sábado, 24 de enero de 2009

From Alcalá to Hawaii – Part 2

[Original Spanish]

Prototypical family that emigrated to Hawaii


Sorry not to be able to provide family photographs as they've been lost in a move, or may have fallen into the oven whilst making bread... everything is possible.

According to the documents, on 24th February 1911, the Soto family left from Gibraltar bound for Hawaii, though their final destination was Honolulu (its capital), in order to work cutting sugar cane in the plantations. After a crossing of almost a month, according to the papers and the embarcation notice, crossing the Atlantic to reach the Pacific through the Magellan Straits, they arrived in Hawaii on 13th April the same year.

Much later, when we were already familiar with the theme through the surfacing memories of everyone in the family, my great aunt Juliana, who was there from six to nine years old, was exercising her imagination, giving voice to her silent fantasies, and was already telling us in her adulthood about old Algeciras stories, some of which were true. Others were some singular invention that lasted only the length of the tale.

She told us about crossing the whole of America from New York. Ellis Island. The adventures they'd had and what happened to them in quarantine. She told us how they stripped her mother and all the little children and put them in a very large room in order to fumigate and delouse them, like they do to animals, how they washed and then cut their hair and made them change their clothes. The same thing was done to the men in a separate room. The American dream wasn't exactly starting with a hot bath!

That's what my aunt Juliana told me but it doesn't fit the facts because in reality, they never put into the port of New York as is shown by the papers. But our imagination sometimes trips us up and some members of my family tell me about having seen, among the thousands of tables of listings of Ellis Island, the names of the Soto family. I don't doubt it, but there are lots of Sotos and it could well be that a branch of the family entered America via New York. But my family, according to the documentation, didn't have that privilege.

After so many days at sea, their muscles, their nerves, their very fibre seemed different. I haven't been able to check this but my uncle Miguel told me in his old people's home that my grandmother took on all the laundry for the crew to earn a few cents. That could well have been how it was because my grandmother also hinted from time to time that she was the ship's laundress but there's no way of being sure. Apart from anything else, my uncle Miguel was mentally very sharp, never once losing his mind for a single moment but when he died, they found an entire food store in his wardrobe in the old people's home because, according the management, he had an obsession that they were going to poison him.

José Soto was a little lame in his left leg although the limp didn't stop him from doing the majority of work activities. When he could put his feet on the ground he had the feeling that everything was floating and it gave him a feeling of sickness and vertigo. There he would stay, turning his head towards the lost horizon, wherever it was, if not to make it out then at least to sense the smell of the town, while his pale body kept looking on the air for the playful writing of his children running, and the far off dream of his wife crossing the side-streets of a town where the hunger of the distant past seemed more real to him that the surprising and marvellous world before his eyes.

Among her most precious things, María had a photograph of her mother which at first was the only link uniting the Spanish family. They were prevented from bringing animals or other things that weren't strictly necessary.

I remember the story of Captain James Cook, the “official” discoverer of the Hawaiian islands. I say “official” because they were discovered by the Spanish many years before the English landed there. The Spanish harvested the “bread tree plantations” just like in the marvellous film “Rebelión a bordo”. The Spanish used its bays and inlets of calm water to protect their galleons from storms and pirates.

The famous captain tells how, on one of his voyages to the new dominions of His Majesty, there was a serious problem. On a ship under his command, a very young cabin boy was discovered hiding a stowaway, apparently a guardian angel made corporeal. After intensive questioning from the captain, the little sailor was still able to use supernatural arguments to justify the celestial origin of his companion. Nevertheless Cook confessed that he felt obliged to put off, at the first opportunity, the cabin boy and his “angel” since “not being well-versed in theological matters and not knowing the sex of angels, he wouldn't be able to comply in carrying out his duty in accordance with the strict but necessary customs of His Majesty”. Captain Cook omitted to report that, whether or not they were telling the truth, before putting off “the boys”, he ordered that they each be given fifty lashes.

They told me stories in small fragments, like those pieces of thread that in the old times, women wove with offcuts from the clothing workshops, which are overlaid one on top of the other to make small blankets which we used to call “cubrepié” [a foot cover]. In that way, small snippets could be tacked together, piece by small piece, slices of this story, hunting in one place then another, slowly like a swallow constructing its nest, until the tale is formed that resembles reality more than we might have thought at the beginning.

The data came to me as if they were looking for a hand to give them form, but it saddens me that despite having looked, I don't have any photographs of my great grandparents on that continent.

I know that when they disembarked, they were put up in large wooden huts in which they had all the comforts of the time. They had a wood-burning stove, a small living room and three bedrooms. In the kitchen they had every comfort. That's as far as I've been able to check from the accounts of other people that I have been able to contact in the course of this long investigation and who are still there, some on the islands and others in San Francisco (California).

That meant an extraordinary change in their lives. Life was going exactly as it was described in the papers, and José was getting used to it. Work wasn't exactly a problem, accustomed as he was to sniffing out like a dog where he would be able to use his worker hands, just as he did in the town. He obtained a fixed contract for three years with the possibility of being able to remain there if he proved to be a good worker, for as long as he wanted with even the possibility of being able to use land donated by the island's government. Life went smoothly and José, Francisco, and even María his wife, were working, some on one thing, some on another. My grandmother, as she wasn't yet old enough, went to work as an assistant to look after a child of the couple who ran the drug store, or a shop where they sold everything.

After a while, work became routine, the children attended school although it could be said that Miguel and Juliana needed a lot of schooling because they weren't used to school discipline. In Alcalá they had never even set foot inside a classroom. One day was the same as the next.

When Francisco was old enough, he started going out with a girl from Malaga who had made the journey with her parents on the same ship, like everyone in search of new hopes and a new world. Love changed Francisco's life and at the same time, it became more bearable. His life was making sense and he even asked permission from her father to get engaged. Francisco was a person that his descendants considered to be a gentleman, serious, formal and a good worker; at the time it was the essential basis if a father was to allow his daughter to maintain a relationship with a stranger.

My grandmother Petra continued serving at the counter and looking after the child. We are able to know the name of the owner because this family thought so much of my grandmother, and she of them, that when my grandmother married my grandfather years later, she gave the owner's name to her own son, and that's why we have a James in the family (Jaime in Spanish), which was always a connection my grandmother had to the times she spent in the islands.

We suppose that's where my grandmother learned English because she had never been to school. But she was an intelligent woman able to pick things up easily. Once back in the countryside married to my grandfather, there wouldn't even have been a poulterer to flatter her, nor even to sell her an egg.

