Adiós: Gone but not forgotten

Adolfo Suárez
The challenge of leading and effecting major political change has been faced by only a select group of individuals. To place Adolfo Suárez on the same pedestal as, say, Mandela or Gorbachev, would be stretching things, but consider the challenge he faced in leading the transition to post-Franco democracy. He himself was not a natural visionary. As the minister secretary-general of the Movimiento Nacional, the only political party that had been permitted, he was steeped in the Francoist tradition. His selection as prime minister by King Juan Carlos was unexpected. Indeed, for those hopeful of reform, it seemed like a retrograde step. But Suárez had the advantages of being relatively young (43) and so open to change and of having been close to the Franco apparatus. He knew, therefore, how to dismantle it. And he did so remarkably quickly.

The transition was anything but straightforward, though. Economic problems, union unrest, ETA violence, discontent among the military, they all played their part (as did his own tiredness of internal squabbles within his coalition UCD) in his eventual resignation in 1981 and in the failed coup attempt which coincided with the vote on his successor. Perhaps Suárez had not been firm enough. Lieutentant Colonel Antonio Tejero, the Guardia Civil officer who led the assault on Congress, had received only a few months' sentence for his part in the Operación Galaixa coup plot three years earlier. Dramatic though change was, there needed to also be a softly-softly approach; hence why the Amnesty Law of 1976 effectively ruled out retribution for crimes during the Franco era.

Hard it was, but the transition succeeded, and this was Suárez's great achievement. Among moves he made that angered the Francoists was to bring Felipe González back from exile. González's PSOE performed credibly in the first elections and it won in 1982 (another coup attempt having been uncovered and stopped just before the election). It was González who was to transform Spain, but he couldn't have done so without the transition under Adolfo Suárez.

Alfredo Di Stefano
Was he one of the greatest footballers ever? Quite probably so. He was from a time when footballers with strange, foreign names were heard of but never seen. There is no doubting his contribution to Spanish football and to Real Madrid's reputation, though where in the pantheon of sporting legends who have lent their names to advertising would one place this gem? "Alfredo Di Stefano dice ... Lucky Strike es mi cigarillo. Irresistible." Much more recently, he appeared in an Estrella Damm advert with Fernando Torres, then the wunderkind of Spanish football, the new Di Stefano. Whatever happened to him, do you suppose?

Gabriel García Márquez
When García Márquez died in April, the response in Spain was one of great grief tempered with great pride. Here was a writer to be placed in the same Spanish literary stratosphere as Miguel de Cervantes. But there was one great difference between the two. García Márquez wrote in Spanish but he wasn't Spanish. He was Colombian. This didn't seem to matter, though. Language had made him one of Spain's own as had his "magical realism", the way in which he weaved a Daliesque surrealism into his stories, the greatest of which and, in my opinion, one of the great novels of the twentieth century was the epic "One Hundred Years Of Solitude". 

Luis Aragonés
For someone whose surname translates as Aragonese, Luis Aragonés should - on account of the historical connection between Mallorca and Aragon - have an affiliation with Mallorca and be held with some affection. He did have and was. Aragonés took Real Mallorca to third place in La Liga in the 2000-2001 season. Oh for those days to return. A second spell as Mallorca's coach three years later was cut short when he was chosen as coach of the national side. In 2008 the great underachievers of world football finally achieved. Aragonés had led Spain to European Championship victory. He did have his moments, though. Like the time he was filmed calling Thierry Henry a "black shit". He was fined 3,000 euros. Had he been an England coach, he would have been sacked.

Paco de Lucia
Someone else with a Mallorcan connection, if mainly by residence and a brief period as a face of tourism promotion, de Lucia was one of Spain's greatest ever musicians. His guitar playing alone was sufficient to have afforded him such an accolade, but it was his innovation which elevated him to the heights of national and international acclaim. He broke down barriers between flamenco, pop, rock and jazz, most notably through his fusion work with the jazz guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. De Lucia was thus a prime mover in making flamenco more widely accessible and appreciated and in inspiring the flamenco fusions that have followed his lead.

