"Song of Spain"

"Come now, all you who are singers,

and sing me the song of Spain...

...a bombing plane's

the song of Spain."

-- Langston Hughes, 1937

 

What.The.Actual. F..."estamos en horario infantil" as they say on Al Rojo Vivo, so I won't complete that phrase, but seriously, the Spanish government needs to chill out, and stop buzzing the embassies of friendly countries (not to mention many pleasant and innocent archives and the researchers therein) in a dubious show of military force.

I know intellectually that Spaniards do desfiles militares rather the way Americans have flags and play the anthem everywhere.  It's basically meaningless, and no one takes it that seriously, or considers it anything other than one of those regrettable relics of the 1950s, that people salute out of habit without particular critical thought or conviction.  But at the point when you send not one or two but a whole flotilla of military planes (a fleet of planes?  a flock of planes?  What's the collective noun here?  Squadron?) plus helicopters, zooming up the length of the Castellana, and flying so low that the nice librarians at the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón have to close the windows against the booming noise, I would say there's a problem.  

"Será por lo de Cataluña," commented one of the very nice women in the office where I was going through the digitized records of the Residencia de Señoritas, when I looked up and wondered what the noise was.  I've no idea if that's true, but if it is it's what my old professor of Catalan at Columbia would have called "una cretinada com' una casa."

I've been getting my news about the famous Catalan proces mostly via La Sexta's irreverent El Intermedio and Al Rojo Vivo, which are more or less the closest equivalents I can find to The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, because I can pretty much only bear news if someone points out the funny parts.  A Fulbrighter based in Barcelona told me (with passion) that the national media was biased against the Catalans, an accusation I took with a grain of salt (ok, a shaker of salt) until this morning, when I stopped for coffee at a cafe near the metro for the sake of speed, and heard TVE's channel 1, which was much more Fox to El Intermedio's Comedy Central.  The older gentleman who was reading La Razón at the bar and commenting to the restaurant's proprietor appeared to be a parody of the kind of españolismo that I assume is mostly in the Catalans' heads.  After listening to the TV for a while (and presumably reading whatever was in La Razón, which after all no tiene razón nunca, as my friends here used to say, the way the Russians joked about Izvestia and Pravda) he hoarsely demanded why "esos sacerdotes" (the Catalan priests who have been defending the proces and Catalan independence) weren't sent by the church to preach in Melilla or Ceuta or the Canaries or other places he presumably considers godforsaken.  By a train of association which I did not follow (which could have been my language skills or his logic skills), he went on to complaining about how Spain had become too "blanda" ever since abolishing mandatory military service (some twenty years ago now), and corporal punishment in schools because now children curse at teachers and there's no discipline.  I'm not precisely sure how all this related to the Catalan independentistes, but it was more a catalog of what he felt was wrong with Spain and people not showing respect.  (I'm sure I could have gotten some good comments about the public health system if I had asked, since I'll bet thirty years ago he had far fewer health problems which just shows that this country's doctors are going to the dogs...probably because of all the immigrants who go to hospitals nowadays.  As it was, I smiled and tried to look like a niña buena and not engage.)

In Carabanchel such elderly dinosaurs are kind of cute, and not particularly threatening (though I'm sure they make life miserable for various non-European immigrants here in small, petty ways), but perhaps because of listening to that over coffee I couldn't help but notice the huge number of rojigualda flags flying from the balconies in the barrio Salamanca when I got out of the metro at Rubén Darío, heading for the Residencia de Señoritas.  The news last night had mentioned the crowds turning out in little towns in other parts of Spain to cheer the Guardias Civiles heading for Catalonia with lots of flags, some of them "pre-constitutional" (as the TV tactfully put it), but I had kind of assumed that the "go ye heroes, go to glory" send-off for the Guardia Civil was limited to pueblos where nothing else interesting was happening, and that their "supporters" (who did appear to be a frothing at the mouth bunch) were more or less like Tea Party people in the US: rural, and basically not part of the fabric of any big city.  (The other thing on the news was that the Guardia Civil are starting to object to being stuck on what is now universally known as the "barco de Piolín" or Tweety-Boat.  They don't like having to share cramped cabins and have been complaining on Facebook, despite disciplinary actions against them for unprofessional social media posts.  This suggests that they are less insanely patriotic than the weirdos waving flags and seeing them off to do or die....or to look at the ocean and the sky, as the song says.)

But the flags in the barrio Salamanca were creepy.  There were a lot of them, and while Tea Party people and old fachas are one thing in working class neighborhoods, the barrio Salamanca is the richest neighborhood in Madrid, and the home of its ruling class.  I am clinging to the hope that some (or most or all) of the flags were put out last night because of the Real Madrid away game in Germany, and are just an expression of soccer patriotism and not something more sinister.  (I will see if they go away tomorrow or over the weekend.)

But what the hell with the planes buzzing the city center?  They were headed pretty much straight up the Castellana, which meant (in addition to buzzing my archive) almost literally rattling the windows of the German embassy (who presumably shrugged and winced), the South Korean embassy (who I imagine really don't appreciate any military planes overhead at the moment), and within 100 yards of the US embassy (which presumably takes the attitude of the more senior gangster in Kiss Me, Kate: "not now, not now, how many times do I gotta tell you?  I'll tell you when.")

During the Civil War, when Langston Hughes wrote his poem "Song of Spain," the Fascist aviators were careful to avoid the Barrio Salamanca because they believed that "los suyos" lived there, and they were unwilling to cause unnecessary harm and stress to people they believed (with some reason) were their natural supporters.  Now, the exact opposite seems to be true.

As far as I've seen on the news no planes have flown over Barcelona or Girona (though perhaps it really is like the anthem in the US, such a given that no one even thinks to comment on it), and I can testify that in the last several days not a single military plane has flown over Carabanchel, or the humbler neighborhoods to the south of the city.  So sending planes up the Castellana to rattle the windows of friendly foreign embassies, and upscale libraries and archives, and the very headquarters of the Partido Popular is a show of strength only to those who are already most likely to support the government, as opposed to just annoying the Catalans, or anybody else who might be annoyed by it.  These are the people who actually enjoy taking their shoes off at airports for the security theater.

Given that they are such absolute fools (and given the airplanes and helicopters vicious fools as well), it is hard to not have sympathy for the Catalans.  And yet if you listen to the independentistes for long you realize that it's lack of planes not surplus of principles that keeps them from being as bad.  The Catalan independentistes have all the charm of the Madrid "patriots" but with a nice hefty dose of provincialism as well.  If Spain were run by Ada Colau and Manuela Carmena it would be in better shape.  But then, if I had the wings of an angel, I'd be able to take better photos of the planes without a zoom lens. 

I'll sign off with a video, which is sideways because I don't have editing software, and can't figure out how to turn it.  (For obvious reasons it was shot in a hurry, with a phone.)  At least it gives a sense of the noise.  Honestly, during business hours in an area with banks and other companies that don't need the distraction.  Humph.