P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
5
I had just entered my twenties when the Civil War broke out with the revolt led by Franco
against the Republic. There was no single event as powerful in the formation of my generation’s
awareness of the world. To many it was our initiation into the Twentieth Century, probably the
worst century in history. The Spanish agony has turned out to be classic, the model for many other
democratic government’s overthrowbymilitary forces espousing a return toChristianvalues. Twoof
my university classmates went off to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, one of them, Ralph
Neaphus, never to return. For nearly four years the first news we looked for in the morning papers
was the news from the Spanish front.
The word “Spain” in the Thirties was explosive, the very emblem of resistance not only to the
forced return of clerical Feudalism in the world but to the rule of unreason and the death of the
mind. For many, even then, the Civil War, with the Nazis and Mussolini’s troops in open support
of Franco, was the opening battle of the Second World War.
“Spain” also meant Picasso and his “Guernica” painting. Yes, it was still hard to believe that an
airforce pilot, even of the Nazi air force, could fly low over an open sunlit square and drop bombs
on civilians. As time went on “Spain” would exemplify the struggles of many other peoples to
emerge into modernity from the fog and futility of tenacious feudal institutions.
Arthur Miller
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
2002
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 25/10/2002.
