Barcelona Sunset

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  Jordi took the telephone with trembling hands and his comrades continued to listen. Jordi nodded for a while, then managed to say “thank you, many many thank you” in English, and then put the phone down. He looked round the room, grinned sheepishly, and the small crowd applauded.

  During the following weeks, much fuss was made of Rivera becoming Prime Minister, with King Alfonso XIII endorsing his position. There was, on the whole, general rejoicing, and the groups of communist brothers had to consider the changed situation. As they were themselves bitterly opposed to the terrorist activities in the city, they welcomed Rivera’s banning of the anarchists, although they were alarmed by the much higher profile of Bravo Portillo and his band of trigger-happy henchmen. At first there was general agreement that the city was calmer: many people living and working in Barcelona went about their daily business with less fear of atrocities. Rivera’s popularity even started to take hold in the group at Begemot when he announced that he would work alongside the unions, and aim to return Spain to parliamentary democracy as soon as possible.

  With some trepidation, the leaders of the Marxist Workers’ Party wrote to Rivera to request recognition of their party, and there was rejoicing in many bars and private rooms, when the dictator agreed to include the MWP in his negotiations.

  It fell to Ferrer to express some doubts. “He’s too good to be true,” he announced at one of their Friday meetings, which recently had become more relaxed. Jordi looked through the smoke towards his friend, and frowned.

  “He’s said many good things, especially regarding the unions, but is there any sign of our lives become easier?” said Ferrer. “How long will we wait? And what else will he do to establish his authority? I don’t trust him, and I don’t think any of us should.”

  Walking home from the mill one evening with Ferrer, Jordi was surprised when a stranger spoke his name. “Hey, aren’t you Jordi?”

  Jordi turned to see a young man, probably about his own age, sporting a huge bushy beard. Jordi frowned at the man.

  “I used to work at the soldier’s uniform factory. We worked hard for little pay, although it wasn’t the worst job. We worked together, you and I, but you haven’t recognised me. I didn’t have a beard before.”

  Jordi looked closely at the man. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you Alvar, worked in the despatch, with that battle-axe woman?” Shaking his hand, Jordi continued, “How are you doing?”

  Alvar smiled. “Well, I didn’t get a job after the uniform factory closed, and I was out of work, and luck, for some time. Now, I just got a job. It’s hard work, but it’s better paid, and it’s one of Riveria’s projects. He’s brought work for many of us who had no work before.”

  Alvar paused, unused to speaking for so long.

  “What job have you got?” asked Ferrer.

  “I’m digging the new Metro,” said Alvar, proudly. “I’m on the section which will be under Passeig de Gracia, on the line which will go to Lesseps.”

  “So you’re a navvy digging in a hole under the Eixample? I thought you boys at the uniform mill were cleverer than that,” said Ferrer.

  “Of course we were,” said Jordi.

  “Yes, I know,” said Alvar, “but when you’ve had nothing for so long, it’s a great relief to get paid work. I’m getting stronger day by day, thanks to Prime Minister Rivera, and I’m getting paid.”

  “Good luck,” said Jordi.

  “Yes, good luck,” said Ferrer, turning away from Alvar. Under his breath to Jordi, he said, “He’ll need it.”

  “He was a clever man when we worked together,” said Jordi. “Now he’s pleased to be digging a hole, and he’s thanking Rivera for it.”

  “You see what I mean?” said Ferrer. “We’ve been tricked by this new prime minister. You should go and hunt around for evidence that he’s working for the common good. I don’t think he is. He’s behaving more and more like a dictator, and the King’s letting him get away with it. So are the Catholics: all the priests are lining up to support him. My dear friend, you are the Daily Chronicle reporter in Barcelona, and I think you must investigate.”

  All was suspiciously quiet for a while, and Jordi was unable to report anything other than an unexpected period of peace in Barcelona. He reassured the Daily Chronicle that he was meeting people and talking to them, but there was little news. Rumours started to circulate about banning the Catalan culture, as it appeared that Rivera felt threatened by the independence movement in Catalonia, but Jordi could find no evidence. He reported the situation to London, always careful to clarify what was rumour and what was true.

