A crazy Dream

ANDRÉS VICENTE GÓMEZ

In everybody's life, and mine is no exception, there is a defining moment or a turning point where chance, luck, fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it, shows you a new way and presents challenges. For me, that moment occurred on a winter morning in 1960, at the Netherne Mental Hospital, located in the outskirts of Coulsdon (Surrey), where I was working and being trained as a male nurse. On that day, I received a letter from my former boss, Niels Larsen from Denmark. In a few months, he was going to produce and direct a feature film called "Tela de araña" (Spider Web) and told me that if I was willing to return to Spain, I could work with him on the project. Since then, my life would be inextricably linked to the cinema.

I had been living in England for two years, since the age of sixteen, after having fled the moral and intellectual poverty that prevailed in Spain in those days. I picked potatoes in Lincoln, apples in God-knows-where, worked as a surgery room technician in Lewisham and washed dishes at a teahouse in Croydon. During that period, I discovered rock and pop music, sex and books that where banned in Spain. The first books I bought were "The Spanish Civil War", by Hugh Thomas and "The Spanish Labyrinth", by Gerard Brenan. In the London of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, I learned about personal freedom.  

Until I went to England, I had spent my whole life in Madrid. I was born in the district of Leganés, but when I was two-years-old my parents settled down in Carabanchel, near my maternal grandparents. My mother was a dressmaker and my father worked at the boilers of an antibiotics company and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Additionally he worked hard for a few hours as a market gardener at the vegetable gardens & orchards of Carabanchel. Throughout my entire childhood, I saw my parents work from morning until night, seven days a week. 

My mother was obsessed with the idea that I should study. Thus, from age 5 to 8 I received private lessons at the house of Doña María, a Frenchwoman married to an army officer whom Prime Minister Manuel Azaña had exempted - together with others - from active military duty during the Second Republic. They lived in a detached house in the residential area of "La Prensa" (the press) and there I started learning French, elementary mathematics (until the level of algebra), Latin and music, especially sol-fa. When I was eight, I went on my own to San Isidro College to take the entrance exams to be admitted to middle school. I failed, despite my exceptional knowledge, because I spelled the word "gypsy" with a "j" in a five-line dictation test. My mother was very disappointed because they had invested a lot of money and effort on my private classes. She then decided to send me to a "normal" school. Thus I ended up at the Don Pablo Cultural Center, which was run by a Red (leftist Republican or anti-fascist) ex-priest married to Doña Isabel, also a teacher. There I successfully completed my middle school studies and passed all my exams. Since languages were optional, I studied English and took my exams in French.

University was out of the question for the son of "Red" workers from a family that had fought in the Civil War on the Republican side and had relatives who ended up in prison. My parents therefore decided that I shouldn't continue studying. They looked for recommendations and contacts and eventually I was left with two options: work as an errand boy at the Banco Central or as a bellboy at the Hotel Zurbano. I opted for the second alternative, not knowing how important the choice would be for my future. I spent eighteen months running errands, buying and selling bullfighting tickets to tourists, trafficking in packets of blonde tobacco cigarettes which I obtained from American soldiers staying at the hotel on their way to their bases of Torrejón, Zaragoza and Rota.

It was at the hotel that I met Niels Larsen, who offered me to work for him. I also met Gudie Lawaetz, Juanita Moya, Augusto Boué, Pilar and her sister Maribel at his office where he represented actors and worked on film promotion. 

Personal and professional contact with Niels Larsen, a refined man and a true Don Juan, opened the door for me to a group of cultivated, educated and affectionate people who triggered my imagination, drew me away from Carabanchel and soon from poor, sad and rude Spain. 

Having fallen in love with Pilar, when she decided to get married and migrate to Canada, I too went to the Canadian Embassy then located in the España Building, determined to follow her. There I was told that immigration applications were only given to people over twenty-one. Disappointed and convinced that without Pilar, there was nothing for me in Spain, I decided to leave for England and spend some time there. Everyone encouraged me to go on the grounds that learning English - which I already spoke though badly - was useful.

My parents -especially my mother- supported this decision and gave me all the money they could, although I recall that it wasn't much because when I arrived at Victoria Station in London I only had three pounds and some shillings in my pocket.

The day I left, my whole family was there at the Estación del Norte (Railway Station), with tears in their eyes, especially my parents. They bid me farewell as if I were traveling to another planet. My cousin Julia, who was like a sister to me, was also there.

In Valladolid, a youngster climbed onto the train and we soon became close friends. I crossed the border into France through Hendaya and spent 5 days with him in Paris. I, having never left Madrid, was completely astounded at the sight of that beautiful city. I was so impressed by everything that I sent a letter to my mother telling her: "Even the sidewalks are different".

In Paris I stayed with some Spanish exiles, relatives of Moni (África), my first "girlfriend" from Carabanchel. Paris fascinated me; there, I discovered the El Globo library, the "Ruedo Ibérico" (a publishing house founded by refugees from the Spanish Civil War) and many books that were banned in Spain, which I eventually bought at Foyles in London. I visited the Louvre, the Eiffel tower, Pigalle and roamed around the surroundings of the square of la Republique, which is where Dani, Moni's cousin, lived and where I was staying.

From Paris I continued on my way by train to London and from there to my final destination: a potato pickers' camp in Lincoln. I had to spend the night in London at the Salvation Army in Charing Cross, in a large dormitory were people slept with their clothes under their pillows for fear they might be stolen. From the Salvation Army I moved on directly to the barracks that lodged my fellow immigrant potato-pickers at Lincoln. There, an Indian cook would wake us up in the mornings to the tune of: "Come Fly with Me". We were a rather heterogeneous group from different countries: a few Spaniards, some Yugoslavs, Italians and Frenchmen, all of whom had to work extremely hard for a miserable salary.

I only put up with it for a short time before I moved on to picking apples which I found to be less tiring. While gathering potatoes, I'd spend most of the time crawling on the ground so that at the end of the day my back hurt so much that it almost made me cry. I recall that I spent my first night there sleeping out in the open because I had such pain that I couldn't climb up the twenty steps that led to the barracks quarters. By contrast, collecting apples meant that I'd be up in the trees, climbing from branch to branch, in search of those sweet, red and bright-colored fruits that looked so tasty. 

At the end of the summer and with it the end of the harvesting season, I went back to London and turned up at the house of the Terrys - a Spanish theater actor and actress who were Republicans in exile. The couple were friends of some neighbors of my family back in Carabanchel. He, the actor, a blind man whose name I cannot recall was a very passionate individual who liked me so much that he put me up in their house and helped me find a job. I got to know their son and grandson and I have always felt sorry about having lost contact with them thereafter. To the very last day of my stay in England, they helped me. I learnt many things about life and postwar Spain from them. For instance, I found out that one could be a left-winger, a Republican and have lost the war and in spite of it hate Russians, particularly the Soviet Communists. The arguments that went on between them and other Spanish exiles in favor and against Communism were endless.

A crazy dream - cont'd