Jack leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap like a college professor, a gesture he’d accidentally picked up from his dad.
“Okay, the shortest version is this: Most politicians suck.”
Brossa snort-laughed again. “Hard to argue with that.”
“The less-short version reminds me of a line in Antony Beevor’s book The Battle for Spain.”
“Yes, I know it. It was a huge bestseller here.”
“He said the Spanish Civil War was the only war in which the losers got to write the history, and he’s right. In the West, we saw that war as purely good versus evil—freedom-loving Republicans fighting a hopeless war against Franco’s unbeatable Fascists. A real David versus Goliath story. If Americans know anything about that war it’s based on the book or the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls. Do you know it?”
“Hemingway. Sens dubte”—Without a doubt. “I love it. It is both terribly romantic and tragic, which is very Spanish.”
“It wasn’t an accident Gary Cooper got cast for that film. He’s an actor who played a lot of American cowboys. The whole movie plays like a western. We Americans love underdogs. The Republicans play the role of the helpless peasants fighting shoulder to shoulder with the International Brigades for democracy. They’re up against Franco’s Fascist war machine backed by Hitler’s Condor Legion and Mussolini’s Blackshirts.”
“Which was true.”
“Which was true, but not the whole truth. The Republicans fought the Fascists, yes, but they were also murdering each other. The Spanish Stalinists were the worst. Their goal was to advance the interests of the Soviet Union, not Spain, and they imprisoned and killed the Spanish communists and anarchists who actually wanted a real socialist revolution here.”
“Crimes were committed by both sides, though far worse by the Fascists.”
“Agreed. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. It’s the contradictions of that war that tell me the most about it.”
“Which contradictions?”
“Franco claimed to be fighting for Catholicism but his crack troops were Riffian Muslims. He also claimed to be fighting for Spanish nationalism but his military campaign relied heavily on German and Italian troops and arms to win.
“At the same time, the Republican loyalists claimed to be fighting for freedom and democracy against Fascism while they were murdering priests and nuns, burning churches, and slaughtering their political opponents. Worse, all of their material support came from Stalin, the most murderous tyrant in modern European history.”
“I’m impressed. You know a lot about our history. It was a very difficult and confusing time for us. In my own family, one side fought for the Republic, and the other side fought for Franco. I even had a grandfather who fought with the División Azul in Leningrad for Hitler—but he was no Nazi and no Fascist. He was just a poor man who couldn’t find any other way to feed his empty stomach. He used to joke how expensive the terrible German rations were.”
“The Germans made him pay for his rations?”
“No, the Russians did. He lost his left eye to shrapnel, and three fingers of his right hand to frostbite.” She laughed. “That never stopped him from sleeping with many beautiful women.”
“The bottom line for me is that it seems like a lot of what’s going on in Barcelona right now is still connected to the civil war.”
Brossa nodded. “Yes, it is. The independence issue was important for us before la guerra and it was never fully resolved, and really, neither was the war itself. Do you know that there are still two hundred thousand Spaniards lying in unmarked graves from the civil war? Can you imagine such a thing in civilized Europe?”
“Yeah, I can.”
Jack’s mind drifted back again to the slaughter of the Yugoslavian civil wars—and every other holocaust that had swept the continent since the Thirty Years’ War. “Civilized Europe has been a slaughterhouse since before they invented the word Europe. The reason Europeans have dominated the globe for the last five centuries is because they have a particular genius for organized violence.”
“You sound like a history professor. I imagine just like your father.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to do with that comment, so he ignored it.
“The Spanish Civil War reminded me that history repeats itself.”
“In what way?”
“When the people believe the justice system is no longer just, that the politicians are above the laws they make, that the government serves the interests of the ruling class instead of the middle and working classes; and when the history and culture and language of the people are denigrated and denied—these are the conditions that make a society ripe for civil war.”
“You have just described the feelings of millions of Catalonians,” Brossa said as she took her last sip of coffee.
“Not just here. It’s a movement sweeping all over the world. And I suspect it might even change the world, sooner rather than later.”
“For better or for worse?”
“The jury’s still out on that one.”
Brossa’s phone vibrated. A voicemail. She checked it, frowning.
Worried, Jack was certain. Something personal.
“Please, take it,” he said.
“Excuse me.”
She listened to the message. Whatever she was hearing—a woman’s anxious voice was all Jack could make out—darkened Brossa’s face. She deleted the message.
“Everything okay?”
“I hate cell phones.” She tossed it on the table like it was a dirty diaper. She began rubbing her forehead, stressed, gathering her thoughts.
“Maybe I should go.” Jack stood.
“Yes, thank you.” Brossa stood, too. “I will call you when I learn of anything. When are you leaving for home?”
“Not until I’m satisfied Renée got her justice.”
Brossa reached for her shoulder holster and slipped it on. She gave him a pitying look.
“This is España, Jack. You might be here for a long while.”