Day 94 - "Assassination"

Spanish Practices

Transcript:

Day 94 Assassination

Wednesday and the excitement cannot be contained, I am going shopping with Chris, well to be honest he doesn’t want me in the first shop, - Mercadona, he tells me he has a routine now and that doesn’t include me putting unsuitable items in the shopping trolley.

Never mind I am going to the Post Office instead, to pick up a parcel, the Post Office is only open between 8.30am and 2.30pm, the local office is tiny and usually packed, as many Spanish still come and pay their bills and do very complicated administrative things.

I arrived to discover the entrance was hidden behind some railing and the pavement outside was in a complete mess. I followed the arrows around to the back entrance, I am guessing the temporary entrance that will take you through the sorting room/office.

Just ahead of me is curly lady, she is our local Postal worker and delivers the mail to the Estate.

But as I reach the door the sign on the door says closed at 2pm. Madre Mia I said to her waving my hands Spanish style. She explained that the Mayor had dug the road up and it meant, for some reason, they were closing early. Then she said to me the name of our Estate.

Yes, “Un a momento” she took my parcel slip and disappeared behind the door. A moment later she was back with my parcel. “Mucho gracias” I said “De nada.”

So I have my parcel and I have time to annoy Chris in Mercadona. I found him pawing the fish, “Oh” he said, “I thought you were going to the Post Office?”

Now doused in alcohol and wearing my plastic gloves to get in, I thought I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity and “helped” Chris with the shopping until he got so annoyed, he told me to go back and sit in the car.

But at least the whole shopping trip this week had a bit of normality about it.

We drove out of the town along Avienda Frederico Garcia Lorca. If you do a Google Map search you will find many roads named after Lorca, he was probably one of the greatest writers and poet of his time and is as important probably as Cervantes, Gaudí and well almost Picasso too.

He came to a rather unfortunate end.

Garcia Lorca was born in 1898 in a little town called Fuente Vaqueros, about an hour’s drive from here, his dad was making good money from the Sugar Cane growing industry. Sugar Cane was a big thing here and a lot of the plains surrounding us now were given over to growing the stuff. By our gym is the old Sugar Factory, that supplied sugar to Spain and beyond.

The factory is wreck but is slowly being restored, a couple of times the place has been used as a film location, standing in for Cuba, I believe once.

Lorca mother was a teacher, when he was eleven the family moved into Granada so that he could attend a city school. From there onto University. From the age of six he took piano lessons and became interested in Spanish folklore.

Rather like the Bloomsbury Set the bright young things of Granada met in a local Café, Café Alameda. By 1917 Lorca was writing books and Lorca’s parents were persuaded to let him attend the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid.

There he made friends with Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists that would become influential throughout Spain. Then came a play, that got laughed off the stage, it was the tale of an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, but that did not deter Lorca.

In a career just a brief 19 years Frederico Garcia Lorca revitalised Spanish Poetry, helped to start the second Golden Age of Spanish Theatre and became one of the most important Spanish poet and playwright of the 20th century, and his work still influences writers and artists to this day.

Unfortunately for Lorca he was Gay, I say that because the Nationalist Forces led by Franco in1936 were not awfully keen on Gays or socialists and he was both, so he ended up being arrested and imprisoned without a trial. On the night of August 18th or maybe 19th, nobody bothered to keep a record, Lorca was driven to a remote hillside somewhere outside of Granada and shot dead.

I say somewhere because so far nobody has been able to find his remains, he might be in the mass grave in Viznar. So, Spain managed to assassinate possibly one of the greatest poets and playwrights of the age all in the name of Nationalism, deciding without a trial he was a danger to the cause. Franco never recognised that Lorca had been bumped off by his Guardia and the whole affair remained an irritation abroad until Francos death.

Those dark days are over and since the death of Franco, Spanish towns and cities have been falling over themselves to name roads, squares, museums and the like after Garcia Frederico Lorca