A Barcelona Heiress

by Sergio Vila-Sanjuán

  “Now that is what you call having everything stacked against you. When did you realize he had disappeared?”

  “Ángel and I had dinner two Sundays ago. He was more nervous than I’d ever seen him. He’d received a tip that Danton, the killer who is going after union leaders, had set his sights on him. And I haven’t seen him since. I’ve asked at the union and the boarding house where he normally stays, but they don’t know where he is.”

  She took a dramatic pause, I suspect in order to hold my attention.

  “Pablo, only you can help me. With your position and your contacts you’re the only one capable of getting the word out in Barcelona and bringing my brother back to me safe and sound. Pablo, tell me that you’ll do it. I fear for my brother’s life,” she finished, with a feverish look in her eye.

  “I will try,” I replied. “I promise you that I will try.”

  María Nilo was truly one of a kind; she put such passion and energy into her actions. And yet, she was also not one to be trusted, as evidenced by the fact that she had kept from me something as relevant as her relationship to Lacalle.

  I accompanied her to the door, and when I closed it Lucinda besieged me.

  “This girl is trouble. You be careful with her.”

  “But …”

  “She’s a snake in the grass, that’s what she is. Who does she think she is? Barging in here like that on a holiday, as if she owned the place! And the way she looked at you! Why she almost devoured you with those eyes!”

  After calming my hysterical housemaid, always so maternal and protective of me, I went out to attend Midnight Mass at the Barcelona Cathedral.

  7

  The rumors that another general strike was brewing, which was bound to sink the city into a state of darkness and chaos, had Barcelona’s ruling class willfully bracing itself. When word spread of the call for another strike, the gentlemen of nobility and high bourgeoisie, who had been put on edge by episodes like that at Turó Park and other, bloodier incidents that continued to befall the city at that time, proffered their services on behalf of the counterrevolution.

  They did so by strengthening their ties with the somatenes, those civil militias that professed their devotion to General López Ballesteros. In theory, most of the men belonging to Barcelona’s privileged classes were registered among their ranks, but in practice, the leading figures, out of caution and complacence, tended to designate people in their service to conduct patrols for them. When they did not do so, comical situations tended to arise. On one occasion the members of a somatén assigned to Doctor Andreu Avenue heard bullets whistle by and everyone took off running. Only the old Count of Lavinia remained right there, next to a lamppost, undaunted, until the skirmish ceased. When the scare was over, the neighbors gradually emerged from the gardens of their mansions and walked out onto the street. Everyone was heaping praise on the count for his bravery, when his wife suddenly put an abrupt stop to all their raving. “Brave? Good grief, don’t you know that Tomás is as deaf as a post?”

  This time around, the revolutionary strike organized by the General Union was set to begin with a total walkout in the transport sector. So the Marquess of Malet, president of the city’s streetcar company, decided to go on the offensive.

  * * *

  As Barcelona began to grow exponentially in the nineteenth century, it quickly became evident that its citizens required a sound transportation network. At first there were three lines featuring horse-drawn carriages running in three directions, followed by a period of steam-powered streetcars which sent up clouds of vapor over the city and, from time to time, ran over a careless child (the San Andrés line was popularly known as “the guillotine”). At the turn of the century the streetcar network went electric thanks to the work of English, Belgian, and German companies refitting section after section of track. The system’s multiple managers muddled operations, leading to abandonment, dirtiness, and poor service until the different companies were finally fused into a single enterprise over which the Marquess of Malet presided. Strong in character, this military man and aristocrat imposed order among the workers and renovated and maintained the company’s fleet of cars, to which he brought uniformity by painting them a distinguishing mustard color. During the era in question, the city was served by seventy-one lines transporting tens of thousands of passengers each day.

