Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936

History is written by the victors. It s a cliche, but a reliable one except in the case of the Spanish Civil War. Many believe wrongly, as it turns out that under Franco s dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. And this myth reinforces another- that there is a national pact to forget what really happened. In the four decades since Franco s death foreign narratives For Whom the Bell Tolls, Casablanca, Homage to Catalonia still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de Espa a was, as its name asserts, Spain s own war, and in recent years the country has begun to reclaim this crucial aspect of its history. In a compelling investigation of collective memory Jeremy Treglown talks to the descendants of men and women killed during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship and stands on a hillside with them as remains are excavated; he attends a Sunday service in the basilica dedicated to Franco s memory, examines monuments, paintings, novels, films, computer games and finds that despite state censorship, creativity under Franco was burgeoning and events of the time were in fact vividl

About the Author :
Jeremy Treglown is a writer and critic who spends part of every year in Spain and has written about the country for Granta and other magazines. His previous books include biographies of Roald Dahl, Henry Green (Dictionary of Literary Biography Award), and V. S. Pritchett (short-listed for the Whitbread Award for Biography; Duff Cooper Prize for Literature). A former editor of The Times Literary Supplement, he has taught at University College London, Oxford, Princeton, and Warwick, and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in London.

Review :
"Alert to nuance, resistant to over-simplification…. Intriguing and passionately argued … in the Gerald Brenan tradition" "This is the most comprehensive, most perceptive book on Spain that I have read for a long time. I'm full of admiration for the scale of Treglown’s undertaking, for its fine balance between storytelling and reflection and its subtle and deep political and aesthetic judgments, which touch on practically everything that irritates or pains me most about my country. Normally these matters are presented abroad with exasperating stereotypes and, at home, with intolerable factionalism. Spain, so obsessed with memory, is extraordinarily forgetful. This is a book that must be read, in Spain and abroad, by anyone who wants to understand the country’s history, her present and future" "In a book ranging elegantly between travel writing, history, literary criticism and investigative journalism, Treglown unpicks the puzzle of Spain" "Evocative and melancholy" "Treglown's interplay of history with personal narratives is skilful and incisive"