Iberia (8 page)

 

‘You want to know what the average day of a club member is?
You must remember that these are well-to-do men, the leaders
of Badajoz, and this is an agricultural region. So your average
man would have to be a farmer. Let’s take that one in the big
chair, staring out the window. His name is…we’ll call him Señor
Don Pedro Pérez Montilla. He lives about twenty miles south of
here. Has one large plantation of cork trees, another where he
grows wheat, some pigs and sheep. About two thousand acres
altogether. Has three cars. An English Land Rover to get about
the plantation, a Spanish SEAT 1500 for his own driving and a
SEAT 600 for the rest of his family. Of course, he never drives
himself. Has a driver who does that. He must rise rather early,
for in the morning, after breakfast of a roll, some coffee and a
glass of anís (anisette), he supervises his farms. But every day he
reaches this club not later than twelve-thirty. Plays dominoes in
the back room. Talks with his friends. About two-thirty in the
afternoon he drives back to his farm, makes his lunch on soup,
eggs and potatoes, meat and fruit and takes his siesta. He’s back
at the club by six-thirty and always sits in the chair you see him
in now.

 

‘At that time he’s joined by three other men, whom he’s known
for forty years. They form what we call a tertulia. That’s an
informal club that meets every day to gossip. What about? Don
Pedro’s tertulia are all farmers, so they talk about cork and olives
and sheep and whether a Land Rover is better than a Jeep. Yes,
every day for forty years that’s what they’ve talked about. Politics
not very often. Religion never, because all four men in the tertulia
know what the others think on those subjects. Sometimes no one
speaks for forty minutes. When that happens they all look out
the window at the pretty girls in the paseo. The tertulia meets in
those four chairs till about ten at night, when Don Pedro drives
back to the farm for his dinner of consommé and tortilla [in
Mexico, a flat unleavened bread of maize; in Spain, a potato
omelet]. A man like Don Pedro would never eat in a restaurant,
but one night four years ago he did invite a guest to the farm for
dinner.

 

‘Don Pedro reads the
ABC
each morning, but nothing else. He
goes to the movies only when they show Gary Cooper or John
Wayne. He has two fine daughters who went for a while to the
convent school, but now they’re waiting for someone to marry
them. Don Pedro would probably not allow them to marry a man
whose family did not belong to our club. Otherwise where would
the new family fit in?’

 

A word about Spanish names. To explain the tradition fully
would require many pages, for it is unbelievably complicated, but
ideally every Spaniard, male or female, has two surnames, the
first and more important being the father’s and the second the
mother’s. Thus Pedro Pérez Montilla can properly be referred to
as Señor Pérez Montilla or simply as Señor Pérez, but to refer to
him as Señor Montilla would be a real gaffe. Spanish also has the
handy little words Don and Doña, which have no equivalent in
English and cannot be translated; they are used only preceding a
given name, allowing one to refer to a man or woman by the given
name with no presumption of intimacy. Thus our friend can be
called Don Pedro or Señor Don Pedro Pérez Montilla. When he
married, let us say to Leocadia Blanco Alvarez, his wife did not
surrender her surnames but merely added his, preceded by the
preposition de (of), so that her name became Leocadia Blanco
Alvarez de Pérez Montilla, and she may properly be addressed as
Doña Leocadia, or as Señora Blanco, or as Señora Blanco Alvarez,
or as Señora Blanco Alvarez de Pérez Montilla, or as Señora de
Pérez Montilla. Frequently the paternal and maternal surnames
are joined by either a hyphen or an y (and), which means that
Don Pedro’s son could be named Antonio Pérez Blanco, or
Antonio Pérez-Blanco, or Antonio Pérez y Blanco, although in
recent years the last has become less frequent. Many Spaniards
today, in common usage, simply omit the maternal surname
entirely or abbreviate it to a single letter. On the other hand, if
Don Pedro and Doña Leocadia belong to the nobility or the
aristocracy (or if they want to put on airs) the son will adopt the
name Señor Don Antonio Pérez Montilla y Blanco Alvarez.
The problem is further complicated when a man has a family
name which is unusually common and a maternal name which
is less so, for then he becomes known by the more distinctive of
his two names, which is only sensible. The five most common
Spanish surnames, in order of frequency, are García, Fernández,
López, González and Rodríguez, and just as the Englishman
named Smith or Jones is accustomed to adding a hyphenated
second name, such as Smith-Robertson, so the Spaniard becomes
García Montilla, sometimes with the hyphen. It is in conformity
with this custom that the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca
is so often referred to simply by his maternal name. Anglo-Saxon
readers encounter difficulties with the names of such historical
figures as Spain’s two cardinals who exercised political leadership,
Mendoza and Cisneros; in history books you will find many pages
about them, and they were at least as famous as Richelieu in
France and Wolsey in England, yet if you try to look them up in
a Spanish encyclopedia you will find nothing unless you happen
to know that the former was born Pedro González de Mendoza
and the latter Gonzalo Jiménez de Cisneros. In each of these
instances, however, the distinctive name is not maternal but
merely a place name added in hopes of making a common name
distinctive. So far I have discussed only the simple cases; the
complicated ones I had better skip.

