INTERVIEWING PAUL PRESTON

MARCEL PROUST CHAIR OF THE EUROPEAN AND IBERO-AMERICAN ACADEMY OF YUSTE

Enrique Moradiellos: We would like to thank Professor Paul Preston on behalf of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation for agreeing to have this virtual talk, which will later be printed in the Foundation’s newsletter.

Professor Preston is probably the best Hispanist −of course British and Anglophone− in active employment. He is a worthy heir to a saga that will shortly turn a hundred years at the hands of previous Hispanists, in particular Gerald Brenan, the author of the great book entitled The Spanish Labyrinth, published in 1943, in the middle of the World War. Professor Preston was born three years after the publication of that book, in 1946, in Liverpool, in a time of a very harsh post-world war, a time of deprivation, hardship and misery that, however, also had the positive side of seeing the beginning of the process of European integration, of overcoming the antagonisms of continental countries, which has led us to the present European Union.

Moreover, in that same year, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave his famous and renowned speech in Zurich appealing to a union of European states, which he called the United States of Europe, as the only remedy to avoid a new continental war; a union that could promote peace, progress and well-being by avoiding the horrors of the past. Seventy years later, in 2006, Professor Preston joined the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste as a member, occupying the Marcel Proust Chair.

Welcome to this talk at your home, at the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste.

. How was your interest in the history of Spain forged? What ended up making you what you are today: the most renowned Hispanist in the world?

Paul Preston: It was a chain of events. As you pointed out, I was born in 1946 in Liverpool, a city very much punished by the blitz (the German aerial bombardments in the world war) as it was the port of entry of American supplies. I remember from my childhood that there was a lot of rubble left in the city and that many of the adult conversations were on the subject, which meant that children played Germans against British. At school, I did not study Spanish and I had no background in the history of Spain. I also remember that when I got older, one of my hobbies was to build World War II plane mockups. Later, I began to read books about the war, but more than about the war itself I

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was interested in its origins and why that catastrophe had occurred. I was then lucky enough to get a scholarship to study at Oxford University. It should be borne in mind that at the time it was not normal for a working-class boy from the north of England to come to Oxford, so it was a great opportunity for me. At Oxford, I learned many things, although I have to say that the degree in Modern History, which was what interested me, focused a lot on British constitutional history and little on contemporary history, so I was left longing to study more about World War II.

When I finished my undergraduate degree, I had doubts about what I was going to do, but I was sure I wanted to do some research concerning the origins of the world conflict. I only knew a little French, but I did not feel like digging deeper into French history. Then the opportunity to go to the University of Reading came up, where a graduate school had been created and I could do a master’s degree focused on the history of the interwar period. Also, luckily, the structure of one of the subjects allowed you to carry out a double research and two dissertations, and one of them was about the Spanish Civil War. I knew practically nothing about this subject; I had only done a term paper at Oxford. However, I was so lucky that the teacher of the subject was Hugh Thomas, the great expert on the Spanish Civil War at the time (he had published his famous homonymous work in 1961), besides being a fantastic and fun teacher. In class we were four students and that allowed different people to come to tell us their life experience as, for instance, the admiral who had commanded the British navy during the siege of Bilbao and a volunteer of the Condor Legion. All this made me very interested in the Spanish conflict and I began to read everything I could on the subject in English. However, I soon realised the need I had to learn Spanish, so I became friends with some Colombian college students, who I had a great time with, and this allowed me to learn Spanish better and travel to Spain. That is how the story of my relationship with Spain and its history began.

. E.M.: When mentioning Hugh Thomas, you are referring to one of the teachers who you have always admitted has influenced your training. However, judging from some of your writings, there were also two other masters in your academic life: Raymond Carr and Herbert R. Southworth. To what extent did these two personalities shape your interest in Spanish issues?

