VALLEY OF THE FALLEN
The background of my latest romance novel, Colleen and the Statue, is the on-going controversy over what to do with Confederate statues scattered ubiquitously across the states of the Old South, including Texas. For example, is the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in a park a symbol of States’ Rights and the Southern Way of Life, or rather is it a symbol of slavery and white supremacy? If the former, it should stay; if the latter, it has to go somewhere else—perhaps to a museum.
It is instructive to compare this American controversy with a similar, recent controversy in Spain over what to do with the to-be-exhumed body of Gen. Francisco Franco. Was he a hero, who saved Spain from Communism and restored the Catholic Church to its proper place or rather was he a brutal dictator, who fought only to acquire power and money? How you answer that question about Franco will determine what you do with his body.
He ruled in Spain from 1939—the end of the Spanish Civil War—until his death in 1975. September, 2019, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the country’s Socialist government could exhume Franco’s remains from the colossal Valley of the Fallen mausoleum that he had built outside Madrid to enshrine his body. The government plans to take the body to the El Prado cemetery near Madrid, where the Franco family has a crypt. However, Spain’s Assn. of Historical Memory opposes this and says the remains should be given to the family for burial in a “private location,” that is, somewhere where it won’t become a new shrine. On the other hand, Franco’s family, who lost in court to prevent the exhumation, wants the body reburied prominently at central Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral, an idea vigorously opposed by the government. Many people throughout Spain are still hoping that a new legal challenge to the exhumation can successfully be presented to the country’s Constitutional Court or to the European Court of Human Rights. No one is sure where the body will eventually end up—whether it will stay where it is, or will be removed to who knows where.
Like we did in the United States, Spain fought a horrific Civil War, theirs from 1936 to 1939. Ironically, in that war, the Rebels under Franco won the war. But to this day, the relatives of the side that lost, the Republicans, don’t accept defeat and think that their socialist/communist side was the “right side.” And likewise, the relatives of the side that won, the Nationalists, who were supported by the Catholic Church, insist that their side was the “right side.” The fear on the part of many Spaniards is that this controversy over the body of Franco will reopen the social and political wounds from the Spanish Civil War—just as many in this country would like to leave Confederate statues alone—not keep refighting the war, not keep arguing over which side was the “right side”—and not reopen old wounds.
My latest historical romance deals with a Confederate statue that in 1913 was placed in the Central Park of my fictitious city—Mackenzie, Texas. I think love stories are not ‘generic,” that is, you can’t place a love story anywhere and in any time. The where and the when—the specific time and the specific place—matters, to give each love story its own specific “twist” to falling in love. For example, the brief and tragic love story between Maria and Roberto aka Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman) in the film, For Whom the Bell Tolls, takes place in 1937, in Spain in the middle of the Spanish Civil War. (The film is based on Hemingway’s novel, which was based on his experiences as a reporter during that war.) The love between the two protagonists makes no sense except in the context of their experiences in the war. Similarly, my novel’s love story between Colleen and Kevin only makes sense in the context of what was going on in the Texas Panhandle in the 1950s. The hold that the memories of the American Civil War aka War Between the States had on Texans of that era is the context for this coming-of-age story between Colleen and Kevin. Their story makes no sense if taken out of that context.
That is, I believe how we fall in love, why we fall in love, and the specific beauty of that love can only be understood by understanding and observing the historical context of that love.
Read my novel, Colleen and the Statue, and see if you see what I mean.