EP 04 - Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

- Episode 04 -

Tales from near the Alhambra

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Spanish Civil War

Thursday 18 August 2021

Headless woman

Tales from near the Alhambra

As you enter the village in the mountains near where we have a family home just south of Granada in Andalucia, Spain, you see this statue of a headless woman. It was put up about 10 years ago. You slow down to cross a bridge over a small ravine, and then come across her on the ravine side, standing in the centre of a small public garden in the semi-shade of an olive tree. It’s unexpected that’s for sure. Enough to stop the car to find out more. But there is no plaque, so after a bit of an aimless wander and peer over the ravine, you drive on. The locals however will tell you she is marking a place where Republicans were shot by Franco’s troops, their bodies thrown over into the ravine. Why a headless woman? Were women killed here in particular? Who in the local municipality or ayuntamiento responsible for these little public gardens briefed the sculptor?

We know that many women were killed because their sons and husbands were hiding in the mountains. Locals tell us some people stayed in hiding for 30 years behind false walls to avoid capture and life imprisonment. Many went

Lecrin Valley, south of Granada

mad. In our village our next-door neighbour was brought up illiterate so that hecouldn’t ever be taken for an intellectual (aka anarchist) like his teacher father who was killed.

The 2004 Law of Historical Memory passed by the socialist government has given everyone on both sides the right to know where loved ones are buried. But evidence of the four decade dictatorship which followed the end of the civil war is everywhere if you look for it. In the nearby cathedral in Granada, to one side of the main altar, are listed the names of the Franquistas who died. Not the others.

People are now saying loudly that reconciliation has to start with saying sorry. They add that this will never happen in Spain because those who were on Franco’s side don’t feel any need to say sorry because, they say, ‘it was the others who started it.’

‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’ – Maya Angelou

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Judy Garland's dress and shoes by Adrian in 'The Wizard of Oz'

Why did fashion become so much more conservative in the 1930s? We look at the puritanical Hays Motion Picture Production Code that banned indecent passions, and at MGM’s Adrian Greenberg, the most powerful Hollywood designer of his day. The arrival of colour film stock and the invention of the close-up meant Adrian designed for the camera, experimenting with hats and calf-length dresses that flattered both the lead actresses and ‘Nancy’ in the plush picture house seat. MGM’s Louis B Mayer, who’d started out selling second hand clothes, made a fortune producing mass-made copies to coincide with each film’s release for Nancy’s modest budget.

Adrian's credit was simply Gowns by Adrian. In addition to Judy Garland, he dressed Ingrid Bergman, Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Marie Dressler, Myrna Loy, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald and Joan Crawford - to name but a few!

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