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Spartacus, My Neighbour

February 28, 2012 by 10 Comments

SpartacusWell, blow me down with a feather!  I just discovered that one of my favourite films, Spartacus, was filmed in part here in Alcalá de Henares.

Thanks to the testimony on Spanish TV of two surviving film extras, I discovered that scenes of the 1960 Oscar-winner, starring Kirk Douglas and directed by Stanley Kubrick, were filmed around the area of the Puerta de Madrid which then marked the western town limits.

 

I´ve often commented that Alcalá de Henares is a pueblo masquerading as a city and now here is the proof. In 1960 it was so small and underdeveloped it could fill in for a sangre y arena location of the Roman Empire, circa 73BCE.

La Puerta de Madrid,Alcalá de Henares,España.

Photo circa 1960

 

For me, Spartacus had it all – the fight against slavery, a tragic love story and the exposé of the true, barbaric nature of empire.  I first saw it when I was very young, watching with my mother who was moved by the struggle of the main characters against injustice.

 

And now I live in the place where it was filmed.

Poetic justice, perhaps?

 

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Aló, Aló, Aló…..

February 22, 2012 by 32 Comments

Badger policeman

 

Mr. Grumpy at Tumbit has got all hot and bothered about Spanglish.  He thinks expats shouldn´t actually speak like expats and has two levels of grumpiness :

  1.  Expats speaking in Spanish but resorting to English words they´re unsure about in Spanish.
  2. Expats talking to English friends and substituting “every third” English word for a Spanish one.

My advice to Mr. Grumpy is to throw caution to the wind because this kind of “wrong” speech has a name and it´s not Confusion, Forgetfulness or Ostentation.  It´s “code-switching” and it´s completely natural.  Anyone who lives with – or more precisely, lives in – more than one language does it.  It´s only linguistically-deprived monolinguals, poor dull souls, who don´t, and even they still have to deal with all the other minefields afflicting language, like register, accent and context.

In these IT days, we hear quite a lot about codes.  WordPress even go as far as to argue that “code” is poetry.  I might take that up in another post, but in the meantime I want to stress that the kind of code we´re talking about when we think of Spanglish is linguistic code – ie. language and all that it entails, which is a great deal.  (Switching does not mean beating grammar into a reluctant schoolboy with twigs of birchwood, but changing from one language to another).

 

Birch for punishment

 

In fact, code-switching is how languages get invented!  When we read in the dictionary that a particular word “ comes from the Latin” (or Greek, Arabic or Sanskrit), it means that certain strange, unintelligible words from far off places have eventually become our very own native words over a period of hundreds or thousands of years.  Linguistic expression is necessarily predicated on a state of being -  who, what, where, why, when, how and whether one is – and is an organic,  living thing to which all speakers contribute all the time.  It´s not something mastodontic which exists over and above us and could go on without us.  No, we are the ones who make it!

And it doesn´t only happen with vocabulary.  I always hated the classical cases and declensions that my Latin teacher, Mrs. McLay, tried unsuccessfully to beat into my adolescent brain.  Apparently the Romans did too and by reprehensible vices like sloth and mental fogginess invented prepositions, thus contributing to  simplifying classical Latin into the vulgar Latin that ordinary folk could actually speak.

As an English and Spanish speaker I, for one, am thrilled about losing all that nominative, accusative, genitive and vocative stuff!  (Sorry Germans et. al., even if often we still, as you do, at the end of our sentences our prepositions put).

The main point about code-switching is that it is anti-translation.

Why?

Because translation is slow, inhibiting fluency, and is thus better suited to the soporific and laborious work of scribing legal contracts. (Trust me, I know, snoooore……).  Code-switching applies to us because the spoken language has to be economical and quick.  If almendros pops into your mind quicker than almond trees then almendros it is,  because speech is not about the muscles of your mouth or linguistic correctness but the new neural pathways creating themselves in your brain and making you bilingual!

The fact is that language is not a question of Tufty the Squirrel walking safely up one side of the street and down the other.  No, it´s about him darting beady-eyed and dangerously back and forth across the road.  Anything can happen and usually does, Spanglish even.  However, this code-switching flow of articulated sound and meaning, for trade, love, ritual and lately, ideas, only becomes a  “problem” when a certain piece of territory is linked to a certain language in order to create a certain nation state with  physical boundaries.  It may be a mark of civilisation to have One State, One Language, keeping all illegal utterances out, but to achieve this, linguistic expression has to be policed.  And what is policing, but policy?

