W.H. Auden wrote of this civil war-torn country, "History to the defeated may say alas but cannot help nor pardon"
...... Auden wrote from Brussels, on 31 August 1938, that he was taken by the 
vitality of .... the prologue to that war, the Spanish Civil War, broke out while we 
were there... [DOC] [TLE] [W. H. Auden] W. H. Auden Selected Poems(BookFi.org) [PAR] In the forties Auden wrote of a love that was spousal and permanent.