[Leica] Nathan's PAD 23/2/2023: explaining the past (and a proper Leica film photo too)

Wed Mar 1 13:54:25 PST 2023

Indeed, post Franco there were many spasms of violence, and, as a 
foreign visitor, I was a witness to one incident of it.

In 1976, I had a 2 week holiday booked with some friends in Majorca in 
Spain, and the week beforehand, the bank in which I worked - in common 
with all other banks in Ireland - locked out all its staff due to an 
industrial dispute. After a week in Ireland, I headed off to Majorca and 
we did what other young men in their twenties did on their holidays - 
beaches, girls, drink, etc. We did notice the police seemed very 
twitchy, but nothing untoward happened.

At the end of the fortnight, I rang my Dad and he told me the lock-out 
was likely to persist for another month or so, as both sides seemed at 
loggerheads with a totally intractable situation. Armed with this 
information, three of us who all worked in banking said farewell to the 
other guys who had to go back home to work, and we went to Barcelona by 
ferry. On arrival, we headed on 25 miles to the north of the city to 
stay in Arenys de Mar where we knew another group of Irish bankers were 
staying in hostels - £3 a day, £1 for the bed, £1 for food, and £1 for 
drink.

Anyway, we all had a great time, even organised a football team to play 
local teams, and whiled away our hours trying to persuade both local and 
foreign young ladies of our honourable intentions. However, one weekend 
a couple of weeks into our stay, ourselves and some girlfriends were on 
the beach amidst groups of locals and foreign visitors, when I realised 
I had left something (swimming goggles perhaps) back in the hostel. I 
headed back there and got it. On my return I noticed some Guardia Civil 
vans parked at the entrance to the beach. They were tooled up with 
batons and looked menacing.

I joined my group and after a few minutes heard shouts and cries. To our 
collective horror, we saw all the Guardia had piled into an innocuous 
looking group of young people about 20 metres away and were beating them 
and dragging them away to the vans. No one on the beach moved, or tried 
to interfere. When they drove off, we asked other people on the beach 
what was the reason for the arrests and the extreme brutality shown, but 
we just got shaking heads and shrugged shoulders. I always wondered what 
happened to those poor people.

Spain has changed a lot in the past 47 years. Four years later, I was in 
a different part of Majorca with my wife and young son. People and the 
police seemed a lot more relaxed even then. However, a few months later, 
Col. Tejero of the Guardia Civil attempted a coup and took over the 
Spanish parliament until he was disowned and his actions belatedly 
condemned by King Juan Carlos. Like most people in Europe at the time, 
we wondered had an evil past returned. Spanish politics is certainly 
interesting...

Douglas
who had no camera with him in 1976, but had heard of Leica. 30 years 
later I owned a IIIc, and the following year an M3. Still have both.

Nathan, I like the image. A very nice moment captured.

On 01/03/2023 18:57, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
> Thanks, Peter. There has been some rain that morning but in general the winter has been dry. In contrast to Northern Europe, it has been unseasonably cold here. This morning when I was driving to work, it was only 9C (48F in American money) which is extreme for Alicante in March (OK, the month just started, but still). However, there is plenty of tomatoes of all types, and the prices are no higher than normal, so the supply problems in the UK are not weather related. I think somebody screwed up and is using the cool weather down here as an excuse.
>
> As for the plaque. It is a long story. The restoration of democracy in Spain following Franco’s death in 1975 was peaceful but perhaps not universally welcomed. The right wing and the Catholic Church were tightly connected, and a not insignificant sector of the population would have liked the Fascist government to have continued with a new head. This did not happen, fortunately, but in contrast to the democratisation process in places like South Africa or Poland, there was no reckoning with the perpetrators of human rights violations of the previous regime—no truth and reconciliation commission, no judicial proceedings, just a tacit agreement to sweep things under the rug and move on. This was known as the “Pacto del Olvido” (“the pact to forget”) and until recent years it was rarely questioned. Only in the past decade has there been serious movement towards a more normal treatment of the past, as evidenced by the removal of Franco’s body from the hideous mausoleum he had built outside Madrid (he is now buried in a normal family plot) and installation of memorials like our plaque in Alicante. Still, there are still street names and symbols harking back to the dictatorship.
>
> Like I said, this is all complicated, intermingled with issues of Catalan nationalism, the role of the church, etc. Lluis, who has actually lived in Spain during the dictatorship and through the transition and subsequent years, may have a much richer perspective than I.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
>
> Nathan Wajsman
> photo at frozenlight.eu
>
> http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
> http://www.greatpix.eu
> http://www.frozenlight.eu
>
> Слава Україні! Героям слава!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 1 Mar 2023, at 10:57, Peter Dzwig<pdzwig at summaventures.com>  wrote:
>>
>> Wow, you have rain in Alicante? But I guess that's why we can't get our tomatoes from Spain and Morocco at the moment.
>>
>> Very much like the picture I wonder what she makes of it, or will do in the future. Great shot.
>>
>> I guess Mussolini's planes were flying out of the Balearics. Would love to hear why it took so long to put in place.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> On 27/02/2023 11:57, Nathan Wajsman wrote:
>>> A proper Leica image this time—shot on film with the Leica M2 and developed by me. The background: on 25 May 1938, Alicante was the victim of one of the many war crimes during the Spanish Civil War. The city was besieged, and starvation was widespread. On that day, the attackers knew that there would be a delivery of fish to the Central Market, and so Mussolini’s air force chose to bomb the market—the objective was clearly to sow terror among the population, there were no military targets anywhere nearby. More than 300 people were killed.
>>> Today the square is called Plaza del 25 de Mayo, and in 2013 a memorial plaque was installed on the pavement (the fact that it took so long after re-establishment of democracy in 1978 is another story). Most people just walk by, but I noticed a father explaining the meaning of the memorial to his young daughter:
>>> https://www.greatpix.eu/All/Picture-A-Day/i-7FBJMQn/A
>>> Cheers,
>>> Nathan
>>> Nathan Wajsman
>>> Alicante, Spain
>>> http://www.frozenlight.eu  <http://www.frozenlight.eu/>
>>> http://<http://www.greatpix.eu/>www.greatpix.eu
>>> PICTURE OF THE WEEK:http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws  <http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws>Blog:http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/  <http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/>
>>> Cycling:http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator  <http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator>
>>> Слава Україні! Героям слава!
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>> -- 
>>
>> Dr. Peter Dzwig
>>
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