Pagan Spain

by Richard Wright, Faith Berry (Introduction)

A masterful chronicler of the African American experience, Richard Wright (1908-60) was one of the most controversial & insightful writers America has produced. In '57 the publication of Pagan Spain, marked a profound change in his literary & intellectual life, reflecting a style more suitable for polemic than travel writing. Indeed, as Pagan Spain portrays midcentury Spain as a country of tragic beauty, political oppression, & contradictions, he amalgamates at once polemic, travel narrative, history & journalistic essay. He combines, as well, 1st-person narrative, eyewitness reporting, commentary, anecdotes, vignettes & dramatic monologue. At the time this book was originally published, the Spanish, despite a Catholic heritage, were shown as embracing a primitive, primeval faith. Expanding his comments on this paradox, he fashions a candid portrait of a country scarred by civil war & with an excoriating condemnation of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. In this opinionated travelog he sees himself as a humanist & reporter, a nonpartisan freedom fighter who's ceaselessly probing, tracing, analyzing & denouncing the signs of evil he associates with white patriarchy & Western imperialism. Pagan Spain, less a journalistic account of a people & an exotic locale than it's a sociological critique of a corrupt system of government, is his only nonfiction book on the subject of a European country. It reveals the striking contradictions within himself as well as within Spain. As a black man in the 50s he castigates the West for its colonialism & imperialism, while as an intellectual he embraces the secular humanism of Western Civilization. His conflicted feelings about the West are perfectly suited to his analysis of Spain, a country allied with the West but also removed from it. The book is a daring portrait of a country in turmoil. The introduction by Faith Berry puts Pagan Spain in context with the trajectory of his philosophical thought. She notes how his dissatisfaction with the Franco government was, in part, the result of his disillusionment with the Communist Party, of which he had been a member.
Richard Wright wrote Native Son, Uncle Tom's Children, Black Boy, The Color Curtain etc. Faith Berry has written Langston Hughes: Before & Beyond Harlem & is the editor of A Scholar's Conscience: Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-77 & of From Bondage to Liberation: Writings by & about Afro-Americans from 1700 to the Present.

Genres: Spain, Travel, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Spanish History, Cultural

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerned racial themes. His work helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of Black Boy and Native Son as an expatriate living in Paris travels through Franco's Spain during the 1950's. The writing is excellent...many quotable quotes to keep the reader thinking. Wright struggles with and concedes his identity as western and Protestant in light of his marginalization as a Black American in his native country. He shares perspectives through the lenses of gender, race, nationality, religion and politics that are both historically located in the time, but also currently relevant. Definitely recommended especially for readers beginning to explore the history and culture of Spain.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1957, this book is of historical interest really, since it describes a way of Spanish life that is, thankfully, mostly history now (although Spaniards do still have a penchant for religious pageant and prostitution -- Wright is interesting on both of these). It's not a history book though -- it's a very personal view of a country that Wright was not that familiar with. He had done some research, of course, but there's the odd factual error (Charles V's "cathedral" in the Alhambra for example). And his dislike of Catholicism means he does not spend too much time exploring the religious background to the pagan ceremonies he witnesses, but derives his own meanings and symbols from them.

The writing is fresh and unhampered by presuppositions. Perhaps because of his own experience of oppression as a black American, Wright is particularly good at empathising with the women he meets. "Spanish men have built a state," he writes, "but they have never built a society, and the only society that there is in Spain is in the hearts and minds and habits and love and devotion of its women."

Perhaps one of the most striking passages is his long description of a bullfight in Barcelona. Unlike Hemingway, he focuses on the emotional and ritual aspects. It didn't change my mind about the barbarism of the spectacle, but it was interesting to realise that bullfighting is not about fitness, agility, or strength. It's about being capable of standing completely still while a massive, angry bull charges towards you. Wright is able to become engaged in the spectacle while still observing carefully and rationally.

[federico garcía LOCA · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why this book is not talked about more....for better or worse

Viva España Viva Richard Wright

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably three and a half, but bumped up for the really great parts.

I don't think I buy the idea that Spain is pagan. Given that he doesn't even really define what he means by that, it would be hard to accept it. I appreciate the idea that the early Catholic Church adopted pagan rituals and ideas in order to attract people (and that those rituals and ideas lasted outside the Church, too), but I don't know that he shows anything but that most Spaniards are deeply Catholic and this extends into their political life.

