Ep. 20D - The Spanish Influence: Interview w/ Juan Antonio Chica Sabariego

This fascinating interview dives into the history of modern Spain, and the influence of Spanish language and culture upon the United States. Juan Antonio Chica Sabariego is the head of the English Department at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas Sierra Morena, located in the Province of Jaén within the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. He discusses Spain's years of civil war and dictatorship under Francisco Franco, and the nation's transformation into a modern democracy during the 1970s and 1980s. We also talk about the occasional tensions that have developed between the USA and Spain, from the Spanish-American war in the late 19th Century to the War on Terror era of the early 21st Century. We conclude by providing some advice to North Americans interested in visiting Spain, and by pondering the increasing linguistic intermixing between the English and Spanish languages on both sides of the Atlantic.

Transcript

Logan: 0:00

From Boomers to Millennials is a modern U.S. history podcast providing a fresh look at the historic events that shaped the worlds of currently living generations of people. Welcome to Episode 20D of The Spanish Influence, an interview with Juan Antonio Chica Sabariego. We will allow our special guest today to briefly introduce himself.

Juan: 0:37

Hello. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. My name is Juan Antonio, as you said. You can call me Juan, actually. I was born in Andalucía. I'm a language lover, and that's why you're talking to an English teacher. I mainly studied linguistics during my academic career. We can consider theoretical and applied linguistics, for example, like translation or teaching English. And I also took a master's in international relationships with Africa. So I would say... My main domain right now is I'm an English teacher. I love languages and I keep studying them now. That's why I'm actually a teacher for the government. I also love history and that's why I think I'm invited here. Philosophy and literature.

Logan: 1:22

Yes, and to my listeners, I promise Juan is actually Spanish. Judging by his accent, you might think he was straight here from London because his English is so good. But I can confirm that I'm here in Spain working with Juan, and he is a native of Andalusia. He's also a very knowledgeable, well-read person who knows a great deal about Spanish history in addition to linguistics, which is why he's a great candidate to be a guest for our show. So to start out, Juan, I'd like to just ask you a little bit about your work here at what is called the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, or an official language school, which basically is here to help the citizens of Spain learn foreign languages. Why do you think it's important to assist the citizens of Spain in learning a second language?

Juan: 2:18

Well, that is actually a very interesting question and a very convenient question because what I'm working for right now is for the government, as I said before. And that means this is a public school. So usually we hear about public schools for kids or universities, for example, in Europe, but not so much in language schools. Actually, we are... As far as I know, there are only two countries in which they do that. One of them is Luxembourg, and we visited that last year because it was the only school like ours. And the other one is Spain. And this is where we start with a bit of history, actually. I think you're going to like it because in the 90s, it was late 80s or 90s, actually, the government, it was a socialist government, a very long-term government. socialist government. It was for 10 years actually. They bet on languages. They decided that Spain has to open to Europe. We had to open to the world and that's when they started creating official languages school for mainly German language, English language, and French languages, which are the languages that we're more familiar to in this context. So that's quite interesting. We were trying to decrease the autarchy that we were going through after the Francoism and the dictatorship. We also wanted to integrate in Europe, which was a very important thing, not only economically, but also with languages. And we also wanted to... I would say to go back to an old position of Spain in the world, which is always that it's been in people's minds, not in an imperialistic way, obviously, but to have a position in the world. And I think languages are quite important for them. And I think we're opening up to that. Spanish people like to compare themselves to everybody in Europe. If you compare us, or when we like to compare ourselves to Portugal, for example, we always say, oh, those Portuguese people, they speak a lot of English, they speak a lot of language. But right now, you can tell me that, Logan, there's a lot of people in the street speaking languages. I mean, you go here and it's true that maybe not everybody, but a lot of young people that already speak a lot of English.

Logan: 4:24

Yes, absolutely. And I think that probably the younger generations speak more English than the older generations. And I'm sure the AOE or EOI is a part of that. The acronym of our schools, yeah.

Unknown: 4:37

Yeah.

Logan: 4:37

You mentioned the term autarky, which is an English word but not one that is commonly used in everyday speech. So my understanding as to what you mean by that is there was a period in the middle of the 20th century, and we'll get more into the history behind it, further on in the conversation, but there was a time when Spain was kind of isolated from the rest of the world and the rest of Europe, economically and culturally. Is that what you're referring to by the autarchy?

Juan: 5:13

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's during Franco times or Francoism, I suppose. The Guardian, in English, people like to say. I don't know if that's actually the term in the States, but that's quite used among, how would you call it, Hispanics, which uses Spanish studies in England, for example. I think that was quite an Iberian thing, because while Hitler, for example, also believed in Ortegi or Mussolini, they had a lot of relationships between them and other people, whereas the Iberian Peninsula with Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain, they always believed that they could do without other people, which seems to be quite stupid because we didn't have enough energy or something. But just a curious thing, this isolation sometimes, it went beyond goods or produce. For example, I don't know if you know that the size of the train rails is different in Spain than rather than the rest of Europe. So that's why if you ever experience, if any of you come to Europe and you... You catch a train, for example, and you try to go from Madrid to Paris, for example, you have to stop in the middle of the frontier, which is either in the Basque country or in Figueras, which was where Dali was born. And you have to change trains because you have to change the rail is different from one country to another. Also, it also happens with the energy, for example, with the electrical energy. So it's not only we had, we've always had that sense of water key in many other countries. So although

Logan: 6:50

Spain is integrated in many ways to the rest of Europe, I guess it was just too costly to... change the width of the railroads

Juan: 7:01

to

Logan: 7:01

standardize them to the rest of Europe. So they still have to change trains when they cross the border. That's very interesting.

Juan: 7:07

Or the train has to change the trails.

Logan: 7:09

Great. So that's just a great example of how history continues to leave its impact upon even modern Spain in the 21st century. So I want to move on to history a little bit. And one thing, many Americans don't don't learn a lot about Spanish history. If my listeners want to write in and say otherwise, maybe there are some parts of the U.S. where they learn more, but from my experience, primarily we learn about the Age of Discovery, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, things like that. And to the extent that Spain comes up again, it just comes up briefly in this period. when the USA actually had a war with Spain in 1898. And it's slightly well known in the US, but to the extent that people know about it, they just know the story of future President Theodore Roosevelt charging down a hill to win a battle in Cuba. What many people don't know is about how that war also involved the US acquisition of not only the former Spanish colony of Cuba, which was semi-independent, but also gaining Puerto Rico and the Philippines as colonial territories, sort of the USA delving into an imperialism beyond its borders in North America. So from the Spanish perspective, which Americans rarely think about, this was kind of a disastrous experience because Americans took away the last of your colonies. So my question for you is, Are the Spanish people still upset with the Americans over that? Well,

Juan: 8:56

just before moving on to that, the last, it was not officially a colony, but the very last colony, there are two of them, and probably I'm getting into very muddy things here. One of them is, it was in Africa. Maybe American people don't know that we used to have one colony in Africa, which was Guinea Ecuatorial, whose capital was Malabo, and that was still Spanish during Franco time, and Occidental Sahara. If you open, I don't know if America, but if you open Google Maps and you go to Morocco, you would see it's divided into two. Well, that was our fault. The South, it was actually Spanish. Do we remember, do we hold a grudge against American people? I don't think so. I don't think many people can remember that we actually fought that war against the North Americans. What we remember, for example, from the Philippines is something called Los Ultimos de Filipinas. which were the last soldiers fighting in the Philippines. And in Cuba, much as you may can think, we actually don't remember the American side or all of that. We remember that we lost the colony. And we have a word for that. It's called el gran desastre, which is a great disaster because it was considered like the... There was a lot of money flowing back to Spain from those islands. So it was perceived as like a punch into the old empire. decrepit, coming to nothing empire. And people were taking, mainly intellectuals were taking them very bad. I believe it's one of the first examples of a false flag attack. That's the only thing I can remember. I don't know if you've got a... And that is something that you studied. I don't know if it's actually according to history. I don't know how that is told according to your perspective, actually.

