Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The Spanish Civil War began 75 years ago. The historian Stephen Payne blames the Left. They murdered rightist leaders hoping to provoke the army into rebellion. Then the Left could crush the army and have a free hand in reconstructing Spain and eliminating the right. It didn’t work out that way. The Right won and [...]

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I have been reading Death Comes to the Archbishop. It is balm for the soul after the other stuff I have been reading: the endless tales of clerical crimes, and the horrors visited by the anticlerical Republicans upon the often innocent priests of Spain. Willa Cather traduces Father Martinez, and is somewhat condescending to the [...]

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RETABLO DEL NACIMIENTO o DE LA ADORACIÓN DE LOS PASTORES
Gregorio Fernández (Hacia 1576, Sarria, Lugo - Valladolid 1636)1614
Madera policromada
Monasterio de las Huelgas Reales, Valladolid

Unlike the other figures, the infant Jesus is naked, which emphasizes his full humanity and his vulnerability. He also is lying in the same position that he is shown in after the [...]

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You can’t make these things up:
 
A teacher in the secondary school Institute Menénez Tola has been denounced by the family of a Moslem student for talking about ham in class.  

Un profesor de secundaria del Instituto Menénez Tolosa…ha sido denunciado por la familia de un alumno musulmán por hablar de jamón en clase. En concreto, el [...]

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Pope Benedict  has approved the beatification of six more martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Because they were martyred, a proof of a miracle is not required, only that they had been killed because of hatred of Christ and had forgiven their persecutors. 
About 2,000 more cases are wending their way through the Vatican. About 10,000 [...]

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The memories of the Civil war are vivid in Spain, and a new movie, There Be Dragons explores them. Roland Joffe, an agnostic, (The Mission, The Killing Fields), directed it. He is aiming for a Palm Sunday, 2011 release. The movie is intense. 
The plot is that two friends who grow up and take different paths, one [...]

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I finished my Camino on October 31, met my wife, and we stayed in Santiago until November 4, just before the arrival of the Pope. We went to Madrid for a few days and observed, among other things, the controversy started by the remarks that Benedict made to reporters on his plane: 

“In Spain, a strong, [...]

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Der Spiegel notes this anniversary: The thousand bloody days of the Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939 when Franco marched into Madrid. The killing was not over.

Probably 200,000 human beings were killed in the name of Franco’s name in the Civil War in in the years after the war. But in their [...]

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Some Americans praise the more sophisticated European attitude to sexuality. The fuss about the Palin pregnancy, or about Clinton’s affairs, would be unimaginable in Europe.
The Catholic Church hierarchy in the United States is heavily influenced by Europe: rising stars among the priesthood were educated at the North American College or at other European seminaries [...]

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We were in Cartagena, Spain, recently before we left for our cruise.
In the town square at the waterfront is an unusual war memorial: A Spanish memorial to the Spanish-American war, which Spain lost.

The monument has a sailor holding a dying soldier.

The victories are holding their laurel wreaths down.
The monument lists the great battle at Santiago, [...]

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