A translation of an excerpt of Soldados de Salamina by Javier Cercas

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Jessie Mason
Gillian Price
SPAN 4040
Final Translation
Translator‟s Note
Javier Cercas‟ novel Soldados de Salamina followed me for a good six months before I
began to translate it. I had read the novel and watched the movie for classes, Iowned a copy of
the book that floated between bookshelf andnightstand, and I found out that the author himself
was giving a talk at my university. So, in making the decision of which text I wanted to translate,
I didn‟t really have a choice. It was Soldadosor bust.
In addition to this novel being beautifully written, it eloquently tackles one of the most
divisive issues in Spain – the Spanish Civil War. The conflict between the Republican
government and the rebel Nationalist forces pitted brother against brother, and the effects of the
war ravaged the country for years. While Rafael Sánchez Mazas was only one man, his story
shows the war from a the perspective of a literary and political giant, someone whose desperation
and fear moved him to action – action which was the difference between life and death.
I ran into some interesting problems in translating this novel. First, the section that I
originally wanted to translate was much longer than what I ended up completing. I intended to
narrate Sánchez Mazas‟ journey from the CárcelModelo de Madrid all the way to the defining
moment of the novel: after running from a firing squad, he hides in the woods and is discovered
by a young soldier, but the soldier doesn‟t turn him in and instead lets him go free, allowing him
to be reunited with the Nationalist forces. I tried to cut out a section of his journey in the middle
in order to unite the beginning of the story with the end, but there wasn‟t a good section to get rid

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of without compromising the integrity of the tale. Every word, every piece of information that
Cercas includes is important. Since I couldn‟t fit the end of the story of Sánchez Mazas‟ escape
into this translation, I instead focused on presenting a well-rounded, informative description of
the events leading up to his escape.
One thing I battled with was deciding how much to footnote. The average Spanish reader
would most likely know who IndalecioPrieto, and Manuel Azaña were, in the same way that the
average American would recognize names like George Washington, or Ben Franklin. However,
the sheer number of people involved in the conflictand with the generally confusing air
surrounding the events of the war, made it necessary, in my opinion, to give some biographical
information about each major player referenced in the novel so that the reader understands who‟s
doing what. I will also take this moment to cite Wikipedia as the source for all of my footnote
information; I was not as well-versed in Spanish history as I originally thought.
There is one phrase from this translation that I am sure will bother me for the rest of my
existence – in a description of a picture of Sánchez Mazas, there is a “cazo de hambre” sitting on
a table. Literally, this translates to something like “a bucket of hunger,” but I couldn‟t settle on a
fixed equivalent in English. I‟m almost comfortable with what I ended up with – “a bucket,
containing nothing but hunger” – as it preserves the sense of emptiness as well as the alliteration
of the original, but I can‟t help but feel there is some exact phrase for it out there somewhere.
Like the actions of the Greeks in the title-referenced Battle of Salamis, the actions of
Sánchez Mazas helped preserve his own life and allowed him to continue fighting for what he
believed. It is my hope that this translation has overcome the language, cultural, and knowledge
barriers surrounding the war and the stories of it, and gifted the unforgettable story of Sánchez
Mazas to the English reader.

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Soldiers of Salamis
In that moment, Sánchez Mazas1
vanished. We can try to reconstruct the events that
occurred during the months prior to the conflict and during the three years that he spent alone
through partial accounts – fleeting allusions in memories and documents of the time, oral
accounts of those who shared snippets of his adventures, memories of family and friends to
whom he told his memories – and through the veil of a legend full of misunderstandings,
contradictions, and ambiguities that was fed by the selective loquacity of Sanchez Mazas during
this turbulent period of his life. So then, the following may not be what actually happened, but it
is what appears plausible; I do not offer hard facts, but reasonable conjectures.
They are:
In March of 1936, Sánchez Mazas was imprisoned in the CárcelModelo de Madrid2
with
his companions from the Junta Política3
. His fourth son Máximo was born, and Victoria Kent,
the seasoned Director General of the prison system, granted the prisoner three days so that he
could visit his wife, on the condition that he give his word of honor that he would not leave
Madrid, and that he would return to jail after the agreed-upon time had passed. Sánchez Mazas
accepted the deal. However, according to another of his sons, Rafael, before leaving jail the
warden called Sánchez Mazas into his office. Between clenched teeth, the warden told him that
he saw dark things, and for that reason he suggested with half-spoken words “that it would serve
him better to not return, and that he, for his part, would not put what one might call his best
efforts into his search and seizure”. Because it justifies the dubious subsequent behavior of
Sánchez Mazas, it makes sense to doubt the truthfulness of this version; it also makes sense to
1
Rafael Sánchez Mazas - a Spanish nationalist writer and a leader of the Falange, a right-wing political movement
created in Spain before the Spanish Civil War.
2
CárcelModelo de Madrid – the main men‟s prison in Madrid during the last quarter of the 19th
century and the first
half of the 20th
century.
3
Junta Politica – the political cabinet under Francisco Franco‟s regime

