Mrs. Sánchez and I have been back in Álora almost a week now and our street has already been scrubbed thirteen times by the town's hi-tech cleaning vehicle. I don't think they've got more than one and Calle Benito Suarez is no dirtier than any other calle, and cleaner than a fair few. I don't miss the dog turds at all. Any road up, as they say in Birmingham, I collared our regular daily street sweeper to find out why we were getting such a good service. It's all to do with the roadworks up in town.
Calle Carmona is closed most of the the time, and Calle Vera Cruz is closed all the time. These are two of our main thoroughfares so getting round, or indeed, in and out of town is a nightmare. Luckily one of Spain's leading surrealist comedians lives here and was willing to design a 'temporary' one way system. One of the results is that Paco with his Lean Machine has to go down our street many times a day (at 1 mph.) to get to calles that need cleaning.
The Clean Machine at the bottom of our street.
It's no match, though, for the annual coating of mucky wax that the various cofradias and hermandades apply to our road surfaces during Semana Santa. Molten wax from a million marching candle carriers has once again left a multi-coloured mottled mess which makes braking a risky and unpredictable manouevre and provides us all with a dramatic soundrack as cars with waxed- up tyres screech round corners like something out of 'Scarface' or 'The Untouchables'. An uninformed visitor could be excused for thinking the town is inhabited by untidy chewing gum fiends.
The evidence
Our street
It's no use complaining to the alcalde (mayor) either. (Jose Sánchez Moreno. No relation) He's nowhere to be seen. The town is now in the hands of the beautiful and talented Sonia Ramos whose title is Alcalde Accidental.
Here he is at one of his rare public appearances last week. He is on the left and Ms. Ramos is on the right. I wish Sonia all the best and hope that 'Epi', as he's known to his friends and grateful townsfolk, will be back behind the wheel soon.
'Guernica' by Pablo Picasso
Yesterday, April 26th. was the 80th. anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town Guernica, during the Spanish 'Civil War', by the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione on the orders of Generalisimo Francisco Franco.
Waves of bombers attacked the town for over two hours and fighter planes strafed the roads out of Guernica killing people as they tried to flee.
The German 'Condor Legion' was led by Wolfram Von Richtofen, a cousin of the famous WW1 'ace' 'The Red Baron'. What an honour for Guericans!
The bombing raid took place on Market Day when the town was full of local residents and people from surrounding villages. It was an explicit act of 'terror' and was one of the first instances of the deliberate bombing of a civilian population. Around 300 people were killed.
Initially Franco denied it had happened as did the Germans. They were widely believed at the time but a British journalist, George Speer, happened to be in the area and reported on the bombings for The Times and The New York Times.(see Telegram from Guernica. Author ;Nicholas Rankin, Faber and Faber, 2003).
Most people who have heard of Guernica know of it through the fame of Picasso's massive painting which is in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Not many people are around who were alive and can remember the events of 1937 in Spain. Most Spanish people agreed to the unwritten Pacto de Olvido' (The forgetting Agreement') and chose not to talk about the horror of La Guerra Civil and the years of repression that followed Franco's victory in 1939..
Now it's all come alive again in Álora.
Every year a group of people gather at the castillo (castle) on the hill to remember the murders of local republicans, socialists and others, all labelled 'rojos' (reds), that were killed by Franco's death squads after Málaga and the surrounding villages were overrun by rebel 'nationalist' and Italian forces. Most of the killings were carried out up at the castillo, which was the town's cemetery until recently, mostly by local members of the fascist 'falange'.
This week work has begun inside the castle walls to exhume the bodies of an estimated 196 people from Álora and surrounding villages who were shot by falangist death squads and buried in mass graves in 1937. Relatives of the victims now have the right to find and identify the remains of their fathers, grandfathers, brothers and husbands by DNA , give them a proper burial and have a memorial erected. Similar exhumations will be taking place in the neighbouring towns of Cártama, Alfarnate and Villanueva de la Concepción.
Also, our 'Accidental Mayor', Sonia Ramos, is trying to have the road from Málaga to Almería designated as a 'Sendero de la Memoria' (Memorial Path) in memory of the flight of thousands of people from Málaga to Almería in February 1937 after the fascist forces of Franco and Mussolini captured the city and immediately executed over 4,000 'republicans'. It is still the biggest exodus of a civilian population in the history of Europe.
The ,mostly, civilians were harried as they fled along the coastal road by fighter and bomber aircraft and shelled from the sea by gunboats (including the German heavy cruiser the 'Admiral Graf Spee)' as they tried to escape to goverment held Almería, 200 km. away. 150,000 left Málaga. Only 40,000 made it to Almería.
Now for the bad news. Recently I reported the opening of two new bars, El Lugar in the 'Barriada del Puente and El Lagá, which opened almost next door to the popular cafetería Los Arcos. They lasted less than a year. El Lugar has had to close because the owner has health problems. El Lagá, which must have had tens of thousands of euros spent on it, has closed owing to a lack of customers.
The good news is that Álora had a fantastic Semana Santa (Holy Week). The weather was warm and sunny so all the 'tronos' (thrones) were able to parade around town (and drop record amounts of melted candle wax on the streets). The bars did well too, especially El Mocho in La Plaza Baja (The Bottom Square) run by the enigmatic and brutally handsome Manolo. He deserves it. El Mocho is our only bar down here now and depends on good weather on Viernes Santo (Good Friday) and The 'Día de Las Sopas Perotas in October to make enough money for him to make a living. I can highly recommend Manolo's tapas and you can always get a good view of 'the real Spain' down here in La Plaza Baja.
That reminds me...there's a very strong smell of reefer around here at the moment. The last time it niffed so strongly was just before the marijuana factory was discovered a few houses down from La Casa Sánchez.
I'm just saying.
Juanito Sánchez
April 28th. 2017
