Sean Creighton

Details

Originally printed and published by Sean Creighton. Agenda Services. (1993); re-published by Sean Creighton, History & Social Action, 18 Ridge Rd, Mitcham, CR4 2ET. 2003 & 2004

Malaga One Week

Memories of Childhood in Civil War Spain

by Carmen Cortes

PREFACE

The thirties saw Spain torn apart, the fragile Republic destroyed and the assumption of power by the Fascists. What follows is a memory of three of those tumultuous years seen through the eyes of a child, remembered as a result of the author visiting Spain in 1990 for the first time in 53 years.

Carmen's father was Gilraltarian and her mother Spanish. They lived in Malaga in Spain. During the Civil War the family moved to Gibraltar to escape from fascism.

Early in 1940, women and children were evacuated from Gibraltar. Some including Carmen went to North Africa. When the French surrendered they were evacuated to London. Carmen's father was granted compassionate leave from his work in Gibraltar to join his family in London. Later on Gibraltarians were evacuated to Ireland. After the war Carmen settled in London.

Carmen is a life long socialist and trade unionist; and she has contributed much to the struggle for human rights through her work with Amnesty. Retired now, Carmen spends much of her time writing short stories as well as continuing to support the causes which have underpinned her life.

© Carmen Cortes 1993

MALAGA ONE WEEK

Wednesday 11th April 1990

At last I was standing on Malagan soil. Because of my heart condition, I was being pushed in a wheelchair from the plane towards the exit by a middle-aged Malageño, and as I could not stop shaking, I told him I was returning to Malaga after 53 years, and would visit calle Victoria. He gave me a hug, and said. "You are one of us. You're home."

I had dreamt so many times of this day. In war torn London, freezing County Down, and the hot hell of North Africa. I felt that I would survive to see Malaga once again before I died.

My friend Anne had arranged for her mother to pick us up from the airport, and she did, but I was dismayed when I saw how high up the mountain her villa was. It meant that I could only climb the high steps once a day.

Thursday 12th April

I am sitting in a small patio with my back to the lounge, and I can see the sierra on my left; facing me the beautiful tiled roofs that hide some of the sea, but not the patch of blue sky. There is a tranquillity in the air that I remembered from childhood.

Lilliane (Anne's mother), Anne and myself went to a Tapas bar, and a waiter called me 'Boqueron del Boqueron' when he heard about my visit. ('Sardine from the Sardine'). A great compliment in Malaga. Men and women still had the graceful walk I remembered.

Good Friday 13th April

We went to a Venta-Restaurant, up at the very end of New Road. Lilliane who drove us there said that the food was excellent. The last time that I had been in that venta was in 1935 with my parents and their friends Julio and Marisa. The view was still breathtaking. In '35, there had been a piano, and Julio had played a tango while my mother and father danced, and Marisa sat with me at the table watching them. Today the sight of the venta nearly broke my heart with the pain of remembrance!

Saturday 14th April

Matt's husband has joined us at the villa. Today they all went out, but I stayed in and had a restful day.

Sunday 15th April (Anniversary of the founding of Spanish Republic 1931)

We went to the centre of Malaga. Calle Marquis de Larios was full of memories. I was surprised to see the centre intact, and some old buildings still standing. From the sound of the bombing, I had thought that the centre had been flattened. The Larios house, still has its lovely marble front, but a plaque saying "Enterprise Ltd" Yak!

Monday 16th April

Matt drove Anne and myself to calle Victorie, and up to calle Carmin. I stood outside No 14. Thinking that so many things had happened to me in that house, that I can never forgive or forget. There at last I lay my ghosts to rest, and rejected the living family, as for some unknown reason they had rejected me. I remembered Tommy my dog. He had been my friend, but we had to leave him behind on our first departure. I never wanted another dog.

