Pedro Corral: Save the militiaman Vicente Aleixandre

Alarm bells rang in the PSOE for being a figure that has always sought to confine itself in its ideological preserve. This is the only way to explain why Sánchez wants to apply the label of victim of Francoism to Aleixandre. An action as instinctive as any other to mark territory. This decision has motivated appropriate reactions such as that of the Madrid Minister of Culture, Mariano de Paco, and interesting articles in the press, such as the one published in ABC by Jaime G. Mora about the vicissitudes of Aleixandre during the time in which he lived.

It is unquestionable that, like so many Spaniards, he greeted the Second Republic with hope. One of his best biographers, Emilio Calderón, identifies the poet with moderate republicanism, at the same time that he credits his resounding rejection of the military uprising of July 1936 and his immediate adherence to the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. In his newsletter, ‘El Mono Azul’, he will publish the prose text ‘Federico’ in tribute to his friend García Lorca, shot in Granada by the rebels four days before his also admired José María Hinojosa was shot in Málaga by the government. .

However, his initial commitment to the republican cause will be questioned due to the persecution that he and his family will suffer in revolutionary Madrid. As he told his friend José Antonio Muñoz Rojas, the Popular Front militias sought him out to kill him. He was later arrested and released thanks to Neruda. His father, a retired colonel of engineers and director of a railroad company, was purged and fined for disaffection.

Taking refuge in the house of his paternal uncle Agustín, a conservative liberal deputy with Alfonso XIII, the poet secluded himself from the world. In mid-1937, Aleixandre tried to leave Republican Spain with his family, but was prevented from doing so because he was of military age, despite being ill and being 39 years old, since in the government zone men between the ages of 18 and 18 were mobilized. 44 years.

Aleixandre went into seclusion again after the war, even giving up publishing for fear of attracting the attention of the victors. In 1940 his father died, after being exonerated from a purge process. The regime will approve granting a pension to his relatives as a military member.

Finally, in 1944 the poet overcame his initial misgivings with the publication of ‘Sombra del Paraíso’. The reissues of ‘Destruction or Love’ and ‘Passion of the Earth’ will continue, without the authorities opposing any veto, as demonstrated by the censorship files consulted in the General Administration Archive. If the first book is assured that it is a “collection of lyrical poems of great quality”, the second is stated that “there is nothing inconvenient or objectionable, other than the nonsense that this prose essay contains from the first to the last word poetics”. A judgment that today seems stingy and short-sighted.

The intention to turn Aleixandre into a victim of Franco’s regime is poorly compatible with his situation under the regime, especially when it is canceled that in his life he was only arrested and threatened with death by supporters of the Popular Front Government, which included the PSOE. In 1950 he entered the Royal Spanish Academy, with wide resonance in the regime’s press. All in all, Aleixandre would become a reference for the opposition to Franco inside and outside Spain. His participation in protests against the repression against anti-Franco intellectuals and workers is well known.

This desire to save the supposed militiaman Vicente Aleixandre gives me the opportunity to correct an error in his biographies. The Documentary Center of Historical Memory (CDMH) preserves a document that would prove his monetary contribution to the Torres-Benedito militia column, formed in Valencia. Vicente Aleixandre’s name appears at the end of a list of 38 alleged donors. In reality, they are the names of anarchist militiamen from the Torres-Benedito and CNT 13 columns, registered by the CNT Payment Commission for the reception of their soldiers from October 1 to 31, 1936. The amount delivered to each one is 310 pesetas. It corresponds to the salary of 10 pesetas a day, multiplied by 31 days, that the Republican Government established for the militiamen. The very heading of the document indicates that it is the “list of affected militiamen”, including Vicente Aleixandre. The CDMH is credited with the existence of several militiamen with that name and first surname: one of them, Borreda second, died in combat on the Levante front.

Denying Aleixandre’s alleged financing of one of the CNT columns to which all kinds of misdeeds were blamed also leads me to reflect on the temptation to simplify experiences as complex as those that any Spaniard must have faced in the war.

Vicente Aleixandre suffered the loss of loved ones in the war, but also in the postwar period, especially his father, his friend Miguel Hernández, who died of tuberculosis in Alicante prison, and his cousin Juan Bautista Peset Aleixandre, shot in Paterna.

This did not prevent him from continuing to cultivate his friendships with people affected by the regime or who contributed to Franco’s triumph. This is the case of aviation officer Andrés Pitarch Ruiz, who boasted of having managed, as head of a Republican aircraft factory, to ensure that no new aircraft came out of it for the government war effort. He had such a close bond with this military engineer that the poet was a witness at the weddings of his sister Isabel in 1933 and his daughter María in 1958.

Aleixandre saw his world of yesterday reduced to rubble by the war, as was his house in Velintonia. But only with his spiritual strength, in a sick and suffering body, was he able to resolve the struggle of opposites, destruction or love, with the triumph of beauty and amazement at his contemplation. That is the lesson that must re-emerge from the ruins of Velintonia, without more walls or more trenches, in the Spain of harmony that we all deserve.