Letter from Iberia
Patrick Marnham
In Seville, in the Museo de BeIlas Artes, a bespectacled girl in jeans and a red beret glared in horror at Murillo's luxuriant paintings of the Virgin and the Child. A few blocks away, in the Macarena quarter of the city, there are queues forming before La Roldama's wooden carving of Our Lady. But those queuing are not tourists, this is one of the most popular objects of religious veneration in Spain. All but the face of the carving is completely concealed in silk and jewels, and over Christmas thousands of people, rich and poor, come to embrace it. Then as they leave the church, they pause at a table to buy national lottery tickets named in Her honour. The Franco regime appears to have maintained Spain miraculously in the condition of 1935. with every irreconcilable difference and mutual hatred lovingly preserved. To an outsider the process of democratic debate seems as inflexible as the meticulously grammatical slogans which are to be found all over the city. Perhaps 'Amnestia por Homosexuales' is a new idea. And in view of the result of the referendum on the new Constitution, 'Cardinal Primado, eighty bishops and seventeen thousand priests say "Vote No" has a novel pathos. But other slogans may even have been painted in the Civil War. 'Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera lives!' seems to be just as popular as when the founder of the Falange was shot in 1936. And the anarchist POUM continue to issue contradictory instructions on neighbouring walls. Readers of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia will feel at home.
After Venice, Seville may be the most beautiful city in Europe. But that, too, is a political statement. The left tend to deface the monuments of the past, such as the fine tiles on the wall of the Alcazar with verses entitled 'First Poem in the Programme of Popular Communication'. The fascists, on the other hand, have actually erected their own wall in the Plaza del Triunfo before defacing it. Meanwhile the tobacconists of the ancient Barrio sell cigarettes singly to regular customers for 5p. And the cultivated art dealers of the same quarter pay local builders about £7.00 for a load of 350 antique tiles, which have been ripped out of a demolished house, and then sell the same tiles to tourists at £2.50 each. On one slogan all factions can be quite certain that no political party will be able to assist them: 'New Seville is a Swindle'. One reads of the hopes placed in the Common Market, and hears the approaching army of PR advisers and Development Corporation chiefs.
Sometimes even today the resources of the tourist industry leave one quite unprepared for something remarkable. In central Por tugal, on a cold damp afternoon, the weather drives our party into an uninteresting-looking church. In a gloomy doorway at the end, there is a handwritten notice suggesting that the visitor enter the Chapel of Bones. Over the door there is another inscription which reads, 'the Bones placed within await the arrival of your own'.
This is inadequate warming of the sight inside. It is a low-roofed chapel, the columns of which are entirely encrusted with skulls. A verger arrives to explain that the display was created in the seventeenth century to assist those who wished to meditate on death. The bones were obtained by digging up the nearest graveyard. To one side a mummified skeleton dangles down on a wire, tendons and muscles still attached.
Beside it the headless body of a young child is suspended, apparently still partially clothed. For some reason one's first reaction is to meditate on the facial expression of Dr Donald Coggan if he were to be introduced into this room suddenly. There's more to this inter-communion business than you might think. One or two nonchalant tourists have scribbled their names, 'Nick, Evita' etc on a convenient skull. Outside, the contemporary members of the congregation placed themselves under the protection of the saint by leaving waxen images of eyes, hands and feet beneath the altar.
And, hanging from a nail on the wall, there are long, brown, dusty coils of women's hair. It is interesting to see a venerable tradition retain such vigour. Possibly Nick and Evita were not feeling so nonchalant after all.
Even in orthodox modern Iberia, reality cll• break in on tourism without warning. Cadiz, a party of tourists start to admire most beautiful old limousine which , parked by the kerb. It is a black Fleetwciod Cadillac which must have been constr, ted in the early Fifties. While fond! ,; its chrome adornments, the tourists • stir prised to see that they have been surrounded by policemen armed with submachine guns. They are stand'ing outside police headquarters and the car belongs to the Chief of Police. It does not take long to establish that they have no intention of placing a bomb in the car, but there is an even more awkward moment as the policemen realise that the Chief's car is regarded as a museum piece. The following morning, the military governor of San Sebastian is assassinated, and then the military governor of Madrid. It is a strange country where real life takes place on a Hollywood film set, while visitors in modern costume wander round under the impression that they are studying the past.
Departing visitors delayed at Mardid airport by the weather in England slowly reconciled themselves to their fate. At first there is much talk of summoning those in authority and demanding every comfort devised by man. Then, on day two of the nightmare, people realise that they are no longer tourists but refugees — and we all know what happens to them if they don't look after themselves. On day three it is possible to be quite cheerful at the incompetence of airlines, and stranded passengers are reminding each other that if this goes on for another twelve hours, the Prado will re-open. The airport even begins to be entertaining. One of the passengers waiting for his flight, a Spanish gentleman, is dressed in the height of fashion and is accompanied by a boy and girl of equally fashionable appearance, his teenage children. Suddenly this respectable figure jumps up and shouts at a grey-haired passer-by, 'Murderer! You killed my father!' The man he has shouted at pays no attention and walks on, but another Spaniard on the next bench gets up and objects. Instantly the first man kicks his shin, an act of some courage since he appears to be wearing Gucci slippers. His teenage daughter tries to restrain him, and gets punched on the chin by her father by mistake. Smaller children start to scream, more people start to fight, and it takes the police a long time to calm everyone down. Among the English travellers who have been waiting for three days, this spectacle is highly appreciated. It is the first free dis traction they have been offered since they arrived in the clip-joint which passes for a departure lounge when there are no depar tures. Finally, the police confront the eleg ant gent with the older man he originally called a murderer. It is none other than Senor Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the Spanish Communist Party. Senor Carrillo is treated with immense courtesy by the Guardia Civil. Mr Gucci, who turns out to be a member of the Falange, has to apologise to him. Perhaps things have changed in Spain after all? Except that his gentlelooking daughter is already on the telephone to her friends, and has evidently enjoyed herself thoroughly. I actually miss Madrid Airport.
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