Dennis Hollingsworth

Civil Wars & Utopia (hecho de menos, Catalunya/España)

Two interesting videos about Spain that focuses on Catalunya and its 300+ year old Spanish history.

"Spanish Secret Conflict" is excellent, balanced and well sourced. Gary Gibson did a superb job sourcing out opinions on both sides at all levels of sophistication. I particularly like the intercultural interviews of those Spaniards both Catalan and Castilian who celebrate and respect each other. At time=14:20, there is a married couple whom I would take to be the most favored emblem of what could be the best future for Spain and Catalunya. This is my political position on the matter: hug it out. Butterfly kisses. (A better translation of the hugs and kisses solution: a newly wrought federalist system, a lower fiscal deficit and more intercultural exchanges and celebrations that could mix Spain better within itself.)

I don't know how balanced the second video is, "Living Utopia", but I found it to be an interesting account of the birth, spread and fall of Catalan Anarchism. It reflects what I learned in reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, the solidarity he encountered and the tragic civil war within a civil war that wrecked their dream, a recurring theme in the Left in general and in Catalunya specifically. I had come to recognize this theme this summer while reading Albert Sánchez Piñol's "Victus, the Fall of Barcelona" at the suggestion of our close friends and neighbor in Tossa, Tony and Ana, who, by the way, are ardent Catalan Independistas.