Article Abstracts and Reviews

Article Abstracts and Reviews
María Eugenia Lacarra. "La utilización del Cid de Menéndez Pidal en la ideologia
militar franquista." Ideologies & Literature, 3, No. 12 (1980), pp. 95-127.
L
ACARRA SEES in Ramón Menéndez Pidal's La España del Cid (which appeared
in the same month as did the Wall Street crash of 1929) and related work an effort by the author to inspire Spaniards of the day — i.e., the concluding years of
Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, a time he considers of spiritual weakness in Spain
— to emulate the actions of epic heroes, especially the Cid. Such action would in
effect amount to substituting as a model one military leader for another, Lacarra
remarks. She lists the character traits Menéndez Pidal finds in the Cid and points
out that don Ramón's favorable interpretation of the hero, especially the justification, in the name of patriotism, of the Cid's acts of violence and manoeuvres
against Alfonso, is a misrepresentation which, nonetheless, was accepted as strictly
historical fact in Spain and abroad.
Lacarra then shows how Franco and his followers exploited this idealization
by borrowing, and applying to themselves and their own situation, Menéndez Pidal's reasoning and his glorification of the outlawed Cid in order to j u s t i f y their
own acts of violence and insubordination. She concludes: "En una España de la
posguerra tan necesitada de intelectuales de estatura internacional, Menéndez Pidal cumplía el doble papel de intelectual liberal e independiente, que pese a serlo
era aceptado por el gobierno, y el de ideólogo 'inadvertido' del régimen, que precisamente por ser inadvertido era más eficaz." 1
DOROTHY CLOTELLE CLARKE
University of California, Berkeley
-o-oOo-o-
1
"In postwar Spain, so greatly in need of intellectuals of international stature,
Menéndez Pidal fulfilled the double rôle of liberal and independent intellectual, who in spite
of so being was accepted by the government, and t h at of 'unwilling' ideologist of the regime,
who, precisely for being unwitting, was most effective." (Translation mine; in the Spanish
text I have corrected the misprint "ideológo" to read "ideólogo." — D.C.C.)
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