Where have all the Spaniards gone?



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Part 1 - 1960-1971: The Old Medieval Spain

Chapter 2: A Long Lost Friend   
Spain has gone thru two transformations in my lifetime. I first visited the country in 1960 when I had barely turned teenager. It was then still a largely medieval country, very poor, and still under the iron grip of the Franco regime.

In the Basque country and in Catalunya there was the dirty loud forge of industrialisation. Everywhere else was steeped in the quiet donkey-fueled silence of the age-old agrarian state that had hobbled from one disaster to the next for centuries.

For the next ten years I came back regularly and tramped all over the country, sleeping in ruins, staying with peasants in make-shift beds in a back room.

I went to church on sunday with the rest of the lads to see and talk with the village girls. This was the only time we could actually have a few minutes face to face before they were bundled away again and hidden.

I hitched a ride on a mule-cart into Barcelona. I bedded down in tiny cramped beds in whitewashed village rooms with no windows, and during the evenings sat with the household huddled round the estufa talking about crops, and the weather, and listening to old country songs. I remember one in particular about someone trying to visit his girlfriend late at night, and running off again because he thought he heard her father coming, but it only turned out to be the cat. Another song was all about a country bumpkin who came home late at night totally pissed, and was afraid to open the front door in case his wife caught him in such a state.

The old folks dressed in rags, always worn with a careful dignity which somehow made them look well dressed.

Time and time again someone would take me home and talk to me, and feed me, and put me up for the night, just to be friendly, just to talk. And, it seemed, just to give me presents.

As I tramped all over Spain I learned to love the people with a deep and gentle affection. They showed me the books they used to teach their children to read. They all contained horrific tales of barbarism. They were books given out by the church to teach submission. There were pictures of cruelty. The saints were saints because they learned to put up with this cruelty, and the people got the message. Mess with the authorities and you'll be sorry.

As I walked and hitch-hiked my way through villages and towns several things became abundantly apparent. First, the countryside was literally falling apart. Towns were falling down. Villages were either crumbling or had crumbled away. I walked up the N4 out of Valencia, up and up onto the plateau on my way to Madrid. Up on the plain I walked past ruin after ruin. Several villages were empty and only shoulder high.

I soon learned not to ask about the empty villages. The folks had "gone away". Some had run away to Argentina. Others had been taken away. Sometimes the entire village had been savaged, with the inhabitants taken into the fields and shot, every last one, and the houses burnt.

When I was walking round the memory was very recent. The war had only ended twenty years ago. It left an indelible mark on everyone. Everyone was cowed in public, but at night someone painted rude words on the church wall. Occasionally someone would lob a brick through the priest's window. The Guardia were everywhere, with their black capes and iron hats, and their sour faces.

I was caught wandering around a deserted village. "What are you doing here? It is forbidden. Go."

I pretended not to understand Spanish, and left, but they bated me on the road, and suddenly I turned on them and told them in fluent Spanish that I was sent by an English newspaper to see what the Spanish were really like. There was a sudden glaring silence, and they climbed onto their motorbikes and rode away.

And then, almost overnight something happened. It must have started in 1964. Several things happened all at once. The government decided that a celebration was in order, and everywhere was the joyous news that Spain, that messy place full of subversives and counter-revolutionaries, that country containing several million countries of one, had clocked up twentyfive years of peace. The reins of power were relaxed just a fraction.

At about the same time the holiday boom began. Suddenly there were beautiful Swedish girls on the beaches wearing next to nothing, and the Spanish boys peered goofy-eyed at them.

Suddenly there was work everywhere in the impoverished south. Builders were needed, more waiters, cleaning ladies. Suddenly it was possible to buy a new set of clothes, and eat better food. Suddenly a middle class began to appear. Poverty began to recede for the very first time in the bleak outback of the countryside.

And just in time came Los Brincos, the Spanish Beatles, to play Spain into Europe, and the new fun society.

And Spain changed. Spain entered the twentieth century, and the old books, the old prohibitions, the old nightmares fled into dark corners. In 1960 Spain was still a medieval land. By 1965 a large part of the country had changed forever. It was that fast.