Logan: 10:43

Well, from my knowledge... We can all have our theories, but the official line of American historians is, I need to set the stage a little bit. First of all, you have, as you said, Cuba being a colony of Spain that brought a lot of wealth to Spain. Indeed, yeah. The sugar cane. Yes. And so it was a very important colony for Spain. Spain hung on to a few islands there. the caribbean even after it lost most of central and south america and mexico and to independence movements in the early 19th century it hung on to these caribbean islands however by the end of the 19th century there developed an independence movement in cuba and there was uh sort of a war between the Spanish to regain control against the pro-independence forces that was getting increasingly violent. And the USA, in its sort of liberal paternalist imperialist role, as kind of policing further European imperial incursions into the Western Hemisphere, the US, it became kind of a celebrated cause among Americans. the North Americans, that

Juan: 12:06

the Cubans... Yeah, there was a lot of propaganda against the Spanish people back in those years. Yeah,

Logan: 12:11

absolutely. The Cubans were being oppressed by the Spanish, and the US sent a boat called the USS Maine that was kind of there to maybe intimidate the Spanish a little bit. And then there was an explosion on... the main and many people were killed i'd have to check the actual details of the casualties you know people were very angry and the new york sensationalist press really made a big deal of it. The assumption among the American public was that the Spanish had blown it up, that they had planted a bomb on it, and the treacherous Spanish had attacked us, and this was the last straw, and we needed to go to war with Spain. My understanding is most historical experts now say that what happened was just an accident that blew it up. I mean, the timing was very convenient because there were people in the U.S. who wanted a war. But because I don't have definitive proof of it, I can't say that the– and really, I mean, there was no CIA back then. So if anybody would be suspected of it, it's almost these newspapers, which were so powerful back then and were promoting this idea of a war. Yeah. But that was the thing that did it, that tipped it over, and there still became like this familiar phrase that goes down in the history books that Americans... would say, remember the Maine. Oh, really? Yeah, like remember the Alamo is another one. Ah, I see. Remember this, what they did to us. The treacherous Spanish did to us.

Juan: 13:54

I get to say that if we ask Spanish people right now in the middle of the street what they remember about the colonies, for example, I think we have a way more historical memory of all that happened, which is what we study in books, for example, but rather a feeling, a sentiment one which is quite attributive right now to extreme right winged parties right so I don't think Spanish people think a lot about this there was just one sentence that I want to bring over because I am a linguist and we still use a sentence making reference to those times is when something bad happens to you normally there's one person I mean mainly old people right now young people don't use it that much is meaning whatever is happening to you right now Cuba was worse for us, right? But I think that has fossilized completely. I don't think people are actually thinking about our beloved golden age in Cuba because nobody will have any recall of that right now. Although during Franco time, information of our situation was actually very controlled by the government, and we didn't know much about that. There was just one tiny thing that I wanted to add to all of these, is that that event triggered what we call the silver age of our literature. So the golden one was... I mean, now that you've got interviewing a very particular Spanish person, so I just hope your listeners can hear about that. But I have a very sad conception of my country because the two golden moments of my country was when the empire was actually decreasing. The golden era, which people may remember Cervantes and Don Quixote, was actually written when Spain was not going in a very good situation. We were going through a lot of wars. We were going through a lot of situations. Second one, which is when we lose the colonies, it was the same. I compare that idea to the one that you can see, for example, with the Ottoman Empire, where a lot of writers were very sad about that. And we had our best writers, or say, the ones you have to study at school, I don't know if people still read them, were coming straight forward from those years. So that's probably the ones.

Logan: 16:04

Some of the best literature then came in these periods of imperial decline. And yeah, if there's one Spanish writer who people in the USA have heard of, it probably is Miguel de Cervantes. And his book in the USA, it's usually rendered Don Quixote. Ah,

Juan: 16:24

Don Quixote. Okay. So he used the Spanish pronunciation.

Logan: 16:27

Yeah. Okay.

Unknown: 16:28

Yeah.

Logan: 16:28

but usually pronounced like I did, badly. No, it's just a different way of pronouncing it. I don't think that's wrong, so there's no problem. I'm glad to hear that we can move past our war over 100 years ago and move on to more recent relations, both good and bad, between our two countries. In the 20th century... The relationship between Spain and the USA evolved through some pretty big political changes in both countries. Can you talk a bit about that? dictatorship that existed in Spain during the middle of the 20th century. Because for your information, as you may be aware, our podcast starts at the end of World War II. And by that time, the dictatorship in Spain was already in place. And it was kind of the main fact of life of the Spanish state for the next three decades. So Can you talk a little bit about the dictatorship and how it shaped the nation's

Juan: 17:57

Brief touch on the civil war. There are many writers that do not consider that a war between fascism and democratic power. Some people try to explain that between poor people and the elite, which in the end aligned to fascism and the communists. But if you read about, for example, when the war started, it was very confusing. You have the government, which was the democratic government republican, in which you had right-winged people, left-winged people. But then you have the communists. Then you have the anarchists in many parts of Andalusia. You've got anarchists in many parts of Barcelona. Then you've got carlistas, which were royalists. They wanted to have back the king. Then you have Franco, who didn't want to have back the king. All of that together was a civil war. And then you have these supporting empires, like, for example, the Reich, who was trying to support Franco, Mussolini, who was trying to support Franco, and the USSR, who was trying to support part of the left-wing movement. So it was quite complex. But moving after that, Franco...

Logan: 19:07

Well, let me just set the stage a little bit, because I don't want us to go into a super deep dive into the Civil War, but just so people have an idea of what was happening. You had... starting in the 19th century, Spain was very politically volatile. And by the 1930s, you have a republic had come into power.

Juan: 19:30

Yeah, exactly. Second one.

Logan: 19:32

We already tried to have one in that very same century. Yeah. But if we talk about the past republic, people are going to get lost. So, yeah. So, by the 1930s, there was a republic in Spain, but there was... People in some parts of Spain who were royalists and monarchists, but especially within the military, there were people who did not like what the government was doing. And there developed a movement within the military to overthrow the Republic. One of the leaders who, well, he wasn't the original leader, but he emerged as the leader, was a general by the name of Francisco Franco. originally from Galicia in the northwestern corner of Spain. He became the leader of the forces that became, I think in English they're usually called the nationalist

Juan: 20:31

forces. Unfortunately, because a very important thing, I think I'm moving a bit ahead, but the most important thing is that since Franco won, and it was a very hard dictatorship, everything was deleted. So they called themselves the nationals, meaning national. No, they weren't given the coup. They call themselves the national, but I don't think that's what they call themselves.

Logan: 20:54

Right. So that's kind of buying into their... framing of it. And the other side, it's usually called the Republican forces, the ones defending the Republic. And as you said, this was a coalition of liberals, socialists, anarchists, communists. I think it kind of moved further to the left as the war went on, as the only ones who would support them were the Soviets. And meanwhile, you have, which is very important when thinking about this conflict's immediate as an immediate predecessor to the second world war you also have military forces of franco reaching out and getting support of fascist italy under mussolini exactly nazi germany under hitler which who even helped bomb some cities in spain one of those was famously captured by picasso and one of the most famous paintings in of the 20th century of

Juan: 21:58

Guernica. Curiously enough, my city was bombed by the Germans. Chaim was bombed by German aviation. I did not know that they got all the way

Logan: 22:07

down

Juan: 22:08

here to Andalusia. They did. In retaliation for something that the Republicans did to the other side, it was bombed and it killed a lot of kids, actually. But it coincided with Guernica, and Guernica was completely destroyed. It was bombed down, although I think many more people were killed in Jaén, which is where I come from.

Logan: 22:31

Well, under-publicized fact, but hopefully a few more English speakers are aware of that particular war crime, such as it is now that you've brought that up. So basically what ends up happening, and I'm sure you know that there were people from around the world who came to fight for both sides, especially the Republican side, including people from the United States, a group known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But at the end of the day, Franco ends up winning the war in part because entreaties to other countries for assistance by the Republic were not answered by Franco. I think the only two countries who supported it were Mexico and the Soviet Union.

Juan: 23:21

I always have to thank Mexico for whatever they did, because they took a lot of people. And this is something maybe American people can hear from it, because Mexican people and the Mexican government of Cardenas, they really took care of a lot of people. And actually, the president of the republic was captured in Vichy. which, unfortunately, he was with the Nazis. And when he died, he wanted to have his tomb in Spain, but he couldn't have that because Franco was here. And he has to be buried quite close to the border in the north. He was in the south of France. And they tried to put a flag, a fascist flag, on top of his tomb. And the Mexican ambassador said, decided to make our president Mexican so he could have a flag that it was not the fascist flag, it was a Mexican flag. So our president of the republic was actually buried with a Mexican flag. And the Mexican ambassador said, he turned one of the rooms of a hotel down there in part of a Mexican embassy so he could die in Mexican land. And he said, it is an honor for us to have a fighter of freedom. That's very interesting. So

Logan: 24:38

he was adopted as a Mexican citizen at the end of his life.

Juan: 24:42

Exactly. He's got the flag and he's been buried with the flag.

Logan: 24:45

In addition, so people should know that once the war was over, there were, and it was a very ugly civil war.

Juan: 24:52

Yeah, it was a very terrible one. Yeah,

Logan: 24:54

with atrocities on both sides. And once the war was over, there were massacres of people who had fought for the Republic.

