On July 18, 1936, Spain split in two. 90 years after that outbreak of hatred that left over half a million dead, the country still debates its past with the same passion as then. The only living witness who can tell it is Joan Escudé, a 110-year-old Catalan who fought on the Republican side and who, with lucid bluntness, states: “Wars are useless and only create misery and destruction”.
Escudé, the oldest man in Catalonia, remembers those days of fury. “When wars start, one can do nothing but take sides and acquire resilience in the face of adversity”, he says. But he also knows that resilience does not erase the horror. The Civil War was the laboratory for World War II: there Hitler tested his Condor Legion and Mussolini sent 80,000 soldiers to bolster Franco, while European democracies looked the other way. “With our Eurocentric view we believe World War II began in 1939, but in Spain it had been burning for years”, says historian Francisco Marhuenda.
The conflict not only pitted armies against each other, but entire families. The Machado brothers, Antonio and Manuel, ended up on opposite sides: one Republican and exiled, the other a Francoist favored by the dictator. “Looking back, you see the path that should never be trod again”, wrote Antonio. But Spain seems determined to tread it again and again.
Today, the Historical Memory (2007) and Democratic Memory (2022) laws seek to heal wounds, but reopen rifts. Pedro Sánchez’s government pushes for the search for the disappeared — an estimated 114,000 bodies lie in mass graves — while the opposition denounces a partisan use of the past. “They try to instill the prejudice that the left is democracy and the right is dictatorship”, criticizes professor Roberto Villa García. Escudé, however, supports the laws: “A people that forgets its history is doomed to repeat it”, he says, though he warns: “Yesterday’s tragedy can become today’s farce”.
The veteran clearly remembers the arrival of the Second Republic in 1931. “In Catalonia there was contagious joy. It was like shaking off a burden: we were forbidden even to speak Catalan outside the home”, he recalls. But that joy was short-lived. Republican reforms crashed against the wall of the Church, the Army, and the oligarchy, and the country bled for three years. Franco ruled with an iron fist until 1975, and his shadow still looms over the present.
Spain is, according to some organizations, the second country in the world with the most disappeared, behind only Cambodia. Mass graves remain unopened, and families search for their dead while politicians accuse each other of manipulating history. Amid it all, a 110-year-old man offers a simple lesson: “Wars solve nothing”. But 90 years after the first shot, the echo of that division still resounds.
para mi estos fachas de mierda nunca van a entender 90 años y siguen llorando por franco chupate esa don joan es un heroe abrazo enorme loco la herida la abren ellos con tanto negacionismo nunca olvidar carajo
110 años y sigue chamuyando el rojo este para mi la guerra la perdieron los zurdos punto dejen de romper las bolas con leyes de memoria q solo dividen viva España unida carajo q se vayan todos los comunistas a Cuba firmado El Gaucho Nacionalista