Segovia and Politics We have no evidence that Segovia developped a reflection about politics beyond the level of observing

politics of a good, clever citizen, prior to 1936. Despite the fact he received little of school education, he was a steady and devoted reader of literature and philosophy, but not of books and essays about politics: unlike Tarrega, he did not fall "empapado" with reading Marx. He begins to write - in his letters - his thoughts about politics since 1936: in other words, since when the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, which suddendly breaks, obliges him - as any other Spanish citizen - to take a position and to act, in a very short time, in order to save his own life. Since then we have the expression of a Segovia's political orientation. It was an extremely upsetting experience. He had just returned with his wife Paquita Madriguera from his fourth tour in the URSS, where he had been very well acknowledged and where he had made a good deal of friendly acquaintance. Before going there, he was in very good terms with several members of the Spanish party who lead the lefty governement - people whom he knew from his youth in Granada (Fernando de los Rios firstly), and he was already, in Spain, a sort of national glory. He had not the slightest notation of a reactionary nationalist: he was doing his active part with promoting the music of (then) modern composers, such as Turina, Torroba, Manen - without considering the non-Spanish authors he had promoted with his performances, and who were not for sure reactionary people (Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ponce, Tansman, Roussel, etc.). So, what happened? At the break of the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona (where Segovia lived) did not fall under the power of the nationalistic party - the military golpe did not succeed in the Catalan capital as it did in many other towns. At that moment, Segovia had not the smallest reason to suspect he was considered a friend of the Franco side. In fact, when his friend, the writer Salvador de Madariaga suggested him to leave, he did not believe. But then he had to realize that it was true, and he precipitated his fugue from Barcelona, just in time to avoid to be arrested by a group of the red party. He went to the harbor with his wife, his guitar and a suitcase, and he took a ship, no matter where it was leaving for. Incidentally, he came to Italy (Genova). Who were those people who wanted to arrest him, and why? They were not official exponents of the governement, they were simply delinquents who had received from the local authorities a sort of silent approval of their purpose of helping the resistence against the golpe with arresting and suppressing all those people who might have been allied with the military golpe. Actually, many of those teams were formed by gangsters who aimed just to do sackings in the houses of their victims, with a political excuse. Segovia's house was made clean of all of its contents: no politics, just crime. Whilst this was happening on a large scale proportion, many exponents of the governement had been able to save themselves, their families and their money outside Spain. Among them, Fernando de los Rios. Segovia thought that tsuch a governement had practically left the country in the power of the gangs which operated out of any law. On the other side, he thought there was a project of re-establishing an order, a discipline and a state. This is why, from such a dramatic new perspective, he embraced the Franco revolution: as a man deeply squared in the Spanish culture and history, he lost his faith in a governement that, at the first thunder blow, had left him (and many other Spanish foremost citizens) in the powers of criminal people, and he thought that the unique way of having a legal situtation restored in the country was in the Franco revolution. Since then, he did not hide his ideas, and he payed a very high price for them. Right or wrong he may have been, he took a full responsibility of his thoughts, words and actions. He did not earn any special privilege from having been a Franco's supporter. Actually, he went back to Spain only on 1952, when he played in Granada, and he did not return to live in Madrid until 1962, when he married Emilia Coral.

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