“Long live death!”, the cry that shook a Spain torn by the nascent civil war

On both sides they were willing to put to arms those who do not profess the same ideas. In the trenches they knew that days of blood and horror would follow like those crazy avalanches: from North Africa the men had come to stay. warlike noises of the nationalist, monarchical and ultra-Catholic uprising of Francisco Franco Bahamondethen just a somewhat new general and of relative prestige in the ranks of the Spanish army.

As a backdrop, a bellicose exchange of warnings would take place in the iconic University of Salamancaa cloister of universal Spain that illuminated its most celebrated cultural sources. However, in those first days of the fratricidal war, from their classrooms would give support to the “nationals” of the Francoist uprisingin the belief that they would come to repair the errors and excesses of the Republic and restore rights and freedoms lost in the Spain of past glories.

Even so, Salamanca remained a temple of knowledge, whose mission would continue to be to enlighten free and democratic thoughts.

Everything would happen on a day like today, 90 years ago, when the country celebrated Columbus Day, by virtue of Columbus’s first excursion on American soil. In a breath, history would suddenly change before the sudden swerve of two crucial men.

According to some contemporary sources, confirmed by historians who succeeded them, Miguel de Unamunoan intellectual of notorious prestige in the world of ideas and educational management, would have had a meeting days before with Francowho after being proclaimed Generalissimo and head of State had established his Headquarters and office in Salamanca, where Unamuno was king without a crown, due to his brilliant mind.

In that face to face, the university rector would express to the leader his concern about the execution, imprisonment and hostilities continuous towards people in their personal and academic environment. He had crossed a border of no return.

On that day celebrating Hispanicity, at the lectern in the auditorium, Unamuno was weaving together the ideas of a speech in development, alluding to the inauguration of the academic year. However, I would not let the Francoist presences be overlooked. He would let the militants of that side know his concerns because he foresaw that a tragic hatred was incubating in Spain for the future, with irreparable damage to society.

Suddenly, General José Millán Astray, a native of Galicia like Franco, at a rapid pace and with a defiant militaristic bearing, would come out at the crossroads and launch what would resonate with humanity for the ages: “Long live death! Death to intelligence!” he would shout to the astonishment of a good part of the academy gathered there.

The halls of that sanctuary of knowledge creaked at insolent words; books fell silent and secular libraries collapsed. Millan would accuse the intellectuals of “betrayal” present there, knowing that Unamuno had expressed his disagreements to the military leader of the sedition. Perhaps for that reason, he would pick up the gauntlet thrown by Millán and divert the course of his oratory.: “You will win because you have more than enough brute force, but you will not convince because convincing means persuading”.

wanted silence Millán’s necrophilia, but it only unleashed a fire in the cloisterswhere he would be attacked.

Without sufficient historical certainty for a widespread consensus, it would be said that legionaries and Falangists were disciples of Millán They would attack Unamuno with blowswho would have been rescued from a virtual lynching by Carmen Polo, Franco’s own wife.

A film version by director Alejandro Amenábar (the film “While the War lasts”) shows the would-be dictator’s wife as a savior heroine, in what appears to have been a free interpretation of the events; In short, a fictional cinematographic recreation, refuted by several historians.

That “Long live death!” de Millán had its origin in a motto of the Spanish Legion, created by himself, whose motivations were in principle tributed to the honor of those who fell in combat for defending their convictions and their responsibilities as a soldier. However, at the dawn of the Civil War, in that Broken Spain, sick with incurable hatred and tribal resentmentmeant something else: the physical death of the enemy, the annihilation of the dissident.

Miguel de Unamuno was a Basque with well-earned aura of authoritative voice in the cloisters: philosopher, thinker, essayist, a voice of universal intellect. Above any political creed, he was rector of that house of higher education and was beginning the annual academic year, despite the pain of a Spain divided in two.

Franco’s approval was due to his hasty support for the nationalist insurgency of July 18, 1936, which would light the spark of war. That act, which he would regret a few days later, had its origins in the disappointment that would be caused by the errors and excesses that he attributed to the republican government, such as the burning of churches and a certain intransigence in the treatment of opponents.

That was just a bolt of lightning: upon seeing that Franco did not intend to correct the republican setbacks, but rather to eliminate the political system and change the democratic life of the Spanish people, like a good intellectual Unamuno would desert those ranks and would be left in an uncomfortable position.between two fires.

Manuel Azaña, the president of the Republic, would publicly disqualify him, and as a result of the verbal outburst of October 12 in Salamanca, Unamuno would also be undesirable in the catacombs of Franco’s power.

I would spend last days under military surveillance, until he died at the age of 72 on December 31 of that same 1936.just over two months after the crossing with Millán. He would not die in silence. Before leaving he would strike down the nascent Francoism for considering it a “band of illiterate and idiots”. History would remember him as an emblem of the so-called generation of ’98, a group of intellectuals who had rebelled against Spanish fatalism in the face of the decline of the old suns of the Empire.

That clique tried to mentally cope with the moral bankruptcy that the loss of the war against the United States had caused in the country, which for Spain would mean more than a military defeat. It would be the abdication of its dominions in the overseas territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

That had occurred in 1898, after brief military skirmishes lasting just a handful of months, an episode that would give rise to that Spanish generation of stubborn thinkers who repudiated the humiliation of defeat before the young troops of the then emerging power, which had already resolved internal disputes on its own soil with a savage fratricidal war between unionists and confederates, between 1861 and 1865.

The devastating American Civil War would be portrayed naively by some historical sources, such as a contest for or against slaverywhen on the battlefields, littered with almost a million dead, the truth had been discussed not because of ethical or moral issues, although probably also because of that, but rather the cannons were roaring because of the imposition of a country model.

What was at stake was the norte industrialistasupported by the expanding system of capitalist accumulation and a certain flexibility of beliefs and values, to the detriment of the single-producer, cotton-growing and exporting south, custodian of traditions and a mystical religiosity, close to fanaticism. That was the great dispute and not the skin color of the wandering souls on either side of the battlefield. Almost a century later, Spain embodied a conflict with a familiar air to that experienced in the lands of young America.

In this case symbolized in its early days in the combative rhetoric between Millán and Unamuno, a perfect metaphor for a Hispanism on fire, with a tragedy that loomed on the horizon. And what poets and authors would symbolize as a duel in the sun between the two Spains: the red and the black, the republican, progressive in its own way, arbitrary and overwhelming before the believing altars, “red” for the recalcitrant nationals.

And the other Spain, that of the traditions at all costs, pro-monarchist, kneeling and praying before the dogmas of Catholicismidentified with the black rooster of the bullfights and the iron cross of perpetual combats, seen from the other shore as synonymous with obscurantism, atavism and death itself, glorified by Millán Astray.

That would not come free for the Spanish. It would cost them almost four years of civil war, more than 500 thousand deaths, mutilated and imprisoned. An implacable dictatorship of 40 years. Indiscriminate repression, summary executions, cultural backwardness, international isolation, political revenge, broken families, exiles and a diaspora that impoverished the community life of the Spanish people during a very long night. If you look at Spanish politics today, perhaps it is not unreasonable to say that there are wounds that have not yet healed in the best way.