Iberia (92 page)

 

I suspect my description of San Juan has failed to convey to
the reader what has actually happened; how can he picture that
jungle of concrete that has risen so swiftly from bare land? How
can he visualize these very tall apartments, with no gardens, no
ambiente, except that each room has an exquisite view of the sea?
How can he understand that in Spain there has suddenly appeared
this alien city, most of whose inhabitants speak northern European
languages, frequent Nordic bars with Nordic bands, and when
the season is over, board up their apartments and go back to
Berlin and Stockholm? It is a revolution of considerable
magnitude, but the best place to acquaint oneself with it is at
Benidorm, a charming village a few miles farther up the coast.

 

Here the activity has multiplied about one hundred times
within five years! Where there were three dozen towering
apartments to startle me at San Juan, there must have been several
hundred at Benidorm. It has a spacious beach, mountains inland
and an unruly sort of charm. It is preponderantly German, and
while I was staying there it gained notoriety because a mad
German described as the Werewolf of the Autobahn was supposed
to have fled to Benidorm after having slain several girls near
Berlin. He was said to be hiding out in some kind of disguise that
would not attract attention, but the Spanish police nabbed him.
He had been riding up and down the beach at Benidorm, dressed
head to toe in a white silk suit and driving a flaming red Mercedes
convertible while accompanied by four blondes. Reporters pointed
out that such a disguise was scarcely calculated to avoid attention,
but the police said, ‘Reverse thinking on the part of a born
criminal.’ Later when the reporters discovered that the suspect’s
passport showed that he had been in Benidorm at the time of the
murders and had indeed been registered with the local police, the
latter said, ‘That’s a technicality we haven’t discussed yet.’ That
afternoon the suspect was discharged and held a press conference
at which he announced that an Italian movie company was going
to star him in a picture to be called
The Werewolf of the Autobahn
.
He thought that maybe the four blondes would get parts, too.

 

Benidorm is like that. Looking at the real estate explosion of
which it is merely a part, one asks, ‘What good has it done the
Spaniards?’ and the answer is problematic. The building gamblers
who have underwritten the initial costs of the apartment houses
have used their small funds to exert a favorable leverage, and since
they know how to avoid taxes they have often ended up
millionaires. Laborers’ wages have been kept low, and although
some of the new bars and stores have fallen into Spanish hands,
most are owned by foreigners. What seems to have happened is
that the low cost of Spanish construction has subsidized good
housing for Germans and Swedes with minimum rewards to
Spaniards. Thus the precedent set by the conquistadors, who
operated a good thing for themselves and for Peru but who
benefited Extremadura in no way, is once more being honored.
And just as the Extremaduran emigrant builds up Germany in
return for a little gold exchange, so the Mediterranean builder
erects homes for northerners. What profits do accrue do not
benefit the countryside, except for the service jobs created by the
new developments. Furthermore, any threat of war over Gibraltar
or any upheaval attendant upon the passing of Franco could
evaporate the tourist industry overnight and leave these vast
buildings vacant. If this were to happen for even a season, with
the resultant defaulting on mortgages and the loss of income to
stores, the Spanish economy would be seriously compromised.
Morally there is also the problem of allowing impoverished
Spaniards to see that their government, which cannot build them
houses or schools, is able to construct luxury housing for aliens.
Few Spaniards, of course, can afford these beach-side palaces.

 

On the other hand, in several good sites back from the beach
in locations like Alicante and Benidorm, Spaniards are beginning
to build high-rise apartments for themselves. An official in the
Health Administration explains how this works: ‘I can’t afford to
put up the money for a beach house. Nor can the other fellows
in my division. So the government has come to us and said, “We
won’t lend you the money to build an apartment at Alicante,
because you’re not a good risk. But there will always be someone
like you employed by the Health Administration, so we’ll lend
the money to the Ministry so that they can put up housing at the
beach, and it will belong to you as long as you work there.”’ In
this manner, even though they own no equities, a few of the
benefits of the enormous building boom trickle down to
Spaniards, but it should be noted that their buildings are not on
the beach; those sites are reserved for foreigners because they have
the money, and Spaniards, from their long association with the
landed families, are habituated to seeing the best of everything
remain in the hands of the few.

