AWAITING THE TEMPEST
(Spain from dictatorship to democracy)
Part 4
Imagine it is the early 1970s and you are in Spain…
Fiestas may not be emblematic of Spain but they do spring to some people’s minds when the country is mentioned. They occur annually everywhere in Spain, in every town and village, last several days and take a bewildering multitude of forms, some of which are very bizarre. However, most have a religious basis, and many can be profoundly moving.
Interestingly, fiestas are not some artifice created by Franco or his tourist department. Most fiestas date back into the mists of time and are usually highly ritualised events that celebrate the Catholic faith. A fine example is the Easter (Semana Santa) fiesta held in Malaga, Andalusia. This fiesta is notable for the massive religious statues that are carried around the town. These are normally kept in the Cathedral but become an integral part of the long processions, despite needing some two hundred people to carry each one.
Many fiestas have odd quirks and Malaga’s Easter fiesta is no exception. It is said that in 1759 there was a cholera outbreak, which meant that that the annual religious processions celebrating Easter could not take place, for fear of more of the population falling ill. Upset by this, prisoners in the local jail escaped and carried one statue (Jesus el Rico) around the town. Having completed this act, they then returned to their cells. Duly impressed, the king (Charles II) decided that, in future, one prisoner each year could be released early from his sentence. This has duly occurred on Easter Wednesday every year since.
For anyone coming to Spain, fiestas provide a wonderful opportunity to see a distilled picture of Spanish culture. They are solemn, beautiful and, invariably, joyful occasions that will remain in your memory for years, in a way that will far surpass a bullfight or Flamenco show.
Of course, any preconceptions of Spain as a whole, based purely upon what you see in the Mediterranean tourist hotspots on the coast, the big cities or the northern industrial areas, can be very misleading.
The vast majority of Spain remains very poor and bears little resemblance to the rest of Northern Europe. The villages and towns situated on the great plains of Spain or in the many mountainous areas seem to follow a life unchanged since the middle of the century. The only major difference for many places is the reduced and elderly populations, now struggling to farm where fewer hands exist to deal with the land. Whilst increased mechanisation has helped enormously in some areas, in others, where high intensity labour was required, you can already see abandoned orchards or fields.
Meanwhile, the sheer complexity of Spain is not something to ever underestimate. The country is huge and incredibly diverse, both geographically and demographically. For example, there is little in common between the people of the Basque region (Vascongadas) and Andalusia, apart from the fact that they reside within the same land mass. Almost the same can be said of those living in Extremadura and Valencia. Equally, those people living in tourist areas on the coast are experiencing a way of life that is unimaginable to those living within inland villages.
With few Spaniards traveling around their own country, there is little unity or understanding of what is happening elsewhere in the country, with personal viewpoints often extremely provincial and sometime worryingly extreme. Indeed, it is hard not to consider Spain anything other a number of ill-defined independent regions (several with their own languages), artificially held together by a powerful, unifying authority.
The question is: what will happen should that central authority cease to exist?
Will Spain break into its constituent parts; will there be a massive bloodletting to revenge the atrocities and hardships of the Franco regime? Will Spain return to its chaotic pre-civil war state, with any number of ferociously competitive and opposing political philosophies fighting for supremacy?
If Franco dies will his successor really be able to hold the country together and, if so, will he need to resort to the levels of repression that occurred during the 1940’s?
Or, is it just possible that Spain can be held together as one complicated but unified mass within which democracy can work?
Only one thing is for sure and that is that Spain is heading, remorselessly, into stormy waters. At 78 years old, El Caudillo cannot last much longer and his death will, inevitably, change everything – as everyone knows. It is just a case of whether Spain can weather the inevitable tempest and find the peace and freedom that the country so deserves.
Only time, of course, will tell.