 

Tufty the Squirrel

 

This is what Mr. Grumpy is doing when he yearns for an either/or paradigm. When he states he only ever begins a conversation in Spanish that he “can be sure of finishing,” he´s policing his own linguistic output and testing his translation capabilities.  To my mind, not allowing yourself to grab at all the wonderful, poetic, chaotic speech resources you have at the tip of your tongue is like imposing a form of corporal punishment on yourself, like the birch!

So don´t police or translate your speech,  because if you ARE an expat, it´s no crime to speak like one!

 

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Garzón Also Gone

February 10, 2012 by 9 Comments


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The Disinherited: The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (Paperback)

By (author) Henry Kamen
List Price: £17.99 GBP
New From: £6.00 In Stock
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In the wake of Baltasar Garzón´s annihilation by the Spanish Supreme Court, I ask myself what he might eventually do, now that he can no longer earn a living in his native land.

Will he go abroad?

If he does, he´ll be in good company, as Henry Kamen´s thorough and well-written book shows.  If you ever ask yourself “what is wrong with Spain?” this is the book to give you the answer.

And the answer is …  mediocrity.

Why?

Because the excellent, the visionaries, the creators, the talented, the thinkers, the innovators have historically  been forced to leave – or be burned alive, murdered or paid less than the  minimum wage.

Kamen states:

“Spain is the only European country to have attempted to consolidate itself over the centuries not through offering shelter but through a policy of exclusion”.

That exclusion has included brilliant Muslim and Jewish intellectuals, scientists such as Miguel Servet, liberals, socialists, artists like Picasso, writers and musicians.  Lorca paid the ultimate price for his difference – homosexual, brilliant, and committed to bringing theatre to popular audiences.

In Spain the norm is still “no significarse.”  Don´t stand out, because if you do, the troglodites who have always run the country (we´re in a five minute democratic period in centuries of unrepresentative authoritarianism) will get you.

So, what´s happening to Garzón is nothing new.

It´s the norm, and if you don´t know that, you don´t know as much about  about Spain as you thought you did.

¡Viva Garzón!

Even if he´ll end up living somewhere else.

Filed Under: Memoria Histórica, SpainStruck, Stay in Love with Spain Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Grave Affair

February 9, 2012 by 10 Comments

As the international press has reported, Spanish Supreme Court Judge Baltasar Garzón is currently on trial for prevaricación, or abuse of power – the sentence will be forthcoming at any moment.

The accusation that he abused his legal powers in order to seek redress for the crimes against humanity committed during and after the Civil War (1936-9) has come from a group called Manos Limpias (Clean Hands).

They accuse Garzón of ideological bias.  This is because the judge has addressed his efforts towards restoring, not only the corpses of those thrown into unmarked graves but the reputation of these “reds” who were murdered by Franco´s coup d´état troops.

Garzón has not sought redress for the supposed “victims” of Republican troops for a very simple reason.  Those fighting on the winning, though unelected and unconstitutional side, received forty years of redress from Franco´s administration. They were honoured and given a proper burial and their families were compensated, enjoying all the privileges of the dictatorial fascist regime.

No-one, in 35 years of “democracy”, has spoken up for the traumatised, orphaned, marginalised relatives of the hundred thousand rotting, lime-covered skeletons lying in Spanish ditches and country roadsides to this day – except Garzón.

 

 

Now, did he “abuse” his power to do so?

As those of us who live in Spain are often reminded, when the old misery-guts himself, Franco, died, he left everything “atado y bien atado.” (All tied-up).  One of those knots was around the Spanish justice system which is archaic, corrupt, partisan and all but inoperative to an extent that leaves most expats, and the Spaniards themselves, of course, gasping in disbelief.  The democratic process has done little to modernise or improve it which is a sorry indictment of the concerns of both left and right-wing elected governments since 1975.

In such a system, what power do judges have? And if Garzón does not have the power to pressurise the justice system to restore murdered fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and children to their families, who does?

Where is he, or she?

Nowhere, because that´s how Franco left it.  And that´s how the sons and daughters of his privileged cronies in the judiciary are trying to keep it. Privilege is passed on, remember, though not to Garzón, who worked and studied his way up from humble origins to become a Supreme Court Judge through merit.

And the privileged hate him for it.  For starting to untie that knot.  They know he´s coming to get them.

Punto pelota – that´s what this is all about.  Forget all that nonsense we hear daily about him “breaking the law”, “illegally financing courses in New York”, “seeking protagonism”, being “annoyed with the PSOE because they wouldn´t give him a Ministry.”  Etc. Etc.