 

Wherever I looked along the coast I found evidence of its being
converted into an endless ribbon of vacation land. New paradors
of clean design were being located at the spots where tourists
driving down from France in sports cars would want to spend
the night on their way to Torremolinos. Good private hotels were
frequent. The narrow road was being widened into one
uninterrupted boulevard that would stretch for seven hundred
miles. The beach areas had been given fine-sounding names which
reverberated with overtones of sun and fun: Costa Brava, Costa
Dorada, Costa del Azahar (Orange Blossom), Costa Blanca, Costa
del Sol, and beyond Gibraltar on the Atlantic, Costa de la Luz. By
this simple device Spain has enhanced the charm of its playlands
manyfold. I am told that throughout northern Europe one gains
cachet if he says, ‘I’m spending my vacation on the Costa del Sol.’

 

North of Valencia on the Costa del Azahar, I began to
experience a sense of excitement, for I was returning to familiar
ground. To the left ran the small railroad leading through the
mountains to Teruel, and I remembered my exploration years
ago; next a road cut off to the right, and as I drove down it I could
smell the orange blossoms which had lived in my memory with
such persistence, for this was Burriana, that little shipping center
where I had first landed in Spain. Could this be the waterfront
where the oxen had lugged the heavy barges into the sea? It was
now a spacious, jetty-girl harbor with orange boats from Denmark
and Germany tied to its piers. Handsome port buildings had been
erected to house officials, and almost at the spot where I had first
come ashore a high-rise apartment was going up. Not a single
item that I remembered still existed, except the Mediterranean,
and it had been so pushed around that I scarcely recognized it.
Little Burriana, a modern shipping center! Empty, bleak Burriana
with its straining oxen, now a location for apartment houses. No
transformation then under way in Spain represented so much
personal drama as this, and once I had seen it I required no further
explanation of what the Spaniards call ‘The Miracle of the
Mediterranean.’

 

Once we had passed Castellón de la Plana my wife took over,
for we were now approaching that provocative region called
Cataluña, which I had never seen but which she had visited some
years before, to her intense pleasure. If I said, ‘Madrid’s an exciting
city,’ she said, ‘But wait till you see Barcelona!’ If I liked the park
in Sevilla, she said, ‘Wait till you see Montjuich in Barcelona.’
And no matter what street in Spain I spoke favorably of, she always
said, ‘It’s pleasant, but wait till you see Las Ramblas.’

 

As we approached the city she asked the driver to keep to the
beach road, and there we saw that lovely chain of seaside villages
which not even modern builders have been able to spoil, especially
Sitges, where we spread a picnic at the farthest point of the pier
so that we could look back at the low houses and the village
square. ‘Three parts of Cataluña are superb,’ my wife explained
as we finished our first meal in the region. ‘Seacoast towns like
Sitges, mountain towns like Vich, and Barcelona. You’re going
to love this part of Spain.’

 

Her enthusiasm began to infect me, and as we crossed the river
with the beautiful name, Llobregat, she pointed to a small
mountain on our right, standing with its feet in the sea.
‘Montjuich,’ she said. ‘We’ll spend a lot of time here.’ When I
asked why, she said, ‘Half a dozen museums plus a village like
none you’ve seen before.’

 

She directed the driver to make a series of tricky turns and
within a few minutes we found ourselves at the foot of that tall
and florid column which dominates the harbor area of the city
and which carries at its top a monument to Christopher
Columbus. ‘When he returned from the New World,’ my wife
explained, ‘he reported to Fernando and Isabel here. Barcelona
was the first city in Europe to hear the official account.’

 

After we paid our respects to Columbus she began to chuckle
with delight, clapping her hands and whispering, ‘This is what
I’ve been telling you about. Las Ramblas.’ It was a wide boulevard
consisting of two outer streets for traffic and a spacious central
mall for pedestrians, the latter containing newspaper kiosks and
many flower stalls. ‘Look! There’s the woman who sells roses.
Over there’s the old man who made me my bouquets. Have you
ever seen so many flowers?’ That day Las Ramblas was indeed a
garden, for it was laden with blooms, but I had little time to study
them, for now my wife tugged at my arm. ‘Look! Look! The bird
stalls.’ At home we have many birds, wild ones of course, who
feed at our window like insatiable gluttons, and we had missed
them. Now we were to have, in our front yard as it were, the
wonderful bird stalls of Barcelona, and although I shall not be
referring to them again, the reader should know that each morning
when I started out to explore the city I stopped first to visit with
the birds—hundreds of them from all parts of the world—in
small, clean cages, well fed and cared for. One can grow to like a
city which gives its morning greeting in such a manner.