I loved reading the descriptions of the landscape and all the travel parts--getting rooms, drinking, going on tours. It made me long for a chance to do that again.

He has some sharp insights into attitudes and some lovely writing. His combination of the catechism for young girls with his chapters is chilling: the catechism says nothing except that Spain was, is, and will be great. But there's no sense of how that will come about, other than that people should follow the Falange and Franco. His description of the naked force visible in the streets also suggests both the strength and the weakness of the regime: it has the support of the army, ut it needs to show that support boldly to keep people in line. So many of Wright's conversations suggest people know what the regime's official philosophy is, but it's not clear how many believe, how many are afraid, how many are biding their time for something to change. Everyone seems willing to talk to him frankly as an outsider, but they all seem isolated from each other in their discontent.

The bullfighting stuff was great. I haven't read a lot of bullfighting stuff (Hemingway, Ferdinand), and I don't remember many of the details, so if Wright is not alone in his interpretations, forgive me for enjoying his version of it. He points out that people identify with both the fighter and the bull, at different times, sometimes simultaneously. And therein lies the arena's power. SOMEONE has to die, but either way the fight is a ritual sacrifice to some dark part of humanity, that NEEDS something to die in a quick, brutal, bloody way.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is foremost a collection of Wright's observations and interactions with Spaniards on two of his trips to Spain in the 1950s. I was curious about the book because I enjoy Wright's writing and also spent five months in Spain when I was in college. Wright doesn't aim to teach the reader about Spain's history, so I can't fault him for the fact that I feel like I didn't learn much in this respect. However, I gained some understanding of how the religious and political context of the mid-20th century in Spain shaped the people, culture, and economy. His writing is engaging, and I appreciated his honesty both in the book and in his conversations with the people he met. This has nothing to do with the book's quality, but I certainly identified with Wright in many ways. When I went to Spain when I was 21 it was the first time I really encountered a people and culture that was different from what I was accustomed to. As such, I found Wright's reflections about adjustments and learning fun to read. My favorite of these was his discussion of semana santa regalia, as I was also shocked when I first saw it. I had to idea at the time that the KKK had coopted the dress.

[Jaybird Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing outshines the subject matter. In a very pleasant read, the author explores the secretive world and history of Franco's Spain. The characters are so good they couldn't be made up and the atmosphere is creepy in a thoroughly pagan way. Unfortunately, Wright didn't quite spoon-feed what he means by Spain being "pagan", but a reasonably intelligent reader will figure it out.

I consciously avoid travel-writing books but this one was the best I ever expect to read about modern Spain, and told from an unexpected voice.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far I'm really blown away by his writing. I don't know if it's just that I really like his style or that I'm sentimental about Spain because I had such a love-hate thing about it when I lived there.

Update: I'm not sure I would use "blown away" to describe the rest of the book. I liked it, but I think I liked the beginning best. I found the chapters where he quotes wholesale from the Francoist pamphlet (am I remembering that right?) tedious but informationally interesting.

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

A total sleeper for me! I had been reading a lot of Hemingway at the time, and stumbled upon this jewel. His style is so powerful, he really takes you there and lets you feel the struggles of Spain...A great read

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I discovered that a progressive 50s African-American writer had written a travelogue about Spain, I could not wait to read it. So much of the English language writing about Spain of this era is in the Hemingway hyper-masculine mold, with issues such as race and gender discussed, if at all, in typical Anglo-centric patriarchal terms. Pagan Spain does not disappoint - this is a book that foregrounds diverse social perspectives that capture a far wider sphere of life than I have encountered in other books of this period.

The picture of 50s Spain Wright paints is a grim one. Fifteen years after the end of the civil war, the country remained mired in not only poverty but full on starvation. With armed soldiers on every street corner, the threat of violence kept a lid on unrest, while the Franco regime, beholden to rich landowners, failed to fix the archaic agricultural system that could not produce enough food to feed the Spanish population. The other great beneficiary of Franco, the Catholic Church, busied itself maximally exploited its socially privileged position and adapting doctrine to the new necessities of survival for ordinary people. Thus, mothers prostituting themselves to feed their children became not only a widespread phenomenon but, in the eyes of the Church-backed state, an "acceptable" sin appropriate for the circumstances. Virginity itself became a prized asset and even occupation - Wright was shocked when a Barcelona woman responded to the question of "what do you do?" with "I'm a virgin".

