Word: franco
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...polls. Richard Oliver Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. Catalan Pride on the Pitch I was disappointed by Franklin Foer's essay about European football, "Homage to Catalonia" [May 22]. Foer said that over the years, his view of the Barcelona club "has grown ever more romantic," owing to its anti-Franco traditions. If he was willing to link football with politics and religion, he should have written at least a couple of lines about Athletic Club de Bilbao, the last romantic soccer team worldwide. It's not that I don't like Foer's favorites, Arsenal and Barcelona, but he should...
...Another adult twist on a child's fable is Pan's Labyrinth. Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro flawlessly laces a Lewis Carroll-like fantasy of an underground kingdom into the realistic story of a sadistic officer (Sergi López) in Franco's Spain and a wily insurgent servant (Maribel Verdú), fighting for possession of a sad, dreamy child. It's got sumptuous special effects and, finally, a mournful wisdom about love, honor and death. Also a standout was Climates, from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This minor-key étude of love, sex and selfishness used minimalist strategies...
...Well, who cares? Pan's Labyrinth is terrific. It sets an Alice in Wonderland fantasy in the desperate conflict of fascists and insurgents in Franco's Spain, 1944. An Army officer, the brutal Capt. Vidal (Sergi López), has married and impregnated a young widow (Araidna Gil), bringing her and her 11-year-old daughter Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) to a house in the rebel zone he is patrolling. Ofelia, fiercely loyal to her mother and dead father, and rightly suspicious of the Captain, feels the force of strange creatures from the moment she arrives at her new home. While...
...city. A cousin of mine had fought for the republic in the Spanish Civil War. Why would a Polish Jew, who had never before set foot in Spain, journey across Europe to take up arms with the Catalans? As a boy, I began reading about Barcelona's resistance to Franco and developed a romance with the city. During my teens, I finally made a pilgrimage to Catalonia. It was the week before the New Year, and Barça had no matches scheduled. But to celebrate the holiday season, the club had opened the doors of its stadium, the Nou Camp...
While, over the years, my view of the Spanish Civil War has grown more nuanced, my view of Barça has grown ever more romantic. During the era of the Franco dictatorship, Barça was the lone place where the Catalans could shout in their own language and denounce the authoritarian regime. No government would dare challenge 100,000 men in the throes of fandom. Franco understood that the Catalan people needed a place to vent their frustration, and Barça provided just that...