 

Las Ramblas proved to be as rewarding as my wife had
predicted. It is a heavenly promenade, probably the best I know,
and on it I spent many hours. A rambla is a ravine, and this one
served as a drainage ditch in time of heavy rain. It is referred to
in the plural because it is composed of different sections: La
Rambla de los Capuchinos, La Rambla de los Estudios, plus at
least three others. It’s the center of Barcelona life: here stands the
splendid opera house, so plain on the outside, so luxurious inside;
here are the theaters, many of the good restaurants, some of the
big hotels, and at the inland end, the central Plaza de Cataluña,
where the trains and subways focus. At the seashore end, near the
Columbus monument, stand the tattoo parlors and the cheap
movies. The kaleidoscope is never-ending, for even at four in the
morning, when the rest of Spain is asleep, sailors are prowling
Las Ramblas and the late restaurants are doing good business.

 

What seemed to me particularly appealing was that quite close
to the boulevard were the city’s most varied sights. Off to this side
the red light district, where contraceptives, ostensibly forbidden
to be sold in Spain, are available in shops which display them in
the window. Over here the vast market, one of the best I had seen,
close to our hotel and selling a huge variety of fruit and seafood.
One stall carried twenty-nine different kinds of olives, large
gray-green ones bitter to the taste, sweet ones pitted and stuffed
with blanched almonds, tiny black ones which my wife preferred.
On the opposite side were the narrow streets which ran to the
Gothic quarter, whose concentration of antique buildings alone
would attract any visitor, and farther along were the streets leading
to this museum or that. Not the least of the treasures were the
bars where dozens of tapas were lined up twenty-four hours a
day, including some of the best seafood one could wish. To spend
a week in a room facing Las Ramblas, visiting the museums or
the Gothic quarter, taking one’s meals in the fine restaurants
nearby and at night listening to the music of Barcelona, would
be an introduction to Spain that might spoil one for what was to
come later.

 

My introduction, following a stroll along Las Ramblas, buying
newspapers from London, Paris and New York that I hadn’t seen
for weeks, was as appropriate as one could have devised. My wife
had a letter of introduction to Dr. William Frauenfelder, the
Swiss-born director of the Institute of North American Studies
in Barcelona, a learned man who knew the city and had a special
affection for it. He met us at our hotel and said, ‘If you like music
there’s a concert tonight that will tell you much about Cataluña.
Care to attend?’ I asked what the program was, and he said, ‘That’s
what makes it so significant. A choral group singing Haydn’s
The
Seasons
. You’ve heard the saying? One Catalan starts a business.
Two Catalans organize a corporation. Three Catalans form a
choral society. In this city music’s important.’ We said we’d join
him, whereupon his manner changed and he became
apprehensive. ‘I must warn you about one thing. The building in
which you’ll hear the music is…it’s unusual. You must prepare
yourself for it.’ I wondered how one prepared himself for a
building, and he explained: “When you go in, please, please, Mr.
and Mrs. Michener, don’t gasp or raise your voices. And above
all,’ here he took us by the hands, ‘above all, dear friends, don’t
laugh. You would destroy your whole effectiveness in Barcelona
if you laughed.’

 

Such a challenge I had not met before. Not long ago my wife
and I had been present when Chagall’s ceiling at the Paris Opéra
was unveiled; we had sat right in front of André Malraux and had
behaved rather well, craning our necks back till we were staring
into Malraux’s face, and shortly thereafter we had attended an
opening at Lincoln Center and had not hooted, but apparently
the music building in Barcelona was another matter. ‘What you
had better do,’ Dr. Frauenfelder suggested, ‘is simply go into the
building and allow it to absorb you. Don’t say anything. Just look.’
We agreed to do this, and at a late hour that night we appeared
at the Palau (Palacio) de la Música and one look at the bewildering
façade satisfied me that no amount of previous warning from
Frauenfelder could have prepared us. The Palau had been erected
in 1900 when architects in many parts of the world were getting
fed up with old formalisms and fake Greek temples, but the
Barcelona architects had had the courage to do something about
it. They cast aside balance and austerity and above all they avoided
standard types of pillars and capitals. They invented new kinds
of pillars, big and small. They devised capitals that looked like
turbans and others resembling mushrooms. They tacked on
balconies, offset windows, and in one area added a statue of
Richard Wagner in his well-known beret. On one shelf someone
who looked like Joan of Arc came striding out of a sculptural
group, but she was wearing a beard. And wherever I looked I saw
not stone or concrete but a mixture of colored ceramic and brick,
delightful to the eye, since light played across the surface unevenly,
here reflecting as if from a mirror, there deadened by the rough
surface of the brick. It was an extraordinary façade, appropriate
for the illustration to a Gothic fairy tale, and my wife whispered,
‘What must the inside be?’