Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches 5 I had just entered my twenties when the Civil War broke out with the revolt led by Franco against the Republic. There was no single event as powerful in the formation of my generation’s awareness of the world. To many it was our initiation into the Twentieth Century, probably the worst century in history. The Spanish agony has turned out to be classic, the model for many other democratic government’s overthrowbymilitary forces espousing a return toChristianvalues. Twoof my university classmates went off to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, one of them, Ralph Neaphus, never to return. For nearly four years the first news we looked for in the morning papers was the news from the Spanish front. The word “Spain” in the Thirties was explosive, the very emblem of resistance not only to the forced return of clerical Feudalism in the world but to the rule of unreason and the death of the mind. For many, even then, the Civil War, with the Nazis and Mussolini’s troops in open support of Franco, was the opening battle of the Second World War. “Spain” also meant Picasso and his “Guernica” painting. Yes, it was still hard to believe that an airforce pilot, even of the Nazi air force, could fly low over an open sunlit square and drop bombs on civilians. As time went on “Spain” would exemplify the struggles of many other peoples to emerge into modernity from the fog and futility of tenacious feudal institutions. Arthur Miller — Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2002 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature on 25/10/2002.