SOURCE: "The Spanish Tragedy," in New York Review of Books, Vol. V, No. 8, November 25, 1965, pp. 23-25.

In the following review, Carr describes Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, as seen in Gabriel Jackson's The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 1931–1939 and Cela's Journey to the Alcarria.

The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 and for a period Europe was engulfed in a larger tragedy. In retrospect the Spanish Civil War seemed what one of the Republican Ministers once called it—a paupers' war. The exiles, like the issues, were forgotten. They were embarrassing relics.

Why should the Spanish Civil War now compel an interest which goes beyond the usual curious concern for the past? Perhaps because of the symbolic overtones that gives Spanish history in general resonance and significance, making it a perpetual demonstration of the truth of Croce's dictum that all history is contemporary history...