The Book Of The Absurd

Gabriel García Márquez should have held on for a few more days, preferably until the twenty-second or the twenty-third of the month. Had it been the twenty-second, he would have died on the same day in 1616 as Miguel de Cervantes. If the twenty-third, it would have been the same day as Cervantes was buried. It would also have been World Book Day and Saint George's Day, aka (in Catalan) the Diada de Sant Jordi.

García Márquez was the modern Cervantes; his story-telling elevated him to an equal status. They are the two greatest novelists in the Spanish language and they both left an enormous legacy. With Cervantes it was "Don Quijote" and quixotism. García Márquez gave us the epic "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" and magical realism. This combination of the everyday with the fantastical will not pass into dictionary usage in the way that quixotism has, but magical realism is an enduring element of contemporary culture. The juxtaposition of the normal and the absurd can, for example, describe much comedy. As such, García Márquez placed the real next to the surreal. It was story-telling with a splash of Dalism.

There was a common thread to these two literary greats' work. The absurd. A reason why Cervantes is still so meaningful today is that quixotism, the pursuit of impractical ideals that can lead to absurd consequences, might be used as a metaphor for certain political, societal or business aims. If one were being really harsh, one might describe the whole European "project" as quixotic. But then one would have to have a real downer on Europe in order to do so.

The death of García Márquez has been met in Spain with grief tempered with pride at his literary achievements. But though he attained a status to match Cervantes, for the Spanish there is one very crucial difference. He wasn't Spanish. He was a standard-bearer for the Spanish language and so therefore for the notion of "Spanishness", but having been Colombian he can't be claimed as Spain's own.

Placing Cervantes and García Márquez on a similar pedestal, one separated by over three centuries, should offer a pause for thought. Despite a rich literary tradition, Spanish has failed to produce novelists or other writers of genuinely global legendary status. Cervantes died, remarkably enough, only one day before William Shakespeare, just one writer in English among numerous others with legendary status. Germany has given several - Böll, the Brothers Grimm, Grass, Hesse, Thomas Mann. French has been about as prolific as English - Honoré de Balzac, Albert Camus, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile Zola, the list goes on.

Spain possessed global presence and the Spanish language still possesses global diffusion and usage. A one-time great power, criteria were in place for literary cultural export in the original language and in translation. Yet somehow, it never really happened in the sense that Spanish writers did not attain the reputations of those from other major European powers. I am trying to think of a good explanation as to why, but I'm struggling.

One conclusion might be that Spain, regardless of one-time empire and that global presence, was and remained on the cultural periphery in European terms. But if this was the case with written culture, the same can't be said for other artistic endeavours. In the last century alone, Spain provided three towering figures to the world of art - Dali, Miró and Picasso. It has also provided the greatest of all - Francisco de Goya.

Whatever the reason, it will probably not be being mulled over too closely on 23 April. Thanks to some clever marketing by Spanish book publishers back in 1923, the burial date of Cervantes was chosen to be the day of the book. It has since become a worldwide "day", having been adopted by UNESCO. That the day happens to also be St. George's Day is just a coincidence. But the Diada de Sant Jordi is as much to do with books - more so in fact - than a saint's day.

Almost inevitably, the day is a day to proudly promote a Catalan literary tradition that was, for so many years during the last century, buried by proscription. In Sa Pobla there is a special honouring of Miquel López Crespí, a native of the town, a writer, novelist, poet and historian.

López Crespí will not be a familiar name. It is certainly not one that has travelled round the world. Yet here is a remarkable man who as a teenager was arrested in 1963 and tortured because of his opposition to the Franco regime. In honouring him, there is an honouring also, thanks to Ramon Llull, of a literary tradition - one in Catalan - which predates Spanish tradition. As a man of literature, López Crespí will doubtless recognise the greats in Castellano - Cervantes and García Márquez. But he would doubtless also reflect on the absurd. Books, in whatever language, should not be proscribed.