The Lions of Catalunya

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  “It’s my fault,” moaned Carla. “I told them to lock themselves in. They were trapped inside, the door was barred, oh God…….”

  A small group of Mossos, standing rigidly to attention, watched the conflagration impassively, rifles on shoulders, the flames reflecting in bayonets and buttons.

  Rafael, held tightly to his mother who was in a state of complete collapse, and he felt another hand join his, helping to hold Carla. He looked into the face of Senora Macia, Carla’s mother, his own grandmother. Behind her stood Grandfather Macia. “Rafael,” said Senora Macia, “It is not safe for you here. Come away.”

  “I can’t leave them,” muttered Rafael, as if by watching the fire, somehow Grandmother Anna and his sisters would emerge.

  “They are all with our Lady now,” said Senora Macia. “Come away and save yourself and your mother before anyone recognises you.”

  Rafael and Carla allowed themselves to be steered away from the heat of the blaze and though the dark alleys to the Macia butcher’s shop. Once inside, with the door and shutters firmly closed, Senor Macia lit a lamp. Their priority was Carla, who remained unable to stand or speak, but fell into a chair, muttering. At last, as she dozed into a fitful sleep, Senor Macia turned to Rafael.

  “By Christ, you stink young Rafael. Where have you been? I hardly knew you, and recognised you only because I saw your mother. And you are walking so badly. I had no idea you had been injured. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Father was arrested, and tortured by the Botfliers. He died in the cellars of the Generalitat, and mother and Grandmother Anna brought his body back to the house this morning. Following his arrest, I have been hiding in the dunes of Barceloneta, disguised as a beggar. As for the way I’m limping,” and he hesitated, uncertain if he should reveal the truth of the Blanxart sword, “it’s an injury from the barricades. It’s nothing.”

  “You must stay here; we will take care of Carla, and you. Too much has happened to you in the last days. You will be safe here for as long as you want.”

  “No we won’t,” replied Rafael, “and if they catch me here, or even mother, you will be drawn into their net. There is a price on my head. It’s not safe for us, and it’s not safe for you. I will return to the dunes, and take mother with me. I am the lion of La Ribera; perhaps I will be the last of the lions of Ribera, but I will always be dedicated to the cause of Catalonya. It may be that the Mossos think mother and I perished in the fire, but if I show my face in La Ribera, I will be recognised, and they will know I’m still at large. For now, it’s best that I vanish. Who knows? Perhaps an army will rise up from the sands of Barceloneta to push the Spanish out of Barcelona once more.”

  “I fear we are witnessing the end of Catalunya,” sighed Senor Macia.

  “Never, as long as I have breath in my body,” said Rafael. “I will continue the fight in the name of my father and my grandfather. I will not rest until Catalunya is a free country once again.”

  “We may wait a very long time for that,” replied Grandfather Macia.

  “However long it takes, it will take. But it will happen one day.”

  “You have a wise head on a young body,” said grandfather, “and I pray you are right. Now if you are determined to go, let us find some provisions for you.”

  Carla stirred from her stupor. “In my sorrow, I have been listening. You are a good boy, my son, and I will come with you. You carry the future of Catalonya, and my duty is to support you. I’ve nothing else to live for, my life is over, except to be with you. Tonight we skulk away into exile, but one day you will return in triumph.”

  Grandmother Macia prepared a bag of food, trying to choose provisions that would last at least some days, trying to guess what they would need to survive in the dunes, and in the darkest moments of the night, Senor Macia watched them slip through the water gate, Rafael with his strange stiff limp, Carla bent, clinging to her son for support, aged before her time by the day’s events. They disappeared into the dunes, and he wondered if he would ever see them again.

