Spanish – Page 3 – Ariel Sheen

Review of "The Underdogs"

Mariano Azuelo’s novel The Underdogs was first published in 1915 and is an account of the revolutionary war in Mexico against the Federal government of Porfirio Díaz. The novel predominantly follows the military actions of bandit-turned-general Demetrio Macías, against the Federal government and the manner in which his armed forces are housed, fed, paid, disciplined and interaccaudt with themselves and others segments of Mexican society. In the account of Demetrio’s rise it is possible to see the historical context of caudillismo and the structural limitations for enacting progressive development once the economic and political contradictions of dependent development have been contested. To the first point of caudillismo, we can trace it in the brief career of Demetrio, who leads a small rebellion for personal gain and then decides to join the “formal” army simply in order to potentially gain more. The second issue is shown in the environmental, institutional and social destruction as a result of the civil war itself.

We first encounter Demetrio and his band in armed confrontation with the federal troops. Demetrio is shown to be brave, strong and charismatic to those under his command. He frames his participation in the rebellion in a moralistic personal narrative devoid of notions of class or national solidarity. This desire for revancha similarly motivates the other members of his band that too could be taken as archetypes for the historical context within which they find themselves. Their attacks are not coordinated with any of the other forces fighting against Díaz in the country until they are joined by Luis Cervantes.

Luis is an outsider, both from his previous advocacy of conservative positions, as is evident from his writing in the El Pais and El Regional newspapers, and his class background, his parents could afford to pay tuition for him to be a medical student. Additionally he is described as having a handsome appearance, likely preserved from not engaging in taxing manual, agricultural labor and having a certain reservedness. For these reasons he is given the name Curro, or handsome, which could be interpreted as referring both to his looks and his refined habits.

However these do not alone compose his variations from Demetrio’s group. He states his decision to join forces with the revolutionary band is for idealistic reasons rather than naked material interest. Azuelo shows how ambiguous such a commitment is, however, in providing a backstory that shows Luis previously in the company of the government troops and deciding to desert after being humiliated by his commander, learning how many of the troops were untrained farmers pressed into service and how profitable the side of the rebellion could be. This last consideration is unknown to the group and thus he is viewed according to all in the band as being “made of different stuff”, which in this context means being looked up with suspicion. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he soon becomes a mouthpiece for the values proclaimed by revolutionary leaders such as Villa and Zapata. While not specifically citing the Plan of Ayala as a motivating force for his action, he states “The revolution is for the benefit of the poor, the ignorant, those who have been slaves all their lives, the miserable ones…” (15).

Though Curro is new to the group and an outsider, his capacity for ratiocination is also recognized. When determining the next plan of action, Curro is able to convince Demetrio not just to be an insurgent, but to make an effort to join the revolutionary army of Natera so as to gain position within the new political organization. On this point he states to Demetrio:

“You are generous, and say: “My only ambition is to return to my land.” But is it fair to deprive your wife and children of the fortune that the Divine Providence is now placing in your hands? Is it fair to forsake the motherland at the solemn moment when she will need the abnegation of her humble children to save her, to keep her from falling into the hands of the eternal oppressors and torturers, the caciques?” (25-26)

Leaving aside the ambiguity of Curro’s commitment to egalitarian reform, in the crucible of Mexican class struggle that Curro has entered into his propounded values are soon confronted by the material realities and he soon transitions to an opportunistic pragmatism. The reasons for this are best voiced by an acquaintance, Sr. Solis, he meets in the camp of Natera. Before he is shot in battle, Solis states that “you either become a bandit like them or you leave the stage and hide behind the walls of a fierce and impenetrable egotism” (38). Stripping the abstract to its materiality, we see that Solis refers to a series of behaviors that Luis also witnesses that could be summed as lack of revolutionary discipline.