Life was going well, with the benefits of work and money, paid in gold dollars. The climate was always monotonous and they watched the clouds. From time to time they refreshingly discharged their natural gift, thanks to the hand of God. No doubt it was more paradise than any other place on earth. José Soto couldn't tell if it was Winter or Summer as the temperature was always the same. It was like an eternal warm Spring that made everyone happy. The moon settled down at nightfall with the stars lending the skyscape a milky whiteness with which you could even read in the forest clearings.

Little Miguel and Juliana spent a lot of time in the countryside playing through a colourful learning apprenticeship and they were attracted more by the blue of the sky and the lushness of nature than dreams of bandits and other pointless things. Despite their mother's insistence, they spent more time in games than sitting on the benches in school, like caged birds looking through the glass at the refraction of the light. María and Juana were still being breast- and bottle-fed.

Miguel and Juliana were such square pegs in round holes that they kept truanting. At one point Miguel got himself into trouble. While they were running across the fields, hiding in the giant irrigation pipes, they were once playing “hide and seek” and Miguel pushed himself into one of the thick pipes with such force that he got stuck, having such a big head. They had to get him out by pulling him and even so, he sported a crown of friction burns caused by the force that had to be used getting him out of the pipe.

From that day on, his mother, using her own particular teaching method, “instructed” him with a pair of espadrilles on the backside and Miguel stopped trying to fit himself into pipes. Above all, he stopped skipping school, though more from fear of bruises than because he liked the lessons.

Life went on and Francisco was making more formal his relationship with his girlfriend. My great grandfather José Soto was missing his country but things were going well for him there. Francisco started to manage machinery at which he seemed to have great skill.

But for an Alcalaino, Alcalá is the centre of the world. We are not Spaniards, nor natives of Cádiz. We are Alcalainos and if we have ever needed to visit the main cities, it has been to visit the doctor or to look for work. In the end our hearts remain where they came from, among the white stones of La Coracha, in the moaning walls of our Roman and Arab castle, and next to the resting place of our ancestors, that from the roof of the town start their flight towards those starry spaces where they flutter among the black and red swallows.

Along the river Barbate, our river, playful and at times dangerous, we can get to the sea but in the afternoons of the Levante, the sea comes to us, putting a beard on Picacho, like an old man looking damp and tired. Farther up, looking towards Africa, “El Pilar de la Reina” [The Queen's Pillar] hidden behind the autumn mists, awaits the inferno of the new sun, the whisper of the hills or any movement from some sleeping souls among the streams.

Perhaps the height of the mountains of Honolulu might make the Soto family nostalgic for Picacho and bring tears to their sweaty eyes, or reawaken the memory of the atmosphere forever embedded in their souls.

“The sea, it calls me towards the green of the ash trees, and towards the white daffodils of the Alcalá meadows when the first rains of Autumn begin.”

The pages of the calendar kept turning. Their situation had become settled. Their tan caused by hunger had been changed into one from the tropical sun, through weekends resting, through their daily meals, regular hygiene. Their family discussions had changed since they were in Alcalá. There the question that was always in their minds was: what would we eat tomorrow?

José Soto was a very observant person and he controlled his time with the precision of a meteorologist; he knew the plants through always having used them and perhaps he'd learned them from his father or his father's father, and that's why this knowledge came to play such an important part in his life.

He'd noticed that in the camp, made up mostly of Europeans, things went smoothly without anything disrupting the life of work, rest and family but in almost three years since they'd arrived, he hadn't noticed anyone dying, something that never ceased to amaze him. He was used to observing every burial in the town, providing that work permitted it and that the bells gave them warning. Already the “pésame” [night vigil] and the wine was being forgotten. As a person full of doubts, he got it into his head that it could be because they were eating the old people and he simply hadn't noticed.

The idea started to gnaw at him and bothered him so much that his mind was in a kind of trance, unable to go forwards or backwards. Being a rather reserved man, he became nostalgic and felt so alone that he started to hear the fluttering of angel wings. The ever-blue sky seemed to him faded and torn like his own soul. Together with his fears and lack of enthusiasm, he was nostalgic for his land and his people.

He started to write letters to friends and people that he thought would be able to offer him work if he decided to return home. He corresponded with all those with whom he'd previously worked, but hardly anyone took the trouble to reply to a madman who'd had the audacity to abandon the town, fleeing from the despotic rule that was common there in those times. The letters took a long time to arrive; the ships didn't leave at the expected times and the First World War which was just breaking out was already an obstacle for shipping.
José Soto waited for the mail near the sea like a mad boy as if love or simply the friction of the breeze reduced him to tears, to running through the green fields to find words of comfort. His life was making him more and more taciturn.

Once, when he received a letter which raised his hopes. It said: “For the sake of old friendship and because you have always been a good man for this house, you will have work here if one day you decide to return.” The letter suddenly lit up José's hopes, so long extinguished. He even welcomed with great happiness the news that his son Francisco intended to get married to Blanca, the Spanish girl who came from Malaga, making the journey to find fortune with them in the new world.

José Soto started to plan his return but again found himself faced with the typical problems of distance, family, and passage. While he had been working, he had saved some money but he couldn't wait another couple of years to finish his contract or stay there for good. Again he thought deeply trying to find a solution to the problem. He realised that it would use up a good part of the money he'd earned with so much sacrifice, but his heart demanded his return. His wife wasn't very well, and it seemed there would always be work for him on returning to Spain. He would have a guaranteed job. It was worth a try.

By then, Francisco had got married. He had his wife and things were going very well. He was in charge of the equipment and he had a job that gave him a comfortable living, and with good promotion prospects inside the company. He was a tremendously skilful person and with the left over junk he picked up from the machines, he made a hot water heater for the house. The water passed through a coil for economical cooking and because of the height, provided enough water pressure for a shower. The water was controlled using another cold water container through a mixer so that your body wouldn't be scalded by the high temperature.

My great aunt Juliana told me more than once that people copied him and asked Francisco for help in making a hot water heater for themselves. My American relatives told me the same thing when I was in contact with them.

Francisco had forgotten about Spain. There in Hawaii he had found happiness, work, a new life. He'd left behind, a long way behind, the poverty, the humiliation, living with such uncertainty. What is more, his country had already acquired a different name: The United States of America. Spain was already just a memory. For Francisco, America meant tranquility where time, like poverty, had come to a halt.

When José Soto decided to make a move, that is to return to Spain, because he was convinced that his life would change after having been in Honolulu and with the promise of work when he got back, his outlook was changing. But he realised that what had brought him there would remain, and it would remain there without him ever having the possibility of seeing it again. In particular it was his son Francisco. He might not see him again and God knows if fate would ever give him another opportunity.

