Benidorm, 1950s, before its development as a stylish resort for middle-class Spanish
Jon in search of the Spanish Civil War (part 2)
While I was researching the local face of the Spanish Civil War along the Mediterranean coast of Spain in 1992, I was tipped off that I should visit Dom Pedro Zaragoza. He had been the alcalde or mayor of a small fishing village and in the aftermath of Franco’s victory in the war he had put forward a scheme to develop his village into a tourist town. He gave me a copy of the original printed plan. Dom Pedro had somehow got to know Franco himself and his new tourist resort had flourished. It was, he told me, intended as a holiday destination for the middle class. His reasoning, he explained with some passion, was that a country with a strong middle class is proof against both communism and fascism.
At the time it struck me as ironic that this man – a dead ringer for his friend Franco, whom we know as a fascist dictator – should have proposed a plan intended to defeat fascism. Also that the resort intended for the middle class was Benidorm, crammed with poor Baqsue families when I was there in May, and snubbed by everyone except working class Brits in the summer season. (It is, if you haven’t been, beautifully designed and maintained – and only one ghetto has been completely abandoned to grim chip bars and English pubs.)
Re-reading Gerald Brenan’s Face of Spain, however, Dom Pedro’s vision makes more sense. Brenan, most famous for his later travel book South of Granada, wrote Face of Spain in 1949-50, just before the alcalde’s Benidorm began its climb to fame. Brenan believed that Franco’s Falange was indeed a lower middle-class movement (pp. 108-09). It was inspired by the hope that it could hold the ring between the working poor and the wealthy landowners. Its failure – and that of Franco – was that it was too weak to suppress the abuses of the rich, or to prevent the descent of working families into desperate poverty. The result was an economy rigged by the hidden forces of big money, kept in business by corruption and the black market.
Two observations to make from this. First, it’s always a mistake to jump to conclusions until we understand the historical discourses in play – and especially in European countries with their complex politics. The story we think we know almost always turns out to be someone else's propaganda. Second, that a European regime can survive for nearly four decades despite the bleak impoverishment of its population and the completely obvious corruption of its leaders. Britain with its food parcels, empty shelves and blatant chumocracy has set out along a well-trodden path.
The age-old challenge for kings and prime ministers - getting parliament to do what you want [Cartoon by Morten Morland 5 November 2018, The Times]
The English parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king, James I and VI of Scotland, money. They’re still paying for the effects of the last plague. But ensuring parliament gives the king money is the single most important job for his chief minister Robert Cecil (whose dad was Elizabeth I's chief minister). What to do?
On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers are calmly informed that there has been a devilish Catholic plot to blow the lot of them up. A plot that their king and Cecil have brilliantly foiled. Unsurprisingly, this time, they vote the king the money he so badly needs. Job done. Check out our series. Nobody else has told this story. Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
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