Spanish Civil War Quotes

“Me parece que de nada vale correr si siempre ha de irse por el mismo camino, cerrado, de nuestra personalidad. Unos seres nacen para vivir, otros para trabajar, y otros para mirar la vida. Yo tenia un pequeño y ruin papel de espectadora. Imposible salirme de él. Imposible libertarme. Una tremenda congoja fue para mí lo único real en aquellos momentos.”
― Carmen Laforet, Nada

“In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and
punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium.”
― Javier Cercas, Soldados de Salamina

“(...)
-Pero, ¿es que también estos fusilan y quitan las casas, y...?
-Sí, hija.
-Entonces, ¿todos son iguales? (...)”
― Elena Fortún, Celia en la revolución

“If I did compress what I know and think about the spanish civil war into 6 lines you wouldn't print it. You wouldn't have the guts.”
― George Orwell, Essays

“two thousand or more Spaniards sailing toward that long, narrow South American country that clung to the mountains so as not to topple into the sea.”
― Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea

“And now, in Madrid, Spain's besieged capital, I've met wide-awake Negroes from various parts of the world--New York, our Middle West, the French West Indies, Cuba, Africa--some stationed here, others on leave from their battalions--all of them here because they know that if Fascism creeps across Spain, across Europe, and then across the world, there will be no place left for intelligent young Negroes at all. In fact, no decent place for any Negroes--because Fascism preaches the creed of Nordic supremacy and a world for whites alone.”
― Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

“Let guns alone salute
The wisdom of our age
With dusty powder marks
On yet another page of history.”
― Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

“The Spanish Civil War was the first fought in Europe in which civilians became targets en masse, through bombing raids on big cities.”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“Albert Camus said of the Spanish struggle: It is now nine years that men of my generation have had Spain within their hearts. Nine years that they have carried it with them like an evil wound. It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many men, the world over, regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.”
― Stuart Christie, My Granny Made Me an Anarchist. The Christie File: Part 1, 1946 - 1964

“My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present,no hope for the future. He concluded this must be what it was like to bleed to death, like so many men he had been unable to help. There was too much pain, too much that was despicable in this war between brothers; defeat had to be better than to continue killing and dying.”
― Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea

“--Do you think he'll be careful, Michael?

--Being that it's a war, ma'am, that would sort of defeat the purpose.

--Yes. I suppose it would.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Somos la voz de aquellos que tuvieron padres en el bando nacional y se resisten tener que hacer una condena de lo que hicieron sus familias. De aquellos que no quieren que se cambie el nombre de su calle por fanatismo político de quienes quieren una España de memoria hemipléjica.”
― Santiago Abascal Conde

“The intimate daily contact with harsh reality began to fray the fabric of my religious convictions... I was beginning to learn that our poverty – the lack of the most basic human necessities – was not caused or altered by the will of any deity. The source of our misery was not in heaven but on earth. It arose from institutions established by men which could be altered or destroyed by other men.”
― Dolores Ibárruri, They Shall Not Pass: The Autobiography of La Pasionaria

“The Spanish Civil War began with a military coup.”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“Notwithstanding the currency of ideas about ‘two Spains’ ready to confront each other on 18 July 1936, ‘us’ and ‘them’ were categories actively made by the violent experience of the war and did not fully exist prior to it.”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“From the start, the Left was handicapped by the great ideological differences between its constituent parts. Widest of all was the gap between the parliamentary socialist movement and the anti-parliamentary anarcho-syndicalist CNT. These differences were not a matter of voluntarism or sheer bloody-mindedness, as the standard historical narrative so often implies. Rather, their irreducibility was a result of the vastly different political, economic, and cultural experiences of the Left’s social constituencies in what was a highly unevenly developed country. For example, the direct political action favoured by many anarcho-syndicalists instantly recommended itself to the unskilled and the landless poor, whose lack of bargaining power and social defencelessness made socialist promises of gradual change through the ballot box seem immensely improbable, if not downright incredible.”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“For urban and rural workers, and for the poor more generally in Spain, the state still had overwhelmingly negative connotations: military conscription, indirect taxation, and everyday persecution — particularly for the unionized. Thus for many Spanish workers, resistance to the military rebels was initially also directed ‘against the state’ and was bound up with the building of a new social and political order, often on radical anti-capitalist economic lines (money was frequently abolished).”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“The absence of a functioning police force or judiciary in Republican territory in the first weeks after the coup, plus the de facto amnesties that saw gaols empty, made it possible for all manner of personal scores to be settled and acts of outright criminality to be pursued in the guise of revolutionary justice.”
― Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

