My friend John has been here for over fifteen years so I reckoned if anyone would know it would be him.
-Why, I asked him, do people in Madrid put covers on their books?
I’d noticed on the metro that a lot of the readers wrap covers on their books, usually pages from newspapers (not the brown paper my dad used for my school reading books).
-That’s a throwback from the days of Franco, he told me, when you didn’t want other people to know what you were reading.
I thought:
-Franco’s been dead for a long time. What are people wanting to hide now?
Looking at the books on the metro without newspaper covers, I’d say a lot of Ken Follett. Not only do the book shops have his novels, you can also buy them in the quioscos (where you buy your newspapers, DVDs and models of the world’s taxis, “This week: Albania”) and they are even given away free by Spain’s equivalent of The Guardian newspaper. Which is a lot more than The Guardian would do. The books I see being read have titles such as The Thief of Donkeys, The House of Carrots and The Holy Sisterhood of Socks. I exaggerate but, as my observations on the metro tell me, not by much.
What people are clearly not reading are the books that they are told to read by Metro de Madrid. Under the title Libros a la Calle (Books to the Street) most carriages have stuck by the doors an illustrated poster with an excerpt from the chapter of a book. Where the text ends in an ellipsis there is a strap line encouraging us to search for the book and read it in its entirety. These admonitions vary. It might be Leer nos hace libres. Y mas felices (Reading make us free. And happier) or Si quieres conocer, pregúntale a los libros (If you want to know, ask books). The posters with poetry always end with Ni un día sin poesia (Not a day without poetry). Looking at what they do read it is clear that the people of Madrid, at least those who use the metro, don’t want to be free, happy or ask a book a question and it is very possible that months go by without even a hint of poetry.
This state of affairs, at the very least, is unnecessary. One of the many reasons for living in Madrid is that the metro system has its own library system. Even better, they do not call the libraries “branches”, instead they are called “modules”. I would have preferred “pod” myself but I imagine we will have to wait until the 22nd century before every bus stop has its book pod. There are eleven of these modules and they go under the name of Bibliometro. They are self-contained, sealed, I have to use the word “pod”, pods that stand on the stations’ platforms, curved and asymmetrical in the modern fashion, staffed by two Biblionauts (I’ve made that word up), usually women, and they are open Monday to Friday from 1.30 to 8.00. You can take out one book at a time (consult the computer screen on the outside of the module because you cannot browse as the books are kept inside under the watchful eyes of the Biblionauts). Everything about them says “speed”, “efficiency” and, of course, “books”. They even have their own logo, a B on its side, two trains head-on in each of the semicircles.
I decided that it was time to play my part to get more books to the street. I would apply for my library card and read the books I had seen on the posters. I decided to go to my “surface” library staffed largely by Elois (I’ve made that up to but I suppose you saw it coming) here in the barrio. With my reader’s card I would be able to take out books from there and from the realms of the Morlocks (Oh God, there’s a whole novel here where youthful and innocent Eloi librarians in bikinis are eaten by subterranean Morlock librarians who are then burnt alive). What can I tell you about my experiences so far? To begin with, it is pleasing and reassuring to note that public libraries in Spain are as much a refuge for the timid, the socially inept, people who are “special” and those that are quite clearly insane as they are in Britain. I’m talking here about the staff and the public. It’s possible that libraries here have an even more important role in this respect. Given the level of noise and physical contact in any public space in Spain, libraries give their staff an environment where they can be free of the compulsion to curl up into a ball, rock back and forth while making soothing animal noises. As for the books, I do have some slight criticisms. The book I took out on the writer Miguel Unamuno had no details (date of acquisition, cataloguing information etc.) on the back of the title page nor did it have the book number stamped on page 21. Some pages had been stamped with the libraries’ stamp of the Communidad de Madrid but apparently at random and after page 43 the person charged with this task had simply given up. Most serious of all, not only was the book cover not stuck with sellotape there was no clear plastic cover on it. I’m happy to say that the book I borrowed that same day from the Bibliometro in Nuevos Ministerios, La lluvia amarilla (The Yellow Rain) by Julio Llamazares, had a stout cover on it and was clearly identified with a very fetching sticker. However, once again, it was let down by a lack of cataloguing details. Those of you accustomed to the rigours of the British public libraries’ cataloguing protocols will share my disappointment. The rest of you will not give a monkey’s.
