The President of the Government participated a few days ago in a tribute to Almudena Grandes, in which he expressed his desire to "vindicate a luminous past of republicanism." These words by Pedro Sánchez have reminded me that, in a collective book (Manuel Azaña: thought and action, 1996), Emilio Torres Gallego refers to "the two great passions of Azaña in his personal and political life: the Republic and Spain" . And it seemed to me that, at this time, it may be convenient, due to being forgotten, to remember this double passion, since, if the republican passion is apparently alive in many of our leaders, it is not usual to find in them a trace of passion for Spain, disdained in these days as a matter of fascists and people of bad appearance. Reason why, Spain being today not only "the one that has no name, the one that nobody cares about", but also the one that is rejected and ridiculed, I want to dwell on the Spanish passion of Manuel Azaña.
"His way of conceiving Spain - writes Torres Gallego - was truly exciting and he knew how to transmit it to those of us who then belonged to the youth of the Republican Left, who still have the concept of the homeland and of Spain that we learned (from) Don Manuel".
How did Manuel Azana conceive of Spain? At first he defined himself like this in relation to her: "With a quarter of Basque blood (the root in Elgoibar) and with a connection in Arenys de Mar -his paternal grandmother, Catalina Catarineu, was Catalan-, I am Spanish as the most Spanish ; he could have been a Patagonian or a Samoyed, but, anyway, I am Spanish, which does not seem to me, neither in good nor in bad, a thing from another world ”. This does not prevent me from drawing his spiritual profile like this: “Spain is, without a doubt, the most important entity of my moral life, a determining chapter in my aesthetic education, connection with the past, projection on the future. It would be trivial and a bit inaccurate to say: I love Spain. No. It's something else: older, younger, but different. (...) I am not indulgent with their defects (nor with mine); with his madness, his violence, his laziness, his backwardness, his envy. But they are not a reason to turn your back on him and detach yourself, nor to climb on the superior man's tripod. On the contrary: his destiny overwhelms me ”. From what his patriotism arose, which for Azaña “is not a code of doctrine; patriotism is a disposition of mind that drives us, like someone fulfilling a duty, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the common good; but no political problem has its solution written in the code of patriotism”.
Following the guideline of the two passions of Manuel Azaña, I do not know if the President of the Government perceives Spain as a nation with the same luminosity with which he perceives republicanism. It is true that he is not obliged by reason of his position to perceive it in this way, much less to say what he perceives, if he perceives anything. Although it wouldn't hurt if he ever expressed his feelings of full understanding of Spain, which he certainly has and never gets in the way of someone who assumes such a high office. Especially, if in his daily political action he deems it convenient and necessary to forge alliances with those who despise Spain as a nation and aspire to separate from his State.
I close this article with other quotes from Azaña, two special ones for Spaniards and another one of more general value. Those that fit us like a glove refer to the Civil War, which can never end in victory because its end, whoever wins, "will not be a personal triumph because when you have the pain of Spain that I have in my soul, you don't win personally against compatriots”; for which "it must be avoided that the Republic is revalued in the estimation of the people simply because its enemies are worse". And the one that has general value is from his last speech in Congress as President of the Republic, in April 1936: “When you are at the head of a great people loaded with rancid and indescribable flavors, the most frivolous soul covers seriously thinking about the historical fecundity of successes and errors. Amen.