  One Sunday, he decided to visit his sisters, and was delighted to discover that he had become an uncle. Carla had given birth to a baby girl, and had named her Yolande. He asked Benet how he had been affected by Rivera’s coup, but Benet and Carla’s lives were unchanged, and more peaceful. He went to Dolors, and asked Jaume about life running the tabac, and again it seemed the new prime minister was succeeding in bring a measure of calm to the city.

  It was ironic, therefore, that on the way back from visiting Jaume and Dolors, he heard an enormous burst of gun fire, very close. Unlike most people, who started dodging into nearby doorways, or running away, Jordi ran towards the noise. His instincts as a reporter propelled him to find out what was happening. He ran through the Portal de l’Angel, and as he turned into the wide square in front of the cathedral, he met a dreadful sight. Many people were running for their lives, and others lay dead or dying on the ground. He ran to the nearest woman, moaning from a gunshot wound in her leg.

  “There’s a sniper, perhaps two or three, up on the roof of the hotel. I’ve been hit. Please help me.”

  Jordi looked around. The firing had stopped, and several people, men and women, lay on the ground.

  “Where are the police?” said Jordi.

  “No sign of them,” said the woman.

  At that moment two of the priests ran from the cathedral and knelt beside others of the wounded, hardly noticing that their habits were becoming blood-stained. The silence seemed intense after the deafening shooting, and the only sounds were the groans of the injured. As it seemed safer to venture into the open space of the square, others emerged from shops and hotels.

  “Where were the snipers?” said Jordi.

  “Up on the roof of the Hotel Colon,” said the woman.

  “Why are there so many people here? What were you all doing?” asked Jordi.

  “It’s Sunday afternoon, and we came to dance the Sardana. We’ve been looking forward to this day for some time. Now it’s ended in this terrible way. From smiles in the sunshine, and gently dancing our national dance, to blood on the pavement. It looks as if several of the dancers have been killed.”

  By this time, ambulances had started to arrive, and nurses and doctors were checking the victims, pulling sheets over the dead, and carrying the wounded on stretchers. There was still no sign of any police.

  Handing the care of the woman to a nurse, Jordi walked over to the Hotel Colon, and went into the foyer. A few of the staff and guests had run out onto the square to help, but there was a considerable crowd in the foyer standing and watching in shock. “What happened?” Jordi asked a timid receptionist.

  “I don’t know,” replied the girl. “It was just this terrible noise, right overhead.”

  At that moment, the lift descended and the gates clattered open. Four men marched out, carrying rifles. Everyone in the foyer gasped, and several threw themselves to the floor. Jordi crouched behind a large stuffed chair, and to his horror, recognised one of the men to be Bravo Portillo, the government’s agent of terror. The young receptionist stood paralysed behind the counter.

  Firing a deafening shot through the ceiling, Portillo spoke. “I’ve been asked to go to Madrid to lead our Prime Minister’s secret service. I shall miss the filth of Barcelona, but I leave my brave boys to continue the fight against the slimy anarchists and the subversive communists. My boys will receive their orders d
irectly from me, from Madrid. Meanwhile, I’m pleased to leave a little parting gift to this foul city, where the dregs of humanity live in their rat holes. My friends, Senor de Rivera wants it made clear that there will be no more dancing the Catalan peasant dance. Make sure the word spreads.”

  Portillo looked around the room, waving his rifle casually at the terrified crowd. He fired, almost at random, and the young woman who had spoken to Jordi only a few moments before, slumped forwards across the counter, blood pouring from a terrible wound in her chest. Portillo’s henchmen laughed, and fired their rifles through the ceiling, before marching out into the mayhem they had created in the cathedral square.

  In the following silence, Jordi crept out of the hotel, and was violently sick in the gutter.

  Back at the apartment, Ferrer was waiting anxiously.

  “I’ve heard of a massacre in the cathedral,” he said.

