Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-05-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005. PAGE 5. Other Views Generalissimo Franco is still dead There’s a famous poem by Shelley concerning the remains of a massive statue of an ancient king found in the Egyptian desert. On the pedestal was an inscription that read: “MY NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS. LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!” Shelley notes that aside from the pedestal all that could be seen was “Two vast and trunkless legs...near them, half sunk, a shattered visage lies...” So much for the King of Kings staying power. I was reminded of Ozymandias and monarchical hubris by a small item tucked away on page 24 of my newspaper this week. The headline reads: MADRID’S LAST FRANCO STATUE IS REMOVED. That would be Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a dumpy, sour Galician military opportunist who, in the mid 1930s, overthrew Spain’s elected government and plunged his country into a bloody civil war that cost the lives of nearly 400,000 Spaniards. Franco was short and pudgy with black button eyes and a comic bottle-brush moustache that made him look like a not- terribly successful door-to-door salesman. He was in fact a ruthless SOB who showed no mercy and took damn few prisoners. Franco so loved his fellow countrymen that he allowed Hitler to use a defenseless Basque village as bombing practice for the German Luftwaffe. On the afternoon of April 27, 1937, Junkers bombers pounded the hamlet with high-explosive and incendiary bombs in the middle of market day when it was most crowded. German Heinkel fighters ^trafed the ?rov/nsfolk as they ran -into the fields to escape^ Federal Liberals to slump Ontario’s provincial parties are calculating the federal Liberals will do badly in an election and showing it with their feet. Liberals in the legislature are not rushing, as they often have done, to leave and run federally, where their party has governed for 47 of the last 62 years and they traditionally had more chance of getting in cabinet. On the other hand some leading provincial Progressive Conservatives and even one well- known New Democrat are switching to run federally and suggesting there are better prospects for their parties and themselves at that level. Former Conservative deputy premier Jim Flaherty explained he is moving because he is shocked and angered by the evidence the federal Liberals diverted government money to fund their election campaigns John Baird, a former Conservative social services minister, explained he is switching primarily because Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin has cut money for health care, despite his huge financial surpluses. Tony Clement, a former Ontario health minister, has virtually abandoned provincial politics since he lost his seat in the 2003 election. Clement ran unsuccessfully for leader of the new federal Conservative party and a seat in the Commons and is now seeking to run federally again. Three other defeated Conservative MPPs will try for federal seats and not wait for the next provincial election in 2007. Some of the MPPs are moving partly because they are right-wingers out of step with the more moderate direction their provincial party is taking under its new leader. John Tory, after 14 years run by the far-right. Flaherty and Baird have denied publicly Arthur Black the bombs. Sixteen hundred unarmed peasants were killed or wounded. The town - Guernica — burned for three days. Franco was unrepentant. He expressed his political philosophy quite succinctly: “Our regime,” he explained, “is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.” I lived in Spain in the late ’60s, a quarter­ century after the fighting stopped. Spanish citizens were still wary. The Guardia Civil with their goofy patent-leather hats and not- so-goofy sub-machine guns, were everywhere. So, I was assured, were government spies. Politics were not discussed around strangers. On the 25th anniversary of the war’s end, a mildly satirical Spanish magazine published an issue, the cover of which bore the legend “VEINTI-CINCO ANOS DE PAZ Y SCIENCIA” - which translates as “25 years of peace and science”. But if you say it fast in Spanish, it translates as “25 years of...patience.” The people I was staying with predicted that the magazine would be shut down and the editor would be jailed. Franco died in 1975. In his own bed, unfortunately, instead of in the jail cell where he belonged. He spent the last four decades of his life as ‘El Caudillo’ - the leader - of a nation still Eric Dowd From Queen's Park they are leaving because of Tory to avoid fostering disunity in a party that already has too much. But Flaherty has shown his far-right passion by such acts as advocating privatizing almost everything but the legislature chamber and removing the homeless from streets. He also said former premier Ernie Eves was a pale pink imitation of a Liberal and Tory too much like a Liberal and should not have run for leader when he had never been elected anywhere. Baird also is philosophically closer to the federal Conservatives led by Stephen Harper. He once publicly shouted down a woman who protested Conservative cuts were hurting her disabled son and accused welfare recipients of 'shooting their welfare cheques up their arms.’ But Flaherty also is the Conservatives’ most exciting orator, as he demonstrated in two runs for leader, and Baird showed talent as a house leader for being undaunted and irrepressible, and injecting spirit into his party’s depleted caucus, and it will miss both. Clement also would have been useful to the provincial party. He was the only minister who won praise in its last decaying days in government, for his fight against the SARS epidemic while Eves golfed. New Democrat Churley will be the most missed day-to-day in the legislature. She is vocal on many issues including the traumatized by its awful civil war. He ruled with an iron fist and a grim determination that Spain would remain backward and insular. And it did - until he died. Whereupon Spain began to carefully but deliberately join the 20th century. I’m sure such an eventuality never occurred to Franco. I have no doubt that ‘the general of generals’ took it for granted that the Spain he left behind would never flirt with that seductive stranger, democracy and the name Franco would resonate reverentially in the annals of Spanish history forever. Resonate, maybe - but not reverentially. Within three years of his death, Spain had a new and democratic constitution and the legacy of Franco was already being dismantled brick by brick. In the Spain I knew. Franco’s portrait hung in every classroom and public gathering place. There were statues of him everywhere. Today there is just one left in the city of Santander, and that city’s mayor has announced that it too, will be removed. As for the Madrid statue - a larger-than- life bronze depicting Franco on horseback, - it was dismantled and trucked to a warehouse. Not without incident. Hundreds of Franco loyalists jeered and gave the fascist salute as the statue was removed. But a spokesperson for the government said the action was taken because “the statue was not appreciated by a majority of the people.” Debate has now begun on what should fill the vacuum left in the San Juan de la Cruz plaza where the statue stood. I dunno. How about a sculpture of two trunkless legs and a half-sunk shattered visag£? environment and women’s rights, as hard to shake off as wet dental floss and among the most effective back-bench MPPs in memory. She bravely shrugged off put-downs by male legislators that happen even in these enlightened days. A Conservative said 'why don’t you go home and take care of your own kids?’ and a Liberal said she was so argumentative she must be having a menopausal 'hot flash.’ Churley as a frightened teenager gave birth to a son and surrendered him for adoption and hounded the Liberals to pass a law that gives adopted children and biological parents access to records through which they can identify and locate each other. Churley says she has done all she can in provincial politics and wants to be part of the new force federal NDP leader Jack Layton is building and this is a worthy motive. MPPs don’t mention it because they don’t want to seem mercenary, but their base pay also is only $86,000-a-year while an MP’s has grown to $144,000 - there are a lot of extra inducements to go federal. only. Letters that printed. dited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be • printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. Here’s to hedonism A gentle breeze breaks the still night air. But the quiet is enlivened by the conversation of a boisterous group of good friends. In a party mood, the revellers discuss everything often all at once. Then the chatter turns to the topic of responsibility, more specifically hard labour and the fact that life’s chores are never-ending. Jokes are made about working someone to the bone, about work cutting into play time. Then when the remark is made that there’s certainly more to life than working yourself to death, a voice rises above the rest, resolute in its conviction. “Hard work,” the individual preaches, “never killed anyone.” So I’ve heard. Yet. 1 am as certain that it probably has been the death of someone in this world at some point, as 1 am that it’s also not always the answer in life. I do believe in working hard. There are jobs that must be accomplished. And let’s face it. there are entirely too many hours in a lifetime to spend them doing nothing. But, I also believe in taking moments for pleasure. The person who earlier advocated hard work never spends a minute in her life without accomplishing some objective. Even her hobbies are manual tasks on some level, whether it’s working on her far too large garden, canning its produce, or quilting. In the many years I have known this woman I have never seen her >,lose her eyes to listen to music. I have never seen her just sit in her garden and truly absorb the beauty she has created. She quite frankly never stops. Not the way I choose to go through life, let me tell you 1 am never happier than when my family is close to me, the sun s beaming down, the birds are singing and I am just sitting, absorbing every sensation, every minute. “I am,” I announced to my kids recently, “such a little hedonist.” I was at the time blissfully enjoying the great outdoors from no greater vantage point than my deck. This is not to say th^it I have any use for real ‘laziness’. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact I abhor it. But among the cleaning, the weed pulling, the laundry, cooking, dishes, oh, yes, and a job, I will take every opportunity to find the pleasure in this life. There will always be a minute or two at least to do something that makes me happy. I can take those days with nothing to do but enjoy them. To some degree, I can let the chores pass for a spell to take advantage of pleasurable pastime. I have actually become so good at my brand of hedonism that 1 can even combine it with responsibility. There is no guilt for me in reading a book while supper’s cooking. I savour a smooth, dry wine and some light jazz on a peaceful evening after dishes are done. Walking barefoot on a neatly-mown lawn, smelling the freshness of line-dried clothes, or taking a break from weeding to inhale the heady fragrance of roses take seconds in a day, but add incredible value to a life. Work on occasion can be enjoyable. Generally, however, it’s what we must do. Pleasure on the other hand is not about responsibility or guilt, thus should be our real purpose. I can’t look at the world around me, all the beauty we’ve been given, and believe otherwise.