The Lions of Catalunya

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  Jordi stood, savouring the moment, and desperately trying to think of the best way to reply; to make the speech he had prepared so many times in his head, but which now he hesitated to put into words. Anna jumped up and put her arms around him, as he took a breath.

  “Friends, father, it is hard for me to put into words the emotions I feel. May I always be worthy of this honour, and with your support, carry forward the love of our nation.” There was another pause, and the others could see he was thinking carefully about what he would say next. “Without sight, I cannot hold the sword alone: I feel its strength and power, and even through my finger tips, I feel its history; but I know I must share its burden with my loyal brother. Come Juan, stand by me, and hold the sword with me.” Juan stood with one hand on his brother’s arm, just as he had guided him for the last thirty years, and the other hand on the sword.

  “Violeta,” continued Jordi, “You will have to share your future husband with me, for he is my eyes; but your sister, when she is my wife, will take some of that burden from him. Are you standing with us, with a hand for Juan?”

  “I am here, dear brother,” said Violeta.

  “Now let me thank you all and pledge my life to both the sword and my future wife, in the best way I know.”

  Juan, instinctive as usual, led Jordi back to his stool, and handed him his guitar. Just as he had played in Santa Maria, he started with slow quiet chords, but unlike the vast echoing spaces of the great cathedral of the sea, he was now in the intimate confines of the upper room, and he did not need to crescendo into strident strumming. The gentle music filled the room, and then his voice, singing a passionate love song, an ancient Catalan song from the mountains, telling of love of the high snowy peaks, the rippling streams and green meadows of Catalonya, carrying a hidden message of love for Anna and her family. Perhaps it was as well that he could not see the tears forming in the eyes of every person in the room.

  On the day of the double wedding, Alejandro led his family, as always, first to their own church of Sant Miquel for prayers, and then onto Santa Maria del Mar for the marriage mass. Anna’s father accompanied her down the aisle, and Violeta was brought to the altar by her brother Oscar. Jordi did not sing at the wedding, as he felt it was a day to be shared equally with his brother, and a performance from him would focus too much attention on him, detracting from Juan’s day. From the church the newly wed couples walked with their parents to the big house in Montcada, where the Valdes servants had prepared a sumptuous wedding breakfast.; and then in the evening, for the first time, Jordi and Juan went their separate ways, Anna bringing Jordi back to Barceloneta which was to be their home, and Violeta taking Juan upstairs to his future home in Montcada.

  The brothers and the sisters were, however, inseparable, and most of the ways in which they spent their time, they were together; whether wandering to a chiringuita for supper, or taking a promenade along Las Ramblas, whether attending mass at Santa Maria or shopping in the market of Santa Christina, the four would be together, chattering and laughing.

  Enric was born a few days before Eduard. To Anna’s great relief, she brought blond, curly-haired Enric into the world, whilst her sister gave Juan a swarthy, dark-haired Eduard. Jordi held his son, delighting in the tiny, frail baby in his arms, singing gentle Catalan lullabies to him, and a few days after the birth, Anna was able to tell him that his son had beautiful blue eyes. She could tell from the way Enric’s eyes followed her around the room, that he could see.

  Anna and Violeta set to work, remembering their obligation to the Catalan inheritance, to sing in Catalan to the babies, and as they grew, to teach them all the songs and stories of their nation state. Thus the next generation started to absorb the folk tunes and the culture which the Blanxarts had preserved down the generations, and with Jordi in the background, the greatest of all Catalan folk singers, they couldn’t fail to understand the importance of their unique culture.

  Senor Valdes had been a successful wine merchant, inheriting a booming business from his father, and he had celebrated that success by investing in the rebuilding of the grand opera house on Las Ramblas, which had burnt to the ground in 1862. His box at the opera was always well stocked with his best wines, and his daughters and their new husbands regularly attended the exciting seasons of opera presented at The Liceu. Jordi was very pleased one evening to recognise the voice of Senor Roca, and discovered that he was the owner of the adjacent box. When Jordi was not himself performing, the brothers and their wives enjoyed a busy social life centred on the Valdes box at the opera.