I have to add that I have also been disappointed by the reaction of my fellow Madrileños. Basically, there hasn’t been one. However, it is early days yet and I’m sure I can expect a letter of thanks from the President of the Communidad any day. At the very least, a cheery wave from the driver of the next metro train I go on and a jolly:
-Hoy un día mas bueno y acuerdate, ¡ni un día sin poesia!
(Turned out nice again and remember, not a day without poetry!)
miércoles, 19 de marzo de 2008
martes, 4 de marzo de 2008
Dust, heretics and death
The land to the north of the Andalusian village of Viznar rises steeply into the Sierra Huétor. The slopes are rocky and although there are trees the soil is shallow and poor. The land nearer the village is more fertile. Irrigation channels built a thousand years ago by the Moors, acequias, bring water to the huertas or vegetable gardens that have been planted on the hillside terraces. As the nearby city of Granada continues to grow, new housing estates are being built on this land. Seventy years ago olive groves lined these slopes. There are still a few olive trees left. It was to here, possibly in the early hours of the 19th of August 1936, that the Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca was brought by men of the local Falange and executed.
Before it vanishes into the tunnel that carries it beneath Granada, the River Darro flows past the eleventh century Moorish baths that sit at the bottom of one of the narrow streets that climb into the old Moorish quarter of the Albaicín. It is not a big building, no more that five or six rooms. The style is simple: arched vaults held up by slender pillars, the capitals decorated with interlaced carvings. Light enters through octagonal shaped holes in the ceilings of the arched vaults. The marble floor still has the channels where water would once have flowed. It is this simplicity that gives the building its charm and beauty. The tomb of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel, on the other hand, in the Royal Chapel in Granada has engraved on it ‘Overthrowers of the Mahommetan sect and repressor of heretical stubbornness’1 . On the altar piece where Ferdinand and Isabel kneel in prayer, a headless John the Baptist kneels too, his neck ending in a gaping throat from which blood continues to spurt. Beside him John the Evangelist has boiling water poured over his head as he is slowly cooked alive in a cauldron, the body of his executioner twisted away from us as he tips the water from a ladle. A slightly different view of the human body is on view here, as if it is saying “Now that we are in charge you can expect a few changes around here.”
It is difficult to know if an accurate map of the Albaicín exists. The streets, narrow enough at times to let two people pass and sometimes not even that, disappear around corners, fall away into worn steps and congregate in little squares called placetas. It is a place of carmens, walled-in patio gardens where orange trees grow around a central fountain and where every view is of the Alhambra, the palace-cum-fortress built by the Moorish monarchs on the other side of the valley. Lorca knew the Albaicín very well. Although his family lived in the areas of the city developed in the nineteenth century, they came to the Albaicín to celebrate midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the chapel of the Convent of the Angustinas Recoletas de Santo Tomás de Villanueva. It was in the carmen of his friend Fernando Vílchez that he listened to the music of Manuel Falla, the Spanish composer and himself from Granada. The musicians too tired to play any more, Lorca rose to his feet and recited his ode to the city of Granada. He was nineteen years old. On the 24th of July 1936, after four days of being shelled by the artillery placed on the terraces of the Alhambra, the inhabitants of the Albaicín surrendered. They had held out for four days against the Fascist rebels who had seized power in the city on the 20th of July. Denied access to weapons by the Republican governor in the days before the uprising, they had fought with shotguns and knives.
