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