Sunday 21 September 2014

Back to Wales from Spain:  
Modernity overlays a strong historical memory  in Wales

Vast spaces dominate the train station and  airport coming home. We pass shopping centres, highways, roundabouts- all of these artefacts of modernity covering the past. In Wales, as in Spain, we see that cultural history may be appropriated - Welsh ladies in quaint costumes from a bucolic fantasy past made for the tourist market.  But the Welsh  also know and remember who they are, cherishing  the experiences  still available within living memory. It has many memorials to their International Brigaders who died in Spain, as well as the Basque children who came to the valleys as refugees during the Spanish Civil War.

At Big Pit museum in Blaenavon, created on the site of a coal mine, Wendy's husband Ray spoke about the 1984-5 Miners' strike.
 He held an audience mesmerised with his description of life as a boy miner, leaving school at 13 1/2 to go underground. He described the harrowing death of his mining partner in a roof fall, and of a Bevan boy sent underground during the war, whose mother thought her son would be safer than in the army. He told of the cheers of joy as the men working in  the pit learned that Labour had won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election.; of the profound impact on people's lives of the creation of the National Health Service;  and the calculated attack by Margaret Thatcher on British trade unions. We were hearing history from someone who had lived it.

These shared memories are cherished and preserved, as the old buildings and local sites are preserved, because they have become part of who the people are, their identity.

The International Brigades Archaeology Project showed us that, however much memory may be buried, the strata can and will be uncovered, through the commitment to historical truth that the team has shown.

Best wishes to the volunteers still digging away on site. We offer some additional verses  to Viva La  Quince Brigada to remember the time we shared:

   En el  viejo pueblo Codo,
rumbala rumbala rum- ba -la
   En el  viejo pueblo Codo,
rumbala rumbala rum- ba -la
   Ni tenemos ni legumbres,  (vegetables)
   Ni  "wi-fi",   ni senales*         * (phone signals)
   aye Carmela!

   En el frente de Belchite,   rumbala rumbala rumbala..  
   En el frente de Belchite,   rumbala rumbala rumbala   
    A tasty dish of cold sardines
   a loaf of bread . ..    .cada dia! *         (every day)
    aye Carmela!
  
Our thanks, from Wendy and Elaine, to Alfredo and Sal, and to all our new friends in Spain for the fascinating discussions,  new experiences and unique opportunities we found there.