Lorca did not go alone to his execution in the olive grove outside of Viznar. With him were three men. Dióscoro Galindo was a 58 year old teacher working in the Andalusian town of Pulianas, three kilometres to the north of Granada. As a member of the Popular Front he had helped ensure that the caciques, the wealthy and conservative Andalusian families who had manipulated the elections for two generations, would not commit electoral fraud yet again. He was arrested on the 18th of August at two o’clock in the morning. Francisco Galadí and Joaquin Arcollas were banderilleras, the men who help the toreador in his fight with the bull. They were also members of the anarchist organisation the C.N.T, Confederación National de Trabajo. It was Galadí who had gone to the Governor to plead unsuccessfully in the days before the Fascist uprising that the workers should be armed. They both took part in the defence of the Albaicín and, possibly using their knowledge of its labyrinthine layout, managed to slip through the armed cordon that surrounded it. Galadí was arrested when he returned to see his ten year old son and Arcolla was betrayed by a family friend. The four men were buried together in a narrow trench.
It is easier to conclude this article by saying what it is not than what it is. It is not a condemnation of acts of brutality both against persons and the world of literature. It is not a condemnation of the repressive regime that followed the defeat of the Spanish Republic in 1939. Nor is it to lament the triumph of mediocrity that followed this defeat; a triumph that the death of Lorca came to symbolise, one of many innovative artistic voices executed or exiled by the Francoist regime. This has been done by better writers than myself. It is definitely not an attempt to use the empty fountains of the neglected Federico Garcia Lorca Park, where the men are buried, as an ironical comment on the way in which Spain has treated both the legacy of Lorca and the consequences of the summary executions. I will leave that to worse writers than myself. What I want to suggest is that the Arab baths, the Albaicín, the lives of the four men all offered different paths for Spain to follow. On each occasion this possibility was rejected.
Looking at what I've written, it strikes me that two currents run deep in Spain, both old and new. There is the personal, deeply human Spain. One of the things that angered the Andalusian caciques about Dióscoro Galindo was that he taught illiterate women how to read and write. And there is the Spain that likes to make sure that everyone knows who is in charge. Again: one of the things that angered the Andalusian caciques about Dióscoro Galindo was that he taught illiterate women how to read and write. As they say in Spain:
-Unos nacen para moler y otros para ser molidos.
Literally:
-Some are born to grind and other to be ground.
I assumed the allusion was to milling grain. In itself, a strong image and, I hoped, a suitable metaphor for my belief in the importance of power in Spanish culture. But checking the meaning of the word moler in the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain, I found this definition:
-Quebrantar un cuerpo, reduciéndolo a menudísimas partes, o hasta hacerlo polvo.
That is:
-To break a body, reducing it to tiny pieces, or to turn it into dust.
For those in charge of the mill, surely a just punishment for all heretics be they muslims, poets, teachers or bullfighters’ assistants.
Before it vanishes into the tunnel that carries it beneath Granada, the River Darro flows past the eleventh century Moorish baths that sit at the bottom of one of the narrow streets that climb into the old Moorish quarter of the Albaicín. It is not a big building, no more that five or six rooms. The style is simple: arched vaults held up by slender pillars, the capitals decorated with interlaced carvings. Light enters through octagonal shaped holes in the ceilings of the arched vaults. The marble floor still has the channels where water would once have flowed. It is this simplicity that gives the building its charm and beauty. The tomb of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel, on the other hand, in the Royal Chapel in Granada has engraved on it ‘Overthrowers of the Mahommetan sect and repressor of heretical stubbornness’1 . On the altar piece where Ferdinand and Isabel kneel in prayer, a headless John the Baptist kneels too, his neck ending in a gaping throat from which blood continues to spurt. Beside him John the Evangelist has boiling water poured over his head as he is slowly cooked alive in a cauldron, the body of his executioner twisted away from us as he tips the water from a ladle. A slightly different view of the human body is on view here, as if it is saying “Now that we are in charge you can expect a few changes around here.”
