Theatre director active in Republican diplomacy
His 1941 play ¿Qué quiere decir Irene? depicts figures fighting in the name of peace. Diplomatic experience became material for drama about war and non-intervention.
Spanish theatre director, playwright, and Republican diplomat. A brother-in-law of Manuel Azaña, he promoted theatre training and stage experimentation and served as consul-general in Geneva during the civil war. His diplomacy became entangled in tensions between the president and the government. Arrested while exiled in France and imprisoned in Spain, he later resumed theatrical work in Mexico.
Career timeline
- 1910Studied at the universities of Valladolid and Madrid, earned a law degree, and pursued doctoral study at the Spanish College in Bologna.
- 1917Directed Unamuno's Fedra at the Ateneo de Madrid, his first work as a stage director.
- 1928–1929Led El Caracol, his experimental theatre company at the Rex hall in Madrid.
- 1930–1935Directed and served as literary adviser in Margarita Xirgu's company, jointly running Madrid's Teatro Español.
- 1932Founded the Teatro Experimental del Español, a theatre school within the Teatro Español.
- 1934Was granted the Teatro María Guerrero and founded the Teatro Escuela de Arte (TEA) there.
- 1936–1939Served as consul-general in Geneva and was caught up in the theft of Azaña's private diaries.
- 1940sWas arrested in France and taken to Spain, sentenced to death by a Francoist court, then had the sentence commuted to thirty years and passed through several prisons.
- 1947After his release he went into exile in Mexico and resumed directing theatre and lecturing.
- 1953–1967Continued directing and lecturing in Mexico and Guatemala and died in Mexico in 1967.
The Spanish Civil War historian who demolished Francoist myths with archival evidence
There is not a single conservative or neo-Francoist historian who does not manipulate the evidence; what they sell are bold-faced lies.
A historian, economist and diplomat who has systematically dismantled Francoist historical narratives through archival research on the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. Beginning with his investigation of Nazi Germany's financing of Franco's rising while a graduate student in Bonn, he demolished the myth of the 'Moscow Gold' in 1976 and went on to show, in a four-volume Republic series, how arms embargoes and international diplomacy decided the war. When the Royal Academy of History published a national biographical dictionary in 2011 that failed even to call Franco a dictator, Viñas rallied thirty historians and produced a 976-page counter-dictionary, En el combate por la Historia (2012), a watershed in Spain's 'history wars'.
Career timeline
- 1968Joined Corps of Spanish State Economists and Trade Experts, first in class
- 1971–1973Commercial counsellor, Spanish Embassy, Bonn
- 1974Published La Alemania nazi y el 18 de julio; PhD
- 1976Published El oro español en la Guerra Civil, debunking the Moscow Gold myth
- 1982Professor of Applied Economics, Complutense University; adviser to Foreign Minister
- 1986–2005EU Commission posts including Director for Asia and Latin America; EU Ambassador to the UN
- 2006–2009Tetralogy on the Republic: La soledad, El escudo, El honor, El desplome
- 2012Edited En el combate por la Historia, answer to the Royal Academy's biographical dictionary
Former Maoist urban guerrilla turned Francoist revisionist historian who reignited Spain's Civil War debates
Asked in a 2008 interview whether he condemned Franco's regime, he refused, declaring that "Franco deserves the gratitude and recognition of the majority of Spaniards."
A controversial Spanish writer who evolved from a founding member of the Maoist urban guerrilla group GRAPO into Francoism's most prominent revisionist historian. He argues that the left, not the right, bore primary responsibility for the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, contending that the Socialist-led insurrection of October 1934 was the conflict's true beginning. His 2003 bestseller Myths of the Civil War sold 150,000 copies and ignited the post-2000 revisionism debates, drawing praise from Stanley G. Payne and fierce rejection from mainstream historians including Paul Preston and Alberto Reig Tapia.
Career timeline
- 1967–1974Studied at the Escuela Oficial de Periodismo in Madrid; became a radical anti-Francoist agitator
- 1975Co-founded the Maoist terrorist group GRAPO; present at the murder of a policeman on 1 October
- 1977Expelled from GRAPO
- 1983Sentenced to one year for kidnapping complicity; accepted reinsertion measures
- 1999–2001Published revisionist trilogy on the Republic and Civil War, including The Origins of the Spanish Civil War
- 2003Published Myths of the Civil War; 150,000 copies sold, bestseller for six consecutive months
- 2005–presentColumnist for Libertad Digital and El Economista; published numerous pro-Franco historical works