I walked across the road to Dona Maria's garden. Her house stood well away from the road. She was my piano teacher when I was about eight. She told Mother that I had a good musical memory. She had been a concert pianist, and took in very few pupils. This Monday in 1990, standing there in the run-down, old, large sprawling garden I could almost hear the voices and echoes of my childhood, and I said quietly, "Rosita...... Manolito... Olegario..... Tonito. Amigos. Compañeros! Where are you now? Right now? And how many of you survived Franco's years?" Anne and Matt did not go with me into the garden, although the gate was open; they respected my wish for some solitude. "Will you be alright?" asked Anne. "Yes. Please come back for me in about half an hour."

When I was alone, I walked up to the house, but it was obviously empty; I sat under one fruit tree, and recalled some of the events of '36/'37.

After the rebellion, Matilde, Tonio, and Olegario were on the side of the Republic, which had won a resounding victory in the February elections. Rosita and her brother were very much on the side of the rebels. Their uncle was hidden in their house in an old wardrobe full of dirty linen for months.

Matilde's father was a prominent trade unionist, and Tonio had five brothers at home ready to serve with the Republic, while his father and his uncle could not wait to hear the sound of the marching feet of the Foreign Legion.

It was during that Civil War that I experienced terror for the second time in my first ten years of life. The wine cellar was our shelter; Doña Maria was a staunch Monarchist, and she had no time for fascists. Her cellar was used as shelter, except for one dreadful night when the bombing became so fierce that everyone rushed up to the shelter of the nearby mountain. Being bombed gives you a feeling of impotence; maybe the fear shows or not, but it is there. We all experience that fear under bombardment from whatever source. You sit and take it because at that moment that is all that you can do, except hope that you will be spared this time.

Some of the men swore under their breath; the old women said their rosary. The young people looked whitefaced and rigid at first. When the air raids became more frequent and thus familiar, children would giggle at the old women, who would talk to airplanes that were bombing us! The old women would say such things as: "Don't you dare drop any bombs here. We are good people, and not like the 'red rabble'". Some of the men would reply: "You just wait, and see what happens when Russia comes to the aid of our republic." Russia did come to give some help, but she did have to be given her pot of gold. Stalin insisted 'for safety'. The innocents just shook with fear and despair. I like Lorca our Andalucian poet; shot by the fascists. I was on the side of the innocent, and the working people, who get so very little for all their work. I still am.

The warning of an imminent air attack was all the church bells in Malaga ringing in unison, a sound which was fearful in itself. The All Clear was not given. We were so defenceless, that the Fascists' planes flew when and as low as they wanted to fly. We just waited for the noise of the planes to stop, before we cautiously came out of our shelters. The air-raid shelters did not exist in our areas. We used cellars, caves in the mountain, and sometimes, even 'under the stairs'. From the air we must have looked to the young 'brave' pilots like demented ants running to and fro looking for some sort of cover.

During daylight the planes flew low enough to see the bread queues consisting of women and children. I have often been asked: "Did they bomb the bread queues?" Some they did, and some they spared. I know that they bombed the gypsy camp in El Mundo Nuevo (a district in Malaga) near the Moorish Castle. Matilde and I saw pieces of the gypsies' bodies and brightly coloured pieces of rags hanging from the trees! After an air raid.

Franco paid part of his war-debt to Germany by sending the Blue Division to Russia, where many of the so called 'volunteers' froze to death in the inadequate uniform that Franco had provided. Others saw an opportunity to go on fighting fascists, and crossed over to the Russians.

BREAD - MISTER - WE WANT BREAD/WORK
(PAN--QUEREMOS--SÉÑOR--Y--TRABAJO)

Malaga late 1936

The peasants had just arrived from the heart of the sierra to the centre of town. There they sat on the edge of the pavement, their feet firmly on the gutter. The old men dressed soberly in the Sunday best, dark suits that were probably relics from their Wedding Day.

The young men wore drill trousers and old jackets, that had been obviously mended many times. No-one had taught them city manners. They looked the only way that they could look, dull witted, heavy, like beasts of burden, work-worn out. They acted the only way they knew. As they had always been treated; like mules.