  Edging up the soft, sandy hillock which signalled the start of the Barceloneta dunes, they turned and looked back at La Ribera. “Farewell old friend,” said Rafael, straightening up, and gripping his mother with one hand, the other hand holding the hidden sword. “The young lion salutes you as he goes into exile.” Carla looked wondrously at her son. Despite the desperate circumstance, she was proud of her son, still in his teens, carrying the future of Catalunya on his shoulders with dignity. They turned and stumbled into the unknown.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Carla and Rafael wandered on towards the beach, pausing briefly at the shrine of Sant Miquel to pray and pick up the meagre possessions and scraps of food Rafael had hidden there. The scattered rogues and vagabonds who lived in the shanty town amongst the dunes were used to the dispossessed and homeless seeking shelter, and took little notice of two people who appeared to be beggars. Rafael’s filfthy state, and his strange gait, meant that no-one looked him in the face, and his mass of unruly blond curls had now become matted and greasy under a rough cap. The lion of La Ribera had truly vanished.

  The two spent the first day and night wandering beside the sea, unsure what to do, or how to survive in such circumstances. The mild September weather, the warmth of the sun and the blue of the Mediterranean gave a false sense of peace and tranquillity, and it was hard to believe that such horror and mayhem lay only a mile away. As a child, Carla had often played beside the sea, and vaguely knew her way about the dunes. Rafael, busy in the shop, learning the vintner’s trade from an early age, had rarely been there. They slept on the beach, still dazed from their experiences.

  The second day they found an abandoned shack just at the edge of the beach. Consisting of little more than two walls and a roof which had fallen in, they decided they could make a shelter of it; and there was no sign of any recent inhabitant or anyone likely to be returning soon. They laboured to clear out the debris, vaguely hoping to find something useful amongst the rubbish, but apart from saving all fragments of wood for a fire, they found nothing of value. By the end of the day, they had a small clear space in which to sleep, but little else.

  Unpacking the bag which Grandmother Macia had packed, they found a cooking pot, a dagger-like kitchen knife, and a water jug. These immediately became their most cherished and valuable possessions, and were hidden under the rags in the corner of the shack. Smiling grimly, Carla said, “Believe it or not, I know this knife. It’s one from my father’s butcher’s shop. Here, in three possessions, is our entire life: a knife to butcher a rabbit, a pot to cook it in, and a jug to fetch the water for the cooking.”

  “Grandmother Macia did well for us,” remarked Rafael. “Can we cook a rabbit in sea water?”

  “I think it would be alright to cook with, but we need fresh water as well. There is a river north of here, polluted but not salty. Tomorrow I’ll take the jug and see if the water there is safe to drink. Today, we’ll manage on some more of the cheese.” Rafael continued to have the Blanxart sword strapped tightly to his leg, enabling him to stand or lie down, but not to sit easily. Lying on the sand, with his mother sitting beside him, they watched the gathering dusk and ate a little of the precious cheese. “Yes,” continued Carla, “We don’t know how long we will have to live here, so we must behave as if it’s for a long time, and become organised. Water will be the priority tomorrow.”

  With the sun setting behind them over the city, casting long shadows before them on the beach, the sea slowly turned from the bright blue of day into the deep dark blue, then black, of night. “We need time to recover, mother,” said Rafael. “We have lost so much, but God has spared us.” He paused and looked around. “It’s so beautiful here, and peaceful. Our Lady of the Sea has guided us here; we must thank her, and Sant Miquel who watched over me for the last few days. As darkness fell, the pair slept.

  Rafael was becoming used to sleeping in the stiff position forced by the sword, and at first he slept soundly.
At some time in the dark of the night, he awoke to hear his mother sobbing gently beside him. Putting out his hand, he found hers, and whispered, “Take comfort, mother. The angels have my sisters in paradise; my father is there with them. Their pains and trials are over.”

  “You’re a good son,” replied Carla. “Without you I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Without me, you might be at home with Grand-mother Macia,” said Rafael, “So it’s I who should be grateful. We are here to care for one another. Now try to sleep.”

