viernes, 29 de mayo de 2009

Alcalaino Memories 2. The Castle

[Original Spanish]

Alcalá began fortuitously, on the top of a mountain around the castle, like so many other towns in Andalucia. The housing and the roads are said to have been made when Per Afán de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa obtained the title of Duke of Alcalá in the 16th century. Consequently, thanks to him were built the Casa del Cabildo, the parish church of San Jorge, the Plaza Alta, the convent, the streets of the nobility, the priests' house, the town, the cemetery... the other monks looked towards the lower parts of the town, the Alameda, where their tiny rooms were located, and the hill of Santo Domingo where the Dominicans settled.

During childhood in the 30s - during the war - it was fun to go up to the top behind the castle. Oblivious to the sad struggle, they dreamed about the history captured by those rocks. Around there had been the cave men, the Turdestanis, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Arabs, the Christians. They had already been learning about it in school with Don Manual Marchante.

Most important for them was the castle, a Roman construction, restored by the Almohades, a present from the Moorish King of Granada to the tribe of the Gazules, North African warriors. That was until the blessed King Ferdinand III came, with his warriors and conquered the town. Next came the poet king, Alfonso X, el Sabio (the wise one), in 1264. He disliked warfare and won over the people with culture, with poems, with public charts and maps, and by distributing the land. He was not a good warrior, but he was a master of letters and an outstanding poet who created songs in that sweetest of Spanish languages, Gallega. And he also put wonderful names to towns and places. To this one, he gave one of the prettiest, Alcalá de los Gazules.

The castle had a wall and a well. The wall went by the Beaterio de Jesús María y José, bordering the two buildings, while the well area was inside the nuns' enclosure. The children would stick their heads around the area of the well to see if they could spot any Moors, but they only made out a big room where the Moors collected rain water. And the gardener told them that there was a passage through which the Moors escaped to the "Prao" when they were surrounded by Christians. The Beaterio was liked very much by the boys and girls because it had been their first school. It was a type of nursery or pre-school, where the children were welcomed from the ages of three to fives years.

The loving care of the nuns, and living together with other boys and girls, was the best present they could have at their age. Their mother had been educated in the Beaterio as a boarder and she wanted her sons to go there too. She had received a good education, lovely handwriting, and at the same time, she had been able to develop one of her favourite activities, drawing and painting. Her sons still keep excellent examples of the work she did in El Beaterio from twelve to sixteen years of age, from 1912 to 1916.

The castle was in use until the 19th century but with the French invasion it was sacked, and to make sure it was abandoned they blew it up. It's said that the town struggled heroically to defend it and so the King granted the three titles of Muy Noble, Leal e Ilustre Ciudad de Alcalá de los Gazules [Most Noble, Loyal and Illustrious town of Alcalá de los Gazules]. From then on, the roads extended downwards looking for the easiest routes. But he preferred the Alcalá at the top of the mountain of Gazul, not below, the Playa and the roads. After the war, a mayor constructed with stones from the castle, the water tank alongside.

On top, the Levante roamed freely and, in the arch at the mouth of the Plaza Alta, they played at struggling against the wind, to see who could do it best. Almost always, they were defeated, dragged helplessly. The wild hedge mustard use to grow in the old mansions of the courtesans of Per Afán, and the alley dogs and mountain cats took possession of every corner. Today, all that has been renovated. But he liked most that old Alcalá, of fifteen thousand inhabitants, that Alcalá of the nuns of the Order of St Claire, of the Beaterio, of the quiet and mysterious passages.


JUAN LEIVA


Published by Andrés Moreno Camacho
Translated by Bob Lloyd

lunes, 25 de mayo de 2009

EVOCACIONES ALCALAÍNAS: 2.- El castillo



Alcalá nació encimado, en la cumbre del monte en torno al castillo, como tantos otros pueblos de Andalucía. La urbanización y las calles dicen que se hicieron, cuando Per Afán de Ribera, Marqués de Tarifa, llegó con su título de Duque de Alcalá en el siglo XVI. Como consecuencia, junto a él surgieron la casa del Cabildo, la parroquia de San Jorge, la plaza Alta, los conventos de monjas, las calles de los nobles, la casa de los curas, el pueblo, el cementerio...Los otros conventos masculinos buscaron la parte baja, la Alameda, donde se situaron los mínimos; y la cuesta de Santo Domingo, donde se establecieron los dominicos.

