Life in Culebrón

In Alicante, on the quayside near the hotel, going down to the Casino there's a little bust of Archibald Dickson and a plaque to commemorate him and the crew of the SS Stanbrook. Archie Dickson was of the same stuff as the men and women of the boats patrolling the seas and oceans looking to save the lives of desperate people fleeing for their lives today. Archie knew what was right. The Stanbrook is small coal fired ship just 70 metres long, 1400 tons and 11 knots top speed. Archibald Dickson is from Cardiff, 47, British Merchant Navy. His ship owners have told him to leave Marseilles and pick up a cargo in Alicante. A Spanish Navy destroyer, controlled by the rebellious forces, which are just about to crush the remnants of the legitimate government, tell Archie not to enter Alicante. He hoists the Red Ensign just a bit higher, grits his teeth, crosses his fingers and takes his ship into Alicante. He doesn't like being told what he can and can't do. The quayside is heaving ...

I went on a bit of a trip yesterday. The title of the event translates as something like  From the Vinalopó to Exile . Vinalopó is the name of our mighty local river which trickles into the sea at Santa Pola and which gives its name to the area. The theme was the end of the Spanish Civil War. We were shown things in Petrer and Elda but the bit I liked best, apart from eating, was going down the air raid shelters in Hondón. Hondón is a very small village just 9 km from Culebrón. Not the most obvious place for an air raid shelter dug 40 metres into the ground and with space for 250 people. So it's March 1939, right at the end of the Spanish Civil War (The result of an army rebellion in 1936 against the elected Leftist Republican Government) the Republic is in tatters. The President, Azaña, reckons the only chance is to hang on long enough for the Nazis to start the Second World War so that the French and British may stop looking the other way and come to his aid. Then Republican ...

I've always liked cinema so, when I began to take an interest in Spain, I made an effort to see Spanish films. For years and years it seemed that every Spanish film ever made was about the Spanish Civil War. They were almost all dull and drear. I also read Hugh Thomas's book about the war and I found it hard going. Paul Preston's more recent history of the same event persuaded me that he was one of the most boring writers that has ever put pen to paper. Years later, I thought I should give him a second chance, he seemed to be well regarded by everyone else, so I read his book about Franco. I have never been tempted to try him again. The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to 1939. That's a long time ago. As I mentioned in a post a few days ago there are two schools of thought amongst Spaniards about the war and more particularly about the dictatorship that resulted from it. That it should be forgotten or that it should be given a thorough airing so that it can be finall...

Spain came up with a novel way to move from the dictatorship of the 40s,50s, 60s and 70s of the last century to the democracy of today. No Truth and Reconciliation Commission here. The people who make the decisions about how things are going to work just decided to forget all about it - the Pacto de olvido - the pact of forgetting. Then, in 2007, the Socialist Government came up with the Historical Memory Law - Ley de Memoria Histórica - which recognised that there were victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gave rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the war, and the subsequent Franco dictatorship, and formally condemned the Franco Regime. Now neither Pact of Forgetting nor the Historical Memory sound like good English to me but I hope that you get the idea. The first idea, the pact, is to sweep the mess under the carpet and the second, historical memory, is to get it all out in the open so you can have a fresh start. The Spanish Partido Popular, the Cons...

Saturday morning in Pinoso – parking at a premium; nothing in Calle Lepanto, Trafalgar or Bailén. Hmm? Now there's a theme. The streets are named for battles. I did a bit of checking. Nearly 400 battles were listed as important in Spanish history with sixteen as absolutely key. With the limited space available my choice has been a little arbitrary. Skipping chronologically over Guadalete, Covadonga , Navas de Tolosa and Ceriñola we arrive at the Battle of Otumba in 1520. This was the one where Hernán Cortés crushed the Aztec Empire and opened the way to the conquest of what is now Mexico. He did it with the help of lots of locals but let's pretend, as Spaniards often do, that Hernán, his horses and a few lads from Extremadura did it alone. So we ignore Pavia and San Quintín and move on to Lepanto in 1571. This was a naval battle between the Turkish Ottoman Empire and an alliance of Christian powers sponsored by the Spanish King. Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote, was t...

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 ...

This isn't about Culebrón or our life here.  I wrote it for the TIM magazine and it was published earlier this month. I just thought I'd save it here too. It's long. El Valle de los Caídos is a huge mausoleum and basilica church carved into solid granite and topped off with an enormous cross in the Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. It was built, on the orders of Franco, between 1940 and 1959 with money from the National Lottery. The work was done by as many as 200,000 Republican prisoners of war according to some sources and as few as 2,470 according to others. The prisoners were able to gain remission on their sentences by working on the construction. Some sources suggest the workers were reasonably paid whilst others charge slave labour. The supposed number who died during the building of the the complex varies from 14 to 27,000, depending on whether the source is pro Franco or pro Republican. The monument was consecrated by Pope John XXIII...

There was a time when every Spanish film was about the Spanish Civil War, usually about the aftermath and the rough handling of the losers by the nasty winners. Fortunately that has changed nowadays and we get a good spread plots and genres. Most Spanish films are made with TV money and with subsidies from film funds. This means that they look a bit like those BBC funded films, quite modest in scale, with production values that betray their small screen destinations. If they have a historical theme (and lots do) they are nearly always shot in a sort of muddy brown colour and use the Spanish equivalent of thou to prove their authenticity. Obviously they are voiced in Spanish or, to be more accurate, Castilian. Actually, unless you're in one of the big cities it's nearly impossible to find a film in its original language - everything gets dubbed into Castilian. Colin Firth, King George VI or el Rey Jorge VI has a nice Madrid accent. The Goyas are the Spanish equivalent of the O...

Over on Life in Cartagena I published a short piece about street names. About how they are small clues to the history of the country and the people it honours. Now that we only come here for weekends I'm not really keeping up with the local news so, just now, I was sifting through the Pinoso websites trying to catch up. On one of them there was a lot of political toing and froing reliving some of the old Francoist/Republican arguments. After a bit of digging around it seems that the reason is that the local Socialist party suggested at the last full council meeting that several street names should be changed. The street names celebrate Francoist victories and heroes of the last Spanish Civil War. There's a recentish national law that says that all the stuff that glorifies the old dictatorship should be removed from public places - statues, street names, commemorative plaques etc. The Socialist suggestions were for names of Socialist heroes and, not surprisingly, the right ...

In June 2008 I mentioned this house as being an important HQ for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. Someone has been doing some work on it. With its new yellow finish it is quite difficult to tell that the house has any history at all - it looks nearly new. I've just read that the last Republican Prime Minister, Negrin, fled Spain as the Republican forces admitted defeat in March 1939. Negrin left on 6 March and the last Republican cities, amongst them Cartagena, fell on 30 March. His departure airfield was the one next to this house.