These supposedly “Clean Hands” should rename themselves Manos Impías, or Unholy Hands.  They´ve been trying to get Garzón for years and now the heat is on because rather than worrying that the dead might speak, they´re thinking ahead to when Garzón might take up the case for the living.

What living?

The thousands of people in this country who were stolen from their parents as newborns by medical and religious hospital staff  and sold in adoption. There is a growing body of mothers who were informed that their new baby had died and been buried – but they´ve found the coffins empty.

Where are their children now?

And why don´t Manos Limpias take up that accusation?

So far these crimes have not been admitted to court, while Garzón´s witch hunt has reached the highest court in Spain.   The fascist Manos Limpias  are not only bent on burying Garzón for opening mass graves, they´re also desperate to prevent him from opening up these empty ones by having him struck off for twenty years.

Till the perpetrators are all dead.

Again.

In the wake of my recent Burns Night, I quote the Bard.

What a parcel of rogues in a nation.

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Mama Forgot

February 2, 2012 by 12 Comments

When my little girl was really little she had a lovely book called Papa Forgot. The Papa in question referred, not to the Daddy, but to the Grandfather who “forgot” all the important things parents insist on, while babysitting his grandson – like hygiene and schedules and a healthy diet.

At my Burns Night on Saturday, I forgot about as much as Papa. I forgot to put a clean towel in the bathroom for guests, I forgot to make the Scotch eggs till half an hour before the guests arrived and I forgot to get out the party matasuegras I bought and contribute to the already deafening noise. I further forgot to invite our Bulgarian neighbours in for a wee dram to exculpate us from the sleep-defying melee.

I did however, remember a whole lot of other stuff –  food, decorations, music.  But what I was really smart to remember was to GET HELP! So Malassie helped me put up the decorations or I´d still be there, half-strangled in a string of balloons.  Papi (o sea, hubby) helped with the food, stopping me from heating the metal-tied haggi in the microwave . (Bad job Macsween!). And my friend Antonio provided me with a miracle cable  (3.5 mm to stereo RCA cable) from my computer to the telly for music or I´d have had to send a Please Rush Me a Bodhran mail to Kilts-n-Stuff.

 

 

I enlisted the help of my Scotsman friend Alec, who did the Address to a Haggis in theatrical style and Malassie and Papi shared the Selkirk Grace with me. Antonio surprised us all by bringing his guitar and Burns lyrics for a wee, well-played singsong and another friend, Marisol, even brought some chairs.

It was, then, rather disappointing that my Immortal Memory speech on the Bard was left both unfinished and in the computer, becoming more of an Immortal She Couldn´t Remember a Thing speech than a tribute to Robert Burns. I had, however, intended to focus on his good looks and his bawdy poetry and managed to muster just enough gumption for that.

Movingly, for me, we ended the night with a hands-clasped Auld Lang Syne. In our house this was always a time for remembering “absent friends” and I remembered Kathleen,  absent since early last year.

It was a very strange night, Maureen´s Night, perhaps, rather than Oor Rabbie´s. There I was, in my paisley pattern red blouse and leather leggings, looking like a cross between Lady Antonia Fraser and the Bay City Rollers (I forgot to take photos)  but no amount of paraphernalia can evoke who a person is, or a country.

In my previous post, I wondered why I wanted to have a Burns Night.  It´s clear to me now that I wanted visibility, I wanted to remind my friends that I come from somewhere, I have somewhere else to go and that even though it´s not independent, I do have a country of my own.

In retrospect, I wouldn´t have a buffet supper as guests didn´t seem to know what to do (help themselves) and Mamá wasn´t very good at being Mummy.  I´d have practised that awful Gay Gordons twist/switch to get it off-pat, rather than off-prat, which is what happened. And I wouldn´t have sung solo, as I haven´t done in any case for some 30 years.

I asked Malassie.

“Did you hear me singing Ae Fond Kiss“?

“Yes.”

“Did you like the song”?

“No.”

“Did you like my singing”?

“No.”

“Do you think anybody else liked my singing”?

“No.”

So, folks, despite the fun we had, the Jimmy bunnet that Marisol actually suited very well and which Alec kept on in the midst of his most polemical aseverations, it´ll be another 30 years before I sing in public again – or have a Burns Night! Our Bard is a hard act to follow: brains, brawn, beauty and brilliance raised in poverty.  I´m not sure we did him – or Scotland – justice.

So, that´s it.  No more Burns Nights.  So all you who weren´t invited this time – I have a very small living room – have no hope of ever being invited to another one. I mean it.

Unless, of course, I forget.

 

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