P.P.: My relationship with Raymond Carr was quite complex. My former pupil and dear colleague, Professor Helen Graham, could say the same. Deep down, I think Raymond was not very comfortable interacting with working-class people, because he was a bit elitist. Going back to the question: when I finished

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my MA in Reading, I returned to Oxford to do my Phd with Raymond. It turned out, however, that he had taken a sabbatical leave and had gone to the United States, so I got a director who knew nothing about the history of Spain. And here I make an excursus: with my doctoral students I have always followed the maxim "from the cradle to the grave" (accompanying them throughout their research and following their progress from the beginning to the end). Returning to the subject, I must point out that the one who really helped me to do the doctoral thesis was Joaquín Romero Maura, who was the assistant professor of Raymond Carr, one of the smartest people I have ever met in my life. In sum, at the time of writing my thesis I did not relate much with Raymond Carr, although later we did have a closer and more direct relationship.

Before reading my thesis, I had published an article on the monarchical conspirators in the Second Spanish Republic in a fairly important journal called the Journal of Contemporary History. On that occasion, I asked Hugh Thomas whom I should send an offprint to in case someone should be interested. He mentioned Herbert R. Southworth. I hesitated and said to myself: how can I send it to him if he is like the great inquisitor? Because he had already published the book El mito de la cruzada de Franco (The Myth of Franco’s Crusade) (1963), a very harsh book against the Francoists. However, I sent it to him and I received a really moving letter that came to say: My friend, at last, it has been decades before arriving to this point. After that, I felt as if he had made me his heir. I visited him often and he became my teacher, a sort of adoptive father with whom I had an incredibly affectionate relationship for many years. When he got sick, I called him almost every day and when he died one of the things I thought was: how awful! The amount of wisdom that has died with this man, because what he knew about the period of the Spanish civil war was incredible, since he had worked in the press service of the Republic being in Washington and in New York. If I were to say which of my teachers I owe more to, I would certainly say to Herbert R. Southworth.

. E.M.: In terms of academic career, once you decided that your vocation was to be a Hispanic historian, you were a professor at the University of Reading, from there you went to Queen Mary College of the University of London and finally to the Chair "Cañada Blanch Príncipe de Asturias" of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Throughout this career, how have you seen that the university teaching of Spanish history has changed from the vantage point of retirement? How to look at that long academic professional life career?

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P.P.: There is not much I can say about Reading University, because I only substituted Hugh Thomas for a short time. At that time, I was still an apprentice. From the time of Queen Mary College in London I have some fantastic memories. I found it a very pleasant and welcoming institution. In many universities, and more at prensent, the environment can be toxic because of the great rivalry that exists to get financial funds or teaching places. But Queen Mary College was like a family I have fond memories of. During the years I spent there, from 1975 to 1991, at least in the history department, there was a family atmosphere and I had a great time.

The leap to London School of Economics occurred because I had been working at Queen Mary College for sixteen years, more than enough time to work at an institution where, in addition, I had achieved some success because I handled the merger between Queen Mary College and Westfield College while I was dean of the Faculty of Letters. As the process turned out well, I was offered a vice-rector position and, if I accepted, I was told that they would think of me if there was a vacancy to be rector in the future. However, at that time I was only interested in teaching and research, not in the career of academic administration. And it was just then when I received the offer of a chair at the London School of Economics, which is like inviting you to play in Real Madrid or Manchester United, that is, at an elite, official first division place. The change was good overall. However, the atmosphere in LSE was a bit toxic and there was an incredible amount of rivalry. There were also good things about it, such as the fact that everyone was prima donna, that is, that there were few teachers who were not brilliant in their field. Another very positive thing was that everything that could be studied there was social science related and you could go and chat in any sociology, economics and political science office with professors who, like me, had an interest in the 1930s. And they all had a room full of books on the subject. However, none of them coincided with the books I had. I mean, you became aware of your own ignorance and limitations. However, as I mentioned earlier, there was also a very negative side concerning rivalries. I am now half retired −I have continued as a researcher, but I retired as a teacher in 2011−, but from what my friends who are still teaching in Britain tell me, there is currently less of an atmosphere of collaboration in research almost everywhere.

Focusing on the subject of Hispanism, when I started working there was hardly anyone who was a historian of contemporary Spain. Of course, there was Hugh Thomas, who had had immense success with his book on the civil war, but who had moved on to study Latin American issues. There was also Raymond Carr, but he had chosen to follow the path of management as rector of one of

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Oxford’s colleges. And finally, there was Martin Blinkhorn in Lancaster and Frances Lannon in Oxford.