The men which are leading the military charge are not just querulous about their socio-economic position but also amongst themselves, their aggression leads to in-fighting that, when exacerbated by alcohol, lead to murder. They display their anti-intellectualism by cooking corn with books, destroying art and breaking objects such as crystal chandeliers simply because they are manifestations of the surplus capital extracted from peasant labor. The chain of command becomes difficult to maintain. There is tension between the insurgents and those that have abandoned their roles in the Federal Army that is compounded by the anti-hierarchical sentiments unleashed by the revolutionary cause. The role of women in the novel not only shows their marginal status within a society dominated by males and naked force but becomes yet another point of differentiation between Luis and the “revolutionary” group. After Luis finds a “currita” that he expresses the intention of marrying, she must lock herself away from the other men for fear of rape. This romantic subplot also highlights the recurring tensions, distrust and conflict that exists between city and urban-dwellers.
As these variances in acculturation accumulate, Luis realizes that his “place” in the revolution is not to be found amongst the armed services but in the urban, professional class. At this point he begins to trade loot with the other members of the group to get the most valuable objects and hides some of his loot from them. Demetrio catches him, but does nothing as Luis manipulates the impoverished leader’s rich moral self-conception by offering to prove his loyalty to the group by offering him his take, which is declined.

After Luis has accumulated enough loot he decides to leave the group. Realizing that the best use of the capital he has accumulated from his time with Demetrio would not be in unstable, impoverished Mexico, he relocates to Texas and invests in the completion of his medical studies. This depiction of capital and intellectual flight is not unique to this historical situation but a trend that still occurs in many Latin American countries. With Luis gone, Demetrio has no compass with which to interpret the vicissitudes of power politics. When asked by Natera who’s side he is on, the Carranca or Villa, his response is to recognize his ignorance on the matter and state that he will follow whoever Natera decides.

In the closing section of the novel the cost of the conflict takes on a greater potency. No longer is the conflict just between the opposing forces but between the purportedly liberated and themselves as well as them with the land. The fighting has claimed so many lives and horses that it has slowed or stopped agricultural production, the legacy of theft and pecuniary speculation has harmed trade and caused peasants to now prefer commodity to money exchange. The novel closes with a deep pessimism as to the future of the movement, best expressed by Demetrio himself. Demetrio returns home to his wife and child but finds that he no longer desires to do the farm work that helped instigate him to take up arms. Furthermore he starts to believe the grandiose, conquerors mythology he created about himself and when asked by his wife why it is that he continues to fight, he has no noble response but simply points to a stone he has just thrown and says: “See how that pebble can’t stop…” (86).

On a final note I think it’s worth commenting that the predominant translation of “Los De Abajo” has been “The Underdogs”. While I agree that the band depicted were “the underdogs” in the fighting that transpired, I believe that my short analysis of the novel indicates that Azuela did not intended this interpretation that these people were simply “those from below.” This is evident in the fact that the one surviving middle class characters, Luis, become so disgusted by what he witnesses that he deserts and the depiction of the rebels as brave, but ignorant bandits that cannot build but only destroy.

Review of "The Lost Steps"

After having deeply enjoyed Alejo Capentier’s novel Explosion in a Cathedral, I decided to pick up his other renowned novel The Lost Steps. Though the setting and plot are vastly divergent from the other work, his style is similar. The at times rambling poetic descriptions with flourishes of erudition, the variegated display of characters attitudes which leave and return in a mutated form like the evolving rhythms of Latin music, as well as the abiding concern over the interpenetration of personal and political engagement are just some of the qualities that brought me back to his writing. For it is these traits combined with many others that is able to transform a story into an artfully executed, moving novel about disillusionment and the possibilities for finding truth.

The novel follows the life of a composer who has grown up and lived in various countries. He is ambivalent to if not downright antagonistic to the American culture he now lives in, and is additionally alienated from his actress wife, his career, his friends and his mistress. Compounding this with the problems of “intellectualism” and a career which provides money but not the possibilities of self-edification overdetermine him into agreeing to leave for the jungle of an unnamed Latin American country to find a certain set of instruments desired for the collection of a museum. Unable to find meaning anywhere else in his life and seeking to please his former mentor that asked him to accomplish this task, the composer leaves. But not before the composer’s mistress Mouche decides to invite herself along.

