General Escobar's War

This poignant historical novel by Spanish author Olaizola (b. 1927, San Sebastian), who has written about such figures as El Cid, Saint John of the Cross, and Cortés, is the story of Gen. Antonio Escobar, the highest-ranking officer of the Republican Army left in the country at the end of the Spanish Civil War. As the novel opens, Escobar is awaiting trial and execution. On July 19, 1936, Escobar, a colonel in the Civil Guard and a man of faith, had chosen to defend the Republic in accordance with his oath to support Spain's legal government. As thousands of armed insurrectionists poured into the streets of Barcelona, he gave the orders to crush the uprising of those who, three years later, would be victorious. The author's take on the Spanish Civil War, told in the words of a soldier who supported the losing side because he believed it was his duty to do so, is powerful in its simplicity and refreshingly unideological. When the novel was first published in 1983, eight years after the death of Franco ended his 36-year dictatorship, attitudes toward the war were still raw enough to produce an outcry. The translator has provided a helpful glossary of characters and organizations cited in the novel.