Used to the countryside, to looking for life in it, José knew plants like an expert botanist. The majority of his treatments and those of his family came from the plants he knew and for them, they were they only resources that they had for maintaining their health. Lemon grass, camomile, mint. Eucalyptus, pumpkin seeds, cucumber in spirit, the cure-all lizard bile, as well as plants that were dangerous to people and animals. From his experience he knew that if an animal, whatever type it was, ate grass which had the menstrual blood of a hedgehog on it, the animal would go crazy and in the majority of cases, would end up throwing itself off a cliff or destroying itself among the fence-wire because of its madness.

He also knew that certain types of plants were harmful to some animals causing irreparable damage to herds. When an animal picked up leeches, the best way to get rid of them was to change the type of water. When a cow is wounded by the points of a ploughshare, the best way to avoid lameness was to tie the hair of the tail to the plough handle. That the oil from a fried snake helps with pain relief... and a thousand and one other tricks to be able to survive in good health at that time in Spain.

He thought deeply about how he would be able to leave work without economic prejudice as he still had time remaining on his contract, and he would have to take a boat as soon as possible since the world situation was getting complicated and there was no time to lose. He discussed it with his wife who, like all wives at the time, blindly obeyed their husbands.

But poor María was reduced to tears, lost like a bird vanishing into the night. Fate was again about to change her life but this time in a very cruel way. She would leave behind part of her family. Francisco was not returning. He had decided to remain there getting away from all their problems in Spain and because his wife did not want to leave her family.

Their daughter Petra who had just reached fifteen didn't want to go back to Spain either, to live again through those hardships of long ago. But her father would not allow her to remain and so my grandmother, because of her age, had to obey her father.

María was very worried about her family and she had the very strong feeling that she would never again get to look at the island's splendid dawns; she was about to wake up from a dream that perhaps never really existed, and the sun, shining from the eyes of her son Francisco, was on the point of being hidden among her silent suffering tears. From that day, she stopped watering the chrysanthemums in the flowerbed near the front door that she had nurtured with so much care in the short time they'd lived in the house. Her soul was forgetting the smell of the sea and once again were awakening those sad memories of their land back in Spain.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't convince her husband that Spain was no longer her country, that the sheep is not from where it is born but from where it grazes. But her husband could only think about going back. Out of fear, there were no arguments, and José had already decided. Her dream had been extinguished and in her heart was drawn nothing more than the tree where the sparrows nested in Spring and left in Summer. The same tree that in Summer afternoons she would hang with a pale-coloured shirt. There was no longer a question about the future and she started to think about how they could leave in the best possible way.

Soon they had a chance to put the plan into action. Medicine wasn't very advanced then and José, well-versed in herbs and ointments, started to devise a way to fool the quacks at the dispensary where he went from time to time when there was some problem with the youngsters, perhaps a bump on Miguel's head, or a scratch on one of their legs. Kid's stuff. The problem of returning was getting itself tangled up with another one, no less worrying. It made him pensive, driving around the island searching for some solution to his obsession.

He had got it into his head that, in order to avoid the problems of old people, they were eating them, above all, the Chinese. This obsession struck him regularly, time and again, that on every death they were substituting another living person so that no-one noticed, and that they were eating them in stews and casseroles and no-one paid any attention.

Between superstition and nostalgia, the poor man was wasting away under the weight of his sickness. He was going from one side to the other looking for an answer when it came to him through the games of his daughter Juliana. One morning he was watching as Juliana was playing “house” with her brother Miguel and other children not far from home and he noticed that his daughter, imitating older people, had painted her lips with the juice of the prickly pear [higos tuneros = “Chumbos”] (which they called 'tintos') from which they distil a red stream that perfectly imitates the lipstick that her mother wore to fiestas or on some days to visit friends or greet a neighbour from afar.

José, an ingenious man, got it into his head that he could exploit the fact and he started, without anyone noticing, to eat the figs, at first a few cautiously and then more. It had the effect of turning his urine into a spectacularly red liquid, very like blood. He was taking every day a portion of the coloured figs using the juice to keep his urine a bright lipstick colour.

In a few days, he presented himself to the dispensary taking advantage of the regular medical checkups he had to attend. He explained the strange case of his red urine and used the opportunity to talk to the doctor about the constant pain in his kidneys. The doctors gave him tests and spent a long time trying to work out if his illness was just temporary, or whether his state of health was declining.

José had already been on the island for four years. He had renewed his contract and was already on the point of being given a plot of land, which had been promised to all the workers that completed their contracted time, so they could remain there enjoying the benefits of their own land. José Soto was giving up all this in favour of his son Francisco who never had any intention of returning to Spain. José knew what was waiting for him in his own country once he could set foot there again.

José's illness didn't get better because there was no cure for it, and he continued taking his figs, urinating red sometimes more, sometimes less. In order to make his illness seem more serious, he made his wife also take the figs and soon the doctors starting thinking that maybe their patient might have a contagious illness. After some weeks of deliberation, and a lot of tests that told them nothing, they decided to tell José that, regretfully, and for health reasons, he would have to leave the island as they already feared he might be contagious.

All the family were checked and no-one except José and his wife had “blood” in their urine, but to avoid any surprises the medical team reported to the company contractors that for the good of the community, it would be better that the Soto family should leave the island, that the company should pay them for his dismissal and for the years that he ought to be remaining there, and the passage for him and his dependents, with the aim of avoiding him becoming a contagious patient creating problems among the labour force. As he didn't like his illness, José started to get well as soon as he had the travel papers in his pocket.

During this time, while the boat was arriving, Francisco had time to get married and they moved into the house of his parents. He was refusing to return to Spain and continued enjoying the benefits that the island offered them. At this time Francisco was able to find work in San Francisco (California) in the same sugar business so he was able to accompany his parents during the three thousand odd kilometers that separated the islands from the mainland. They all knew that the boat represented the limit of their family and that only God knew if they would see each other again.

It is difficult to know the exact date on which they left Hawaii because there are no relevant documents remaining, but taking into account the fact that my grandmother was born in 1900, she went to America at the age of eleven, returned to Spain at fourteen years and was almost fifteen, we can say that they were there between four and five years. Many of my family say that the boat returned to Gibraltar from where they departed; some said that it was a munitions ship, others that it was a merchant ship... the fact is that it's not possible to tell because the trip was somewhat irregular and I don't think it was possible to tell one ship from another. What is certain is that José Soto came back with money saved, thinking that he would be able to start a different life in Spain, from what he was doing abroad.