  As Senor Valdes’ success grew, he bought many vineyards throughout Catalunya. Oscar Valdes took a major part managing the family business, and was rapidly becoming a well-known businessman in his own right. It seemed the two families, Valdes and Blanxart, were enjoying a golden age. Jordi would lead his rather timid mother to the Valdes box, where she began to enjoy the music of Verdi: she declared La Traviata to be her favourite, and every time she saw it, she cried softly through the last act. Juan, on the other hand, took his father to Don Giovanni, and Alejandro, unused to such musical excesses, decided that he rather liked the music of Mozart. In the evenings, back in their humble house in Sant Miquel, Emilia and Alejandro would lie in bed whispering.

  “Did you ever imagine we would become so grand? Going to the opera, and supper afterwards in Montcada? Two old people in the twilight of our lives, living such lives? Our sons have done well!” But they never let go of their working class background, and whilst enjoying the entertainments given them by their sons, they never aspired to such middle class behaviour as demonstrated by the Valdes family.

  It was Oscar Valdes who brought news of the shadow which was to fall across their middle class lives. Returning from a visit to one of his father’s vineyards, he spoke grimly. “The harvest is failing everywhere, the grapes are not ripening, but dying on the vines. I fear we have a disaster on our hands, father.”

  Senor Valdes immediately sent for his horse, and the two galloped out to the vineyards along the muddy Llobregat River. Sure enough, the vineyards were a sorry sight, and jumping down from his horse, Senor Valdes grabbed the first handful of shrivelled grapes on the first line of vines. “This is terrible,” he groaned. Re-mounting father and son rode swiftly into the small town of Vilafranca del Penedes, centre of the Llobregat wine-growing country, and spoke to many of the despondent inhabitants. All had the same story: far and wide, the harvest was failing; far and wide there was nothing but shrivelled and blackened grapes, fit for nothing.

  Speaking to the manager of one of his biggest vineyards, Senor Valdes learned the truth. “An insect of some sort has attacked the vines. They are all dying. We have no choice, but to uproot them all, and burn them. There will be no harvest this year, nor for some years to come. The Catalan wine industry may never recover.”

  Father and son rode home a little more slowly. After a long silence, as they reached the slopes of Montjuic, Senor Valdes reigned in his horse, and they sat overlooking the vast metropolis. “We have had our golden years, my son,” stated Valdes, “and now they are over. You are aware of the debts we have from simple things like paying glassblowers for bottles and printers for labels, to the huge burden of wages and the costs of our presses. Without grapes this year, we would be struggling, but without grapes for many years, we are finished.”

  The house on Montcada was closed up, and the proud senyera on the high wall of the great chamber taken down and folded. Debtors queued to remove furniture before the house was sold, and tearfully Senora Valdes left her beautiful home. Juan and Violeta, with little Eduard, moved into the Blanxart house on Sant Miquel, and Senor Valdes with his wife and son found a vacant shack on the roof of a nearby tenement in humble Barceloneta. Senor Valdes was most upset about losing his box at the opera: his pride and prestige were hurt by such public humiliation as putting an opera box on the market. Jordi and Juan pleaded with their father to buy it, but it was too extravagant, and too middle class, an
investment for the old man to contemplate.

  Oscar was, however, given work at one of the chiringutas, one which needed his managerial skills, as it was the only one not turning a good profit. He found the work hard after his exalted managerial position in the family firm, but quickly showed an understanding of the business and rapidly turned the chiringuita into one of the most profitable.

  Emilia loved having her house full, and particularly enjoyed the company of her two lively grandchildren, the cousins Enric and Eduard. Except for a rare invitation from Senor Roca, visits to the opera became a thing of the past for the old couple. Jordi, Juan and their wives still attended regularly, and for the young men, it was simply a matter of returning to the hen-roost where they used to sit. Their wives were unsure at first, sitting with the ordinary people, without a comforting glass of wine, but once the lights had been lowered and all had focussed on the music and spectacle, they forgot their apprehension.

