Preamble

Being a fairly (or perhaps that should be 'unfairly') selfish individual I really wish I hadn't seen it. I rather wish I had remained in ignorance.

I believed that Spain, having joined the EU would have made greater progress towards normality after the evil of the murderous Fascist dictatorship.

The pieces of writing featured on the Spanish Vignettes page show how wrong I was.

William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich observes that
'No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian state can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda.'

He was writing about an evil Fascist regime that lasted 12 years, the evil Fascist regime in Spain lasted three times as long.

For the middle-aged and the elderly the Fascist past clings like a cankerous slime; behind politeness, euphemism, doublespeak, and plain unvarnished lies its sickly thrall corrupts and diminishes the body politic.

In The Spanish Holocaust Paul Preston comments
'By dint of totaliarian control of the education system and of all means of public communication, press, radio and the publishing industry, the Franco regime made a powerfully sustained attempt to brainwash its population. To this day, its powerful residual effects hamper the ability of mainstream contemporary society to look upon its recent violent past in an open and honest way.'

I find it sobering to see an adult pause and look carefully in every direction to ensure nobody is within earshot before making an anti-Fascist comment to me. I find it sobering when in casual conversation I mention that an elderly acquaintance of mine is a Socialist his entire family are shocked into silence.

I find it sobering to witness the judiciary engaging in la justicia al revés in the 21st Century. (That rarest of things, an apologetic Fascist, Ramón Serrano Suñer acknowledged that during the Fascist dictatorship 'justice' in Spain was no more than la justicia al revés - 'back-to-front-justice'.)