The return ship, after putting in at San Francisco, started the voyage on the same route that they had followed to America from Gibraltar, but not without having to dodge certain dangers owing to the world conflict, and they were suspicious of everyone. They appeared back in Alcalá, a little richer and wiser, but without having anywhere to stay since the hut in which they had lived was no longer adequate, and besides, once one is accustomed to the good life, the hard life is painful.

They were taking time to recover from the journey which it seems took fifty-odd days at sea, before José started to seek out the Señor who had promised him that they would have work in the fields as soon as they returned. The problem was that those who made the promise never imagined that they would be able to return again to a land that was practically killing them with hunger. Like the saying “You don't know what you really need until you don't have it.”

Meanwhile they were staying in the Posada de la Cruz. Time was ticking by and there was no sign of work. José Soto got involved in some commercial enterprises such as buying a field with his savings but it didn't work out and he had to sell it at a loss. Between one thing and another, they were eating up their money together with their hopes of a more dignified living. Every time he followed up the promise of the letter, the answer was: “I'm not going to give you anything to do!” But he insisted so much that in the end he was able to get a job in the farm Los Joyas, at least in a corner of it.

The owner, in order to avoid the economic drain that he thought would be entailed in paying for the upkeep of a family, granted José a slice of land in a corner of his finca, just opposite a venta [inn] that always carried the name “La Libre” [The Hare], and alongside the gully of a stream where the family, with the help of my grandmother's boyfriend, built a hut. One of the Toscano family, today an old man but then a youngster, said that José Soto's hut was like a “palace” and that his father visited it frequently, admiring how comfortable it was considering the times.

In time, my grandfather Martínez, who was working for the Toscanos, finally married my grandmother Petra. He got her a job, initially in charge of the farmhouse, while José Soto was at times a shepherd and generally cared for the livestock.

Among the memories that my grandmother kept until her last hour, there figured a brightly coloured Manila shawl that apparently still exists but we don't know in whose hands; a fan on each vane of which there appears the names of each of her brothers, her father and her mother; some little boots that she had to sell and which she wanted to recover though the woman didn't want to give them back because they were a keepsake of the woman with whom she had worked; and a banjo that somehow I managed to get rid of because after so many years it was very broken and would have cost three hundred pesetas to repair. Neither my savings nor my family could stretch to music even if it might have been celestial.

In a conversation with Don Luis Toscano, the father of Nicolás Toscano Liria, a friend since childhood, sat one afternoon on the Alameda listening to the silent sunset. He said that his family was always amazed on picking up a map, at how a man without education might have gone half way round the world, twice. Or rather, as I told him, effectively the entire way round.

“Hunger Don Luis, Hunger.”

My grandfather Martínez, after a few years sold the market garden at Sarandeo. On the deeds appeared as a witness the “head of the Toscano family” and it is surprising that my grandfather who seemed to know so much, when it came to signing, made his mark with his fingerprint, as valid then as a handshake.

Today the family from San Francisco has lost some of its members through an accident while they were travelling through America. Those who remain hardly have any memories of Spain, although they say: still they have a place in their hearts for these lands.


Manuel Guerra Martinez

Mayo de 2006

Publicado por Andrés Moreno Comacho

Traducido por Bob Lloyd

lunes, 19 de enero de 2009

Calle del Sol, Alcalá de los Gazules

[ Original Spanish ]
I’m going to tell a story. According to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, the word “story” means, among other things, the telling of past events worth remembering. Elsewhere it allows the possibility that this narrative doesn’t have to be based solely on authentic facts, but also on products of the writer’s imagination, or a mixture of reality and fantasy. Certainly, what I am going to tell you about would appear to many people to be events worth remembering, and to others, the alternative definition - and both are right. Because, as the poet said, “Nothing is true or false; everything depends on the colour of the glass you see it through”. Anyway, I’m going to go on with the story, seen through glass coloured with fondness and sincere gratitude to those who made possible my happy childhood in that street, good honest people who wrapped those years of my life in a blanket of affection and warmth.

The story concerns life in an Alcalá street in the late 1960s and early ‘70s; a place like any other for many, but not for me, and certainly not for all those who were born or grew up in it. All those for whom its white walls have borne silent witness – if only walls could speak!!! – to their day-to-day existence. Because all sorts of things went on, and still do, in the Calle del Sol. Today when I walk down that street, I seem to see and hear, smell and feel, touch and even taste the essence of those years. I should say that I wasn’t born there, but in another street nearby – la Despeñadero – though my heart and my memories will always belong to the Calle del Sol.

Why “Street of the Sun”? I don’t know – I suppose it is because it is flooded with sunlight from dawn till sunset, starting near the Alameda and ending in the Calle de la Salada (Nuestra Señora de los Santos). This light produces a tingling deep inside me. Whitewashed facades gleam in the rays of natural light, reflecting a culture which still inhabits our deepest roots – Arabic. Vestiges of that culture could be seen on summer evenings, when the neighbours sat in their doorways and watch the sun slip down between the eucalyptus trees on La Coracha. Men and women, boys and girls; humble, if not poor, with no more riches than the hands they worked with. And they worked hard, because the house would soon fill up with children and the daily wage wouldn’t be enough to go round.

The street was cobbled, restored like many others thanks to the community employment funds at the beginning of the 1980s. A narrow street, which protected us from the sun. You knew what was being cooked in each household by the smells which emanated from the little kitchens, which were often in a separate room alongside the house. The street was so narrow that you could have a conversation with someone in the house opposite just by leaving the doors open.

The houses were small but had to accommodate so many children - an area of barely forty or fifty square metres, where by day you had to pack away the children’s beds to provide enough space to carry out the domestic tasks. Everyone slept in the same room, two or three to a bed, depending on the size of the bed. The room, if you can call it that, where the parents slept was separated from the rest only by a curtain. With the passing of time, the living quarters might be enlarged by adding another room alongside or, with great effort and people young and old lending a hand, another floor might be built on top. We might lay the bricks one day, and the next, God willing, render it and then give it a coat of whitewash ... and so little by little these tiny houses expanded to provide shelter for however many offspring there were.

The houses were humble, like their occupants, but they had a certain charm: that sepia-coloured photo of the grandparents hanging on the wall, or that wedding photo, or the one of the eldest son taking the oath of allegiance. In those days people didn’t have photo albums - there was no spare cash for such things - let alone a video of the wedding banquet. You could watch television surreptitiously in the Bar de Arroyo, or in the house of Manuel Cuesta and Manuela Arana, who where the first in the neighbourhood to have a TV.