Juan: 25:02

I think, and I think this connects with the dictatorship after the war that we were talking at the beginning of your question. I think that that is the key point. Franco decided to delete part of Spain and he did so. That's why I consider that my country has a very sad history because we did that with Jewish people in medieval times. Half of the people living here which were the Jewish and the Moorish, they were kicked out of the country. We did that with the liberals in the 19th century. Half of the population was kicked out of the country. And we did that with the Spanish people not so long ago with Franco. And

Logan: 25:44

just to circle back to what you just said about Mexico, my understanding is Mexico was one of the countries that took... People escaping who wanted to avoid getting executed by Franco's

Juan: 25:56

regime. Mexico, France, Argentina, those were the big countries that took a lot of people. Many of our main poets died there, for example, because you need to imagine a country that was completely emptied. by the Franco regime. They only considered that the only valid people were those supporting the dictatorship. So you had intellectuals, you have, that they all ended up in Argentina, for example. If you think about, we have actors like Margarita Chirgo or Federico García Lorca, which was a poet who was killed by the regime during the Civil War. He tried to get Some tickets to go to Argentina, but he died. You have Juan Ramon Jimenez, which is a Nobel Prize. If you Google him, you will find it's our Nobel Prize. He actually died in Puerto Rico. Buñuel, everybody may remember Buñuel, the film director. He moved to France and from there he went to Mexico and he spent a lot of time in Mexico. It was a very hard time. This country was completely emptied by any sense. And the only people living here were people that, intellectuals, supporting the regime. So Franco had complete freedom, which is quite an oxymoron, but complete freedom to turn the country into whatever he wanted to do. So now you need to imagine around 40 years later, of repression, 40 years of the only culture was a culture accepted by the regime. Literature was the one that the regime wanted. Films were the ones that the regime wanted. This country was shaped for 40 years out of the fascism. That we came out of that It's an amazing thing. Oh, it is. That's my

Logan: 27:36

main thing. Remarkable accomplishment that Spain has changed so much and became a modern democracy after such a long period under this authoritarian government. Just to kind of set the stage for what Franco's regime would be like, I want to circle back to the Civil War, even though we're a little off our outline. I want to... emphasize one thing that is often brought up in English language accounts of the Spanish Civil War, which is that you have a conflict that is sometimes oversimplified as kind of a urban versus rural kind of a thing, secular versus religious, and I think that's a vast oversimplification, but it was a war, as you mentioned, with a strong... class component, whereas the supporters of the Republic were often, and their leaders were from a more humble background generally than the leaders of the supporters of Franco's movement. And one thing that you read about is the attitudes toward the Catholic Church at the time, because there was Mm-hmm. Yeah. These beautiful churches being burned to the ground, priests being shot, basically for being priests. It's like, this is pretty extreme and it seems hard to justify, but there, and I'm not saying it, murdering people in any case could be justified in any case. But can you maybe, because this is something I've struggled to understand, explain why the church was so resented and why Why it was kind of seen, at least in that manifestation, as being something that was sort of deeply intertwined with sort of an oppressive ruling

Juan: 30:10

class. I don't think I have a clear answer for that. Because if we talk about church in Spain, we have to go back to very old times. Because for the people who are listening to us, you should not forget that in the 17th century, we still have Muslim people living in our country. So if you were the church, you were very belligerent. You were always fighting to get a lot of Catholics. They did so. We were a very Catholic country. Now, were we a very Catholic, structurally, like, clerical? Well, that was the word that I would use. I don't know if you use that in English, which is the structure of a church, like the pope, and then you've got all the power and structure of a church. We have a word for that. We were very anti-clerical.

Logan: 30:56

And one thing, people, think about... often in English-speaking countries, and some of this reflects, I think, a kind of anti-Catholic bias, but there's kind of a stereotype about a very authoritarian kind of almost fanatical Catholicism that people talk about the Spanish Inquisition and things like that. But the interesting thing is, actually, I've read that at the time of the Civil War, the stereotype would be, Spanish people are all super religious. But actually, at the time of the Civil War, church attendance rates were actually quite low.

Juan: 31:33

Well, because you always need to distinguish between people being very religious at their homes and people going to church. That's true. And in this country, this is a very splayed conception. There are two different things. It's quite different to America, I think. People here can consider themselves very religious, and they will never step into a church. And they still consider themselves very Catholic. Even as Catholic. Even as Catholic. But they don't go to Mass. I've heard many people around saying, I'm Catholic, I believe in God, but I don't like the Pope. Not this previous one, but previously. Or I'm Catholic. Yesterday someone told me that I'm very Catholic. I believe in my God, meaning our Lord, whatever. But I will never go to church. I don't like priests. So this is a very, this is running in our veins. And you have to picture yourself that during those, in that period of time, religion has had a very strong power because they control all the schools. There were no public schools. Public schools were done by the Second Republic, the government of the Second Republic, and it was completely, and they were completely destroyed after that. So Franco relied on public, two main points, main foundations. One of them was the party. Curiously enough, he uses a very communist words for that. He called it the party and the vertical union, el sindicato vertical, which was the only union allowed. That was one thing. And the second one was nacional catolicismo, the national Catholicism. During those days, because people tend to believe that the church completely aligned to Franco's And it happened so. But then Franco became a very, I would say, inconvenient ally. Because while the rest of Europe was still having democracy after that, after the war, Franco was still nominating the bishops here. This is something that only China does right now. So it was a very, very complicated ally for the church. But the church accepted him because they had a lot of power.

Logan: 33:44

So even, for instance, in the Vatican, there probably was some resentment of Franco for having so much control over the Spanish Catholic Church, control that the church would have liked to be more autonomous. But because of the fact that he had so much power and that he was independent, upholding a sort of status for his version of the Catholic Church. They didn't mess with the situation.

Juan: 34:11

The Franco motto was like, damn it, I forgot about that, luckily. But it was something like, only God and history will judge me. And Franco used to, every appearance that he did, it was under a pallium, which is what bishops and the Pope had. So Franco had a very... perverted relationship. And he tried to make us very religious in his own perverted way, which was a very obscure one, actually. I was just trying to check up while we were talking. We signed a contract with the Vatican in 1953 with Franco. And that contract is still in force. And in that contract, it says we will support the church with money, but the church will have teachers. They were giving a lot of power. And up to date, it's very difficult to break that contract because the Vatican doesn't want to because it's very lucrative for them. But back in those days, it was a way of being together. So I would say the word that you can use is perversion. Religion and Franco, they had a very perverted

Logan: 35:20

relationship. So when you use this word perversion, do you mean he kind of was using and twisting religion to his

Juan: 35:28

political project? It was obscure. It was smothering. It was a way of controlling people. It was a way of making women stay at their place, men being at the other side. It was a way of controlling people. That's why religion is so complex in this country.

Logan: 35:44

Yeah, I understand that you went from a period where in like the 1920s and 30s where only about 20% of the population went to mass to a period where... And you've read more about this than I have, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that in order to get a job, you had to get a letter from a priest.

Juan: 36:05

Probably,

Logan: 36:05

many times. For a woman, I think, particularly, to get a

Juan: 36:10

job. They need approval from a priest. Back when my dad was at school, it's not that far away. My dad is 60 right now. Back when he was at school, the first thing he did was saluting the flag, which was obviously a fascist salute. I would say saying Padre Nuestro, which is like praying. Well, I don't know. It's praying the main prayer that we do in Catholicism. And then everything revolved around that era. But you need to consider something. There was a saying that says the only three people that have value in the village is the priest, the doctor, and the teacher. And sometimes the teacher and the priest were the same person. So those were the most important people in any single village that you had in this country.

Logan: 36:51

Let's kind of sum up this first stage of Francoism. It's important to note that despite Franco being allied with these other fascist governments in Europe, Spain did not fight in World War II. And Franco was kind of busy cleaning out his enemies out of Spain and kind of consolidating his government.

Juan: 37:13

Just a curious

Logan: 37:13

thing, because

Juan: 37:14

we need to honor the memory of the Republicans. Spain did fight, but not as a country. The first colon that came into Paris, free in Paris, it was this Spanish one.

Logan: 37:26

Oh, really? And who were they?

Juan: 37:28

It was exiles from the asylum seekers from the Second Republic. They went because they believed if they freed Paris, if they freed France, France was going to free Spain. The Russians took a lot of kids. We call them the Russian kids. We're talking about a lot of kids going to the USSR. Actually, I was talking to a Russian friend the other day, and there was a very famous hockey player who came from a Spanish family, and they fought with the Russians in the Second World War. So there

Logan: 37:58

were Spanish volunteers who went to fight for the Allies,

Juan: 38:01

both

Logan: 38:02

amongst the British and the Americans on the Western Front and among the Soviets on the Eastern

Juan: 38:07

Front. And they used the Spanish Republic flag. They are considered a column from a country, but it was a country that was not existing anymore. In fairness, if we're

Logan: 38:15

going to mention them, we have to mention that there was a volunteer group that went to fight with the Germans on the Eastern Front, too, that were Spanish. Exactly.

