Many people's impression of Spain stubbornly stays on the sexy gypsy girl dancing flamenco, the gorgeous and sunny bullfighter boy in the passionate bullring, the sweaty footballer on the green field, the top Iberian oak ham transparent as red jade...
As a lover of literature, my impression of Spain can be traced back to a foreign classic "Don Quixote" that I read when I was young. This huge novel is an insurmountable monument to the classical art of Renaissance Spain, a rare treasure of world literature, and later literary critics have even hailed it as the first modern novel in the history of Western literature, and it is a precious spiritual treasure left by Cervantes.
Don Quixote is set more than a hundred years after the decline of knighthood and chivalry, and the original intention of the novel was to criticize the popular chivalric novels of the era. Therefore, the protagonist Don Quixote is either crazy and absurd on this road, or on the road of madness and absurdity.
In this character, absurd and incredible things happen one after another, making people laugh at the same time, but there is also a little sadness and helplessness between the lines.
More importantly, the novel alludes to the contradictions and conflicts that broke out in the gradually declining Spanish society in the late 16th ~ early 17th centuries, whipping the extravagance and decay of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, and the bitter pain and struggle of the people at the bottom jumped on the paper.
It is true that the character of Don Quixote is undoubtedly ridiculous and pathetic, but at the same time he is kind and respectable, in stark contrast to his entourage Sancho, a pragmatic and timid peasant with a bright mind, the two escalate and fight monsters along the way, and a series of ironic stories occur.
In fact, the contradiction that takes place in the interesting "master and servant" is fundamentally a conflict between naked but practical realism and gorgeous but unrealistic romanticism, yes, "a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers, and a thousand Don Quixotes in the eyes of a thousand readers".
An epic study of Spain's turbulent history, One Hundred Years of Decay: A Political History of Spain, written from the Second Restoration of the Bourbons in 1874 to the 2014 reign of Alfonso XII, Felipe VI, the grandson of Spain, provides a profound analysis of the main causes of the country's stagnation due to inequality, violence, government weakness and deep corruption at all levels of Spanish society.
Throughout the period of the Bourbon Restoration, various manifestations (among which the founder of the fascist party, Primo. The arrogance of solipsism during the De Rivera dictatorship), institutional loopholes and corruption, and the overall incompetence and inaction of government officials pushed the already precarious country further and further downhill, and the Second Republic, the first democracy in Spanish history, was born.
The thief of the hook, the prince of the thief. As one of the more controversial heads of state in Spanish history, Franco is an important figure who spends a lot of ink and has a relatively broad perspective throughout the book. He started the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and became head of state for life from the end of the civil war in 1939 until his death in 1975, and Franco ruled the Spanish people for more than 30 years (before his death, Franco declared the restoration of the Spanish monarchy and appointed Juan, grandson of Alfonso XIII). Carlos I succeeded to the throne, this is a later story).
Although this period is considered to be one of the longest and most authoritarian periods in Spanish history, and has a huge negative impact on the entire Spanish society and people, especially in political, economic, military, diplomatic and socio-cultural aspects, there are still many people in Spain who believe that Franco's contribution to Spain should never be erased.
In addition to Franco, Monopoly Juan. March is also a very difficult character mentioned in the book. In addition to his public banker identity, there are sources that British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill secretly contacted March in an attempt to persuade him to become a secret agent working for the British government. Not only that, Churchill also asked March to secretly raise a huge sum of nearly ten million dollars to buy off the top officers of the Franco regime one by one, coercing and inducing them to maintain their line with Hitler.
When it comes to the history of March's origin, it is not an exaggeration to describe Marx's famous phrase in Capital that "capital came into the world, dripping blood and dirty things from head to toe", he was a complete speculator, good at using all favorable conditions to create wealth for himself, including taking advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune. During World War I, for example, he dealt illegal tobacco to enrich his wealth.
Because March openly supported Franco and his regime during the Spanish Civil War, Churchill's attitude was somewhat vacillating before considering whether to develop him as a British spy. It wasn't until 1940 that March was finally commissioned as a secret agent working for the British government.
Today's Spain, as one of the five major industrial powers of developed capitalism in Europe, the era of dictatorship and autocratic rule has long been fading away, the smoke of civil war has long dissipated, the people's enthusiasm, architecture, painting, fashion and other aspects of performance are also very bright, there are many food, entertainment, intoxicating...