Rights Rhythm: Spain in My Heart

Last week I kicked off our discussion of Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine with Pete Seeger's take on the Spanish Civil War song 'Viva La Quinte Brigada.' How about we close out with a little more music? This is from an album of contemporary musicians putting their spin on anthems of the era, Spain in My Heart: Songs of the Spanish Civil War. The album includes Pete and Arlo Guthrie singing Woody Guthrie's song 'Jarama Valley', another version of 'Viva La Quinte Brigada' by East LA natives Queztal and the always inspiring Lila Downs (see video above) with 'El Quinto Regimiento.'

The idealistic appeal of "fighting the good fight" against the fascist troops of General Francisco Franco as he warred against Spain’s democratically elected government drew more than 45,000 volunteer soldiers from over 50 countries during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). This influx created a canon of war-related songs sung by the freedom fighters and revived during the American folk boom of the Fifties. Rather than emulating the strident chaos of battle, the CD conveys more subtle aspects of the conflict – yearning for simpler times ("Asturias," "En La Plaza De Mi Pueblo"); longing for distant loved ones ("The Bantry Girls’ Lament"); the equal significance of life, love and death ("Llegó Con Tres Heridas"). The war and the bravery of the anti-fascist forces are addressed in such songs as "Jarama Valley," "El Quinto Regimiento," "Taste of Ashes," and "The Abraham Lincoln Brigade." No matter in what language the songs are performed, the bravery, pain and loss felt by soldiers and civilians alike are rendered with a conviction and feeling that transcends words and forges an aching link with the listener.

Sample more tracks from the album below.

Rights Reel: The Mexican Suitcase

Who doesn't love a lost treasure story? As a film supplement to our reading of Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine, a mystery set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, I'd like to recommend the documentary The Mexican Suitcase. The film tells the story of three lost boxes found in a closet in Mexico City in 2007. The boxes, misplaced in the chaos at the start of WWII, contained many of the Spanish Civil War negatives by the legendary photographer Robert Capa and fellow photographers Gerda Taro and David "Chim" Seymour.  The film traces the path of the negatives from Spain to France to Mexico and highlights the role Mexico played in the civil war and its significance for refugees from Spain. The film also examines the attitude of today’s Spaniards towards the fate of their ancestors who lost their lives in the war. You can stream it on Netflix or Amazon Instant.

You can also learn more and browse through a gallery of photos at the International Center for Photography website and the story and photos are also available in book form.

Franco's Ghost

Here's a few additional resources on the Spanish Civil War in case you wanted to put our August book, Watcher in the Pine, in context. Google Cultural Institute has an easily digestible multimedia spread that gives you the basics. For a little additional period color, you can watch The Spanish Earth, a 1937 pro-Republican propaganda film narrated by Ernest Hemingway. If you'd like a little more depth, try this podcast from the BBC In Our Time Series.

As with many divisive periods in a nation's life (I'm thinking of our recent reading of Anna Funder's Stasiland about East and West Germany) the process of reconciliation is ongoing. Just this year, Amnesty International released a report, "Time Passes, Impunity Remains", criticizing the Spanish government for blocking investigations into Franco-era crimes,

“The fact that Spain is neither investigating nor cooperating with proceedings relating to crimes committed during the Civil War by both parties to the conflict or under Franco is a slap in the face of all the relatives of those who were abused and disappeared at the time,” said Esteban Beltrán, Director of Amnesty International Spain. 

“We have seen a tendency for these cases to be closed without further investigation but the situation has worsened recently after the Supreme Court ruled that it was not for Spanish judges to prosecute these crimes. The only avenue of judicial investigation available in Spain it seems to be shut down.”

Amnesty is urging authorities in Spain to investigate and prosecute crimes or offences under international law and to assist fully with any request for cooperation it receives from foreign courts that decide to investigate these crimes.  For more on how Spaniards are confronting the legacy of the Franco era, watch "Franco's Ghost" above.

Our August Author: Rebecca Pawel

It's time to get to know Rebecca Pawel, author of our enaging "Mystery Month" selection Watcher in the Pine.  First stop is her website, Rebeccapawel.com, which has the usual biography and info about her other books. In the Links section, she has helpful pointers to the sources she consulted to create the Spanish Civil War setting for her books, something I was curious about, but unfortunately many of the links are now defunct. This one which will give you a little tour of Liébana and Potes, still works.  The New York Sun also has a brief profile of the Pawel here.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of interviews with this author available online. Fellow crime fiction writer Cara Black gets her on record with her favorite writers and films and other assorted trivia here, but the most interesting stuff can be found at Morpheme Tales where she discusses creating the central character, Tejada, how she worked to get the historical details right and the reception of her first book Death of a Nationalist, in Spain. Probably the best news is that although she has completed the Tejada series, her next book will be in Renaissance Flanders during the Eighty Years War. I'm not sure that's going to bring her back to Rights Readers, but it'll be on my personal "to read" list for sure.

Back to Picasso's War

I was excited we chose Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine as our "Mystery Month" selection thinking it was great that we were going to discuss a new topic, the Spanish Civil War. Somehow, I had completely forgotten how much we had enjoyed reading Russell Martin's Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece That Changed the World. If you want to jog your memory about the painting, the book and the history behind it in preparation for reading this month's mystery, the Picasso's War website is a fun place to start.

For more visuals of the era, check out UCSD's collection of posters from the Spanish Civil War or Columbia University's collection of children's drawings from the period.  I would love to find more books like Picasso's War that offer great works of art as an entry point into a discussion of history and human rights. Let me know if you know of any or nominate some works of art for this treatment in comments!

Rights Rhythm: Defeat Facism with Pete Seeger!

Let's warm up for the discussion of our August mystery, Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine, set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War with a recent performance of Pete Seeger and grandson performing in front of a massive audience in Barcelona in the video above. Pete recalls the solidarity album he and other American anti-fascists helped put together in 1943, Songs of the Spanish Civil War 1: Lincoln Brigade, and urges the crowd on just as vigorously as back in the day. Pete would want you to sing along: find the lyrics here. Sample the original album below. Rumba la rumba la rumba la!

For August: Watcher in the Pine by Rebecca Pawel

Once again, we are kicking back in August and enjoying a mystery, this time one from Rebecca Pawel's series set in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, Watcher in the Pine:

Spain, 1940. Potes, a remote northern mountain village, is Carlos Tejada’s first independent Guardia Civil command. He soon discovers that this “promotion” is a mixed blessing. The villagers are unwelcoming. He and his pregnant wife, Elena, have no place to live but the jail, and his own men seem strangely hostile. Is it just their suspicion of his wife’s Republican sympathies? Or is there more going on in the beautiful but bleak area, recently devastated by the civil war? Tejada discovers that there may, indeed, be a new outbreak of that war with Potes as its epicenter. And he must find a way to reconcile his love for his wife with his duty.