Juan: 38:24

Sadly enough. But we need to mention, because there was the hope and the imagery of Republican exiles. They thought that if the rest of Europe was freed, Europe was going to free Spain. But that never happened because Franco did his job very

Logan: 38:43

well. So yeah, so can you kind of sum up a little bit this first stage of Francoism in the 40s and 50s?

Juan: 38:50

So during the 40s and 50s, this country was completely in tatters. There was nothing, nothing here. So Franco developed the country by trying to build up everything we had. It was an autarchy, so we were not receiving anything from it. And now you have to imagine the only friend we had around us was Salazar Portugal. And there was a moment in which Franco even decided to We knew because there were papers. He actually thought, we need to conquer Portugal because we don't trust Salazar. That never happened because we were completely destroyed. We had nothing. We were a very sad, poor country. Just

Logan: 39:24

for our listeners' information, Salazar was the... Portugal is also under a right-wing dictatorship, similar, maybe less extreme than the one in Spain. And its leader was named Salazar. Antonio Salazar. Okay, Antonio. I didn't remember

Juan: 39:42

his first name. Antonio Salazar, wasn't it? So after that, in the 50s and 60s, we call that como un regeneracionismo. There was a movement in which he tried to open up a bit to the country, mainly tourism. This is where we've got many ideas of, this is probably the idea that the rest of the world had of Spain, because that was where Franco tried to use. He used two main poles. They developed, sorry for using this world to the rest of my people, but civilized formal people, which were people from the north, the Basque people, and then the party, the flamenco dresses. the feria thing, which is probably what you ever imagine every time, the fans, the lights, Sevilla, which was the most leisure one. And that was the image that was portrayed to the world. This is what we call the... We were opening up a bit because we needed money. And this is the first time we started to have appliances or devices coming from other parts of the world and tourism, mainly in certain very regulated spots of the Spanish world. Like, for example... in the south in Malaga because that was reflected in films for example that was the first time we saw a bikini in our country and it was from Swedish girls and those Swedish girls appeared in films so we start to have Franco was starting to opening up and it is in that time in which I would say we were completely lost because the world bought Franco because it was very interesting

Logan: 41:13

so yeah just to provide some more context to this You see, and this is when my country comes back into it, initially after the war, before he died, Franklin Roosevelt, who was one of the most left-leaning presidents in U.S. history, the person behind the New Deal, which was kind of the start of a social welfare state in the USA, he, toward the end of the war, said some very negative things about Franco's government because he They were allied with our fascist enemy. But over time, very quickly, as the Cold War, which we've talked about on episodes of this podcast, how quickly the distrust grew between the former allies and we enter into this Cold War by the end of the 40s. And things very quickly change. It rearranged completely. Yeah. You have Operation Paperclip where the U.S. is sanitizing the Nazi history of certain German scientists so they can be brought to the U.S. to work for us. And likewise, all of a sudden, many right-wing forces, even fascistic forces that the U.S. was saying, these are enemies, we don't want anything to do with them, all of a sudden were like, we can work with them because... the communists were seen as the ultimate challenge. Exactly. And that opens the door to the U.S. having a more friendly relationship with Franco.

Juan: 42:44

It's quite curious because sometime after the Second World War, I suppose the states, but Europe decided they didn't want to have more wars. And to kick Franco out of this implied a very big war. So he stayed there during the autarkic period. We talked about the 40s and even part of the 50s. It was quite calmed.

Logan: 43:06

I want to say one more quick thing about the autarky because basically there was not much international trade. No, we didn't. Iberia was just trading within itself. And for any country... including countries today that might be interested in trying this approach. It did not result in huge economic prosperity for Spain. Not at all. Times were very tough. People who grew up in that era were less tall than people

Juan: 43:37

today. People tend to think that we're quite small because we didn't have food. Right now, people are quite tall, as you may have seen. Yes, it's a huge difference between

Logan: 43:45

the

Juan: 43:46

70-year-olds and

Logan: 43:48

the

Juan: 43:49

30-year-olds This is a very physical thing that you notice in a country at war. And this is that saddens me a lot to see the countries at war right now. I could see how my grandpa was very small, how my dad was a bit taller, and how I'm actually the tallest of the family. And that's very common. Because I've got free

Logan: 44:07

democracy.

Juan: 44:08

Very common here. It's very common, exactly. However, I'm just going to add a funny thing here is that we used to have our own cocoa. We used to have our own things and we still have them. Those trademarks are still Spanish ones because we need to have our own world in Spain. So while the rest of the world was importing chocolate from Brazil or chocolate from Africa, we have Guinea Ecuatorial, which used to be one of our colonies. So we imported our own chocolate from there. But it was a very, if you'll allow me the word, it was a very stupid vision of Spain because we couldn't produce our own energy. We couldn't produce many other things. But a very interesting thing is that you mentioned the States and how the States were quite tolerant, at least, with Franco. during the Cold War. But you don't have to go that far. Europe starts to be quite open to Franco. And this is what we have. I believe maybe American people don't know about Eurovision, but this is like a contest in which all the countries from Europe, they get together and they sing a song. They vote for the best song. We were invited to that. Actually, Franco, during Franco times, we won twice. And that was a way of opening up to Europe. to make ourselves, our image, softer into the world. And that was Franco's idea. And we were accepted to that. I noted down a couple of things. We also have many naval bases, I think you call them, right? This is where America decided to say, well, Franco's not that bad compared to Stalin or to any other person. So we started to have our own naval bases in Spain during Franco time. And my favorite story is the bomb bomb.

Logan: 45:46

Including, before we get into that, including, so even in a time before Spain officially joined NATO, which

Juan: 45:54

it eventually did. Sure, it was the

Logan: 45:57

82, 1982, at the end of Franco times. Even before then, they were allowing NATO and US military bases in Spain.

Juan: 46:06

Yeah, exactly. My favorite story is that one's that time in which America plane was flying and they dropped by accident a bomb in Spain in which is a very nice part. It's in the southeast. The Franco regime hate completely that it was a very atomic bomb. And he actually heard a lot of people from that area. But it was kept as a secret.

Logan: 46:31

Just so people aren't confused, the nuclear explosion did not happen. No, no, no, no, no. It never happened. It was just a nuclear leak, actually. Yeah, but the components of this nuclear bomb... fell and even though the device was not detonated, the components hit things and

Juan: 46:50

injured people. They were not the target either. No, it was an accident. It was an accident. They were overflowing the Spanish country and then sadly there was an error mistake, something dropped, but it became quite important because it was the first time that we noticed that and it leaked out the regime's hand. So everybody was talking about that.

Logan: 47:12

And I imagine even though they tried to cover it up to the extent that it received publicity, obviously it's going to make people question allowing

Juan: 47:20

the U.S. to be doing operations here. who was Fraga. Well, the name would say nothing to you, but he later on recycled himself and founded the right-wing party in our country. Just for you to get an idea of how things evolved. The post-Franco... Yeah, during democracy. The Partido Popular. Partido Popular, yeah. He was actually the founder, but he was the Ministry of Tourism with Franco. He had to take a bath where the bomb fell. to prove that there was no polluted water. No radiation. Exactly. So imagine how hard that was for Franco times.

Logan: 48:05

Yeah, very interesting. So yeah, if you can expound on sort of the late... Franco period. The

Juan: 48:11

late Franco period is quite interesting because you could start noticing that there is quite open. We started to have music coming from the rest of the world. We started to have a lot of things coming from the rest of the world. Franco was already quite sick. So we call them the popes, which is the elite of Franco time, which is something people shouldn't forget. Franco stayed in power for such a long period of time because there were people who were living very good. And those people were never the people, the common lay people. It was the elites. And the elites were getting very nervous because what was going to happen after that? And there was a series of maneuvers after that. And Franco decided to design a successor, which was not among his kids. It was actually the king, the actual king, the current king that we have right now, what we used to have right now. So

Logan: 48:57

this is just to remind people. Spain, like most European countries, had a monarchy. It was pushed aside for

Juan: 49:06

a republic. The last time we had a monarchy was beginning of the 20th century. Let's not forget about this. Spain was not a monarchy, a monarchy's country during the 20th century. We had two dictatorships, we had two republics, but we didn't have monarchy. A big thing with monarchy. But Franco thought it could be a good idea to reinstall the monarchy. But let's not forget, Franco was not a monarch.

