We Saw Spain Die by Preston Paul Page B

His job was, broadly speaking, to bring up to date the official historiography of the regime in order to repel the attacks coming from Paris. The principal weapon in the armoury of this new unit of intellectual warfare was provided by the purchase of the magnificent library on the Spanish Civil War, built up over many years by the Italian journalist, Cesare Gullino, who had originally been sent to Spain by Mussolini. Southworth quickly became the department’s main enemy. In comparison with Hugh Thomas, who was already well known after the worldwide success of his book on the Spanish war, Herbert Southworth was virtually unknown. However, there was another crucial difference between the two men. Thomas had written his great book on the conflict, but the Spanish Civil War was not going to be the central objective of his life. He was already working on his monumental history of Cuba. Southworth, in contrast, dedicated his life to the study of the Spanish Civil War. Moreover, against de la Cierva, who had the staff and resources of a ministry at his disposal, Southworth had his own arsenal: one of the world’s greatest collections of books on the war.
    As well as being an anti-Francoist author, Southworth was one of the investors who made possible the survival of the important Spanish publishing house in Paris, Editions Ruedo Ibérico. 2 That Ricardo de la Cierva y de Hoces saw Southworth as an opponent to be feared was soon revealed. In 1965, de la Cierva had written to him, saying: ‘I have great respect for you as an expert on the bibliography of our war and many people have been made aware of your book thanks to me. But I sincerely believe, Mr Southworth, that if you were to eliminate all the passion and prejudice that is found in your pages, your work would achieve the status that it deserves’
(Tengo una gran estima por Vd. Como especialista en la bibliografía de nuestra Guerra y muchas personas han conocido su libro por mi medio. Pero creo sinceramente, Mr Southworth, que si Vd suprimiera toda la pasión y todo el partidisimo que rebosa en sus páginas, su obra alcanzaría todo el valor que se merece). 3
They met in Madrid in 1965 and de la Cierva invited him to dinner. Southworth told me later that de la Cierva had proudly recounted to him how the police had orders to seize copies of
El mito de la cruzada,
found whensearching bookshops and the homes of political suspects. De la Cierva confided that he recommended and even gave to his friends confiscated copies of the book, proceeding to distribute copies to the other dinner guests. However, in Franco’s Spain, what was said in private was often far removed from what was said in public. Ricardo de la Cierva wrote:
    H. R. Southworth is, without argument, the great expert on the bibliography of our war, as seen from the Republican side… His library on our war is the world’s most important private collection: more than seven thousand titles. I am almost certain that he has read all seven thousand. And he keeps, in a tremendous photographic memory, all the important facts and all the relevant cross-references between these books. 4
    De la Cierva had underestimated the numerical size of the library, but not Southworth’s detailed knowledge of its contents. This praise was immediately followed by some ferocious, but superficial, attacks on the alleged deficiencies of Southworth’s methodology.
    Who was this Herbert Southworth, the legendary book-collector who for many years to come would be the legendary intellectual scourge of General Franco’s dictatorship? His books would be quarried by the most serious specialists on the Spanish Civil War and his study of the bombing of Guernica would be one of the three or four most important of the many thousands of volumes written on the conflict. Even so, few people knew who he was because, not having a position in a university, he lacked an easy label. Nevertheless, he had had an extraordinary existence. His passage from