Ana’s Reviews > The Spanish Civil War > Status Update

'Upon the heaped skulls of all these ideals, one dispassionate, duller, greyer man survived triumphant, as Octavius survived the civil wars in Rome. Caesar and Pompey, Brutus and Antony, Cato and Cicero – all, with their genius, lacked the minor talent of being able to survive. Francisco Franco was the Octavius of Spain.'

'A group of "old shirts" visited Rome and offered Don Juan, son of King Alfonso, the "constitutional throne of a Falangist State". The prince refused.'

Thomas's writing style is crazy sometimes. 'One series of incendiary bombs dropped in a cemetery and caused a fiery resurrection of the dead.' ? excuse me ?

'Russia...presumably knew that if she sent to Spain enough arms to win the war for the Republic, the odds would be that a world war would follow, with Britain and France at least neutral and perhaps actually aligned against her.'

'Hernández, on behalf of the Communists, proposed to Negrín that he should become Prime Minister. Negrín answered that he would do so if his party accepted the idea, adding that he was unknown and not popular. Hernández replied that popularity could be created. If there was one thing the Communist party could do well, he said, it was propaganda.'

'But the truth of [Guernica] has long since been known. In October 1937, a Nationalist staff officer told a Sunday Times correspondent: "We bombed it, and bombed it and bombed it, and bueno why not?"'

'The International Brigades now had their first rest from action. The volunteers had discovered in battle that "a war of ideas" is much the same as any other conflict. In Spain as elsewhere there was confusion of orders, jamming of rifles at the critical moment, uncertainty about the whereabouts of the enemy and of headquarters, desire for cigarettes (or sweet-tasting things), fatigue, occasional hysteria.'

'In Valencia the population ate well throughout the war and visitors were often served with ten different hors d'oeuvres and ten courses, but in Madrid meat was almost unknown. Foreign visitors ate horse meat, though Hemingway once procured three tins of caviare and half a camembert at the Hotel Florida.'

'Hull said that America had no law against aid to Spain – only a policy of "moral aloofness".'

'Both [Germany and Italy], especially the former, gained the impression that the "Young General" was both able and likely to be influenced by them. They decided this without perhaps taking adequate account of the power wielded over Franco by his wife, a fervent Catholic who increasingly saw her husband as the leader chosen by God to save Spain from the enemies of the Church.'