Logan: 49:34

He was a dictator. He never declared himself king or anything. He was a caudillo,

Juan: 49:40

which is like the duche or the führer in

Logan: 49:44

Germany. Exactly. But in this case, he found someone from... The previous royal line, right? A very convenient, hereditary monarch to

Juan: 49:53

reinstall. Yeah. So that king, who happens to be Juan Carlos I, I meaning the first, that king was brought up to Franco when he was a kid, actually. And he was taught how to be a good leader for Spanish people following the precepts of the single party rule. the single union, the national Catholicism.

Logan: 50:17

So basically Francisco Franco from childhood was kind of mentoring Juan Carlos to be his successor. So much so that

Juan: 50:26

the king's father, the Juan, we call him an infant, meaning the heir to the throne, but he could never touch the throne because Franco said, not you, it's going to be your kid because I need to mentor, that's a good word, mentor the thing. So you need to imagine a very convulsing times at the end of that and then we were opening up people were looking for freedom because the rest of europe was full of freedom when franco died it was it was big i once remember one of my russian friends told me when stalin died my grandma was was crying and i asked my grandma why are you crying and she said is it because stalin died and she said no it's because i don't know what's coming after And this is pretty much what people were feeling here. What is coming after this? But it was Juan Carlos. And I invite people, Google, please, Juan Carlos. The first day he became a king of this country, the symbols behind his back are fascist symbols. It's not the Constitution, but the papers he was signing. They have the two-headed eagle, which is a symbol, one of the symbols. that he robbed from the past of Spain, Franco. And there was like a twist at the wheel, and the king decided to say, we're going to be a kind of democratic country. This is when we get into very funny things, because I think I told you a couple of days ago that we were talking about WikiLeaks, and there were some leaks, there were some cables that said that Kissinger visited Spain a couple of times, and he actually said, we need to control this a bit, because we don't want the communists to come back. We don't want another civil war right now that Europe is quite calm. And that's why everything was prepared. Luckily, it was for the best because it was a democracy that came after that. And so just to streamline that a bit.

Logan: 52:16

How much credit do you think? Juan Carlos deserves. I mean, sometimes the version of the story, and I think you've told me this is an oversimplification, but the idea that he wanted to just enjoy being this rich guy who would have this great life and be worshipped as the king, but he didn't want to deal with the governing. So he's like, let's let a parliament take care

Juan: 52:39

of that. It's very difficult. What we have right now is a story of what we want to be. And the transition, which is called the transition, is a period that we call the... From the dictatorship to the democracy, as we call it. It was a very complex one. If the civil war was complex, if the Franco time was complex, this was very complex. Because there were people from far wing, extreme people, who wanted to keep a dictatorship. We were... Along with, no, because the Soviet Union was still there. We were the only country with a dictatorship. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there was another one. But Portugal had their own revolution. A revolução dos cravos. The revolution of the flowers. And that was very nice. But we didn't. And when was that? That was a couple of years away before. I think it was 10 years before that.

Logan: 53:30

Before

Juan: 53:31

Franco died. We're talking about Franco died at the end of the... the 70s I

Logan: 53:37

think he died in 1975 and by the end of the decade you have a constitution and then there's a coup attempt in the early 80s so yeah, kind of take us through that

Juan: 53:48

so the thing is that after that we were moving towards a democracy, we had our parliament we opened up the parliament and we were discussing many things, we tried to have constitutions a very important thing is that in 1982 we signed our entrance in NATO But that was still under kind of a fascist regime. We didn't complete, complete. We were going little by little where we're doing the things. Then we reached democracy. We like to say that one day, the previous night, we went to bed in a dictatorship. And the next day, we wake up in a democracy. This is a joke that we have in Spain. So things were going okay. We had our first parliamentary. We call them the Congress. So we have our Congress election. And then one February, one day, one good day, it was not that good. There was this guy came and he attempted a coup d'etat. And he couldn't achieve that because the king... went out. I mean, people have to imagine the king, he's like the head of all the armies, but effectively he can never command anybody. It's not like in the States. But he came out and he says as chief. Commander, I demand them to stop and not keep attempting the coup. So instead of backing the coup, the king came out and said... He rejected that. This is where the leaks... This is where everybody was saying that he received a lot of pressure from Europe and he received a lot of pressure from America. They said, let's not get in those things again. During those days and previous days and after those days, a lot of people were kicked in the streets. Because the far-right movements were killing people because they wanted to still have the Franco times. But in the end, little by little, we kept moving. And then after the mid of the 80s, we started to have a socialist government. Yeah,

Logan: 55:41

let me jump in and just kind of lay out modern Spain because I did an episode on the recent... German elections and gave a little overview of the different political parties. So real quick. So once Spain moves into democracy in the 80s and 90s, you get two main parties, Partido Popular, the People's Party or Popular Party, which is generally center-right, although it did have some of these people who were under the A big amount of people, actually. And then you have a party called...

Juan: 56:21

Partido Socialista.

Logan: 56:22

Partido Socialista... De obreros.

Juan: 56:26

Es Partido Socialista Obrero Español.

Logan: 56:27

Español. So this is, that would be translated, I guess, as the Socialist Workers Party of Spain. Exactly. Which sounds very radical to an American ear. Is it? That's it? Yeah, it sounds like Bolsheviks to

Juan: 56:41

socialist workers. That is the oldest party that we have in Spain.

Logan: 56:45

And it does go back to some of the socialists of the Republican era. But today they're like a pretty normal, like center-left party, right? I would say rather center-left. Center of the left, but yeah, quite central. If not just center, centrist. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so after the coup in the 80s, the socialist government, like a center-left government takes over and you really see kind of the final phase of transition into democracy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Juan: 57:13

Well, the socialist party, you have to imagine that America was quite, The United States didn't trust Europe because we're very communist and socialist back in those days. You only have to imagine Italy, for example. Italy is the only one.

Logan: 57:28

Okay. Of course, we have to divide out. And the same with what you said about Spain being one of the last dictatorships in Europe. We have to remember that you had Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain, which was under dictatorship. That's why I corrected myself. But then from an American perspective, even Western Europe, you have democratic socialists, social democrats of various stripes that are maybe even even though they're not the authoritarian communist boogeyman they they still are seen as little suspect by the american capitalists that they are not trusted so much i think that's kind of what you're getting at right

Juan: 58:07

yeah but you need to imagine for example that um the um communist party and i'm i'm not referring to socialists the actual communist party they almost made it to power And America

Logan: 58:21

boycotted a lot of things. So this is what you were mentioning with the Euro-communism, which was kind of a different type of communist party in the part of Europe that was west of the

Juan: 58:33

Iron Curtain. This is very clearly, when the Soviet Union was becoming very radical in the views, many communist parties decided to stem off from that branch. And this is what we call the Euro-communism, or Euro-communismo, because it was anytime And it was the Italians they actually wanted to do that because the communism was very, very extended in Italy. So was in France. France was these close to get a communist party in power. But let's say magically things revolved. American culture was very prominent. And then little by little, the communists were having less and less and less presence in the Congress. And

Logan: 59:14

it has to be said that... And we talked about this on the podcast in late 1940s, the US played a strong role in trying to prevent those big communist parties in France and Italy from taking power, even being allowed to participate, be given ministries in a coalition government.

Juan: 59:33

Exactly. They were very, they were strong together. But you need to imagine now a country, but back to Spain, in which the president, he was a socialist president, a very, let's not forget that in the the foundations of the PSOE, which is the socialist party, the word Marxism appeared. But during those 10 years with the socialist president, the word Marxism was removed from the foundation texts. So just for you to imagine how there was a clear movement towards social democracy, actually. Yeah. Which is probably, I would say, the main pillar back in those years in Europe. So during those days, the socialist president actually shaped the country. as it is nowadays. We entered the European community. We entered all the international treaties, WHO. We entered the part of the United Nations, other parts. We entered many other things. And, but there was a tiny thing that I would like to comment on that, which is the referendum against the NATO. In 1982, we were part of NATO. In 1985, we had a referendum against NATO because these socialist presidents promised when he was elected that we were going to get out of NATO. And this links with an idea that probably you're going to ask me. You've been asking me about what Spanish people think about Americans and what is our relationship since we talked about that war. And now it's a very complex one again. Spanish people back in those days and the left parties, they didn't like Americans. Because for them, that implied war, and that implied a very imperialistic approach to the world, that it was totally against that. So they were not from the USSR. They were not supporting the Soviet Union. But this Euro-Communism was very anti-American. Well,

Logan: 1:01:23

in particular, I think, from my understanding, and some of this is a general opposition toward US Cold War militarism, going back to criticism of the US role in the Vietnam War For example, it may be that. South America. Of course, yeah. But maybe that concern goes down a little after the departure of Nixon and the U.S. retreat from Vietnam. But there's a huge flare-up in the anti-American sentiment, at least among the people on the left in Western Europe when Ronald Reagan comes to power and Margaret Thatcher comes to power in the U.K. because they're seen as kind of saber-rattling people. pushing toward a potential nuclear war with the Eastern Bloc. They're much hated in

Juan: 1:02:12

Europe.

