Allende’s novel is historical fiction at its best that informs the current immigration debate
One of the great tragedies of the 20th century was the overthrow of the republican government in Spain in 1937 and the rise to power of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, whose brutal dictatorship ruled Spain until his death in 1973. In the run-up to World War II, Franco would allow Hitler to experiment with carpet bombings on market day in the Basque town of Guernica, killing men, women and children going about their daily routines.
Pablo Picasso painted the bombing of Guernica into the history books with his iconic rendition of its violence and mayhem. Today, it stands as an international monument decrying the terror and the killings of that day. To underscore the violence and bloodshed, Picasso painted without color and even used a matte finish to his paint so the painting would appear as stark as the death and destruction.
Ernest Hemingway, who covered the civil war in Spain would go on to write his famous novel about the war, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Americans would join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight for the Republic against Franco, detailed in Adam Hochschild’s recent book, “Spain in our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.” Hochschild’s treatment of the civil war is a must-read for anyone interested in how idealism, conviction and courage plays out in a war doomed for failure and a snapshot of the tragedy that would befall Europe in the years to come.
Art and literature can play critical roles in unraveling and remembering the horrors of war as Picasso and Hemingway demonstrated in their respective works. In the case of the Spanish Civil War, thanks to a recent novel by the distinguished novelist, Isabel Allende, we learn about another chapter in the lives of Spanish Republicans marked for death, imprisonment or banishment by the Nationalist forces of Franco. “A Long Petal of the Sea” chronicles the refugees who fled Spain, traveled to France and boarded a ship for a new life in Chile.
When Franco captured Barcelona, a stronghold of Spanish Republicans, his military executed anyone it suspected of Republican loyalties. Teachers, union members, intellectuals and artists were systematically eliminated. That caused La Retirada, the Retreat of refugees fleeing on foot for their lives with only one escape route over the Pyrenees Mountains into France. In 1939, half a million refugees found themselves at the French border in a scene in Allende’s novel that reminds the reader of a more recent border crisis on America’s southern border. It’s a history lesson reminding us that insensitive and inhumane immigration and refugee policies have a way of repeating themselves to this very day.
France had no interest in alienating Franco by taking in what it considered enemies of the military coup, so the refugees were treated as though they were prisoners of war and sent to internment camps.
After the fall of the Spanish Republic, the famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, sprang into action and convinced the president of Chile to welcome those fleeing the brutality of Franco. He sponsored the ship Winnipeg, which set sail for France where it took on 2,200 Spanish refugees. On that August night in 1939 when the Winnipeg sailed for Chile, Neruda proclaimed the Winnipeg to have been his most beautiful poem.
Historical fiction at its best, Allende’s novel captures the desperate plight of people who cannot return home but who have no idea what the future holds. The future she creates for Victor and Roser, her two protagonists who board the Winnipeg, aligns with a history that has these Spanish Republicans fleeing military dictatorship in Spain only to experience the same in 1973 when the Chilean government is overthrown by a military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet. Victor and Roser find themselves fleeing for their safety for the second time in their lives, this time to Venezuela.
Isabel Allende knows something about the ruthless ways of Pinochet. As a journalist in Chile at the time, she found herself on a list of Pinochet’s enemies and fled with her family to Venezuela as did Victor and Roser.
Today, Isabel Allende lives in California where her writing career flourishes with 24 books that have been translated into 42 languages, selling more than 74 million copies and garnering more than 60 awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom conferred on her by President Barack Obama. In a recent interview for an upcoming Readers Corner show next weekend, she talked of her peripatetic journey of life, living in a number of countries, not always her choice. She has always felt like an outsider which accounts for her ability to capture the refugee or immigrant experience as beautifully as she does in her recent novel.
Whether your interest is the history of war-torn Spain and France or your desire to learn what it must it must be like to walk in the shoes of an immigrant or a refugee striking out for a better life, “A Long Petal of the Sea” takes you on a journey into the past that informs the present day, as our nation struggles to deal humanely with peoples seeking safety and opportunity. It’s a tale of lives well-lived and helps us understand those less fortunate who long for what we too often take for granted.
The novel, written by a woman proud of her Basque roots, should hold special interest in Boise with its history of Basque migrants who we remember and celebrate to this day for enriching and adding value to our community.