Month: June 2024

Truth Stretched Thin

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

I love visiting Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. Ever since spending a year in South America in my early 20s, and acquiring a feel for the language, a small part of my growing up was rooted in hispanic culture. A recent trip to Spain brought introductions to new cities, including Burgos and Alcalá de Henares. The latter visit arose from a longstanding wish to see the birthplace of Spain’s most distinguished writer, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The author of Don Quixote was born there in 1547 and it is where he spent the first four years of his life. Understandably, alongside his former home which is now a museum, the city celebrates its famous author in numerous statues, street names and public institutions. Don Quixote is considered to be the world’s first novel in the modern sense of the word.

Given the date of his birth and the febrile politics of a recently re-conquered Spain, Cervantes was born into a world in which it had been decided that the co-existence of faiths was intolerable. In 1492 the Muslims and Jews who had not converted to Christianity were expelled from Spain. Those who had converted lived amongst neighbours who, very often, sought any sign that the conversion was one of “convenience” and would report people to the authorities. This was the time when the Inquisition was in full force and those who converted were keen to appear compliant. Many years ago, while participating in a canyoning activity north of Almuñécar, in Andalusia, a young instructor accompanying us told me that his surname was the same as the name of a local village. His family’s story was that they had been Jewish and, like many of the converts who remained, they took the name of a local town in order to immerse themselves in Christian Spain and avoid suspicion. Such practices were commonplace.

There is a claim that the family name of Cervantes came from a town of that name in Galicia, and may have been taken for reasons of conversion. However, this is far from certain. The proximity of the Cervantes family’s home to the Jewish quarter of Alcalá de Henares might be a more persuasive argument for some kind of connection. Today, all that indicates the onetime presence of a synagogue and Jewish “coral”, as it was called, is a small plaque. Cervantes senior was a doctor and the family lived both opposite this old Jewish quarter and beside the city’s ancient hospital.

A statue of Don Quixote outside the house in which Cervantes spent the first four years of his life in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid

Initially, after the Reconquest, the Jewish community experienced relative security compared with other European countries. This did not endure.

“Yet Jews were still better off than their Ashkenazic brethren in the rest of Europe who were expelled from England and France and faced continuing and unrelenting pogroms and persecution in Germany and Central Europe, eventually driving them eastwards to Poland and Lithuania. The Christian rulers of Spain exploited the skills of their Jewish subjects and a thin layer of upper class Jews remained wealthy and influential. The Jewish population of Spain generally still felt comfortable there. After all, they had lived as Spaniards for many centuries. Why should the situation change now?”

The Spanish Expulsion from the Jewish History website accessed 28/06/24

Perhaps the strongest argument that Cervantes had Jewish ancestry comes from evidence internal to Don Quixote. In an excellent BBC World Service edition of The Forum scholars argue that in his novel there is “an implicit cultural critique” which questions, as far as it can, some of the negative narratives about the descendants of Muslims and Jews still living in Spain. In a section of the novel where Don Quixote is in Toledo, he seeks and finds someone to translate a text in Arabic. By showing the continued presence of Hebrew and Arabic speakers in Spain Cervantes put in doubt the official story of a single, homogenous, Christian culture.

Out of the troubled waters of post-reconquest Spain Cervantes created a story capable of finding a broad and appreciative audience. Don Quixote might be seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone, enabling different communities to discern for themselves an intelligible and constructive place in Spanish society. That is no small feat, and the unparalleled significance of Cervantes in Spanish culture bears testimony to his achievement in enabling humour, insight and compassion to leaven the complex experience of living in a society where the past was an ever-present and potent challenge to the present.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water”.

Don Quixote

Those who do not think as we do

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

I am standing in a Spanish market town which looks like so many others which I’ve visited over the years. As it happens, by longstanding tradition, Monday has been market day from time immemorial. However, on Monday April 26th 1937 – about a month after Easter – it was a day like no other. From 4 pm, and lasting for several hours, German and Italian planes bombed the hell out of Guernica. The buildings consisted mainly of wood, and the aircraft first targeted the town’s water tanks and fire station. Those who attempted to flee into the countryside were strafed by German fighters circling the drop zone of the bombers. It is estimated that with visitors to the market from nearby Bilbao, there were 10,000 people in the town that day. Three days after the attack the forces of General Franco occupied the town and, consequently, it is very difficult to know the true human cost of this atrocity. The most likely figures estimate 1,645 dead and 889 injured. Given the length and intensity of the attack these numbers may be underestimates, but we shall never know for certain. Due to the longevity of Franco’s reign independent data-gathering and interviews with survivors only took place long after the destruction of the town.

