From a distance, the image of a pistol-toting Civil Guard colonel holding prisoner Spain's cabinet and members of parliament recalled Marx's phrase that history, tragic in its first occurrence, repeats itself as farce. From a lesser distance, the long night of 23-24 February, with tanks in the streets of Valencia, national television taken over, ministers and deputies incarcerated under armed guard in the Cortes, sometimes seemed like history setting out to repeat itself as tragedy.

LRB 16 July 1981 | PDF Download