November 29, 2023 • 37 mins
Montserrat is a culturally important place with a lot of stories. This episode focuses on three to show its importance as a religious center, as a strategic military location, and finally, as a place that has been home to political protest.
Research:
- Buttery, Helen. “The Dark Queen.” National Post. March 31, 2001. https://www.newspapers.com/image/513661243/?terms=madonna%20montserrat&match=1
- “Basque Country and Catalonia: Different Paths to Recognition.” Centre on Constitutional Change. June 3, 2019. https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/news-and-opinion/basque-country-and-catalonia-different-paths-recognition
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "ETA". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ETA
- Dawson, Paul. “Napoleon’s Peninsular War: The French Experience of the War in Spain from Vimeiro to Corunna, 1808–1809.” Frontline Books. 2020.
- “Defendents Backed By Protestors.” Arizona Daily Star. Dec. 14, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/164623929/?terms=montserrat%20protest&match=1
- Duricy, Michael P. “Montserrat Black Madonna: Black Madonnas: Our Lady of Montserrat.” University of Dayton. https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/m/montserrat-black-madonna.php#:~:text=the%20dark%20color%20of%20Our,most%20celebrated%20images%20in%20Spain.
- Duricy, Michael P. “Black Madonnas: Origin, History, Controversy.” University of Dayton. https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/b/black-madonnas-origin-history-controversy.php
- Eder, Richard. “Burgos Court: Stage for Basque Case.” New York Times. Dec. 7, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/07/archives/burgos-court-stage-for-basque-cause.html
- Eder, Richard. “Trial of Basques Starts in Burgos.” New York Times. December 4, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/04/archives/trial-of-basques-starts-in-burgos-15-are-charged-in-slaying-of.html
- Gipson, Ferren. “The Story of the Black Madonnas.” Art UK. Oct. 11, 2018. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-story-of-the-black-madonnas
- Jeffrey, Simon. “Timeline: ETA.” The Guardian. March 11, 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/11/spain.simonjeffery
- “Limit to Free Speech.” Des Moines Tribune. Dec. 16, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/325193542/?terms=montserrat%20protest&match=1
- Nurse, Charlie. “The Burgos Show Trial of 1970. Ihr.world. Dec. 3, 2020. https://ihr.world/en/2020/12/03/the-burgos-showtrial-of-1970/
- Oman, Charles William Chadwick. “A History of the Peninsular War.” Oxford. 1902. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/historyofpeninsu04oman/page/n9/mode/2up
- “Police Surround Montserrat Monastery.” Redlands Daily Facts. Dec. 14, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/5016668/?terms=montserrat%20monastery&match=1
- Roccasalvo, Joan L., C.S.J. “Elegance Personified: The Black Madonna of Montserrat.” The Institute for Sacred Architecture. Volume 21. https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/elegance_personified
- Scheer, Monique. “From Majesty to Mystery: Change in the Meanings of Black Madonnas from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries.” The American Historical Review, vol. 107, no. 5, 2002, pp. 1412–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/532852
- “Sit-in Staged at Monastery.” Tulsa World. Dec. 14, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/888773559/?terms=montserrat%20monastery&match=1
- “Spanish Police Given Special Arrest Powers.” York Daily Record. Dec. 15, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/553332476/?terms=montserrat%20protest&match=1
- “Time Won for the Basques.” The Guardian. Dec. 18, 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/image/260548322/?terms=montserrat%20protest&match=1
- Wilkinson, Isambard. “Montserrat Black Virgin ‘was white originally.’” The Telegraph. April 13, 2001. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/1316133/Montserrat-Black
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we went to Barcelona.
We did. That's gonna come up a little bit here
for a minute. We have a few episodes lined up
(00:24):
that are inspired by that trip. One of my very
favorite days from that trip is when we went to Montserrat.
That name literally means serrated mountain because if you look
at it, it is jagged. There are some cool pieces
of lore about how like angels cut it that way,
none of which we're getting into today, but I was
(00:44):
just blown away by how absolutely beautiful it is. Both
the natural elements of it, like when you're up there
and you're looking out at the vista, you feel like
you're on top of the world, but also the man
made structures there are quite beautiful. And because it's about
an hour's bus ride from where we were staying in
Barcelona proper, we got a lot of history information en
(01:04):
route from our guide, who was the wonderful Isabelle, who
I absolutely adored. But there is a little bit of
a language difference, and that meant that there were a
few times where she said something that made me go
what we Yeah, we had very similar experiences and that
I was like, what are you? What are you talking about?
And then it made me start to think about what
(01:25):
kind of information I would like if I could curate
the story of Monserrat for a group of visitors, right,
I would want stories that ranged from the earliest days
of the monastery that's there to more modern times. There's
even prehistory before the monastery. We can talk a little
bit about that behind the scenes. But Manserrat is a
really culturally important place with a lot of stories. So
(01:45):
I was like, how how would I want to lay
this out as like a terronism guide. So that's kind
of what you're getting today. We're mostly focusing on three
primary elements of its history, which kind of show the
importance of the place as a religious center, which also
includes some art history, as a military center, and finally
(02:07):
as a place that has been home to political protest.
So the earliest historical information on the site where the
monastery at Manserrat would eventually be built is of course sparse,
and it all starts at least in terms of the
inspiration for the monastery with a kind of mythic story
about a sculpture being found, and according to that legend,
(02:30):
in the year eight eighty, several shepherds who were children
saw a light and heard music coming out of a
cave on the mountain one night. So when they went
to this cave, they found a sculpture of the Virgin Mary.
This sculpture was surrounded by angels who were playing music.
So the children went and reported this to local adults,
(02:51):
and as a result, the bishop came to see the
sculpture for himself. He was so taken with it that
he wanted to move it to an existing cathedral. But
the story goes that as the madonna was being carried
down the mountain, she got heavier and heavier, and they
interpreted this as a sign that the statue wanted to
(03:12):
stay there on Manserrat, and so that was where a
monastery or any other religious buildings would have to be built.
Where this sculpture came from is unknown. The lore puts
its origin at the time of Jesus, and that it
was a request of Jesus to Saint Luke to have
(03:32):
an image of his mother Mary carved from wood. In
some tellings of this story. The carpentry tools which had
belonged to Jesus were used by Luke to create this
wooden portrait of Mary, and according to legend, this piece
of artwork arrived in Barcelona via Saint Paul, who gave
it as a gift to the Christians living in the area.
(03:54):
So that of course leads to the question how did
this statue get to a cave on Maserat? But one
popular theory is that when the Moors attacked Barcelona in
seven eighteen, the sculpture was hidden in the cave for
safety and then stayed there for the next one hundred
and sixty years because over time the secret hiding place
(04:16):
was forgotten. Basically, everyone who knew where it was eventually died.
And within a decade of this find, which believers consider
to have been a miracle, there was a chapel built
outside of the Santa Kova, which is the name for
the cave that the statue was found in that translates
to Holy Cave. That chapel location can still be seen,
(04:40):
but you have to hike a little way away from
the monastery to see it. By the end of the
ninth century, there were several more chapels. In ten twenty five,
abbott Oliva of Ripley officially founded the Monsarrat Monastery, and
for several hundred years the monastery at Monsarrat was under
the control of this monastery at Ripley. It didn't become
(05:01):
completely independent from that organization until fourteen thirty one, under
an act of Pope Eugene the Fourth. There is this
really significant moment that happens in the late eleven hundreds,
the statue was replaced with a new one. But even
this is something that's a little confusing because it's not
(05:21):
often mentioned in various accounts of the statue at the monastery,
although the abbey's official website does mention it in their
historic timeline, noting that this twelfth century statue is one
of the jewels of the collection, and even today when
you read short write ups, this statue is still talked
about as though it's possibly something that was made by
(05:41):
Saint Luke. The statue, which is currently on display, is
very much in line with the art style of the
twelfth century. The seated figure of the madonna is elongated,
like her features are elongated. Although it is not an
especially large piece, it's thirty eight inches tall, so about
a meter tall. The infant Jesus is in her lap,
and she holds an orb in one hand. That orb
(06:03):
is actually a thing you can touch. The way she's displayed,
there's like a glass case protecting her, but that one
hand holding the orb protrudes from it and people touch
it as part of their prayers. That switcheroo aside, maybe
the most fascinating aspect of this depiction of Mary is
that she's dark skinned, so she's grouped under the umbrella
(06:25):
of depictions known as black Madonna's like that name suggests,
these are images of the Madonna that have brown or
otherwise very dark skin. The Mansarat sculpture is called La morinetta,
which translates from Catalan literally to meaning brunette or brown.
