Books

Mountain memories

The imposing rocky landscape of the Priorat region persists as a link between the present and darker remembrances of the volunteers who came to fight in the Civil War

Jagged as a dragon's teeth, flat-topped like a launch pad, car­peted with wild flow­ers or cov­ered with glis­ten­ing snow, the moun­tains of Cat­alo­nia re­main im­printed on the mind. To those who have grown up in their shad­ows, they are a sym­bol of home, loved and longed-for when­ever abroad. Un­aware of the power of moun­tains, for­eign­ers from flat­ter lands can also come under the thrall of these rocky gi­ants that leave you with more than just pic­turesque mem­o­ries.

When I first vis­ited the hills and moun­tains of the Pri­o­rat in 2001, I was fol­low­ing a re­search trail, trac­ing the mem­o­ries of an Eng­lish nurse, Pa­tience Dar­ton, who had been in Cat­alo­nia dur­ing the Civil War. She told me about a cave hos­pi­tal near La Bis­bal de Falset where she had cared for the wounded dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Ebro. Her rec­ol­lec­tions of those days had been strik­ingly vivid, not just be­cause of the ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ing of her pa­tients but also be­cause of the beauty of the land­scape that had sur­rounded the scenes of car­nage. When I vis­ited the vil­lage after her death and found the cave, it was my turn to feel the pull of the moun­tains. I re­turned shortly af­ter­wards to live in the Pri­o­rat and con­tinue my re­search there.

The process of 're­cov­er­ing the mem­ory' of the Civil War was then in its early days, so 65 years after the Civil War began, it seemed the per­fect mo­ment to get to­gether with local his­to­ri­ans and cre­ate an as­so­ci­a­tion, 'No ju­bilem la memòria' and begin to un­earth the story of the war in what had been a very re­mote re­gion. An im­por­tant part of its largely un­known his­tory was linked to the months that the vol­un­teers of the In­ter­na­tional Brigades had been based there, prepar­ing for the Ebro of­fen­sive. As well as re­search, the work of the as­so­ci­a­tion in­cluded or­gan­is­ing con­fer­ences and com­mem­o­ra­tive events. In­ter­na­tional Brigaders, though el­derly and fre­quently frail, came from many coun­tries to take part. Firm friend­ships were formed, par­tic­u­larly with those from Britain and Amer­ica, who stayed with us and re­vis­ited the places they had last seen in their youth.

In that spring and early sum­mer of 1938, in the brief lull be­tween a dev­as­tat­ing re­treat from Aragon and the start of the Ebro cam­paign, there had been happy days for the Brigaders in the Pri­o­rat. There were fi­es­tas with the peo­ple of the vil­lages, danc­ing, wine, and even ro­mance with local girls for a few, all tak­ing place within sight of the moun­tains where they would soon be fight­ing, and where some would die. In New York archives, I found pho­tographs and film footage taken in the Pri­o­rat dur­ing those days, show­ing the Brigaders as strong young men among the vines and hazels with the moun­tains as an em­blem­atic, eas­ily recog­nis­able back­drop. The Com­man­der of the Lin­coln Bat­tal­ion, Mil­ton Wolff, came back to the Pri­o­rat in 2003 to stand once again on the spot where he had been fa­mously pho­tographed by Robert Capa, and to tell us how he had felt, march­ing at the head of his men, so many years be­fore. The mov­ing trib­ute he paid to his com­rades was in­cluded in the award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary made by our as­so­ci­a­tion.

Con­trast­ing mem­o­ries

For these men and women, the mem­o­ries of moun­tains were shot through with strong, and some­times con­tra­dic­tory, emo­tions. Back home again after the Civil War, among their sen­su­ous de­scrip­tions of the land­scape that sur­rounded the val­ley where they had built their tem­po­rary camp, they re­called how they would watch as the clouds poured over the cliff faces, “Ni­a­gra-like” but “more ma­jes­ti­cally than any wa­ter­fall,” and how “in the late af­ter­noons the face of the rock would glow pink against the drop­ping sun.”

The warm mem­o­ries con­trasted with the grim re­al­i­ties of the bat­tle in the moun­tains at the other side of the Ebro where the un­for­giv­ing rock of­fered lit­tle shel­ter from heavy bom­bard­ment by Franco's forces. Re­turn­ing to those sites of fear and loss for the first time after many years could be cathar­tic for some. Sur­rounded by a warmly wel­com­ing crowd of peo­ple at an un­veil­ing of a plaque on the top of Hill 705, one Welsh Brigader, Alun Menai Williams, was moved to say, “The beau­ti­ful panoramic view from the top of that hill can­celled out the bloody view that has pol­luted my mind for so long.”

My own mem­o­ries of liv­ing in the Pri­o­rat are also tinged with mixed emo­tions. From the diminu­tive Mil­o­quera to the high plain of La Mola, across the ranges of the Montsant, Llaberia, Cav­alls, Pándols –these moun­tains seem to have per­me­ated my writ­ing, per­haps above all, in the novel, Warm Earth. My love for the re­gion could be given full rein in the scenes set in the Pri­o­rat; it un­der­lies the emo­tions of these fic­tional women as they ex­pe­ri­ence in­tense hap­pi­ness then des­per­a­tion at the life-chang­ing loss of loved ones.

Now, I spend most of my time in Eng­land and the vet­er­ans who re­turned to Cat­alo­nia in times of peace are all dead, though not yet for­got­ten. Like Mil­ton Wolff, who could feel the pres­ence of the men who had marched with him along the road from La Torre de Fontaubella, when I visit the Pri­o­rat I look around me at the moun­tains that have be­come so fa­mil­iar and feel twinges of loss at know­ing these 'Vol­un­teers for Lib­erty' are no longer with us. Above all though, I have an over­whelm­ing sense of my good for­tune in hav­ing lived in such an un­for­get­table place and hav­ing known such re­mark­able peo­ple.

More to read, more to discover

Angela Jackson's novel, Warm Earth, featured recently in Catalonia Today in Michael Eaude's ongoing selection of books looking at Catalonia through foreign eyes:

http://www.cataloniatoday.cat/article/113-books/
920452-recovering-ignored-history-hymn-to-freedom.html.

Warm Earth is now available for Kindle and can be downloaded free from Amazon from March 12-16

For more on the work of No jubilem la memòria see
www.nojubilemlamemoria.cat

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