Logan: 1:02:13

I'm sorry to

Juan: 1:02:13

say that. Thatcher and Reagan, they're not loved in Europe. And I would say even central parties, they try to avoid that feeling because they don't like those figures. Their theories are quite controversial for us. But the thing is, you need to imagine there is those years in which we have this socialist party. He actually changed completely his mind. So we open up to the euro coin, we open up to the I can tell you light stories of people from my neighborhood, from my own family, who voted for this man as a socialist, and then they stopped voting him because they thought he became a right-wing. Okay, again, in American and European terms, they're completely different. You need to imagine how my family was probably aiming at a social democracy, and this person was getting more and more central. And this centralism was perceived as right-winged in this

Logan: 1:03:02

part of Europe. How do you feel about that? Because in Europe, there are what we call Euro-skeptics, both on the far right and the far left, people who think the EU is either violating national sovereignty for parties on the right or that they are... maybe like a neoliberal kind of entity on parties on the left. But I mean, from my point of view, and I've never asked you your opinion about things, and of course I have to tell my listeners that, which should be obvious, but just as a disclaimer, that Juan's opinion is not the same as every Spanish person. No, of course, that's the first thing. Of course it doesn't happen. I'm a very particular Spanish. From my point of view as a student of European history, as As an outsider, I have my criticisms of the EU. NATO is a separate issue, but the criticisms of the European Union and the Eurozone, and you went through the Eurozone crisis after the Great Recession in the 20th century. So there are all kinds of potential problems there. But at the same time, I think it has to be acknowledged that if you look at European history, this period, for all the problems of the EU, there has been more peace and prosperity.

Juan: 1:04:22

This is probably the best thing that has happened to Europe.

Logan: 1:04:26

Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, although I'm I think there's certainly room for reform. I would be very concerned about what would happen if the European Union went away tomorrow.

Juan: 1:04:37

Yeah, well, just two quick things and just to finish that thing. And I stick to what you say about the European Union. I promise I'm going to answer to that. So I'm not avoiding the topic. But the thing is, you need to bear in mind that this country was built by the Socialist Party. And then the cherry on top was the money from the European Union. We have roads. You've been here. Every single road, every single airport, every single infrastructure that is important to this country has been built thanks to the European money. And for me, that's the best thing of the European Union, which is we build peace. And I hope it's carried on like that forever. Because this is what makes me feel that I'm a very proud European, even if I am very critical of the European Union. So this country was born in there. And now you need to, I want the listeners to imagine that sad country, obscure country with religion. It changed completely. We have people from everywhere in the world coming here to have tourism. These people from the elite, the new elite, was called the happy people. But we use the word, the happy people, they say in Spanish, because there were these people who were opening up to the world. This very president was the one that thought we need languages in schools because we need to open up to other things. Marbella, the south of Spain, Barcelona, the Olympic Games, the Universal Exposition in Sevilla. We open up to the world and we were telling the world, we are very nice.

Logan: 1:06:04

Yeah. I'm sure many of my older listeners will remember, but just as a refresher, in 1992, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Barcelona, Spain. And that was kind of seen as, I think, a sort of coming out party for democratic Spain.

Juan: 1:06:18

There is a very few examples of how the Olympic Games, we can talk about the politics of Olympic Games, how Olympic Games have improved a country. Spain is one of them. Everybody, every single country after Spain was looking for the Barcelona effect because it completely changed Barcelona and it completely changed the country.

Logan: 1:06:41

But in most of those cases, they lost money on the Olympics and it didn't actually help the country for the long term, but it actually seemed to help Spain. And you also see, so you have economic growth in general from this integration with Europe and tourism, you have more money coming into the country. Just to ask a question, quick question I hope doesn't get us too far off track but I'm curious you mentioned how under Franco you maintained like a pretty hierarchical society where Franco would help out his friends who were elites and I know that even under the Socialist Party there continued to be some issues with corruption and people having special ties but was there any ability to kind of Well, I don't want to be conspiratorial about it. I mean, we can look at it from that point of view. But just in terms of the everyday Spanish person, something like the Escuela Oficial de Idioma system, things like that, to what extent was there public investment in things that... created greater opportunity and equality economically and even opportunities to become involved in politics and things like

Juan: 1:08:00

that for regular Spaniards. As we're getting closer to my time, obviously it's more difficult for me to talk from an objective historical point of view and I talk more from a personal point of view, but I do believe this country had a plan and that plan was to become better. I certainly believe so. I don't think A lot of people from the totalitarianism time, and I use the word with knowing that, camouflaged into democracy, and we still have them. But hey, if that was for the good, maybe that's the toll we have to pay. Because 15 years ago, listeners, this was a totalitarianism. This was a complete dictatorship. So it's very difficult to remove. And also, would it be fair to kill half of the Spanish people even if they are fascist? just to have another country and another democracy? Wouldn't that be what Franco did? I think in a spirit of a better world, this country opened up and said, guys, we have to carry on. And I truly believe they did the best.

Logan: 1:09:05

And even if that meant that not everyone involved in the old regime was completely marginalized...

Juan: 1:09:11

Or punished. We are starting now to punish people. We are starting now to... refresh all those ideas, to go back to them and think about that. And I think that's very healthy. And we have to carry on like that. But I also think it was very healthy what people did, which was like, we need to look into the future. But this country was built up completely by my parents' generation. So they had everything. They could do whatever they want. So that's it. Answering for the European Union thing. It's true that after the crisis, Okay, Spain changed color. They went for the right, like a central right, as you said. It was José María Aznar. Probably you don't remember him, but we do remember you because he was quite a friend of George W. Bush. And he opened up to the, like, I would say... He was a very liberal politician, and he was very liberal in economic terms. He privatized many things. Maybe for you it's not that strange, but for us, it's very strange that he did all of that.

Logan: 1:10:10

Yeah, so just for my listeners, a reminder that liberal in an American context is sometimes used as synonymous with progressive or even left, whereas in Europe, typically liberal is kind of... centrist or even center-right, kind of pro-business, pro-privatization, things like that.

Juan: 1:10:31

So after that, we have what we call, there was like an economic bubble. In economic terms, we put all our money on building things. That's why we call it the brick bubble. And all that money was put on building things for tourism. We relied a lot on tourism. And after the big crisis in 2008, Until 2016, roughly, it was eight years or even 10 years, these countries had a drawback economically. And this is where Euro-excepticism started to build up.

Logan: 1:11:03

Okay, well, so back to Aznar. He went along with Tony Blair and George W. Bush. He supported the decision to invade Iraq after 9-11, even though Iraq was not in any way involved in the 9-11 attacks. And... Were Spanish troops sent? Yes. And then there was a terrible terrorist attack, and it was widely perceived that Spain was targeted because they had joined in this war on terror, and it led to kind of a backlash against the center-right government. Maybe you can expand on that a little.

Juan: 1:11:42

Yeah. Well, we always have this feeling. You know that up to date, the attack that has caused more conflict casualties in Europe. That one, the one that we had in Madrid. It was a bomb in a train. We always have that feeling that we were a peninsula because the rest of Europe didn't say anything about us because they thought it was other things.

Logan: 1:12:02

I do remember the... It was very hard for us. It was even covered in the States.

Juan: 1:12:07

And it changed completely the mind of people. And this is where I would say there was a second wave of anti-American feelings in Spain because we were against the war. Everybody will remember in this country, no a la guerra, which is no to war. We were very against the war.

Logan: 1:12:21

Yeah, I remember reading at the time, opinion polls of countries. And, you know, France famously opposed U.S. involvement in the war, as did Germany. And France received a lot of heat over it in the U.S. at a time when there was this kind of post 9-11 outburst of like kind of fanatical patriotism. And they

Juan: 1:12:45

changed the name

Logan: 1:12:48

of the French fries to Freedom Fries. There are all these jokes made about the French. But I remember reading a poll of Europeans and the Spanish population was just as opposed, like 70, 80% as the French were.

Juan: 1:13:02

Because that was perceived like a very pernicious attack on us. And we never wanted that war. No one in Spain believed in that. And when we were hit by that attack, we suddenly realized that we didn't want to be part of the war. I think my

Logan: 1:13:23

country would have had the opposite view. If we're a victim of a terrorist attack, we're even more enthusiastic about revenge and war. But Spain took a different attitude. They got dragged into something that was not their fight, not a just war. And then it was causing blowback in the form of terrorism. And the attitude, I think, was why we never should have gotten involved

Juan: 1:13:47

with this. Yeah. If I can tell you something about my country that makes me feel very proud is that after all the several jihadist attacks that we have had, we have never become anti-Arabs because we don't believe that Arab or Muslim people are doing that. It's just people and violence, and that could be anywhere.