A aquella niñez de los años 30 -la de la guerra- le gustaba subir a la cima detrás del castillo. Ajenos a la triste contienda, fantaseaban la historia prendida de aquellas piedras. Por allí habían estado los hombres de las cuevas, los turdetanos, los romanos, los visigodos, los árabes, los cristianos... Eso ya lo iban aprendiendo en la escuela con don Manuel Marchante.

Lo más importante para ellos era el castillo, una construcción romana, rehabilitada por los almohades, regalo del rey moro de Granada a la tribu de los Gazules, guerreros musulmanes norteafricanos. Hasta que vino el rey santo, Fernando III, con sus guerreros y conquistó el pueblo. Después llegó el rey poeta, Alfonso X el Sabio, en 1264. A éste no le gustaban las guerras y ganaba los pueblos dándoles coba con cultura, con poesías, con cartas pueblas y con repartimiento de tierras. No era buen guerrero, pero era excelente maestro de letras e inefable poeta que le daba por hacer cantigas en la lengua más dulce de España, la gallega. Y ponía bellos topónimos a los pueblos y a los lugares. A éste le puso uno de los más bonitos, Alcalá de los Gazules

El castillo tenía una cerca y un aljibe. La cerca pasaba por el Beaterio de Jesús María y José, limitando las dos construcciones, mientras que el aljibe quedaba dentro del recinto de las monjas. Los niños se asomaban al aljibe a ver si veían algún moro, pero sólo divisaban una gran habitación donde los moros recogían el agua de lluvia. Y un hortelano les contaba que había un pasillo por donde salían los moros al “Prao” cuando les rodeaban los cristianos. El Beaterio era muy querido por los niños y niñas, porque aquel había sido su primer colegio. Era una especie de guardería o preescolar, donde acogían a los niños de tres a cinco años.

El cariño de las monjas y la convivencia con otros niños y niñas eran el mejor regalo en aquellas edades. Su madre se había educado en el Beaterio en régimen de internado y quería que sus hijos pasaran por allí. Había recibido una buena cultura, una letra preciosa y, al mismo tiempo, había conseguido desarrollar una de sus aficiones favoritas, el dibujo y la pintura. Aún su hijos conservan excelentes muestras de aquellos trabajos que hizo en el Beaterio desde los doce a los dieciséis años, de 1912 a 1916.

El castillo estuvo vigente hasta el siglo XIX, pero con la invasión francesa fue saqueado y, al verse obligado el ejército francés a abandonarlo, lo volaron. Dicen que el pueblo luchó heroicamente para defenderlo, de manera que el Rey le concedió los tres títulos de Muy Noble, Leal e Ilustre Ciudad de Alcalá de los Gazules. A partir de entonces, las calles se fueron extendiendo hacia abajo, buscando los caminos más fáciles. Pero a él le gustaba aquella Alcalá, la de la cima del monte Gazul, no la de abajo, la de la Playa y las carreteras. Después de la guerra, un alcalde construyó con sus piedras el depósito de agua junto al castillo.

Por arriba vagaba el levante a sus anchas y, en el arco de la boca de la plaza Alta, jugaban a luchar contra la levantera, a ver quién podía más. Casi siempre eran vencidos y arrastrados sin remedio. Los jaramagos crecían a placer en las viejas mansiones de los cortesanos de Per Afán, y los perros callejeros y los gatos montunos se adueñaban de todos sus rincones. Hoy todo aquello ha sido rehabilitado. Pero a él le gustaba más aquella Alcalá, la de los quince mil habitantes, la de las monjas clarisas, la del Beaterio, la de los callejones recoletos y misteriosos.



JUAN LEIVA

domingo, 24 de mayo de 2009

Alcalá de los Gazules – a very brief history: part 1


The history of Andalucía is fascinating and rich in examples of both conflict and cooperation between cultures. Dig just a little beneath the surface of any town in Andalucia and you find yourself in the midst of historic upheavals, shifting populations, changes in languages, cultures and beliefs. Much of the history of these towns is buried in memoires in local libraries or odd paragraphs in larger works, but I've tried to put our town, Alcalá de los Gazules, in the context of the major events in a whistle-stop tour and hopefully give a taste of what that took place in these parts.

In the beginning...