So there's a lot of religious and art history writing
(06:47):
about black madonnas because there are a lot of them,
and there are lots of varying theories about why they
exist and what, if anything, that coloration means. To be clear,
this is referring to madonnas that are found primarily in
like predominantly white European countries, not madonnas that are made
(07:09):
in regions where a darker skin tone is like more
common among the general public, so it does raise some questions.
One theory is that these images were made with darker
skin tones in an effort to kind of marry pagan
and Christian imagery. That is just one possible explanation. We'll
talk about others in just a moment. I will say that,
(07:32):
like a lot of these depictions, their skin is a
lot darker than like the rest of the sculpture. Yeah, yeah,
well so darker than the rest of the sculpture, and
like darker than like the olive toned skin that like
a lot of scholars believe that like the historical Jesus
probably had right right, they are like dark, dark brown,
(07:53):
and sometimes literally like the color of coal. Right. There
is also a commonality among the various black madonnas in
that most of them, by which we mean the sculptures
or paintings, are associated with miracles, which has led to
a common belief that a black madonna is especially sacred.
This is also linked by some to the verse in
(08:13):
the Song of Solomon in the Bible, which reads, I
am black but comely, or in some editions, I am
black but beautiful. That verse, which of course includes a
lot more. Text is often examined as a study of
race within Christianity, but as it pertains to Madonna's there
are theories that some of them may have been painted
with dark skin to invoke that verse, and there is
(08:36):
even a possibility that a trend may have started after
some representations of Mary were made with this darkened skin
tone or became darkened, and that then others followed suit.
In the case of the Madonna of Monserrat, it appears
that she wasn't actually created with dark skin, but that
her skin on this sculpture darkened over time, and she's
(08:59):
not the old only black Madonna that appears to have
gone through this sort of shift. There are a few
different possible reasons for this. One cause is that some
of them have just been discolored by their surroundings, particularly
things like candles, which can deposit a fine soot residue
onto surfaces. Another, which was mentioned as early as eighteen
(09:22):
seventy eight by French architect Charles Ruhal de Fleury, is
that works might have had silver plating, and that silver
plating blackened over time, and then he suggested that that
look was copied by subsequent artists In the early twentieth century,
Stephen Bissel, a Jesuit scholar, noted that a lot of
(09:43):
skin tone paint included vermilion or red lead, and both
of those can blacken over time. In a paper for
the American Historical Review in two thousand and two, anthropologist
Monique Scher, who includes all of these explanations and authors,
notes quote Although the novelty of a black madonna seems
to be a source of pride for local pilgrimage centers,
(10:05):
today among most scholars the phenomenon has been deemed rather uninteresting,
as it is customarily considered to be nothing but darkening
by candles and age, and thus not warranting greater investigation
or elaboration. I will confess when we got kind of
the weird she's black, but they think it's from candles,
(10:26):
I was like, what that doesn't make sense. But reading
all of the art history discussions of what may have
gone on, I'm like, ah, now I understand. I had
a very similar response to like a different part of
that same explanation that she gave to us, which is
like she was like she might have been white and
she might have turned black, And I was like, what
are what do you say right. The Madonna of Montserrat,
(10:49):
which is a wooden sculpture as we said, was examined
by conservators in the early two thousands to determine what
the true nature of her pigment was, and using X
rays and other tests methods, researchers concluded that she had
originally been depicted with light color skin, but that either
candle smoke or a varnish reaction on the skin tone
(11:10):
areas of her sculpture caused this thing to turn black.
She was then, though repainted black during restoration efforts over
the years by conservators who may have believed the original
color was black. The most recent black repaint that they
were able to conclusively identify was done in the early
eighteenth century. By the twelve twenties, pilgrims started to make
(11:35):
their way to the monastery to visit the Virgin of Monserrat.
By the mid twelve twenties, the monastery had a boy's choir,
which it still has, and official recognition of the Brotherhood
of the Mother of God of Monserrat. Also in the
early thirteenth century, Alfonso, the tenth King of Castile Leon Englecia,
who was known as Alfonso the Wise published a book
(11:57):
of songs, Canticles of Holy Mary. These are not all
songs he wrote, although he may have written some of them.
It's believed that musicians of his court created most of
the songs, and the songs tell the story of the
monserrat Virgin Mary. They attribute multiple miracles to her. In one,
a man who put a ring on the statue's finger
(12:20):
is then visited by the madonna in his sleep. After
he gets married, she tells him that he cannot marry
because he had already pledged himself to her. According to
the song, that man left his wife to become a monk.
Other stories told through the canticles include the madonna bringing
a woman's beloved son back from the dead, and there's
(12:41):
even one in which a man is struck dead after
painting the madonna white. That's a particularly interesting one because
it indicates the statue had already blackened by the thirteenth century.
This collection of songs helped spread the story of the
statue and its finding, which was considered a miracle, as
well as other miracles attributed to it, and it drew
(13:02):
more people to the site. The monastery continued to grow
throughout the following decades, and it had a steady stream
of pilgrims who visited to see the Madonna. In the
fourteen nineties, the monastery got a printing press. It was
one of the first in Spain, and that makes Monsarrat
now home to one of the oldest publishing houses in
the world. It is still going more than five hundred
(13:23):
years later, although there have been interruptions due to various conflicts.
This area has had a lot of conflict. Yes, we're
going to talk about some more of them in a
subsequent episode Bonus Story. Also in the fourteen nineties, the
monastery at Monsarrat was invoked in the naming of an island.
(13:44):
Just in case at the beginning of the episode you
weren't clear on whether we were talking about the mountain
or the island, the two do have a common tie
between them. The island was named Santa Maria de Monserrat
in honor of the Virgin Mary. At Monsarrat, there was
a monk from Monsarrat with Columbus on his second Transatlantic
voyage in fourteen ninety three. His name was Bernardo Buil.
(14:09):
While the Caribbean island was inhabited around three thousand BCE,
possibly by a pre Arwak people, and then by the
carib people. After that. When Columbus got there, no one
was living there, so it was colonized almost one hundred
and forty years later and used for plantations. This island
passed between Britain and France until the Treaty of Paris
(14:31):
and seventeen eighty three once again made it British territory,
and it's remained British territory ever since. The island of
Monsarrat has its own lengthy and complicated history of slavery
and government unrests and even volcanic activity, way beyond the
scope of this episode, which is about a different place. Yeah, yeah,
I just thought we would pop that in in case
(14:53):
you're like, wait, but why does the island have the
same name. Coming up, we're going to talk about Napoleon's
role in the hisay of Monsarrat, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. One of the most significant
(15:14):
events for Monsarrat was the destruction of the entire facility
in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon invaded Spain in eighteen oh eight,
and if you look at Monsarrat on a map, it
sits to the northwest of Barcelona, so it was right
in between the French border and the city of Barcelona,
which as a religious center made it vulnerable to an
(15:35):
advancing army, and as a military location, made it important
as a strategic location for both the Spanish and French armies.
