Spanish Culture Behind Barbed Wire: Memory and Representation of the French Concentration Camps, 1939-1945By the end of the Spanish Civil War in March of 1939, almost 500,000 Spaniards had fled Francisco Franco's newly established military dictatorship. More than 275,000 refugees in France were immediately interned in hastily constructed concentration camps, most of which were located along the open shorelines of France's southernmost beaches. This book chronicles the cultural memory of this war refugee population whose stories as camp inmates in the early 1940s remain largely unknown, unlike the wide dissemination of the literature and testimony of the survivors of Nazi death camps. The hidden history of France's seaside camps for Spanish Republicans spawned a rich legacy of cultural works that dramatically demonstrate how a displaced political community began to reconstitute itself from the ruins of war, literally from the sands of exile. Combining close textual analyses of memoirs, poetry, drama, and fiction with a carefully researched historical perspective, Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire Investigates how the most significant literature of the early post-civil war exile period appropriated the concentration camp as a discursive vehicle. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 64
Page 15
... chapters of all of civil war exile history belongs to the Spanish Republicans who were interned in hastily constructed French concentration camps , the largest of which were located along the open shorelines of France's southern- most ...
... chapters of all of civil war exile history belongs to the Spanish Republicans who were interned in hastily constructed French concentration camps , the largest of which were located along the open shorelines of France's southern- most ...
Page 16
... chapters of Part I. In my analysis of the textual construction of the French border town of Collioure- both the burial ground for Spain's most famous exile , the great poet Antonio Machado ( 1875-1939 ) , as well as the location of one ...
... chapters of Part I. In my analysis of the textual construction of the French border town of Collioure- both the burial ground for Spain's most famous exile , the great poet Antonio Machado ( 1875-1939 ) , as well as the location of one ...
Page 17
... chapters of " Part IV . The Camps as Battlegrounds of Emigration : The Struggle for Liberation " consider how the inmates are chosen by official relief agencies for liberation , and how their story of the struggle among the internees ...
... chapters of " Part IV . The Camps as Battlegrounds of Emigration : The Struggle for Liberation " consider how the inmates are chosen by official relief agencies for liberation , and how their story of the struggle among the internees ...
Page 23
... chapter " Memory and Forgetting , " Anderson observes : " At the state's margins , a ' memory ' was already emerging of a ' Spanish ' Civil War . " A signifi- cant portion of this marginalized memory belongs of course to the dis- placed ...
... chapter " Memory and Forgetting , " Anderson observes : " At the state's margins , a ' memory ' was already emerging of a ' Spanish ' Civil War . " A signifi- cant portion of this marginalized memory belongs of course to the dis- placed ...
Page 26
... chapter of her book with the first such episode of Re- publican identities in tatters . On January 24 , 1939 , the eve of the Na- tionalist army's takeover of Cataluña , Mistral arrives at her place of work , a film distribution company ...
... chapter of her book with the first such episode of Re- publican identities in tatters . On January 24 , 1939 , the eve of the Na- tionalist army's takeover of Cataluña , Mistral arrives at her place of work , a film distribution company ...
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Common terms and phrases
Agustí Alambradas Amieva Andújar Antonio Machado Argelès Argelès-sur-Mer Artís-Gener Aub's barbed wire barbed-wire Barcarès Barcelona Bartolí Bartra beach beauty camp inmates Campos de concentración Celso Amieva chabola chapter Collioure concentration camp Cristo cultural Cyprien dead death describes diary Don Quijote dream Ediciones edition emigración emigration Espinar Eulalio Ferrer exilio español Éxodo fellow fight France Francia freedom French concentration camps García Gerpe gendarmes Gerpe's guards hope Ibid identity Igualada imagination interned José Juan Julio León Felipe letter living Luis Luis Suárez Madrid María Max Aub memoir memory Mexico City narrator nation Negrín novel official Paris poem poet police political prisoners published in Mexico Pyrenees recalls refers refugiados Remedios Varo Rojo sand scene Septfonds SERE soldiers space Spain Spaniards Spanish Civil Spanish Civil War Spanish exile Spanish refugees Spanish Republic Spanish Republican story Suárez suffering Tarrés thousands tion Vernet Vives writes
Popular passages
Page 156 - I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect.
Page 198 - Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Le rodearon millones de individuos, con un ruego común: "¡Quédate hermano!" Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Entonces todos los hombres de la tierra le rodearon; les vio el cadáver triste, emocionado: incorporóse lentamente, abrazó al primer hombre; echóse a andar...
Page 157 - This is why utopias permit fables and discourse: they run with the very grain of language and are part of the fundamental fabula, heterotopias . . . desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences.
Page 177 - ... no aglutina; ni el llanto ni la sangre. Y ¿para qué sirve la sangre derramada si no junta los labios de la casta? Disolvente es la sangre en esta tierra lo mismo que las lágrimas, y ha clavado banderas plurales y enemigas en todos los aleros. Los ídolos domésticos hablaron vanidad.
Page 198 - Al fin de la batalla, y muerto el combatiente, vino hacia él un hombre y le dijo: «No mueras, te amo tanto!» Pero el cadáver ¡ ay ! siguió muriendo. Se le acercaron dos y repitiéronle: «No nos dejes! ¡Valor! ¡Vuelve a la vida!
Page 157 - Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy 'syntax' in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to 'hold together'.
Page 173 - Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera. Jorobados y nocturnos, por donde animan ordenan silencios de goma oscura y miedos de fina arena.
Page 34 - Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.
Page 120 - A few years ago we had been called the martyrs of Fascist barbarism, pioneers in the fight for civilization, defenders of liberty, and what not; the Press and statesmen of the West had made rather a fuss about us, probably to drown the voice of their bad conscience. Now we had become the scum of the...