The Olive Field

This proletarian novel, published in 1936, is set in Andalusia and Asturias between 1932 and 1934. The central character, Joaquín Caro, leaves the small Andalusian town of Los Olivares de Don Fadrique following the brutal suppression of a workers’ protest. He goes to Asturias with his wife Lucía and later takes part in the unsuccessful revolution of October 1934 before returning to Los Olivares to begin again.

The author, Ralph Bates (born 3 November 1899), grew up in the southern English railway town of Swindon and his first job was in a railway factory. He enlisted in the army in 1917 and served with the Royal West Surrey Regiment. After the war, he returned to the factory and became interested in the workers’ political movement. He moved to Spain in 1923. His first book (a collection of short stories) was published in 1933 and his first novel appeared in the following year. He served with the International Brigades during the civil war and afterwards emigrated to Mexico. In 1947 he moved to New York to lecture in creative writing and English literature at New York University and he worked there until his retirement in 1966. Although he had continued to write, his last book to be published had appeared in 1950. Before his death as centenarian, he had been writing a history of the Greek island of Naxos, where he had been living, as well as a collection of poems.

The suppression of the workers’ protest in Los Olivares resembles the slaughter of advancing soldiers on the Flanders battlefields:
“ ‘They're coming, the bastards,’ shouted the sergeant of the Civil Guard... and Montaña wrenched his pistol from its holster and shouted, ‘Fire!'. Rifles flew up and the muzzles came down to the waistline of the advancing fours of the procession and the first volley cracked like lightning... The leading ranks crumpled and blew apart as if a terrific ráfaga had whirled among them, an uplifted placard spun round and the paper was torn away by an invisible thong which whipped fragments of wood into the air. The screams of the procession and the thundering of the rifles drowned Montaña’s cracking voice as he yelled, ‘Fire! Fire!’