The Beatles played in fascist Spain...

Philly_Q

RocknRollDave said:

Philly_Q said:

Now that you mention it, all those great Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in Spain.

Paella westerns?
Sangria westerns?

DannyP said:

Philly_Q said:

Now that you mention it, all those great Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in Spain.

Spain: home of spaghetti.

Italian productions, filmed in Spain.

Actually a lot of them were international co-productions, but they originated from an Italian production company, with an Italian director.  Django was the same, Italian production, partially shot in Spain.  I guess Italy doesn't have enough dusty desert locations.

LastMantra

That's not why they were called that.

Edit Philly beat me to it.

Philly_Q

LastMantra said:

That's not why they were called that.

Do tell?

Edit: I've seen your edit.

LastMantra

Philly_Q said:

LastMantra said:

That's not why they were called that.

Do tell?

Sorry, edited my post now ^

Filmed where most of the rain falls.

Creed_Clicks

I am going through the podcast posted earlier. I suppose as Franco was anti communist, he was considerd "ok" by the rest of western Europe and the USA...

guitartango

Creed_Clicks said:

I am going through the podcast posted earlier. I suppose as Franco was anti communist, he was ok...

Tell that to the people of Spain

mudslide73

guitartango said:

Creed_Clicks said:

I am going through the podcast posted earlier. I suppose as Franco was anti communist, he was ok...

Tell that to the people of Spain

I have a Catalan mate who corrects everyone who refers to him as Spanish. It's a very deep level of feeling that I wasn't fully aware of, shamefully. 

Creed_Clicks

@guitartango edited! that didn't read right!

Blueingreen

CaseOfAce said:

Pop musicians boycotting nasty regimes didn't just automatically happen because some musicians were virtuous.  An idea had to develop and gain traction first.  That hadn't happened by the time The Beatles went to Spain.

->

A news report describes the protest set off by British pop star Dusty Springfield when she refused to perform during a tour in South Africa unless she could sing to a non-segregated audience. Although her 1964 tour was cancelled, many other British rock stars joined her in condemning apartheid.

Turns out Dusty didn't actually finish the tour and was deported.
I'd assume that the Beatles would have been aware of this since it would have been in the tabloids or on the radio back then?

Great thread by the way - a chap above asked what was point of it - but I've learnt stuff I never knew before.

The Beatles would have been aware of it, but it's a completely different thing.

Dusty didn't boycott South Africa to make a political point - in fact in interviews later she stressed that she knew nothing about politics, and was not politically motivated.  She was an obsessively enthusiastic black music fan who rightly thought it would be unacceptable if the people who invented the music she was performing wouldn't be allowed so see her perform it.

She travelled to South Africa assuming that she would be allowed to play to non-segregated audiences since a clause in her contract insisted she would.  The government didn't like it, panicked, and she was kicked out of the country.

What she did was brave and admirable and ahead of her time, but it didn't in any way reflect a generally accepted principle that pop artists didn't perform in countries with nasty regimes. That didn't arrive until many years later.  As the Glasgow Herald put it in 1989:

Her action then was seen as cranky and dangerously subversive. Pop entertainers in the sixties weren't meant to have a public conscience, and it is only comparatively recently that anti-apartheid pop protest has gained credibility.

Besides Spain isn't South Africa: however brutal the regime might have been, it didn't have racism as a deliberate philosophy.  It's just being anachronistic to take The Beatles to task for not boycotting Spain.

merlin

LastMantra said:

Sorry, edited my post now ^

Filmed where most of the rain falls.

What, in Majorca?

merlin

mudslide73 said:

I have a Catalan mate who corrects everyone who refers to him as Spanish. It's a very deep level of feeling that I wasn't fully aware of, shamefully. 

Try telling a Scottish, Welsh or Irish person that they're English. Maybe even a Cornish person...
I always correct people when they say I'm English. 

Chris.B

There's a statue of the Beatles conveniently close to the Mersey - just in case. 

chillidoggy

merlin said:

LastMantra said:

Sorry, edited my post now ^

Filmed where most of the rain falls.

What, in Majorca?

No, on the plain.

mudslide73

merlin said:

mudslide73 said:

I have a Catalan mate who corrects everyone who refers to him as Spanish. It's a very deep level of feeling that I wasn't fully aware of, shamefully. 

Try telling a Scottish, Welsh or Irish person that they're English. Maybe even a Cornish person...
I always correct people when they say I'm English. 

Quite. Hence the use of the word "shamefully".

Funkfingers

The Beatles also played in the Philippines during the Marcos era.  

EricTheWeary

Funkfingers said:

The Beatles also played in the Philippines during the Marcos era.  

…but they refused to meet Imelda Marcos and they were then banned from the country. Although the refusal seems to have been a general not wanting to deal with authority rather than a political statement. 

Funkfingers

IIRC, they elected never to meet with political leaders again after Harold Wilson tried to exploit their reputation in 1964.

Dominic

mudslide73 said:

guitartango said:

Creed_Clicks said:

I am going through the podcast posted earlier. I suppose as Franco was anti communist, he was ok...

Tell that to the people of Spain

I have a Catalan mate who corrects everyone who refers to him as Spanish. It's a very deep level of feeling that I wasn't fully aware of, shamefully. 

The Basques are even more militant about it.
Franco dealt very harshly with Basque Separatist Agenda 
Garroting was the execution method ( Anton Puig etc )

crunchman

guitartango said:

Creed_Clicks said:

I am going through the podcast posted earlier. I suppose as Franco was anti communist, he was ok...

Tell that to the people of Spain

A lot of the people of Spain liked him.  I remember going there in the late 80s, and a lot of the older people looked back on the Franco days as better.  "We didn't have to lock our doors at night" type of stuff.

I don't think they would have known about the atrocities though.

Spain stayed neutral after WW2, and I doubt any of the allies had the stomach to depose him after 6 years of war - especially only a decade or so after a messy Spanish Civil War.  Based on the Civil war, if they had deposed him, Spain may have ended up with a communist government.   That all led to him being tolerated.

We have done that more recently as well.  We tolerated Saddam for a good while because he was viewed as less bad than Iran.  If he hadn't invaded Kuwait he might still be in power now if he hadn't died of natural causes in the meantime.

Hurling_Fruitmig

TheMarlin said:

You can’t judge events from 50 years ago by modern moral standard.  Was a completely different world back then.  

Yes and no.

You're corect that the idea that pop groups and sports stars should boycott countries run by unpleasant regimes is a pretty modern one and it certainly wasn't happening much when the fab four went to Spain.

On the other hand, it was less than 20 years since the Allies had been fighting fascism in Europe, and 30 years since the International Brigades had been fighting the fascists in Spain including a sizable British contingent.