Spain: Ghosts and Reflections
James Michener and Giles Tremlett, though writing 40 years apart, share a foreigner’s fascination with a historically and culturally complex country, Spain. Michener’s 1968 work, Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections, resembles his many novels in its meticulous detailing of important figures, critical events, and historically significant places. The book differs from his time sequenced novels in its focusing through the author’s travels and adventures throughout Spain, as he experienced and researched simultaneously, often residing for a month at a time in various cities and villages.
Tremlett, a British journalist living in Spain for 20 years, focuses on the post-Franco world he has experienced. He, as does Michener, shifts his focus from one part of the country to another—from the Flamenco world of Sevilla’s barrio to the chauvinistic areas distinguished by distinct languages, not just dialects, which mark each area’s defiance towards the country’s centralized constitutional monarchy. In his work, Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past, Tremlett visits small villages as well as cities, unearthing the seemingly hidden or suppressed after-effects of both the Civil War and the Franco regime.
Both authors find Spain to be enigmatic—and the gist of each book is the unraveling of various puzzles—Michener looking for the “enduring quality” which has emerged for more than 1,000 years, and Tremlett focusing primarily on the uneasy quiet of the last 60 years. Michener is concerned about why Spain remained “emotionally confined to her peninsula”; why this country, which had previously been open to all religious and ethnic groups suddenly “reversed herself,” becoming “one of the most homogeneous and frightened people in the world”; why this freedom loving country so often turned to “dictatorial forms of government”; why Spain, which remained devoted to the Catholic Church, seemed always reluctant to follow the church hierarchy. Tremlett finds it odd that the Spanish people can be so vociferous and opinionated, yet extremely quiet about the Civil War that had killed hundreds of thousands. Tremlett believes that the “ghosts” of the horrible strife, are powerfully affecting the people—quiet though the populace may appear. As mass graves are still being unearthed, village residents co-exist with people who had murdered their relatives decades earlier. “The Valley of the Fallen,” is an enormous monument/cathedral built to promote peace by honoring the dead of both sides of the Civil War. But this monument evokes more “Ghosts” of Spain’s past because the focal point of the site is Franco’s grave—and Franco had used political prisoners as his labor force for erecting, in essence heaping humiliation upon humiliation.
For the casual traveler, a Rick Steves guide (in print or video) is a fine introduction to Spain. But Michener’s and Tremlett’s studies are wonderful companion pieces for the reader who wants to explore the soul of the country, a soul which has in the course of many generations passed through many “dark nights” of despair. The great test for Spain is its ability to overcome the troubling passages of its history, and to grasp and reaffirm its great potential. The books cannot provide a completed story because too much has yet to be resolved.
Ted Odenwald and his wife have lived in Oakland for 39 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust.