So because of this, the Spanish army moved into the
monastery and the monks left. Most of them went to
the island of Majorca, taking a lot of the monastery's
valuables as well as art, in the hopes of keeping
(15:55):
those things safe. Although Spanish forces held the mountain and
use it is a central location to send arms and
information to the surrounding military units, Napoleon's troops boldly moved
to try to take it for themselves. There's an interesting
piece of lore attached to the first battle at Monserrat
between France and Spain. The French military was powerful. It
(16:18):
managed to set the monastery on fire, but then they
heard what sounded like a massive Spanish army marching on them,
and they retreated. Those huge troop numbers were an illusion,
though The noise was attributed to the drum of a
single boy whose drum beats echoed so loudly off the
mountains that it created the sound of just a huge
(16:40):
throng of marching troops. Sometimes this story is told as
though the drumming was part of an organized effort on
the part of the Spanish forces, and other times it
sounds more like just a lucky accident. The name Isidra
Juke Casanovas is often given as that of the drummer,
and there's a mania meant to him in Elbrook, which
(17:01):
that's just to the east of Monsarrat. That's where he
is said to have been drumming. And the early fighting
at Monsarrat in eighteen oh eight, the French lost more
than four hundred men. Yeah, it's very interesting how differently
that story gets told. In one, it's like the people
of Elbruk are trying to take up arms and help
in the effort, and they tell him he can't help
(17:21):
in any way, and so he gets his drum and
it's very heartwarming and inspiring story. And in others it's like, no,
they literally plan this out. Oh so, so just if
you read it, it may come out different depending on
your source. But the Napoleonic Wars, of course continued for
years beyond that early victory for Spain and overall, Napoleon
was quite successful in his campaign to capture Spain. In Catalonia,
(17:45):
Montserrat was one of the holdouts, and then in eighteen eleven,
General Louis Gabriel Cuchet took ten thousand French troops and
positioned them all around the monastery for a coordinated attack
from all sides. This operation on the part of the
French took the Spanish forces at Monsarrat by surprise, and
France killed hundreds of Spanish soldiers and at that point
(18:08):
the monastery was burned down. The site remained empty for years,
during which time Spain enacted land acts which divested the
monks of the property on Monsarrat, But in eighteen forty
four monks returned and in the decades that followed the
monastery was rebuilt. In eighteen eighty one, the Virgin of
Monsarrat was declared a patron saint of Catalognia. Yeah, she
(18:32):
is not the only one, but she is one of them.
In nineteen eleven, Monsarrat opened its museum, then the Biblical
Museum of Monsarrat. During the tumultuous times, the monastery had
experienced Before this, it had lost almost all of its
heritage objects. So a Benedictine monk and scholar from the abbey,
father Bonaventuro Ubach, had traveled to various sites in Northern
(18:54):
Africa and the Middle East to create a new collection
for this museum. More than sixty years later, in nineteen
sixty three, the museum expanded and evolved to become Musea
de Montsarat. This new museum included archaeological items that the
monastery had acquired, and it also transitioned a lot of
the art that had been displayed or stored in the
(19:16):
monastery into the museum setting. This included a lot of
Baroque and Renaissance art that had been collected over the decades.
And then the museum received a large donation from the
collection of Catalan art collector Joseph Salardies when he died.
Salardis had lived to be one hundred and five and
throughout his life he had acquired art, so his collection
(19:38):
was very impressive. Some of the most impressive pieces in
the collection of the Museum of Montserrat today are from
this bequeathment, including works by Picasso, Fortuny and Johnsinger Sergeant.
The collection has continued to grow as other estates have
bequeathed collections, and it operates through donations. This year we're
(19:59):
recording twenty twenty three, the museum added a really interesting
exhibit which shows off the excavated walls of the oldest
buildings of Monsarrat. They are reconstructed on an upper gallery floor,
so you can walk through the space in the same
configuration that it was originally built in. This exhibit is
starkly lit. It's incredibly striking. Did you go there? I did?
(20:21):
I did not? I did, And it's it's a little
bit strange just in terms of like the feeling it
evokes when you walk in, because you're up there looking
through their art galleries, which again they have what I
can only describe as a banging art collection, Like they
have some jewels in there that I never realized were
there at Monsarrat. And you kind of seen this door
(20:44):
open and you see like stone walls, and not knowing
what it was, I was like, what on earth is
in there? And I went in and started walking around,
and a couple of other people from our tour group
had gone in also, and a couple of people were like,
it's a little bit spooky up here because it is
there's nothing else in there except these walls, and like
the lighting is very very dramatic. And then as you're
(21:06):
reading that this is what they had excavated during one
of their building periods, it's really interesting and it's just
by itself. There's no other stuff, right, and so I
don't know, it's a really really beautiful thing that entire
museum kind of blew me away. I am in love
with it. So it's on my list to go back to.
(21:28):
So we are jumping ahead a little bit here. Yes,
we are jumping past the Spanish Civil War, but I
promise you're going to get some in upcoming episodes because
I want to talk about a more recent event. But
to talk about this event, which was a protest that
happened at the monastery in nineteen seventy, we first have
to talk about the Basques and an extremist group that
grew out of the Basque desire for self governance. So,
(21:51):
just as an expectations management here, this is a high
level look at these ideological struggles, and we obviously cannot
condense decades and even centuries in some cases of nuanced
conflict down to a few paragraphs and capture everything. So
please know that your understanding after you hear all this
will be very basic. It's a very high level overview.
(22:16):
So the Basque people are defined as an ethnic group
originating in the western Pyrenees, on the Bay of Biscay,
so the northern shore of Spain and into France, and
for quite a while the Basque area, like Catalounia, has
been involved in a dispute with Spain over its status
as part of that country, with the issue of autonomy
(22:38):
at the core of that. In eighteen ninety four, the
Partido Nationalist of Osco, or the Basque Nationalist Party was formed,
and it persisted in secret all through the Franco regime,
but it had its own internal struggles. In the mid
twentieth century, the Basque Nationalist Party fractured, with a breakaway
(22:58):
group forming these Scottita Askatasuna that's the Basque Homeland and
Liberty Party that's also known as the ETA. And a
big reason for this fracture was that while most members
of the Basque Nationalist Party wanted to continue to pursue
their political goals peacefully as sort of a moderate Party,
a smaller group felt like it was time to take
up arms and physically fight for self determination. That fracture
(23:23):
was catalyzed when Franco's regime, in an effort to quell
Basque unrest, banned the Basque language and conducted a cultural
genocide against the Basques. That smaller group that wanted more
direct action formed the ETA, and even within the ETA,
there were disparate factions with separate goals. So one branch
(23:43):
in the ETA, the Nationalists, wanted Basque autonomy, essentially in
the same way the Nationalist Party had, But another faction,
which is sometimes called the ETA VII, made up of
younger members, wanted to pursue a more Marxist approach to
government than their ETA fellows, and they were also much
more willing to take extreme measures to reach that goal.
(24:05):
So the ETA became the target of the Franco regime.
And while there were absolutely members of the ETA committing
violent and terrorist acts, you will sometimes see it called
a terrorist organization. The Spanish government would also just arrest
people on even a whiff of suspicion that they had
connection to or involvement in the ETA, and once detained
(24:26):
that those people were treated terribly. They were beaten and tortured.
