“Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.
At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state.
The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.
In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.
After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.
This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent. “Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.
At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state.
The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.
In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.
After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.
This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent. “Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.
At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state.
The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.
In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.
After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.
This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent.
Black Storms by Teresa Solana (Corylus Books) Out 25th October 2024
A country that doesn't acknowledge its past is destined to repeat its mistakes. Why murder a sick old man nearing retirement? An investigation into the death of a professor at the University of Barcelona seems particularly baffling for Deputy Inspector Norma Forester of the Catalan police, as word from the top confirms she's the one to lead this case. The granddaughter of an English member of the International Brigades, Norma has a colourful family life, with a forensic doctor husband, a hippy mother, a squatter daughter and an aunt, a nun in an enclosed order, who operates as a hacker from her austere convent cell. This blended family sometimes helps and often hinders Norma's investigations. It seems the spectres of the past have not yet been laid to rest, and there are people who can neither forgive nor forget the cruelties of the Spanish Civil War and all that followed.
