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| Right!?!?!?!?! Like... what. |
It's interesting to see Spain grapple with their concept of religion. During Franco's regime, he wanted to make Spain a great Catholic nation, as done by Isabella and Ferdinand way back in the 15th and 16th centuries (in 1492 Isabella expelled all Jews from Spain, and the Inquisition began. And Colombus set sail, for what it's worth). Franco changed the entire identity of Spain in alarming and terrifying ways. Let's just do a quick inventory here.
Second Republic (1931-1939)
-Women could vote, hold public office, work outside the house, get divorced, were considered equal citizens
-State is extremely secular
-Catholicism loses followers, due in large part to ineptness of Church, and the fact that the government disassociated itself with Rome, leaving Catholicism to fend for itself (after centuries of funding it with government money)
- Education, free thinking, free speech encouraged.
CIVIL WAR (1936-1939)- Fascists, led by Franco, win. Republicans slaughtered after the victory. Spain is left in serious trouble, as the country has literally been torn apart in one of the bloodiest, terrifying ordeals. Many considered the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to WWII, as countries such as Germany and Italy supplied the Nationalists with new weapons and technologies. The aftermath of the war lasted over twenty years; Many areas in Spain did not have street lights until the 1960s.
Franco's Regime (1939-1975)
- Catholicism forced onto entire country
- Women could not divorce, leave the country without their husband's passport, open a bank account, leave the house without their husband's permission, contraception outlawed. Women's rights non existent.
- Catalan, Galician and Basque languages outlawed.
- Censorship of books, magazines, television, movies, etc. Dubbing of foreign films became the norm, so as the content could be manipulated easily. The practice became engrained in the consciousness of Spain, and even today people prefer dubbed movies to subtitled ones, even though they obviously are not censored.
- Freedom of speech outlawed.
- Pretty much anything else you can think of that coincides with a dictator.
So, clearly, there's a lot going on here. In 1978, Spain instituted a new form of government, a constitutional monarchy. The new constitution took Spain out of the dark ages, and interjected more modern and liberal ideals into the political system. In more ways than one would think, Spain is infinitely more secular than the United States, which now seems to me to be more conservative than I had thought while living there, and our government clutching the Bible tighter than I had thought. And yet we still have completely different interpretations of the term "religious tolerance." Hell, even freedom of speech differs in interpretation.
I've been wanting to write this post for awhile. It's so incredibly hard to condense everything I've learned this semester (or even just day to day things) into a blog post. I never feel like I do my subjects justice, and there's really no way I could ever. But I did want to end on this one note, that's not a history lesson, and dude, if you're still reading this you deserve something shiny. So here goes.
I put it off as long as I could. As soon as my religion teacher gave my the assignment, I felt uncomfortable. Interview a Spanish person on their concept of religion in Spain. How the government is affected by it. What they believe in. What are customs and social norms. I felt like it was a really personal thing she was asking us to do, press someone on their faith in a different language no less. So naturally, I put it off until the night before. Before dinner I tentatively asked Luis if I could interview him for a class. As my professor suggested, I approached it as a live history, and then the plan was to segue into more religious topics. So at about 9.00, I grabbed my computer, and met him in his and Isabel's room, where he was poised by his computer. Each armed with Google Translate, the interview began. I asked him about his church community, religion in school, his own experiences with education as well as factual information about the 1978 constitution. He was, as always, incredibly patient and helpful with me.
I typed out the interview as best I could, and as I saved it in my email to print the next day, I felt like I hadn't fully done what my teacher wanted me to in the assignment. I knew she would grade me harshly for not pressing issues pertaining to his own personal ideologies. Born in 1931, Luis had lived through the Second Republic, the Civil War, Franco. When I asked him when he started school, he mentioned he was six years old, and attending was difficult. He waved his hand and looked away, "The war in Barcelona... was terrible. Terrible time." He then immediately changed the subject to something a little more positive. I didn't want to push him to talk about anything. My host family has welcomed me into their home and treated me like a daughter, joking with me, nagging me, feeding me. Who the hell was I to ask personal and probing questions? About midway through the interview, his brother called, and they chatted briefly. After hanging up, he looked at me and said proudly, "Catalan," referring to the language they were speaking in. When I ran out of questions, we discussed the decorations on the bedroom wall, his and Isabel's First Communion papers, a bridal picture of Isabel on their wedding day. Sitting in my own room afterwards, I reflected on the history of the country, what it had been through, and what individuals had faced throughout the years, seemed more real than what I had seen in literature, primary documents, textbooks, film. It's when these concepts you have learned get fleshed out, become illustrated before you do they really take root. It goes from interesting historical information to a tangible array of emotions and real experiences of the kind an outsider can only get the faintest glimpse of.
So. History, religion, government, family. They are all intertwined in such messy and subtle and unexpected ways. I have just over a month left here, and for the first time it hit me I would actually be leaving. The thought of saying goodbye to Isabel and Luis made me so incredibly sad.
