The Spanish Civil War remains both a fascinating and deeply
tragic moment in history. It was a
microcosm in which the true, and mostly unflattering, colours of the full range
of society and politics were revealed.
This account is both a narrow slice of the story and yet also a
retelling of the “big” story.
It is a book about José Robles’ death, a writer I have never
read, who moved in literary circles, the output of which I have also never
read, and so at one level the major result of reading this account was the
sense of how poorly educated and ignorant I must be.
There were moments when I was gripped by the tale, and
moments I felt lost. It is a search for
the truth of José Robles’ death, and yet it uncovers, as far as I could tell,
not one ounce of new information about that event. But that is the great truth of the Spanish
Civil War, it is one never ending hall of mirrors – the more you reach for the
“truth”, the reality of it, the further that sprite darts away from you.
For me, having read a little about the Spanish Civil War
there was no great revelation, (and for someone who has not at least a working
knowledge of the conflict this is I think a book in which you would
flounder). The interest was rather a
closer look at the patina of the essentially familiar.
One irritation is that this is a book in translation and
they translated the titles of source material in the text with no indication of
the original language (or availability of English versions). Therefore, turning to the bibliography to
find the details of the many interesting follow up reads what one finds is a
wall of Spanish. That most works about
the Spanish Civil War referenced by a Spanish writer are written in Spanish is
not my complaint, but it would have been a simple task for the translator to
have some notation in the text that would have told the simpleton monoglot like
me that a work was inaccessible.
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