A Date with History

I’d been checking her out for a while. Read some of her books. Googled her biography. Watched a documentary in which she made an appearance. In short, I was crushing pretty hard.

Then some recent travels afforded me a one-night layover in Madrid, and I decided to make a move. She works independently of any university, but I managed to procure her email address from an association at which she gave a lecture last April.

The Pick-up Line: So I’m a young American researcher…

The Caveat: I don’t even know if you live in Madrid…

The Move: Would you want to meet up in the morning before I have to hop on a plane to Tangier?

She writes back within hours. I’m on the phone with Rod and freak out: “OHMYGODOHMYGOD, María Rosa de Madariaga said she would go out with me! OHMYGOD – What will I say? What should I wear? AHH!”

As it turns out, the anxiety was unnecessary: María Rosa de Madariaga – one of the leading historians on relations between Spain and Morocco before and during the Spanish Civil War – is absolutely lovely.

We met at a café around the corner from her apartment, not too far from the Nuevos Ministerios metro stop. The pop music playing was too loud, and I could not have been more off my Spanish game, fumbling for words and expressions, but she was patient and respectful. Garrulous! Our conversation lasted for close to two hours, primarily because I would ask a single question or make a vague comment, and she would hold forth for a good five or ten minutes. With her seductively knowledgeable speaking voice, though, listening was a pleasure.

We started by jamming on history. What struck me most during this part of the conversation was her matter-of-factness regarding the presence of Moroccan soldiers – whom she unhesitatingly qualifies as “mercenaries” – in Franco’s army. She presented the phenomenon as straightforward and pragmatic: Franco needed soldiers and so he wooed the Moroccans; the elite Moroccans played along when it behooved them, while poor Rifians signed on for largely economic reasons. Shrug. Nothing too surprising there.

Only I think it is surprising, or would be for people unfamiliar with the history. And furthermore, I think it’s important. It offers a challenge to the way we normally conceive of relations between the “West” and “Islam.” My impression is that it’s easy for scholars to become so immersed in their area of studies that they lose sight of its significance for the general public – definitely a pitfall I want to remain aware of as I consider moving forward with academia. Maybe even one I’d like to sidestep completely. I know academics can have a great time disparaging pop-scholarship, like Blink by Malcolm Gladwell or The Ornament of the World by María Rosa Menocal (aHEM), but there’s something to be said for exposing non-academics to alternative histories.

Returning to the date, though: we next talked about methodology. Madariaga is a forceful proponent of rigorous, “scientific,” archival investigation. Every fact ought to be supported with the most reliable, written sources available. Personal narratives can offer a human side to history – testimonies to the feelings and thoughts of veterans – but the facts contained within them ought never to be accepted without documental verification.

Indeed, Madariaga is skeptical and even critical of some of the personal versions of history she’s come across. The demand by some Moroccans that Moroccan soldiers be classified alongside victims of Francoist repression under Spain’s Law of Historical Memory, for example, she sees as totally out of line. Moroccans were mercenaries, soldiers fighting on the front lines – not at all the same as civilians punished by a conflict in which they hadn’t participated.

As for a Tetouani association concerned with military pensions, she seems to likewise view them as over the top. Their plight may have her sympathies, but their self-victimization (she nearly rolled her eyes when I reported hearing one man draw a parallel between Moroccan soldiers and Jews in WWII) and distortion, even falsification, of history elicits harsh condemnation. But she denounces no one so much as the leader of another organization in Rabat, who she essentially portrayed as a mutilator of historical facts and as a charlatan, attempting to exploit this cause for his own advancement or to solicit money from the Moroccan government.

As for why we are seeing this attitude of victimization, especially among the younger generations, she suggested that it may be an imitation of similar movements taking place in other former colonies, like Algeria. She didn’t seem to put much stock in it all. I’m not sure yet what these reflections mean for my idea to put together a personal narrative-based exhibition (see previous post containing the extension request); they have certainly given me pause.

I guess I was also taken somewhat aback by her dryness, her apparent lack of an activist-y, crusader-y mentality. Not that I was expecting her to be a zealot, but my imagination had painted more of a Howard Zinn figure, i.e. a writer of a certain type of history about a certain topic with a certain purpose, i.e. a writer of an alternative version of the Spanish Civil War about the participation of Moroccan soldiers with the aim of rethinking the image of the “Moor” in the general Spanish mind.

The truth, though, is that she’s pretty cut and dry and unapologetic about the Moroccan role in the war. She’s not unsympathetic, but I sense that her intensely anti-Francoist beliefs make it difficult for her to rally with any great passion behind even his non-ideological supporters. If I’m right, Madariaga takes us back to my friend Carolina’s comments that everyone in Spain has a side and that what is needed is some non-partisan investigations and writings (again, see previous blog post).

As we reached the end of our conversation, I inquired after her professional trajectory and her advice for young people considering a career in history. It turns out she’s one of those academics who’s not so much into the teaching thing but rather gets her kicks from archival “detective” work. After a handful of years at universities in Madrid and Paris, she picked up a gig with UNESCO, working on a project about the transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world to the Christian West in the Middle Ages. These days, she’s developed enough of a market for her books on Moroccan-Spanish history that she passes her time in pursuit of documents, writing and giving various lectures. Fortunate lady, to be able to do what she loves.

Work-wise, her advice was tri-fold: 1) have a plan de travail, that is, a very specific outline of what a project is going to look like; 2) conduct rigorous research! documents, documents, documents; and 3) be true to yourself: people of varying political and ideological persuasions are not always going to be fans of your work, but you need to stand by your #2 rigorous research and not let them get to you.

I’m definitely still grappling with #1. Hopefully #2 will be applicable in September, when the archives are supposed to open. I can only fantasize about one day needing to draw on #3.

Then again, my date-with-a-historian fantasy has already become reality. An ongoing one, I might add. Not only are we still in email contact, we have a follow-up date: a book talk of hers in Tetouan in early November.

There was this great moment when a young man approached us to say that he couldn't help overhearing our conversation, that he was really interested in relations between Islam and the West, could we recommend any books and are we family? Madariaga graciously referred him to her own titles and explained that we were just two friends, smiling and winking at me the whole time. I just about swooned.

"For Caitlyn, with friendship and wishing you much success in your research. María Rosa de Madariaga."
Double swoon.