  Malet, who considered the company a kind of personal fiefdom, was riled by the threats of a strike. Reacting with a martial air, he announced that, despite the strike plans, service would not be interrupted. He decided to lead by example, and thus proclaimed that he would personally drive a streetcar. And he didn’t stop there: he called for volunteers among his friends and associates to assist him. After being urgently contacted by telephone, amid all the agitation inherent to any conspiratorial undertaking, many young men from leading families followed his example. Once these men had received accelerated, and possibly insufficient, training from drivers loyal to the marquess, the city was soon teeming with streetcars moving about somewhat erratically and, in a couple of cases, derailing, though without any casualties.

  But these accidental drivers were, even in those circumstances, among the well-to-do, which gave rise to the kind of humorous scenarios that could only be expected. It was not uncommon to see a chauffeur-driven luxury Dodge Brothers sedan behind an overloaded streetcar, complete with a butler on the passenger side carrying a basket full of sandwiches for the brother of the Marquess of Mataró, who braved the fury of the commoners as he piloted the Sagrera–Horta line. Nor was it shocking to see the Count and Countess of Piedrahita’s Lincoln Cabriolet cruising alongside the streetcar bound for Plaza Tetuán in order to provide its operator, one of the couple’s sons, with bottled water.

  Only one woman was so bold as to join the effort as driver. Isabel Enrich adeptly worked the levers of the electrical traction vehicles as if she had never done anything else in her life. Julián Pérez Carrasco had asked me to write a story for El Noticiero Universal about what he dubbed the “aristocratic counterstrike” and, because the courts at that time were at a virtual standstill, I acceded to his request and decided to accompany my friend on one of her routes at the helm of the roofless streetcar covering route 168, from Plaza de Cataluña to the Josepets church, continuing on to the Plaza de la Rovira in the Gracia district before completing its run at the Coll terminal.

  Many of the young volunteers had been issued revolvers but, as Isabel refused to go armed, in addition to the ticket seller she was accompanied by a security guard the Marquess of Malet had assigned to her. The sentry wore a long jacket and a helmet, and he rode in the front row of the vehicle. He made no effort to conceal his boredom, and from time to time he would stare at the people coming and going up and down the stairs that led to the upper platform, all the while clutching his Winchester repeating rifle with calloused hands.

  “What I don’t understand,” Isabel said to me, dressed in a dark green trench coat and panting as she worked the controls, “is why you don’t volunteer to participate as well.”

  I reflected for a moment before responding to that irresistible young lady whose daring constituted, for those of us who were close to her, an evident call to action. Her attention was now riveted to the rails sunk into the pavement and earth of the city streets, upon which our vehicle slid, between bicyclists and pedestrians in bowler hats rashly darting right in front of us.

  “I feel more comfortable as an observer,” I responded. “I believe that in this way I can offer a more impartial view of the conflict, both as a journalist and a lawyer. I maintain a certain distance from social struggle, for at this time it would be too easy for me to adopt radical positions, which is precisely what I have always striven to avoid. I do not wish to end up participating in the kind of exchanges of gunfire that take place every day, although, watching you at the helm of this car, I am tempted to follow your example.”

  “‘The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the right
eous.’”

  “The Book of Proverbs is wonderful, isn’t it? ‘As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.’”

  “And ‘By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.’ Sir, get out of the way!”

  After leaving behind the bourgeois terraces and lush plane trees on Paseo de Gracia, we headed down Salmerón Street, which was much more humble, yet full of local color. Two donkeys burdened with milk had pulled up right over the rails as the milkman struggled in vain to get them out of the way. Isabel honked loudly, but the animals wouldn’t budge, and a group of curious onlookers were soon drawn to the scene. A few men sporting classic worker caps began to insult my friend.

  “Come on, baby, get down from there. You’re much too pretty to be one of the bosses’ lackeys.”

  “Aha … so the rich have discovered the streetcar, but just to annoy the poor.”

  “Just what we needed: a woman taking a job from a driver who needs to put bread on the table.”

  “Get back to your pots and pans before you run someone over.”

