Spain Then And Now

My wife and I have just returned from a trip to Granada, Sevilla and Madrid. For my wife this was her second visit to Spain and first to Andalusia. For me it was my fourth overall and the first time I revisited the south in forty years.

The Spain I first knew as a student in Granada and Madrid in 1966 and 1968 is long gone. Then it was a dictatorship, ostracized by the West for Franco's "neutrality" in WWII, and sealed off from its neighbors by a combination of its own paranoia and slow recovery from a brutal Civil War. Politically and religiously deeply conservative, it hardly benefited from the largess of the Marshall Plan unless, of course, one considers the location of a major American airbase and sub base on its soil beneficial to the local economy.

Today, it can be argued Spain is one of the most liberal countries of Western Europe in many respects. Vibrant, progressive, thriving, vital. One sees it everywhere from the sophistication of Madrid, which four decades ago was a dowdy and officious capital in name only, to the extensive public recycling and conservation projects. Cultural life and national patrimony, always rich, are experiencing a renaissance. The Prado, one of the world’s great museums, has expanded and is now one of three important museums within walking distance of each other, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofia forming the other two-thirds of this golden triangle. Everywhere there are signs of urban renewal and reclamation.

Forty-two years ago when I first landed in Spain, the generation that fought its Civil War, a conflict that inflamed world passions as much as Vietnam did in ours, was exhausted and spent. By comparison, today's youth have grown up in a democratic society whose transition has been relatively smooth. (The 1981 coup attempt, shockingly recent but virtually overlooked when one considers post-Franco Spain, was never really a serious threat to the new state.)

Reminders of the Civil War are still present in unexpected places, the Reina Sofia Museum with its most prized possession Guernica being principal among them. (In an adjoining room a propaganda film runs continuously. Made during the Civil War, it pleads the Republican cause. In another, Robert Capa's pictures from the Civil War fill the walls. And the Guernica does not sit alone; all of Picasso’s prepatory sketches line the adjacent walls and enrich our understanding of his intense probing for the final expression of his grief and outrage.

In conversations with a few cab drivers I asked what had become of “los grises”, the gray-clad police one saw everywhere, and of the Guardia Civil, their tri-cornered black hats and green uniforms a common and intimidating sight? Both drivers referred to these vestiges of Franco’s police state as “bastards” and “thugs”, public utterances that would have literally been dangerous in the past. The Guardia Civil can still be glimpsed maintaining their vigil at public buildings, military installations and other sensitive sites, but their public presence is much less conspicuous, Behind the scenes, however, they remain an important national police force. Los Grises have been replaced by a more modern looking force, just as formidable in appearance, but not nearly as plentiful.

Despite these reminders of the Franco years, for Spain's worldly youth of today the Civil War is not really that much closer than the Peloponnesian War. Their war is the global one on terror and in Madrid, especially, they know its effects all too well. Not only do the airports have the now-standard security practices, so do the train stations with high-speed service to the capital, their platforms guarded by checkpoints and screening devices. Internal strife has not altogether disappeared, either. In the north of Spain, ETA, weakened but hardly extinct, continues to wreak havoc. The day we departed for the U.S., the separatists killed a civil guard in a bomb attack.

In the Spain of 1966, 27 years after the Civil War ended, the streets were still filled with beggars, the blind, the disabled and the walking wounded (less politically correctly referred to then as "mutilados"). They are largely gone now, too, most from old age and disease, but no state can simply banish the disabled from its midst. Today Spain has developed a sophisticated health care system and social services network (what Western European nation today is not offering better health care for ALL of its citizens than the US?) that doesn't simply warehouse people in the streets. There were two big lottery systems in the ‘60’s, the national and the one specifically sold by and benefiting the blind. The latter has been replaced by ONCE, an organization that uses proceeds from lottery sales to provide employment for the disabled. Their kiosks have replaced the wooden stools of four decades ago.

Some things never change, fortunately. Each evening, all of Spain still enjoys the paseo, the stroll during which every ambulatory inhabitant of the peninsula sallies forth. Joining them each night, Ellen and I made note of the physical evidence of Spain's evolution since my first visit. The oldest generation invariably features a husband and wife of decidedly small stature and, most interesting, nearly equal height. The middle-aged generation, on the other hand, is taller than their predecessors with the differences in height between men and women more pronounced. And the younger generation? They are much taller, with the full range of body types and heights (though very little obesity). They look like, well, everyone else their age throughout the Western hemisphere and Europe.

Spain has literally grown.