The Alhambra, photo by Jchapin
We are seeing an uprising in Spain, a country that under General Franco and fascism, in collusion with the Catholic Church hierarchy, forced its citizens to enter into a compact of silence and complicity in the aftermath of the Civil War that ended in 1940.
Spain has the dubious distinction of being second only to Cambodia in its number of mass graves. Many, like Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet that I wrote about in my novella, The Poet & The Angel, were left in unmarked graves.
There has never been closure to this period of history and the country is fooling itself if it thinks that the writhing spirits of its ancestors and their plaintive cries from the grave can be ignored. You cannot heal by forgetting the enormity of this tragic period of history. You can only slide further into a deep and abiding national psychosis.
It is a truism that what is ignored in the psyche will come back over and over again, whether for an individual or for a country. It is the soul crying out for absolution, release and healing. We see in Spain now the rise of Vox, a right wing conservative organization that mirrors the philosophy of Fascist Spain under Franco. Franco himself intentionally emulated the crusade of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who, with their Inquisitors in tow, decimated the Moors and the Jews in Andalusia, ending a Golden Age where peace, harmony and prosperity prevailed.
Like an individual who sees their karma come back to face them, so now is Spain.
Spain has the dubious distinction of being second only to Cambodia in its number of mass graves. Many, like Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet that I wrote about in my novella, The Poet & The Angel, were left in unmarked graves.
There has never been closure to this period of history and the country is fooling itself if it thinks that the writhing spirits of its ancestors and their plaintive cries from the grave can be ignored. You cannot heal by forgetting the enormity of this tragic period of history. You can only slide further into a deep and abiding national psychosis.
It is a truism that what is ignored in the psyche will come back over and over again, whether for an individual or for a country. It is the soul crying out for absolution, release and healing. We see in Spain now the rise of Vox, a right wing conservative organization that mirrors the philosophy of Fascist Spain under Franco. Franco himself intentionally emulated the crusade of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who, with their Inquisitors in tow, decimated the Moors and the Jews in Andalusia, ending a Golden Age where peace, harmony and prosperity prevailed.
Like an individual who sees their karma come back to face them, so now is Spain.