Madariaga's Spain
MAURIN, JOAQUIN
Madariaga's Spain Spain: A Modern History. By Salvador de Madariaga. Praeger. 736 pp. #7.50. Reviewed by Joaquin Maurin Spanish journalist, now living in the United States When the first edition...
...The insurrection of the "Republican" army, in July 1936, was the direct result of the Republican politicians' incapacity...
...As it stands, no contemporary history of Spain can claim to compete with it in range, scope or first-hand knowledge of events...
...But its foundations become shakier every day...
...he has lived much of the history he relates...
...It had to be written...
...Madariaga, for several reasons, was particularly suited to undertake this needed study...
...Madariaga, like Ortega y Gasset, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Manual Ma-chado, Luis Araquistain, Gregorio Maranon, Perez de Alaya, Fernando de los Rios and Manuel Azana, belongs to the generation of 1914...
...But Madari-aga's book shows how the Republicans took, one after the other, all the steps necessary to failure and defeat...
...Today, Franco can count on little sympathy in Latin America...
...He has a historian's training...
...After having lost the support of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco tried to rely on the dictatorships that kept emerging, sometimes with his active encouragement, in Latin America...
...At the time, the author could hardly foresee the historical cataclysm that was soon to shake Spain to its very foundations...
...And, last but not least, the vast majority of Spaniards abhor it...
...But from the first this unfortunate Spanish Republic fell into the hands of little groups of narrow-minded politicians who did their best to bring about its downfall...
...Yes, one can imagine how much the author, for whom writing historical studies, philosophical essays, novels or poetry was always a delight, must have suffered while he put together and lived all over again the history of contemporary Spain, The new edition of this work is the first to be published in the United States...
...Madariaga helped the Republic to the full extent of his capacities—in the League of Nations, as Ambassador in Washington, as Secretary of Foreign Affairs and as a constant and valuable adviser...
...Madariaga believes that the membership of a democratic Spain in a union of Western European nations, of which he himself is one of the main advocates, would strengthen Europe, democracy, and Spain itself...
...It has been amplified and carefully brought up to date...
...It is a disconcerting and exasperating experience...
...and he has played in it—and still plays—an important part...
...It not only explains the fiasco of the Republic, but also the loss of the Civil War...
...He could easily have adopted, like other representative figures of his generation, an attitude of "expectant neutrality...
...A second edition of Spain: A Modern History was published in 1942, and Madariaga wrote in the preface: "It is not the kind of book one writes for—or with—pleasure...
...Instead, since Franco to him represents all that is opposed to a democratic Spain, Madariaga has become and has remained the fascist regime's most stubborn enemy...
...Several chapters of Spain: A Modern History constitute the most implacable indictment of the anti-democratic regime ruling today in Spain, because they are dispassionate, objective and truthful...
...The author believes that the Franco regime is doomed to disappear because it is an historical anachronism...
...Yet this study of 19th- and early 20th-century Spain led him to the conclusion that, in 1930, the country was close to a historical turning point...
...It has failed to realize its economic and political promises...
...This is Madariaga's hope...
...Madariaga's book ends on an optimistic note...
...Under their impact as writers, teachers and artists, the Monarchy, which had seemed the traditional obstacle to the modernization of Spain, eventually collapsed...
...The Republic collapsed while he was abroad...
...And in this hope he has written the last chapter of his remarkable history...
...In 1931, the Republic was proclaimed...
...How an army organized by Azana was able to rebel against the Republic, and how the Republic managed to lose a war that should not have been lost, is something which left the whole world puzzled...
...In the last three years, the most important of these have crumbled: Peron in Argentina, (Odria in Peru, Rojas Pinilla in Colombia, Perez Jimenez in Venezuela...
...Unlike the anarchist, Nietzschean "generation of '98" (Unamuno, Baroja, Valle-Inclan, Azorin, Maeztu), Ma-dariaga's generation called for a modern Spain, adapted to the democratic trends of the age...
...Reviewed by Joaquin Maurin Spanish journalist, now living in the United States When the first edition of this book came out in London in 1930, Salvador de Madariaga was teaching at Oxford University...
...But not even Madariaga, one of the ablest interpreters that the spirit of the Spanish people has found, could foretell what direction it would take...
...When and how it will fall, no one knows...
Vol. 41 • September 1958 • No. 31
