…She
has been called the most fascinating woman of the twentieth century, and also
the most enigmatic. To me, she has also been my step-grandmother. Imposingly
always dressed in black, she has been the origin of many famous dictums, among
them: “¡No
Pasaran!” and “Better to die
standing than to live on your knees.”
She
lived a long life, and these days, as I am unstoppably becoming an old man
myself, she has been dead for many years already. Her name was Dolores
Ibarruri.
One
day not too soon I may sit down to write a personal story about her, but in
this entry she is the central character of the less personal, but still little-known
(yes!) historical episode called the Spanish Civil War…
Textbook history relates
how the Socialists came to power in Spain in 1931, when the people voted monarchy
out of existence. How the country’s diehard monarchists plotted to overthrow
the Republic, in a series of initially unsuccessful attempts. How in 1936 the
Rightist General Francisco Franco led a successful revolt against the
Republican government, and in the ensuing war was supported by Hitler,
Mussolini, and the Pope (Pius XI), while the Loyalist Republican forces were supported
by Stalin and by the so-called International Brigades, organized by some
liberally-minded Western romantics (Ernest Hemingway prominently among them as
a war reporter on the Republican side), with considerable Soviet help.
But what textbook history
failed to notice, however, was that, with friends like Comrade Stalin, the Spanish
Republic had been doomed from the very start, enemies or no enemies. Just like
Lenin before him, Stalin hated all socialists and independent communists much
more than any of his capitalist adversaries. In so far as Spain was concerned,
Stalin secretly rooted for Franco, while openly opposing him; and, while openly
supporting the Republicans, secretly wished them all to drop dead. (Go figure
that out!)
Thus, Stalin’s grand
strategy in the Spanish Civil War was to bring the Left to ruin, to let the Ultra-Right
win, and then to try to take control of the pendulum swinging back to the Left,
with the help of the pro-Soviet Spanish clients.
Stalin was convinced that
Franco would make a much easier mark to bring down than any of the Republican
leaders. His logic was fine, considering Franco’s association with such
unsavory characters as Der Führer and Il Duce. Had El Caudillo
not managed to cleverly distance himself from the Axis Powers, by declaring
Spain’s formal “neutrality” in World War Two, and had he not made himself
indispensable to the free world by virtue of his anti-Soviet credentials, he
would surely have had a great fall, just as Stalin had predicted.
In the meantime, Stalin
did not have to look too far for “our man in Madrid.” She came to
him. My future step-grandmother Dolores Ibarruri, indeed, made herself
extremely useful to Stalin, displaying, along with her undisputed revolutionary
pathos, an acute opportunistic brilliance.
She had become a romantic
leader in Spain, in her own right. Always dressed in black, she appealed to the
crowds with a self-reinforcing image. Her thinking in this matter of constancy
in appearance was precisely like Hitler’s, who had several dozens of exactly
the same clothes, with the intent of developing a lasting visual bond
with the public.
Being a Communist member
of the Republican Government, soon to become Vice President of the Cortés, La
Passionaria, as she was called, enjoyed sufficient political clout
to be able to pull off what was undoubtedly the most amazing heist of the twentieth
century. I am referring now to the untold story of the Spanish Gold…
(This is the end of Part
I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)
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