The houses may have been cramped, but there was warmth in them. A genuine homely warmth; the family all together with some or other visitor, gathered around the fireplace on cold, wet winter nights. Social gatherings when the old folk told the children scary stories about hens and chicks wandering through the countryside at night, or a priest in a cassock who was said to appear in front of the Black Rock. We children sat with our eyes out on stalks, more through fear than curiosity. More than once we would go running home, in the darkness of the night, fleeing the shiver of terror which ran down our spines.

The street had its own trades, like Pepe Romero’s carpentry workshop, el Pichi, at the end where Paco Pimpinela had his little shop later on. There Pepe had a little wooden horse with its rider, stirrups and all the harness, and my childhood dream was that he would give it to me. I didn’t get it, however hard I tried, cajoling him and running errands. Another carpenter’s shop belonged to Pepe “the Long” as we called him; a man who appeared one fine day, looking for new horizons and settled himself in. I believe he came from a town in the Sierra de Malaga. The workshop was one room, very narrow, where Pepe had his workbench and furnished only with a folding bed, put away by day and extended at night, a washbasin, and a chair. We never understood how he could earn a living mending the broken legs of tables and chairs and wooden washbasins... He ended up making beehives with the planks which we children gave him in exchange for a few coins.

There was a piglet in a wooden box, which Juana Mendez raised with a feeding bottle until it was big enough to take to the pigsty at La Coracha. Juana supported herself – today we would call it the “hidden economy” – by breeding pigs in those caves and feeding them on leftovers collected from the houses. Later she would sell the animals to the butchers in the food market, making enough for a few plates of food, or pay another instalment on the little gold chain which she was buying for Paca’s communion. In those days we stashed any coins we had in the little cups which hung on the dresser or in the larder. Putting money in the bank was for other people. La Levita, Catalina, another neighbour , had a cave in the same place where she also bred pigs and attended to various other matters ... I can still smell those stews she made, into which along with a few chickpeas she put a piece of cow bone to give it a bit of substance. More important than substance, it gave it flavour. Then she would add a handful of fat noodles and that, for her, was a feast.

Then there was Petronila’s “Carboneria”, making charcoal for cooking and carbon kindling for the brazier. I can still see her, with her son Jacinto, Catalina la Levita and Manolo Poley with his mother, going off every day to the Gómez’s cinema. Poley was an authority on that. And there was Maria Martinez’s hairdressing salon, before it moved to Santo Domingo. In the entrance patio we played “bull”, according to the customs of that time.

And what can you say about Francisca Ramirez, and the teacher Perea? It was said of him that, when an amnesty was declared at the time of the foundation of the Second Republic, under the influence of wine he liberated his caged goldfinches. There was a carnival song about it, which went:

And [the birds] came out singing
And so the ideas of that good man, Antonio Perea, lived on.

Most of the men kept pack animals. Mountain people - Cristóbal Ríos, José and Antonio Bermejo. Juan Romero Torres - ”Chaparro” - who became the street’s builder when the teacher Perea abandoned that office because of his age. He took responsibility for all those odd jobs which needed doing, and left my house “like a dovecot” after it had been touched up with whitewash. Good people like Quico, Juana Mendez’s brother, who worked with Visglerio in Patrite. Quico found room in his heart for everyone, and he ended his days with his sister in the Calle del Sol.

The women, like Micaela and Maria Antonia Bermejo, Quica and María Cabrera, raised their children by juggling the budget when a day’s work was scarce. Those were the times of shopping “on the slate”; the bill was settled when the money came in from work in the fields – gathering kindling, working on the cork, etc.

We grew up amongst people who set us an example of honesty and hard work: people who would use the fruits of their labour to extend their houses, putting in bathrooms - the only people in the neighbourhood who had bathrooms were Vicente Marchante and ourselves.

Then there were the street kids - the Chaparritos, the Bermejos, the Cabreras - first cousins. They were hardworking, and good footballers; La Coracha was a handy place to have a good game. They were full of mischief – there was not a single birds’ nest in those trees, however high, that they didn’t investigate. The wild figs, with which we stuffed ourselves like sparrows, left our mouths covered in sores and our bodies itchy. There were the gang wars with the kids from the Plaza Alta, which they always won because from the castle they could pelt us with stones.

People on their way back from burials would take a shortcut through our street, burdened with their mourning and their pain.

And my mother would stand at the top of La Coracha to remind herself of better times in my father’s mill down in El Prado...

Calle del Sol was a street full of dreams for a better world, for a better life, which was the aspiration of all who lived there. It was a street of mutual support, where no-one had to go a day without eating, thanks to the neighbours. People left their doors open all day, so anyone who wanted to could pop in for a chat. Today, when life for some has taken many unexpected turns, it pleases me to see how the standard of living has improved for these hardworking families. But it saddens me when I look back and see how many are missing, those we thought would go on forever. Calle del Sol, from above, is the first thing to be seen in Alcala, and I know they are looking down on us from on high. Because, in spite of being such a narrow little street, its white walls have a special luminosity, shining over the cobbles and turning the street into a mirror in which we can be watched by Juana, Chaparro, Bermejo, Poley, La Levita, Quico– all those who made that street distinct from the rest.

I could carry on and fall asleep remembering a time which will never return, but which stays latent inside me so I can reawaken it at will. I could make this a never-ending story, but that is not my intention. This narrative is a snapshot photo of Calle del Sol in another era. Anyone who wants to can carry on with it, but they must take care when touching up the photo...

José Sánchez Romero, September 2007
Translated by Claire Lloyd, January 2009

jueves, 8 de enero de 2009

VISTAS DE ALCALÁ DE LOS GAZULES



Esta mañana estuve visitando a mi amigo Juan Pizarro en su Taller y cuando bajaba hacia La Playa, pude sacar estas bonitas fotos de nuestro pueblo. A pesar de que hacía mucho frío, Alcalá estaba precioso.


martes, 6 de enero de 2009

From Alcalá to Hawaii - Part 1

The story of an Alcalaino emigrant who went half way around the world in search of fortune.


The sea breeze swept through the Calle Sagasta. The air coming from the buildings/blocks freshened the silence of the siestas. Half of Cádiz was sleeping, the other half was splashing about in the waters of the Caleta and on the Playa Victoria, while the kids were jumping from the Puente Canal on the road leading from Puerta del Malecón to the castle of San Sebastian.


