you never know

In commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, and in memory of Cesar Augusto Cortes, I am presenting this StoryCorps interview. The Spanish Civil War is often called the testing ground for World War II, setting the stage for the twentieth century’s civilian horrors of war. It was also a war where powerful ideaologies-in all their complexity- fought to determine the future of a nation, and maybe even the world. International volunteers flooded in to join the struggle against the facist powers of Italy and Germany that supported Franco’s Nationalists. The war in Spain held a special resonance for journalists and writers like Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Dos Passos, and Langston Hughes.

My father grew up in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and eventually left the Franco dictatorship to find success as a doctor in the United States. We talked about the war, living under Facism, and how these experiences affected his political beliefs. I remember looking at the title, in Spanish, of one of his books: “Los Ninos de La Guerra, Ya Somos Viejos” (The Children of the War, Already We Are Old). It is the stories of my father, and those of his generation, that we must remember.

Cesar_Cortes.mp3