Leon Trotsky: Prologue, Mis Peripecias en Espana

June 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 175 f.]

This book owes its origin to chance. I had not in any way planned my journey to Spain at the end of 1916. Much less had I conceived a study of my own of the interior of the “model” prison of Madrid. The name Cadiz resounded in my ears almost like something exotic. In my imagination I associated it with Arabs, with sea, and with palm trees. Until the autumn of 1916 I had never wondered if the beautiful southern Cadiz was blessed with a police force. Nevertheless I had to spend some weeks under its vigilance. This whole experience was fortuitous for me and seemed, at times, a pleasant dream. But it was neither fantasy nor dream. Dreams are not in the habit of leaving fingerprints. And in spite of that the prints of all the fingers of my right and left hands can be found in the office of the model prison of Madrid. No greater proof of the reality of what happened could be given by any philosopher.

In the prison in Madrid, on the train, in the hotel in Cadiz, I noted down my impressions without any particular purpose in mind. My notebooks later traveled with me across the Atlantic; they remained in my baggage during the weeks I enjoyed the hospitality of the king of England, in the concentration camp in Canada, and they again crossed the ocean and the Scandinavian peninsula with me to Petrograd. In the whirlwind of the events of the revolution and the civil war I forgot they existed. In 1925, speaking with my friend Voronsky, I mentioned in passing my Spanish impressions and notes. Voronsky at that time edited the best monthly literary review in the Soviet republic, and with his native journalist’s talent he immediately took advantage of my indiscretion to keep me from leaving until I had solemnly promised to look for my notebooks and to give them to him to copy and put in some order. That is how this book appeared. Another of my friends, Andres Nin, decided to translate it into Spanish. I had grave doubts about the wisdom of this undertaking. But Nin was very insistent. For this reason the responsibility for the appearance of this book in Spanish falls on his shoulders.

My knowledge of the Spanish language was at a very elementary level: the Spanish government didn’t let me perfect myself in the language of Cervantes. This circumstance alone is enough to explain the quite superficial and simple character of my observations. It would be useless to look in this book for more or less complete pictures of the customs or the political and cultural life of Spain. The aforesaid shows how far the author is from any pretensions. I did not live in Spain as an investigator or observer, nor even as a tourist at liberty. I entered the country as someone thrown out of France and I lived in it as someone held in jail in Madrid and under surveillance in Cadiz while waiting to be thrown out again. These circumstances restricted the radius of my observations and at same time conditioned beforehand my way of reacting to the aspects of life in Spain with which I had contact. Without a good ironic relish, my series of experiences in Spain would be, even for me, a completely indigestible dish. The general tone of my book expresses, in all its spontaneity, the feelings I had when I made the trip through Irun, San Sebastian, Madrid to Cadiz and from there again to Madrid and Barcelona, to disembark later, quitting the coast of Europe, on the other side of the Atlantic.

But if this little book can awaken the interest of the Spanish reader and induce him to penetrate into the psychology of the Russian Revolution, I shall not lament the work done by my friend Nin in translating these plain and unpretentious pages.