Public reading

I've mentioned Azorín, the writer born in Monóvar a few kilometres from Pinoso, before. There's a lot going on about him because it's the 50th anniversary of his death. A while ago I went on a walk around Yecla based on one of his books and today I went to a public reading of another of his works. It wasn't something I'd planned to do but when I booked up for another Azorín event the woman on the desk persuaded me to sign on for this one too.

If I've mentioned Azorín a couple of times I have mentioned my terror at speaking Spanish hundreds of times. Terror is definitely the right word. In fact my Spanish nowadays isn't too bad and, under certain circumstances, I talk without too much effort or I laugh off my mistakes. One of the worst situations though is when I participate in something that isn't really designed for someone with defficient Spanish. Go and stand in the crowd to watch a procession and nobody is surprised that there is a foreigner there taking snaps. Go to a concert and it's the same. But, if you go to a poetry reading or a political rally then, obviously, if you're there you must be able to speak Spanish; if not why are you there and not curled up safe on your sofa watching the BBC?

It's worse if Maggie isn't there for two reasons. The first is that if we are spoken to she is much, much braver than me and she does the speaking. All I have to do is make gutteral interjections or laugh at the appropriate time. The second is that it means I'm alone with nobody to talk to about what's happening or why.

So I turn up at the appointed time for the public reading of Las confesiones de un pequeño filósofo. The reading was going to be in the street outside the Azorín museum but the weather has been miserable for the last two or three days (probably because it's a bank holiday weekend) so the event was moved inside. I was cold sweat anxious in that irrational way that I have when I may be called upon to answer questions in Spanish. It was fine though, all I had to do was say hello and then I was able to skulk against the wall. The organisers had a list of names and just before everything got under way they asked me if I was Chris Thompson. They asked me first, they knew. My tiny joke about me looking English went down well. A few minutes later they asked me if I would like to be the first to read. It wasn't a public reading in the sense of someone with nice intonation and a good knowledge of the novel reading selected passages; it was the public taking turns to read some of the book! At least I understood the question enough to be forceful, definite, resolute and clear in saying no.

The reading was interesting enough. I didn't know the book but, after hearing the early chapters, I thought I might give it a go. Azorín has two modes - in one he gets all philosophical and talks about writers and political theories unknown to me and in the other he writes descriptions. I don't care at all for the philosophical stuff but the descriptions are often splendid.

When it was time to go

Just down the road from us, about 5kms away, is a small village called Hondon. In May 1938 a group of Republican soldiers turned up in the village, requisitioned the house next door to the pine tree that gave the best shade and set about building a munitions dump, a couple of machine gun nests, a lookout tower and an aerodrome. Nearly a year later the reasons became clear.

First a bit more background. On July 18th 1936 the Army rebelled against the elected Republican Government of Spain and so the Spanish Civil War began. At first it was a pretty equal contest but slowly but surely the rebels gained territory. On 30th March 1939 Alicante City fell to the rebels and a day later rebel troops entered Murcia, Cartagena and Almeria. The war was officially won, or lost, on 1st April 1939. So the area where we live was the last bit of Spain to fall to, what were by then, Franco's troops. Franco ruled, as a dictator, in Spain until November 1975.

Alicante province was loyal, right to the end, and for that reason the last headquarters of the legitimate government of the day, given the codename Posición Yuste, was in Elda/Petrer which is only about 20km from Culebrón. That must have been one possible contingency plan from the time those troops were sent to Hondon.

Elda/Petrer fell on the 29th March. At the very end there was infighting within the Republican Government as the situation became hopeless. The recently promoted Colonel Casado raised a revolt with the intention of doing a deal with Franco to end the war. In the event the Official Government fled Spain in the early morning of 5th March. Doctor Negrín the President, Dolores Ibarruri or La Pasionaria a Communist Party leader, Rafael Alberti a famous writer of the time, Enrique Lister one of the Republic's top military commanders and several others were among the group that left in two twin engined Douglas planes heading for Oran in Algeria from the aerodrome at Hondon.

I knew most of this before today. I knew about the house that had been used by Republican big wigs near the turn down towards Salinas off the Monóvar road. I knew about the flight from the aerodrome. However, it wasn't until the 85th anniversary of the birth of the Republic the other day that I realised that there were air raid shelters in Hondon. So today I went looking for them.

Whilst I was searching for information on the Internet I came across a walker's itinerary. The particular group had been to Hondon to see the shelter and then walked on to a place called Las Casas de Collado Azorín where the, one time famous, writer Azorín used to spend his summers. Azorín was born in Monóvar, another local town, and was one of several Spanish writers known as the Generation of '98 - the year in which Spain lost the last remnants of its once mighty empire. That turned out to be an interesting little spot too. I can't find out whether the hamlet takes its name from the writer or if the writer, José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz, took his pen name from the place. The latter seems more likely.

Good to know that there are still new things to be discovered so close to home.