationality. Dalí created his own museum near his home in Figueras (Barcelona) which is more an experience of fantasy than a museum. Luis Buñuel. In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, film became a highly valued means of expression. Literary themes, topics from the zarzuela, and visual art all came together in film. In 1928, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel joined in the production of Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), a surrealist film where the influence of psychoanalysis, that fascinated 1920s artists, is felt. This film established Buñuel as the foremost Spanish filmmaker and a dy-namic and innovative internationally recognized master. Buñuel adapted easily to films with soundtracks although, in Las hurdes, the soundtrack is more political propaganda than the voices of the village people in the film. Buñuel continued to be productive until his death in 1983. Other filmmakers such as Florián Rey and Benito Perojo were also active in Spain. Their work was a guide to later Spanish filmmakers such as Carlos Saura and Pedro Almodóvar.

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Chronology: 1899: Santiago Ramón y Cajal published Texture of Man’s and Vertebrates’ Nervous System. 1902: Alfonso XIII becomes King of Spain. Valle Inclán published Sonata de otoño (Fall Sonata) 1904: José de Echegaray awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1905: Unamuno published Vida de don Quijote y Sancho (The Life of Don Quijote and San-

cho). Manuel de Falla composed La vida breve (Short Life). 1906: Santiago Ramón y Cajal is awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. 1907: Picasso paints Les demoiselles d’Avignon. 1908: The right to strike is granted. 1909: Uprising in Barcelona to protest the sending of mostly Catalan soldiers to fight in Mo-

rocco. This starts the Semana trágica in Barcelona. Spanish troops are defeated in Mo-rocco.

Azorín published España. 1910: The Escuela Nueva is founded. This was another experiment in education inspired by

the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. 1911: The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo CNT (National Confederation for Work) is

formed. This group was based on anarcho-syndicalism and was very important among industrial workers in Barcelona and among agricultural workers in Andalusia. It contin-ues to be an important labour and political force in Spain today.

Pio Baroja published Las inquietudes de Shanti-Andia (The Worries of Shanti-Andia.) 1912: Antonio Machado published Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile.) 1913: Unamuno published El sentimiento trágico de la vida (The Tragic Feeling of Life). Jacinto Benavente staged La malquerida (The Unloved woman). 1914: Manuel de Falla premiered La vida breve. 1915: Manuel de Falla premiered El amor brujo (Bewitched Love). Blas Infante published Ideal andaluz (Andalusian Ideal.) 1916: Manuel de Falla premiered Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of

Spain.) 1917: The General strike leads to a long period of political crises and to the jailing of important

socialist leaders. Juan Ramón Jiménez published Platero y yo (Platero and I.) 1921: A minority of PSOE members, adherents to the III International, separate and form the

Spanish Communist Party (PCE). The Spanish army is again defeated in Morocco. Ortega y Gasset published España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain.) 1922: Jacinto Benavente is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Manuel de Falla premiered El sombrero de tres picos (The Three Cornered Hat). Joan Miró painted La Granja. 1923: Manuel de Falla premiered El retablo de Maese Pedro (The Stage of Maese Pedro.) 1923-1929: Dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera. Thanks to government invest-

ment in industry, he was able to put an end to strikes but this did not appease agricul-tural workers or intellectuals who rejected the military presence in government. The Great Depression put an end to the investment plan because funds were not available. The government fell.

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1925: Spain attempts to pacify Morocco, then a Spanish protectorate. Rafael Alberti published Marinero en tierra (Landed sailor.) 1926: First flight between Buenos Aires and Spain. 1928: Federico García Lorca published Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads). Jorge Guillén published Cántico Buñuel and Dalí produced Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog.) 1929: Ortega y Gasset published La rebelión de las masas (The Rebellion of the Masses.) 1931: Second Republic proclaimed. 1932: Unamuno published La agonía del cristianismo (The Agony of Christianity.) 1936: 18 July, military uprising; the Spanish Civil War begins. 1937: Picasso paints Guernica. Topics for Review and Discussion: 1. Explain the condition of Spain’s society, economy and politics from 1900 to 1930. 2. What role did film play in Spanish society at this time? 3. What is meant by the term: las dos Españas (the two Spains)? 4. What does the art of the early twentieth century tell us about Spanish society? Bibliography: Barea, A. García Lorca, The Poet and his People Basdekis, D. Miguel de Unamuno Bosquet, A. Conversations with Salvador Dalí Brenan, Gerald The Spanish Labyrinth Dalí, Salvador. Dalí Donaghy, Peter J. and Michael T. Newton. Spain: A Guide to Political and Economic Institu- tions Honig, E. García Lorca Payne, Stanley G. Spain’s First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931-1936 Penrose, Roland. Picasso: His Life and Work Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War