Fighting Fascism with His Cello

I read an interesting article about Pablo Cassals (1876-1973) this morning. Casals was the great Spanish cellist of the last century. In 1936, when Casals was 60, the Spanish Civil War broke out. He volunteered with the anarchists, who saw him as a wealthy bourgeios man (which he indeed was) and sent him on his way. For the rest of the war, he raised money for the Republic by playing concerts throughout Europe, always imploring Europes democracies to help out the Republican side. (Fun fact: none of them did.) He continued to raise money for refugees, who were in wretched camps in France. (Amongst those refugees was a 6-year-old Sergio Aragones, whose family would eventually emigrate to Mexico, one of the few pro-Republican countries in the world, along with the Soviet Union. Aragones would eventually become a great cartoonist for Mad Magazine in the U.S.A.) Casals picked the wrong side and never lived in Spain again. He spent the rest of his life in Puerto Rico, playing cello and supporting anti-war and anti-nuclear movements.

This is Pablo Casals in 1917. (Image in the public domain.)

The article was in Van magazine, an excellent online magazine about classical music. It points out the apolitical posture of modern classical musicians, singling out Joshua Bell and Gustavo Dudamel. I would like to see classical musicians—who are titanically skilled—to publically come out against the falangists of today.

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