He was an excited historian; he did not like what had happened in the history of Spain, or in the history of Spain, if you will, of her, but he told her with a love that also included affection for those who did not interpret her as he did.
Fernando Garcia de Cortazar He was an educated and conservative man, willing to understand the position of the others, the left-wing historians, but firm in his convictions about the historical future of a country that was impossible to agree on. He was a Jesuit priest, but he did not exercise it to explain his position in the face of what happened between us. Namely, he did not invoke God but the science in which he believed (in historical science, not in religious science) to try to understand, as he himself titled, the exciting moments in the history of Spain. He wrote many books, even an encyclopedia, to prevent what he had learned from going down the ravine in which they convert (we convert) the media to the media. encyclopedists, whom we ask for opinions instead of asking for verifications.
It was not possible, in any case, that he did not fall, like practically all his colleagues, into the dilemma over who was to blame for the dispute that, in short, has occupied most of written history since before 1939. I saw it I gave speeches, I did interviews with him, and I saw him argue with his friends and with his opponents, and I never saw in him someone who sought to be the first in the diatribe. He knew, but he wanted to know what the others were saying, and in that sense never started a controversy to be right, for example, if the culpa Was it from the Republic or from fascism, but where was the root of that confrontation that, on the other hand, with different disguises today marks a country capable of restarting controversies that claimed winners and losers as in Western movies.
I was an enthusiast. So much so that she even wrote history for children. The verses that she chose to preside over a singular work say a lot about her way of approaching the past, Exciting moments in the history of Spain (Espasa Libros, 2014), an explanation of fiction to schoolchildren who read it. Those verses are by Lope de Vega and they go like this: “Oh homeland! How many facts, how many names,/ how many great events and victories…/ Well, you have someone who does it and who forces you,/ why do you lack someone, Spain, who says it”. It is usually quoted, and it is usually said, what you agree with, and Fernando was part of the army of those who also asked themselves that question of Lope de Vega (“why do you lack, Spain, whoever says it”) , but he had the misfortune of living in a very long time in a Spain that is reluctant to think that by putting different truths together, a paradigm shift could have been reached long ago that is not based only on the most unfair of dilemmas, that of the good guys and the bad guys (again, like in the West).
He was a man of a exuberant friendliness; He walked like a midfield footballer, he always looked for the smile that he gave in others, but that did not command an accommodating character, for example, with respect to the imperious and terrible presence of terrorism that destroyed generations of Basques determined to assert his ideas by killing those who opposed them. He was a man of peace, a good person who always greeted you wishing you life and good will.
The reflection of that human attitude is his enormous work, but this would not be, moreover, exemplary, if he himself had not been someone who wanted to tell so that it would be known that Spain never deserved that sad fate. In that singular book that he is the one that he made so that children could understand the Spanish odyssey he describes April 14, 1931 in this way, on a fictional level: “What hours those! The king fled on April 14 and the people took to the streets to celebrate the proclamation of the Republic. It was a very happy day. Antonio Machado, who was already old and hoisted the tricolor flag in the Segovia Town Hall, did not remember a happier one. When he went to Madrid he used to tell me: ´An entire regime has fallen without blood, without revenge, to the astonishment of the whole world`. Oh the Republic of 1931! How many illusions did it bring! How many hopes aroused!”
The root of that fable that Fernando dedicated to the children is also the root of his way of address the endless Spanish discussion, in which he will now only intervene through the books in which he put as much passion as distinguished him when referring to the faith he professed.