I believe that now, thanks in part to my students, there are more people dedicated to the history of Spain. However, the problem is that the jobs that are available are related to European history in general, so whoever sits a public examination for these jobs is in competition with historians from Germany, France, Italy, or Russia, etc. Many of the best young historians of Spain in Britain are now in language departments (in the specialty of Spanish) and this is a good thing because now those departments no longer focus on Language and Literature, but also have historians and professors of political science on their staff.

. E.M.: One of the great achievements of that long academic career −and this is a personal opinion, but also one that I have experienced− was the foundation of the Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies at Queen Mary College, which later became the Cañada Blanch Centre once it moved to the London School of Economics and Political Science. It has been a centre of excellence for training and teaching under which no less than a hundred British, Spanish and many other researchers have completed doctoral theses. How did the idea of this academic adventure begin? What purpose guided you and how did you contemplate all this work from the standpoint of retirement?

P.P.: The truth is that at the beginning there was no plan for the Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies. Everything developed little by little. Some young researchers like you, Henry, like Ismael Sanz and Julián Casanova, informed me of their desire to spend some time with me in London and I thought it might be a good time to create a fixed reception structure, because at the time the centre was just a name, a very small room at Queen Mary College, but with a great sense of fellowship. That is how the idea and the reality of the centre came up.

When I went to LSE there was no one who wanted to continue with the centre at Queen Mary, so there was no objection for me to start the same project at my new academic home. The refoundation of this centre there coincided with a time when I organised scholarships for students with a foundation called The Anglo-Spanish Cultural Foundation, created by D. Vicente Cañada Blanch, a philanthropist who had been an importer of fruits from Burriana (Castellón) and who had created a school for Spanish children in London. At that time, I worked as an interpreter at the meetings of the

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Democratic Junta of Spain, which allowed me to coincide again with Pepe Coll Comin, who I knew because we were both members of the British branch of the Junta and he was the Agriculture Attaché of the Spanish Embassy in London at the time. From then on, we started to work so that the centre could have more stable funding and be permanently established.

I have been in charge of the Centre and the Chair for more than 25 years. I have to say that I did not want that post at first, because I had just finished a book about Franco and had started doing research on Italian history to write a book about the figure of Mussolini, but I finally sat the public examination and got the post. The main focus of the Centre was to encourage research on contemporary Spanish history and it was truly achieved, because I had about 35 British doctoral students and over the years we had almost 200 students from different countries. Another great achievement, was the creation of an extensive library on 20th-century Spain. Finally, I modestly started publishing books about contemporary Spain that now make up more than a hundred titles altogether. At first, I had no idea how the centre was going to turn out, but it was growing and now that it is about to close as an institution with my retirement, I admit that it saddens me.

. E.M.: I can imagine, because the truth is that, as far as the studies on Spain in the English-speaking world are concerned, the Centre was a reference of quality and cordiality for those who were there as visiting researchers and it is a shame that it cannot remain open. In any case, throughout this academic life you have led, it should be said that, at the very least, you are the author of no less than 30 monographs −apart from reeditions−, works and books signed alone, that compose a brilliant fresco of almost all the contemporary Spanish history of the 20th century. You begin with the crisis of the Bourbon Restoration system at the beginning of the century and continue with the times of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, the republican democratic quinquennium, the triennium of the civil war, almost four decades of Francoism and the phase that opens with the political transition from 1975. Like any reader of your extensive work, I have my own preferences among all that huge work, but... Could you point out any landmark, any particular work that has been of, for example, special −not academic, which they all are− emotional relevance? For me in particular, as a student in the early 1980s, reading the book La destrucción de la democracia en España: reacción, reforma y revolución en la Segunda República (1978) was a unique learning experience. It encouraged me to write a type of story similar to the one in that book, with individual agents acting in conflicting socio-political contexts. However, I wonder if there is any work of that transcendent scope for you.