These Spanish peasants wore their beret pulled over the forehead almost to eye level, a sort of symbolic shield against the city sharpies. These peasants had seen their bosses fields turned into bloody battlegrounds, and it was rumoured around Malaga, that some of these peasants had hanged some of the landowners on the village square and burnt down their houses.

The young men were awaiting to join the militia of the Republic, but this republic was still too young and too short a time to teach these peasants even how to read. The older men just sat and watched, waiting to be told what to do by their leaders. Each group seemed to have a leader, who read the daily news to them from the local newspaper. The leaders also dealt with the clerks that came to the Plaza to deal with the applications made by the peasants to join the militia to work or fight for the Republic. According to my father even to die for the Republic one had to apply for permission.

The peasants farted freely, spat out black tobacco juice, and got rid of excess mucus by squeezing the tip of the nostrils with two fingers, and letting the worst follow the law of gravity. The rest was wiped away with either sleeve.

From my childish point of view, the peasants did everything that I would have enjoyed doing but was not allowed to do. Many of them were soon in the militia and I saw them a few days later after their arrival wearing 'el Mono' ('the Monkey'). This was a one piece overall usually dark khaki with many pockets. A workman's uniform. The new soldiers had a small pebble to hold in their right hand to indicate to them that the hand holding the pebble was the right hand, and the hand without the pebble was the left hand. What happened to the peasant that was left handed, can only be imagined! The corporal that drilled them daily in the Plaza de La Merced shouted at them, insulted them, and swore at them to the delight of our group as we watched from a safe distance at the corner of calle Victoria. We learned many new words from the drilling corporals. One of them stuck in my mind because of its lovely sound. (PA-LAN-GA-NE-ROS) Slang for a sort of pimp of the worst kind. Abuelita explained to me what some of the words meant, but warned me not to use them until I was a bit bigger or someone would surely hit me. She had a different code of conduct than m any of her generation; very basic. You did not spit, you washed daily, you ate what she gave you. If the three rules were kept, she left you alone, and did not tell you what to think, or to do everything as a robot!

The peasants at the plaza looked impassive, and lost. I heard later that most of them died at the front, or were shot by the Rebels after the fall of Malaga. Father said one evening when he arrived home from calle Larios, that some of the peasants had been jailed by orders of the Civil Governor of Malaga for causing disturbances; the event became quite common. Workers with grievances got together with some of the peasants, and settled scores with their former employers. Then the governor would use the local police to jail them until their mates in the militia got them out. But despite everything there was a lightness of spirit in the air; a feeling that seemed to say for the first time among workers: "I may be different than you, but I am just as good." The 'rich' customers, good and bad, trembled!

Even as a child I had noticed before the events of 1936, a feeling of fear in the eyes of some workers (most of them serving the public), a fear of not pleasing, of lifting the head to look customers in the face in case it was thought defiance or worse insolence. Some of my mother's friends would often say: "I had to let her go. Did her work well enough, but I caught her staring at me." When Mother told this to Abuelita she just said: "Your friend has put another girl 'on the streets'. She wants shooting!" In 1935, for a worker the most feared word was to get 'La Pata' ('The Kick Out') but for a brief time in 1936 that fear was gone.

When asked by some journalists from Madrid what they did want the peasants shouted at them the eternal cry of peasants through the ages. "LAND, BREAD, FREEDOM". That's all.

By then Julio, who had been in a military academy in Cataluna, was now a captain in the Republican Army and stationed in Malaga. He was billeted in our house. He and Marisa shared my bedroom and I slept under the large old fashioned table in the corner of our dining room, and John the English volunteer slept in the recess of the small hall just inside the flat.
Some of the young soldiers came to our home to collect from Julio the few pesetas allotted to them daily by the Madrid Government. As they left they would mutter "Gracias mi capitan. Gracias". Julio usually replied looking uncomfortable: "Don't thank me because this is your money and comes to you from the Republic". But they looked doubtful as they shuffled away. "Marxist" Marisa often said with disdain. "I am willing to die for these peasants" (she did) and she would go on to say: "But I could not live with them". Returning home after queuing for hours for bread and anything that was on offer in the few shops left open, past the peasants that were sitting as usual on the edge of the pavement around calle Larios, and La Plaza de la Merced, Marisa and my mother would exclaim as soon as they arrived home: "They are barbarians. They look disgusting, and have no manners!"