Although Cádiz was known as a port in Phoenician times, until Romanisation in 206BC most of Southern Spain was ruled between three tribal groups, the most powerful of which the Turdestani, lived along the Guadalquivir, the river running through modern Seville to Córdoba.

The Romans called what is now Andalucia, Hispania Baetica and it provided the Empire with salt, olives and fermented fish sauce called garum. It was a wealthy region populated by the up-and-coming commercial types along with freed slaves and was so stable that the Romans didn't even maintain a garrison here. The area was so completely Roman in culture that the citizens of Baetica spoke a form of Latin and enjoyed the same legal rights as the citizens of Rome itself. Baetica even provided two Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian.

During the time of Roman rule, people spoke Vulgar Latin, a dialect mixing Latin, some Berber and some Arabic. Under the Romans, the area also became officially Christian though the countryside took little notice.

As the Roman Empire found itself overstretched and split into two, the weakness was exploited in the early fifth century by the Vandals, an east-German tribe, who being attacked from the East by the Huns, started migrating into Roman territory.

Internal political scheming in Rome in 429 led to a disastrous deal between the ambitious General Boniface and the Vandal King Geiseric. The deal was that the Vandals would help Boniface in his power struggle in exchange for land in northern Africa. Once the Vandal army was on the move, it was unstoppable and Geiseric invaded across the Straits of Gibraltar with 80,000 men. Eventually Geiseric even sacked Rome in 455. The Vandals called the area of Southern Spain, Vandalusia giving us the modern name.

As the Vandals were consolidating their power in Iberia, the Romans this time enlisted the help of the Visigoths, a tribe originally from the Balkans, to regain control of the peninsula. As Rome crumbled, the Visigoths pushed the Vandals into the North of Africa and took control not just of most of Spain but also most of what is now France. The Visigoths were great builders and the only ones to found new cities in Europe between the fifth and eighth centuries. They were initially tolerant of other faiths including Judaism and Catholicism, though their own religion of Arianism (not at all related to the ideology of the German Nazis) was based on the teachings of a priest regarded by Rome as a heretic. In the main they tried to keep out of religious disputes and live and let live.

In Alcalá there are still remains of buildings erected by the Visigoths including the Mesa del Esparragal, the old tower to the northwest of the town.

A visit from the neighbours...
Over the water in what is now Morocco, the warlike and independent Berber tribes has resisted all attempts at domination from the Romans, the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Byzantine Greeks. No-one controlled the Berbers except themselves!

In Andalucia, there were Christians of many types, jews, pagans, muslims, all living together peacefully but the state was riven by internal power struggles. By 700, the church had turned on the dissenters with furious repression as they sought to establish a single, all-powerful religious power. In reality far from uniting the state, they deeply divided the population.

By 711, the Visigoth rulers were seriously weakened by internal division and across the water was a muslim army of 70,000 under the command of Tariq El Tuerto (Tariq the one-eyed) who landed at Gibraltar and began 781 years of muslim rule in Spain. To the Berbers of Morocco, Andalucia looked like paradise with plentiful supplies of water, and rich soil, and fired by the belief in their destiny of spreading Islam around the world, they quickly took control of Algeciras and swept up through the country. By 714, the muslims controlled all of Southern Spain.


Meanwhile in Alcalá....

In amongst all these great historical changes, was a small village, almost half-way between Algerciras and Cádiz, 50 km inland, consisting of a few dozen people, mostly working in the campo. To the south-west of the mountains known today as Picacho and the larger Aljibe, Alcalá already had an impressive tower, the Mesa del Esparragal, built by the Visigoths commanding views towards Jimena in the East, and Arcos to the North. To the Visigoths, Alcalá was a frontier post, a status it would acquire again and again throughout the centuries.

The arrival of the Moors in 711 signalled changes for Alcalá, as for all of Spain. The population of Alcalá was predominantly Berber in origin, spoke a dialect of Vulgar Latin and Arabic which came to be called mozarabic, and those who could write, wrote in Arabic script. This legacy is still seen in modern Spanish with more than 30% of Spanish words coming from Arabic and even Alcalá is said to come from Al Qulat, the tower. Like much of Andalucia, Alcalá was what we would now call multicultural with a mixture of religions, paganism, animism and atheism. The Visigoths had made efforts to Christianise all the areas under their control but with limited success.

