Barcelona, Apr 15 (EFE).- The writer Ignacio Martínez de Pisón believes that almost ninety years later “we have not overcome the fracture of the Civil War” and his modest contribution to overcome it is the volume of stories “War Parties”, which now it has recovered with four new texts, one by Rafael Alberti on the contest in Ibiza.
“Parts of war” was published in 2009 by RBA with the aspiration of being the “great novel” regarding the war, but, despite the fact that it had several editions, over time it became “unfindable” even in second hand, “Because nobody has wanted to get rid of him”, and in the volume there are “stories that cannot be read in any other source such as those of Ramón J. Sénder or Pere Calders”, he assures in an interview with EFE.
In the recovery, published by Catedral, there are four new stories that were not included at the time due to rights issues, ignorance or because they had not yet been published, as is the case of a commission that Pisón himself (Zaragoza, 1960) received later and which became “Men of Peace”, which deals with the bombing of Guernika.
In this “definitive” version, Pisón has also added “Una historia de Ibiza”, by Rafael Alberti, regarding the beginning of the war on the Balearic island; “The language of the dead”, by Alberto Méndez, and “On the empty balcony”, by María Luis Elío, a Navarro-Mexican author who is now being recovered and to whom Gabriel García Márquez dedicated “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
“The language of the dead”, by Alberto Méndez, closes the book, a story, says Pisón, that “prefigures what the post-war period was going to be, has something metaphorical, in the same way as the one that opens it, ‘La lengua of the butterflies’ by Manuel Rivas, which talks regarding how the transmission of knowledge is interrupted and the children end up stoning the teachers”.
Pisón considers that although thirteen years have passed, “the book remains fresh” and stories such as those by Chaves Nogales, Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, Ignacio Aldecoa or Ana María Matute “not only do they not lose quality, but they have gained.”
The origin of this volume, recalls the anthologist, was to make “a kind of collective novel, since in Spain there was no great novel regarding the Civil War”.
And he adds: “War is so vast, it has so many facets, that no novel that tells several stories would be enough, that’s why it might only be reflected through the vision of many authors.”
The author of “Secondary Roads” does not know how many years will have to pass for “the wounds to heal”: “I don’t know if we are regarding to overcome that fracture, or if a new generation will have to appear that no longer has any ties.”
The recent statements by Vox in Castilla y León to repeal the decree of the historical memory of that community, which “was done by the PP, not the United Left, but that is the problem, that wars invade the political space,” are of little help.
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Instead, he values the current trend of historians like Julián Casanova, who “are very thorough with the data and that can make it easier to reach a common and shared version of what happened.”
In the selection of stories, Pisón looked for them to be representative of several generations of writers, from different points of view, to be writers from the left and from the right, who spoke of the countryside and the city, of both sides, and who wrote in the different languages state officials.
In short, he concludes, the book provides “a common version of the conflict, so that we do not continue to throw the Spanish Civil War at our heads.”
Two novels by foreign authors who were very close to the Spanish war, André Malraux with “Hope” (1937) and Ernest Hemingway with “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940) testify, according to Pisón, “the universality of the war of 1936 but also its enormous literary potential”, before much time had passed.
“Much less time than that between the battle of Waterloo (1815) and the publication of “La Chartreuse de Parma”, by Stendhal (1839), or the battle of Borodino (1812) and the appearance of “War and Peace”, of Tolstoy (1864)”, he warns, “without knowing if the story is better told from a distance”.
All the stories in the volume talk regarding the same thing: “Ordinary characters in exceptional circumstances.”
Looking back, Piso realizes that since the first publication of “War Reports” many of the authors have died. This is the case of Zúñiga, Antonio Pereira, Miguel Delibes, Francisco Ayala, Ana María Matute or Manuel Talens, “as if the chapter on those who directly experienced the war had been closed.”
Although the stories cover the main events of the war, two of the “gaps” in the first version have been corrected with that of Alberti, on the Balearic Islands, and with that of Pisón himself, on Guernika, however, he has not been able to find none that reflects the dispute in the Canary Islands.
Interested in the “documentary value” of these stories, very evident in Manuel Chaves Nogales or Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, Pisón stops at “Campos de los almendros”, by Jorge Campos, which speaks of a prison camp, in which some Republicans try to flee although they finally end up returning “because they have realized that the whole of Spain has become a concentration camp”.
Once this book has been published, Martínez de Pisón is preparing “a soap opera” that will narrate “a story set in post-war Madrid regarding some terrible moments, with consequences of the war”.
Jose Oliva
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