Barcelona Sunset

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  An hour later, Jordi not only had many pages of his notebook filled, but he had a new and clearer understanding of his father. He was as unhappy as ever with his father’s enthusiasm for violence, and he carefully avoided any discussion of his old friend Tomas, who had become a terrorist. Privately, he was struck that his father’s attitude to guns was very similar to Jose de Rivera’s, although the two had very different targets in mind. He also kept quiet about his mother getting involved. It had upset him that she had answered the door with a gun in her hand.

  “Can you really get this published in a London newspaper?” asked his father.

  “Yes,” said Jordi. “It’s published anonymously, so that I cannot become a target, but the editor likes my work. The newspaper is what’s called ‘left-wing’ in England, which means it’s sympathetic to the workers’ cause.”

  “We’ve been speaking to one another in Catalan,” said Pa. “They don’t print it in Catalan, surely?”

  “No,” said Jordi. “I’ve have found a friend who was born in Scotland. He translates my reports, and telephones them to London. And he’s teaching me English as well, so soon I hope I’ll be able to write my reports myself.”

  For the first time, Pa smiled. “Jordi, I always said learning to read was important. It’s opened a whole new window for you, and for us. I suppose I’ll never win you over to the anarchist belief, and I’ll have to try to be content that you’re a good communist. It’s hard for me to say this, but I am proud of you, boy. Make sure the world knows what’s going on in Spain. Now quickly, get out of here before Tomas comes and shoots you.”

  “You’re not joking, are you Pa? He really would shoot?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t trust him, and we’re on the same side. I never know what he’s doing, or what he’s thinking. He’s got much worse since his grandmother died. Now go!”

  Jordi did not send his father a copy of his report on the Barcelona anarchists, as he was sure his father would not like what he said. Neither did he reveal to London that the “leading anarchist” in his report was in fact his own father.

  Released from the drudgery of his work at the mill, Jordi had the chance to walk the streets of the city. In slighty better clothes than the second-hand garb worn by all of the working classes, he could walk with less fear through the middle-class areas of the city, and was able to start a network of contacts, within the Generalitat, and in the Ajuntament of the city. He also cultivated friendship with various newspaper vendors on the streets, as he found they were an excellent source of gossip and information.

  For some time after Rivera took control of the government, there was a kind of phoney peace. Jordi was able to detect the undercurrents of discontent which rumbled beneath the surface, but on the whole, the city was a safer place than it had been before. He felt as if he, and the whole city, was sitting on a powder keg, and that it could explode at any time. There was enormous resentment caused by the banning of most aspects of the Catalan culture, but for a while, at least, the discontent did not erupt.

  Groups of communists continued to meet. In the evenings, Jordi would take off his respectable working clothes and go back to his drab mill-worker rags to drink in the bar and attend the regular Friday meetings. Knowing he was able to send reports to London about life in the city, many of his friends at the Begemot would give him fragments of news which they thought would lead to an exciting column when Jordi investigated.

  One evening after supper, as they walked back to the tenement in Barceloneta, Jordi was unusually quiet, and Ferrer asked him what he was thinking about.

  “Lots of things,” was Jordi’s vague answer. “I’m really enjoying writing and I love the work as a reporter, but it’s all rather hit and miss at the moment. I don’t have an office, and it’s becoming embarrassing relying on the telephone at the Begemot Bar. I’ve not been spending much of the money that comes from London, except on some clothes, and I can afford to get a place of my own. I’m thinking that the time has come to move out of your room, and get a place which would be an office, as well as somewhere of my own to live.” Turning to Ferrer, he laughed, “I could even have my own telephone!”

  “I knew the time would come,” said Ferrer. “I’ll miss having you around. You’ve brought a lot of interest into my life, and I’ve enjoyed your company. But you’re right, the time has come for you to move on.”

