Faschism and the Future

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I try to understand why facism was so fascinating for young people in the thirties. We have created a vision of facism that is completely false. The republic was an excellent, wonderful experiment, but it made lots of mistakes. If you only define your country by its worst parts, then you're not going to be able to go on as a society. I think we are more similar than we think. We are not exceptional. So i think that they must go hand in hand. You cannot have one thing without the other.

Javier Cercas is one of Spain’s most distinguished novelists and a columnist at El País. His books, like Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment, explore the history of modern Spain and the role of historical memory in contemporary life.

In this week’s conversation, Javier Cercas and Yascha Mounk discuss Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, the movement for Catalonian secession, and how countries should approach their often complicated pasts.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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