  “No, not in the cathedral,” said Jordi, “but in the square. Portillo was there, with other gunmen, and they fired on the sardana; and then in cold blood, he killed a young woman in a hotel. It was random killing. It seems you were right when you said you didn’t trust Primo de Rivera. He’s behaving like a dictator, not a prime minister, and this isn’t going to lead to any restoration of democracy. He’s made Portillo chief of his secret police. Being there was terrifying, but I’ve got a scoop for the Daily Chronicle. I’ll write it immediately, and get Steven to translate. I’ll get him to phone it to London tonight. I know it’s Sunday, but we’ll have to wake the barman, and get him to let us use the Begemot telephone.”

  The London readers of the Chronicle were astonished to read about the massacre over their breakfasts on Monday morning. No other paper carried the story, and there was some scepticism in England about its accuracy. The following morning, however, all the other papers had the story, and were able to verify Jordi’s graphic report. Senor Donald in Fleet Street was particularly pleased with his young Barcelona correspondent, and made a large payment into his bank account, and wrote him a fulsome letter of praise, hoping for more such timely reports in the future.

  Whilst the English readers were digesting the news of the cathedral massacre over their breakfasts, Jordi was at the Generalitat in Barcelona seeking any further news about Rivera’s policies. Of course, as it was Monday morning, Jordi should have been at work.

  “We’ve got to be careful,” Ferrer had said. “I’ll cover for you this morning, but Albert will smell a rat if you take too many days away; and if he gives you the sack, he’ll sack me too.”

  “I think the time may have come for me to leave the mill,” said Jordi. “The London Daily Chronicle is paying me far better than the mill, and recently I’ve made good money from the newspaper. I need to go out and about during the working day, to seek out stories, and to get the most up-to-date news for the paper. If I had more time to do the job, I could do it even better.”

  “I’ll cover today,” said Ferrer, “and we’ll talk about it this evening. Albert will probably want you to work for a few days whilst we find a replacement.”

  At the Generalitat, a long notice had been posted on the main door, and copies were available for journalists. Jordi took a copy, and went to a nearby cafe to read it. Sure enough, Rivera was clamping down on many aspects of Catalan life, in an effort to demoralise the Catalans, and to further subdue the elements of unrest in Barcelona. In addition to banning the sardana, there would be no more church services in Catalan, no public events in Catalan, no legal documents in Catalan. Newspapers were to be entirely in Castilian, and all schools were to teach exclusively in Castilian, and ban reading, writing or speaking in Catalan. Sitting in the cafe, Jordi read the whole convoluted document, and wrote the next report for the newspaper. Pocketing the government document and his scribbled notes, he hurried through the old city, across Placa Catalunya, and up to the enormous building site of the Metro construction. He expected that the navvies labouring on the site would be stopping for some kind of short lunch break, and soon after he arrived they started streaming out and sat around on the spoil heaps with their pathetic bread-and-tomato lunches.

  Jordi was seeking Alvar, and was alarmed to find almost all the navvies sported identical black beards, and wore similar filthy clothes. In fact, it was Alvar who saw him first, and came over to him.

  “It’s dreadful here,” said Jordi. “You can’t really say you like this kind of work.”

  “It’s foul,” admitted Alvar, “and exhausting, but it’s work, and I get paid.”

  Jordi explained that he was leaving the mill, but that his job there was clean, better paid than most jobs in the mill, and easy for someone with intelligence, like Alvar. He told Alvar to come and meet Ferrer at a cafe in Barceloneta, the same evening. He then walked to the mill, and by chance Ferrer met him at the gate.

  “What are you doing here?” said Ferrer. “I told Albert you were too ill to come to work.”

  “I’ll tell him, I made a miraculous recovery,” said Jordi. “And then I’ll tell him I’m leaving.”

  “That lands me with the challenge of finding your replacement,” said Ferrer.

  “No it doesn’t,” said Jordi. “You remember that chap Alvar, we met in the street a few days ago, working as a navvy on the metro? He’s coming to meet you properly this evening, and he’ll be great for my job. He doesn’t say much, a very quiet man, but clever and quick.”