  “I need to regularise the work that Steven does, as well,” said Jordi. “Just buying him drinks at the bar is not good enough for what he does for me. My English is getting better, but I need him to continue to teach me, and to look through my reports when I’ve tried to write them myself in English. If I get an office, he could come and help with the translations, and there’d be a telephone for sending the stuff to London.”

  “Are you becoming a business man?” smiled Ferrer.

  “Certainly not.” said Jordi. “I’m a reporter for two reasons: first, I seem to be quite good at writing; and second, I believe in the chance to tell the world what’s going on in our city and in our country.”

  Ferrer smiled. “Ever since that first piece you wrote about Tomas, I’ve told you, your writing is good.”

  “The world must know. It sounds very pretentious, but I think I’m helping the cause by writing reports for London.”

  A few days later, Ferrer got home from the mill, to find Jordi waiting for him.

  “Keep your coat on,” said Jordi with some excitement. “I want to show you something.”

  Jumping on a tram from the quayside, they clanged and rattled past the Columbus Column, and the horses panted as they pulled the tram up the wide boulevard of Paral-lel. “It seems a long time ago since I was a kid in the Raval,” said Jordi as they jolted past.

  As they neared the Placa d’Espanya, the horses’ panting changed to coughing with the dusty atmosphere caused by the vast building site. The huge open space of d’Espanya was being transformed into an enormous and elaborate fountain, surrounded by many statues. On the hillside of Monjuic, other grand buildings were emerging from the chaos. Although construction of many of the buildings had started before the Great War, building had ceased when war broke out and had only recently resumed. The passengers on the tram pulled out handkerchiefs and held them over their noses and mouths to avoid breathing the dust.

  “Have we come here to see your new rooms?” asked Ferrer. “You’ve chosen a hell of a place to live!”

  “Not rooms, but just one room,” replied Jordi, “and it’s going to be the centre of the universe when all this construction is finished.”

  Alighting at the last tram stop before Placa Espanya, they walked into a narrow lane. Stopping before a grand front door, Jordi produced a bunch of keys. They went into a wide hallway, built to accommodate a horse and cart, and started to climb the stairs. At each landing the building became less grand, and on the top floor, they climbed a narrow stair and stopped before a shabby brown door. Ferrer was puffing whilst Jordi fiddled with the key, and he had to bend to get through the door.

  They entered a small room. It was empty except for a tap and a small sink in one corner. The walls were painted chocolate brown below, with the top half a dirty cream colour. Tired oil-cloth on the floor, was functional even if rather worn, and in the centre of the ceiling hung a naked bulb.

  “What do you think?” said Jordi.

  “The Barcelona office of the London Daily Chronicle?” asked Ferrer, smiling.

  “Yes,” said Jordi. “I paid for a month, this very morning.”

  “It’s good you’re used to climbing stairs,” said Ferrer. “That seemed to be many more than we have in Barceloneta.”

  “It’s the sixth floor, just like your place,” said Jordi. “But the ceilings are much higher in the grand apartments on the lower floors, so there’s quite a lot more steps. But come and look at the view.”

  Bending slightly, Ferrer looked out of the small window, and exclaimed, “The whole of Placa d’Espanya, and even a view as f
ar as the old Casaramona factory. I can remember when they built that. It was going to be the great new hope for workers, with better conditions, bringing a whole new dawn of factory work. It didn’t last long: went under about the same time as your old uniform factory, I think, just after the end of the Great War. Didn’t change what life’s like in all the other mills.”

  “Perhaps some-one will think of something to do with it one day,” said Jordi. “It just stands empty now. But it’s a good view to have from my little office.” Opening the window, there was an enormous rush of noise: steam shovels, cranes, shouts of workmen, as well as the usual traffic noise. Jordi turned to Ferrer. “If I lean out, I can just see where the hut was, where I lived with my sisters, and where Grandmother and Tomas came to live. The hut’s gone now, and there are new buildings going up all over the mountain. Monjuic is changing very quickly.”

  “The new buildings are marching up one side from Sant Antoni, and from here as well,” said Ferrer. “Soon there will be no trees left on the mountain.”