Mouche is familiar with all of the “isms” of the time and self-identifies with the “cultural left”. She is not a socialist, as to be so would be to submit to authority over her, which she resists at every turn and to find a profession that was not involved in the continuing obfuscation of the mind – astrology. Instead she is engaged in petty rebellions against the bourgeoisie, of which she is a part, and bases all of her valuations upon the thoughts of the great Europeans aesthetes. This eventually leads to a conflict between her and the composer, as he increasingly looks down upon her inability to understand what she encounters based upon the object itself and as she makes a purchase of an art object there that she could obtain anywhere rather than the special, one of a kind objects d’art that she could only obtain there. We see the stirring of such animosity in the references to the bliss which the composer gets when speaking his mother tongue regularly. As he remember not only scenes from his childhood memories but also his “racial memory,” he feels more connected in this world.

A coup in their city of arrival causes them to delay their trip into the jungle. Time slows but due to the new regime the amount of money he was given is now worth much more. The couple escapes the city and a Canadian artist that the composer rightly fears would draw them back into the milieu he sought to avoid by taking a bus to the edge of the jungle to begin their trek to the place where it’s suspected that the instrument is located. While moving from van to boat to boat, there are several beautiful images and many interesting frontier town characters. Rosario, the Greek, the Adelanto and Fray Pedro are the main persons whose life-stories contribute along with the change of scenery to the dissolving effect on the composers habits and personality.

The composer’s growing respect for the atavistic once there leaves him to break with his Mouche once she’s come down with malaria and to then take up with Rosario. Rosario is a woman who is constantly described as unable to even be conceptualized by those that have not lived in the jungle and truly understood the adaptive requirements to live there. The linguistic signifier which she uses to describe herself once they are involved, “your woman,” implies that she is somehow property and in a disempowered state but as the other shows this is only the case if her choice in the matter is discounted. Rosario’s powerful emotions leads her to acts of service and affection toward the one that she has chosen, the composer, but this is shown to stem from a recognition of mutuality rather than expectation. The composers ability to genuinely change and stay this person, however, is tested and he fails. Following a return of the impulse to create a new musical arrangement, the composer suddenly needs paper and pen desperately. Their distance from civilization and the weather make it hard to do this. Following the arrival of a rescue party, the composer leaves despite his resolution to stay. He will just get some paper to take back with him and divorce his wife so he can be honestly married with Rosario and then he will return. Things, however, are not so simple.

When the composer finally returns to the area near where he was taken, he discovers that the woman that he wants to return to is no longer possible. It is directly alluded to by the Greek Miner that the world they live in is not that of Odysseus and that Rosario that she is no Penelope. The living conditions are such there that it is not possible to hold on to anything but the present.

Review of "El Filibusterismo"

I approached El Filibusterismo knowing that it and Noli Me Tangere’s publication was the legal justification for the judicial execution of the author by the Spanish government. Incidentally the site of the execution was a ten minute walk from my apartment in Barcelona. I’d previously read Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination for my Global Histories course at NYU and was fascinated by the life of the author. After being so close to his execution site and having seen his former student residence while exploring the streets of Madrid, I decided that after I returned to the States I would finally read it. After having read it, all I can say is that it is possible that due to the working up of it in my mind of the novel that it wasn’t able to fulfill the expectations that I had of it. I wouldn’t say that it is bad, but more so that its emphasis of the political level tended to overwhelm the aesthetic dimensions of the novel, which while present aren’t given the same sort of attention. In stating this I know that I am not alone, as surely the Spanish government must have felt this way as well and am aware that this has much to do with Rizal’s changes in the urgency of the need for political change in the Philippines.

El Filibusterismo picks up the general narrative development from where Noli Me Tangere left it 13 years later and in such a way that the one misses little not for having read the first one. All we need know, and this is illustrated in the book, is that the innocent love of Ibarra has turned into a obsessive hatred against the Spanish colonial government. Rather than plan an outright guerilla rebellion himself, he seeks to pit foes against one another, defrauds the colonial powers and later attempts but fails to bomb a number of the government functionaries.

Some of the novel’s greatest prose comes from Ibarra, who in his new guise goes by the name of Simoun, when he describes to Basilo his rationale and plans for attack, and the conversations amongst the priests and students. The attempt by the students to use their own rhetoric of universal human brotherhood and various legal proclamations against the friars is met with the sophism that devolves into naked power games. The numerous Philippine youths that are attempt to play a positive role in the direction of their country are one by one put in a situation that forces them to kill themselves, be killed by the army or self-emasculate themselves to save their lives and futures.

