Shorter Notices
Cinderella of Europe: Spain Explained. By Sheila M. O'Callaghan. (Skeffington. 1 2S. 6d.)
WHAT is it about Spain that makes the English—and, alas, the Irish—lose their heads ? Ever since we islanders have been visiting the peninsula, and writing about it, there seems to have been an almost insuper- able obstacle to. seeing objectively this remarkable country, so European by geo- graphy, so un-European in culture. In the eighteenth century Joseph Townsend, then Richard Ford, Aubrey Bell, and today Gerald Brenan, are practically alone among scores of writers in understanding the difficult simplicity of the Spanish character. And since the Civil War the whole dis- cussion has been so bedevilled with politics that Spain and the Spaniards hardly get a look-in Our authors write about Spain with their minds on England. It is part of Spain's misfortuhe that she infects with her own violent extremism those who think themselves her friends.
Miss O'Callaghan's purpose was to give a sympathetic vindication of the Franco regime. There was, in fact, room for an impartial examination of the Spanish scene during the last ten years, giving full weight to the difficulties of the Government and the genuine progress achieved in social administration on a budget half of which goes to the service ministries and the police. Such a book would, I think, arrive at the conclusion that the Franco regime is nothing like as good as Miss O'Callaghan thinks, nor anything like as bad as the monopolists of democracy hope, and that the fierce and corrosive Spanish egocentricity will go through any institution, democratic or totalitarian, like an old goat eating a fence. But Miss O'Callaghan comes to praise General Franco, and finds it quite impos- sible to do so without blackguarding the leaders of the last Republic. The first third of the book reads like Nationalist propa- ganda of fourteen years ago, and when one secs from the very odd foreword the sort of book the author consulted, one understands the reason why It is also clear why she was officially discouraged from writing her own book, for intelligent supporters of General Franco can hardly welcome such embarrassing advocacy. The blatant par- tisanship destroys confidence, and the facetious triviality of much of the writing
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