Echoes of Guernica

This is the name I've given to a new series of articles for Substack in which I hope to develop some ideas about the nature of wars of ideology.   I have always been fascinated by the Spanish Civil War because it never really made sense to me.  It was not a war of conquest, or of territory, or a war over resources.   It was a war between brothers within the same family.  And over half a million people died in it.  While the fighting officially stopped in 1939, many would say the killing did not stop until the late 1970's, after the death of Franco.   In the thirteen years I have been talking to the Spanish people about it, it is clear to me that to a certain degree, it is still going on.   Since I first came to Spain on a Camino pilgrimage, I've talked to Spanish people about it when I had the opportunity, a college history professor in Leon, an elderly lady in her nineties in the village of Bulnes who lived through the turmoil.  But I eventually found it difficult to do.  There is a sacredness to the space in such a conversation, and I eventually came to understand it.  And to see myself as an intruder.

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So I decided to leave the Spanish alone and respect them in this history.  But I also decided to write  about it because the more I learned and the more I considered all the events, a very disturbing idea began to take shape.   As bizarre and exceedingly unlikely as the conditions that led to the war were at that time...

I would argue that they are all present today.

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Starting May 18, 2026, I will be traveling across Spain visiting key sites significant to the conflict.   At each site I will gather images and write a Substack article on what aspect of the idea of a "War of Ideology" the site evokes for me, and publish it, along with the images, on Substack.​​​​​​