Ghosts of Spain (62 page)

The arrests in Marbella opened the floodgates. Suddenly mayors, councillors and building developers around Spain were
being picked up for similar crimes. At the same time corruption cases began to blossom in regional governments from Valencia and the Balearic Islands to Andalucia. Even the monarchy found itself being dragged into the dirt, with the king’s son-in-law Iñaki Urdangarín, Duke of Palma, accused of cashing in on the largesse of some of the more corrupt administrations. At the time of writing there is feverish speculation over whether the duke, who denies wrongdoing, will be indicted for his dealings with the Balearic Island and Valencia governments. Little surprise, perhaps, that in a poll at the end of 2011 Spaniards should, for the first time since pollsters began asking the questions, give the monarchy a score below 50 per cent on ‘trust’ (the press did better). More worrying is the reaction of Spanish voters to corruption. As often as not, they have simply voted back the same people who had been lining their pockets.

Corruption was one of the drivers of a phenomenon that kicked off in Spain and, as the world’s financial centres were being targeted by protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement, soon spread around the globe. The
indignados
, or ‘indignant ones’, emerged in May 2011 after a handful of people decided to set up a protest camp in Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol. When police arrested them thousands more came in their place. Within days tens of thousands of people were occupying the square and dozens of other squares around Spain. There was something uplifting about the protests – not in their political content, which was confused and directionless – but in their method. Peaceful and constructive, this was a generation of young Spaniards whom many commentators – including myself – had written off as spoilt, passive spectators. Here, at least, they were trying to have their say – an entire generation engaged with politics. Suddenly, they cared.

There was much to care about, and not just corruption. Unemployment crept ever higher and looked set to hit almost a quarter of the workforce by 2013. Without apartment blocks or motorways to build, Spain’s workforce must now compete with either better-educated northern Europeans or much cheaper labour in
the developing world. It is, quite simply, not prepared. As my own children work their way through Spanish schools I, too, have become aware of the glaring weaknesses of a system in which pupils are tested externally only when – and if – they do university entrance exams. Every other exam, including the state
bacca-laureate
, is set and marked by their own teachers. A Spanish mania for old-fashioned cramming of facts has its advantages, but is accompanied by little in the way of skills-learning. Inside the classroom teachers are untouchable – regardless of how bad they might be. Outside it, they are an immovable corporatist block. Governments generally leave them alone. The only external valuation of their work comes in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) tri-annual PISA report. This places Spain below the OECD average on the key skills of reading, mathematics and science.

Zapatero reacted to the economic downturn by first denying Spain was in trouble and, later, by borrowing money to pump into the economy. He eventually accepted warnings that the markets thought Spain was living beyond its means. He was forced to impose the harsh measures insisted on by the euro currency zone’s heavyweights, led by German chancellor Angela Merkel. I once asked him, during an interview, if he felt there was anything at all left-wing remaining in his policies. ‘We haven’t cut spending on education … and we haven’t cut spending on health,’ he replied. But even that was not true. In Spain both education and health are run by the regional governments. These were being ordered to cut their budgets – and schools were suffering as a result. So, too, were health services. It was the price paid for the dilution of Spanish sovereignty that came with joining the euro. Economic policy was, in effect, being made outside Spain. Rajoy was similarly forced to act against his own liberal beliefs, raising direct taxes within just two weeks of taking office.

Sticking his head into the sand was Zapatero’s biggest mistake, but correcting that error is what eventually cost his party its worst results in the thirty-four years since democracy had been restored. Austerity and spending cuts helped produce mass
unemployment and a second fall into recession. In 2009 a senior official at the General Workers’ Union told me that if unemployment went above 4 million, there would be a social revolution. By early 2012 the total was 5 million and rising. Little surprise, then, that Spaniards threw Zapatero’s Socialists out. In November 2011 they awarded Rajoy a landslide victory in the hope that he could fix the mess. At the time of writing, however, it remains unclear whether Spain will survive inside the euro zone – or even what shape that zone will take in the future. Neighbouring Portugal, Italy and Greece have all run into trouble. Spain has fewer problems than any of them, but might still be washed away in the flood.

The Rajoy government brought still greater austerity and more pain. It also set about reforming an economy that was clearly not competitive. Whether it will improve things, or make them worse (or one, then the other), only time can say. Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to meet and interview both Rajoy and Zapatero. One thing can certainly be said for both of them: they are honest men, neither of whom – despite the rampant corruption that blossomed at the level of regional governments and town halls during the boom years – would have taken a euro from the Spanish state for their own personal benefit. It is a characteristic, in fact, shared by all the prime ministers of Spain over the past thirty years. This is worth noting, if only because of a northern European tendency to lump southerners together as somehow lazy or venal. Spain, in this case, shares neither the high-level corruption of Italy, nor a history of falsifying the country’s accounts, like Greece. Nor has it frittered away its European funds, like Portugal. None of that means it will escape the fallout of the latest round of turbulence sweeping Europe. But it does hold out promise for finding a way back out again.