  Regardless of political strife and tensions, the glorious opera house stood as a glowing tribute to the commercial success of the city. The brothers had particularly enjoyed introducing their wives to the splendours of the house – Juan describing the golden chandeliers and the bright reds of the velvet seats. Jordi remained mystified by the concept of colour, but was especially appreciative of the brilliance of the singing, whether it came from works by Mozart or Verdi.

  The four of them had an extraordinary experience up in the hen-roost in 1883, when the company presented a long and difficult opera by the controversial German composer Wagner. Not only was the story in Catalan in their programmes, but the singers were singing in their beloved language. This was one of the first translations of the opera, and extraordinarily it was into their beloved Catalan. Jordi drank in the modern music with all its unexpected harmonies and soaring melodies. At one point Juan thought he would explode with excitement, when he whispered urgently to Jordi, “The hero, Lohengrin, he has a sword like ours!” By the second interval of the interminable opera, the girls were uncomfortable and wanting to leave, but the brothers were entranced, and determined to hear every note.

  Afterwards, outside on Las Ramblas, Anna and Violeta needed fresh air and refreshment to recover, but their husbands were plotting how they could get to see the opera again. Turning to walk towards the sea, they met Senor Roca.

  “My God,” exclaimed Roca, “That was hard work. I don’t think I need to sit through that again. Give me Verdi any day!”

  “Do you mean your box will be empty tomorrow, Senor Roca?” enquired Jordi.

  “It certainly will, young man, there is only so much that a man can endure, and this Wagner has gone well beyond my endurance. Certain parts of my anatomy are quite numb!”

  “Then can we have your box? It would be a shame for it to go to waste.”

  “Very well, although I confess I find it hard to imagine that you would want to hear all that again.”

  “Again and again and again!” exclaimed Jordi. “It was wonderful!”

  “I’ll never understand you young people, always so excited by the strange and new. The box is yours’ whenever Herr Wagner’s music comes to town!”

  Time would show that Senor Roca’s assessment of Richard Wagner was wrong. Wagner’s operas came to be great favourites amongst the Catalan audiences, and soon many of the German works had been translated into Catalan, and the operas were performed regularly in the local language at the Liceu Opera House. Jordi, however, was frustrated that he couldn’t transpose any of the Wagner operas on to his guitar. “How does he write such complicated stuff?” he asked his brother.

  The old lion Alejandro took to his bed in 1876, and died peacefully, aged seventy; he was quickly followed by his wife, and within the year by Senor and Senora Valdes. Jordi, Juan and their wives thus made four sad journeys to Montjuic, reflecting that their parents had lived through extraordinary times. Barcelona had flourished and become the powerhouse of Spain, only to rebel and become the capital of an independent state. From hiding their senyeras in case of punishment, they now flew them with pride, and a senyera was draped over each coffin as it made its slow way to the burial ground.

  The chiringuitas remained busy at all times, and the brothers were pleased to promote Oscar to have a managerial eye over all of their many busy workers; this gave Jordi and Juan the chance to put their own effort into the teaching of Catalan. The busy house on Sant Miquel, swollen already with the many brothers and sisters Anna and Violeta gave to Enric and Eduard, was teeming with anxious young people eager to read and write their mother tongue. One day Juan had a bold suggestion to make to his older brother. “We have a chain of chiringuitas, all busy and making money for us. Let us enlarge them, and at the same time close one down.”

  “You are speaking in riddles, brother,” replied Jordi.

  “No, listen. If we enlarge them all but one, we can take in more customers; and the one we don’t enlarge, we will turn into a school. A school dedicated to teaching Catalan. That way we increase our income from the beach kitchens, create a proper school for our students, and give Anna and Violeta more space here at home to care for our children. We will have a school on the beach. We cannot fail.”

  Oscar was charged with the task of expanding all but one of the beach kitchens, and Juan became fully engaged renovating one of the oldest, at the end of Almirall Aixada, to become the make-shift school. Jordi was frustrated that Juan would not let him visit the chaotic building site whilst the renovation was in progress. “You’ll fall over something and hurt your hands,” Juan told him, “And we can’t have that!” Later, however, when the work was finished, Anna took Jordi and his guitar down to the beach, and into the schoolroom.

