Iker González-Allende, Leland and Dorothy Olson Professor of Spanish, published a critical edition of a Basque novel published during the Spanish Civil War, Euzkadi en llamas ("The Basque Country in Flames"), by Ramón Belaustegigoitia (website is in Spanish).
This is the first edition of the novel since its original publication date in 1938 in Mexico, where the author went into exile after living several episodes of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
González-Allende's introduction presents the author's works and ideology, analyzes the novel, and outlines the editing criteria. The novel offers the perspective of the Basque nationalism during the Spanish Civil War through the main character, a young man who joins the Basque army to fight against the Francoist forces that started the war with a coup d'état against the democratic Second Spanish Republic.
With more than 600 pages, it is the longest and most panoramic novel about the Spanish Civil War in the Basque Country published during the years of conflict. This edition is important not only because it recovers a book that was inaccessible to the general public, but also because it helps to better understand the ideology of Basque nationalism during the first third of the 20th century, offers an inclusive perspective of the Spanish Civil War, and reveals the literary quality of the narrative published during the conflict, which has usually been considered as merely propagandistic.
Reviewer José Ramón Zabala describes it as "a magnificent exercise of historical memory". A review by Hamaikabide Elkartea (in Spanish) is available here.