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imagine that it might not be false. What is certain is that Sánchez Mazas, forgetting the protests
of chivalry and heroism with which he illustrated so many pages of incendiary prose, broke his
promise and fled to Portugal. However, José Antonio4
, who had taken the words of his deputy
seriously and who judged this as a test of not only his honor, but that of the entire Falange,
ordered Sánchez Mazas to return to Madrid from the jail of Alicante,5
where his brother Miguel
had been transferred on the night of the 5th
of June. Sánchez Mazas obeyed, but before he could
enter once more into the Modelo, the uprising broke out.
The days that followed were confusing. Almost thee years later, Eugenio Montes, whom
Sánchez Mazas called “my best and most trusted comrade in the effort to put humanity in the
service of our Falange,” described, from Burgos6
, the journey of his friend in the days
immediately following the 18th
of July as “the adventure of horses and hiding, with the red
henchmen chasing his heels.” The phrase is as bizarre as it is evasive, but perhaps it doesn‟t
completely betray reality. The revolution triumphed in Madrid. Peoplepeoplekilled and were
killed in the ditches and in their homes. The government had lost control of the situation, and a
deadly combination of fear and euphoria filled the air. The rebels proliferated in the houses; but
in the streets, the military reigned. One night, in the beginning of September, incapable of
tolerating the unease of the secrecy and the imminent presence of dangerany longer, or perhaps
urged on by his friends or acquaintances that had run the risk of sheltering a fugitive of his
caliberfor too long, Sánchez Mazas decided to leave his hideout, flee Madrid, and head for the
zonanacional.7
4
José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia – Spanish lawyer, nobleman, politician, and founder of the
Falange
5
Alicante – a city located on the eastern coast of Spain, 265 miles southeast of Madrid and 111 miles south of
Valencia
6
Burgos – a city located in northern central Spain
7
zonanacional – the region of Spain under control of Francisco Franco and his regime

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Predictably, he did not succeed. The next day, before he could hit the streets, he was
detained; the patrol demanded that he identified himself. With a strange combination of panic
and resignation, Sanchez Mazas understood that he was lost.As if he wanted to silently say
goodbye to reality, during an interminable second of indecision he looked around him and
although it wasn‟t even nine in the morning, in the Calle de la Montera8
the shops had already
opened and the urgent hustle of the people of the city inundated the sidewalks while the harsh
sun announced another suffocating morning of that never-ending summer. In that moment the
three armed soldiers noticed a truck, stuffed with UGT9
militants and bristling with rifles and
cries of war that was headed to the Guadarrama border.Its bodywork daubed with signs and
names, among those that of IndalecioPrieto, who had just been named minister of Marine and
Air10
in the brand new government of Largo Caballero11
. So, Sanchez Mazas planned and
executed a desperate idea: he told the soldiers that he couldn‟t identify himself because he was
undercover in Madrid completing a mission that had been directly entrusted to him by the
Minister of Marine and Air, and he demanded to be put in contact with him. Torn between
bewilderment and suspicion/distrust, the soldiers decided to take him to the headquarters of the
Department of General Security to make sure his implausible excuse was authentic; there,
through anguished negotiation, Sánchez Mazas was able to speak to Prieto on the telephone – he
was interested in the situation, advised Sánchez Mazas to seek refuge in the Chilean Embassy,
affectionately wished him goodluck; then, in the name of his old African friendship, ordered that
they release him.
8
Calle de la Montera – a street in the seedier part of Madrid, home to pimps and prostitutes
9
UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) – General Union of Workers; a major Spanish trade union, historically
affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
10
Department of Marine and Air – concerned with the maritime and air force branches of the Spanish military
11
Largo Caballero – Spanish politician and trade unionist, leader of the Spanish Socialist Worker‟s Party and the
UGT