Guernica had no air defences. In fact, there was nothing in the town which could have responded to an attack from the air. Without fear of their own losses, German and Italian forces reigned down terror – and this was a primary goal of the mission. It communicated around the world that Axis forces could, and would, attack civilian targets with impunity, wherever it was deemed necessary. Reducing a town to rubble simply became one strategy in the ambitions of conquest which the dictators desired and sought to enact. It was a powerful example to anyone contemplating resistance about the cost of non-compliance.

“It is necessary to spread terror,” General Emilio Mola declared on 19 July 1936, just a day after the coup began. “We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do.”

General Emilio Mola quoted in “Guernica” in the BBC History Magazine

It was the event which inspired what has been described as the last political masterpiece of art, Picasso’s Guernica. Visiting the peace museum in the town there are several representations of Picasso’s work, set alongside many photographs of the destruction left behind. As with Ukraine and Gaza, and so many other places, the piles of rubble and scorched buildings stand as symbols of desecrated communities. There are always narratives that seek to find excuses for such actions. “Local people were sympathetic to terrorists; they sheltered them; they conspired with them”: therefore the cost they have paid is entirely proportionate. Only the delusional can believe that the eradication of schools; hospital and places of worship will bring about an enduring peace. Instead, it plants in the hearts of the survivors, and especially the young, a determination fuelled by a loss which seeks justice by all available means. These fires burn long, long, after the incendiary devices have done their worst.

In Guernica’s ‘Park of the Peoples of Europe’ are works by the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (pictured) and Henry Moore. Chillida’s piece (pictured) is entitled “Our Father’s House” and was commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing.

The desire to eradicate difference is perhaps one of the most pernicious threads pulled through the most shameful parts of human history. When our arguments don’t prevail, or people seem unreasonably stubborn to retain their language or culture, let’s simply bomb them into submission. What we never seem to learn, despite the beguiling simplicity of this approach, is that it doesn’t work. It perpetuates hatred and drives culture underground, not to extinction. If a fraction of the energy and resource that went into war were taken to promote peace, we would live in a very different world. It took the horrors of WWII to create the United Nations, and several other institutions dedicated to promote understanding, peace and reconciliation. At some point, God willing, may we find in the aftermath of today’s destruction an equal determination to seek peace and pursue it.

The Matter of Time

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It is well over 20 years since I last visited Bilbao. This bustling northern city of Spain, and the largest in the Basque Country, lies in an impressive location between two small mountains ranges and the sea. It is full of local character and boasts impressive museums and galleries. The Guggenheim Museum, which opened in 1997, is a spectacular work of art in itself with its distinctive curved and shinning exterior. Frank Gehry’s waterside masterpiece claims that very rare accolade of being praised equally by critics, academics and the general public.

Inside the Guggenheim are the vast and imposing creations of Richard Serra, who died earlier this year. When I was last in Bilbao some of the steel structures were in place, but not all. I can remember walking around the curved and towering sides of this massive installations and experiencing the dizzying effects of being inside these metal behemoths. Today, walking around and within the complete set of structures is an even more spectacular assault to the senses. Light, space and sound are distorted in ways that question our certainties and give the world back to us in unexpected ways. In a venue visited by tourists from all over the world, words from many different languages echo around the soaring sides of steel, creating a Babel-like atmosphere of mythic confusion. For Serra the whole experience was intended to shape our awareness of time as, walking around the pieces, our perception bounces between the unexpected and the slow unfolding of different spaces.

“The meaning of the installation will be activated and animated by the rhythm of the viewer’s movement. Meaning occurs only through continuous movement, through anticipation, observation and recollection”.