Logan: 1:14:04

So for people who don't know, well, hopefully most of my listeners are aware that Spain is right across from Morocco, for example. We had the very long story of formerly Muslims and that parts of Spain spent hundreds of years under the rule of Muslims. So you have this long history there. Certainly, there is some. There's Islamophobia in Spain. There's a far-right party now that is not... one of the major parties, but has gained some popularity that talks about things like a need for a new reconquista to try to fight Islam, which is this anti-Islam stuff you see putting anti-migrant sentiment out there all across Europe. So there are very common ties between these groups in different countries. But as a general rule, I think I would agree with you that there isn't this kind of national attitude that the Arab countries are enemies. I think Spain has good economic ties with countries in North Africa, for example. Is that the case?

Juan: 1:15:11

Yeah, exactly. We have Morocco. We have a lot of relationship with Morocco. We also have a lot of relations with Algiers. With Saudi Arabia, we build the trains of Saudi Arabia. Qatar, we have a lot of relationship with them. But even, sorry to get back, but Franco times... The first column that attacked even the civil war was the Moroccan one, because that was a part of Morocco that was part of Spain back in those years. The Saharan, the Western Sahara that I was talking about before. So Franco was against Israel. This is a very pro-Palestine country, and you would see that in the streets. You would see a lot of flags. The only time we were not that much is with Aznar. but because we were aligning to this American George Bush thing. But even then, we never, never said anything against Palestine. So it's like in our DNA, because we're mixed up with these people a lot. So it's a narrow conception, all those things.

Logan: 1:16:11

So let's talk about the European

Juan: 1:16:15

Union. Yeah, and then you have the brick bubble, I think. Yeah, we had the brick bubble and that brick bubble changed completely the conception of Europe. But then little by little, people were becoming more pro-European. I think the pandemic has helped a lot because we felt that we were much helped by that. Yeah. And I think even far left parties understood that they have to play within the European Union. So they no longer want to get out of the European Union. What they want is to change radically the European Union.

Logan: 1:16:45

Okay. And in giving this overview of modern Spanish politics, we would be remiss if we don't at least mention... the issue of sectionalism, that there are separatist movements in the Basque country and Catalonia. I don't want to get too deep into this, but I just want to acknowledge that this issue exists.

Juan: 1:17:04

Since my country existed as a country, we have always had these tensions. This is part of us. This is always going to be with us. What can I tell you? I can tell you very easily one thing, one idea. During medieval times, we were never one country. Actually, it was reflected with the words. We were los reinos, el reino de las Españas. We were not only one Spain. We were the kingdom of many Spains. We were very happy. We were frolicking with the Habsburgs because we could, everybody of us could have their own kingdom, but we were under one monarch. But then the French, as usual, came. They gave us a king, a Bourbon. Okay. And that king was very centralist. And that's where all the problems went back to normal.

Logan: 1:17:51

And just for my listeners, this was under Napoleon in the early 19th century. Napoleon invades Spain.

Juan: 1:17:58

No, no, no. That was a bit before.

Logan: 1:18:00

Oh, so there was an earlier French occupation. Our kings were actually Habsburgs. Was this under Louis?

Juan: 1:18:05

Yeah. Okay. It was Louis XV. He sent us one of his, I can't remember, I think it was some of us. And then from that moment on, our royal family, it was from France. French origin, not from Austrian origin. And the Austrian were very good at accepting all the kingdoms. But the French family was very centralist. And that's where many problems started. And from the

Logan: 1:18:27

Habsburgs ruling Spain, who were less centralist to the Bourbons. Being more centralist. And that's the tensions that started a lot. You do have various movements. There are still many of the minor political parties are sectional or separatist, wanting more autonomy for Basque Country or more autonomy for Catalonia. Those are the two biggest ones. And there was...

Juan: 1:19:21

Pretty brutal terrorist

Logan: 1:19:23

movement.

Juan: 1:19:24

In Catalonia, there was also terrorism in Basque Country, which is probably the most well-known.

Logan: 1:19:28

Yeah, ETA was

Juan: 1:19:29

the name of the group. Maybe we can do a single program on that if you want, because it's quite complex to talk about all of that. But yes, it exists. It will always be here. Recently, you may have seen Catalonia trying to separate. It has always happened because we are many countries in one country. We speak many languages, do in democracy. We granted a lot of rights to people. to their language, to their culture. And that shows because people speak their own language, people have their own culture, but they still want to have more, I wouldn't call it freedom because we're free under the country, but maybe they call it like that. Maybe we need to have their opinion. But what they actually want to have is more independence in their political affairs, in their economic affairs, et cetera, et cetera. The Basques are quite calm right now. The Catalans are quite calm right now, but it will come in waves. Andalucía even tried to have a successionist movement. So this is in our DNA as much as any many other things, Logan.

Logan: 1:20:25

The future is unwritten. So that's one thing people visiting Spain should be aware of is there are these big regional differences and that Spain is fairly decentralized. There's a lot of power to the regional

Juan: 1:20:38

governments. It's almost like a federal

Logan: 1:20:40

country. They even call them autonomous communities. They kind of are self-governing under the umbrella of this federal government in Madrid. That brings us into the final stretch here. For people from North America who want to maybe visit Spain, should they come here, what will they learn by studying its language and culture? How will they be perceived?

Juan: 1:21:05

Okay. Well, first of all, you're never going to be hated because I don't think that's a problem with us. You may have probably heard about these demonstrations against tourism, but basically, But that's because structurally our country is based on tourism and it's becoming to give us a lot of problems because, for example, access to housing is becoming very difficult because everything is reserved to tourism. I mean, the first thing you need to think, I know a lot of Americans because there is a community of Americans in Granada that I talk to. You need to be quite open because this is a very, as you may have said, this is a country within a lot of countries. People have their customs and it's pretty much similar. Like when you go to anywhere else in the world, people like to have their customs respected. People like to be asked questions, but people wouldn't like... I think I noted that down because I think it's a very important thing. You may notice big differences. We don't have a culture of abundance. Our supermarkets are tiny compared to yours. And we like it. I know you may expect you're going to have a lot of products. We don't have them. We're very happy with a few things we have. Sometimes we don't even need any more. More and more coffee shops are opening. But people like to have their coffees with the noises, talking to their families, talking to their friends. And changing all of that sometimes are very disrespectful. So what I believe is, and what I'm seeing right now, is a lot of dialogue between tourists and Spanish people. So the best thing you can do is try to ask for the culture of every part of Spain, because you're going to love it. And if you respect it, and if you add things from your culture, and if you see other things and you enter into that dialogue, I think that's going to be for the best for my country and for you.

Logan: 1:22:44

Do you recommend that Americans visiting Spain try to learn some Spanish first? Por favor.

Juan: 1:22:52

Please. I speak English and I'm Spanish. I also speak French. When I go to France, do your best. It doesn't mean they have to speak. We are very grateful people. As long as we hear some five words of Spanish, we're always going to tell you, you're a very good Spanish speaker because we're pretty much like that. But it's very nice to open up and to try to learn.

Logan: 1:23:12

And people should know that this is not No, people are not going to speak English

Juan: 1:23:35

there. We have a lot of American people that have decided to move in here right now. Because things. And we have a lot of American peoples. And what we are seeing right now, and I think that is creating a very critical opinion against Americans. And I'm not saying that in any disrespectful way, of course. It's that a lot of people are coming here and they're just trying to buy houses. They use American money, which is, well, you can tell me, Logan, American money here... Not recently, because it's become decreasing the value, but it's very valuable here. The buying big, large quantities of apartments or houses, just making their own houses if these were... in the middle of Texas, in the middle of whatever.

Logan: 1:24:26

Yeah, well, in the quick interest of fairness, and I'm not usually the knee-jerk defender of Americans, but we're not the only guilty party here because even within the Eurozone, in other parts of Europe, the salaries are much higher. And for instance, Germany. And so the money goes a lot farther here, can buy more here. So it's... British people, American people, people from other places who come here and use the fact that they have higher incomes to buy big houses, which drives up the cost

Juan: 1:25:05

for

Logan: 1:25:05

the

Juan: 1:25:05

locals. That's the thing, what I'm trying to say. Just bear in mind that with everything that's happening right now, for example, if you go to a city like Granada or to a city like Barcelona, it's becoming very difficult for local people to live in there. And the color of cities is getting lost. And sometimes when we migrate to other countries, we want to take our country with us. But that makes it very difficult for other people to leave. Okay. Because right now people are getting kicked out of Granada, for example, because they don't have money to rent an apartment.