Although it is now fashionable to claim that nobody saw the oncoming disaster, that is not completely true. Government officials were already admitting that the housing bubble was beginning to deflate in 2007, though they hoped for a soft landing. That
November I wrote an epilogue for the US edition of this book that summed up the size of the boom and captured the possibility that something might be about to go wrong – though I had no idea that, with the credit crunch around the corner, the change would be so calamitous.

If I feel a special affinity with Spain’s immigrants at this difficult time it is because I, too, am one of them – though my privileged circumstances have obviously made the experience different. One of the
pueblos
mentioned earlier in this book, Candeleda, has since become my second home. Even there, in a small country town well off the beaten track, Spaniards are learning to live with new neighbours from different cultures – be they Muslims, Latin Americans or Chinese. My new
pueblo
has been most welcoming to us all. In September 2008 I found myself squeezed into a tie and suit, sitting in the front pew of Candeleda’s church watching the
novena
– the final mass of a series of nine on consecutive days – while the town choir sang Bach. ‘I don’t believe in this stuff,’ admitted Mayor Miguel Hernández, a socialist and agnostic, who was sitting beside me. ‘But we have to be here.’ It was fiesta time. This was not the August affair when the town fills up with summer vacationers but the more intimate fiesta dedicated to the town’s patroness, a local Marian apparition dating back seven
centuries and known as the Virgin of Chilla. The virgin’s fiestas are yet another excuse for a week of late-night partying, loud music in the town square and fun with fireworks, but – with the vacationers gone – they mainly attract townsfolk and people from round about. I was here as the
pregonero
. This is roughly the equivalent of the person who opens an English village fête, but with the added pomposity demanded by a fiesta that is both religious and a reaffirmation of municipal pride.

At midnight I stood in front of several thousand Candeledanos on a stage in the middle of the Plaza del Castillo. I avoided the long-winded, baroque format favoured by more traditional
pregoneros
and, in relatively few words, thanked them for welcoming people from so many different places and cultures into their previously homogenous community. I had been told to close my speech by calling out the three traditional vivas that mark the start of the fiestas. ‘
¡Viva Candeleda!
’ I shouted. ‘
¡Viva!
’ they roared back. I repeated the performance with ‘
¡Vivan los Candeledanos!
’ and ‘
¡Viva la Virgen de Chilla!
’ Each cry was greeted by a roar of ‘
¡Viva!
’ And each ‘
¡Viva!
’ was another Spanish arrow piercing my heart.

In a country given to such intense self-reflection about layers of identity it is, perhaps, not surprising that my own family’s idea of itself should be based on an increasingly complex mixture of culture, blood ties, history and loyalties. I was reminded of this on 7 July 2010, as we drove up La Castellana, the ten-lane boulevard that runs north–south through Madrid. Minutes earlier the Spanish soccer team had sealed its place in the World Cup final in South Africa by beating Germany. Carlos Puyol, the Barcelona centre-back, had flown across our television screen – all flowing, heavy-metal hair – to head in the only goal. Now the Spanish team had a chance to lift the World Cup for the first time ever. We took the car out, just as we had two years earlier when Spain became European soccer champions, to join in the honking, cheering, flag-waving celebrations that were bound to erupt across the city. I had not counted, however, on what the crowd who had watched the match on giant screens at Real Madrid’s
Santiago Bernabeu stadium would do. Rounding a corner we were met by a shirtless mass, flooding down the street, flags, banners and scarves waving. They blocked all the lanes and surged in a loud, euphoric flood of people towards the centre of town. In just a few minutes we were stuck in gridlock, fans clambering on the cars. Two Tremlett boys sat in the back, struck with awe.

Four days later we watched the final in a New Jersey suburb with a Mexican-American friend whose puffy eyes were proof that he really had, as he claimed, watched every match in the tournament. My children, clad in the red Spanish shirts of ‘la Roja’, were upset that we were not in Madrid to see a game that brought Spain to a grinding halt. So was I. When Andres Iniesta struck the only goal of the night in extra time, Spain went wild. A small corner of New Jersey also went mad – though only a few Latinos seemed to know why we were driving down their streets honking our car horn. That night the Empire State Building was lit up with the yellow and red colours of Spain. Sporting triumph is not so banal in a country where identity is a political battle zone. Some in Catalonia backed Holland against Spain in the final. But others reported that – for the first time in ages – they could walk proudly down a Catalan street with a red shirt and a Spanish flag, not worrying about the insults that might come their way from nationalists or separatists.

