There’s a Spanish word which has a very special meaning – or had at least, half a century ago – and it sounds odd to British ears: El Generalísimo, which might mean something like ‘the generaliest of all the generals’ practically a (what comes next – a field marshal?).
Anyway, I’m talking about El Caudillo, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who after forty days and nights in the comfort of the intensive care unit at the Hospital de la Paz in Madrid, finally succumbed to his woes on November 20th these fifty years ago.
Not that you’d think it with all these fascist idiots still running around the city squares half a century on and giving what used to be called a Hitler salute.
There’s a story I like: Franco is in his hospital bed and there’s a crowd outside shouting. Franco – who is losing his facilities by this time – asks the doctor, ‘What are they saying?’ The doctor goes: ‘They’re saying adiós, adiós’.
‘Really?’ says Franco, ‘Where are they all going?’
In those times, Mojácar where I lived with my parents (when I wasn’t travelling somewhere) was a quiet and forgotten village with just a sprinkle of eccentric foreigners.
We never thought about Franco, and the Guardia Civil were chummy enough.
My father used to drop off a case of wine in the police barracks in next-door Turre every Christmas. It never hurts to have friends with silly hats and a pistol.
One day a few years before, back in 1971, the cops had come by on their mopeds and sorrowfully told my father and me that we would have to report to the local lock-up in Vera – a cavernous room under the ayuntamiento – as punishment for sawing down Mojácar’s first billboard, which had been erected by a Corsican fellow who had just opened the pueblo’s first souvenir shop.
He could obviously see which way things were going.
All we had with us was a bottle of Spanish lemonade (filled with vodka), a change of underwear, a couple of Ian Fleming novels and my dad’s radio. He liked to listen to the BBC’s World Service and appeared to be very disappointed when they failed to mention our incarceration.
We spent three days in the clink (I was just seventeen) and were due to face further punishment, but the British ambassador saved the day, and we were forgiven and our names removed from the records.
In Franco’s time, it helped to have un enchufe – a ‘good friend’ – and the ambassador had been to school with my dad. A few words in the right ear…
By 1975, Franco was on his last legs, and word reached us from the far-away outpost of Jávea in Alicante that the Swedes (I may be wrong about this) had decided to have a demonstration of their love and respect for Spain and so held a celebration with the famous, albeit fascist slogan Arriba España, which they had unfortunately translated on a large banner as ‘Up Spain’.
At last, El Caudillo finally died, and Spain entered into strict mourning. The bars were closed for three days, and solemn music was played on the radio and the one TV channel.
My father and some other foreign residents, being appraised of this tender moment in Spain’s history (as above, they found the pueblo’s only bar was unexpectedly shut), decided the thing to do would be to go to mass in our local iglesia and show our respects.
The priest was surprised to see us, as there was (as usual) no one else in Mojácar’s house of worship except a few old girls in black.
As we left, pulling off our neckties (those that still owned one) we found the mayor and a collection of irate locals waiting for us. Y’see, Mojácar had been a communist holdout during the civil war, and consequently, no one was sorry to see the old gangster go to his reward, such as it no doubt was.
‘Oops’, said my dad.
The tension grew until the Mayor Jacinto saved the day. ‘Antonio, go and unlock the bar. The foreigners are thirsty’.
I’m not sure, after all it was exactly fifty years ago, but I think we all drank champagne.