Whether there was evidence of that connection or not. The
ATA engaged in various illegal and violent activities, including robbing
banks to maintain their financing. But in nineteen sixty eight,
there were two murders that resulted in a massive effort
on the part of the Franco led government to just
(24:48):
shut the ETA down completely. The first murder victim was
Jose Pardoner, who was a Spanish Civil Guard officer that's
one of the country's national police forces, and he was
shot on on June seventh, nineteen sixty eight, when he
pulled over two of the founders of the etaight sabi
Is Barrieta and Enachi Sarascietta, at a traffic stop. These
(25:10):
two men fled the scene and they were stopped a
second time, and during that second stop, Asbarrieta was killed. Yeah,
for clarity, we did not get good pronunciation examples for
those name, so apologies if you know them and they
sound terrible, that is not Tracy's fault. I couldn't find
a guide. The second murder victim was Militon Manzanes, who
was an officer in the Spanish Secret Police, and he
(25:33):
was killed outside his home on August second. This is
characterized as retaliation for the death of extra Barrieta, but
Manzanas also had a reputation as an incredibly brutal man
who ordered arrests and tortures of Basque citizens. These two
murders led to a massive effort on the part of
the Spanish government to bring the responsible parties to justice,
(25:56):
and ultimately sixteen Basques were brought in on accusations that
they had participated in or aided in the murders. In
a moment, we'll talk about how these legal proceedings played
out and how Monsarrat came into the picture. But first
you'll hear from the sponsors that keep Stepfimus in history
class going. The trials which resulted from the arrests made
(26:27):
after those two nineteen sixty eight murders was carried out
in the city of Burgos. They are sometimes called the
Burgos Show trials. One man, Francisco Isco, was accused of
shooting Manzanas, and the other fifteen defendants were brought up
on a variety of charges. Five of them, in addition
to Isko, were accused of planning the murder of Manzanas,
(26:48):
and the death penalty was sought for them. The others
had all been accused of different crimes in service of
the ETA, including things like robbery, bombings, and distribution of
pro Basque and anti fas Franco materials. One woman, Maria Arenzazu,
had no specific charges against her. These trials were actually
(27:08):
courts martial, even though the defendants were not military personnel.
This was a practice under Franco in which trials happened
very quickly and sentencing was harsh, and the press was invited.
A Spanish government seemed to believe that media coverage would
show how quickly and forcefully terrorism was being dealt with,
but it really had the opposite effect. While many of
(27:31):
the reporters who witnessed the trials were from Spanish papers
that supported Franco, there were also international journalists there who
saw these proceedings as extreme and in violation of human rights.
The prosecution's case had one big problem. There were confessions
from some of these people to the murder of Manzanas,
(27:53):
but all of those confessions had been given during torture,
with no additional evidence in place. There was conflict in
the courtroom throughout these trials, which ran from December third
to December ninth, nineteen seventy, and even before the trial started,
members of the ETA kidnapped West German Consul Eugen Biel.
Although leaders within the ETA initially claimed that their organization
(28:16):
had no involvement, this entire scenario was contentious and because
of the murky information that was presented to prosecute the defendants,
public opinion landed not really with the Franco regime, but
with the Basques who were on trial. If you're wondering
why that kidnapping didn't turn public opinion against the defendants,
(28:37):
the Guardian explained it as being more about the ongoing
problems with Franco in its reporting at the time, quote
the issues of Basque nationalism as such are only an
occasion for deeper protest at the depressed state of Spain
thirty years after General Franco's crusade. This is one reason
why the kidnapping of the West German Consul, deplorable as
(28:59):
it is, has not undermined the anti Franco movement. The
kidnapping was a blunder and has rightly been condemned by
most of the movement. Even before this trial started, members
of the Catholic Church had publicly stated that the death
penalty should not be pursued. Many of the defendants used
their time on the stand to shine a light on
(29:21):
police brutality. Jizeus Abriscatta very plainly stated the reason he
was part of the ETA in his examination, which was
printed in the New York Times. He told the court
that he joined the ETA when he first became aware
of social oppression. He then described his arrest in his
apartment along with his two friends, and how one of
(29:41):
the men was abused and questioned there in the apartment
after he had been shot in the chest by police
and was begging for a doctor. He described extreme torture
at the hands of police once they were brought to
a station and booked as well. His descriptions were so
graphic that the judge was like, let's move on. The
cases concluded on December ninth, and then the weight began
(30:03):
for the judges. There were seven to issue their verdicts.
I also saw this reported once as having five judges.
I wasn't able to conclusively see like a list of
them to know which is the case, But there were
multiple judges in this In these courts martial here's how
all this relates to the monastery at Monserrat. While the
world waited to learn the fates of the defendants, three
(30:25):
hundred of Catalonia's prominent intellectuals staged a sit in at
the monastery to protest the trials. This was done with
the support of the Abbot. This protests started on the
afternoon of Saturday, December twelfth, and by Sunday police had
blocked all the roadways leading to the monastery and were
patrolling the area. This was to be clear and illegal
(30:47):
sit in, though the Abbot had approved it. Spanish law
at the time forbid assemblies of more than twenty people
without a government permit, and it speaks to the importance
of the Monsarrat Monastery and its association with peace. It
was a place that protesters were fairly confident and no
one would barge in because it is considered such a
sacred and important place, and the monastery was itself a
(31:10):
place of protest in its own right. By this point,
when the Catalan language had been banned in Spain, sermons
continued to be delivered there in Catalan, and while the
police sealed off the monastery so no one could go in,
or out, even the monks. They did not actively interfere
with the protesters, but they did, according to reports, shut
(31:30):
down the telephone lines to the facility. That lockdown also
meant that things like food and other supplies could not
go in. This was not the only protest in Spain.
While people waited to hear the verdict, there were so
many that Franco ordered unlimited arrests throughout the country and
expectation of the reaction once the verdict was issued. That
(31:52):
meant they could arrest and hold anyone for up to
six months and withhold any legal rights. This was a
suspension of a provision within the country's constitution that gave
citizens legal rights even outside of Franco's jurisdiction. In other countries,
protests were staged that were openly critical of Franco. According
to newspapers reports at a protest in Amsterdam, signs carried
(32:14):
by protesters read quote Spain the tourists Mecca, but Liberty's
tomb for the monsarrat protesters. Things ended peacefully. This, once
again evidence is the high regard that the monastery was
and is held in. Unlike other places throughout Catalogna and Spain,
there were no arrests of protesters, and the protests only
(32:35):
lasted a couple of days. The protesters became kind of
concerned that the Franco government might do something to the monastery,
so they negotiated that they would leave peacefully if their
names were not recorded and no arrests were made. That
was agreed to, but before vacating, they wrote and published
a manifesto which included the following passage damning the Franco
(32:57):
regime quote, the rights of the peace and nations which
form the Spanish state are suppressed by an artificial national unity,
and the present political and judicial system makes crimes of
actions which in democracy are considered fundamental civil rights. On
Christmas Day, a week after the Mansarat sident ended, Consul
(33:19):
Eugenbiel was released by the ETA. The verdicts were released
three days later. They acquitted one defendant, sentenced six to death,
and then doled out a combined five hundred years of
prison time to the rest of them. The whole thing
was a media nightmare for Franco, and two days after
the decisions he commuted the death sentences to life in prison.
(33:40):
In nineteen seventy seven, two years after Franco's death, Spain's
new amnesty law led to the release of all fifteen
people who had been sentenced at these trials. The ETA
continued to exist until it was disbanded in twenty eighteen.
And those are a handful of events that happened in
Montsarat that to me give you a bigger overview of
(34:01):
what its importance is in Spanish and Catalonian history. Yeah,
and hopefully we didn't bungle any of those details because
some of these things are going through translators. Yeah, I'm
gonna say we have another a Barcelona trip related episode
(34:22):
coming up in the near future. And I had some
similar struggles. Dim I get, Am I understanding this correctly?
I hope? I hope. Fingers crossed, Fingers crossed? Do you
have some listener mail? Yes, I'm still going to talk
about Jack Landards. Look, I know we're into wintertime and
there are other things going on. We're not quite in
winter officially, but you know, we're into the winter holiday season,
(34:45):
but it's always Halloween at my house. So I'm going
to read this email from our listener, Carolyn, who writes HI,
longtime listener, first time writer. While listening to your Jack
o Lantern episode, I was reminded of the following story
Worry About nine years after moving to London from the Midwest.
I was talking to my coworkers about how excited I
(35:06):
was to carve pumpkins with my toddler age son for
the first time, and I was shocked to be met
with blank stares from my coworkers. Halloween wasn't as big
a deal in the UK in two thousand and five
when we moved, but it had steadily been gaining a popularity,
so I erroneously assumed my younger colleagues would be totally
on board with this whole concept, but nope, they all
(35:27):
thought I was crazy. Luckily, our neighborhood was much more
Halloween friendly and our carved pumpkins were very warmly received.