  With the apparent lull in the violence in the city, Jordi had offered one or two reports to the London newspaper concerning the rapid development of Barcelona. He had reflected on the irony of so many flourishing businesses, and such a flowering of architectural genius happening hand-in-hand with the terrorism of the anarchists, and the disruptions caused by the communists. It seemed the city thrived and blossomed with near-chaos in its midst, a paradox which Jordi could not explain, but which intrigued his London editor.

  Senor Donald had welcomed Jordi’s accounts of the architectural marvels in the city, and had even found photographs to accompany Jordi’s descriptions of La Pedrera and La Sagrada Familia. Jordi had managed to interview the occupants of one of the apartments on Passeig de Gracia, and had wandered the strange building site of the enormous Familia church. As with most commentators, he considered it highly unlikely that Gaudi’s masterpiece would ever be finished. He had attempted to meet the great architect and was horrified to hear of his untimely death under a Barcelona tram. He had been one of the thousands in the crowd at Gaudi’s funeral, and had written movingly for his newspaper, reflecting sadly that no-one had recognised the famous architect when he died. His malnourished body had been mistaken for that of a tramp.

  It was a few days after Gaudi’s funeral that Jordi had taken possession of his room at Placa d’Espanya. Turning from the noise and dust of the huge building site, he smiled at Ferrer. “Where better for a reporter to live than overlooking the biggest building site in Spain, probably in the world?”

  “So,” said Ferrer, “this is the site of the great exhibition.”

  “Yes,” replied Jordi. “You see below us the grand circular road, with the traffic going round and round? In the centre is going to be a huge fountain. This was a once a grubby little square, and is now a huge traffic roundabout. You can see the fountain is nearly finished. Like many of his projects, Antoni Gaudi had a hand in designing it, and won’t see it finished.”

  “I’m sure there will be trams falling off their tracks and smashing into one another on these tight curves,” said Ferrer. “Trams don’t like going round in circles, and with this new electricity they’re trying in parts of the city, they’ll go much faster, and spin off and kill people.”

  “Don’t be pessimistic,” smiled Jordi. “The whole point of all this construction, is to show off how modern we are. The British started it all with a great exhibition in Hyde Park years ago, and Barcelona had just as great an exhibition in the Cuitadella Park before I was born. Now we will have an even greater exhibition.”

  “They’ve been talking about it for long enough,” said Ferrer. “Didn’t they start some of the building before the Great War?”

  “Yes, but the war came, and we finished up making uniforms. Now there’s peace, we can get on with … um … getting on!”

  “You said you can see where you lived in that hovel on the mountainside,” said Ferrer.

  “Yes. You know, thinking back, how extraordinary it was, that we lived in a shack, with a dirt floor, in the same city as grand houses with gas lights and all modern conveniences. That’s why so many fellows have turned to communism.”

  “And why so many are anarchists like your Pa, and Tomas.” said Ferrer. “It’s not much better today, is it? Most of these men building this great exhibition, will go home to hovels, or overcrowded tenements. And many of them are worth far more than labouring on a building site. Alvar, who works with me, doing your old job, is a very clever chap, and yet he was stuck digging the metro tunnel under Passeig de Gracia.”

  The two men paused as they watched the chaotic work of the building site. Hundreds of men, scurried about like ants, all over the mountainside. They could easily see the wide gash of the main street which would take sightseers up the hill between the grand buildings of the exhibition. At the top of the avenue, a strange round construction was visible, and beyond it the growing pile of what appeared to be an enormous palace.

  “So, where was your hut?” asked Ferrer. “I know I visited it, but everything is so much changed, I can’t tell where it was.”

  “You see an odd round thing being built at the top of the road?” said Jordi. “Higher up from that, where that huge palace is going up, that’s where we lived.”

  “From a slum to a palace in one generation!” exclaimed Ferrer.

  “And not any old palace,” smiled Jordi. “It’s to be the Palau National, where we will celebrate all that’s great about Catalonia.”

