A few years ago, I submitted the Madrid chapter of my guidebook and a new TV show we produced on Madrid to the local tourist board for a tourism promotion contest. While I knew I was promoting tourism in Spain far more than any other participant, I also knew I wouldn’t win. That was a few years ago. Just yesterday, my local guide friend told an anecdote about how my writing was ridiculed by the panel of judges as being just “too full of Franco.” (Tourist boards are all about fun in the sun and duty free shopping.)
I don’t think you can tour Spain properly without an understanding of how a brutal civil war followed by half a century of dictatorship impacted the society and leaves it scarred today.
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Now I’m in Ireland. I just watched a powerful movie (The Wind that shakes the Barley) in a small town (Dingle) theater filled with local farm kids whose grandparents could have been the stars of the movie showing how a heroic independence was won after a 700 year long battle with the world’s quintessential colonial overlord (Britain) and the battle then morphed almost immediately into a civil war (fighting over how to deal with a Britain-ruled north).
Walking a Dingle street the next day with the retired local police chief, Tim, I worked to bring to life Ireland’s history using insignificant bits of a small town a world away from Dublin as a rack upon which to hang this understanding. A century ago the town’s police station was the Green Zone of English imperialism here, housing the dreaded Black and Tan forces who kept any Irish insurgency under control. It was burned and today only the red brick wall at its gate survives. Across the street a big, white crucifix stands memorializing where local boys were executed (firing squad) by the English “in the glorious struggle for a free Ireland.” This was erected after the Free State was established, but even back then they knew the struggle was on-going. It is dated 1916 to 19__. Ireland remains divided and the date remains poignantly open ended.
I enjoy history–I actually got my history degree accidentally, it was so much fun. And the history that inspires me most is from the last century–heroic figures who people alive today still remember. Churchill, chomping on a cigar in his bunker, keeping England fighting. Ataturk, muscling medieval Turkey from the buffet line of Euro-imperialism into a modern democracy.
Turks still remember the George Washington of their young nation. I have a Turkish friend (Mehlika) who was so dedicated to Ataturk that as a young girl she believed she’d never be able to fall in love with another man. Her father died of a heart attack during a moment of silence at a Rotary Club ceremony to remember what Ataturk did for Turkey. Even today, Turks see Ataturk’s image floating by in the clouds.
The sights and stories of small people (young and old) fighting Hitler, Franco, the USSR, or the Queen carbonate my European sightseeing. And, to any student of history, two things seem very clear: we can learn valuable lessons from history; and the resilience of a people’s cause, while easy for an imperialistic power to underestimate, is an impressive force.
The English burned the harps here in Ireland centuries ago. But the pipes and fiddles play on as today the Irish culture thrives.