Ernest Hemingway (Source: here)
Ernest Hemingway was uncompromising about many things, not least his writing. He was fanatical about truth. However, truth, to Hemingway, did not always correspond to truth in the so-called real world. Hemingway was, after all, writing fiction. He understood that good writing can create truth, meaning it can conjure up realities in our imaginations that seem so real as to be even more visceral than reality itself. It requires, said Hemingway, really, really good quality writing. "All you have to do is write one true sentence", he said, "Write the truest sentence that you know".
Ronda - a town on edge (Source: own photo)
Aside from his love of writing, Hemingway loved Ronda, the ancient and beautiful town perched on the edge of a cliff roughly equidistant between Málaga, Sevilla, and Gibraltar. Hemingway visited Ronda many times in the 1950s, when he befriended Antonio Ordóñez, a famous bull fighter, who enjoyed torturing bulls to death in unfair contests in the town's famous bull ring, Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda.
Statue of Antonio Ordóñez outside the Ronda bullring (Source: own photo)
Hemingway paid homage to his love for Ronda by making it the setting of one of the most searing chapters in his famous Spanish Civil War novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls". In Chapter 10, Hemingway graphically describes a massacre of fascists at the hands of angry peasants in a town, which he said in a later interview was Ronda (see here).
The landscapes surrounding Ronda are stunning (Source: own photo)
Chapter 10 begins with a description how the mayor of Ronda, the first fascist victim, is thrashed to death with flails before being thrown over the 300 ft. cliff surrounding Ronda. The same fate is metered out to a wealthy landowner. The peasants then direct their fury at the son of another wealthy landowner, a much-maligned womaniser and coward, who lacks skills as a bullfighter. As he alternately pleads for mercy, whimpers, and screams in terror, he is dragged to the cliff edge and thrown off without even being beaten first. From then on it quickly gets much worse until, eventually, all the fascists have been murdered and their bodies thrown over the cliff. By the end, the peasants are a drunken, frenzied mob in the grip of deranged blood lust.
Ronda's beautiful cliffs have a bloody past. Or do they? (Source: own photo)
Three days later fascist forces retake Ronda. Hemingway does not go into detail about what exactly happens except to mention that Pilar, a rare example of a strong female character in Hemingway's writing, says that the massacre of the fascists was the worst day of her life 'until three days later when the fascists took back the town'. Maria, another important female character in the novel, albeit one who lacks nuance, begs Pilar not to talk about it. Maria is very young and so deeply traumatised that for a time she is unable to speak; she was raped by fascist guards following the retake of the town (see here).
Ronda viewed from the west (Source: own photo)
Of course, the events of Chapter 10 occurred over and over again in countless towns and cities all over Spain during the Civil War. Yet, it is almost certain that the precise events as described in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" did not actually take place in Ronda. There are neither written records nor eyewitness accounts that speak of anyone being thrown over the cliff in Ronda during the Spanish Civil War.
That is not to say that Ronda was spared. Quite the contrary. In July 1936, the commander of the small army garrison in Ronda, obeying orders from fascist superiors in the military, demanded that the left-wing mayor of Ronda step down. The mayor refused and managed to disarm the garrison with the help of peasant groups that had assembled outside the town hall after hearing news of the fascist coup.
Bull fighting is big in Ronda (Source: own photo)
Thus began the peasant revolution of July 1936 in Ronda in much the same way it began in so many other small towns in Andalucia that summer. In Ronda, the revolution lasted until the fascists took the town in September of 1936. By then, resentment between the warring parties had grown deep. During the ill-fated peasant revolt, the Conferacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), the Anarchist Labor Union, had been in control. CNT had drawn up lists of fascists and fascist sympathisers including priests and took many of them outside of town to be executed. Between 200 and 600 people out of Ronda's total population of 15,000 are believed to have been murdered.
Rapeseed flowers on the western slopes beneath Ronda (Source: own photo)
When the fascists took over, prominent Republicans who had not fled to Málaga themselves became victims of brutal reprisals. The casino in Ronda became a site of daily courtmartials, which were followed by immediate public executions. A few Republicans escaped to the nearby mountains, where they formed guerrilla bands that attacked buses passing through the hills; this went on right up until 1952.
In my view, there is nothing controversial about Hemingway's claim to have written about Ronda, even if he didn't. His work is pure fiction. More importantly, Hemingway's descriptions are true not only according to his own understanding of truth, they also become true to us, because the stunning realism of Hemingway's writing evokes emotions within us as if we were there in person to witness the atrocities.
The End
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