We live in Luxembourg now and there are enough expats
here to provide a suitably Halloween atmosphere if you know
which neighborhood to hit. It's also a tradition here to
celebrate trolikt at the same time of year by carving
spooky faces into turnips and beats and lighting candles and
(35:49):
windows to protect yourself from the souls of the dead.
She includes a link about Halloween in Luxembourg and says
thanks for your hard work putting out such a great podcast.
As Tax attached a photo of my son as a
vampire squid from Halloween twenty eighteen and my cat Sophia
Castrillo and Flavia Edith Beans. Sophia is the void and
(36:09):
Flavia is the fluf and they are a bossy pair
of con artists who claim they have never been fed.
You know, I think there might be like a little
secret school of cats where they teach each other how
to look pathetic and like they've never been taken care
of or eaten in their entire lives. Yeah, I am
continually thankful that our cats are not like that about
their meals, although they are like that about treats. We
(36:33):
have a mixed bag since you have multiple cats. One
of our cats will literally like look up from the
bowl he's in if one of the other of us
that did not feed him comes in the room and
act like they were left out of the feeding proceedings,
even when you can point and go, your food is
right there, my dude. So he took the advanced level
classes clearly. In any case, Thank you so much, Carolyn
(36:54):
for sharing that story with us, It's always interesting to me.
I have had other friends who have gone abroad, and
their stories similarly of how they're like, it's Halloween and
they kind of get blank stares always tickle me a
little bit. Since it has become such a huge deal
here and certainly it's a huge deal in my life.
But if you would like to write to us and
tell us your stories of holidays that don't go quite
(37:16):
the same wherever you're at as to the way you
grew up, you can do that at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social
media as Missed in History, and if you haven't subscribed
and would like to, you can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
(37:37):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we went to Barcelona.
We did. That's gonna come up a little bit here
for a minute. We have a few episodes lined up
(00:24):
that are inspired by that trip. One of my very
favorite days from that trip is when we went to Montserrat.
That name literally means serrated mountain because if you look
at it, it is jagged. There are some cool pieces
of lore about how like angels cut it that way,
none of which we're getting into today, but I was
(00:44):
just blown away by how absolutely beautiful it is. Both
the natural elements of it, like when you're up there
and you're looking out at the vista, you feel like
you're on top of the world, but also the man
made structures there are quite beautiful. And because it's about
an hour's bus ride from where we were staying in
Barcelona proper, we got a lot of history information en
(01:04):
route from our guide, who was the wonderful Isabelle, who
I absolutely adored. But there is a little bit of
a language difference, and that meant that there were a
few times where she said something that made me go
what we Yeah, we had very similar experiences and that
I was like, what are you? What are you talking about?
And then it made me start to think about what
(01:25):
kind of information I would like if I could curate
the story of Monserrat for a group of visitors, right,
I would want stories that ranged from the earliest days
of the monastery that's there to more modern times. There's
even prehistory before the monastery. We can talk a little
bit about that behind the scenes. But Manserrat is a
really culturally important place with a lot of stories. So
(01:45):
I was like, how how would I want to lay
this out as like a terronism guide. So that's kind
of what you're getting today. We're mostly focusing on three
primary elements of its history, which kind of show the
importance of the place as a religious center, which also
includes some art history, as a military center, and finally
(02:07):
as a place that has been home to political protest.
So the earliest historical information on the site where the
monastery at Manserrat would eventually be built is of course sparse,
and it all starts at least in terms of the
inspiration for the monastery with a kind of mythic story
about a sculpture being found, and according to that legend,
(02:30):
in the year eight eighty, several shepherds who were children
saw a light and heard music coming out of a
cave on the mountain one night. So when they went
to this cave, they found a sculpture of the Virgin Mary.
This sculpture was surrounded by angels who were playing music.
So the children went and reported this to local adults,
(02:51):
and as a result, the bishop came to see the
sculpture for himself. He was so taken with it that
he wanted to move it to an existing cathedral. But
the story goes that as the madonna was being carried
down the mountain, she got heavier and heavier, and they
interpreted this as a sign that the statue wanted to
(03:12):
stay there on Manserrat, and so that was where a
monastery or any other religious buildings would have to be built.
Where this sculpture came from is unknown. The lore puts
its origin at the time of Jesus, and that it
was a request of Jesus to Saint Luke to have
(03:32):
an image of his mother Mary carved from wood. In
some tellings of this story. The carpentry tools which had
belonged to Jesus were used by Luke to create this
wooden portrait of Mary, and according to legend, this piece
of artwork arrived in Barcelona via Saint Paul, who gave
it as a gift to the Christians living in the area.
(03:54):
So that of course leads to the question how did
this statue get to a cave on Maserat? But one
popular theory is that when the Moors attacked Barcelona in
seven eighteen, the sculpture was hidden in the cave for
safety and then stayed there for the next one hundred
and sixty years because over time the secret hiding place
(04:16):
was forgotten. Basically, everyone who knew where it was eventually died.
And within a decade of this find, which believers consider
to have been a miracle, there was a chapel built
outside of the Santa Kova, which is the name for
the cave that the statue was found in that translates
to Holy Cave. That chapel location can still be seen,
(04:40):
but you have to hike a little way away from
the monastery to see it. By the end of the
ninth century, there were several more chapels. In ten twenty five,
abbott Oliva of Ripley officially founded the Monsarrat Monastery, and
for several hundred years the monastery at Monsarrat was under
the control of this monastery at Ripley. It didn't become
(05:01):
completely independent from that organization until fourteen thirty one, under
an act of Pope Eugene the Fourth. There is this
really significant moment that happens in the late eleven hundreds,
the statue was replaced with a new one. But even
this is something that's a little confusing because it's not
(05:21):
often mentioned in various accounts of the statue at the monastery,
although the abbey's official website does mention it in their
historic timeline, noting that this twelfth century statue is one
of the jewels of the collection, and even today when
you read short write ups, this statue is still talked
about as though it's possibly something that was made by
(05:41):
Saint Luke. The statue, which is currently on display, is
very much in line with the art style of the
twelfth century. The seated figure of the madonna is elongated,
like her features are elongated. Although it is not an
especially large piece, it's thirty eight inches tall, so about
a meter tall. The infant Jesus is in her lap,
and she holds an orb in one hand. That orb
(06:03):
is actually a thing you can touch. The way she's displayed,
there's like a glass case protecting her, but that one
hand holding the orb protrudes from it and people touch
it as part of their prayers. That switcheroo aside, maybe
the most fascinating aspect of this depiction of Mary is
that she's dark skinned, so she's grouped under the umbrella
(06:25):
of depictions known as black Madonna's like that name suggests,
these are images of the Madonna that have brown or
otherwise very dark skin. The Mansarat sculpture is called La morinetta,
which translates from Catalan literally to meaning brunette or brown.
So there's a lot of religious and art history writing
(06:47):
about black madonnas because there are a lot of them,
and there are lots of varying theories about why they
exist and what, if anything, that coloration means. To be clear,
this is referring to madonnas that are found primarily in
like predominantly white European countries, not madonnas that are made
(07:09):
in regions where a darker skin tone is like more
common among the general public, so it does raise some questions.
One theory is that these images were made with darker
skin tones in an effort to kind of marry pagan
and Christian imagery. That is just one possible explanation. We'll
talk about others in just a moment. I will say that,
(07:32):
like a lot of these depictions, their skin is a
lot darker than like the rest of the sculpture. Yeah, yeah,
well so darker than the rest of the sculpture, and
like darker than like the olive toned skin that like
a lot of scholars believe that like the historical Jesus
probably had right right, they are like dark, dark brown,
(07:53):
and sometimes literally like the color of coal. Right. There
is also a commonality among the various black madonnas in
that most of them, by which we mean the sculptures
or paintings, are associated with miracles, which has led to
a common belief that a black madonna is especially sacred.
