How the Fight Over Spains Anti-Fascist Legacy Involves a Former Nation Editor – The Nation

From left to right, Julio lvarez del Vayo, the Spanish foreign minister; unknown; Francisco Largo Caballero, the Spanish prime minister; and Lieutenant Colonel Rabio, commander of the troops in Madrid, inspect troops on the front during the Spanish Civil War in November 1936. (Fox Photos / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

On November 30, the Spanish government announced that it would step in to save the tomb of a longtime Nation journalist, Julio lvarez del Vayo, who worked as one of the magazines editors from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s.

Vayo, as he was generally known, was a socialist politician and diplomat who served as Spains foreign minister during the Spanish Civil War (193639). After Francisco Francos victory, he lived in exile in France, the United Stateswhere he became a close friend of Nation editor Freda Kirchweyand Switzerland, where hed traveled during the war years as well, trying to rally support in the League of Nations for the beleaguered Spanish Republic. He was buried in Geneva. As the rent on his tomb was running out, his remains were set to be exhumed and moved to an ossuary.

The decision of Spains progressive coalition government to protect Vayos tomb from destruction comes at a time when the countrys anti-fascist legacy is once more under dispute. In September, Prime Minister Pedro Snchezs cabinet approved a Law of Democratic Memory, meant to meet the long-standing demands for justice and recognition of thousands of victims of the Franco dictatorship. The new law would provide material and symbolic reparations for victims of state violence and expropriation; annul judicial sentences from Francos sham courts that were designed to eliminate political dissidents; reform public history education; limit freedom of speech for antidemocratic ideologies; and remove or prohibit public tributes to the dictatorship.

The proposal has incensed the Spanish right, which accuses Spains progressive government of breaking the pact that enabled the countrys transition to democracy. Following the example of their European and US counterparts, Spains right-wing leaders hope to spin electoral wool by demonizing anti-fascism, which in Spain means questioning the legitimacy of the historical struggle against the dictatorship. One deputy from the conservative Partido Popular (PP) recently wrote that its a fallacy to identify anti-Francoism with democracy. In October, the city government of Madridruled by the right with the support of the far-right party Voxproceeded to remove a memorial plaque to Francisco Largo Caballero, a longtime socialist union leader and Republican prime minister during the civil war, who was later arrested by the Gestapo, interrogated by Klaus Barbie, and deported to a Nazi concentration camp. (He survived the war but died soon after.)More on the Spanish Civil War

In a perverse bit of irony, the city government defended the removal by invoking Spains current memory law, which was adopted in 2007 and prohibits extolling individuals who participated in the failed military coup that unleashed the civil war or in the Francoist repression. The citys defense revived old Francoist myths, claiming that it was the radicalism of leftist leaders like Largo Caballero that stoked much of the political violence in the first place. Right-wing myth-making has since only grown. The Spanish right now paints all those who participated in armed struggle against the dictator, including the guerrilla units that fought both Nazism and Francoism from southern France, as terrorists. Among them was Julio lvarez del Vayo, who in 1963 galvanized remaining guerrilla units into the Spanish Front for National Liberation. In fact, it was the association of former guerrilla fighters in France that first sounded the alarm about Vayos impending exhumation. In the Spanish government, it was Pablo Iglesias, the leader of junior coalition partner Podemos and Snchezs second in command, who took the lead in saving the former ministers tomb.

Vayo started writing for The Nation in 1939. As a member of the board of editors under Freda Kirchweys editorship from 1941 until 1955, he shaped much of the magazines editorial line on US foreign policy during World War II and the early Cold War. Identified with the left wing of the Spanish Socialist Party, he was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and reviled by the anti-Stalinist and liberal left, from Dwight Macdonald to Arthur Schlesinger, and, eventually, by his own party, which expelled him in 1946 along with some three dozen other left-wingers, including former prime minister Juan Negrnwho also wrote for The Nation. (They were posthumously reinstated in 2009.)

Vayos ubiquitous presence at The Nation, where he had Kirchweys unconditional support, fueled complaints about undue Communist influence and rumors that Vayo was a Stalinist agent. When, in 1951, The New Leader printed a letter from former Nation art critic Clement Greenberg that claimed Vayo had turned the magazine into a Soviet mouthpiece, Kirchwey sued Greenberg for libel. According to Kirchwey biographer Sara Alpern, the editor wanted to protect Del Vayo, who, as a political migr, faced possible deportation if the authorities believed the serious charges directed against him. The controversy led contributing editor Robert Bendiner and staff contributor Reinhold Niebuhr to resign from the masthead. According to historian David Jorge, Vayo was never more than a fellow traveler. The rumors against him, Jorge told us, were first circulated by his former party colleagues and later picked up by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which, alongside The New Leader, Encounter, and other magazines, was secretly funded by the CIA. In early 1952, Vayo and his wife, returning to the United States after a trip to Europe, were arrested under the McCarran Act and detained for several days.

In his decade and a half at the magazine, Vayo wrote more than 400 articles. Among his most personal pieces is a hair-raising 4,000-word dispatch he filed in August 1949 describing a clandestine trip to Francos Spain. Triumphantly titled I Got into Spain, Vayos article narrates how he disguised himself as a tourist to enter Spain before being detained by the Spanish police, who let him go after being fooled by his fake American accent and the American-made items he had on him. By the time Vayo was informally deported back across the border to France, he had managed to report on the lives of everyday people under the Franco regime. He paints a bleak picture. People who go to France return to Spain talking about how much there is to eat in France, he explained. To stop these reports travelers who say too much are often arrested. French bread is a luxury article to be smuggled over the border. Yet the trip left Vayo hopeful. He reported that the anti-Franco resistance had been encouraged by the US refusal, the month before, to grant Franco a $50 million loan. I can assure Americans today, he wrote, that the Spanish people are as worthy of American sympathy and support in their present magnificent struggle against the last heir of Hitler as they were during the active period of the civil war. Vayo included the story in his memoir, The Last Optimist, which came out the following year.

Vayo would never see his anti-Francoist wishes fulfilled. His editorship at The Nation ended shortly after Kirchweys retirement in 1955. By the end of that year, Francos Spain was admitted to the United Nations. Vayo, who lived out his exile in Switzerland, died in May 1975, age 84, six months before Francos death that November.

Read more from the original source:

How the Fight Over Spains Anti-Fascist Legacy Involves a Former Nation Editor - The Nation