At that time I was too young to understand that it was the bread provided by these 'barbarians' that had kept us alive in the past, and kept us alive now. Abuelita, my grandmother on mother's side, was a five foot bundle of slim energy; eternally on the move; or so it seemed to me. She treated the peasants kindly but roughly, but then she treated everybody the same way with the exception of my father. They addressed each other as formally using the 'usted' ('you') rather than the 'tu', which is a more intimate form of 'you', and which was used with members of the family and friends.

Abuelita had peasant features, jet black hair, and black eyes very deep and very penetrating. She was a dogsbody for the family, being a widow, with two children from her second marriage and with no income of any kind except what she earned by helping anyone who needed her help within the family and what father and mother provided. They paid her rent and light bills. It was an unwritten agreement that they would help her until my aunt and uncle were old enough to take over. Across the years I can see that perhaps she knew just how those 'descamisados' ('the shirtless ones') felt.

Sometimes we saw young women dressed in the Mono, laughing, smoking and talking with the men in the street. These women wore a short red scarf around the neck. We children were fascinated by them. Marisa said that she admired them. Julio and Dad said nothing about the smoking-trousered-gun-carrying women, but they wore a grave look of disapproval when the subject of the milicianas came up and my mother would sigh and say that women should not smoke in the streets!

Mother and Marisa often smoked one or two cigarettes from Dad's store which he kept locked up near his bedside table in a small wall-cabinet that was really a safe in the wall. Everyone called it Papa's cabinet.

Mother had a key and often raided it looking for cigarettes which she and Marisa enjoyed smoking in secret. Julio did not smoke so he must have noticed it when his 'woman' smoked. Dad just ignored the whole thing.

Sebastiana a young peasant woman who did all the work around the house, and came early in the morning and left late in the evening; liked a smoke, and I would get her one from time to time from Papa's cabinet. Sebastiana was very religious, and gave all her money to her sister, whose husband had a 'bad back and did not work'. She was one of Abuelita's neighbours, and was very grateful to her for finding her the job at our house. Her only sin was the occasional smoke, and she was the only person who listened to my stories. Although she could no longer go to church because of the conflict, she was so harmless that no one objected to her thanking the Lord for everything; which considering we were being bombed daily, was very tolerant of us.

Abuelita turned up at our door, one day wearing a red scarf around her neck. She had asked and obtained the scarf from a miliciana, and Mother pointed out in horror that Abuelita in her black dress and red scarf might be taken for a member of the FAI (Federacion Anarquista Iberica) which in my mother's eyes, and fertile mind had committed every crime that had ever been committed. Abuelita just said laughing: "I wear what I like, and I like the scarf". My mother sighed, to my knowledge she never won an argument with her strong minded mother.

Not all the peasants were pleasant. Some of the young ones soon copied the bad habits of the city, especially as regards women. When they saw two good looking women (most women except maids and 'dogsbody' like my own grandmother) seemed to me to walk in pairs, and holding each other's arms. The young peasants would shout 'piropos' more offensive and basic than the Malagan men would express. A piropo is supposed to be a compliment from a man to a woman whatever her age, or looks, because according to Malagan men, a woman always has something worth admiring from a man and vice versa.

My first political lessons began at that early age while I listened to Dad's radio (no-one but Dad was allowed to touch that radio with the 'green eye'). The radio station from Seville would say. "It is not true that we are bombing open cities". Seville was already in Rebel hands and was being used for propaganda by radio by one of Franco's generals, Queipo de Llano. I having just returned from the cellar after an air raid by the very people that were claiming on the radio that they were not doing so! Those radio talks from Seville taught me a great deal about politics and human nature.

Radio Malaga sometimes insisted in a firm well modulated man's or woman's voice (they took turns): "It is not true that some of our citizens are now burning convents, and large rich houses, and other properties. It is not true that some of our citizens are shooting people Chicago style as the wicked people at Radio Seville are saying."