  “I said he’d need some luck when we met him. I didn’t expect you to be the one bringing him such good luck. Well done!”

  Within a few days, Jordi was free from the shackles of the mill, Alvar was installed in the dark little office, and Senor Albert was pleased with the new employee. Once he had seen the efficiency of the new man, Ferrer was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

  With Steven’s help with translation, Jordi wrote to Robert Donald in London, explaining that he had given up his job as a clerk at the mill, and would be working fulltime reporting for the British newspaper. Eventually he received an exciting letter from his London editor, welcoming him to the National Union of Journalists, and enclosing a document, in Spanish, which he could use to gain access to reporters’ briefings in Barcelona. He boasted to Ferrer that he was proud to be a member of a British union.

  Jordi’s English was slowly getting better, but with Catalan as his mother tongue, he struggled with doing everything official in Spanish. Getting into meetings at the Generalitat was, however, impossible, if he spoke in Catalan. It was very hard for him, but gradually he was becoming tri-lingual.

  Armed with his London credentials, he sought interviews with senior politicians, and one of his first interviews was with Primo de Rivera’s son, Jose. It was a steep learning curve for Jordi, as he had to keep his own opinions well under control, despite sitting talking to one of the most unpleasant men he’d ever met. Jose de Rivera was clearly his father’s son, and was very close in age to Jordi himself. He was obviously very excited by his father’s success, and spoke proudly of the future fascist state for which his father was creating a foundation. He referred to his father, not as Prime Minister, but as Dictator Rivera.

  Jordi asked Jose de Rivera about Bravo Portillo. Did the Dictator’s son agree with the violence of the head of the secret police?

  “Of course,” replied Jose. “We must rid Spain of the communists and anarchists. They only understand the rule of guns and fists, and have to realise that their methods are unpatriotic, and immoral. It is morally imperative that we remove them by every means necessary. These followers of Karl Marx, the famous German Jew, must be eliminated.”

  Inwardly Jordi shuddered, but diligently kept his eyes fixed on his notebook as he recorded the frightening conversation.

  When writing his report for London, he reported Jose de Rivera accurately, and verbatim, but he ended his writing with a warning: the Spanish Dictator Rivera appeared to laying the foundations for a very undemocratic Spain. With this kind of writing, Jordi realised he was putting himself at considerab
le risk, and he reminded Senor Donald in London that he preferred to keep his anonymity as ‘Barcelona reporter’, or ‘our man in Barcelona’, with his own name omitted from the printed article.

  To redress the balance, he decided to attempt to interview his own father. He walked down the Ramblas, and nervously went to the music shop.

  “Well, well, young Vilaro, come to buy a violin?” growled the toad, from his usual begging position on the pavement. “The door’s locked. They keep it like that, all the time. Frightened of who might call.”

  Jordi knocked and waited. His mother opened the door, a small pistol in her hand.

  “Jordi! How lovely to see you!” said his Mam, lowering the pistol. “Step inside quickly. We never hang around on the street with our own personal spy crouching there, watching and listening.”

  Once inside, Mam continued, “You look good.”

  “Mam, why are you carrying a gun?” asked Jordi.

  “All women must learn to be armed in these times,” replied his mother. “It’s the duty of every woman to be ready. But why are you here? How is it that you’re not at work?”

  “It’s a long story, Mam, and I’ll tell you soon. But for now I’ve come to see Pa. Is he here?”

  “I’m here,” came his father’s voice, aggressively. “Look what the cat’s dragged in. What do you want, boy?”

  Carefully Jordi explained that, thanks to Bonaventura teaching him to read and write all those years ago, he was now working for a London newspaper, and he had a chance to tell the world about the plight of the workers of Barcelona. He did not mention that only a few days before, he had been sitting with Jose de Rivera. He chose his words carefully, and his father began to thaw. After a while, Pa took him into the backroom, with its familiar gloom and dust, and the two of them sat. Jordi glanced at the piano, wondering if it still hid the cache of weapons. Then he pulled out his notebook, and simply asked his father what he would like the people in London to read.