When ‘la Roja’ played against England recently, I discovered that I was the only person in my living room cheering the team in white shirts. Those who were small children when the first edition of this book was written are now young teenagers. Born and bred in Madrid, and with Spanish as their mutual language, they are clear about where their sporting loyalties lie. They carry British passports and speak mostly English at home, but their predominant culture is that of Spain. It is they who now correct my linguistic gaffes when I return from my weekly outings on Spanish television or radio (for I, too, have succumbed to the siren call of the broadcast
tertulia
). One son has professed a desire to take Spanish nationality. The other dreams of green English gardens. Their parents, too, wonder whether it is time to
show a commitment to this country by taking up Spanish nationality. Unfortunately this cannot be shared jointly with British nationality, so the natural division will be for only one of us to become Spanish (and their mother has the better claim). None of this is certain, but it would bring to a full circle the journey started by Salvador Ripoll Moncho when he left the Alicante village of Tárbena for New York, Panama and, finally, Denia. Many decades later young Spaniards are, once more, packing their bags and seeking work abroad. I can only hope that these new Spanish emigrants receive the same warm welcome that I have felt in their country.

Many of those who have helped me over the past three years are named in the pages of this book and my first thanks must go to them. I hope to have done justice to them all. On a handful of occasions, in order to protect privacy, I have changed names. I have made this clear in the text where I have considered it important.

Professor Justin Byrne, Isabel Yanguas and Christopher Skala generously gave their time to read through early versions of the text. Their encouragement has been key to keeping the writer writing. I am indebted to Paddy Woodworth for looking through the Basque chapter and for his expertise on the GAL affair. David Fernández de Castro Azúa and Stephen Burgen similarly read through, and put me right on, Catalan affairs. Alan Goodman, Elizabeth Nash and Paul House also helped scrutinise the text. Responsibility for any errors that escaped, and for all the opinions expressed, remain exclusively mine.

In the Tiétar Valley I am indebted to Federico Martín and to many of those, especially Federico’s mother Clara, who shared painful memories of events from almost seventy years ago. In Barcelona my special thanks go to Silvia Català – not just for her help but also for two decades of friendship. Iñaki Gorostidi, Iñaki González, Nick Gardner, Iulen de Madariaga and Rosa Aliaga were invaluable in the Basque Country. The Elkarri peace movement has been a constant help there over the years. Prison officers at Spanish jails, who are targets for ETA, do not like their full names to appear in print. My thanks, therefore, go to Mercedes at Seville jail and Víctor in Granada. Alfonso de Miguel was a crucial flamenco contact as were many workers at the Esqueleto in Seville. Clea House and Monica Pérez diligently checked
translations from Spain’s varied languages – though, once again, I have had the final word on these.

Amongst the institutions and public bodies to have helped me are the Biblioteca Nacional, the Audiencia Nacional, Patrimonio Nacional, the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, the Dirección General de Instituciones Penitenciarias, the Secretaria de Política Lingüística of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Omnium Cultural, the Fundación Nacional Francisco Franco, the Fundación Sabino Arana and the Mancomunidad de Municipios de la Costa del Sol Occidental.

Santiago Macías, Jusèp Boya, Montse Armengou, Justin Webster, José Antonio Sanahuja, Pedro del Olmo, Gijs van Hensbergen, David Sugarman, Ángel Palomino, Carlos Velasco, Mercedes Munarriz, Isambard Wilkinson, David Sharrock, William Chislett and several descendants of Salvador Ripoll have all provided help, often without knowing it.

Commissioning editors in London allowed me to chase stories that have provided much of the background, and some of the backbone, of the book. Ed Pilkington at the
Guardian
encouraged me to devote more than the usual time to looking at Civil War graves, while Harriet Sherwood generously gave me the three months off that I needed to finish writing. My thanks to them and the rest of the
Guardian
’s foreign and features desks. Elsewhere, thanks are owed to Bronwen Maddox, Gill Morgan and Tony Turnbull at
The Times
and to David Meilton.

My agent Georgina Capel has been an invaluable and enthusiastic guide. At Faber and Faber special thanks go to Walter Donohue and Nick Lowndes for their patience and understanding when dealing with a writer schooled in the rhythm of journalism. Thanks also go to Graeme Leonard for his seamless editing.

My most heartfelt gratitude, however, goes to my in-house editor, advisor, expert on flamenco matters and so much more, Katharine Blanca Scott. Two young Tremletts, Samuel and Lucas, have helped the author more than they can possibly know.