 

In a small Spanish city to which a friend had sent me a postal
money order I had a rueful introduction to this problem of names.
My friend had assured me by phone that the money had been
sent, and the post office had advised me that it had arrived and
that upon presentation of my passport it would be paid.
Accordingly, I went to the post office, but before telling the clerk
my name, handed him my passport. He studied it, consulted his
file of incoming money orders and said, ‘Nothing here.’ I
explained that I knew it was in hand, so with much politeness he
searched his papers again and said, ‘Nothing here.’ This time I
noticed that he was looking in the A file, so I suggested, ‘Perhaps
if you look in the…’

 

‘Please, Señor Albert,’ he said. ‘I know my business.’
In my passport he had seen that my name was James Albert
Michener and he was smart enough to know from that who I was,
and he had no cash for any Señor Albert. When I tried to explain
what my name really was he became angry, and I was not able to
get my money until Spanish friends came from the hotel to the
post office and explained who I was. When the money was paid,
the clerk took my passport again, studied my name and shook
his head. When he handed back my papers he said, ‘I am sorry
for your inconvenience, Señor Albert.’

 

The nightly paseo which Don Pedro watches from his window
is common to most Spanish cities, but in Badajoz it has special
features because the city has not one main plaza but two. Plaza
San Juan, which faces the cathedral, we’ve seen, but Plaza
Generalísimo Franco, the larger of the two, we have not. They are
connected by the street that runs past the big windows of Don
Pedro’s Casino de Badajoz, so that what in other cities is called
‘a turn about the plaza’ becomes in Badajoz a substantial march:
back and forth along Plaza San Juan, down the long street past
the Casino, then around the Plaza Franco, where band concerts
are held from eight to ten.

 

Badajoz, as seen from this latter plaza at night, is a delightful
city. ‘These gardens are for all and are to be cared for by all,’ states
a large sign beneath which iron tables are set out for groups of
eight or ten teen-agers. Nursemaids in starched uniforms parade
up and down with infants in carriages, and a host of children
under six play among the trees till midnight. ‘They’ve been taking
a siesta all afternoon,’ a mother explains. At the corners of the
park semicircular benches made of bright tile are occupied by
soldiers and their dates, while at the tables along the outer edges
men sit in groups talking about the same topics that are being
discussed in the Casino. At ten-thirty or eleven the older people
wander home for dinner, and the long day ends.

 

In all but one of the cities discussed in this book I will be
drawing upon recollections of more than one visit. I have been
to Badajoz four different times, to Madrid about twenty, to Sevilla
a dozen, to Teruel two; it was not until my last visit to Spain that
I saw Barcelona for the first time. Of the various things I was to
see in Badajoz, I think the most meaningful occurred during my
first visit when I was standing idly in Plaza Franco toward
midnight as the stragglers were heading home. A married couple
named Serrano were seated at the table next to mine, and as I rose
to go back to my hotel the man said, ‘You’re not going to miss
the cathedral?’ I asked why not, and he said, ‘Because it’s May
13.’ I asked what was special about that date, and he said, ‘Come
and see.’