  Isabel leaned out and shot back at them, “Hey you loudmouths, and what are you doing? I know you don’t need to use the streetcars because you aren’t working now, nor does it look like you will be any time soon. You knock me because I’m helping the city function, and its people get around? And because I’m a woman? Some brave lovers of progress you are!”

  A group of ladies waiting for the streetcar took Isabel’s side and were soon embroiled in a loud squabble with the workers who had harangued her. Before long everyone on the corner was shouting, and the passengers riding on the top deck eagerly joined the dispute.

  At that point the troublemakers began to rock the car, pushing it from the right side.

  “Turn it over! Let’s flip it!”

  Isabel grabbed my hand.

  “Shouldn’t we get out?” I asked, shaken by the vehicle’s swaying. Several passengers had jumped off.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly.

  Things were getting ugly when, finally, the guard seemed to snap out of his fog, and stood up with his Winchester clutched in both hands.

  “Who here wants trouble?” he bellowed.

  The rabble-rousers backed off and, resigned, drifted away from the vehicle. Meanwhile, the donkeys had finally gotten out of the way. My friend vigorously honked the horn again, and her streetcar surged forward, continuing on its winding path toward the city’s higher ground.

  We resumed our chat while from the sidewalks we caught gazes from street vendors and shoe shiners, maids pushing baby carriages, traveling barbers, mop merchants, water sellers with tin cups, and knife sharpeners with their spinning lathes. A band of blind musicians playing violins and bandurrias banged out their tunes in front of a wall plastered with placards and posters advertising upcoming plays and shows.

  Our vehicle was hounded by small, sporadic groups of hostile hecklers who, without going so far as to attack us, let loose with the occasional barb. “Scabs!” “Bourgeois tyrants!” “Vermin!” Crippled by the strike, the city was operating in a kind of stupor, as if it had been placed under sedation.

  From time to time Isabel halted the car at designated stops. I helped her make sure that the boarding passengers either showed their pass or paid the five-cent fare.

  “We believe that we’re in the right, and historically we have been,” Isabel said out of nowhere. “But our inability to listen to those on the other side will be our undoing.”

  “When you say ‘we,’ to whom are you referring?’”

  “Well, us—the aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, the businessmen, and the enterprising people who built this city, creating companies and raising buildings that are the pride of this impoverished and dejected Spain. Without this ‘us’—a group in which I include your parents and mine, Barcelona would continue to be a sleepy and shabby provincial town. We were the ones who breathed life into it, but we don’t know to be generous, and, in order to keep our workers from destroying us, we’ve had to turn things over to characters like López Ballesteros, who is a brute …”

  “Yes, but an effective and possibly honorable one.”

  “And aided by a cruel and villainous accomplice, his boss the police chief, that Beastegui, with his heartless blue eyes and his tie pin … always so prim and proper, yet exuding unpleasantness. That man is a torturer.”

  “A torturer? What makes you say that? How do you know?”

  “I have my sources,” she replied; an evasive response from which she did not retreat, despite my insistence. “Barcelona is a city of haves and have-nots, plagued by injustice.”

  “That is so, and just what do you do to address these issues?”

  “Come with me tomorrow afternoon and you shall see.”

  * * *

  The next day Isabel picked me up in her car, and minutes later we were in front of a tall building on Pasaje Lloveras. A maid escorted us to a waiting room crowded with women with small children wailing, running around the table or, in some cases, sitting there motionless with sickly faces. The walls were lined with shelves full of lavishly bound tomes on a range of medical fields, and taking a prominent position in the room was a white marble bust of a gentleman with a smartly trimmed mustache and a goatee.

  “This,” my friend announced, gesturing toward the sculpture, “is the eminent Dr. Vidal Solares, Barcelona’s finest pediatrician, and this is his private practice, where he treats the children of the city’s wealthy.”

  A nurse came out to receive us and escorted us to a foyer. The door was open a crack, allowing us to overhear the doctor’s conversation with a mother who seemed rather irksome.