Muslim rule was characterised by a very liberal policy towards people of different races and cultures. Jewish, Christian and Muslim peoples collaborated and worked harmoniously for centuries producing a flourishing of culture and science at least as great as the Renaissance in the rest of Europe. Al-Andalus, as muslim Spain was called, boasted the most advanced knowledge in Europe and it was Arab scholars who first translated the Bible into Latin and Greek, enabling many Christian scholars to read it for the first time.

But it wasn't all harmony and goodwill. There were arab dynasties seeking to push their own regional interests in Al-Andalus and there were frequent invasions from the Taifas, Almoravids, and Almohads, successive dynasties ruling northern Africa. Each had their preferred princes and the whole of Southern Andalusia was a contested area, defended by fortifications and frontier lines against armies employed when political intrigue failed.

Running North to South was a line from Arcos down to Tarifa and this was frequently the fault-line between competing Arab dynasties. During the 11th century, Alcalá was part of the Kingdom of Seville, but during the 12th, it was variously part of the Kingdoms of Jerez, and of Arcos. Sometimes, Alcalá even stayed independent. It could well be that the additional “de los Gazules” indicates that uncertainty in the ownership of Alcalá though some historians say it reflected the Berber population.

In the North of Spain, the Kingdom of Castille was rattling the sabres, pushing southwards, taking land from the Moors, taking advantage of the divisions in the Almohad dynasty of Northern Africa, and finally Ferdinand III took Cordoba in 1236. For nearly ten years there was an uneasy truce until in 1246 the famous Pact of Jaén was signed. In exchange for payment, the Moors under Ibn Alhamar retained possession of Granada, Malaga, and Almeria.

For Alcalá, that meant being on yet another frontier between the area controlled by Castille, and the new Nazarí kingdom of Granada. In 1264, there was a revolt supported by Granada which was defeated by Alfonso X (known as “El Sabio”, The Wise) but this created a dangerous frontier between Vejer, Medina-Sidonia, Alcalá, and Arcos. Alcalá was given a garrison, but since the town was largely the garrison, whoever owned the garrison owned the town.

The problem was the small size of Alcalá and the fact that few people wanted to move to a dangerous area. The Kingdom of Castille needed to beef up the local population to make it stronger but few people were interested even though there were financial sweeteners like freedom from certain taxes and gifts of land. But few relished the thought of being a target, however well-paid.

In 1279, Alcalá and Medina were given to a religious order, the Orden de Santa María de España, which was a covert way of making them garrison towns. Unfortunately, every time there was a defeat and change of ruler, the frontier towns were affected. By 1282, Alcalá was owned by Guzmán, El Bueno, the ruler of Tarifa; it was given to him in payment of a diplomatic debt. A year later, he swapped the town for an olive grove near the Guadalquivir! As soon as Alfonso X died in 1284, Alcalá was attacked and devastated by the benimerines, yet another Berber dynasty from North Africa.

Alcalá was passed around like an unwanted present for the next thirty years or so as alliances shifted, until in 1310 Alcalá was given to the Duke of Cordoba, who promptly forgot to include it in his will... so Alcalá was again given back to the crown on his death. At the time, donating towns to nobles was a common form of court payment, even if some of them barely noticed.

And so it continued until in 1427 Alcalá obtained the important status of an inland port – a puerto seco – one of only eleven, in which special types of commercial trade could be transacted. This gave some stability and potential wealth to the town but right into the first half of the fifteenth century, Alcalá remained formally unowned.

Land disputes plagued the area with disputed boundaries and contests for ownership. Alcalá had possibly the longest running land dispute in Andalucia – it lasted from 1503 until it was finally resolved in 1931, a mere 428 years! It concerned the founding of Paterna and the pasture lands needed to support it.

Reconquest and Expulsions
In 1492, Jews were forced to adopt catholicism or face expulsion and the majority were dispossessed of their houses, land and wealth and forced into North Africa and Europe. Unable to accept alternative religions as the Moors had done for centuries, the Castillian rulers evicted large sections of the population of Andalucia.

Alcalá was largely Moorish and so did not experience the kind of upheaval that was to come later when the Christians turned on the Moors themselves in 1609-10.

As the Christians took control of Andalucia, Alcalá was developed as a religious centre, with the building between 1498 and 1511 of the Santo Domingo monastery. It was a centre for study and culture but was also equipped for punishment and penitence in line with the decisions of the growing Inquisition. Although it later became a training centre for priests, it also housed prisoners of the Inquisition including one Fray Domingo de Valtanás who was condemned to “unpardonable sentence for the defense of heretics” and he died there in 1568.