Almost all of my brothers had already left the town. Some were studying by means of sacrifices, as they say cutting the chickpeas from the plate. My father carried out his duties as “municipal” as the “guardias urbanas” [urban police], were always called in Alcalá... and my mother was arranging hair in the “comedor peluquería”, so that we were all able to eat, at least twice a day.


This wasn't unusual in a lower middle-class family; one part of Alcalá lived well, another survived, and the last third always lived their lives with more dignity than plenty. The top ten per cent lived by exploiting the lower two thirds.


We never knew exactly how needy we were at that point. My mother had shared us out everywhere like things for hire. First in the seminary, where those that subscribe to the faith were taken to prayers and to Latin like little priests, after having heard the generous call from on high. Another of my brothers felt the calling but he felt so low about it, that after a while, the “baby” changed, and he went to Úbeda to turn milling machines and drills in a college run by Jesuits. When he finished there, he walked God's world, with a gitano companion, putting up posts to bring the telephone to half of Andalucia. The other two lads were still kicking cans about.


The girls, especially the eldest, grew up rapidly because of the responsibilities that she had to take on, far beyond what would normally be expected of someone her age. The next, also studied outside of Alcalá, and the last of the girls, though not in order of age, also made an effort to study... But she had to settle for two thirds of the “bachillerato” [school certificate], and an electrician husband who gave her two remarkable little boys.


We were living in those circumstances when Summer came. Summers have the unfortunate habit of arriving after Spring, a time of cicadas, crickets, and elusive young partridges and little cicada lice.


It was already years since my grandfather had died. The campo where he had lived, was now remote from our family. No more those deep gazes over the horizon to see if someone was coming to share a chat and the “zurraposa”, which was little more than a tin can in which the coffee grounds were reheated day after day until they lost their taste.


It was a fertile place of orange trees and blue blossoms, and the purest of “kakis” [type of fruit], of delicate bleeding pomegranates, vine and cherry trees, that adorned the half-deserted space of the afternoon with red, yellow and ochre tones, the pear trees that sweetened overflowing springs, the fig trees with their incessant generosity, the poplars that lined the boundaries and the waters of the Presillas, falling, blood and light into the reservoir of daily water, held in a withered enclosure, abandoned like a child, orphaned and undernourished.


Whenever we approached there, we felt the sadness of neglect and the quiet solitude of its hopeless suffering.


I'd spent many years in that semi-paradise. I had practically grown up amongst the couch grass. I had learned to read in the farmhouse opposite, called “Cabeza Redonda” [Round Head], with a teacher that came from Estremadura and who virtually lived on the presents that the kids gave him to pay for the classes. Cherries, olives, grapes.... In Winter, he “punished” us by throwing us out of the pokey little room that smelt of sour grape spirit and sent us to set traps for small birds and in this way, he made sure that we had some meat to eat. The teacher only lasted a little while there. I think of the time when the lizards and frogs were eaten like an exquisite delicacy, and of running out of tears that were supplied every day; it reminds one of the land.


Education was for us a lesser evil. If today I was reliving those times (I know that some people will be thinking 'For God's sake, let's have one and only one Saint Tomás'), it would have filled me with psychological traumas. I would have been declared an abused child, abused by my parents, my teachers, even by myself according to the new standards of post-modern education, which is no more than an invention of 'progressive' people that doesn't provide any clue to the fundamental values of life. Sometimes I think that animals have more capacity to educate than people.


But in the end, the teacher went and my grandmother was given the job of continuing to teach me writing. My grandmother Petra, who although she could read, said she didn't know how to write, made me draw the letters – one of life's ironies. Although she knew how to read, she never understood that the one was related to the other.


When I was tired, with eyes reddened by the dim light of the oil lamp, she let me rest and would begin telling me strange stories that I could never understand. She spoke to me of giant animals, like enormous cows that submerged themselves in the deep sea, who would expel jets of water from their backs up into the sky, just like when we took the cover off the tank to water the garden flowerbeds. She told me things about the sea... my grandmother said that the sea was like an endless open countryside but instead of trees there was only water and that boats crossed it like snails, leaving a trail behind them to mark the return path.


My grandfather never told me those stories; he said that he didn't understand a lot of what my grandmother was telling me for amusement, but it had to be true because my grandmother never lied. He said she already had those stories in her head when he first met her but he hadn't paid them much attention. He was content with the little he had.


The only thing that worried him was when his son, Manolo, a country carpenter, brought him a mandarin orange seedling that he really liked. Each time we sat at dusk during watering time under the shade of the orange, he asked me: “Will I eat the oranges from this tree?” It saddened me because I knew that my grandfather was like an animal dealing with illness; when he felt some pain, he winced and went to the first corner he could find until the unpleasant feelings passed.


The poor man died of a bad illness and like the sparrows... “emberrenchinado” [utterly enraged]. He was able to try the mandarin oranges, but despite his enthusiasm, they made him pull a strange face and he had to take a pinch of bicarbonate or chew a camomile flower to relieve his burning stomach.


His death was a genuine suffering not through the fact of the death itself, because he knew that his life was ending and he accepted it. But what he couldn't accept was this: “Your grandmother won't let me smoke. She's hidden my tobacco pouch...” I went out to the path at the end of the garden so that no-one could see me, and I demanded a cigarette from the first person that passed by, so that my grandfather could smoke it in secret and that it might calm the anxiety of the vice he'd had since nine years of age.


The death of my grandfather was a turning point. My grandmother declined and over time, started to lose her mind. “Senility” is how they refer to those mental lapses with which a person's mind is derailed and which makes them wander from one moment to the next in a life without coherence or sense. At least that's how it seems to those around them.


She held on for a while in Alcalá until all my uncles were married but inevitably sooner or later she had to take the option of going to live with her daughters, sometimes in Alcalá and sometimes in Cádiz. It was here in Alcalá we encountered her senility and where she would eventually die.


My mother sent me on an errand to the seminary where I was studying to one day become a priest, but that day never came. (Something that shows the infinite wisdom of our creator.) One of my great-aunties called Teresa suggested that I should go and see some of her family that were going to visit my grandmother as they couldn't speak Spanish. My mother always knew that I, because of having studied at the seminary, should know how to speak other languages.


I never dared to mislead her because apart from anything else I spoke broken English thanks to Mr Lauren, the Englishman that came to Alcalá. He discovered Patriste, and set himself up there. From then on, through his friendship with José Moreno (the Frenchman), we became friends and every afternoon I went by bicycle to his house, sometimes alone, sometimes with Antonio Paino. He went to paint, and I went to improve my English, or rather to destroy it, or so it seemed from Mr Lauren's face on hearing my expressions.


