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.