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P.P.: (Laughter). The first thing I have to say is that I don’t know how you got to the figure of thirty monographs. But anyway, that must obviously include articles as well as books. When I write a book, I establish emotional bonds of different kinds according to the book. If in 1978, when the monograph you are referring to was published, I had been asked what kind of historian I was, I would have said that I was a social one, because it was a book in which I was trying to decipher the social origins of the Civil War. Then I realised that what I really am is a biographer, because "the pages come to life" when I talk about people, whether it be Indalecio Prieto, Francisco Largo Caballero, Julián Besteiro, José María Gil-Robles, Manuel Azaña, etc.

Following up on the subject, another book that goes hand in hand with the one mentioned is El triunfo de la democracia en España: de Franco a Felipe González pasando por Juan Carlos (The Triumph of Democracy in Spain) (1986). Here, I focused much more on the role of individuals, such as Felipe González, Santiago Carrillo, Adolfo Suárez, Manuel Fraga and King Juan Carlos I himself. It is a book that deals with a personal experience because, although I had no relevant role in the Transition, I was in touch with many of the characters I write about. I met them in person and talked to them about those times and circumstances.

The book Franco: Caudillo de España (1993) was originally commissioned by a publishing house. I didn’t want to write it because I thought I would get very bored with the character, which I was hardly attracted to at all, but then it did not turn out that way for obvious reasons. It was long and sometimes fascinating work, but not necessarily pleasant.

If the question is, which books did you like writing most? I would say it is a series of short biographies that I wrote under the title of Las tres Españas del 36 (1936: Three Visions of Spain) (1998), which I really enjoyed writing. In the same vein, the second book in the series is entitled Palomas de guerra (Doves of War) (2001), which narrates the lives of Priscilla Scott-Ellis, a right-wing British nurse; Nan Green, the left-wing health administrator; Mercedes Sanz-Bachiller, the founder of Auxilio Social; and Margarita Nelken, the great art critic and socialist deputy. This experience of elaborating those short biographies was magical, because I was able to get to know Mercedes Sanz-Bachiller well, meet her personally and interviewing her was a tremendous experience. As far as the rest of the women are concerned, I was fortunate to have access to their letters, their diaries and I met their relatives, so it was an unforgettable experience.

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Perhaps a book that has a special significance for me is Idealistas bajo las balas: corresponsales extranjeros en la guerra de España (2007), which in English has a much more beautiful title: We Saw Spain Die. This book is my great tribute to Herbert R. Southworth because he knew all those war correspondents, and it was fantastic when I had access to the colossal correspondence of Louis Fischer, George Steer and Jay Allen. All these correspondents arrived in Spain during the war without any special interest for the country and in many cases without being from the left, and in their writings, they tell how they fell in love with the Spanish republican people who, despite the appalling circumstances they faced, continued to fight for their Republic. Many of the correspondents explained why Spain meant so much to them; I remember one saying: “the Spanish war is my war”; and I remember another letter from a correspondent saying that on arriving in Toulouse after being able to leave Spain, being able to sit in a restaurant in front of a French omelette and to eat well, he could not eat and began to cry due to what he had left behind. All this, I get emotional when talking about it, made me understand what Spain meant to me.

There is another book, El holocausto español: odio y exterminio en la Guerra Civil y después (The Spanish Holocaust) (2011), a tremendous book about the massacres in the Civil War that almost killed me emotionally during the years I snooped around in all that horror.

Finally, I would like to mention the book El final de la guerra: la última puñalada a la República (The War Without End) (2014), which was also very emotional to elaborate and became my particular tribute to Doctor Juan Negrín, of whom, like you, Enrique, I am a great admirer.

. E.M.: The book Un pueblo traicionado: España de 1874 a nuestros días: corrupción, incompetencia política y división social (A People Betrayed) (2019) is a great frieze of this Spanish history since 1874, from the origin of the Bourbon Restoration, and takes a phenomenon that we have seen to be crucial as a common thread: those forms of socio-political corruption and the effects it has had on the stability of the country and on its possibilities for modernisation. What led you to write this great panoramic work that seems almost the most important legacy of a lifetime dedicated to the study of contemporary Spain; which seems almost like a textbook of Spanish history over the last century and a half?