 

We walked back to the Cathedral, where families were entering
the ugly main portal accompanied by more than a hundred young
people. I entered the dark interior; little boys in robes were
handing out lighted candles that produced marvelous shadows
across the low-vaulted ceiling. The interior of the cathedral was
even more depressing visually than the exterior, for late in the life
of the church some enthusiastic canon had built a choir and
plastered its walls with a cheap stucco that was supposed to look
like cut stone. The four bottom rows were painted a dirty beige,
the nine top, a sickly puce. But spiritually the interior had the
same bold force that I had observed in the cathedral as a whole;
I was inside a great fortress which contained no nonsense or
embellishment. In time of peace worshipers came here to pray;
in time of war to defend themselves.

 

At midnight bells tolled and five dignitaries of the church in
full regalia conducted a service which I could not understand.
‘It’s not a mass,’ the Serranos told me. ‘It’s an invocation to the
Virgin.’ There was a moment of silence as the hundreds of candles
flickered, and then Señor Serrano whispered, ‘It’s May 13. The
Virgin of Fátima. We’re very close to Portugal, you know.’
When the praying stopped I assumed that the services were
over, but they were just beginning, for now a procession formed
at the altar and left the cathedral, entering the dark city, and all
who bore candles fell in line and began a solemn march down
Calle del Obispo San Juan de Ribera, through the silent Plaza
Franco and out into the suburbs lying to the northwest. The
procession consisted of some four or five hundred worshipers,
perhaps as many as a thousand, for it stretched a long distance.
At the head marched a priest with an electronic bullhorn, through
which he sang endlessly in a husky voice,

 

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria…’

until all marchers took up the chant and Badajoz echoed with
praises of the Virgin.

 

Through the darkness we approached a tall building some seven
or eight stories high which was used as a girls’ school; it was dark
and silent, but as the priests at the head of our column reached
its doors, suddenly from the roof several hundred girls in white
lit their candles and began chanting, ‘Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.’ The
effect was stunning. The marchers stopped. The priest with the
bullhorn sang no more, but the girls’ voices, drifting through the
night, lent the procession a religious quality that was profoundly
moving. Quietly word passed along the column, ‘Proceed,’ and
in silence we left the school, from which the echoes of chanting
could long be heard.

 

Now we were in the country, toward two o’clock in the
morning, and a three-quarter moon lit our way, so that we could
see the trees and the towers of some building about a mile distant.
The priest with the bullhorn resumed his chant and finally we
came to a halt before a building, which I never did identify. Its
front contained many balconies which were jammed with monks
and nuns, and everyone bared his head as the priests who had led
us from the cathedral began a service in praise of Our Lady of
Fátima. It was a solemn, deeply moving moment, and many
kneeled.

 

In the days that followed I was reminded again of the first
essential for anyone who wishes to understand Spain: in every
manifestation of life Spain is a Catholic country, and if citizens
are willing to march several miles at midnight to honor the Virgin,
they are equally willing to abide her surveillance in daily life.
Down the street from the Casino de Badajoz stands an old palace
at present converted into the offices of the diocese, from which
the schools of Badajoz are supervised. The walls contain
graduation pictures from the College of Our Lady of Carmen, in
which, by Spanish tradition, the boys are dressed as admirals of
the fleet and the girls as queens with tiaras, except that the boy
who gained top grades is dressed as a fifteenth-century grandee
with lace ruffs. There is no education not under the control of
the Church and its orientation is to the past.

 

On the door of the parish church nearby hangs a poster
classifying the motion pictures to be shown in Badajoz this week:
Class 3-R.
For those eighteen and above, but watch out
Class 4.
Gravely perilous to morals
The National Catholic Confederation of Heads of Families
.
Remember these classifications:

 

Class 1.
For everyone, including children
Class 2.
For those fourteen and above

 

Class 3.
For those eighteen and above

These restrictions apply to all dioceses and cannot be changed
by any officials in those dioceses.