A shared history...

I was hankering after the good old BBC last night so fired up the laptop to watch a couple of shows that I had downloaded on the iPlayer before leaving the UK for just such an emergency (NOTE TO BBC; please please PLEASE make iPlayer available overseas).

I watched an episode of the Inspector Lindley Mysteries and then moved on to a documentary entitled ‘What did you do in the war daddy?’ I am a history graduate through desire to enjoy my degree rather than through any hope of working in the historical field, and I am a sucker for anything vaguely historical; books, films, documentaries, I lap it all up – but woe betide anything that is historically inaccurate; not in the minutiae sense but in the sense of one big plot theme or supposedly historical reference that is just stupidly wrong.

Anyway, always loving the BBC docs I downloaded this one and stored for later use. Now was the time. I began watching it and it was really very interesting, moving and poignant; the sadness of children who lost their fathers in WW1, some who never even knew them. I was faithfully watching away when I realised that this series was something completely new to my Spanish fiancé who was sitting happily watching beside me.

Completely new.

A completely new history. Something that he had never learnt about in school. It struck me that Spain was not involved, in more than a peripheral way, in any of the wars that have so shaped the consciousness of a large part of the rest of Western Europe over the previous century. WW1: Britain, France, Germany, Belgian, Russia & the Balkans not to mention the participation of the (then) colonies of these imperial powers. WW2: Britain, U.S.S.R., Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Austria, the Balkans and again many many other commonwealth countries and other people from across the world. The Cold War: Germany, U.S.S.R., Britain & Western Europe, The States, among others.

I realised that during the first World War, Spain had not really been involved; the hardships, the horrifying death toll on the battlefield, the advances in weapons that so outpaced the tactics, the discovery of, or rather the creation of a situation that lead to the occurrence of Shell Shock….and so many other things, the tank for God’s sake, the invention of the tank! This all meant nothing to my fiancé… (not that the Spanish army don't use tanks, just that the reference to how they came about is something rather abstract)

I am not saying that the Spanish have not been affected by the consequences of these wars…which brings me to Hitler...

…and World War II.

By the time of this war Spain had fallen under Franco’s boot (even though quite recently). The Nazis had been involved in the ultimate victory of Franco in the Guerra Civil in Spain, anyone who knows much about history or art has at least heard of Guernica. Spain was the Nazis tactical testing ground. But during the war Spain was designated a ‘non-belligerent member of the Axis’ they sent one division of troops to support Germany, they sent workers and they sent money (largely in repayment of Nazi loans). But that was it.

They were largely peripheral players in this war that is so etched on my consciousness; images of the Nuremberg Rally, Hitler, Churchill, the air raid shelters, London on fire, tanks against horses in Poland, the words from Churchill’s speeches, images of Auschwitz…

During the Cold War they remained under Franco, emerging only in 1975 (that is ONLY 33 years ago!) and again, largely peripheral.

It is strange, had I moved to France, to Germany, Russia, Ireland, the US, even New Zealand the people there would have had an understanding, albeit from a different perspective, of all of these things, possibly even have grandparents who had been involved on some level in these conflicts…but…Spain?

I know that it is not just conflicts either, although these of course are catastrophic events and the ones that have scarred us most. I know there is more to history than that but for now, it is enough to dwell on this.

I am suddenly aware that history is very important to me, more than I realised, that this history of Western Europe that I have always been aware of, that I have studied, my history and the history of my people, it is not even vaguely the same as the history of this country and this people. What do I do on 11th November this year? Do I just go quiet and remember the war dead, those who died in WW1 and in any war across the world, our boys in Iraq, Afghanistan…even when nobody here understands anything about it?

I have decided that the answer is, of course, YES!

Yes I do observe our usual remembrance rituals, I will watch the cenotaph and all the veterans and the Queen. I am moving to Spain, not forgetting where I came from after all.

And it is not just this symbol of national mourning that I will be on my own in missing, what of the trooping of the colour? And other more trivial things, Wimbledon, Ascot, Henley? Silly little things, things that I never went to but did watch on tele, but things that are really very British. Things that I will miss dreadfully.

