Spanish views from a small town

Some who have studied European history superficially in school know that the few countries that remained neutral in World War II were Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, and Spain. They will have learned that after the Spanish Civil War, Franco decided to maintain neutrality because Spain was in no condition to participate. And so ends our link to that war, with German bombers having helped Franco pummel Guernica, giving free reign to Picasso's imagination, and nothing else. Few have ever read about the División Azul , the Blue Division, a group of soldiers that Franco sent to help invade Russia. Fewer even, have heard about the thousands of Spanish who perished at Mauthausen. Yesterday my eye happened to run over a small news story a group on Facebook that I follow put up, talking about how the acknowledgment of history is something that is discouraged in Spain. It was an article telling the story of a survivor of Mauthausen who happened to die on the evening of this past January 5th...

When I visited Astorga and León last month I had the great good luck of being directed to one of the spots I could find more information on my grandfather. Yesterday , the photocopies of his prison record arrived by mail. How strange to see that old-fa shioned hand writing that wrote down all the in cidences bold ly stated; his arrival, the re ason for his incarceration, his sentence, statements he was made to swear to. I had thought all of it would be typewritten. But no , in those days, desp ite the amount of pris oners rou nded up by the Frente Nacional in their rebel lion against the established go vernment, the prison books were still books and still handwritten. On the 27th of July, 1937, h e was sentenced to twenty years by the military tribu nal set up in Santiago de Compostela soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. The official crime was "rebelión militar," "military rebe llion." It is completely ironi c th at a milit ary tribu nal set up b...