It was late afternoon and it was already June. I asked permission to go and visit my father confessor, a magic formula that always had the desired effect in that I was able to leave the “sacred place” in break time, above all from six to six-forty or six-fifty.


When I arrived I found half or even three-quarters of the family... my aunties were all there with their husbands, my cousins and some close relatives. My brother Pedro, who always appeared out of nowhere, was there from the first. Already he had put away a slice of bread with “zurrapa”. It seemed that when he was a boy, he had the gift of ubiquity – of being able to be in two places at once – or so it seemed to me. He was here, there and everywhere. What bothered him the most was that I would say he was yonder [“acullá”] and he would whisper to my mother that I was swearing [it sounds similar to an obscenity in Spanish – trans].


When I arrived it was as if the sky had opened and the “saviour” had arrived, as I suppose I was for them. My aunty introduced me quickly to the conversation in the “Spanglish” of those who for many years hadn't practised or even heard Spanish spoken. “Your uncles from America.” I say it now but I thought it then and kept quiet. “Already, we are rich.”


But it wasn't that. It was simply that they could hardly understand each other. I tried to remember my first, second and third courses in English, starting with “My name is Manolo” and “What is your name?” My grandmother had a lost expression, she was running back and forth not knowing what she was doing, from time to time drying her eyes that filled with silent tears.


While everyone was trying to agree on the language, amidst gestures, shouts, and nonsense, my grandmother, with a clear focussed voice as you'd use to address a child, came out with “Where is my brother Francisco?” Everyone turned to each other in silence, thinking about “senility” and whether we'd misheard, and then again, with the same clear voice she repeated the question.


The only thing my brother Pedro could think of to say was “Hey, look at that!” As if he was picking up the thread of how my grandmother usually was, when she was talking to herself. As unfortunately we pay so little attention to the elderly, especially if they suffer from confusion, we didn't realise that my grandmother was speaking English perfectly, or that at least she understood her American relatives sufficiently clearly that for a while, they were engaged in conversation with her. As my cousin Paco said, they were going over old times.


My cousin Paco was the most brilliant student I've ever seen. He started to go to the Columela School in Cádiz where, in four years, and despite my father pulling strings, he had only ever done: drawing, sandwiches, and playtime! His father was advised by one of his friends, not my cousin's, that it would be good to enrol him one Summer in an academy in Puerto Real run by a Miguel Carzo, better known as the Academia de Miguelito, which had a very effective teaching system. Miguel had such confidence in his teaching, that he guaranteed the positive results of his students even before they started work.


His academy was according to him, certain of passes and so it turned out because in just one Summer, in this Summer when the Americans came, my cousin passed: the first stage, he skipped the second stage, he completed the third and fourth stage, and passed the fourth level examination. He didn't eat, nor sleep, nor read sports papers, as he used to do ever since he was weened. He didn't even listen to sports broadcasts about the Cádiz football club nor despite being a life-long supporter, Barcelona. He didn't even read the results sheets that were sold every Sunday afternoon in Cádiz.


His sole preoccupation was books. His mother had to take him to the doctor when he was ill but even that didn't stop him. This book fever brought him problems because he met a girl in the Cortijo de los Rosales in the Parque Genovés and he left her when he found out that she was from Puerto Real because he took such a dislike to the town. Even now, to get to Seville, he'd go from Cádiz to Ceuta, passing through France! What a teaching system Miguel used!


Surprised by the fact that my grandmother should be involved in the conversation, we all asked ourselves how it was possible. My uncle Miguel, my grandmother's younger brother who was extraordinarily bald (within the family it was said he attended Communion with no hair), suddenly explained: “It's because your grandmother was in America for four years.” All of the grandchildren were amazed because no-one had ever mentioned anything of her history.


Mulling over the memories a little later, I became preoccupied with the story and I traced the line back to the grandmother's parents. It doesn't matter how they arrived in Alcalá but from the documents, we can see that they came from Albuñol in the province of Granada, and that they lived in a small hut in “El Lejío”, a place of poor and unfortunate people, where José, the head of the family, worked at various jobs whenever he could get work and, except for rare occasions, barely covering the family's basic needs.


It's certain that he worked for the Toscano family in the fields because they have told me stories about him. He worked sometimes as a custom's policeman and tax collector according to Francisco Guerra from his extraordinary memory, and that he had a number of sons, the eldest of which was called Francisco. He got together with my grandmother quite late in life as can be seen from the document cited in this article.


It was the time of the African Wars and Francisco found himself with call-up papers sending him to “mili” [Military training], and he had no way of knowing if he was going to end up fighting in Africa for causes that neither he nor his parents understood. The events of the war tormented him, a boy of eighteen that had barely started to live; he could see himself in a place far away shooting against people that, as his brother Miguel would say, had never done anything to him.


Taking the decision was not easy, but it is clear that he was strongly influenced by the delivery to the town of some papers in which they were looking for workers for the “New World”, specifically to work in the islands of Hawaii. They were offering work and conditions which had to be agreed, the necessary documents, and the person they should present themselves to, which was none other than Don Carlos Crovetto. He was in charge of the inspection department, where they were told not to trust intermediaries. They were told the salary and given a short history of the islands.


For Francisco it was a way of avoiding getting caught up in the war in future, and of fleeing the overwhelming poverty from which they had few possibilities of ever escaping. Not only that, but also escaping from the endless groups of people who collected each day in the “Plaza del Hambre” [Hunger Square] of Alcalá waiting for the “aparaó” or the “señorito” to signal with a finger that he would give them work that day.


The socioeconomic circumstances didn't offer much hope for the future. Spain was involved in a humiliating war in which soldiers had to sell their ammunition in order to buy or barter for a little food from the locals, the same ammunition that would later be used by the “rifeños” [Rif tribesmen] against the Spanish soldiers themselves. All those details about the army, the bad training of the commanders, the embarrassment at the loss of Cuba, meant they were acting more for C [Caudillo – Franco] than for strategy and this was understood perfectly by the military bureaucracy. So the eldest of the sons of José Soto and Maria Benítez decided to scarper first rather than flee without arms and resources, before an enemy, while the general on duty shouts at them “Run! Run! The Bogeyman is coming!”


The Soto family had to make some preparations before leaving the town. Because they lacked everything, a donkey loaded with their few belongings, the three chickens that ate whatever nature provided, a goat and a load of kids [goats] walked towards voluntary exile, fleeing poverty in search of an uncertain future. Crossing the route from Picacho, going all night and part of the following day, they arrived at Tarifa, at a friend's house, the brother of José's wife.


