Out of touch with reality

In the Dictionary of Spanish Biographies prepared by the Royal Academy of History (RAH), Franco is never called a dictator, while it is said that Republican leader Negrín was at the head of a "practically dictatorial" government. These are only two of the value judgments in a work that extends to 43,000 biographies in 50 volumes, and in which 5,500 writers have participated. But they do not conform to the picture drawn, with an overwhelming range of verified documentation, by all historical works prepared with a minimum of scientific solvency. That Franco was a dictator, and that Negrín presided the government of a parliamentary republic, are unquestionable historical facts.

To judge by published information, these errors are not the only ones. One of the challenges faced by democracies which emerge from a dictatorship is that of dismantling the myths and legends that the regime built up to justify its excesses. The role of many historians regarding the Franco regime has, in this sense, been exemplary: there is now a broad agreement on its origin and development. One of the functions of a history academy ought to be that of ensuring rigorously scientific treatment of those events in the past that have been tendentiously interpreted by concrete interests, thus producing a picture that will approximate to the truth of events, and not show favor to any version of the same.

The RAH does not seem to have acted in this manner. To refer to the Republic as the "Red enemy," and to accept at face value the term "national forces" which the rebel army applied to itself, are symptoms of a disturbing levity, in that they echo the victors' reading of the Civil War. Yet the Franco regime not only narrated the war in its own manner but, in its aspiration to wipe out every trace of the Spanish liberal tradition, likewise rewrote all previous history in its own terms.

How does this Dictionary treat the biographies of the American conquistadors; of the defenders of the Cortes de Cádiz (the first modern parliament, in Napoleonic times); of the 19th-century liberals? If the dominant outlook is the same that has led Luis Suárez (author of the Franco biography) to write that the Opus Dei founder Escrivá de Balaguer felt "presages of a divine calling," this would suggest that the prejudices of Franco's National Catholicism are all too alive and kicking, and that a 6.4-million-euro public subsidy is not required to preserve them. But it is impossible to revise the nuances in 43,000 biographies. The guarantee of their quality must proceed from within the institution that produces them.

The RAH lives outside Spanish society and, unlike the Spanish Royal Academy of language, has turned its back on self-renewal. The Dictionary was an opportunity to achieve a greater public projection of its work. But the few volumes so far published show that the fascist version of history is still alive in the RAH. Its director, Gonzalo Anes, must explain how he has allowed a work made with public money to take this form.