P.P.: (Laughter)... Well, I don’t know if it is the last book or not, because I am working on three more projects, but it is true that they are not of that historical depth. This project was also an editorial commission. At first, I was

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not very fond of the idea, but my literary agent asked me to write a book to update Raymond Carr’s well-known manual on contemporary Spanish history, which was first published in 1966. My first thoughts were very negative. I thought it was going to be horrible, but my agent insisted that it would be easy for me because I had already worked on three different periods of that part of history. I replied that that was not what I wanted, to repeat myself, but when thinking of doing something different it occurred to me that perhaps using the triple filter of corruption, political incompetence and the consequence in social division, it could turn out to be an attractive book.

In general, this book has been a learning process for me. From 1874 until almost World War I, almost everything was new to me. I started studying that period seriously and it was fascinating. The period of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship was more familiar to me because I had started my doctoral thesis on this character, but I stopped working on him because at that time it was very difficult to access the archives. Right at this stage is where I hope the most original part of the book is, because when I started to do research, I found that at this stage there was a lot of corruption, it wasn’t as harmful as that of the Franco era, but it was just as incredible. As a dictatorship, it was not as harsh or bloody as Franco’s, far from it, but, in short, for me it was a learning process. Although I am acquainted with the period of the Republic in depth, I had never focused on corruption; I have learned about financing during the Civil War and I have also focused on corruption during the Francoist period.

I started working on the book five or six years ago, the last four under the shadow of Brexit, and on the idea that there was almost a mathematical equation: corruption plus political incompetence equals social division. However, this does not only apply to the history of Spain or Italy. It is also seen in the history of contemporary Britain. This discovery added a very sad element to the book.

I have read reviews and critiques about this book that sadden me because they say that the author of the book is anti-Spanish or someone who hates Spain and that is why he writes books like that. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book is, in fact, written from my love for Spain and from my despair for Britain.

. E.M.: This mention of Brexit takes us to more current issues that will inevitably be dealt with here as you are a member of the Spanish and Ibero- American Academy of Yuste. This exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, with its implications for the future, has perplexed all of us

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and we do not know how to look for the origin or the reason. How did this difficult divorce come about? What do you think will happen in the future? As a British sufferer, was Brexit a surprise?

P.P.: I believe that the fundamental thing here has been the dominance of the media and the use of data and information in social media to address the message in a precise sense. We first need to look at the austerity policies that have been in place since the time of Margaret Thatcher and the labour destruction of the economy of Britain’s industrial north. We should also, above all, bear in mind the austerity that we have been suffering since the crisis in 2008. Perhaps all this has conveyed the feeling −especially in the north− that for the political elite of Westminster (seat of the British Parliament) the situation in the north of the country was of no importance. The media trick is that people like David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne, upper-class and wealthy, have taken advantage of the situation and presented themselves to the public as champions of the abandoned working class of the north. It is mind- boggling, but it is a lesson about the power of the media. Added to that, is the shadow of the loss of the empire. The idea that Britain has to regain its independence brings together those absurd lies that Boris Johnson told when he was a journalist, such as the fact that the European Union wanted to impose square bananas, in short, amazing nonsense. Perhaps, the desperation felt by people suffering from these economic and vital hardships is affected by this offer of a new independence, which is a lie, but which ensures that Britain will once again be great if it separates from the EU.

Anyhow, I despair. Here is an example of these politically instrumentalised lies. The great Nissan manufacturing plant is located in Sunderland, because Britain is the gateway to the European Union market. However, if there is a Brexit without agreement, the plant will leave to continue having access to the European market. In spite of this, I saw a worker of that plant in the news, who claimed that he didn’t care if there wasn’t an agreement with the European Union and became unemployed when asked about Brexit. I don’t understand this senseless patriotism. I wish I had an explanation for it all. What’s more, I must add that when Brexit coincides with the full impact of the COVID at the end of the year, there will be terrible social divisions in this country. Seriously, I believe there will be street riots with people fighting for food.

. E.M.: Yes, it is a disturbing scenario, of course. We will see if the situation can be redirected or not. It will be a matter of political ability and citizen responsibility, in any case. Professor Preston, I would like to end this long

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conversation thanking you on behalf of the Foundation for the kindness you have shown in receiving us, even if it is telematically. As always, it has been a pleasure and an honour to chat with you.

European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation

Translated by Verónica Guillén Melo

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