Spain: A Unique History (4 page)

In 1957 I applied for admission to the doctoral programs at Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago. All three admitted me and offered a fellowship, though only in the case of Chicago was the fellowship large enough to pay my full expenses for a year. I decided to accept the fellowship at Columbia not because that university was any more prestigious than the other two, but because I calculated that a university in a city like New York would be more likely to have the resources to foster research in a new field such as the contemporary history of Spain. This was not something that I knew for a fact but more an intuitive hunch or wager, which, in fact, turned out to be exactly correct.

Columbia proved to be the best choice for three different reasons. First, it had adopted an accelerated doctoral program, which required of students already possessing a master's degree scarcely more than two semesters of class work (most of which could be taken simply as "registration credit"), as well as a written qualifying examination and a two-hour oral examination for the doctorate, before moving on to dissertation research. Thus, given the powers of concentration that I possessed at that time, I had only to spend one academic year meeting requirements at Columbia, whereas at Harvard and Chicago two full years or more would have been required. This enabled me to move much more rapidly and greatly eased the potential financial strain, since I was otherwise hard put to finance graduate study.

Second, I had the good fortune to have Shepard Clough as my adviser at Columbia, although I had not been aware of this ahead of time, and it formed no part of the reasoning behind my selection of that university. It turned out that Clough had served on the admissions and fellowship committee of the History Department the year before and had urged that a fellowship be offered to the potential young candidate in Spanish history. Clough was a former student of Carlton J. H. Hayes, who had been ambassador in Madrid during 1942-45; Clough was a specialist in modern French and Italian economic history. About that time, his
Economic History of Modern Italy
was awarded a prize by the Italian government. Clough had no knowledge of Spanish history but thought it useful and even important that others study the topic. Thus I became the first of several students to carry out research on Spain under Clough (the next would be Edward Malefakis). He strongly supported my work, helping me to obtain a fulsome research fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), which would in fact provide more money than I could spend in the very inexpensive Spain of 1958-59.

The third advantage that I derived from Columbia was key contacts with the Spanish émigré community, which worked out even better than I had hoped. The first Republican exile I met was Emilio González López, who had been one of the two key leaders of the Organización Regional Gallega Autonoma (ORGA), the main party of the Galicianist Left Republicans (its other principal leader being Casares Quiroga). In exile Don Emilio was for many years professor of Spanish literature at Hunter College (City University of New York), and I had several fruitful conversations with him about contemporary Spanish history and historiography, in addition to the politics of the Second Republic, in which he had played such an active role. Though González López had been a man of the Left, he was not sectarian like Monguió but objective and insightful. He was, in a totally informal way, the only instructor in Spanish history I had had to that point.

In addition to my discussions with Don Emilio, I made a series of other contacts, such as those with Eloy Vaquero, a veteran politician of the Radical Party who had been a cabinet minister under Lerroux, and with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT — National Confederation of Labor) leader and journalist, Jesus González Malo, who was married to the literature professor Carmen Aldecoa. Through González Malo I was introduced to the biweekly
España Libre
, founded originally by Left-leaning Republicans (if I recall correctly) but supported by other sectors of the Spanish Left in New York. Later the first book review that I ever wrote for publication, on Victor Alba's
Historia del Frente Popular
, appeared in
España Libre
.
¹⁰