Rizal’s criticisms of the colonial friarocracy are devastating. The educational system is shown to be a not only a farce but a true barrier to the proper education of it’s pupils, native women are sexually preyed upon by the friars – who are constantly trying to increase the extracted amount of forced labor or goods from the population. The image of the populations poverty and impossibility of upward mobility or peace due to these friars is indeed serious and Rizal shows that though there are bureaucrats that are willing to side with justice, with the natives, they are placed in a situation that to do so openly is conceived by the power apparatus as to be a traitor and cause for dismissal and immediate exit from the country. The flip side of this is the constant production of rebels, such as Cabesang Tales and the group of bandits that he soon turns more political, that must be continually fought against. Spanish colonialism is constantly shown to be a cancer on the native people. Despite all of this, Rizal manages to intersperse enough comedic phrases that it is not all moribund and depressing for the reader.

Humorous comments alight on the peculiarities of the Chinese living the Philipines, the intellectualism of the friars that is sizable only in this colonial provinces and shrinks to nothing once moved to the cities of Europe, the near autocratic powers of friars that have in many respects the same sociopathy of children and many more.
One of the jokes that I found particularly amusing occurred when a group of Friars decides to go visit a fair. Amongst the carved goods of people typical to the area is a statue of a one-eyed, disheveled woman holding an iron with puffs of steam coming out of it. What is the carving of this woman supposed to represent? The Philippine press.

As a novel which praises suffering for a righteous cause in the face of a greater force than oneself, in it’s criticisms of Spanish rule, documentation of the immorality of the friars and call for action towards a national renewal that will eventually lead to their expulsion by any means necessary El Filibusterismo makes a political tract into a narrative. While to be sure it has it’s moments of description rather than narration, to use a literary distinction coined by Georg Lukacs, it is as the whole telling the story of the Fillipino, their enemies and hinting towards means to get them out. While Rizal doesn’t present a character in the book that it meant to substitute for his particular beliefs, but having so many characters in there that repent then prevalent political tendencies, ideas and showing their interrelation he is able to present a compelling piece of historical literature.

List of Good Spanish Language Films

Learning a foreign language is not simply about being able to communicate with other people but also being able to better understand their culture, history, values and struggles. Part of this involves familiarizing yourself in their artistic productions, be it paintings, poetry or cinema. The latter two are definitely more useful in understanding a language and the last the most so in increasing aural comprehension. Here are some excellent examples of Latin American and Spanish cinema that I’ve found to always be aesthetically pleasing. My apologies for not giving plots synopsis, but they can be found on the Amazon links and in my humble opinion are all worth viewing.

The Motorcycle Diaries (Widescreen Edition)

Y Tu Mama Tambien

Pan’s Labyrinth

Biutiful

Like Water for Chocolate

Love in the Time of Cholera

The Perfect Crime (El Crimen Perfecto)

Innocent Voices

Between Your Legs

Sex and Lucia (Unrated Edition)

Carmen

Second Skin (Unrated Version)

Under the Same Moon

La Estrategia Del Caracol Lo Mejor Del Cine Colombiano

The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)

Rosario Tijeras

Lolita’s Club

Perder Es Cuestion De Metodo

The Official Story (La historia oficial)

El Norte (The Criterion Collection)

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)

Broken Embraces

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

The Skin I Live in (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

All About My Mother

Bad Education (Original Uncut NC-17 Edition)

Matador (1986)

Law of Desire

Two Barcelona Observations & A Note on Spanish Translations

Random Observation: The dogs on the street here are incredibly well behaved and most of them aren’t on leashes. They typically follow a few feet behind their masters or walk beside them. I’ve seen hundreds of dogs and not once have I seen two them act aggressive towards one another, even if one is an excited puppy.

Random Knowledge: During the regime of Franco, a law forced restaurants to offer a “Menu del Dia” so that every working man, regardless of his wages, would be able to enjoy a filling yet affordable lunch out. The law’s gone but the tradition continues and is the reason why €6.50 meals are still offered throughout Barcelona and the rest of Spain. Fascism – It takes away your right to organize and fight for higher wages, but provides you with cheap calories!