We still had the sting of the burning buildings in our nostrils. The sound of gun fire that came from the shooting of 'suspects' that had been driven to somewhere up the road, and shot on the way to the sierras, was still ringing in our ears. The Chicago style execution was carried out by making the person step out of the car, make a run for freedom, and then he would be shot until he was dead. I did not hear of any women having been taken 'up the mountain' to be shot.

Soon we were under siege. We were eating green bread that turned the bowels to water. One day Julio came home, but only for a few hours, and I heard him tell Dad. "Mike what are you waiting for? Take your wife and child back to Gibraltar and out of this hell. Now." Father replied calmly. "When our Consul tells me to leave, we shall, even if we have to go on the last boat to leave Malaga Harbour."

John (Juanito) the English volunteer, had left for the front. Our flat was silent and desolate after Julio's departure for the Front at Almeria. He had spent an hour locked in with Marisa in my bedroom, and later she came out silent, and dry eyed to see him off. He had embraced Mother and Dad and given me a big hug. Then his official car sped him away from our lives towards what we thought at the time certain death.

A few days later we too left Malaga. Early in 1937, just before Italian tanks rolled into the defenceless city. We sneaked away to a friend's house not far from the harbour, and I was not allowed to say good-bye to any of my friends. Matilde, and Tonio the beautiful boy who had given me my first kiss, had decided at the last meeting of our little group to defend Malaga. We would fire from the roof tops, we would never surrender. We had it all planned. Tonio was not a boyfriend in my later understanding of that word. I loved him on the same level as I loved Matilde, or the others, for the way they made me so happy when in their company and for their pleasant looks, and for who can say what. Anyway we had it all worked out. We would defend Malaga as we have seen it done in the film about the Red Guerrilla!

Very early one morning Hoppy, a cab driver, a friend of Dad, took us to the harbour. An English Destroyer ship was just outside the harbour, and we had to take a launch manned by English sailors that was to take us to the ship. Father was in another boat with other men, and we, Mother and myself, were in a launch with a couple of women and some children.

That morning I saw for the first time, and perhaps for the last time in my life, pure unselfish, deep love mixed with desperate and helpless fury. All those emotions showed on the face of the tall man standing on the quay, with a militiaman on each side of him, as his small daughter (six or seven years old) was forcefully detached from him, not unkindly by an English sailor, and bundled into our launch and into the arms of a young woman who looked like the girl, and was her mother.

As long as I live I shall never forget the desperate cry of that unknown little girl as she shouted: "Papa! Papa! Papa!" as she struggled to free herself from her mother's arms. And the figure of the silent man in the rumpled suit, and open necked shirt as he was led away by his escort in handcuffs will haunt me always. The sight of that desperate human being has made me think of men first as my fellow creatures and secondly as men.

My own departure was less dramatic. I had cried when Tommy left for the country, and clung to the door of the cab saying "I can't leave Malaga, and my friends". Then Abuelita pushed me into the cab and walked away.

After a few months in Gib, Dad decided to take a chance and applied at the Spanish Consulate for permission to take us back to Malaga. He gave them the impression that he intended to reside there again as if nothing had happened. I believed that we were really going to reside with the fascists, but the day before our departure from the Rock I heard Dad, Mother and his aunt having a big discussion about the wisdom of going back to 'that hell' - mother's words. Dad insisted that we would be safe, and that he only wanted to collect our things, see some friends and leave Malaga as soon as possible. So in early summer 1937 we returned to Malaga.

Before we left Gib, my father's aunt raised the question of my education, and was told that the matter would be seen to when we came back. I had not been to any sort of school for over a year. The convents were closed, and my parents had been too busy trying to survive! Meanwhile I read everything I could find, and kept reading my old school books over and over again.