The sixteenth century for Alcalá was grim with frequent outbreaks of plague. In 1507 plague hit Andalucia and returned with a vengeance in 1521 killing over 50,000 people. African plague hit in 1564, followed by Mediterranean plague in 1583, and the Great plague in 1599. Little wonder then that the population was further depleted by massive emigration from the countryside to the American colonies.

In Alcalá, the Moorish past was erased. The impressive church that now stands in the Plaza de San Jorge at the top of the town, was built on the ruins of the destroyed mosque. The gothic church was extended between the 16th and 18th centuries and has baroque altarpieces and includes a visigothic pedestal and an icon of San Sebastian from the 12th century.

The original tower still stands though there is an unsubstantiated claim that within the church, somewhere behind the altar, one of the muslim builders, in stonemason's graffiti, carved Allah is Great in Arabic!

A plague on your house...
The seventeenth century saw plague devastate the population of Andalucia yet again. The combination of plague, hunger, drought, floods, failed harvests, locusts, and even earthquakes, made life desperate. Between 1618 and 1648 Spain, along with the other European powers, was involved in the so-called Thirty Years War being fought largely in Germany. For Andalucia, that meant even less food for families as the government drained their supplies to feed the armies. In desperation, throughout the 1640s there were campesino revolts and violence against the land-owners, which even reached Seville in 1652, and we see the beginning of anarchist sentiment forming in the countryside.

When the Spanish king Charles II died in 1700, there was no Spanish successor to the throne so there was a contest between the Austrian Hapsburgs, and the French Bourbons, the latter finally winning, and in fact the Bourbons are on the throne today in the person of Juan Carlos I. But that contest resulted in global warfare on four continents for thirteen years, from 1701 to 1714, the War of the Spanish Succession at a cost of 400,000 lives!

All the benefits of the Spanish Empire overseas were being squandered by the nobility who were financing lavish expenditure and debts in Europe, and they turned to the countryside for more wealth. Andalucia saw the small farms consolidated and larger scale farming introduced under very harsh conditions but it wasn't enough to satisfy the nobles. As always in times of crisis, scapegoats were sought and by 1767, the nobility had turned on the Jesuits, expropriating their land and property and distributing it amongst themselves.

In France, the revolution of 1789 raising the banner of liberty, fraternity, and equality, swept away the monarchy, but this had almost no impact on the largely illiterate population of Andalucia. The Spanish nobles kept a tight rein on the area preventing any spread of such dangerous ideas though pamphlets did appear from priests who had fled France but were sympathetic to the poor.

Napoleon and beyond...
The nineteenth century saw the Peninsular War, the growth of liberalism, a constitution signed in Cádiz in 1812, the “Carlist” civil wars, more plague and famine, the arrival of pronunciamientos or coups by the military, a failed Andalusian revolution in 1868, the rise of anarchism and the “Black Hand” paramilitary group, land reform, the caciques and señoritos, and much more.

Alcalá, just like all the towns in Southern Andalucía, was right in the middle.

In the next part we'll take a trip through these more recent events, which had such a huge influence on our town.

martes, 19 de mayo de 2009

Cortos sobre el pueblo saharaui

Hoy he recibido esta invitación en mi buzon y estoy seguro que nadie se molestará (todo lo contrario) si yo la utilizo para invitar a todas las personas que pasen por este blog.
Recuerda: Viernes que viene, a las 9 de la noche en el Instituto.

Si quieres aumentar la imagen, haz clic sobre ella.

jueves, 7 de mayo de 2009

Alcalaino Memories

[Original Spanish]

1. Consciousness and the bomb

"Colorao!" shouted the boy behind him suddenly. Immediately, he half-turned and chased the one who had shouted. It was the game of "Colours". The five boys whose turn it was to shout were opposed to the other five whose backs were turned, looking towards the wall. On hearing his colour, he'd turn around running to touch whoever was shouting, before they could reach the sanctuary marked on the floor by a circle. Those who were tagged by the enemies were out. They were the losers and they took the place of those who faced the wall representing a colour.

That afternoon they were playing colours in the alley Osorio, a blind uneven alley which opened onto the calle La Amiga. Only six neighbours lived there: my parents with their ten children, María Pizarro and her three sons, the Jiménez family - three unmarried daughters, the Muñoz family with their three sons, a single man, and the Colóns with several sons. All around the houses were decorated with lemon trees, lady-of-the-night and other flowers, and there he was playing with his friends.