Wright, however, did not come to Spain to write a lefty polemic against the degradations of theocratic fascism. Like more modern historians, he saw Spain as facing a deeper challenge of modernisation. Outside of a handful of industrial regions. the country could be best compared to underdeveloped non-European societies. An American military architect (one of the few people in the book with a positive outlook on Spain's future) tells Wright that Spain is a society trapped in a pre-modern era that needed dragging, through long-term external intervention, into the age of consumer capitalism. The fact that we know this successfully happened in the following decades makes the poverty and brutality of the society described by Wright feel even more astonishing.

It would be wrong, however, to caricature the Spain of this era as simply backward. Wright was struck by how Spaniards had no "racial consciousness" - unlike in the United States, his skin colour did not define the way people treated him or condition negative assumptions about who he was (if pushed, most Spaniards assumed he was French or American). Wright's astonishing account of the popular spectacle of bullfighting also offers a philosophical interpretation of it not as a reversion to bloodthirsty barbarism but as a kind of exercise in radical democratic participation, with the matador being directly controlled through the collective affirmation of the crowd. In a society with precious little democracy or solidarity, the bullfight was a cathartic moment where the desparate struggle for survival became, briefly, something everyone in the audience could share in common.


Where Pagan Spain perhaps fails to deliver is with the central thesis suggested by the title. Beyond there being some sense of continuity for Spaniards between Catholicism and their pre-Christian traditions, we never really get a clear idea of why Wright thinks the Spanish are pagans. It is apparent that most Spaniards he met were extremely pious and believed themselves to be Catholic (even if some of them didn't even know what the bible was). Perhaps what is most fascinating about Wright's attempts to deconstruct Spanish Catholicism was the extent to which his worldview was shaped by his upbringing as an ascetic American Protestant. In particuar, the open co-mingling of sex and religion in Spanish society both repelled and fascinated Wright. His conservative idea of Christianity had no place for such taboo subjects.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to me as a gift—and I immediately wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before. After ten years here, I thought I’d at least heard of all the famous books by ex-pat writers on the country; but this one had flown under the radar.

From the first pages, I could see why. Wright based this book on three trips he made to the country, totaling a few weeks’ time. He did not learn the language or do a great deal of scholarship. Instead, this is a highly impressionistic account of what he saw in the Spain of the 1950s. Indeed, in many ways this book is as much about Wright as it is about the country he visited.

This is not such a bad thing, as Wright as a fascinating man. At this point in his life, he had fled America for Paris, and had spent years becoming an expat intellectual (Gertrude Stein makes her inevitable appearance here, as the person who advised him to go to Spain.) During this time, Wright had come to see himself more broadly, not just as a product of American racism, but of European Protestantism and Western values.

Spain was an affront to this background. Poor, backward, and deeply Catholic, the country shocked and appalled the American writer. This was, after all, the hungry years of the Francoist period, arguably one of the worst times in the country’s history—where poverty was rampant and the government’s main concern was in enforcing the state’s version of the Catholic religion.

Wright’s response to what he saw—the bullfights, the flamenco, the rampant prostitution, the totalitarian regime—was to create his own highly idiosyncratic explanation of the country. He came to view the Spanish as a kind of ancient pagan people, who’d had an official Catholicism forced upon them since Isabel and Fernando—but who struggled against it. For Wright, Spain was not really a part of the “West,” it was something far more primitive, more sensual, more dangerous. His Spain was the worship of virginity and violence.

Judged as a historical thesis, I think this has little to no merit. I am not denying that there are “pagan” elements of Spanish religion and culture; but the country is hardly unique in this respect. The book is also marred by some basic factual errors (confusing a palace for a cathedral, for instance), not to mention some frankly odd opinions. The Alhambra, for example, is dismissed as a superficial pile of stone; and while Wright feels deeply for a persecuted Protestant woman, he is remarkably unfeeling as to the plight of the Roma people (ironic, considering that this is where Spanish racism is most clearly visible).

Nevertheless, the book is a pleasure to read. Wright was clearly exercised by the country, affronted and challenged, and he describes what he sees with amazing vividness. Even when I couldn’t quite believe what he was reporting (many of the conversations are frankly implausible), I was completely hooked. And, it must be said, in the end he does manage to convey what it was like to be a tourist in Franco’s Spain. It didn’t seem too pretty.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't really like most travel logs I've read before. I'd imagine that's mainly because Richard Wright, as much as I love him, isn't a travel writer. He doesn't paint the landscape in a very meaningful way, we get no real feel of the food or smells, more of just a general vibe.