  “This is quite a big space, isn’t it?” asked Jordi.

  Sitting him on a stool, Anna said to him, “Sing and play, my love. You will tell how big it feels from your music.”

  Jordi started to play, and then sung a few lines. Stopping, he laughed, “We have a little concert hall don’t we? A little Catalan concert hall by the sea!” As he returned to the song, he could tell that others were creeping into the schoolroom, and sitting quietly at his feet. He reached the end of the song, and there was a scattering of applause. Laughing again, he said, “OK, sometimes it will be music; but more often it will be speaking and listening, reading and writing. Let us open our school as soon as we can. And Juan, are you nearby? For us, there will be much to learn as well, as I am determined to conquer German, so that we can understand Senor Wagner’s operas!”

  Life in the 1880’s settled into a routine, if a life punctuated by constant terrorist attacks could ever be called routine. The vast majority of the population were delighted to be living in their own republic and the senyera flew in the breeze over many homes and businesses. But this was Barcelona, and the constant undercurrent of restlessness never went away. Whether right wing royalists or communist cells, there were always groups set upon assassinating someone, or calling a strike, or simply enjoying tearing up part of Las Ramblas to practise building barricades. The middle classes in their grand apartments in L’Eixample were certain that all the plotting was happening in Barceloneta, and to be fair, Prosper Verboom’s elegant new town had taken on the appearance of a Dickensian slum.

  In fact, this reputation as a hotbed of dissent was unwarranted; the residents were loyal Catalonians, but peaceable, and given to argument with words not weapons, more likely to clash over a dominoes board than with guns and bombs. The real terrorists and agitators came from the margins of the sprawling city, and from the grim outlying industrial areas like Sants. Cells would spring up overnight, target their particular grievance, cause whatever gratuitous violence they favoured, and melt away again as quickly as they had appeared.

  As young teenagers, Enric and his cousin Eduard, had taken to exploring the city, returning with amazing tales of change and development. Anna and Violeta had trouble separating the truth from the exaggeration. Enric claimed they had been into exotic gardens in L’Ei
xample; Eduard spoke of huge fountains gushing coloured water; and the two were fascinated to watch the building of Placa de Catalunya, the enormous square at the western end of Las Ramblas.

  None of the adults believed the boys, but then one day in 1887, they came home with extraordinary tales of the demolition of La Cuitadella. The hated fortress, symbol of Castilian oppression, remained a huge carbuncle close to the city centre. New developments had grown up all around it, but the ancient lump of earthworks remained, an anomaly in the changing landscape. “If you don’t believe me, you must come and see for yourself!” challenged Enric, and grabbing Anna by the hand, he dragged her urgently to the beach. “There!” he said. “Didn’t I tell you?

  Shading her eyes from the sun, Anna could just make out, beyond the railway, that a large gang of men with wheel barrows, were indeed taking the fortress apart. A huge steam shovel roared and whistled as it moved the earth. “Oh,” she gasped, “Won’t your father be pleased?”

  Back at the house, Juan had arrived with more exciting news. “Have you heard?” he said, “They’ve started work on La Cuitadella. The whole thing is to be flattened.”

  “We’ve seen it,” boasted the boys.

  “A nice big space for a factory, I suppose,” grumbled Violeta.

  “Or even rebuild La Ribera slum,” suggested Jordi.

  “No, much better than that!” replied Juan. “They’re going to make a park, you know, with trees, and a boating lake, fountains and statues.”

  “Can we go and watch?” asked Enric.

  “Don’t get under the workmen’s feet,” replied their mother, “And don’t come home covered in mud!”

  At the edge of the old fortress site, they watched as the great steam shovel dragged lumps of the earthworks away and into the filthy water of the old moat. Men with wheelbarrows carted large pieces of stone to one end of the site where they were stacked, ready to be used again elsewhere. Bricks were being stacked neatly into piles, also ready for re-use. The boys noticed an old man with a broad brimmed sun hat, watching the scene just as they were.