Suddenly the noise of an aeroplane engine was heard, then a terrible bang that paralysed everyone. At his young age, he'd never heard anything like it, not even during the stormy days when the booms of thunder crossed the town and made the Lario shake. It seemed as though the explosion had been produced right under his very own feet. The mothers all appeared as if propelled from the same spring: María Pizarro from los Almagro, whose house was on the corner of the calle la Amiga; la Colona, a very poor family with many children who lived on the corner of the alley; the mother of the Muñoz family who seemed well off; the father of Manolo Mancilla, the sadler on the corner of Calle Real, and Gaspara, his mother, wife of Patricio Leiva, secretary to the Council.

They gathered them and put them in the basement of the Muñoz house, below that of the Jiménez family. They put some cushions on the ground, brought them some sandwiches, and they carried on playing and jumping until they fell down exhausted. As a four-year-old, he couldn't begin to understand what was happening. That night, in his dreams, he heard the buzz of the plane and the tremendous bang. He opened his eyes but only saw the sleeping boys at his side. On getting up, he felt different, as if something had changed, though he couldn't put his finger on it.

Before the bomb, he had never been aware of any event that so captured his mind with such force. It must have been important, like waking up to a new world, because our earliest memories stay with us our whole lives. When he awoke that morning in the basement, everything seemed different. He started to connect things together, to ask himself about things. Certainly he'd become aware of what was around him, but he'd never identified it, nor put names to it: his father, his mother, his brothers, his friends, his house, El Beaterio, his town... From that day on, everything took on a new meaning, as if things were lit up more vividly. That's how they were, but hidden in obscurity without needing to be recognised.

The following morning, he started to realise a few things. They were saying that some Italian pilots had bombed the town by mistake. They'd wanted to drop the bomb on Jimena de la Frontera to teach them a lesson, since it was one of the towns most resistant to accepting Franco's uprising. Jimena - that means "the leaning" - was situated at the back of Alcalá, between the peaks of Alcoba and Jateadero, by horse from the sierra del Aljibe and Monteconche. They said that the Italians didn't know the area very well and confused Alcalá with Jimena. The bomb killed a family that lived near the house.

Mid-morning, shouts were heard and they said that the father came to the street Amiga carrying in his arms, his small dead daughter, on the way to the barracks of the Guardia Civil, which was in the middle of the street. Those were the days that awoke in people the sense of destruction, of war, of pain. Some children said that the bomb should have fallen on the Guardia Civil, but it was just chatter from the older boys.

That experience lasted a very long time. Every time a plane appeared in the sky over Alcalá, he thought that it was going to drop a bomb, he had such complete distrust of aircraft. Even now, when he is obliged to take a flight, the mistrust and fear wells up, as if they were machines developed to do harm.


JUAN LEIVA

Published by Andrés Moreno Camacho
Translated by Bob Lloyd

miércoles, 6 de mayo de 2009

EVOCACIONES ALCALAÍNAS: 1.- La bomba y la conciencia

“¡Colorao”! –gritó por sorpresa el chaval que estaba a sus espaldas. Inmediatamente, dio un salto, media vuelta y persiguió al que había gritado. Era el juego de los colores. Los cinco chavales a los que tocaba gritar se enfrentaban a otros cinco que estaban de espaldas mirando a la pared. Al oír su color, salía corriendo para tocar al que había gritado, antes de que llegara al refugio señalado en el suelo con un redondel. Los que eran tocados por los enemigos quedaban eliminados. Eran los perdedores y ocupaban el puesto de los que estaban frente a la pared representando un color.
Esa tarde jugaban a los colores en el callejón de Osorio, una calleja sin salida con grandes desniveles, a la que se entraba por la calle la Amiga. Sólo vivían seis vecinos: Mis padres con sus diez hijos, María Pizarro y sus tres hijos, las de Jiménez –tres hermanas solteras-, los de Muñoz con sus hijos, un hombre soltero y los de Colón con varios hijos. Allí daba el corral de su casa con el limonero, la dama de noche y las flores, y allí jugaba con sus amigos.