Translations: As part of my interest in 15m and the post-left political turn generally, today I started reading and translating Pensar el 15M y otros textos. There’s not yet been any high-profile news related to this book in Spain in the same way that the Tarnac 9 brought attention to The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection, but I’m hoping that with the translation of this into english it will provide the english-only speaking world with a better understanding of some of the political and social issues happening here in Spain and indeed the rest of Europe. At Harper’s Magazine, Nathan Schneider has a good article about OWS (also available here), the American manifestation of the Spanish manifestacios. If you are interested in reading some chapters before I shop them to publishers, email me.

A Visit to Madrid

We arrived in Madrid at 9:30 a.m., which was just enough time to go from the airport to a Civil War tour starting at 11 a.m. if we were to walk briskly. However I sprained my ankle three day ago, causing me great pain when walking. The pain was so bad that Josselyn offered to push me around in a luggage cart and the strange stares didn’t dissuade me from this course of action. By the time we’d left the get and the luggage cart, however, we changed our plans and went to visit the airport doctor rather than trying to rush to the tour.

Two different doctors checked me out, each telling me to stay off my feet for a few weeks then wrote a prescription for an anti-inflammatory to help with the swelling. My response that I was on vacation and wouldn’t miss out on seeing the city elicited a laugh as well as an advisement not to push myself. While it’s true that I could always return, the idea of being bedridden over the next two weeks that we’d planned on traveling was detestable and I decided to grin and bear the pain as much as possible.

We took the train in and got off at Sol stop, in the middle of the plaza of the same name. The plaza was huge and filled with vendors selling lottery tickets for Navidad. There were also several people in children’s costumes encouraging tourists to pay for a photo with them and beggars with physical impediments. This last category was somewhat shocking as it’s something that I hadn’t seen in Barcelona at all.

After dropping off our bags we walked over to the Prado Museum. The Prado, like many of the other museums that visited this trip, has an extensive and impressive collection of art too numerous to examine in any detail. What I found to be the most enjoyable, however, was Carvaccio’s, the Goya’s and the one Picasso that they had in “Acrobat on a Ball.” Several of the Romanesque style commemorative sculptures made for Spanish generals in the 18^th century, a form of art not normally to my liking, impressed me as well.

A few hours into exploring the museum, the peckishness that we quelled with mini-wraps and carrot cake at the café gave in to a full out hunger. We were both tired and got some empanadas and pizza and went back to the hotel. While eating we flipped through the television in our room and happened to come across the movie Everything is Illuminated. As it was the first movie that Josselyn and I watched together some three and a half years ago and we weren’t interested in experienced Madrid’s famous nightlife while I had footpain, we watched it again.

We had a refreshing sleep, prepared for our day and had some pastries and mulled wine from Mercado de St. Miguel. After the enjoyable Sandeman’s tour we went on in Dublin, we decided to go on their NewMadrid Spanish Civil War Tour. While our guide, who was Irish, was extremely well informed and didn’t rely upon notes at any time for dates or names, the actual sites were less than compelling. This is of course understandable, however, as being that it happened so long ago and is an occurrence many are eager to forget the architectural traces of it are few.

The tour started off in Plaza Mayor and continued to Plaza Sol, the main site for populist political life in Madrid. After this we walked to a rather undistinguished bar. Here it was, we learned that the first Spanish socialist party was formed. Anyone familiar with the origins of other socialist parties will know that beer hall origins are a common denominator, this being one of the few spaces open and available for workers to have the space to talk. I was somewhat disappointed that this wasn’t explained.

Another issue that I took with the tour was the guide’s use of the terms Nationalists and Republicans. While there were certainly groups within this denomination that were of an internationalist orientation, such terms present the Republican’s as somehow fighting against the interests of the “nation” per se. Each group was fighting for a different notion of modernism and how the “nation” of Spain would be organized. Going into this makes it more of a lecture than a walking tour, though a passing mention of this would have eased my historian’s sensibilities.

Following this we went along the main street that the German airplanes bombed and there was cursory talk about Fourth Internationalist involvement in the war. We went to a cite commemorating an attack on Nationalist soldiers and some remnants of pillboxes in a park which was near by a statue that had gunfire markings on it.