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That same day, Sánchez Mazas was able to enter the Chilean Embassy, where he stayed
almost a year and a half. One photo survives from this time of confinement: Sánchez Mazas
appears in the center of a circle of refugees, including the Falangist writer Samuel Ros; there are
eight of them, all a little ragged and poorly-shaven, all excited. Dressed in a shirt that was once
white, with his Semeticprofile, his short-sighted glasses, and his broad forehead, Sánchez Mazas
is leading elegantly on a table on which we can only see an empty glass, a piece of bread, a
bunch of papers (or books), and a bucket, containing nothing but hunger. The others are listening
to him read a fragment of Rosa Krüger, a novel that he wrote, or started to write, in those days to
ease the pain of imprisonment and distract his companions. It was published, unfinished, fifty
years later, when its author was already long gone. Without a doubt, it is his best novel, and also
a good novel, and also strange and almosttimeless, written in a Byzantine manner by someone
with the taste and sensibility of a Pre-Raphaelite12
painter, with European vocation and patriotic
and conservativecontent. Saturated with exquisite fantasies, with exotic adventures, with a kind
of melancholy sensualitythrough which, with an exact and crystalline prose, he narrates the battle
inside the protagonist where the two essential concepts that, according to the author, govern the
universe,fight – good and evil –, as well as the final victory of the former, personified in a donna
angelicata named Rosa Krüger. It‟s astonishing that Sánchez Mazaswas able to isolate himself
from the never-ending, noisy promiscuity that reigned in the embassy in order to write his book,
but not that the fruit of this isolation carefully avoids the dramatic circumstances that surrounded
its conception. After all, it would have been redundant to add to the tragedy of the war a story of
the tragedy of the war. Apart from that, the apparent contradiction between the bellicose
Falangist ideas of Sánchez Mazas and his apolitical and embellished literary chores that had so
12
Pre-Raphaelite – formed in 1848 and widely regarded as the first avant-garde movement in art, they were a group
of English painters, poets, and critics who wanted art to return to the way it was before Raphael began painting

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preoccupied some of his readers resolves itself if we admit that both are opposing yet coherent
expressions of the same nostalgia: that of a world abolished, impossible and invented from
Paradise, that of the sure hierarchies of an ancien régime that the inevitable winds of time have
swept away forever.
As time passed and the blood and despair of the war increased, the situation in the
embassies that had taken in fugitives of the republican-controlled Madrid became more and more
precarious, and the fear of attacks grew stronger. It reached the point that everyone who had a
reasonable possibility of escape within their reach preferred to run the risk of the venture in
search for a secure refuge rather than prolong the anguished uncertainty being locked up and
waiting. Samuel Ros managed it;he arrived in Chile around the middle of 1937, and didn‟t return
to Spain until the following year. Motivated by the success of Ros, Sánchez Mazas tried to
escape in the fall of „37. This part of his story was told with the help of a prostitute and a young
sympathizer of the Falange, whose family knew of Sánchez Mazas and owned (or had owned) a
transportation factory. His plan consisted of reaching Barcelona, and, once there, getting the aid
of the quintacolumna13
to get in contact with the underground escape network and cross the
French border. They executed this plan, andduring various days Sánchez Mazas traveled the six
hundred kilometers that separated him from Barcelona through backroads and trails,
camouflaged among a shipment of rotten vegetables in the company of the prostitute and the
youngFalangist. Miraculously, they made it through all of the checkpoints, arriving safe and
sound to their destination, with no more setbacks than a popped tire and a dog with an
exceptionally good sense of smellthat put the fear of death into them. In Barcelona the three
travelers separated and, as planned, Sánchez Mazas was taken in by a lawyer working for the
13
quintacolumna – a term created by Nationalist General Emilio Mola. In 1936 he told a journalist that has his four
columns of troops approached Madrid, a “fifth column” of supporters inside the city would support him and
undermine the Republican government from within – the term was widely used after that

