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

Thu Mar 2 01:13:11 PST 2023

Douglas

Thank you for sharing that story.

Sounds like you had a very adventurous youth - and I hope to hear more
stories like that!

jasse

On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 9:54 PM Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:

> 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!
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Leica Users Group.
> >>> Seehttp://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug  for more information
> >> --
> >>
> >> Dr. Peter Dzwig
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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-- 
Jasse Chan

jassechan at gmail.com