De pronto, se oyó el ruido del motor de un avión y, a continuación, un zambombazo terrible que los paralizó a todos. A su corta edad, nunca había oído nada igual, ni siquiera los días de tormenta cuando los truenos recorrían el pueblo y hacían temblar la sierra del Lario. Parecía que la explosión se había producido debajo de sus mismos pies. Las madres aparecieron como impulsadas por un mismo resorte: María Pizarro la de los Almagro, cuya casa hacía esquina con la calle la Amiga; la Colona, una familia muy pobre con muchos hijos que vivía en el rincón del callejón; la de Muñoz, que parecían acomodados; el padre de Manolo Mancilla, talabartero situado en la esquina de la calle Real, y Gaspara, su madre, mujer de Patricio Leiva, secretario del Ayuntamiento.

Los cogieron y los metieron en el sótano de los de Muñoz, debajo de las de Jiménez. Colocaron unos colchones en el suelo, les llevaron unos bocadillos y siguieron jugando y saltando hasta que cayeron rendidos. A sus cuatro años no acertaba a comprender lo que había pasado. Aquella noche en sueños oía el zumbido del avión y el tremendo zambombazo. Abría los ojos y sólo veía a los chavales que dormían a su lado. Al levantarse se encontró distinto, como si algo hubiera cambiado, pero no sabía encontrar la razón.

Antes de la bomba, no tenía conciencia de otro acontecimiento que se hubiera grabado en su mente con fuerza. Eso debe ser importante, como el despertar a un mundo nuevo, porque el primer recuerdo nos acompaña toda la vida. Cuando despertó aquella mañana en el sótano, todo le parecía distinto. Comenzó a relacionar y a preguntarse algunas cosas. Ciertamente, tenía conciencia de lo que le rodeaba, pero no lo había identificado nunca, ni le había puesto nombres: su padre, su madre, sus hermanos, sus amigos, su casa, el Beaterio, su pueblo...Desde ese día todo cobró una nueva dimensión, como si las cosas se iluminaran con más viveza. Estaban ahí, pero ocultas en tinieblas sin necesidad de ser reconocidas.

A la mañana siguiente, comenzó a enterarse de cosas. Contaban que unos aviadores italianos habían bombardeado el pueblo por error. Quisieron tirar la bomba sobre Jimena de la Frontera para darle un escarmiento, ya que era uno de los pueblos que más se resistía a aceptar el levantamiento de Franco. Jimena –que significa “la recostada”- está situada a la espalda de Alcalá, entre los picos de la Alcoba y el Jateadero, a caballo de la sierra del Aljibe y Montecoche. Decían que los italianos no conocían bien la zona y confundieron a Alcalá con Jimena. La bomba mató a una familia que vivía cerca de la casa. A media mañana se oyeron unos gritos y dicen que el padre subía la calle de la “Amiga” llevando en sus brazos a una hija pequeña muerta, camino del cuartel de la Guardia Civil, situado a mitad de la calle. En aquellos días se le despertó el sentido de la destrucción, de la guerra, del dolor. Unos niños decían que la bomba la quisieron hacer caer sobre el cuartel de la Guardia Civil, pero eran comentarios de niños mayores.

Aquella experiencia le duró mucho tiempo. Cada vez que aparecía un avión en el cielo de Alcalá, creía que volvería a arrojar una bomba, algo así como cierto recelo de los aviones. Incluso ahora, cuando se ve obligado a realizar un vuelo, surge el recelo y el miedo, como si fueran aparatos preparados para hacer daño.


JUAN LEIVA

martes, 5 de mayo de 2009

La Romería y el Camino 2005

No son nuevos estos vídeos, pero a mí me han llegado ahora y como lo importante es que los protagonistas y los que no son protagonistas se lo pasen bien echándoles una ojeada... pues aquí están.
Los vídeos de la Romería son de Andrés Romero Torres y los del Camino son de Juan Ulloa. Gracias a los dos por hacerlos público.



Para reproducir el vídeo, pulsa sobre la flecha central y para cambiar de vídeo, pulsa en las flechas laterales.

domingo, 3 de mayo de 2009

VISTAS DE ALCALÁ DE LOS GAZULES


Bonitas vistas desde San José, en las que se pueden apreciar las zullas, planta de la familia papilionáceas (Hedysarum coronarium), de hojas compuestas, flores purpurinas y fruto con tres semillas, junto a la carretera que conduce a Paterna, con el puente del Prado en primera línea.

El tiempo que hará...