Book Review: Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett

This book is for you if you want to start understanding Spanish society. The author, a British journalist for the Guardian who has lived in Spain for decades provides a unique perspective - through the eyes of an expat, rather than a tourist - who cannot possibly appreciate the nuances of Spanish life, or a local - for whom nothing would feel unusual.

Neither a history book, nor a travelogue, but somehow simultaneously both, the book blends history with its impact on today’s life in Spain. We follow the author to all parts of Spain - from the immigrant influenced Andalucia to the separatist Basque country, from the over-touristed “white coast” to windswept Galicia - to discover how the region’s unique history shapes current events. In all these regions, we encounter the social issues faced by Spaniards and learn how they connect to the past. This unusual style is insightful - we see the present through the lens of the past.

I learnt a lot about Spain - a country of contradictions. For example, Spaniards love airing their opinions about everything; however, for decades after Franco’s death nobody talked about the dictatorship. Flamenco is a major tourist attraction in Spain; however, the immigrant community that pioneered this performative art form is essentially ostracised. Spain boasts of some of the most breathtaking Islamic influenced architecture thanks to around 700 years of Moorish rule; yet fraught relations with the Islamic world led to the devastating train bombs in Madrid in 2004. Despite strong opposition from conservatives, Franco personally approved bikini donning tourists in Spain; ironically, the resulting mass tourism would precipitate the end of that era.

Spain is diverse, complex and passionate. Many regions of Spain are fiercely proud of their own identity and dialect. The Galicians are proud of their celtic heritage, the Catalonians of how different they are from everyone else. Yet, the approach to expressing their identities is vastly different. While Catalanoia demands sovereignty via political channels, the Basque country for a long time had the extremist group, ETA, violently demanding separation. Perplexingly, while most Catalonians speak Catalan, very few Basques speak Euskara, an unusual language unrelated to any known language of the world. Similarly confusing, though not unique to Spain, is the Spaniards’ passion for children, but lack of support for mothers.

I was most astounded by the peaceful transition to democracy after Franco’s death - without protests or revolutions - a seemingly impossible feat given the violent revolutions and wars that preceded or followed other regime changes. Tremlett carefully explores these aspects by uncovering impacts of the regime on various aspects of Spanish life. A comical example is how conservative family values - adultery and divorce were blasphemy - impacted entertainment. Movies had to be suitably modified. In Mogambo, to sidestep the lead actress’s adultery, the censors transformed the on-screen couple to brother-sister, thus creating an incestual relationship instead! After the transition to democracy, Spain eagerly wanted to “catch up” with the rest of Europe - leading to construction of magnificent buildings all over Spain, with architectural greats such as Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer, Santiago Calatrava, lending their impressive talents.

We explore Spain through entertaining encounters with unusual people and incidents - a lecturer in the Basque country who has to have an armed guard for protection against the ETA, an activist who broke the pact of silence to dig up mass graves of people killed by Franco’s thugs, a wildly popular flamenco contest in prisons, the flamboyant drug lords of Galicia, the corrupt mayors of the white coast, and the author’s own encounters with (the lack of) feminism.

The engaging and entertaining writing style makes it an easy read, holds your interest, and is rather like a collection of related short stories rather than a history book, all the while ensuring that you come away with a much deeper understanding of Spanish life today. A fun and insightful read!