MALAGA - 1937

We arrived at night. The streets were dark, quiet and deserted, giving an atmosphere of fear, a clammy undefined fear. We went first to Abuelita's place and she told us to be very careful and to watch ourselves at all times with everyone, and sadly added 'including me'. We would have to carry our papers around with us everywhere, and move about as little as possible, and show our documents to anyone who demanded them even if they were not in uniform. No one was allowed to linger, talking with anyone on the sidewalk was out, as they would be arrested. Above all she said to us looking suddenly very tired and very serious: "If you want to survive, give the fascist salute on every public occasion, like this." She lifted her right arm extended palm outwards. Then with some of her old mischievous humour she added "The Cales (gypsies) now say in their lingo when they salute: "Up to here we're in the shit". And they have suffered many deaths at the hands of the fascist death squads."

Abuelita then went on to tell how she had spent a whole night burning every paper with Julio's name on it, and how some neighbours had helped to shove most of Julio's and Marisa's clothes down a well near the Mundo Nuevo. One of Abuelita's neighbours had shot his son before he could surrender to the on coming rebels and then shot himself through the head.

Abuelita said that just after Julio turned up at her house, where Marisa was hiding, and Marisa left in the truck full of militia (men and women) with Julio, and she was only wearing her night clothes and his army pre-war coat.

Later that week troops dressed in Italian uniforms had chased boys who were still in short pants, and were running towards the Almeria front to join troops still loyal to the Republic. Abuelita wept as she spoke.

We arrived at our old flat feeling depressed. Inside everything was clean and tidy and very quiet. (No Tommy to greet us.) Abuelita had even left a cold supper and a bottle of vino tinto for us. She did not come home with us, saying: "I'll come tomorrow" as she waved us off we could hear her saying in a whisper: "Cuidado...Careful".

That very night while we were having our Cena (late supper) they came for mother. The secret police; two men in dark suits like American Gangsters. I could never remember their faces. We could hear another man pacing up and down outside our door. I was too frightened to look up at any of them. Father sent me to my bedroom and told me to stay there until he came for me. A few minutes later I heard a car driving away, and I came out of my room.

Mother and the two men were gone, and a whitefaced, wild-looking man that I hardly recognised as my father was begging the man who stood outside our open door to let him follow mother. The man said shortly: "No". At last Dad persuaded the man to let him go across the road to Rosita's villa.

Rosita and her mother came over and stayed with us all night. Rosa, Rosita's mother had sent a message to Abuelita who asked uncle Pepe who was an "old Shirt" (one of Franco's 5th column men) to go to the commisaria where Mother was being held. Rosa told Dad that her husband and her father-in-law would get Mother off and added: "This time at least". (My Mother had helped to hide Rosa's husband and uncle, and had saved their lives). Rosa advised Dad that it would be just as useless to go to the British Consulate with these Nationalists, as it would have been with the Reds; both disliked the British at the moment. Rosa said that 'they' would try again, "so get out of here with your family as soon as you can imagine it possible". She promised to help as much as she could.

Meanwhile Rosita stayed with me in our large kitchen, teaching me the Fascists' marching songs. Even at that early age, I realised that a great ideological gap existed and would always exist between us. She took to fascism with great gusto.

Mother returned to us in the early hours of the morning. Her uncle Pepe, and Abuelita came back with her. She looked dazed and kept rubbing her hands nervously, and refused to have anything to do with me. Abuelita put me to bed giving me a big hug as she tucked me into my bed clothes. Later I heard that one of our neighbours, Don Marco, had reported my mother to the Fascists, because he said that she sang "La Internacional" and so did her little girl (me) and he also told them that we had a Republican Captain living in our flat. He was an educated man who had taught me to play chess, and who had been my friend. At the start of the Civil War Mother had saved his life by telling the militias that Don Marco was away in the country with his family, when she knew that they were
hiding in the loft!

Mother stayed in bed for the next few days, and would not stop telling at every opportunity what Rosa's husband had said in the comisaria. She, mother, had been working for Franco all the time, and that she had secretly admired Franco! Finally even my Abuelita got sick of hearing that and left; leaving a neurotic woman, who from having been an easy going mother, had turned into what I can only describe into a tyrant, and I tried to keep out of her way. From what I heard Mother telling Dad, she had not been treated badly, because the man in charge had recognised her, as the 'brave little woman' who brought bread to Rosa's family hidden between her thighs! And who had kept them alive.