By far the most significant for me of the émigré Spaniards whom I met in New York was Joaquín Maurín, cofounder of the famous Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM — Workers' Party of Marxist Unification). He would become an important friend, with whom I maintained frequent contact up to the time of his death in 1973. In some sense Maurín "adopted" me almost as a kind of American stepson. He was a remarkable man and a very good friend, retaining the vigorous personality and rather striking physical appearance that had made him a key leader among the revolutionary Left during the early 1930s. His Franco-Russian wife, Jeanne Lifschitz, was rather puzzled by the special relationship that developed between us, for, though by 1958 Maurín was largely social democratic in his political outlook, she knew that I did not at all share the revolutionary Marxist orientation that characterized his active career in Spain. I can only say that there quickly developed a special elective affinity between us on the basis of certain shared interests and a mutual liking and esteem. Maurín appreciated the seriousness of my scholarly interest and the willingness to work hard at it — things that he had never encountered before in American attitudes toward Spain during what was already his decade-long exile in New York. Soon his concerns became almost paternal, unfailingly solicitous of my best interests and well-being. Much more sophisticated than most of his revolutionary counterparts of the 1930s, Maurín had also preserved much of the puritanism of his Aragonese origins and sternly warned me of the dangers of "Caribbean corruption" when I went to Havana in June 1960 to inspect Castro's revolution. I will never forget our last farewell in 1973, when he was already stricken with what was a fatal illness. Since it was raining, he insisted on accompanying me with his umbrella as I hailed a taxi in front of his apartment building in New York.
¹¹

I was originally introduced to Maurín by Francisco García Lorca, a brother of the poet, whose career as a diplomat had been cut short by the Civil War. He developed a second career as Spanish literature professor at Columbia, where he was one of the editors of the
Revista Hispánica Moderna
. García Lorca was a member of the tribunal of my oral doctoral examination, which took place late in April 1958. During the course of that examination Frank Tannenbaum, then the senior professor of Latin American history at Columbia, queried me about the character of the contribution of Spain to Latin American civilization. I knew that Tannenbaum was a proponent of the Black Legend, was interested primarily in the Indian and black populations of Latin America, and always tended to denigrate the role of the Spanish. There were obviously severe limits to the extent that any humble student could question the opinions of a professor who formed part of the tribunal, but I have always had an independent streak that rebelled against forms of political correctness. I chose very carefully the terms of my response and indicated that the positive contributions of Spain to Latin American civilization should not be dismissed out of hand.

My response was carefully noted by García Lorca, who was pleased and later recounted it to Maurín. The latter in turn then wrote it up in slightly exaggerated form as a stirring defense of Spanish civilization, publishing it in
España Libre
and elsewhere. This points up the extent to which the Republican exiles, despite their critique of current Spanish institutions, maintained a strong and defensive Spanish identity abroad, almost to the point of a cultural nationalism.

The most important thing that Maurín did for me was to open the route to the oral history research that I would soon undertake in Spain. He put me in touch with his veteran POUMist colleague Julián Gorkín (one of the POUM leaders prosecuted in Barcelona by the Negrín government in 1938). Gorkín was active in Paris with the exiled opposition and was also a vigorous anti-Soviet publicist. He maintained contact with Dionisio Ridruejo, who by that point had joined the active opposition to the Franco regime and had formed a small clandestine social democratic group with Enrique Tierno Galván and a few others. Gorkín's letter of presentation to Ridruejo would be fundamental in initiating the long series of contacts that I would develop for my research with current and ex-Falangists.

I embarked for Spain in September 1958 on the Queen Mary. The era of transatlantic jet travel would begin just one year later, so that I participated in the final phase of ocean voyages just before they would be rendered technologically obsolete. My first stop was in Paris, where I was able to meet a variety of émigré political personalities, ranging from Gorkín to José Antonio de Aguirre. Julio Just, a former leader of Izquierda Republicana from the Levante, even invited me on a short bus trip to the Paris suburbs to meet the elderly Diego Martínez Barrio, then president of the Republican government-in-exile. At that point the former Radical and Unión Republicana leader was old and feeble, and our conversation lacked substance, but it was very generous of just to take me to meet him.

The most interesting Republican political figure in Paris at that time was José Antonio de Aguirre, head of the Basque government-in-exile, which inhabited its own separate building in the "Delegation d'Euzkadi" on the Right Bank of the Seine. The position of lecturer had been arranged for Aguirre at Columbia during World War II as a sort of wartime "cover," and thus I came from the university with a strong letter of introduction to him. On the personal level Aguirre was most engaging and likeable, very friendly and agreeable to talk with. He gave me a great deal of time, and we had a very interesting and lengthy conversation about Spanish and, especially, Basque affairs, which was repeated nine months later when I came back through Paris. My interest in Basque nationalism was awakened by these conversations, though prior to them I had read almost nothing about the Basque Country.

