Spain Will Live

On 3 March 1939, the newspaper La Défense, the official organ of the French Section of the International Red Aid, featured a four-column headline on its front page: “L’Espagne vivra!” (“Spain will live!”). The fervent defense of Republican Spain clashed with a moment in which thousands of refugees had just crossed the French border and the civilian population was suffering the hardships of nearly three years of war. This humanitarian crisis was the visible face of an untenable position for the Republican government following the collapse of the Catalan front on 8 February. In fact, on 27 February, France and Britain had recognized Franco’s government—a definitive diplomatic blow.

This was the context in which Spain Will Live was created.  Produced by the French Section, the documentary begins its narrative with the February 1936 elections and a central thesis: the modernizing project undertaken by the Popular Front would be cut short by reactionary forces assisted by international fascism. A conceptual opposition—fascism versus antifascism—guides the interpretation of the events that follow.

In this regard, its structure is similar to that of other compilation documentaries that aim to synthesize the Spanish Civil War, such as Espagne 1936 (J. P. Le Chanois, 1937) or Ispanija (E. Shub, 1939). In this case, the narration was written by Georges Sadoul, then a film critic for Regards and L’Humanité. He was also a member of the Communist Party and created a text that conveyed the party’s central theses are conveyed, although not explicitly: the futility of the Non-Intervention Committee (incapable of stopping Italian and German support for the rebels), the denunciation of atrocities against the civilian population, and the conviction that the fall of the Republic would pose a serious threat to France: “If fascism triumphs in Spain, the plan to encircle France outlined in Hitler’s Mein Kampf could become a reality.” Hence, the film ends with a desperate call for anti-fascist resistance and support for the Republican cause, including raising funds to send aid and thereby highlighting the work of the Section.

This film was the third film about the Civil War that Cartier-Bresson directed. (The others were Victory of Life (1937) and With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1938), both made in collaboration with Herbert Kline.) However, L’Espagne vivra, driven more by idealism than pragmatism, emerged at a critical juncture. The end of the war rendered its message useless, but not its prediction: months later, World War II began, turning the Spanish Civil War into its prelude.

RRT