Logan: 1:25:37

So this is basically what we call in the U.S., and you may use the same word here, gentrification,

Juan: 1:25:43

essentially. It's a gentrification, yeah. And I'm talking about the Saints of America's Because in Grinnell there are many and I live there with my partner. But that's not negative. I think that's bringing another culture and that's very good. But just bear in mind of the consequences that that could happen. So think twice. Try to always meet a Spanish person if you came here to live. Try to always have Spanish people so you can know their problems and you can share problems with them. And you can know their actions can affect you, your actions can affect them. That's the only thing I'm telling. I'm not telling people not to come, of course. I

Logan: 1:26:19

want everybody to come. Luckily, I happen to live in a village right now where I'm teaching, where there's not a big problem with

Juan: 1:26:31

gentrification. We would probably gentrify this, but no. But apart from that, I would say learn a bit of Spanish. mix up with Spanish people because that will give you a whole different landscape of the world. and of the world here. And that will help people understand you better and you understand people. And that's it. That's the only thing I would say. I don't think people came with very bad ideas. So that was no problem.

Logan: 1:26:54

So yeah, learn the culture. Sorry if I have offended someone. No, I think what you say is quite reasonable if you're going to and behave with a sense of responsibility about how your actions have on the local population. And remember, When you come to another country, whether it's temporary or permanent, the responsibility is on you to adapt to your new environment and not expect them to adapt to you.

Juan: 1:27:24

Eventually it will happen. I always believe that the beautiful part of migration is that it changes everybody completely. But it needs to be a dialogue. And if we can make the power best, that's very good to do because we can understand other people. So I hope I'm not offending any American who's listening to these guys. You're very nice. I'm just telling you now that I have the chance of explaining that thing, how some people may perceive this situation.

Logan: 1:27:52

Very interesting. In our last 10 minutes or so here, I... I wanted to give this episode a short, punchy title, so I called it The Spanish Influence. We've talked a lot about the history and some of the interaction between the US and Spain and the emergence of modern Spain. I want to talk briefly about the Spanish influence on North America. The biggest single influence that Spain has given and this is mostly in the modern sense through its cultural descendants in Latin America, which are, of course, mixed with other cultures, indigenous cultures as well. But the biggest Spanish influence is language and some aspects of culture through Latin America. You pointed out recently a fact that may shock some Americans, which is that there are more native Spanish speakers in the United States today than there are in Spain.

Juan: 1:28:51

Exactly. Right now, I think the lead is Mexico. The United States is getting very close. And in a couple of years, guys, you're going to be the country with the biggest number of Spanish speakers in the world. And I think that's a big responsibility on you now. Because unlike us, which are a very tiny country now compared to Spanish speakers, if you compare to Argentina, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, we're very tiny. We're not that many. Of course, Mexico, it's a massive amount of, I love Mexican people. You're very nice and you speak very nice Spanish. So, but yeah, and I think that, I think I told you, I wanted to speak about that because for example, Spanglish, which is how we call that, which is that mixture of Spanish and English is becoming very interesting and it's drawing the attention of a lot of researchers on Spanish language because English comes from that. I think we've taught that several times in class. English language is a mixture. It was an Anglo-Saxon language branching from Germanic languages. And then, sadly, the Franque, which was called a Frankish language. It was kind of French, but not still French, mixed up with English in Brittany, in the northwest part of France. And then it jumped over France. Great Britain, which is the other one, okay, which is the English one, and then English was transformed completely into a new different language. That's why if you compare English to German and English to French, sometimes it's closer to French than it could be to German, even in certain words. And just so

Logan: 1:30:24

our listeners have a sort of statistical sense of it, my understanding is even though some of the most basic words in the grammatical structure come from that old Anglo-Saxon origin Exactly. Right. We have more words from Latin languages than we do from Germanic languages, even though we are classified as a

Juan: 1:31:05

Germanic language in English. The way English language behaves is also kind of Roman. So I would say very dare some linguist would even say English is a very strange Roman language. But I'm not supporting that.

Logan: 1:31:20

But

Juan: 1:31:21

you can argue it's kind of a hybrid. Exactly. And that's my point, Logan. Spanglish is a hybrid. You go around Mexico and you hear people speaking English because they have gone to the States. They have family in the States. If you talk to Mexican people in the States, if you talk to American people there, if you talk to second generation Mexicans that are already Americans, they mixed up English and Spanish. And soon enough, we'll have something very radical to look at. Would that be a Creole? Would that be a kind of a pigeon thing in families that it's evolving? Would it standardize? Would it be something that would be, that it would move that of what it is, which is quite anecdotal. We don't know, but it's very nice to look at. And even if you go to Mexico, or even if you go to the States, or even if you talk to Spanish speakers, we use English more and more. So it must be a very nice and interesting way if you've got American listeners, if they are there, they can keep an eye on the Spanish they hear, the English they hear, and the mixture that they hear. Because I think that's going to give, according to my own humble opinion, a lot of value to your country too.

Logan: 1:32:24

Exactly. Exactly. Even in Spain, you have, although it's divisive popularity of reggaeton music from the Caribbean, even here in Spain, and even in the United States becoming more popular. So you're seeing this greater influence of Latin America in the United States. And I think stretching back much farther in Spain, because you speak the Spanish language, you've read Latin American writers and everything for years. But in the US, you're seeing a much bigger Latin American influence that may surpass the influence of Spain specifically. But

Juan: 1:33:07

many of the reggaeton singers, for example, or reggaetoneros, many of them have lived in the United States. So they speak English. They use English words. Puerto Rican people. Of course. When they sing, it's a beautiful thing listening to them singing because you've got Bad Bunny, for example, and you hear them singing and it's a beautiful mixture of Spanish and English. They use the word, for example, janguear, which is to hang, to hang about, to hang around with people. And we already have incorporated that. thanks to reggaeton and thanks to Puerto Rico. So that's fascinating. For a linguist like me, that's a fascinating thing.

Logan: 1:33:43

So that's... Taking like the sort of phrasal verb in English, like to hang out and incorporating it into a Spanish infinitive verb. people with certain status or from certain countries with the idea that there's going to be this huge rollback of immigrants. I want to remind my listeners that even if the current government does incredibly punitive things and deports millions of people, they will not eradicate Latin American influence in the United States. The influence is irreversible. It goes back a long way historically, and it's only gotten stronger right now. And this has mostly happened over the past 60 years. We've gone from probably like 5% Hispanic Latino to closer to 20% Hispanic Latino in the USA, including almost a over 40%, getting near a majority in some states like California, Texas, New Mexico. And there's so many families that are mixed between Anglo and Hispanic. So there's no way that you can make that influence go away.

Juan: 1:35:15

If you allow me, and that would be my last thing, there is a singer called Jorge Drexler, and he's got a song with Caetano Veloso, which is a Brazilian. And the song is called Bolivia, and it talks the story of Jorge Drexler. His family was born in And during the ghetto of Warsaw, the family was expelled by the Nazis. And the only country that accepted him was Bolivia. And the song talks about how... It's very nice. I actually recommend everybody to look for this song. It's in Spanish, but you wouldn't have any problem translating that. At the end of the song, it says, the paths that we take in our lives, we believe is a one-way path. But sometimes they get transformed into a double-way path. They come and they go. Because that's what history is. Like a whirling... How do you call those doors that actually move like a round?

Logan: 1:36:03

Revolving doors.

Juan: 1:36:04

Like a revolving door. And as soon as you get in, you think you're going to get in a pod and you're going to get in another one. We will never know how we're going to be. We used to be immigrants in Spain and now we're receiving immigration. Yeah, it's

Logan: 1:36:17

so fascinating. And it's also worth thank you for your comments on history, because there's a concern in my country about growing tendency toward authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. And so it's also encouraging to hear the story of Spain, despite its many current problems economically and otherwise of a country that overcame a lot to go from an authoritarian system to a democratic system that for all its flaws, I think there's a lot to be proud of.

Juan: 1:36:49

Yeah, that's it.

Logan: 1:36:50

That's

Juan: 1:36:51

a thing.

Logan: 1:36:52

I can't say anything better

Juan: 1:36:53

than

Logan: 1:36:54

that. So many thanks to Juan for being our guest for this fascinating conversation. To learn more about our show, you can visit our website, boomertomillennials.buzzsprout.com. You can follow us on Instagram or Blue Sky on social media. You can provide feedback at boomertomillennialatoutlook.com is our email. You can find bibliographies for past and upcoming episodes on our Patreon page. Thanks as always to our listeners. We will release our final two episodes on the Kennedy administration this summer. Until then, thank you for listening.