{"id":15346,"date":"2025-02-04T13:55:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T19:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&p=15346"},"modified":"2025-07-20T11:53:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:53:36","slug":"letter-to-general-franco","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/letter-to-general-franco\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to General Franco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fernando Arrabal<\/a><\/h1>\n

Translated by Peter Thompson<\/a><\/h2>\n

Letter to General Franco<\/h3>\n

ISBN: 978-1-956921-43-4 <\/span>(pbk.)<\/p>\n

(February 2025)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

Fernando Arrabal (full name Fernando Arrabal Ter\u00e1n, born 1932 in Melilla, Spain) is the author of hundreds of books, plays, poems, screenplays, operas and other creative projects in both French and Spanish. He has directed seven full-length feature films and has published over 100 plays; 14 novels; and 800 poetry collections, chapbooks, and artists\u2019 books. His complete plays have been published in multiple languages in a two-volume edition totaling over two thousand pages.<\/p>\n

His famous\u00a0Letter to General Franco,<\/em> written and sent during the dictator\u2019s lifetime, is the most provocative of several \u201cletters\u201d he wrote to various political leaders and organizations. When Franco\u2019s insurrection began in 1936, Fernando\u2019s father was arrested for his loyalty to the Republic and sentenced to death. Though the sentence was later commuted and his father subsequently escaped, he was never seen again. About this Arrabal would write:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWithout trying to compare what is incomparable, when I confront these twilight episodes (and quite often without any logical connection), I think of that scapegoat, my father. The day on which the Uncivil War began, he was locked up by his \u2018compassionate companions\u2019 in the flag room of the Melilla military barracks. He was meant to think carefully, since he risked a death sentence for mutiny if he did not join them in their insurrection (alzamiento). After an hour, Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal summoned his ex-comrades \u2013 already! \u2013 to inform them that he had pondered long enough. Today, because of this precedent, shouldn\u2019t I serve as witness, example, or symbol, as he did, of the most fundamental occurrences? I, who am a mere exile.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

His exile in Paris, to escape a fate similar to his father\u2019s, did turn out to be productive, as his work there prompted\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u2018 theatre critic Mel Gussow to call him the last survivor among the \u201cthree avatars of modernism\u201d. In 2025, at the age of 93, in seeming vindication of his long years of exile under the Franco regime, he was awarded the Grand-Croix d’Isabelle la Catholique, Spain’s highest civic honor.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Letter to General Franco<\/em>\u00a0appears here for the first time in English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fernando Arrabal<\/a>
\n9781956921434<\/span>
\nOne of the great anti-fascist documents of the 20th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[17],"product_tag":[381,481,109,495,38,93,18,383,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-15346","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-dialogos","7":"product_tag-ebook","8":"product_tag-fernando-arrabal","9":"product_tag-france","10":"product_tag-franco","11":"product_tag-non-fiction","12":"product_tag-peter-thompson","13":"product_tag-poetry","14":"product_tag-poetry-translation","15":"product_tag-spain","17":"first","18":"instock","19":"taxable","20":"shipping-taxable","21":"purchasable","22":"product-type-variable","23":"berocket_lgv_grid","24":"berocket_lgv_list_grid"},"yoast_head":"\nLetter to General Franco - 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