The January 7 report on two recently published books about the new towns promoted by Franco’s government between 1940 and 1970 has caused a notable stir. Jesús Zorrilla, a reader of the newspaper, sends me a message in which he is “disappointed by the article” which he considers “a succession of anecdotes, all negative.” In his opinion, «an article must first present the facts and evaluate them later. In this the facts are absent. In the comments of subscribers to the digital edition, the idea is repeated that the text is “biased” and that it does not provide complete contextual or perspective information.
Israel Viana, author of the text and Culture journalist, is not surprised by these reactions, since “everything we publish about Franco ignites the passions of readers, both those on the left and those on the right, showing that in Spain we are still not able to talk about this period without arguing. “It is a stage of the past that is very present.” He explains that it is “a report about two books that are identified in the text.” These books, adds Viana, “address the beginning of the colonization promoted by the Franco regime starting in 1939, which was accompanied by the propaganda implicit in politics, and which caused those who responded to that call not to find what had been fiance”. Viana explains that it is not his opinions that are expressed in the text, but rather those provided by the expert authors and the hundreds of settlers whom they have interviewed for their essays. He does not agree that the article does not offer data, since in his opinion “sufficient information is provided for a cultural report such as, for example, the 55,000 families that were there, the years of the measure, the organizations involved, the percentage of expropriated lands, how much their value grew, the interest paid by the settlers, how many of them abandoned the process or the time it took to pay the debt. In any case, says Viana, “more than enough data to contextualize. It is a press report and not an essay or a thesis, and I invite readers to buy the books and capture the infinite nuances of the story.
It is true that many of the comments from subscribers of the digital edition attribute the possible deficiencies they detect to the authors of these essays, and not to Viana. However, one of them says: «Nothing was ever perfect. Not now either. “A certainly poor article for the plaintive litany it conveys.” Viana himself warns that both texts approach colonization from different points of view, but that both highlight the “hardships and struggles at the beginning of this process”, which could explain this feeling that justice is not done to history. of a period by referring only to the negative part. Jesús Zorrilla’s message, for example, mentions that “the ending is eloquent when Viana states that the settlers are proud of what they did to raise their families in those towns, which is in contradiction with the bulk of the article.” ». In this sense, Israel Viana comments: “One of the authors interviewed, daughter and granddaughter of those first settlers and is proud of her past, congratulated me on how well I had reflected that process.” The journalist does not believe that it is incompatible that a reality that could have been random has generated feelings of pride in what has been achieved, and remembers how “the article mentions the case of Llanos del Caudillo where, in a popular referendum promoted by a PSOE mayor’s office, the “70% of the population chose to keep the name.”
The article has resonated in a special way at the beginning of 2025, when the government proposes to celebrate the fifty years since the death of the dictator. For Viana “what politics does is not decisive”, which may make sense in a strict way from the perspective of a cultural section. But the reality is that it is, and that the proliferation of exhibitions, publications and events that are going to occur these months can be interpreted in a specific social and political framework. Viana regrets that “unlike other countries, the story of what happened seventy years ago in Spain provokes reactions as if it had happened yesterday.” And this reflection leads me to think, in line with this report, to what extent the newspaper can contribute to closing this wound. I think that in the climate of polarization in which we live, the responsible exercise of writing involves assuming, with even more zeal if possible, that no article is harmless, and that we must avoid at all costs being used as a weapon to incite battles that do no good to anyone
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