“Vous vous rendez compte, quelle vie cette vie. Vous vous rendez compte, quel monde ce monde," Mais oui, je me rends compte. Je ne fais que ça, me rendre compte et en rendre compte. C'est bien ce que je souhaite. J'ai souvent recontré, au cours de ces années, ce même regard d'étonnement absolu qu'a eu ce viellard qui allait mourir, juste avant de mourir. J'avoue, d'ailleurs, n'avoir jamais bien compris pourquoi tant de types s'étonnaient tellement, Peut-être parce que j'ai une plus longue habitude de la mort sur les routes, des foules en marche sur les routes, avec la mort aux trousses. Peut-être que je n'arrive pas à m'étoner parce que je ne vois que ça, depuis juillet 1936. Ils m'énervent, souvent, tous ces étonnés. Ils reviennent de l'interrogatoire, éberlués. "Vous vous rendez compte, ils m'ont tabassé. -- Mais que voulez-vous qu'ils fassent, nom de dieu? Vous ne saviez donc pas que ce sont des nazis?" Ils hochaient la tête, ils ne savaient pas très bien ce qu'il leur arrivait. "Mais bon dieu, vous ne saviez pas à qui nous avons affaire?" Ils m'énervent souvent, ces éberlués. Peut-être parce que j'ai vu les avions de chasse italiens et allemands survoler les routes à basse altitude et mitrailler la foule, bien tranquillement, sur les routes de mon pays. À moi cetter charrette avex la femme en noir et le bébé qui pleure. À moi ce bourricot et la gran-mère sur le bourricot. À toi cette fiancée de neige et de feu qui marche comme une princesse sur la route brûlante. Peut-être qui'ils m'énervent, tous ces étonnés, à cause des villages en marche sur les routes de mon pays, fuyant ces mêmes S.S., our leurs semblables, leurs frères. Ainsi, à cette question: "Vous vous rendez compte?" j'ai une réponse toute faite, comme dirairt le gars de Semur. Mais oui, je me rends compte, je ne fais que ça. Je me rends compte et j'essaie d'en rendre compte, tel est mon propos.”
― Jorge Semprún, The Long Voyage

“Communism is the anger of the people - but if not tempered, it is an anger that turns on itself. It must be managed with care, or it can result in an oppression that could be as bad as the all-powerful rich pushing those who have nothing into the ground.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, A Dangerous Place

“A loud, relentless mechanical moaning filled the air, as if a giant hound constructed by the gods of iron and steel were baying at the moon. The air raid warning started, and then other sounds came - the whine of aircraft engines followed by the crump, crump, crump of bombs falling.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, A Dangerous Place

“I see how the gaping abyss between those who have much and those who have nothing can cause dangerous fractures in society. I see how power corrupts, how the people are manipulated and kept in their place. I see all of that, Professor Vallejo. But I am always left wondering if the fighting is worth so many dead. This country has been torn apart by authority-hungry men in all realms - in business, politics and religion. It is the ordinary people who are crushed like ants underfoot. That is what happens. That is the only comment I have.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, A Dangerous Place

“The world is strange, stranger than we imagine, stranger than we can imagine.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Luath Press Ltd We Shall Pass.

“Life has mysterious patterns. Some things, even when they appear unfathomable, are meant to be.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Luath Press Ltd We Shall Pass.

“It seemed as if man felt eternally alone and needed to follow leaders, religious and political, even into the wilderness of their own worst instincts.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Luath Press Ltd We Shall Pass.

“Their bodies touched. They weren’t cold. They were burning. They made love beneath the olive trees in the glow of the icy moon. It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. There was just that moment and they knew that it would make every moment of the days to come more terrifying.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Luath Press Ltd We Shall Pass.

“Life has mysterious patterns, that some things, even when they appear unfathomable, were meant to be.”
― Clifford Thurlow, We Shall Pass

“They had never sat together like this – real coffee in a café; people living normal lives. It’s the small things that matter most, the trivialities, the daily routines. We struggle and dream, strive for purpose and meaning, but ten minutes having coffee with friends in a Spanish café. These are the things that make us human, the things we remember.”
― Clifford Thurlow, We Shall Pass

“The days of our lives are quickly forgotten. War days are vivid, protracted, indelible. We are as moths who singe our wings and still fly back into the flame. The soldier exists in a private hell half deaf and half blinded by poisonous fumes.”
― Clifford Thurlow, We Shall Pass