And then something else happened. Spain entered the European Union. Was that the catalyst? Maybe. Because funds flooded into the country for public things, like roads, and electricity. In the eighties when I lived almost permanently in Spain, you could go virtually anywhere in the country and not find electricity. But in 1990 it was everywhere. And by 1990 the Spanish psyche had changed again.

I remember after being away for a couple of months I walked down the road of the town where I lived, about twelve miles inland from Benidorm. I turned the corner, crossed the road, and, without thinking pushed open a door and went inside. The sight that met my eyes made me stop in my tracks. I juddered to a halt, turned and went out again, thinking that I'd inadvertently gone in the wrong door.

I opened the next door and went inside, realised I'd gone into the Farmacia, and went back out to the street. I was puzzled, where was the bar?

I walked back thru the first door, and stood there. Yes, this is the bar. But what the heck's happened to it? At the far end in the dingy light I could see a couple of old men I knew. They waved. I indicated the floor, the tables, the actual bar, and just stood there. "Que pasa?"

One old guy shrugged his shoulders. "Progress," he said with a sneer.

"Has Juan sold up?"

"No, he has become a capitalist." I could see all of them were itching to spit on the floor. They stared at it. It was a revolting red and white vinyl. The tables also had red and white vinyl on them. The bar was chrome and glass. The whole place looked utterly disgusting.

"Where is he?" I asked.

Another dismissive move of the head. "He works in Alicante every day. He has lots of money now."

It was clear that Juan was behaving in a totally unacceptable, totally un-Spanish way. To be called a "capitalista" was a serious put-down. However, five years later virtually every Spaniard was a capitalista, and thriving on it.

I drove from town to town. I went back to my old haunts. Nowhere could I find the Spain I used to know. I even went to Toledo, and stood bewildered on the dual-carriageway looking back at the town, the tears pouring down my face. I went to Granada, and found more dual carriageways, and could hardly hear myself speak for the roar of traffic, and could not see the horizon for brown smears of pollution. I searched for the old Consul's house, but lost my way in concrete barriers. Armed guards shouted at me from the walls of the Alhambra.

And finally, one day I fetched up in a dust-bowl right on the edge of the province of Cadiz. I liked the look of the place. I couldn't quite say why. It looked a mess. It was silent. There were cars here and there, but every one of them was parked. I had just driven over miles of bumpy track. I had nearly got bogged down in the marshes. Children had stared at me. When I went by there was a sudden silence. Intrigued I walked up the road by the river. Intrigued I turned into a side alley. Intrigued I pushed open a door. An old man sitting at the bar greeted me and immediately offered me a plate with almonds on. I took one and wished him well, and we started to talk.

The barman came in. He had just been feeding his chickens. He was fat and jolly and asked me what I wanted.

"Some Manzanilla of course," I said.

He smiled, and turned. He tapped six barrels above his head, ranged in a row. "Which one do you want?" he asked.

"The best of course," I replied.

His face beamed, and he stroked the wood of one of the barrels. "This is the best," he said with a faraway look, and picked up a tumbler. He squinted at it to make sure it was scrupulously clean, and put it under the tap, and watched as the liquid poured into the glass. It was clean and clear like spring water, but there were hints of something more flashing in the liquid. I could see it was pure magic.

He dished out a plate of almonds and a plate of big fat green olives, and I sat and drank, and nibbled, with a look of inane pleasure on my face. Never have I tasted such succulent olives, or drunk such wonderfully alcoholic magical spring water.

Half an hour later we were watching the football and my tumbler was re-filled. We argued about the relative merits of the teams, and then I thought I'd go and look at some of the bodegas at the top end of the town.

The barman was nowhere to be found. "He will be with his chickens," said my friend on the stool.

I walked out behind the bar, out thru the back door and down the garden path to the chicken shed at the bottom of the garden. Inside the pen, sitting on an upturned box was the barman talking to his hens.

I pulled up another box and we sat there for five minutes watching the chickens.

When I finally found my way back to the car, clutching a present of some home-grown almonds from my friend on the barstool, and a saints-day calendar from my new friend the barman, I climbed in, put my hands on the steering wheel, and, I dont know why, I just burst into tears.

Of course, I do know why. After all those years I had just found a long lost friend: the Spain I used to know all those years ago. Wonderful! Estupendo!!
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