This is also linked by some to the verse in
(08:13):
the Song of Solomon in the Bible, which reads, I
am black but comely, or in some editions, I am
black but beautiful. That verse, which of course includes a
lot more. Text is often examined as a study of
race within Christianity, but as it pertains to Madonna's there
are theories that some of them may have been painted
with dark skin to invoke that verse, and there is
(08:36):
even a possibility that a trend may have started after
some representations of Mary were made with this darkened skin
tone or became darkened, and that then others followed suit.
In the case of the Madonna of Monserrat, it appears
that she wasn't actually created with dark skin, but that
her skin on this sculpture darkened over time, and she's
(08:59):
not the old only black Madonna that appears to have
gone through this sort of shift. There are a few
different possible reasons for this. One cause is that some
of them have just been discolored by their surroundings, particularly
things like candles, which can deposit a fine soot residue
onto surfaces. Another, which was mentioned as early as eighteen
(09:22):
seventy eight by French architect Charles Ruhal de Fleury, is
that works might have had silver plating, and that silver
plating blackened over time, and then he suggested that that
look was copied by subsequent artists In the early twentieth century,
Stephen Bissel, a Jesuit scholar, noted that a lot of
(09:43):
skin tone paint included vermilion or red lead, and both
of those can blacken over time. In a paper for
the American Historical Review in two thousand and two, anthropologist
Monique Scher, who includes all of these explanations and authors,
notes quote Although the novelty of a black madonna seems
to be a source of pride for local pilgrimage centers,
(10:05):
today among most scholars the phenomenon has been deemed rather uninteresting,
as it is customarily considered to be nothing but darkening
by candles and age, and thus not warranting greater investigation
or elaboration. I will confess when we got kind of
the weird she's black, but they think it's from candles,
(10:26):
I was like, what that doesn't make sense. But reading
all of the art history discussions of what may have
gone on, I'm like, ah, now I understand. I had
a very similar response to like a different part of
that same explanation that she gave to us, which is
like she was like she might have been white and
she might have turned black, And I was like, what
are what do you say right. The Madonna of Montserrat,
(10:49):
which is a wooden sculpture as we said, was examined
by conservators in the early two thousands to determine what
the true nature of her pigment was, and using X
rays and other tests methods, researchers concluded that she had
originally been depicted with light color skin, but that either
candle smoke or a varnish reaction on the skin tone
(11:10):
areas of her sculpture caused this thing to turn black.
She was then, though repainted black during restoration efforts over
the years by conservators who may have believed the original
color was black. The most recent black repaint that they
were able to conclusively identify was done in the early
eighteenth century. By the twelve twenties, pilgrims started to make
(11:35):
their way to the monastery to visit the Virgin of Monserrat.
By the mid twelve twenties, the monastery had a boy's choir,
which it still has, and official recognition of the Brotherhood
of the Mother of God of Monserrat. Also in the
early thirteenth century, Alfonso, the tenth King of Castile Leon Englecia,
who was known as Alfonso the Wise published a book
(11:57):
of songs, Canticles of Holy Mary. These are not all
songs he wrote, although he may have written some of them.
It's believed that musicians of his court created most of
the songs, and the songs tell the story of the
monserrat Virgin Mary. They attribute multiple miracles to her. In one,
a man who put a ring on the statue's finger
(12:20):
is then visited by the madonna in his sleep. After
he gets married, she tells him that he cannot marry
because he had already pledged himself to her. According to
the song, that man left his wife to become a monk.
Other stories told through the canticles include the madonna bringing
a woman's beloved son back from the dead, and there's
(12:41):
even one in which a man is struck dead after
painting the madonna white. That's a particularly interesting one because
it indicates the statue had already blackened by the thirteenth century.
This collection of songs helped spread the story of the
statue and its finding, which was considered a miracle, as
well as other miracles attributed to it, and it drew
(13:02):
more people to the site. The monastery continued to grow
throughout the following decades, and it had a steady stream
of pilgrims who visited to see the Madonna. In the
fourteen nineties, the monastery got a printing press. It was
one of the first in Spain, and that makes Monsarrat
now home to one of the oldest publishing houses in
the world. It is still going more than five hundred
(13:23):
years later, although there have been interruptions due to various conflicts.
This area has had a lot of conflict. Yes, we're
going to talk about some more of them in a
subsequent episode Bonus Story. Also in the fourteen nineties, the
monastery at Monsarrat was invoked in the naming of an island.
(13:44):
Just in case at the beginning of the episode you
weren't clear on whether we were talking about the mountain
or the island, the two do have a common tie
between them. The island was named Santa Maria de Monserrat
in honor of the Virgin Mary. At Monsarrat, there was
a monk from Monsarrat with Columbus on his second Transatlantic
voyage in fourteen ninety three. His name was Bernardo Buil.
(14:09):
While the Caribbean island was inhabited around three thousand BCE,
possibly by a pre Arwak people, and then by the
carib people. After that. When Columbus got there, no one
was living there, so it was colonized almost one hundred
and forty years later and used for plantations. This island
passed between Britain and France until the Treaty of Paris
(14:31):
and seventeen eighty three once again made it British territory,
and it's remained British territory ever since. The island of
Monsarrat has its own lengthy and complicated history of slavery
and government unrests and even volcanic activity, way beyond the
scope of this episode, which is about a different place. Yeah, yeah,
I just thought we would pop that in in case
(14:53):
you're like, wait, but why does the island have the
same name. Coming up, we're going to talk about Napoleon's
role in the hisay of Monsarrat, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. One of the most significant
(15:14):
events for Monsarrat was the destruction of the entire facility
in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon invaded Spain in eighteen oh eight,
and if you look at Monsarrat on a map, it
sits to the northwest of Barcelona, so it was right
in between the French border and the city of Barcelona,
which as a religious center made it vulnerable to an
(15:35):
advancing army, and as a military location, made it important
as a strategic location for both the Spanish and French armies.
So because of this, the Spanish army moved into the
monastery and the monks left. Most of them went to
the island of Majorca, taking a lot of the monastery's
valuables as well as art, in the hopes of keeping
(15:55):
those things safe. Although Spanish forces held the mountain and
use it is a central location to send arms and
information to the surrounding military units, Napoleon's troops boldly moved
to try to take it for themselves. There's an interesting
piece of lore attached to the first battle at Monserrat
between France and Spain. The French military was powerful. It
(16:18):
managed to set the monastery on fire, but then they
heard what sounded like a massive Spanish army marching on them,
and they retreated. Those huge troop numbers were an illusion,
though The noise was attributed to the drum of a
single boy whose drum beats echoed so loudly off the
mountains that it created the sound of just a huge
(16:40):
throng of marching troops. Sometimes this story is told as
though the drumming was part of an organized effort on
the part of the Spanish forces, and other times it
sounds more like just a lucky accident. The name Isidra
Juke Casanovas is often given as that of the drummer,
and there's a mania meant to him in Elbrook, which
(17:01):
that's just to the east of Monsarrat. That's where he
is said to have been drumming. And the early fighting
at Monsarrat in eighteen oh eight, the French lost more
than four hundred men. Yeah, it's very interesting how differently
that story gets told. In one, it's like the people
of Elbruk are trying to take up arms and help
in the effort, and they tell him he can't help
(17:21):
in any way, and so he gets his drum and
it's very heartwarming and inspiring story. And in others it's like, no,
they literally plan this out. Oh so, so just if
you read it, it may come out different depending on
your source. But the Napoleonic Wars, of course continued for
years beyond that early victory for Spain and overall, Napoleon
was quite successful in his campaign to capture Spain. In Catalonia,
(17:45):
Montserrat was one of the holdouts, and then in eighteen eleven,
General Louis Gabriel Cuchet took ten thousand French troops and
positioned them all around the monastery for a coordinated attack
from all sides. This operation on the part of the
French took the Spanish forces at Monsarrat by surprise, and
France killed hundreds of Spanish soldiers and at that point
(18:08):
the monastery was burned down. The site remained empty for years,
during which time Spain enacted land acts which divested the
monks of the property on Monsarrat, But in eighteen forty
four monks returned and in the decades that followed the
monastery was rebuilt. In eighteen eighty one, the Virgin of
Monsarrat was declared a patron saint of Catalognia. Yeah, she
(18:32):
is not the only one, but she is one of them.
