Forward to the past

Last Wednesday, a group of us visited the Instituto Cervantes on T.M. Kalaw. As activists for constitutional reform we wanted to find out more about Spain’s influence on our heroes, Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Lopez-Jaena et al. What impelled them to seek political reforms for the Philippines while they were students in Spain?

This is the other Spain that is relatively unknown among Filipinos today. I discovered it recently from Manuel Sarkisyanz’s book “Rizal and Republican Spain”.  

 We also went there to view the ongoing exhibit on the Spanish Civil War — Corresponsales en la Guerra de Espana 1936-1939.

I asked Manoling Morato, a Rizalist who bought the rights to Rizal, Filipino Poet and Patriot from Spanish author, Dr. Jose Barron Fernandez to come along. But, he too, did not know the address. Isn’t the Instituto Cervantes near La Salle? I looked it up in the Internet and found it was next door to Casino Espanol, a place that was hard-wired in my mind as an exclusive club now decrepit that once stood for Spanish in the Philippines and excluded “indios.”

Imagine, my surprise when we got there. The Instituto was in a building exuding the visual impact of modernity. It knocked down my preconceptions of what Spain or what is Spanish to someone like me who only knew of colonial Spain and the friar abuses documented in Jose Rizal’s novels.

Who was the architect of this building? You enter a place full of light — glass panels that reach to the skies, floors of black stone, a building so austere and uncluttered that you begin to imagine possibility. Javier Galvan Guijo, the Instituto’s architect once said “light is the protagonist of his design.”

An innovating architect he had created a building that reflects the light of our sunny country. Galvan belongs to Spain’s school of modern architects who are challenged by natural space, something inherent in the place they would build on rather than designs taken from architectural learning.  

But there was another reason why I was thrilled by the visit to the new Instituto Cervantes. I found it later when I went home.

It was built according to the same principle that my daughter, Marta, an architect practicing in London, used for my house in Alabang. She had designed a house that was an oddity in the village — a yellow monolith she described as a ‘celebration of the tropical sun and sky.” 

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I quickly recovered from my love at first sight of the building I once thought I would never see or set foot on because of my prejudices. Pepe Rodriguez, its director introduced us to the other officers of the Institute who shook my hands “Encantao” while I mumbled my inferior “hello.” We noticed several young students in the Spanish classes. Pepe pointed to us a bulletin of jobs available for Spanish speaking Filipinos in local call centers. So the Instituto is not only about culture but also economic possibilities for outsourcing. They could teach more students Spanish in universities so they can qualify for jobs without having to go to Spain, but there is a lack of professional teachers.

To those who have not yet visited the new Instituto Cervantes, visit it now while the exhibit on the Spanish Civil War is ongoing. The exhibit is a good point of departure for insights into parliamentary federalism that Spanish progressives wanted for their country. This was not the first civil war in Spain but it probably was the most famous and celebrated because of the participation of foreigners most of them correspondents of major newspapers around the world.

These correspondents would later become renowned authors — Antoine de Saint-Exupery (more known to me as the author of “The Prince”) wrote for L’Intransigeant “Aqui se fusila como se tala arboles,” G.L. Steer for New York Times “The Tragedy of Guernica”, “Historic Basque Town wiped out,” George Orwell for New English Weekly “Spilling the Spanish Beans”, John dos Passos for Esquire “Room and Bath at the Hotel Florida” and of course, the most familiar to us, Ernest Hemingway for the New Republic “Hemingway reports Spain”.

Putting together the various reports was obviously a feat. Pepe adds “these old pages (all framed with a blue background) are original.”

Whether it was in 1833, 1868 or 1936 the battle of ideas on politics and government was a continuing phenomenon in Spain. How did this influence the Philippine revolution? And just what did our heroes learn in this other Spain that they wanted also for the Philippines?

In her the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Helen Graham writes her book is not about battles and strategy. “It is concerned throughout with how it affected the physical and psychic lives of soldiers and civilians, and how it shaped the course of politics, society, and culture inside Spain but also beyond.”

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The Philippines belongs to that beyond, a country whose sons and daughters understood the ideas being fought for in the civil wars of Spain. As we seek constitutional reform today it is good to know that our aspirations are nothing new but old — so enduring it reaches us today.

My journey began with Manuel Sarkisyanz, an Iranian who wrote Rizal and Republican Spain.

He deplores that “histories of Filipino emancipation seldom refer to Spanish models although it was common knowledge in Rizal’s time.”

He says that monastic domination may have attempted to isolate Filipinos from outside influences especially from the progressive elements of republican Spain. But that time is over and it will be our own fault if we continue to isolate ourselves from such a fascinating intellectual past. The intervening period between Spanish and American colonization needs to be looked out more closely.

Sarkisyanz writes we have to revisit the revolutionary period before the Americans came. Indeed if our revolution borrowed its ideas from republican Spain we ought now to cull the good we took from it and made our own.

Filipinos born in the American period have prejudices that inhibit them from revisiting that Spanish past. I am one of those. Filipinos may once have been excluded from Casino Espanol but that is a selected memory. It is time to comprehend the entire pre-American period, the other Spain of civil wars that inspired Rizal and Co. to seek freedom and democracy so early in our history.