There they waited a while to be able to board one of the boats that was going direct from Málaga to Honolulu-Hawaii, making a stop in Gibraltar to pick up another group... The sugar cane plantations were waiting.


The first thing Francisco did was to go up to the Peñon [Rock of Gibraltar] and get work as an assistant in a bakery that, as far as we know, answered to the pompous name of “Panadería Miguelón”. My great aunt Juliana told me that, despite his young age, he was used to eating “bread from a tin”, very different from the famous “teleras” [Andalucian round bread loaves] that are made in Alcalá.


They lived on what Francisco was earning and on what contraband he could bring from Gibraltar, and with the help of José's wife's family. The goat soon disappeared because they were sure they would not be able to take it , and the donkey was sold it seems to a fisherman in the town so that it could be used to carry a lamp at night to guide the small fishing boats. This long-established system was used by the coast people until quite recently. It consisted in hobbling the legs of the animal and hanging the light from the neck. The animal is tied by a rope and every time it tries to move, it moves the light which serves as a reference point for fishermen.


I'm putting here (for information), the summary of a letter that my family from America sent me in answer to an earlier letter. It was impossible to reproduce it exactly owing to the poor quality of the copy.


My dear cousin Manuel:


Sorry for the long delay in replying to your very interesting letter. I have just finished my book in which I have detailed the adventures of my grandparents and will try to help you get to know more about those matters that interest you.


It took my grandparents a lot of stamina and determination to make the change to find a new way of life for themselves and their children. They would have worked outside and would have remained there if they had stayed with my parents, and if my grandfather had not feigned his illness.


Your grandmother Petra told me about it the last time we were in Spain. The illness that her brother “caught” was from Spain, and despite the poverty in which they had lived, they decided to return to that same misery back in Spain, while my father and mother got married. Something exceptional in the New World.


Nevertheless, perhaps a better way of looking at it is that had they not returned to Spain, the family you have now would not have returned either. In Spain, it would never have been like a nice family. Your grandmother Petra didn't want to return. She wanted to stay with my father but her father said to her: “A young woman ought to return to Spain with the rest of her family.” That was how our ways became separated, the life that there is in Spain nowadays, and what we have in the USA. For better or worse, I am sure that you and I have had a marvellous life, as much for us as for our families.


Your mother, who I met in Alcalá, is a charming person and we enjoyed visiting your brothers and sisters. We had immense fun and someday, God willing, we'll meet again.


You are surely amazed that I am writing this letter in English. In fact, I no longer know Spanish and it seems to me much better to write in English. We don't use Spanish at all. It has been forty years since my mother and father died in a traffic accident and the majority of my Spanish ancestors are deceased, so we no longer have any need to speak Spanish. We wouldn't want to forget it because it is a beautiful language by we prefer to speak English. Our two daughters chose Spanish in secondary school and my wife Blanca is Spanish like me because her parents came to America on the same ship as my parents.


Concerning the information you asked for, here it is.


Firstly, I never knew my grandfather as Pedro (that mental lapse slipped out in the letter I sent you, forgive me). I always knew him as, and he always was, José. In fact, it was my name, like that of my grandfather, and my grandmother was María. My elder sister was also called María like her. When they left Gibraltar for Hawaii, this was the family of José Soto.


José Soto, father
María, mother
Francisco, son 18 years old
Petra, daughter 12 years old
Miguel, son 7 years old
Juliana, daughter 6 years old
María, daughter 2 years old
Juana, daughter 1 year old



The information that I have checked about my parents is the following:


Name of the ship: S. S. WILLESDEN
Date of embarcation: 12.10.1911
Arrived at Hawaii: 8.12.1911



I suppose it should say days navigable but it says in translation DAYS NON-NAVIGABLE 53, which I don't agree with.


They travelled by ship through the Magellan Straits (South America) and they never docked in New York nor on Ellis Island on the way to Hawaii. Fifty-three days is a long time aboard a ship with 1797 passengers, 639 men, 400 women and 750 children.


In the interests of attracting Spanish people to emigrate to Hawaii, they put up posters and notices in the cities and towns of Southern Spain. An agent that spoke Spanish was also invited to stress the advantages of the trip and of working in the sugar cane plantations. The emigrants had free passage, supplied by the Institute for Emigration of Hawaii [Immigration?]. They also had to go through a medical examination which they had to pass in order to get work, and a second medical examination for the later disembarcation.


When they arrived in Hawaii, none of the passengers was permitted to leave the ship until the second day. Then they locked the women and children in one zone and the men and boys in another. Their clothes were taken from them and they were showered with cold water from hosepipes. The women were crying to their children but the men and boys remained silent. Everyone was being forced to strip in front of their children. A new experience in their lives.


After three years working, (here I think there's a mistake, it was longer), their work contract wasn't renewed and they decided to go to San Francisco. During this time, your relatives returned to Spain. My father and mother had got married. They had saved enough money to pay for three trips to San Francisco.


Well, that seems to be all I know here about that trip from Spain to Hawaii. They suffered a lot of deprivation on the ship but I don't know the details. I myself remember when I was very young, my father receiving mail from Spain and sitting down to read his letter, the only communication he had from his mother, father, and his brothers and sisters.


My father was a very intelligent man and he taught me a lot of great things. In 1927 I invented a heater which allows us to shower with hot water. The invention was never used except to shower and cook with. He was a lovely person, one hundred percent Spanish. He loved all the things he had to do as part of being Spanish. I was his only son, a young man, and he was as proud of me as I was of him. My mother was a beautiful and marvellous lady, and I have three sisters. I believe it was family typical of those that came from Spain.


When they were killed in a traffic accident, I thought that I would never recover from the tragedy. My wife Blanca who was with me the last time we were in Alcalá died, and now I am alone, but I have my two daughters and four grandsons, and they are everything to me.


Well that seems to be everything that I know about the trip from Spain to America. Naturally I write what I know but I regret not having written in Spanish and not having done so sooner. You wrote a beautiful letter to me and sometimes when I come home, I read it again and again.


Thank you for your letter and my best wishes to you and your family.



Manuel Guerra Martínez

May 2006


Published by Andrés Moreno Comacho
Translated by Bob Lloyd

lunes, 5 de enero de 2009

VISTAS DE ALCALÁ DE LOS GAZULES

Caminamos hacia la Plaza Alta por San José
Calle Ildefonso Romero ¡¡¡sin coches aparcados!!!

Otra vista de la calle Ildefonso Romero, ¡¡¡sin coches aparcados!!!


La Plazuela con sus mejores galas en la noche de Reyes




El tiempo que hará...