A SUMMARY OF

Las Armas y Las Letras: Literatura y Guerra Civil

Alejandro Santana-Vallarta
European Culture & Society
April 7,2016
Formatting a project on a subject so broad, rich, and diverse as the Spanish Civil War
requires a poetic touch and a bit of storytelling. Ironically, this is even more so the case when
writing about its writers, their political involvement ranging from presidency to solitary exile
abroad, some ardent communists, others fascists, all caught in between two diametrically
opposed points of departure (14) that framed the most extreme microcosm of political conflict
in the twentieth century. No doubt a major task, one that has needing reediting and retelling and

has led to the third publication of writer Andrs Trapiellos Las Armas y Las Letras: Literatura y
Guerra Civil, covering the lives and works of over one hundred authors and their ties to a war
that helped shape the modern world.
Trapiello, grabbing hold of his heritage and demystifying it, works through the
developments leading up to the war in a Spain in which generation 981 novelist Po Baroja said
Spanish writers . . . have not one enemy, but two; the whites and the reds, that each by their own
means wants to complete our happiness throwing us in jail (39). The beginning of this decline
into Civil War finds its roots in the Spanish-American War of 1898, where Spain lost the last of
its colonies while also facing poor agriculture, famine, a military bereft of an empire, and lacking
lacking substantive sensitivity as a centralized government to the national aspirations of Catalan,
Basque, and Galician ethnic groups. (27). As the economy worsened and the government found
itself in a state of extreme political instability the majority of Spain found dissatisfaction with the
constitutional monarchy under Alfonso XIII, culminating in the victory of the left-leaning
Republicans in the municipal elections of April 12, 1931, thus beginning the Second Spanish
Republic.
The Republic, however, was not a glorious changing of the guard for everyone in Spain. In fact,
it was a violent one. The Republic had a majority anti-clerical stance, and upon gaining power
needlessly secularized cemeteries, signed the dissolution of The Society of Jesus and
passively assisted in the burning of churches and convents (29). This anti-religiosity of the
government sparked divide in the country, a divide that truly cemented itself after the October
Revolution of 1934, where the right-wing CEDA was denied entry by local miners into the
1 Reference to Spanish writers writing around the Spanish-American War in 1898. Other
generations include 14, in reference to the beginning of WWI, 27, third centenary of poet Luis
de Gngoras death, and 36, the beginning of the Civil War.

government despite having won the 1933 general elections. What proceeded was a military
suppression of the miners led by then general of the Republic Francisco Franco in October of
1934, subsequently dividing society and its writers, some moving to the left, others to the right,
while others tried not to take a side but were forced by events to do so (30).
In what is the first of many analyses, Trapiello presents Miguel de Unamuno, rector of
the University of Salamanca, who once believed that the clean sword of a general would bring
peace and fully supported right-wing Spain. Soon after the beginning of the war, however,
Unamuno noted it is not some Spaniards versus others, if not all of Spain, one, against its own
self (53) and made this point clear to his supposed faction at a speech rally in the citadel of his
university. He stated: You will win because you will have excess brute force. But you will not
convince, because to convince signifies persuading. And to persuade, you will need something
that you lack: reason and right in the struggle. It seems futile to ask that you think of Spain. I
have spoken (53). Not surprisingly, Unamuno fell into infamy for his patronizing speech among
the Nationalists, and soon after passed away on 31 December 1936.
One can hear the paternal voice in Unamunos warning to not only the Nationalists, but
the Republicans as well, as he knew that they were just as capable of violent radicalism as his
own party. One can imagine him lecturing poet Rafael Alberti, a dedicated communist who was
fascinated by Russia and what the USSR represented of leftist utopia (126) and participated in
the 1934 First Congress of Soviet Writers along with acting as Secretary of the Alliance of
Antifascist Intellectuals in Spain. He was, as Unamuno would fear, just as bloodthirsty as the
Nationalists who cried, Long live Death! After seizing the palace of a the marquises of Heredia
Spnola, Albert told his fellow militants, A revolution is not complete if one does not hear
yelled: Were gonna kill the real turkeys! (129). Albert, not only a poet, but a militant, was