Everyone looked subdued; afraid. My friends looked so clean and tidy. Matilde's mother had died in an air raid, and her father was in prison. She was staying with her aunt who lived at the end of our road. When we met, just once after my return to Malaga, she stood outside my window dressed in black, with large circles around her beautiful eyes. I asked her to come inside the house, and she said sadly: "No". We held hands through the space made by the white bars across my window. (It was usual in Spain then to have bars across windows and balconies.) On an impulse I whispered so that only she could hear me. "If it takes more than twenty years, 'we' ('los nuestros') will come back. At that moment Rosita joined me at the window. She spent most of her waking hours at my place. She now said to Matilde in a mocking voice: "Have they sent your father's clothes back to your aunt yet?" Matilde, my Matilde, our leader, hung her head, and said in a small voice: "No, not yet God willing. Never!" Then turning to me she said: "I suppose that now Rosita is your best friend you even give the fascist salute". Something made me say angrily: "No" I repeated firmly. "No". Then went on: "I salute the English Army salute like this" and gave a very good imitation of the salute which I had copied from watching an army instructor saluting an officer on the Casemates in Gibraltar only weeks before.

It was then that Rosita demanded her reward. Had she not stayed all night with me while we awaited my mother's return? "No" she said laughing. "Carmencita, you also give the Franco salute. Let's do it". And she raised her right arm, and I raised my right arm while I looked down and thought of the terrible men who had come to take my mother away, and for which I felt she will never forgive me. At that age I took the blame for mother's arrest. When I looked up Matilde had turned her back on me and was gone. I never saw her again. So I added cowardice to my many other real and imaginary sins!

According to Rosita anyone looking scruffy was a 'Rotten Red'. l knew that to be a lie because Marisa was the smartest woman that I had known, and she was not rotten, but she was a red through and through.

The fascists were enticing the youth into their ranks, and fooling some of them, except the children of Los Nuestros, whose fathers, brothers and friends had gone to take part in the defence of Madrid, or else they were rotting in the prisons awaiting their turn to be shot. The family would receive their clothes back. Franco was taking revenge on the Malageños. Mass shootings against the wall in the main prison yard took place regularly, and it had to be whitewashed often, because even the soldiers were sickened at the sight of so much blood. Some foreign prisoners who managed to survive told later of screams and cell suicides, and of great courage!

Young boys were parading now in the streets with well pressed black shorts, blue shirts with the sleeves turned up one inch just above the elbow, and black shining shoes. All day long they strutted up and down our street. An army of children aged about six to ten years. The girls were also recruited in this 'army' and wore black skirts and blue blouses. They called themselves Margaritas (daisy) and the boys were called Flechas (arrows).

The night before we left Malaga for the second time that year, Dad booked a late dinner at Ganbrinus a fashionable restaurant in Malaga. Smartly dressed we arrived at the place to find it full of army officers and their 'women'. We saluted before sitting down in a small recess in the darkest part of the room. I heard father say in a low voice to mother: "We'll have whatever you want no matter the cost, and what money is left, we will divide between your Mother and Hoppy."

I remember having fish soup, salmon and caviar on toast. Father asked me to remember the first time that I had tasted caviar, vermouth and a sip of champagne. The drinks made me feel a little light-headed. At home I was allowed to drink some wine with my main meal, but very little.

My parents had tears in their eyes as they toasted 'Espana' and in a lower voice 'Los Nuestros'. Later that night there was a torch procession through the centre of town, but fearful of the curfew, we tried to keep well away from the main streets, as we hastened home. But we could see the distant flares of the torches carried by the Blue Shirted men.

At home I heard Mother and Dad talking about the news that they had heard through the gypsy grapevine, that Julio and Marisa had got away to Madrid. The day following our great farewell dinner once again within months we were driven to the docks, and boarded a ship for Gibraltar. I did not say goodbye to Malaga that time because to me that cowed city was no longer 'my Malaga'.