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JMB, one of the numerous and unconnected Falangist factions that the quintacolumnahad
scattered around the city. After giving him a few days of rest, the members of the JMB urged
him to take command and,to prove his worth as the fourth-in-command of the Falange, reunite
all of the quintacolumnista groups, force them under the discipline of the party, ad make them
coordinate their activities. Maybe because his only worry up until this moment had been
escaping the zonaroja14
and entering the zonanacional, or simply because he knew himself to be
incapable of what they asked of him, the offer surprised him, and he rejected it, citing his
absolute lack of knowledge of the situation of the city and the groups that operated in it.
However, the members of the JMB, as young and daring as they were inexperienced, who had
awaited his arrival like a providential gift, insisted, and Sánchez Mazas had no choice but to
accept.
In the days that followed, Sánchez Mazasmet with representatives from the other factions
of the quintacolumna.One morning, while he was making his way to Iberia, a bar in the middle
of the city whose owner sympathized with the nationalist cause, he was detained by SIM15
agents. We are now at the 29th
of November, 1937; the versions of what happened after that day
differ. There are some that claim that Father Isidoro Martín, who had been one of Sánchez
Mazas‟ professors at the Real Colgeio de María Cristina in El Escorial, interceded in vain on his
behalf before Manuel Azaña16
, another of his former students. Julián de Zugazagoitia17
, the same
who, when the war ended, Sánchez Mazas unsuccessfully tried to free from the firing squad,
confirmed that he proposed a trade to Prime MinisterNegrín– Sánchez Mazas for the journalist
FedericoAngulo, and that Azaña hinted at the convenience of trading the writer for some
14
zonaroja – the region of Spain under the control of the Republican government
15
SIM – Servicio de InformaciónMilitar, the intelligence agency and secret service of the Republicans
16
Manuel Azaña – president of the Republic
17
Julian de Zugazagoitia – a socialist politician, journalist, writer, and Minister of the Interior

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compromising manuscripts of his that were in the hands of the rebels. Another version says that
Sánchez Mazas was never able to make it to Barcelona, because he took refuge in the Polish
Embassy after his time in the Chilean Embassy, and that he was attacked in the same moment
that Azorín18
thought to free him from a death sentence. There are also those who say that
Sánchez Mazas really was effectively traded in the midst of the war. The latter two hypotheses
are erroneous; with almost complete certainty the first two are not. Anyway, the reality is that,
after being detained by the SIM, Sánchez Mazas was taken to the ship Uruguay, anchored in the
port of Barcelona and converted a while back into a floating prison, and afterwards taken to the
Palace of Justice19
, where he was put on tiral along with other quintacolumnistas. During the
trial, they accused him of being the supreme leader of the quintacolumna in Barcelona, which
was false, and inciting the rebellion, which was true. However, and setting him apart from the
majority of the accused, Sánchez Mazas was not condemned to death. The fact is strange; maybe
only an inquiry in extremis by IndalecioPrieto can explain it.
At the conclusion of the trial, Sánchez Mazas was taken back to the Uruguay once more;
he spent the months that followedin one of its cells. The conditions were not good: the food was
scarce; the treatment, brutal. News about the course of the warwas scarce, but there was enough
to satisfy the captives on the Uruguaythat the victory of Franco was close. On the 24th
of
January, 1939, two days before Yagüe‟s20
troops arrived in Barcelona, an unusual rumor
surfaced, and it didn‟t take long for the nervousness of the jailers to show. In one moment he
thought they were going to free him; in the next he thought they were going to kill him. The
morning passed between these two anguished alternatives until, at three in the afternoon, a SIM
18
Azorín – the pen name of José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz, a novelist, essayist, and literary critic
19
Palace of Justice – the home of the court system
20
Juan Yagüe – one of the most important army officers on the Nationalist side, also known as the “Butcher of
Badajoz” for his actions during the war

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agent ordered him to leave his cell, and the boat, and get on a bus parked on the pier,
wherefourteen other prisoners from the Uruguay werewaiting for him, along withthe Czech from
Vallmajor, and the seventeen SIM agents charged with their custody. Among the prisoners there
were two women: Sabina González from Carranceja, and Juana Aparicio Pérez from Pulgar; also
present wereleading jonsista21
José MaríaPoblador, an important player in the attempted coup in
July of „36, and JesúsPascual Aguilar, one of the chiefs of the quintacolumna in Barcelona. No
one knew in that moment, but of all the male prisoners that made up the convoy, by the end of
the week only Sánchez Mazas, Pascual, and Poblador would remain with their lives.
21
jonsista – a follower of the Juntas de OfensivaNacional-Sindicalista (Unions of National-Syndicalist Offensive),
the national syndicalist movement in Spain