In nineteen eleven, Monsarrat opened its museum, then the Biblical
Museum of Monsarrat. During the tumultuous times, the monastery had
experienced Before this, it had lost almost all of its
heritage objects. So a Benedictine monk and scholar from the abbey,
father Bonaventuro Ubach, had traveled to various sites in Northern
(18:54):
Africa and the Middle East to create a new collection
for this museum. More than sixty years later, in nineteen
sixty three, the museum expanded and evolved to become Musea
de Montsarat. This new museum included archaeological items that the
monastery had acquired, and it also transitioned a lot of
the art that had been displayed or stored in the
(19:16):
monastery into the museum setting. This included a lot of
Baroque and Renaissance art that had been collected over the decades.
And then the museum received a large donation from the
collection of Catalan art collector Joseph Salardies when he died.
Salardis had lived to be one hundred and five and
throughout his life he had acquired art, so his collection
(19:38):
was very impressive. Some of the most impressive pieces in
the collection of the Museum of Montserrat today are from
this bequeathment, including works by Picasso, Fortuny and Johnsinger Sergeant.
The collection has continued to grow as other estates have
bequeathed collections, and it operates through donations. This year we're
(19:59):
recording twenty twenty three, the museum added a really interesting
exhibit which shows off the excavated walls of the oldest
buildings of Monsarrat. They are reconstructed on an upper gallery floor,
so you can walk through the space in the same
configuration that it was originally built in. This exhibit is
starkly lit. It's incredibly striking. Did you go there? I did?
(20:21):
I did not? I did, And it's it's a little
bit strange just in terms of like the feeling it
evokes when you walk in, because you're up there looking
through their art galleries, which again they have what I
can only describe as a banging art collection, Like they
have some jewels in there that I never realized were
there at Monsarrat. And you kind of seen this door
(20:44):
open and you see like stone walls, and not knowing
what it was, I was like, what on earth is
in there? And I went in and started walking around,
and a couple of other people from our tour group
had gone in also, and a couple of people were like,
it's a little bit spooky up here because it is
there's nothing else in there except these walls, and like
the lighting is very very dramatic. And then as you're
(21:06):
reading that this is what they had excavated during one
of their building periods, it's really interesting and it's just
by itself. There's no other stuff, right, and so I
don't know, it's a really really beautiful thing that entire
museum kind of blew me away. I am in love
with it. So it's on my list to go back to.
(21:28):
So we are jumping ahead a little bit here. Yes,
we are jumping past the Spanish Civil War, but I
promise you're going to get some in upcoming episodes because
I want to talk about a more recent event. But
to talk about this event, which was a protest that
happened at the monastery in nineteen seventy, we first have
to talk about the Basques and an extremist group that
grew out of the Basque desire for self governance. So,
(21:51):
just as an expectations management here, this is a high
level look at these ideological struggles, and we obviously cannot
condense decades and even centuries in some cases of nuanced
conflict down to a few paragraphs and capture everything. So
please know that your understanding after you hear all this
will be very basic. It's a very high level overview.
(22:16):
So the Basque people are defined as an ethnic group
originating in the western Pyrenees, on the Bay of Biscay,
so the northern shore of Spain and into France, and
for quite a while the Basque area, like Catalounia, has
been involved in a dispute with Spain over its status
as part of that country, with the issue of autonomy
(22:38):
at the core of that. In eighteen ninety four, the
Partido Nationalist of Osco, or the Basque Nationalist Party was formed,
and it persisted in secret all through the Franco regime,
but it had its own internal struggles. In the mid
twentieth century, the Basque Nationalist Party fractured, with a breakaway
(22:58):
group forming these Scottita Askatasuna that's the Basque Homeland and
Liberty Party that's also known as the ETA. And a
big reason for this fracture was that while most members
of the Basque Nationalist Party wanted to continue to pursue
their political goals peacefully as sort of a moderate Party,
a smaller group felt like it was time to take
up arms and physically fight for self determination. That fracture
(23:23):
was catalyzed when Franco's regime, in an effort to quell
Basque unrest, banned the Basque language and conducted a cultural
genocide against the Basques. That smaller group that wanted more
direct action formed the ETA, and even within the ETA,
there were disparate factions with separate goals. So one branch
(23:43):
in the ETA, the Nationalists, wanted Basque autonomy, essentially in
the same way the Nationalist Party had, But another faction,
which is sometimes called the ETA VII, made up of
younger members, wanted to pursue a more Marxist approach to
government than their ETA fellows, and they were also much
more willing to take extreme measures to reach that goal.
(24:05):
So the ETA became the target of the Franco regime.
And while there were absolutely members of the ETA committing
violent and terrorist acts, you will sometimes see it called
a terrorist organization. The Spanish government would also just arrest
people on even a whiff of suspicion that they had
connection to or involvement in the ETA, and once detained
(24:26):
that those people were treated terribly. They were beaten and tortured.
Whether there was evidence of that connection or not. The
ATA engaged in various illegal and violent activities, including robbing
banks to maintain their financing. But in nineteen sixty eight,
there were two murders that resulted in a massive effort
on the part of the Franco led government to just
(24:48):
shut the ETA down completely. The first murder victim was
Jose Pardoner, who was a Spanish Civil Guard officer that's
one of the country's national police forces, and he was
shot on on June seventh, nineteen sixty eight, when he
pulled over two of the founders of the etaight sabi
Is Barrieta and Enachi Sarascietta, at a traffic stop. These
(25:10):
two men fled the scene and they were stopped a
second time, and during that second stop, Asbarrieta was killed. Yeah,
for clarity, we did not get good pronunciation examples for
those name, so apologies if you know them and they
sound terrible, that is not Tracy's fault. I couldn't find
a guide. The second murder victim was Militon Manzanes, who
was an officer in the Spanish Secret Police, and he
(25:33):
was killed outside his home on August second. This is
characterized as retaliation for the death of extra Barrieta, but
Manzanas also had a reputation as an incredibly brutal man
who ordered arrests and tortures of Basque citizens. These two
murders led to a massive effort on the part of
the Spanish government to bring the responsible parties to justice,
(25:56):
and ultimately sixteen Basques were brought in on accusations that
they had participated in or aided in the murders. In
a moment, we'll talk about how these legal proceedings played
out and how Monsarrat came into the picture. But first
you'll hear from the sponsors that keep Stepfimus in history
class going. The trials which resulted from the arrests made
(26:27):
after those two nineteen sixty eight murders was carried out
in the city of Burgos. They are sometimes called the
Burgos Show trials. One man, Francisco Isco, was accused of
shooting Manzanas, and the other fifteen defendants were brought up
on a variety of charges. Five of them, in addition
to Isko, were accused of planning the murder of Manzanas,
(26:48):
and the death penalty was sought for them. The others
had all been accused of different crimes in service of
the ETA, including things like robbery, bombings, and distribution of
pro Basque and anti fas Franco materials. One woman, Maria Arenzazu,
had no specific charges against her. These trials were actually
(27:08):
courts martial, even though the defendants were not military personnel.
This was a practice under Franco in which trials happened
very quickly and sentencing was harsh, and the press was invited.
A Spanish government seemed to believe that media coverage would
show how quickly and forcefully terrorism was being dealt with,
but it really had the opposite effect. While many of
(27:31):
the reporters who witnessed the trials were from Spanish papers
that supported Franco, there were also international journalists there who
saw these proceedings as extreme and in violation of human rights.
The prosecution's case had one big problem. There were confessions
from some of these people to the murder of Manzanas,
(27:53):
but all of those confessions had been given during torture,
with no additional evidence in place. There was conflict in
the courtroom throughout these trials, which ran from December third
to December ninth, nineteen seventy, and even before the trial started,
members of the ETA kidnapped West German Consul Eugen Biel.