Only many years later would I learn that Aguirre's lectureship at Columbia had been largely artificial, a political arrangement. Nor did I understand altogether that Aguirre had so much time to spend with an American doctoral student because at that point Basque nationalism was in the doldrums, a state of weakness and inactivity that would lead to the emergence of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA — Basque Homeland and Freedom) only a few years later.

From Paris I traveled by rail to Spain by way of Toulouse. I wanted to make contact with the Spanish Socialist leadership there, which had possession of the mediation proposal of José Antonio Primo de Rivera of August 1936, confiscated by Indalecio Prieto and eventually deposited with the party leadership. Rodolfo Llopis, the party secretary, received me promptly and brusquely, and within twenty-four hours provided me with a photocopy of the document.

I entered Spain by way of Port Bou and Barcelona, where my main goal was to meet the great historian Jaume Vicens Vives, who already ranked in my eyes — limited though my vision was — as the outstanding historian then practicing in Spain. Vicens invited me to his home and then to dinner the following night in a restaurant in the old Plaza Real. This was the beginning of my friendship, and also discipleship, with Vicens, a striking personality whom I still consider the most dynamic historian that I have ever known. I cannot precisely explain why he took such an interest in me, since I had no work to show him except for a seminar paper written at Columbia the preceding spring, based on very little in the way of primary research but incorporating much material from the extraordinary holdings of the New York Public Library. Altogether I saw Vicens on five different occasions that year — three times in Barcelona (September and December 1958, April 1959) and twice in Madrid (February and May 1959). We talked about the history of Spain and of Catalonia, and also the domestic political situation.

I spoke at length with Juan Linz, who was beginning work on an SSRC postdoctoral fellowship at the same time that I started my predoctoral research. He had spotted my name on the SSRC list and had written to me before I had left home. Linz had convinced me that there was not likely to be any change prior to the death of Franco, but early in 1959 Vicens was engaged in negotiations with monarchist dissidents and still hoping that enough pressure might be exerted to effect a change of regime, a hope that he had abandoned by the spring of that year. Our final meeting in May 1959 consisted of a dinner with Vicens and his wife at a sidewalk cafe not far from the Plaza de España.

Vicens made a more powerful impression on me than any other historian I have known. His example was one of extraordinary dedication, energy, analytical ability, concern for opening new fields, and also of a rigorous self-control and objectivity-the latter to an extent rare even among professional scholars. It was Vicens who pointed out to me the importance of a study of the politics of the military, which would be the subject of my second major book. When I learned of his death from lung cancer in June 1960 I could scarcely believe it, for he had always seemed so vital, lively, and full of energy. He accomplished a great deal in what turned out to be a relatively short career. When I published the book on the Falange the year after his death, it seemed most appropriate and fitting to dedicate it to the memory of Vicens.

As I began research in Spain at the beginning of October 1958, I had no clear idea what to expect, but enjoyed the carefree self-confidence of youth, which in this case proved appropriate. I appreciated that the regime had become somewhat more moderate and, though still a police state, was not totalitarian, which hopefully would allow me some freedom for research. As a precaution, the announcement of my research award from the Social Science Research Council had been camouflaged, listing my topic simply as research on "corporatist ideology" in Spain. As it turned out, the timing was ideal: with the passage of twenty years since the Civil War and the frustration of the Falangist revolution, a good many veteran
camisas viejas
(lit. "old shirts") were willing to serve as oral history subjects, while my status as a North American research student also proved an advantage. The Pact of Madrid with Washington had been signed five years earlier. Though it may not have guaranteed freedom of activity for an American scholar, it certainly helped. My status as a foreigner and as a doctoral student was also useful, for the former freed me from identification with either of the two bands in the Civil War, while the latter went some distance to establishing bona fides, without ulterior political motives. Thus I think that I was accepted for what I was, by most but of course not all, of my Spanish research contacts.