One of the aspects of the tour that greatly pleased me was its use of comparison to one of the other main sites of the Civil War – Barcelona. While Madrid had many more Communist cadres that were disciplined and open to military organization the rebellious citizens in the capital of Catalunya were predominantly anarchists. This orientation had a profound effect on the manner in which each city was defended from the Fascist army. How it was that the city managed to defend itself longer and stay a more cohesive unit was gone into in depth and this was pleasant, however

This tour is somewhat of a paradox: those that are interested in this period will know much of the information and, like myself, while finding it enjoyable will feel as if is lacking the physical qualities as the actual traces of the war are so few. While those that are uninformed may find the material interesting, finding the sites less than compelling they will view this struggle as something essentially Spanish rather than relating to the entire economic world system that would lead to the eruption of World War II. For those that are interested in touring the sites of Madrid I’d simply recommend skipping the tour and mapping out a few sites to visit yourself.

After this, I went to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum on my own as Josselyn was tired from the previous days perambulations. On my way there I took a non-direct route and discovered a plaque commemorating Filipino author Jose Rizal. To say that a non-violent anti-imperialist activist against Spanish rule in the Philippines had a plaque in the capital city surprised me is an understatement.

While I’ve not read his most important books Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)
or El Filibusterismo, he featured prominently in Benedict Arnold’s book Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, which I read for my Global Histories class.

Once arriving at the museum I was delighted to discover that there was a special exhibition on the Russian Avant-Guard. The security there was much more lax than at Prado and as such I was able to take pictures of the better works on my phone to share with Josselyn. I hobbled back to the hotel and as we were both hungry we went to eat at an Argentine steakhouse.

Now with the exception of Colombia, which I didn’t visit during a festival season, I’ve never spent much time in Catholic countries. Because of this seeing the Christmas spirit in Madrid was a unique experience for me. Like Barcelona there were lots of lights atop the streets showing with themes of wreaths and decorative balls, however the sheer number of people in the street, many with ridiculous hats, singing with others was completely unique.

Our last day in Madrid, Josselyn and I went to the Museo Reina Sofia. We left to get there shortly after it’s opening as I’d heard the Guernica room filled up very early and didn’t stop until close and I wanted to get some “alone time” there. However this didn’t happen. I was grateful for seeing it as well as the other wonderful pieces of art and photography there.

Viva Barcelona!

It’s been a little over a month since moving to Barcelona. While getting accustomed to the time change and daily rhythm which is so vastly different from the of New York hasn’t been difficult per se, but it has exacted from me my ability to write. The amount of bureaucracy here is indeed mind-blowing and probably a reason why the black market is so prevalent throughout the country. However, now that I consider myself mostly adjusted, I wanted to take the time to write in some detail about some of my thoughts since arriving.

First I must admit that since arriving I have found myself consistently gratified for having taken the time to read Robert Hughes book Barcelona, a comprehensive account of the history of my new home cities development from Roman colony to empire to unwilling appendage of Castillian influence to war zone to home of the 1992 summer Olympics. Hughes also introduces the eminent personages that helped construct the city and bring it renown, catalogs many of the distinctly Catalan cultural traditions, traces it’s political and economic developments as well as give detailed examination of the city’s famous architecture. Poets, revolutionaries of the Right and Left, Kings, colonialists all have their place, but it is the artisans which designed the city that he devotes most of his attention. This is unsurprising given Hughes background as an art critic, but his exegesis of wood, marble stone and cement is no mere formalism but informed by the historical contexts and conflicts of the time.

Hughes gives the history behind the Teatro de Liceu, a work of epic beauty constructed during the beginning of the Golden Age of the Catalan bourgeoise which could not cope with the industrialism which helped bring it into being. The strange placement of Monjuic, a castle at the edge rather than the center of the city, is explained, as well as the large statue of Christopher Colombus pointing to the New World close to Barcelona’s docks. The reasoning that so many of the cities street names are of foreign origin are brought to light, as are many other aspects of the city that I have since encountered.