  In the morning, Carla wrapped her black cloak around her, and set off with the water jug. Rafael watched her go with mixed feelings. He hated seeing his mother having to live like this, but her knowledge of the area, scant as it was, was a great deal more than he had. It was also safer for her than him to go wandering near other people and it was logical, if worrying, that it was Carla who went in search of water.

  Rafael was determined to spend some time trying to improve the shelter, and hoped that some of the fallen roof could be put back. Limping stiffly, he moved around, hunting for longer timbers to heave up on top of the shack’s two crude walls. He did not hear the horseman approaching until the last moment.

  “And who have we here?” demanded the rider in Castilian.

  Turning awkwardly, Rafael found a lone soldier looking down at him.

  “By the Virgin, you stink!” announced the soldier. “I asked you, who are you?”

  Rafael hestitated, pulling his cap down. “Joan Macia, sir,” he replied quietly, in Castilian.

  “What’s that? Didn’t hear you.”

  “Joan Macia,” Rafael spoke a little louder, the unfamiliar Castilian sticking in his throat. “Sir.”

  Flicking his riding crop at Rafael, the soldier barked at him, “Speak up man. Who are you?”

  Shouting loudly at the soldier, Rafael denied his name for a third time. “Joan Macia, Sir! God save the King!”

  “Very well, Joan Macia,” replied the soldier. “God save the King!” And he cantered away.

  Rafael turned and hit his head against the side of the shelter. God save the King! How could he have denied himself three times? He was the lion of La Ribera; he was a Blanxart; and now he had fallen so far that he was afraid to admit even to his own identity. All those weeks on the barricades; all those promises to his father and grandfather; he felt he had betrayed them all. And yet what choice had he had? He must think of his mother and her survival; he must do all he can to stay alive, ready for the day when Catalunya began to fight back. He grasped the hidden sword, and vowed that one day he would hold his head up high again.

  He spent the day shuffling around the immediate area of the hut, picking up driftwood and bringing it back ready for making a fire. The scrubby vegetation of the dunes seemed to him to have little possibility for anything to eat, and he hoped his mother would do better than him identifying edible plants. During the afternoon Carla returned with the jug now filled with brackish water, and a bundle of green-leafed plants.

  “There are soldiers everywhere,” she declared as she arrived, and set down the jug. “In ones and twos, poking their noses into everyone’s business.”

  “I had one here, mother,” replied Rafael. “On his own, just the one, on horseback. Came right up close before I noticed him. Wanted to know who I am.”

  “What did you say?” alarm crept into Carla’s voice.

  “I told him I’m Joan Macia,” said Rafael, with some embarrassment. “I betrayed father and grandfather.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Carla firmly, “you did the right thing. If you had told him you’re a Blanxart, he’d have arrested you immediately, and you’d be long gone from here when I got back. I was a Macia once; perhaps the time has come for me to be Carla Macia again.”

  “You’re not angry at me for denying father and grandfather’s name?”

  “Certainly not,” replied Carla. “In fact I am mightily relieved that you were quick thinking enough to do so. Our first duty to your father’s memory is survival, and you did the only thing you could do to survive. The sword you bear is symbolic; and it is your responsibility to guard it now. At the moment, if anything should happened to you, there’s no-one to hand it to. One day, perhaps generations from now, that sword will be carried in glory through the streets of Barcelona, heralding the rebirth of our great Catalonian nation. For now, you must do everything in your power to guard it and keep it safe.” She paused, and smiled, “Oh, come here.” And she hugged him just as she had done when he was a small child.

  Pulling away, he asked her about finding water.

  “It’s a long way,” she said, “and the water is very muddy. We must leave it to settle overnight and then see if we can pour off enough to drink.” Rafael looked at the muddy water doubtfully, but said nothing. “And we must start to find food in the dunes and in the sea. There are rabbits, but they’ll be hard to snare; there must be fish, but we have no line to catch them with; and there might be oysters. Let’s go and see.”