It is difficult to know if an accurate map of the Albaicín exists. The streets, narrow enough at times to let two people pass and sometimes not even that, disappear around corners, fall away into worn steps and congregate in little squares called placetas. It is a place of carmens, walled-in patio gardens where orange trees grow around a central fountain and where every view is of the Alhambra, the palace-cum-fortress built by the Moorish monarchs on the other side of the valley. Lorca knew the Albaicín very well. Although his family lived in the areas of the city developed in the nineteenth century, they came to the Albaicín to celebrate midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the chapel of the Convent of the Angustinas Recoletas de Santo Tomás de Villanueva. It was in the carmen of his friend Fernando Vílchez that he listened to the music of Manuel Falla, the Spanish composer and himself from Granada. The musicians too tired to play any more, Lorca rose to his feet and recited his ode to the city of Granada. He was nineteen years old. On the 24th of July 1936, after four days of being shelled by the artillery placed on the terraces of the Alhambra, the inhabitants of the Albaicín surrendered. They had held out for four days against the Fascist rebels who had seized power in the city on the 20th of July. Denied access to weapons by the Republican governor in the days before the uprising, they had fought with shotguns and knives.
Lorca did not go alone to his execution in the olive grove outside of Viznar. With him were three men. Dióscoro Galindo was a 58 year old teacher working in the Andalusian town of Pulianas, three kilometres to the north of Granada. As a member of the Popular Front he had helped ensure that the caciques, the wealthy and conservative Andalusian families who had manipulated the elections for two generations, would not commit electoral fraud yet again. He was arrested on the 18th of August at two o’clock in the morning. Francisco Galadí and Joaquin Arcollas were banderilleras, the men who help the toreador in his fight with the bull. They were also members of the anarchist organisation the C.N.T, Confederación National de Trabajo. It was Galadí who had gone to the Governor to plead unsuccessfully in the days before the Fascist uprising that the workers should be armed. They both took part in the defence of the Albaicín and, possibly using their knowledge of its labyrinthine layout, managed to slip through the armed cordon that surrounded it. Galadí was arrested when he returned to see his ten year old son and Arcolla was betrayed by a family friend. The four men were buried together in a narrow trench.
It is easier to conclude this article by saying what it is not than what it is. It is not a condemnation of acts of brutality both against persons and the world of literature. It is not a condemnation of the repressive regime that followed the defeat of the Spanish Republic in 1939. Nor is it to lament the triumph of mediocrity that followed this defeat; a triumph that the death of Lorca came to symbolise, one of many innovative artistic voices executed or exiled by the Francoist regime. This has been done by better writers than myself. It is definitely not an attempt to use the empty fountains of the neglected Federico Garcia Lorca Park, where the men are buried, as an ironical comment on the way in which Spain has treated both the legacy of Lorca and the consequences of the summary executions. I will leave that to worse writers than myself. What I want to suggest is that the Arab baths, the Albaicín, the lives of the four men all offered different paths for Spain to follow. On each occasion this possibility was rejected.
Looking at what I've written, it strikes me that two currents run deep in Spain, both old and new. There is the personal, deeply human Spain. One of the things that angered the Andalusian caciques about Dióscoro Galindo was that he taught illiterate women how to read and write. And there is the Spain that likes to make sure that everyone knows who is in charge. Again: one of the things that angered the Andalusian caciques about Dióscoro Galindo was that he taught illiterate women how to read and write. As they say in Spain:
-Unos nacen para moler y otros para ser molidos.
Literally:
-Some are born to grind and other to be ground.
I assumed the allusion was to milling grain. In itself, a strong image and, I hoped, a suitable metaphor for my belief in the importance of power in Spanish culture. But checking the meaning of the word moler in the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain, I found this definition:
-Quebrantar un cuerpo, reduciéndolo a menudísimas partes, o hasta hacerlo polvo.
That is:
-To break a body, reducing it to tiny pieces, or to turn it into dust.
For those in charge of the mill, surely a just punishment for all heretics be they muslims, poets, teachers or bullfighters’ assistants.
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