The Good Fight
Most of them are dead now and the handful of survivors are in their 90s, but today the Spanish goverment is finally officially honoring the veterans of the 1936-39 conflict. It’s difficult to interest a generation that doesn’t even remember Vietnam—and can’t even organize a group effort to blow up party balloons—in the Spanish Civil War, but I’ll try to break it down:
- Good guys: Republicans—defenders of the young, struggling, democratic, egalitarian, legally-elected republic
- Bay guys: Loyalists—supported by Nazi troops and Nazi state-of-the-art weapons, they wanted the king returned to the throne and everything back the way it was, which was hunky-dory for the rich/landed/influential/well-born
There were a few times back in the twentieth century—that parent of all our present troubles—when people were called on to actually, you know, take a risky stand for what they believed in. One was for civil rights (Michael got knocked about in Selma over that one), another was for the Spanish Republic. People from all over the world went to Spain: like Hemingway, to fight because fightin’s good if it’s The Good Fight—like Orwell, to protect the birthing of a just and kind society—like Dorothy Parker, to get their frivolousness kicked out them.(What’s your fight, then? What’s at stake? And what’s the risk?)
Suggested Reading:
- “Soldiers of the Republic” a very short story by Dorothy Parker
- For Whom the Bell Tolls a novel by Ernest Hemingway (one of the greatest American novels and a damn good read. Yes, Hemingway is kind of a joke now, but that’s what happens to brilliance in this country. We don’t know what value to give it.)
- Homage to Catalonia, a memoir by George Orwell
- For Whom the Bell Tolls starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman
- Land and Freedom directed by Ken Loach, starring Ian Hart
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