A mythical Balearic Island

I’m just back from a great break in warm and sunny Mallorca. Or rather according to The Rough Guide the mythical fifth Balearic Island called “Majorca” (the English spelling for Mallorca). Since this is apparently a long standing Spanish joke (there are only four Islands).

As much as I enjoy The Rough Guides and have been using them to get the most out of holidays for years they are extremely patronising about the typical holidays enjoyed by ordinary working people. Now I have flown into countries and used The Rough Guide to take public transport or to hire a car and tour around the countryside while staying at small hotels or camp sites and eating at local restaurants. Which they seem to think is the only "proper tourism".

However, I also from time to time enjoy staying put for a week at a well run inexpensive “all inclusive” resort favoured by the masses. Last week I still went walking and touring most days but I mainly just wanted to indulge, crash out, read and enjoy the sea and sunshine. Some of the huge sprawling resorts are pretty awful but just rubbishing anything that doesn’t appeal to a middle aged middle class graduate reminiscing about his gap year is just toffee-nosed nonsense. I would recommend the resort Calas de Mallorca on the East Coast to most folk - it was very pretty, there was lovely walks along the cliffs and beaches, there was even (God forbid) a small but compact and lively commercial centre of bars and shops - but to The Rough Guide it is simply just awful and charmless - not even really worth a mention.

On a more serious note the picture is of a memorial “to all the victims of the civil war” (in Spanish on base) just under the Santuari de Sant Salvador in Artá (well worth a visit for the views). I do not know who erected this memorial or why (The Rough Guide did not mention it!). During the War Mallorca was occupied by the Fascists while Menorca was held by the Republicans. By co-incidence last week was also the 39th anniversary of the end of the Franco regime.

Homage to Catalonia

I had a break from blogging the other week while enjoying sunshine (and rain) in Andalucía, Southern Spain. Okay, we actually stayed in the concrete seafront “British” colony that is Benalmadena Costa. Which wasn’t that great, but it was a good central base for getting around the province.

The rain did give me a chance to reread one of my all time favourite books, “Homage to Catalonia” by George Orwell. (Or by his real name Eric Blair – these Blair’s get about).

Orwell had volunteered to fight the Franco fascist rebellion against the socialist republican government in the Spanish civil War (1936-1939). He served on the front line for several months with a Catalonia militia which supported the revolutionary minded POUM movement.

It is a compelling story by an Eton educated former Burmese colonial policeman who travelled thousands of miles to voluntary take up arms, serve in often appalling conditions and risk his life for what he personally believed in not what his country wanted him to fight for.

The book works for me on a number of levels. It is a gripping account of the misery and squalor of 115 days of trench warfare (guess where George picked up his “Orwellian” hatred of rats). The description of an assault against an enemy strong point and the subsequent hand to hand combat is compelling.

He uniquely describes the role that lice have played in European combat over the ages. Countless generations of solders in famous battles have not only had to fight the enemy before them but at the same time the lice that were attacking their genitals! This is something most history books somehow fail to mention.

The book is also a political thriller. Despite risking his life for the Spanish republic and being shot in the neck by a fascist sniper “The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail”. George was identified as a political enemy by the republican government and narrowly avoided arrest or even execution due to his association with the POUM. He had to go in hiding while still recovering from his wounds before he was able to escape out of the country.

It is also a first hand political history of an important period. In very simplistic terms the POUM were repressed by its own government because it was thought as being in favour of promoting "revolution" in Spain as the only means of defeating the fascists. While the mostly communist government believed that the defeat of the fascists was the overwhelming priority and this needed a poplar front rather than a revolution. As well as disciplined and well trained regular armies rather than "egalitarian" workers militias.

Would Cuba have survived as long as it has without its well trained and disciplined regular armed forces?

Orwell of course does not come out of things without being open to criticism. He describes some of his British compatriots serving with him as being “rift raff”? Which in the book he annoyingly does not explain or elaborate. This runs the risk of him being portrayed as a Eton snob?

I also wonder about his apparent “support” for workers “revolution”? Of course since the POUM and the Anarchists were suppressed by the government (mostly Communist), who then went on to eventually lose the War, it is tempting to think that perhaps a “revolution” might have enabled the republic to defeat the fascists. Personally, I think that the republican government was only able to survive as long as it did since it had a lot of mainstream support. From the majority of Spaniards who were neither communists nor revolutionaries.

I find it quite revealing that Orwell casually mentioned that he only saw a couple of un-vandalised churches while he was in Spain. Many churches were vandalised, destroyed or even used as toilets. While I can understand that many republicans were anti-clerical and that the Catholic Church in Spain had largely been an oppressive institution. I find it difficult to understand how sensitive, intelligent, educated people such as Orwell could not realise the fatal damage being done to their cause by such pointless and counter productive destruction of sacred Church property and by the fairly widespread indiscriminate murder of clergy? The fascists were able to gain widespread support due to this stupidity.

By co-incidence the only mention of southern Spain in the book was rather rude comments about the fall of Malaga to the fascists and about the fighting qualities of Andalucía republican militia. While ironically the only significant reference I saw to the civil war during my stay was during a visit to the impressive town of Ronda. Where during the war, republicans apparently threw hundreds of supposedly Franco supporters to their deaths from the top of the gorge that divides the town. Looking down that gorge it must have been a horrible death. Things don’t change; Hamas threw members of Fatah off the top of tower blocks last year when they took over Gaza.

Despite everything going to pieces, George did have optimism for the future even it this was based on somewhat usual circumstances. While he was on the run from the Communist republican secret police, they raided his wife’s hotel bedroom late at night. They searched the room from top to bottom and took away all his letters and war souvenirs however, because they were Spanish men, they were unable to ask his wife to get out of her bed and search the bed or even underneath it. Since he could have had many subversive documents or even arms under her bed, he felt that this was a sign that whatever happened Spain would not become a proper fascist state like Germany.

Finally, I enjoyed George's typically British sardonic comments on being constantly congratulated as being very “lucky” after surviving being shot in the neck by the sniper. He thought that it would have been luckier not to have been hit at all!

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?