What Wright does convey better than any travel writer I've read since Anthony Bourdain are the people he meets. And they are *miserable.*

1950s Spain sounds like it sucked, real hard. Spanish men were useless and Spanish women were subjugated by the church. It was a nation bereft of hope and unable to imagine a meaningful future. (According to Wright, Spanish schoolchildren at the time were being taught Franco would never die.) People were going hungry and jobs were scarce. The Communists were still around and on the run, and Franco and the Catholic Church kept a tight lid on every aspect of Spanish life. (Also according to Wright, as a part of the American government's deal with Franco that allowed US military bases on Spanish soil, American service members could not leave bases in uniform, lest the Spanish people see strapping, shiny young American soldiers and start getting "ideas.")

Wright's contempt for the Spanish people is both incredibly obvious and more than a little hypocritical. He does point out comparisons between the plight of Protestant Spaniards to his own experiences being a black man in America and speaks on his discomfort at seeing the origins of KKK garb in the Spanish church. And yet, his sense of Western Superiority is evident; Wright's own Protestantism doesn't allow him to see anything remotely Catholic with anything less than disgust.

I am big fan of Wright's work, but this isn't my favorite of his. He just isn't a travel writer, he isn't very good at being subjective and meeting people where they are. Still, a really good piece of insight into Franco's mid-20th century Spain.

[Valarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book by Richard Wright book I've been able to finish. I've owned it for more than 25 years and finally read it after an October 2025 trip to the Andalusia region of southern Spain.

It was written in Wright's travels to Spain in the 1950s, during Franco's reign, and it was interesting to compare and contrast that period to now to see what Spain has retained but also the Spanish people's response to authoritarian rule compared with our response to see what could be our future if we're unable to right America's ship.

In a way, the book is very basic, but what Wright notices about Spain is interesting, regarding sex, purity, misogyny and Catholicism; the entanglement of church and state, and how women in a misogynist culture maintain strength, resilience and creativity despite their oppression.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a vivid depiction of Spain and Spanish people, how they look, behave, speak in conversation with Wright, who is curious and direct. And how marvelous to read this account by a black man, who finds no racism to deal with -- that wall of prejudiced, unreasoning dislike -- as he travels alone. Wright's observations about church and state in Falangist Spain are insightful, thoughtful, fascinated. When he calls someone 'brother' he means just that. I am so glad to have read this and look forward to reading more by Wright. Too bad he was not required reading in my young life, as he should be required reading in schools now.

[Gisselle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a page turner. Wright could be given to sweeping pronouncements from time to time but that was a minor annoyance. He captured mid-50s Spain very well but what jolted me the most was the way he treated subjects that are still relevant today-he includes a discussion with an American female friend about how women are treated in public that could very well have been carried out today, and the segment with the Catalonian barber has a certain poignancy with what is going on in the news. I'm keeping this vague so you can be surprised when you read it as well ;)

[Ryan Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great, thoughtful read for any student of Spanish history or lover of Richard Wright. My edition (the HarperPerennial) included an incredible introductory essay by the late Faith Berry, which lent an enriching context to my reading of Francoist Spain through Richard Wright’s mind and heart.

[Michael Wichita]

Reading List: Spanish Civil War by Foreigners

1. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
2. Pagan Spain by Richard Wright (post war)
3. For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
4. Days of Hope by Andre Malraux (skip this one)

[Niniane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel memoir of a Black author in Spain in the 1950s. From his description, the people were deeply religious and their sexuality was repressed.

He attended a bullfight, talked to local young Spaniards who felt trapped, lived in various hotels with difficult landlords.

[Koneazny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! History, politics, race, culture all woven together in an interesting trip to Spain based on true events.

[Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

[Danielle McClellan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely dated, weirdly opinionated, and in moments bizarrely argued--Here is an example of one of his many questionable aphorisms sprinkled throughout the text: “Spanish men have built a state, but they have never built a society, and the only society that there is in Spain is in the hearts and minds and habits and love and devotion of its women."--this mid-century report of Wright's travels through Spain during the Franco era is also beautifully observed and often compelling. I find Wright's writing to be most effective when he is describing interactions with the Spanish people and least interesting when he moves into his quasi-psychoanalytic stance. I would have liked to have read more about Wright's experience of traveling through Spain as an African American man. He touches on race a bit, and when he does, his perspective is fascinating and thoughtful. I wish that he had discussed that aspect of his trip more.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely curious and interesting account of the Spanish travels of an African American writer during the early 1950s. Wright is well aware of the harsh political conditions of the country and tries to go beyond the surface of things. Some of his descriptions may sound a bit off, but he took a genuine interest in the country and the people and his work is useful to understand everyday life under Franco's dictatorship.

[Ben Kline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was fairly disappointed in this book. Wright is a wonderfully descriptive writer (especially when it comes to landscapes, architecture, and very complex spectacles like bullfights and religious processions), but his recreated dialogue is very stilted and not believable. As a travel writer he is very limited by his (lack of) language abilities as to who he can speak to, and there is a large underclass of Spaniards that he observes but cannot understand in an articulate way. His sociological/anthropological thesis about Spanish religion and paganism is way too sweeping for the scope of his travels and this book. The generalization and essentialism is very much of its era, but still somewhat surprising from someone like Wright.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much about Spanish history and the Franco regime from this book. Wright is one of those wonderful writers who is more interested in the people he talks to and what he observes around him than he is in himself. This book is a great lesson in what we DO NOT want to happen in this country, the oppressive union of church and state that must never happen is democracy and social mobility are to survive.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pagan Spain by Richard Wright is an interesting book with Wright in the role of journalist rather than novelist. In 1953 and 1954 he took trips to Spain from his home base in Paris. His intention was not to write a travelogue but to attempt to capture the spirit of Franco’s totalitarian Spain. He interviewed a broad spectrum of people, little people, big people, scholars, journalists, Falangists, working people, old people, young people. The title refers to the mindset Wright found in Spain in the mid-Twentieth Century, a mindset that seemed to be left over from the Fifteenth Century, a mindset based on tradition, fantasy, fear and oppressive control, a sort of primitive faith with the state seen as the sacred center. Wright’s journalism is probably not entirely fair and objective as his left-wing bias is openly admitted to from the beginning. His narration of his travels and his discussions with Spaniards is interspersed with chilling excerpts from Formacion Politica: Lecciones para las Flechas, a catechism of indoctrination and mind control studied at the time in Spanish schools. Wright’s social critique is powerful and brutally honest, a reminder of the dangers of government oppression.

[J.T. Oldfield]

From my review:

Wright doesn't really delve into what he means by his title except for a few pages towards the end of the book. He felt that Spain was different than the rest of the West, was not, in fact, a Western country, due to its non-secular government. Because it was so wrapped up in the Church, and because its particular brand of Catholicism involved heavy inclusion of Saints (and their miracles) and relics, it was, in fact, not Christian but pagan. This word he uses, pagan, was perhaps not really accurate. It seems to me that what he meant, is the Church of the Middle Ages. He never describes pagan practices, per se, but does describe practices and mentalities that went out of fashion centuries ago--even before the advent of Protestantism.

Read the rest of my review here: http://bibliofreakblog.com/creative-n...

[Ashley Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fantastic one for me to read after having spent four months in Spain recently. This book (written by the magnificent Richard Wright) showed in a vivid and entrancing manner a Spain very different from the one that I had experienced. It shows a Spain under Franco and Wright does a phenominal job of highlighting people and how they lived during the time of his visit. If you are interested in Spain at all, I definitely recommend this book.

[Steven Passmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kind of interesting how he ties ancient paganism to Latin Catholicism. Also the pervading feudalism in Spain to the same feudalism in Mississippi and the South. "Pagan Spain" was ironically my first Richard Wright book, but I'll pick up "Native Son" after this.

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting, controversial perspective on Franco Spain. Beautifully written and wonderfully anecdotal. Interesting to read a lesser known work of Wright given his significant impact on Civil Rights in our country.

[Christopher Staley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was far more insightful than Hemmingway on the same subject (generally speaking) - and I'm a fan of Hemmingway. Gave me a whole new understanding of a Arrabal's work.

[Petter Nordal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe you want a more in-depth analysis with more history and broader depth. Then it would also be less like a letter from a friend and take longer to read.