infamous between both those on the Left and the Right for his extravagance in his military
campaigns and activism among the leading intellectuals and military leaders, going along all
day taking group photos, at the last minute passing his camera to someone and jumping right into
the middle of the photo (131). Despite being as well the most photographed and most
recognizable poet of the war, Alberts writing falls a bit flat as he was, as writer Ramn Gaya
said, perhaps one of those young artists who, when it was the most necessary, failed to
transcend his youth, which is to say he could not pass the magnificent novelties to the consistent
and mature bullfighting (134). This is to say that he was disconnected, more interested in sociopolitical issues than wordsmithing, his poetry, Gaya adds, being a bit mechanic, systematic,
artificial and in reference to his poetry more or less concerned or inspired by social or politic
topics, it is better not to speak of it (134).
Albert involved his poetry politically, making direct parodies on right-wing counterparts
like Agustn de Fox, poet and diplomat to Franco himself, who wrote news articles, lyrics,
prose, and poetry and was deployed early on in his diplomatic career to Sofia, Bulgaria and
Bucharest, Romania. Though by no means as glamorous and sexy as the anti-establishment
radical Albert was, Fox, for a time, was a playboy in Francos party, working, partying, and
making love to countless women in Bucharest, then waning into a nominal character in an
office, a bureaucrat of the system during his time working in Salamanca and finally chastely
accompanying the ladies of high society in Burgos to mass (75). Before a prolific and industrious
writer, Foxs continual ascent in the ranks of Franco and integration into the Nationalist
government resulted in not a loss of precision or poetics, but rather tension: We get in the
Dionisio Ridruejos car . . . All the Falange intellectuals. Pedantic and inhuman conversation. We
get out. The lights in the sea-blue velvet case. Smoke of a boat. Festival. A bear.

Literature, Trapiello says, becomes lost with order, and dies, perhaps, along with the
possibility of ones talent while climbing up bureaucratic ladders for power and security. Though
on the other side, Fox and Albert were not so different in their temptations, one for fame, the
other a secure career, and both for power. It was nearly impossible to avoid this, the only clear
way of doing so being taking the example of Unamuno, or his political enemy Manuel Azaa,
who, unlike Unamuno, died at the end of the war, but like Unamuno, did so out of the immense
pain that the Spanish tragedy produced (489). Ironically, he was the Republics last President
before surrendering to Franco in the April of 1939, as well as the subject of Trapiellos last
chapter, a solitary figure in his work with the radical Socialist and Communists factions of the
Republic, in his death abroad, and his work on paper, a writer, Unamuno said, without
readers (491).
Azaa wrote extensively, and though what he had of a career in literature was a failure,
and his ability to avoid and win the war was altogether absent, no one in Spanish literature and
in civil life believed as much in words as Azaa, with the exception of Unamuno (495). A
refuge, words often acted as a refuge for Azaa, especially after he resigned as President of the
Republic upon official defeat to Franco. It was only in words he confided, himself too skeptical
for the times that were passing and too idealistic to not leave a testimony to history, he did not
resign so that politicians of his time or academics of the future could judge him (496). He was,
in Trapiellos view, uncut for politics, unable to personally compromise himself like many of his
contemporaries to a time that looked for some sort of solution, whether in weapons or words, that
wasnt always there. Almost no one was the exception to this rule, and Trapiello teases the
achievements, passions, inconsistencies, and failures of these writers to give a very human
perspective on the best writers and thinkers of a war that has shaped history.

Works Cited
Trapiello, Andrs. Las Armas y Las Letras: Literatura y Guerra Civil (1936-1939). Barcelona:
Ediciones Destino, 2010.