Richard Serra – about the installations entitled “A Matter of Time”

This is what art offers us at its best – the opportunity to move beyond what we assume and project. To begin to perceive different possibilities and opportunities. It is little wonder that so much of the status quo in politics and elsewhere operates to curtail investment in such projects. The narrow measures of cost and benefit have little scope for calculating the value of these artistic expressions. In the political manifestoes currently on offer in the UK neither of the main parties offer any detailed vision for public art or community creativity. As Richard Serra said on more than one occasion: “art is purposely useless…” – which is part of its magic for humanity, as well as the reason politicians are unlikely to spend very much time speaking about it.

Shameless

Chris SwiftLeave a comment

Many businesses have compliance officers. It is the responsibility of these members of staff to ensure that a firm complies with all the legal and regulatory requirements laid upon it. However, I am going to suggest that there is a different understanding of compliance which is a significant dimension in the various scandals that have come to light in recent months. Whether it is the Post Office, or the entire system of politics and health care provision, in the case of contaminated blood, something has led seemingly intelligent and responsible people not only to fail to act, but to actively work to suppress concerns and continue with dangerous treatments for which other – safer – options were available. What has led these people to comply with behaviours and a culture they knew to be wrong?

Organisations are very good at suppressing criticism. Even when there are good policies and procedures for raising concerns, unspoken influences shape the course of action people feel able to use. For example, without overwhelmingly compelling evidence – and other willing witnesses – the balance of power sits with management. Managers organise rotas; authorise annual and compassionate leave requests; they write appraisals and references. Suggesting that something is wrong means that a manager has allowed something to happen under their watch; been so ill-informed as to be unaware; or are directly complicit in some aspect of a negative culture. In all circumstances it is a risk to whistleblow, whatever paper assurances exist in corporate policies. Even if nothing negative happens at the time, managers may salt away their feelings about the employee and save their retribution for a future time when their action, and past events, can no longer be connected.

Sometimes chaplains fail to recognise these dynamics and express their views with naive candour. I have known several chaplains over the past couple of decades who decided to raise a concern directly with a CEO or organisational chair. This may be no bad thing, but it can irritate all the managers they have cut out between their organisational position and the top of the chain. Perhaps, in the spirit of naval chaplains, the chaplains regard themselves to be the equal of whoever they happen to be addressing. In some cases they have not even bothered to voice their concerns internally but, in the first instance, have gone to an external party. This kind of behaviour was picked in early drafts that led to the NHS England chaplaincy guidance of 2003, Caring for the Spirit. At one point there was text to the effect that chaplains could offer critical insights about an organisation, so long as this did not come as a surprise to that organisation. In other words, chaplains should escalate things internally before writing to their bishop etc..

The problem with internal escalation is that it can be stimied in a number of ways. I have seen on many occasions how the legitimate concerns of a chaplain have been reinterpreted and dismissed while, at the same time, subtle changes may have been made quietly in the background. While it is good that a chaplain’s observations might help put things right, it may also have marked the chaplain out as a troublemaker as far as management was concerned. Organisations possess a gravity that bends behaviour towards various degrees of compliance.

Watching the recent questioning of the former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, I was struck by the complete absence of shame in the testimony. There were tears; apologies; and a lot of regret that she had been poorly advised, but no shame. This was an organisation that persecuted and prosecuted its own staff; trusted a faulty software programme more than people; and defended its wrongful actions long after it was clear that reasonable doubt existed about Horizon. At least one person caught up in these horrors committed suicide, and many others were falsely imprisoned. Surely the person who sat at the top of such an organisation, receiving an enormous salary and bonuses, would be ashamed to say they were in charge? Yet that was not the impression given during the testimony.

“A certain kind of shame is valid in its proper context. If you do something morally wrong – steal a colleague’s idea or make a promise you don’t intend to keep – you should regret it, feel guilty, even ashamed of your actions. That’s not unhealthy. It might lead you to apologize and might prevent you from doing it again”.

This Leadership Motivation Is Toxic. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Do It by Erica Ariel Fox, Forbes Magazine 5 December 2022

All this suggests that the training and formation of senior managers gets so invested in processes and operating systems that some of the core humanity of leadership gets left behind. In the case of the Post Office, the voices of staff working in the branches were given remarkably little weight. To meet financial targets, and defend an eye-watering investment in Fujitsu, people were simply thrown overboard. If that isn’t something a leader should feel ashamed about, then our selection and development of leaders needs a serious overhaul.