It is incredible that in year 2013 one can still write in a book aimed at bringing the knowledge about Spain’s recent history to a general audience that, in comparison with the rest of Europe, “Spain still feels different.” Then the book makes a clumsy attempt to blame the difference on Muslims.
The book is called Franco’s Crypt and is getting rave reviews in the press. I have no idea if it’s good because I’m still stuck on page 3 with the “Spain is different” argument
I feel like that sentence is a super clumsy rhetorical flourish to set up the rest of the book. “Even if you ignore all of the middle ages and all of modernity, Spain still feels different because Franco’s dictatorship happened.”
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Yes, I think this is the point. It is also a sales pitch: “Ooh, Spain, exotic.”
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What is the “rest of Europe” from which it feels different?
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The author is British so i guess he sees himself as the golden standard of normalcy. 🙂
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Perhaps of note: A friend so mine is planning to move to Spain. He is living on a small pension and Social Security (U. S.) He feels he can no longer afford to live in London where he has been for a few years.
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I’ve been hearing about this book in the media, apparently taking a more right-wing tilt than I’m comfortable with. It’s not that I think the PSOE has it together in the least, but come on.
I’m tired of the “Franco was not so bad” argument as well as of the “we never got beyond Franco” argument. I’d like to hear something a bit more interesting.
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Yes, the book starts with the idea that Franco was not that bad since valuable works of art were created during his dictatorship. According to this logic, Stalin was great, too, because he gave Solzhenitsyn tons of good material for his writing.
I plan to write a book about the historic memory and the legacy of the Civil War, so I’m checking out the competition. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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