Franco's Crypt

Oct 30, 2024 1:24 AM

Author:Jeremy Treglown

Franco's Crypt

History is written by the victors. It’s a cliché, but a reliable one – except in the case of the Spanish Civil War. Many believe – wrongly, as it turns out – that under Franco’s dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. And this myth reinforces another: that there is a national pact to forget what really happened. In the four decades since Franco’s death foreign narratives – For Whom the Bell Tolls, Casablanca, Homage to Catalonia – still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de España was, as its name asserts, Spain’s own war, and in recent years the country has begun to reclaim this crucial aspect of its history.

In a compelling investigation of collective memory Jeremy Treglown talks to the descendants of men and women killed during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship and stands on a hillside with them as remains are excavated; he attends a Sunday service in the basilica dedicated to Franco’s memory, examines monuments, paintings, novels, films, computer games and finds that despite state censorship, creativity under Franco was burgeoning and events of the time were in fact vividly recorded.

In this groundbreaking and captivating new book Jeremy Treglown examines the very tenet of our cultural identity: how we remember. Franco’s Crypt is a much-needed re-examination of a history we only thought we knew.

Reviews

Alert to nuance, resistant to over-simplification…. Intriguing and passionately argued … in the Gerald Brenan tradition

—— El País

This is the most comprehensive, most perceptive book on Spain that I have read for a long time. I'm full of admiration for the scale of Treglown’s undertaking, for its fine balance between storytelling and reflection and its subtle and deep political and aesthetic judgments, which touch on practically everything that irritates or pains me most about my country. Normally these matters are presented abroad with exasperating stereotypes and, at home, with intolerable factionalism. Spain, so obsessed with memory, is extraordinarily forgetful. This is a book that must be read, in Spain and abroad, by anyone who wants to understand the country’s history, her present and future

—— Antonio Munoz Molina

In a book ranging elegantly between travel writing, history, literary criticism and investigative journalism, Treglown unpicks the puzzle of Spain

—— Giles Foden , Condé Nast Traveller

Evocative and melancholy

—— Sunday Business Post

Treglown's interplay of history with personal narratives is skilful and incisive

—— Mercedes Camino , Times Higher Education

A deeply felt exploration of a part of history that to most of us is dark matter, and a thought-provoking portrait of a society where the dictator, instead of being ousted or defeated, died happy and old at the age of 82

—— Sinclair McKay , Daily Telegraph

Important, lively and appetisingly varied... No one who cares for the deep and dark truth about Spain can fail to admire and learn from what is to be found in the many-chambered depths of Franco's Crypt

—— Frederic Raphael , Literary Review

One of the many pleasures of Franco's Crypt is that it draws our attention to a long list of Franco-era writers and film-makers whose work is unfamiliar or forgotten

—— Patrick Marnham , Spectator

As Bostridge shows in this beautifully written and detailed book, 1914 was a 'fateful year', England was truly never the same again

—— Independent, Book of the Week

Vivid, finely drawn

—— Mail on Sunday

As mesmerising as a great historical novel

—— BBC History Magazine

Escaping the Nazis across the Pyrenean mountain trails became one of the most extraordinary acts of spontaneous resistance of World War Two. In Cruel Crossing, Ed Stourton straps on his backpack and takes to the escape lines himself, reflecting as he treks on the courage and self-sacrifice of the escapers and evaders who went before him - many of them young women, whose remarkable stories are told here often for the first time. Stourton has produced both a compelling history and a unique mountain guide, telling his story with his familiar humour and journalistic verve.

—— Sarah Helm, author of A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE

An important book packed with poignant stories, remarkable characters and uncomfortable truths.

—— Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved and The Woman Who Saved The Children

Cruel Crossing is an accomplished account of an overlooked part of the Second World War. Using wide-ranging research and an impressive number of eye-witness accounts, Stourton tells the story of the escape lines across the Pyrenees, and of the wartime history of southwest France in all its muddied complexity. The gripping escape stories he narrates are sometimes harrowing, often moving, and above all, full of variety and surprises. There is suffering, extraordinary bravery, friendship and even humour; but there is also treachery, betrayal and villainy. A fitting memorial to how war brings out the best and worst in people.

—— Matthew Parker, author of The Battle of Britain

Enthralling stories ... a moving retelling of some of the war's most heroic episodes

—— Nigel Jones , Telegraph

A vigorous book, full of energy as well as insight

—— Jeremy Black

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