The Forever Nonexistent “Second” Spanish Civil War

There may exist, given the thought, something to be called a “lost episode” or chapter in world or, at least, European history in that a minor attempt, in the 1970s, to disrupt and overthrow the Spanish Parliament had only ended in a very stupid and useless fiasco.

This was because of a significantly genuine lack of real support for any such attempt to stop the course of historical events toward greater degrees of democratization, of the slide toward the growth of the ideological Left in the politics of that country.  And so, such a past, though interesting, episode, which becomes ever more obscure decade by decade, must go down the proverbial Orwellian memory hole.

Is it actually possible to really live one’s life in, perhaps, the supposed existential or phenomenological shadow, so to speak, of an “important” event that had, in fact, never occurred?   Would the person affected by such an emotional or, perhaps, psychological affectation be too excessive for words?  

Or, would it be ever said that he was among the last of the true romantics or, probably, a genuine neo-romantic type of person searching for ideals in which to believe athwart an often disbelieving world that, e. g., routinely mocks honor, heroism, valor, truth, justice, chivalry, etc.?   Perhaps, there is no longer any belief in what used to be referred to, without today’s skeptical or sardonic sneering, as “the heroic in man.”  There may be the final end of dreaming of castles in Spain, though, maybe not.

Many people, on both the political Left and Right, once thought it was fully possible that a second Spanish Civil War might someday occur; this was fairly true, at least, back in the 1960s and 1970s when, for a time, it seemed that a great deal of unresolved tensions and bitterness could have provoked yet a second contest of will to be brokered upon the bloody soil of ancient Spain. 

On the Right, for instance, it can be recalled, e. g., that the Catholic writer and scholar Frederick D. Wilhelmsen had, back then in those above-cited decades, fully expected such an event, concerning which he had publicly declared that he was then ready to join in the fighting that was, thus, expected; Wilhelmsen, therefore, would have gladly put a rosary around his neck and gone off into battle for another crusade.