The two Spains, and what this poem might tell us about ourselves

[mount_oregano]

Spanish poet Antonio Machado was born in Seville in 1875 and died in February 1939. His health failed while he was escaping Spain as its government fell to the Fascists at the end of its Civil War.

Spain had long been divided. Although its Civil War began in 1936, Machado named this split “the two Spains” in his book Proverbios y cantares (Proverbs and Songs), Poem LIII, in 1917, and the name stuck.

Roughly speaking, one side of the two Spains was conservative, religious, rural, and traditional; the other progressive, secular, urban, and modernist. There were also differences between regions and between people with privilege and people condemned to poverty. The split ran deep and complex.

As Machado wrote in this poem, twenty years before the brutal war began, one Spain had a death grip on its position, the other was just waking up, and the future did not look good:
 

Ya hay un español que quiere

vivir y a vivir empieza,

entre una España que muere

y otra España que bosteza.

 

Españolito que vienes

al mundo te guarde Dios.

Una de las dos Españas

ha de helarte el corazón.

 

My translation:
 

There now is a Spaniard who wishes

to live and begins to live,

amid one Spain that is dying

and another Spain that yawns.

 

Child of Spain, as you come

into the world, may God help you.

One of the two Spains

is going to freeze your heart.