Saturday, December 29, 2007

Ill wind from the Canaries

Back in the early hours of this morning from a festive break in Gran Canaria. Left the warm sunny Isle and arrived over Gatwick amidst a very rainy, windy and bumpy squall. After the plane landed safely the passengers burst out in applause!

When we started the holiday the previous Friday the first thing I saw as we left the aircraft and queued to get into Las Palmas airport was an A3 poster with individual pictures of the 6 “most wanted” ETA terrorist suspects. They all looked very young. Also, unlike “wanted” posters I’ve seen in the UK where often the pictures had come from police custody records and the person is usually scowling at the camera and looking very shifty. These photos I assume mostly came from ID or passport applications since the pictures were of people smiling nicely into the camera (probably trying not to giggle – as you do). It was very strange. Not sure whether this is an argument for ID cards in the UK or not?

We stayed at a hotel in the Playa Del Ingles. This was the first time we had visited Gran Canaria so we were not too sure what to expect. As our transfer bus arrived in the town (about 22.00) I saw a young northern European male get out of a taxi while enthusiastically swigging from a full bottle of wine. However, the resort was fine, clean, with marvellous sandy beaches, dunes and only a few “Costa del tacky” bits. It is a sunbathers and wind surfers' paradise. In the hotel there were mostly German guests and it was refreshing to be amongst people who had as little foreign languages skills as we had. People would speak to us in German and would be astonished that we could not understand them. I think it is a bit of a myth that everyone in Europe can speak English.

We had a fantastic all day walk up to the mountain village of Artear, walking back along a desolate barranco (“ravine”). It felt as if you were in a “Wild West” film set.

On Friday morning I had the shock of seeing the headlines in newspapers for sale in the supermarket about the murder of Benazir Bhutto.

While in the airport waiting to come home there were more of the posters of the 6 wanted ETA suspects. In the some of the posters the bottom 2 of the pictures had been cut out? So I don’t know whether that means they have been captured or not. At the airport you could see military hangers with Spanish air force planes. In 1936 the future Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco had been “transferred” by the republican government away from his Foreign legionnaires to Gran Canaria, they were justifiably suspicious of his intentions. According to Lonely Planet (3rd edition). The pro-government commander of the Las Palmas garrison died in “mysterious circumstance” on July 14. Franco then seized control of the Canary Islands and flew out of this airport to Morocco on July 19 1936. The rest is history.

The latest “permanent ceasefire” by ETA has broken down. A bomb killed 2 passengers in Madrid airport last year and 2 unarmed policemen were shot dead early this month. While I have no time for terrorists who attack Parliamentary democracies (no matter how flawed) and I suspect (hope) that eventually ETA will give up their pointless “armed struggle” and disarm. However, I can’t help agree with the conclusion on Wikipedia that the roots of ETA support lies in the attempt by Franco to destroy Basque nationalism because many opposed him during the civil war. Franco banned the Basque flag, celebration of holidays, speaking the language publically or teaching it and even the baptism of children with non-Spanish names

You can play with history “what if ...” all the time. However, if Franco had never left this island in 1936, if he had been arrested or the plane crashed on route then perhaps the kids in the wanted posters might been on holiday with their friends in Gran Canaria surfing or playing beach volleyball. Rather than been hunted down like animals across Europe?

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