  “But, Doctor, my daughter begins to cry every time we put her in the bathtub. Please tell me what we can do about her.”

  “It’s very simple, ma’am. Your daughter is slovenly.”

  “Oh!” The lady fell silent, but only for a moment. “You see, we’re following the advice of a friend of my husband’s who told us that the best thing for children is to give them lots of liver and lamb brains, but our little Martita just refuses to eat them. What do you think?”

  “Do you like brains and liver?”

  “Goodness no! The truth is that I don’t like them at all.”

  “Well, neither does your daughter. Give her some sole and a good piece of beef, and she’ll eat. And have her take some vitamins too.”

  A few seconds later an obese midwife emerged with a placid baby girl in her arms. Behind her came the doctor. Corpulent and with a closely cut beard, his booming voice must have caused his tender young patients to cry at the mere sound of it. His expression transformed when he spotted my friend.

  “Countess! What a pleasant surprise that you can accompany us this afternoon! You can see the new wing we have opened.”

  After the customary introductions, the doctor put a coat on over his white smock and showed us to his car. His chauffeur, who was already waiting for him, drove us to a three-story building relatively nearby, at 467 Consejo de Ciento Street.

  “This is where we treat the poor children whose parents cannot afford private care,” the doctor explained. “For years I paid for it myself. Over time, given the refusal of our government institutions to fund my initiative, I decided to turn for help to a number of well-to-do ladies, who responded to my appeal.”

  We toured the building. The ground floor housed a ward known as The Drop of Milk, where sterilized milk was distributed to children who could not be breastfed by their mothers. On the same floor was the dispensary along with rooms for surgery, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, and massage therapy. Each bore a plaque indicating the name of the person who had funded the facility: the Marchioness of Bañolas, the Countess of Benabarre, Mrs. Lefinur …

  When we reached the ear, nose, and throat dispensary, Isabel Enrich pleaded, “Don’t make me blush, Doctor. Don’t show him this one.”

  “
And why not? It is only right that this area should bear your name; if it were not for your assistance this hospital would be in even more dire straits than it already is. Your friend here,” said Vidal Solares, turning to me, “has gone to great lengths to obtain funding for us, often drawing upon her own assets, and also had a hand in the modest subsidy which the city finally agreed to grant us.”

  “My family has some influence with the previous mayor, and was able to bring some pressure to bear. Later, I also did what I could. We shall continue to implore them for aid, Doctor. What they give us is but a pittance.”

  “Tell me, Dr. Vidal Solares,” I cut in. “What inspired you to undertake this effort?”

  The doctor scratched his goatee before replying.

  “Listen, my friend, today’s children are tomorrow’s men. The ancients believed that infants exhibit, as if molded in wax, the vices and virtues of the adult, in such a way that the former is a reflection of the latter, who simply proceeds to reveal over time what was inborn from the very beginning.

  “Today we know that it is just the other way around: the character of our adults depends entirely on how we raise our children. If we take care of and bring them up properly, they will be responsible. If we neglect them and leave them to fate, we will have delinquents.”

  “You speak like a psychologist.”

  “But I’m not. I am a children’s doctor, a pediatrician. My obsession is maximizing the attention they receive so we no longer hear stories of children dying or suffering irreparable damage because their families didn’t have the means for care. That is an injustice and a disgrace for those of us who can help prevent it. In England they passed the first legislation protecting child workers in 1802. Here it took us eighty years to do the same, and it is evident that the results of this delay have been dreadful. One day, twenty years ago, a distraught woman came to my practice, crying uncontrollably, with two children stricken with pneumonia. Their condition was serious. If they had not received attention, they could have died. Unable to stomach that idea, I took them into my own home, and the patients slept in the cribs that had belonged to my daughters. First I established a free service for nursing infants, and then we created The Drop of Milk; the first facility of its kind in Europe, as recognized by the 1906 International Convention in Brussels, and little by little we have continued to expand. This year alone we attended over seventy thousand patients!”