15/02/2004
15/02/2004 Accustomed as we are of having to live from one stopgap to another, everyone gets up in arms over something transitory and then the sun shines again, over an official subsidy with immediate profitability, over culture created by the lord mayor´s brother-in-law, over the politician fretting about the cursed photo in the paper or the television news the next day, over layabouts, villains, the holier-than-thou in the sacristy and fanatics, over the illiterate who have a seat in parliament and an official car, over the stupid arrogance of those in charge and over bitterly brotherly resentment of those who are prepared to lose an eye if their enemy loses two; accustomed, in other words, to Spain, reduced to one brief sad word, you sometimes say to yourself, "to hell with the lot of us". Well, just open this rotten melon that tastes of cucumber, get indigestion from our collective coffee, tighten the rope then let go, shake the tree and, once and for all, let´s all clear off. Let it rain fire on Sodom and we all live it up in Benidorm.
The problem is that sometimes, those days when everything is grim, you think like that; myself included. But then, you get into your car and take off, anywhere, to Vitoria, for example. And you get out at a gothic cathedral, the Cathedral of Santa Maria, begun way back in the 13th century, in the Spain that some have now discovered never existed (bloody ridiculous!). You take a walk around. The place is being restored within the framework of one of the most important and leading rehabilitation projects in Europe in the 21st century, and which the whole city enthusiastically supports. Then you look around and say to yourself, "Well, chum! Maybe you went a bit over the top. And all that about raining brimstone from the heavens, or from wherever, is overstepping the mark." You might even hear of at least ten honest men in Sodom and so many more in Gomorrah, or wherever. In the end it turns out that everywhere there are people worth saving: upright citizens, good vassals in search of good lords. When you give them the chance and you explain things, instead of subsidising a posh book with the hundred poets of Villanueva del Mar, essential for western culture, or paying umpteen thousand pounds to Madonna for singing at the delightful tomato throwing festival of Tomillar del Cenutrio, considered of touristic interest no less, they actually do invest in memory, in education, in true culture in the most generous but precise meaning of the word. Then, these good people react, respond, become committed and declare their solidarity, giving back significance to words whose noble meaning we have perverted so much of late: we, fellow countrymen, neighbours, fellow citizens. Compatriots.
If you need to come to terms with this country of ours, with this Spain of so much folklore and so much rubbish, take a stroll around Vitoria (or Gasteiz if you prefer the ancient noble Basque name). You will see how a project of restoring a cathedral and its surroundings can, with talent and good will, become a live lesson in history, a guided visit to the past, exploring the different strata of what we were, to understand better what we are and what we might one day be, if they let us. To understand, from the objective lesson of old stone, that in this ancient place of ours, this public square where so many races, languages, cultures come together, so many people who at times killed one another and at times joined forces to kill others, suffering under the same incompetent kings, the same fanatical friars, the same bloodsucking ministers and civil servants, recovering memory means preserving the cement and mortar that hold the bricks together, without which there would only be scattered unsupportive debris of a dead past, leaving only an echo of the injury. When you walk around the scaffolding and the bare foundations, and the ancient open tombs in the cathedral´s underground, along the route so wisely laid out by the architects and archaeologists responsible for this extraordinary project, you experience a quiver of solidarity and pride, because you are strolling down your own memory. You feel like one more stone, but just as important as all the others, in this old splintered cathedral called …..Spain.