A completely new history. I have also made a mental note that I will find out more about the Spanish Civil War and Spanish history. However, I have decided to start with Napoleon and the Peninsula Wars in Spain. The Brits were involved in that, I can get to grips with that. And then move onto more Spanish-centric stuff.

It’s actually quite exciting, a whole new history to explore and a twentieth century one that has been largely hidden owing to the very recent nature of the emergence of Spain from fascism. It is something that is easy to forget when you are here, that most of the people I work with were born under a fascist regime.

Nobody talks about it.

Nobody mentions it.

My future mother-in-law was a primary school teacher during this regime. She has some textbooks on how good boys behave and how good girls behave. I have a feeling that this could get very interesting…

Spain 3 - Italy 2

So, Spain v Italy in Euro 2008 took place last night and Spain won on nerve-wracking penalty shoot out. It is the first time in 88 years Spain have beaten Italy in an international football game.

Now, I live a bit out of the city centre so I hate to think what it was like in the centre but when that last goal went in, the place erupted, car horns beeping, firewor, our block of flats just went mad, you could hear everyone from all over the block just cheering and yelling. People just poured out of their houses and celebrated, very spontaneous and enthusiastic. It is great to see it, everyone was just so in the party spirit. If Spain make it to the final I will be first in the bar to soak up the atmosphere I think!

¡VAMOS ESPAÑA!

Why blog?

I have never blogged before and am probably, in reality, rather too old to do it but I thought that I would start a blog because I have just moved to Madrid for the foreseeable future; maybe it will be a good thing to record how I find it all, as much for myself as for anyone else! I will try to blog about stuff that strikes me as different here, probably ranging from the massive to the seemingly unimportant, but it is often the smallest things that make the biggest difference.



I am no stranger to moving my life around or to travelling generally, although moving now I am older and have more to leave behind has been a surprisingly wrenching experience. It is when you move somewhere else in Europe that you realise how different the Brit really are from our European neighbours. I am sure this is a sweeping generalisation but, at the moment it seems to me that most Mediterranean Europeans could move from their country to another without experiencing too much of a culture-shock. The same could well be true of Northern Europeans I suppose although I have to admit, that is not somewhere I have really been. The Brits are just different. Having lived in SA I didn't feel the differences so acutely; I lived in an English speaking area and hung out with English (and Afrikaans) speaking friends and families. While they lived more outside and just had a fantastic life, their attitudes, the things they considered rude, their way of interacting and being was not, in many ways, staggeringly different from ours.



I have been discovering over the course of the last year or so that the Spanish, whilst obviously having pretty much the same core moral values and life outlook, are rather different from us. Having just moved here and the more permanent nature of the change has now started to sink in I am beginning to miss things from home (aside from friends and family of course!). These are the things I have noticed so far (although I am sure I will miss some from this list):



* Tea! Yes folks, it is no myth we Brits LOVE our tea. I have a good supply but miss it in restuarants and the like

* BBC - the BBC is definitely the best media provider in the world and I miss it; radio, tele, the lot.

* Decent sofas - the Spanish like their lazy-boys and they are the height of fashion here but I don't like them all, give me a good old fashioned English couch anytime.

* Light coloured wood. The wood of furniture here is really really dark

* Wimbledon - GUTTED to be missing this, I don't have Canal+ or BBC here so will miss the lot and it is my summer ritual

* Rugby - they just don't do it here
* Boots - I love that shop



There are however lots of advantages to being here as well, cheap clothes, fab climate, laid back people (mixed blessing sometimes though), being on the Metro at midnight without thinking you're going to die, nightlife (eating at 11 and partying til whenever and everything stays open), the friendliness of the people, long lunch breaks, drinking in the office bar (oh yes people, you read that one right), arriving at work at 9.30, the sound of Spanish, being with my fiancé and I am sure millions more.



Well, I have bored you all enough.

Til the next time...or ¡hasta la próxima!

WW