Normal war (if any war is ever normal) is terrible, but each side tries and often succeeds in hiding some of the beastly things their sadistic bullies get up to. But in a civil war quite often both sides see and often experience the sadism of both sides, and that to me makes civil war even more terrible than 'ordinary' war. Civil war robs humans of any illusion because it is too real! A country like Spain, a country of great culture, but a country of bullfights and religious fanaticism, made civil war really horrible for guilty and innocent alike.

MALAGA 1990

Tuesday 17th April 1990

We had lunch at home and then went to see Matt off at the airport. We then returned to the villa. Later that evening Anne and her mother went out to visit friends, and I stayed in to watch Spanish television.

Wednesday 18th April (The day of Departure)

Anne and myself went to the little market on the nearby beach. I walked to the edge of the water, and dipping my right hand into the exploited but to me still beautiful Mediterranean I said farewell to the Mare Nostrum again. I felt like the Moor must have felt when he had to leave his beloved Granada, and when he ordered his musicians to sing his lament: "Adios Granada, Granada mia. Yo no te vuelvo a ver mas en la via" ("Goodbye Granada, my Granada, I shall never see you again in this life.")

We walked along the beach looking at the colourful stalls, crammed with clothes, souvenirs, leather goods and cassettes. We bought some souvenirs and also some Spanish cassettes. When suddenly I heard a man singing a folk song; the years rolled away and I could almost hear Angelillo a Spanish pop singer of the thirties singing. I went over to a stall and bought the cassette containing the song I had just heard. That Wednesday in 1990, I was happy to see the children of the gypsy sellers, well-dressed and looking well fed, playing near their parents vans. How different they were from the gypsy children of the Malaga of my childhood. They then looked half starved and ran around almost naked. That was Malaga of the thirties. Now in 1990, they looked what they are. Children. Not the poor thieving little beggars of long ago.

Lillianne drove us to the airport almost in silence. She looked a small lonely figure as she left us in the departure lounge. ADIOS--ADIOS MALAGA!

Back in London one night I looked at some photos old and new, and suddenly I can almost hear dad long ago in 1943, in the flat where we lived at the top of London Mansions in London Avenue, Fulham. He said to Mother in a calm voice: "Concha, I saw Hoppy in Knightsbridge today."

My mother stopped serving the soup, and said with a smile: "Not the cab driver from Malaga?" Dad said: "The same one, and he told us he saw Julio on crutches in Madrid before it fell to the rebels. Hoppy managed to get to France before they shut the frontier, and he got to London via Dunkirk."

Mother was shaking with emotion while Dad, my small brother and I waited for our soup. "What happened to our friend Marisa?"

Dad said: "Julio lost his right leg." He continued in a sad voice: "Marisa was killed fighting as a miliciana on the outskirts of Madrid."

There was a long silence, and then my mother, looking as if she had just come back to us from a long way off, said in a small voice: "And how is Hoppy?" Father said quietly, but firmly. "Marisa made her choice, so please don't grieve for her and as for Hoppy, he lives up to his name. Hopping around, and making jokes around the bars as he calls the Pubs."

Mother asked: "But what does he do now?" Father said: "Hoppy's English is very bad, so he can't work with the cab. He helps to clear debris from bombed sites."

SUMMER 1990

In my tiny bedsit in Battersea in the early morning I make a cup of coffee, put on the Malagan tapes, sit back in my most comfortable chair, eyes closed while I listen to the words. My mind goes back to the small patio overlooking the sea and sierras; tranquillity washes over me, as during my one week in Malaga, after fifty-three years. The trip to Malaga helped me to lay the memories of the trauma of the years 1935, 1936, 1937. The words of the pop song go something like this:

Vives solamente en el pasado
como si el mundo se hubiera terminao
La vida no es pasado que es presente
Y todo loque fue, ya esta borrao

English equivalent: -

You only live in the past.
as if the world had ended.
Life is not the past but the present.
And everything that was is scrubbed out


Carmen Cortes