My research into the life, the poetry and the plays of Federico Garcia Lorca took me to Spain off and on for about three years. One day I visited the Spain's National Museum, " The Museo Nacional Centro de Arts Reina Sofia as I knew it held the drawings, sketches and paintings of a number of artists from the days of the Civil War, including Picasso's famous Guernica.
Guernica is a Basque town and in the days of war was thought to be a center for the Republican resistance movement that was made up of several elements, artists and writers, those deemed "anarchists", socialists and communists. This was the group that came up against General Franco and his Nationalists, strongly supported by the Catholic Church who wished to have Spain remain in the old ways, with the Church at the helm.
I wandered into a little room that was running new reels from that time and sat down one that depicted the bombing of Madrid by the Nationalists. An elderly man came in and sat beside me and the two of us watched these images unfold before us. Then the man started to cry, silent tears, shoulder heaving, great sadness. After a time, I stood up, touched his shoulder gently and then left the room as I did not want to interfere in this moment of remembrance.
When I turned to corner there was Guernica, the massive mural that Picasso created to capture the morning that the Nazis casually bombed Guernica into eternity. You see, the Franco regime welcomed Hitler and Mussolini into the country well in advance of World War 11 so that they could practice and refine their weaponry as a preparation for the deadly devastation that was to be unleashed in the rest of the world. Because no other country came to Spain's aid, their weapons practice proceeded unhindered.
It is one thing to see this painting in image above, it is quite another to see if stretched across a wall, in full color. The pathos surrounds you.
After this, I wandered through galleries that showed other works from that period, and many of them showed the "religious" toting machine guns. In one, a bishop was positioned behind sandbags, gun in hand and a helmet atop his miter.
Make no mistake: at that time Catholicism and fascism were one and it was this union that faced with the radical idealism of those from the left, idealists, those who wanted a different world than the one the landowners and the "gentry" provided them with at the time. To clarify, communism at that time was embraced by the intelligentsia and gained great traction in the universities of the world as the students sought to fight for a more humane world of greater equality.
I sat outside the museum for a time, trying to absorb the significance of this imagery, watching a man plying is guitar softly and singing. He was hurting no one. He was a gypsy and his musioc soothed me. Suddenly, one of the "Guardia Civil", Spain's police anvil, approached this man and berated him. waiving him away.
It was a poignant moment for me because I knew how much Garcia Lorca loved the gypsies, his well known "Gypsy Ballads" spoke of this love. I also knew how much he abhorred the way they were treated by the Guardia Civil and the state and wrote vociferously about this, and about the hypocrisy of the Church that aided and abetted the state in these activities.
It was a powerful moment in my own research.
Guernica is a Basque town and in the days of war was thought to be a center for the Republican resistance movement that was made up of several elements, artists and writers, those deemed "anarchists", socialists and communists. This was the group that came up against General Franco and his Nationalists, strongly supported by the Catholic Church who wished to have Spain remain in the old ways, with the Church at the helm.
I wandered into a little room that was running new reels from that time and sat down one that depicted the bombing of Madrid by the Nationalists. An elderly man came in and sat beside me and the two of us watched these images unfold before us. Then the man started to cry, silent tears, shoulder heaving, great sadness. After a time, I stood up, touched his shoulder gently and then left the room as I did not want to interfere in this moment of remembrance.
When I turned to corner there was Guernica, the massive mural that Picasso created to capture the morning that the Nazis casually bombed Guernica into eternity. You see, the Franco regime welcomed Hitler and Mussolini into the country well in advance of World War 11 so that they could practice and refine their weaponry as a preparation for the deadly devastation that was to be unleashed in the rest of the world. Because no other country came to Spain's aid, their weapons practice proceeded unhindered.
It is one thing to see this painting in image above, it is quite another to see if stretched across a wall, in full color. The pathos surrounds you.
After this, I wandered through galleries that showed other works from that period, and many of them showed the "religious" toting machine guns. In one, a bishop was positioned behind sandbags, gun in hand and a helmet atop his miter.
Make no mistake: at that time Catholicism and fascism were one and it was this union that faced with the radical idealism of those from the left, idealists, those who wanted a different world than the one the landowners and the "gentry" provided them with at the time. To clarify, communism at that time was embraced by the intelligentsia and gained great traction in the universities of the world as the students sought to fight for a more humane world of greater equality.
I sat outside the museum for a time, trying to absorb the significance of this imagery, watching a man plying is guitar softly and singing. He was hurting no one. He was a gypsy and his musioc soothed me. Suddenly, one of the "Guardia Civil", Spain's police anvil, approached this man and berated him. waiving him away.
It was a poignant moment for me because I knew how much Garcia Lorca loved the gypsies, his well known "Gypsy Ballads" spoke of this love. I also knew how much he abhorred the way they were treated by the Guardia Civil and the state and wrote vociferously about this, and about the hypocrisy of the Church that aided and abetted the state in these activities.
It was a powerful moment in my own research.