  Slipping out of her worn leather shoes, Carla led the way to the water’s edge where the sand gave way to a rocky shoreline. Rafael followed, but he kept his boots firmly on. Not only did he have to cope with the hidden sword, but he was not at all keen to walk into the water. “Yes,” called Carla, “These are oysters. They’re rather small, but they’ll taste good. And there are other shellfish among the rocks.”

  Carla collected enough shellfish to make a meal, and dropped them into the pot with seawater and some of the herbs she had collected during the day. “Rafael,” she instructed, “Wander over the dunes and find someone with a fire. Ask them to let you light one of these twigs you’ve collected and we’ll start a fire of our own.”

  Rafael returned with the twig glowing, and soon they were watching as their small fire grew and started to heat the pot in its midst. Once they were settled watching the cooking pot, Rafael said, “I got some news from the people I spoke to over there. There have been more fires in La Ribera. The Mossos have orders to burn any building showing the Catalan flag. No-one is safe.”

  “Grandfather Macia has a senyera in his butcher’s shop,” remarked Carla. “He’ll be a target.”

  “Most of la Ribera is loyal to Catalunya, mother,” observed Rafael. “Everyone is a target.”

  Each day Carla would walk to the stream for water. She would return with plants they could eat, and bits and pieces of rubbish she thought useful. One day, down at the edge of the stream, she found a cracked drinking cup and another day she returned triumphantly with thread and a bent pin, with which, she declared, they could catch fish – although, try as much as he could, Rafael never did.

  Rafael ventured further afield and started to meet some of the other destitute inhabitants of the dunes. They accepted him as simply ‘Macia’, and mindful of their own doubtful backgrounds did not enquire why he and his mother were living beside the sea, nor how he had acquired his awkward limp. He began to learn which plants could be eaten, and the autumn yield of berries from some of the scrubby plants were a welcome addition to their shellfish diet.

  On one memorable occasion, Rafael killed a rabbit by the simple and accidental expedient of falling on it, the hilt of the sword strapped to his side crushing its skull. Little of that unfortunate creature was wasted, but try as he may, Rafael could not repeat this bizarre way of catching a meal.

  Mother and son settled into a simple routine for some days, until the morning they were woken by the shouting of some of the nearest residents of the shanty town. Stumbling out of the shack, they could see the western sky full of fire and smoke. Rushing up the dune to a vantage point, Carla could see clearly what was happening. The whole of La Ribera was alight, and an acrid smell of burning drifted across the dunes. Rafael came limping up behind her, and they stood with several of the others who lived in the dunes.

  After the initial shock, Rafael spoke first. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing,” replied one of the other watchers. “Nothing at
all.”

  “He’s right,” said Carla. “Let’s hope they had some warning. Let’s hope they’ve escaped. The whole place is on fire, the whole of the slum. My father’s shop, all the shops, all the homes, everything caught up in one horrible great blaze.” Turning to Rafael, she clung to him. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”

  Rafael put his arm round his mother. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “We must remain hopeful.”

  It was then they saw the beginnings of the huge crowd struggling towards them. Out from the water gate, and from other ways out of the city, the people of La Ribera were dragging handcarts and possessions away from the inferno. In attempting to salvage as much as possible, most had laden themselves with intolerable burdens, and the chaotic procession moved very slowly across the dunes of Barceloneta.

  “There are hundreds of them,” gasped Rafael. “They must have been given a warning.”

  “Let us hope Grandmother Macia and Grandfather are amongst them,” said Carla.

  The sorry mass of refugees continued to scramble over the dunes and through the rough paths, engulfing the scattered shacks and hovels of the existing population. As some got nearer to Rafael, he saw the wretchedness on their faces, and he remembered those first few lonely nights when he had fled the Blanxart shop inferno. Now, however, there were hundreds, of them. The ragged army continued to advance, wave after wave clambering up and down the dunes towards him. The landscape became a black mass of moving bodies, like a plague of locusts crawling across the land. Would they continue straight past him and into the sea?