While the two thousand years of history and development that are gone over in this 567 page book have an impressive amount of detail, it is the final chapters on Gaudi which are by far the most in depth. Given Gaudi’s impact on notions of Barcelonans Catalan identity and subsequent use in advertising matrerial this is unsurprising. However, this section is no more paean to genius, the capacity of architects to bring an aesthetic pleasure to the banal and incorporate local craft traditions into work in a time of increasing standardization and deskilling. Additionally, the book ends with a masterful deconstruction of La Sagrada Familia, the building probably associated with Barcelona in the same way that the Eiffel Tower is with Paris.

And speaking of Paris, I must admit that after having read this I have a fervent desire to return to Paris after having read Eric Hazan’s The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps. While I visited many of the literary sites made famous by the long history of Parisian intellectuals and writers, the Lost Generation and Henry Miller, this text, I’m sure as Hughes does, presents a type of history shows just how embedded the past is into the present.

Whilst on the subject of the past embedded in the present, and one of the reasons why I wanted to write this blog, was that one of the things which have taken me by surprise since arriving is the living memory apparent within the public places of Barcelona. While visiting the library closest to my house I noticed several Republican political posters from the Spanish Civil War. Whilst walking around the Montjuic park I came across a statue of Fernando Ferrer – a secular educator that was sentanced to death for a falsely attributed role in an assassination plot. In a bookstore by the Liceu metro line, off Passeig de Gracia, I entered a bookstore which contained a large display of books related to the Spanish Civil War at the front of the store, the area which is considered most valuable to attracting customers. There are posters and graffiti, heavily concentrated in the Gracia area, for the CNT, CGT and COO and whilst walking in the Old City there was a large rally composed of these groups protesting cut in social spending.

I see this and in light of the fact that all of these public acknowledgments of previous and still existing social conflict stems from the death of Franco and the relaxation of strictures preventing remberence I find stunning. The various conceptual and historical frameworks offered by G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhart Koselleck, Benedict Andersen sets my mind running in various directions, especially when considering the manner in which such history is deployed amidst the current Spanish economic crisis. This is a topic that I’m sure I will meditate on more as time goes on and I find myself exposed to more experiences – however one such topic that I think worthy of attention is how there are certain historical periods which some regions/countries get stuck in.

For Spain it is clearly the Spanish Civil War which is historical moment that is constantly returned to it as a source of inspiration, reflection and criticism. During the time immediately preceding, during and following the war there was a flourishing of literature which was describing the events. The two books most widely acclaimed about the events, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, are truly great but should also be paired with a Spanish work of similar greatness, Lorca’s Three Tragedies. Additionally, it wasn’t just the literary arts that was affected. Perhaps the most famous work related to this was Picasso’s Guernica. While the ideological foment embedded in this period wasn’t atypical and had several echoes in other national literatures and arts – however that this continues to be a guiding source of inspiration is.

Recent films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Last Circus, There Be Dragons also center on or have these events play a major role in plot and character development. Even Javier Bardem’s recent film Biutiful, set in modern day Barcelona, focuses on a character haunted by his father who died while fleeing Franco’s death squads. Such a history is not surprisingly disavowed in Woody Allen’s omphaloskeptical film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

This is not so unsurprising as such events allow for dramatic tension that rarely emerges. Inter-natinonal war is one thing, but prolonged civil war with entrenched positions based upon class/ideological differences is. My own interest in the dynamic provided by nationalistic and ideological tension contained within the context stems from a period of convalescence where I devoured The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, The Spanish Civil War: Revised Edition, The Spanish Civil War, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women in a period of a few weeks. I bring this as just as many of the conflicts within the Civil War are still relevant to contemporary issues and not just to Autonomous communities in Spain.

To cite a specific example, last Thursday I unwittingly walked into my first major Spanish demonstration protesting the neo-liberal policies mandated by Germany to support the EU (pictures). Spain still has credibility where Greece and now Italy do not, but this doesn’t mean that there still isn’t rampant unemployment, social unrest and problems that are lying underneath the semi-peaceful veneer. This is, however, unlikely to change. As the moral hazard created by Greece and now Italy spreads it is likely to create increased tension amidst those and other member nation states as incentives to fail become available. While the battles for the future control over resource management and government policy will now be directed by politicians rather than princes or fuhrers, thus taking the heroic element out of politics with bureaucracy, what economists should consider is not the increasing perfectibility of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models – but how it is that historical traditions inform economic responses.

That said, I’m going out to see more of the city.