Although leaders within the ETA initially claimed that their organization
(28:16):
had no involvement, this entire scenario was contentious and because
of the murky information that was presented to prosecute the defendants,
public opinion landed not really with the Franco regime, but
with the Basques who were on trial. If you're wondering
why that kidnapping didn't turn public opinion against the defendants,
(28:37):
the Guardian explained it as being more about the ongoing
problems with Franco in its reporting at the time, quote
the issues of Basque nationalism as such are only an
occasion for deeper protest at the depressed state of Spain
thirty years after General Franco's crusade. This is one reason
why the kidnapping of the West German Consul, deplorable as
(28:59):
it is, has not undermined the anti Franco movement. The
kidnapping was a blunder and has rightly been condemned by
most of the movement. Even before this trial started, members
of the Catholic Church had publicly stated that the death
penalty should not be pursued. Many of the defendants used
their time on the stand to shine a light on
(29:21):
police brutality. Jizeus Abriscatta very plainly stated the reason he
was part of the ETA in his examination, which was
printed in the New York Times. He told the court
that he joined the ETA when he first became aware
of social oppression. He then described his arrest in his
apartment along with his two friends, and how one of
(29:41):
the men was abused and questioned there in the apartment
after he had been shot in the chest by police
and was begging for a doctor. He described extreme torture
at the hands of police once they were brought to
a station and booked as well. His descriptions were so
graphic that the judge was like, let's move on. The
cases concluded on December ninth, and then the weight began
(30:03):
for the judges. There were seven to issue their verdicts.
I also saw this reported once as having five judges.
I wasn't able to conclusively see like a list of
them to know which is the case, But there were
multiple judges in this In these courts martial here's how
all this relates to the monastery at Monserrat. While the
world waited to learn the fates of the defendants, three
(30:25):
hundred of Catalonia's prominent intellectuals staged a sit in at
the monastery to protest the trials. This was done with
the support of the Abbot. This protests started on the
afternoon of Saturday, December twelfth, and by Sunday police had
blocked all the roadways leading to the monastery and were
patrolling the area. This was to be clear and illegal
(30:47):
sit in, though the Abbot had approved it. Spanish law
at the time forbid assemblies of more than twenty people
without a government permit, and it speaks to the importance
of the Monsarrat Monastery and its association with peace. It
was a place that protesters were fairly confident and no
one would barge in because it is considered such a
sacred and important place, and the monastery was itself a
(31:10):
place of protest in its own right. By this point,
when the Catalan language had been banned in Spain, sermons
continued to be delivered there in Catalan, and while the
police sealed off the monastery so no one could go in,
or out, even the monks. They did not actively interfere
with the protesters, but they did, according to reports, shut
(31:30):
down the telephone lines to the facility. That lockdown also
meant that things like food and other supplies could not
go in. This was not the only protest in Spain.
While people waited to hear the verdict, there were so
many that Franco ordered unlimited arrests throughout the country and
expectation of the reaction once the verdict was issued. That
(31:52):
meant they could arrest and hold anyone for up to
six months and withhold any legal rights. This was a
suspension of a provision within the country's constitution that gave
citizens legal rights even outside of Franco's jurisdiction. In other countries,
protests were staged that were openly critical of Franco. According
to newspapers reports at a protest in Amsterdam, signs carried
(32:14):
by protesters read quote Spain the tourists Mecca, but Liberty's
tomb for the monsarrat protesters. Things ended peacefully. This, once
again evidence is the high regard that the monastery was
and is held in. Unlike other places throughout Catalogna and Spain,
there were no arrests of protesters, and the protests only
(32:35):
lasted a couple of days. The protesters became kind of
concerned that the Franco government might do something to the monastery,
so they negotiated that they would leave peacefully if their
names were not recorded and no arrests were made. That
was agreed to, but before vacating, they wrote and published
a manifesto which included the following passage damning the Franco
(32:57):
regime quote, the rights of the peace and nations which
form the Spanish state are suppressed by an artificial national unity,
and the present political and judicial system makes crimes of
actions which in democracy are considered fundamental civil rights. On
Christmas Day, a week after the Mansarat sident ended, Consul
(33:19):
Eugenbiel was released by the ETA. The verdicts were released
three days later. They acquitted one defendant, sentenced six to death,
and then doled out a combined five hundred years of
prison time to the rest of them. The whole thing
was a media nightmare for Franco, and two days after
the decisions he commuted the death sentences to life in prison.
(33:40):
In nineteen seventy seven, two years after Franco's death, Spain's
new amnesty law led to the release of all fifteen
people who had been sentenced at these trials. The ETA
continued to exist until it was disbanded in twenty eighteen.
And those are a handful of events that happened in
Montsarat that to me give you a bigger overview of
(34:01):
what its importance is in Spanish and Catalonian history. Yeah,
and hopefully we didn't bungle any of those details because
some of these things are going through translators. Yeah, I'm
gonna say we have another a Barcelona trip related episode
(34:22):
coming up in the near future. And I had some
similar struggles. Dim I get, Am I understanding this correctly?
I hope? I hope. Fingers crossed, Fingers crossed? Do you
have some listener mail? Yes, I'm still going to talk
about Jack Landards. Look, I know we're into wintertime and
there are other things going on. We're not quite in
winter officially, but you know, we're into the winter holiday season,
(34:45):
but it's always Halloween at my house. So I'm going
to read this email from our listener, Carolyn, who writes HI,
longtime listener, first time writer. While listening to your Jack
o Lantern episode, I was reminded of the following story
Worry About nine years after moving to London from the Midwest.
I was talking to my coworkers about how excited I
(35:06):
was to carve pumpkins with my toddler age son for
the first time, and I was shocked to be met
with blank stares from my coworkers. Halloween wasn't as big
a deal in the UK in two thousand and five
when we moved, but it had steadily been gaining a popularity,
so I erroneously assumed my younger colleagues would be totally
on board with this whole concept, but nope, they all
(35:27):
thought I was crazy. Luckily, our neighborhood was much more
Halloween friendly and our carved pumpkins were very warmly received.
We live in Luxembourg now and there are enough expats
here to provide a suitably Halloween atmosphere if you know
which neighborhood to hit. It's also a tradition here to
celebrate trolikt at the same time of year by carving
spooky faces into turnips and beats and lighting candles and
(35:49):
windows to protect yourself from the souls of the dead.
She includes a link about Halloween in Luxembourg and says
thanks for your hard work putting out such a great podcast.
As Tax attached a photo of my son as a
vampire squid from Halloween twenty eighteen and my cat Sophia
Castrillo and Flavia Edith Beans. Sophia is the void and
(36:09):
Flavia is the fluf and they are a bossy pair
of con artists who claim they have never been fed.
You know, I think there might be like a little
secret school of cats where they teach each other how
to look pathetic and like they've never been taken care
of or eaten in their entire lives. Yeah, I am
continually thankful that our cats are not like that about
their meals, although they are like that about treats. We
(36:33):
have a mixed bag since you have multiple cats. One
of our cats will literally like look up from the
bowl he's in if one of the other of us
that did not feed him comes in the room and
act like they were left out of the feeding proceedings,
even when you can point and go, your food is
right there, my dude. So he took the advanced level
classes clearly. In any case, Thank you so much, Carolyn
(36:54):
for sharing that story with us, It's always interesting to me.
I have had other friends who have gone abroad, and
their stories similarly of how they're like, it's Halloween and
they kind of get blank stares always tickle me a
little bit. Since it has become such a huge deal
here and certainly it's a huge deal in my life.
But if you would like to write to us and
tell us your stories of holidays that don't go quite
(37:16):
the same wherever you're at as to the way you
grew up, you can do that at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social
media as Missed in History, and if you haven't subscribed
and would like to, you can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
(37:37):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.