  “Such changes,” sighed Ferrer. “I’m not that much older than you, Jordi, but I remember what this was like when I was a child. Down below here, just about where that fountain is being built in this – what did you call it – roundabout? That was the public gallows. And my dad told me that the bullring was built on the site of a dreadful abattoir, stinking with the smell of rotten flesh, and with the air full of the bellowing of frightened cattle.”

  “The bullring was well established when we were living up the mountain. We went sometimes, and I used to be very excited by it. Now I’m not so sure,” said Jordi.

  “What’s that round construction at the top of the road?” said Ferrer.

  “Let’s walk up and see,” said Jordi.

  At the door of the apartment building, Jordi and Ferrer tied handkerchiefs over their faces and set off up the hill. The track was wide and smooth, and as they walked clouds of dust arose. The din of the construction was even louder than they expected when they got close it to, but they were able to wander unhindered through the massive site towards their goal.

  “It’s very different from when I lived up here,” shouted Jordi over the builders’ noise.

  “Let’s hope it won’t be so dusty at the top,” shouted Ferrer back.

  They reached the round construction they had seen from Jordi’s window, and were unable to tell what it was, even when close to it. A large circular bowl of concrete contained a spider’s web of iron pipes, and greasy engineers were hammering and clanging on the metal parts like filthy demons. Seeing one man who appeared to be a supervisor, Jordi went over to him and asked what it was.

  “A fountain,” replied the man. “Huge pumped jets of water will be fired into the air from this great bowl, and crash back down. From here, waterfalls will cascade down either side of the wide avenue.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Ferrer. “It’s not possible.”

  “We’ve come a long way in technology,” said the supervisor. “You see all those pipes? You think they’re iron, don’t you? They’re not: they’re steel, much stronger and safer.”

  “What’s this fountain going to be called?” asked Jordi.

  “The Magic Fountain!” replied the supervisor. “It will be playing all through the times that the exhibition is open. They may even leave it here afterwards. It will be a great attraction.”

  Jordi continued to talk to the supervisor without telling him how the information he was giving so freely, would form the ba
sis of a very interesting column for the London Daily Chronicle.

  Continuing up the hill, Jordi spotted an old and gnarled lone pine tree. Turning to Ferrer, he laughed. “You see that tree? It used to be just outside our hut!”

  “And it’s still here,” said Ferrer.

  “Just outside the Palau Nacional,” said Jordi, grandly. But as they watched, a lumbering steam shovel came grinding towards them, and ripped the tree from the earth in one tearing, bone-crushing moment.

  “Oh,” said Jordi, unusually speechless.

  “That’s progress,” said Ferrer.

  Turning to the view, Jordi said, “At least some things don’t change. The sea still sparkles blue, and the sun still shines in the sky. Whatever they build up here, it will never be as glorious as this sight of the Mediterranean Sea.”

  As the sun started to set behind them, a shrill steam whistle sounded the end of the working day for the labourers. The dust settled quickly, and Jordi and Ferrer started to walk down the hill back to Placa d’Espanya. Halfway down the hill, they came upon a small group of workers couching around a man who was groaning loudly. Going closer to the group, Jordi could see that the man was bleeding profusely from his hip and leg, which seemed to have been crushed.

  “This man needs to get to hospital,” said Jordi.

  The dusty labourers looked up at the respectable young man, with cynical and tired expressions. “Fuck off, mate,” said one of them in a guttural Mercian accent. “Who’s to pay for that? He’s lost litres of blood, and he’ll die soon. We’re just waiting for him to die, and then we’ll carry him home.”

  The man’s groaning seemed to fade, as he slipped into unconsciousness. One of the labourers leaned over his face. “Still breathing,” he said. “He won’t be long now.”

  Jordi stepped back from the group, stung by their contempt for him.

  “Just like the mill,” said Ferrer. “Human life is cheap. They’re so far from home. Many of these Mercian labourers have come from even greater poverty in their part of Spain to find work in our city.”