{"id":257,"date":"2010-06-15T09:27:20","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T14:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=257"},"modified":"2010-12-15T19:57:19","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T00:57:19","slug":"spain-and-america-a-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/257\/spain-and-america-a-reflection","title":{"rendered":"Spain and America–A Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Ebro at Asc\u00f3<\/p><\/div>\n

Spain\u2019s economy is in a death-spiral, with unemployment approaching 50% for people under 30 and holding at nearly 20% overall.\u00a0 \u00a0As Spain\u2019s frothy real estate market subsided, its golf industry crumpled with the grace of a train derailment.\u00a0\u00a0 So I was a little surprised when I received a letter from a Spanish colleague telling me that a small town in Catalonia was looking into developing a golf course as a part of its new mayor\u2019s strategy to diversify the local economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The town of Asc\u00f3 lies along the Ebro River about sixty miles west of Tarragona, where the Ebro delta spills into the Mediterranean.\u00a0\u00a0 A couple of millenia ago Hannibal marched up the Ebro valley on his way to the Alps, perhaps pausing in the plains near Asc\u00f3 to give his elephants and troops a breather.\u00a0 The Ebro then separated Rome\u2019s Iberian provinces from Carthage.\u00a0 The view from Asc\u00f3 today is serene, with the silhouette of the coastal mountains scratched across the eastern horizon and a chain of villages tucked into the lower slopes, alternating like foot prints up the valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What lies to the north, however, defines modern Asc\u00f3.\u00a0 The massive cooling tower of a nuclear power plant nearing the end of its useful life sits in the foreground, dominating its bucolic surroundings.\u00a0 Asc\u00f3 is in the running as a depository for Spain\u2019s nuclear waste, an assignment that would bring jobs and a certain economic stability.\u00a0\u00a0 The staff required to maintain the nuclear facilities, would, the mayor hopes, provide potential golfers.\u00a0 He also imagines a marina for pleasure boats built in concert with the golf course, as well as hotels and a restored historic town center all working together to create a destination.\u00a0 Visitors could sail up the Ebro, or drive up on the heels of Hannibal.\u00a0 Although it is a small town, Asc\u00f3 has a long and rich history, reflecting the essential themes of Iberia\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

Coming to Asc\u00f3 had given me an excuse to visit Barcelona, where a friend I have known for fifty years now lives.\u00a0 Ignacio A. had a long career in the UN before retiring recently to Barcelona.\u00a0 His last posting was in Japan, and he lived many years in Kenya.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been friends since high school, but we haven\u2019t seen much of each over these intervening years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time we met, Ignacio was unlike anyone I had ever known\u2014 cosmopolitan and sophisticated, speaking English with a Spanish accent, reflecting mostly his Mexican birthplace but also holding traces of Ecuador, where he had lived for several years, and the Castilian lisp of his parents.\u00a0 He was the first person I ever heard say \u201cciao.\u201d\u00a0 I thought I heard him saying \u201cchow, mami\u201d to his mom when we were leaving his house, and asked him what he meant.\u00a0 It\u2019s an Italian word, he said, and spelled it for me\u2014\u201cpeople use it all over Latin America, not just in Italy,\u201d he explained.\u00a0 This was very exotic to a boy who had never been east of the Wabash River nor further west than St Louis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Asc\u00f3, 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

Why Ignacio was in Spain was a little complicated.\u00a0 He had been divorced from his third wife a few years before, and was looking for a city with a rich cultural life to enjoy as a single man.\u00a0 But Spain attracted him also as the homeland of his parents, who, as refugees from Franco\u2019s fascist regime, had been welcomed into what they presumed would be a brief period of expulsion by a sympathetic Mexican government in 1938.\u00a0 Exile for his parents would be their permanent state\u2014his mother would return to her homeland only in death, and is buried in Catalonia.\u00a0 His father never returned, but built a distinguished career as an archeologist in Mexico, which is what brought Ignacio to Carbondale, Illinois in 1960.<\/p>\n

Southern Illinois University had been a teachers\u2019 college until after WW II, when it became a university.\u00a0 In order to build its reputation as a seat of higher learning, SIU offered sinecures to a number of prominent retired academics from places like Harvard and Columbia, as well as professorships to people with international reputations, such as Ignacio\u2019s father.\u00a0 Bucky Fuller, for example, led a design department that was cutting-edge in the 60s, studying human impacts on the environment\u2014spaceship earth and all that.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Ignacio, in fact, would attend SIU as an undergraduate and study in Fuller\u2019s department before going off to Cornell for a Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I arrived in Carbondale by a less glamorous route\u2014driving down highway 51 from Centralia.\u00a0 My dad had died when I was in eighth grade, and my mom, who was a 36 year old housewife with three kids and no money, decided to go to college.\u00a0 She did this first at the junior college in Centralia, starting her college freshman year the same year I started mine in high school\u2014and in the same buildings.\u00a0 In retrospect I cannot admire more what she would go on to accomplish, but at the time it was not cool to have your mom ask you how you were when she saw you in the hallway between classes.\u00a0 I mean, you\u2019re in high school, for god\u2019s sake\u2014you\u2019re practically grown\u2014you don\u2019t need your mom spying on you all day.\u00a0 So when, after two years at JC, my mom said she wanted to move to Carbondale so she could continue her studies, I was happy to be heading off to a place big enough that I was unlikely to bump into my mom when I wasn\u2019t eager to see her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And so it was that Ignacio and I met as high school juniors, immigrants to a new town, converging from different worlds.\u00a0 Because most of the students in the high school we attended were children of academics, they were more open-minded to outsiders coming in than kids in other schools might have been.\u00a0 Our class was also very small, which made it easier to identify the key people who were running the social show.\u00a0 Many of us have remained close over the years.\u00a0 Ignacio, too, seemed full of self-confidence, and even wore a suit to school when the rest of us wore shirts and jeans.\u00a0 In any case, he and I both managed to adjust, new boys with some of the same worries who enjoyed each other\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

Now, decades later, here we were driving to Asc\u00f3 on a rainy Sunday morning, reminiscing about Carbondale, catching up on each other\u2019s kids (he has four daughters, I have two) and sharing our mutual astonishment about being as old as we are.\u00a0\u00a0 Our worlds touched in another curious way, too.\u00a0 Ignacio is an expert on development, but not the kind associated with the clients I normally work with, who call themselves developers.\u00a0 \u00a0Ignacio worked at the base of the economy, while I work near the apex.\u00a0 Ignacio was concerned about rural poverty, about how you assemble the resources to launch people toward economic self-sufficiency, provide education and resources for women, and build social structures that can resist the obliterating grasp of political corruption.\u00a0 I was working with developers selling real estate and resort homes to people with disposable income thousands of times higher that Ignacio\u2019s \u201cclients\u201d possessed.\u00a0 My clients often provided jobs to the people Ignacio\u2019s work focused on, but otherwise the distance between the two worlds was wide and deep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We also talked about Ignacio\u2019s father\u2019s experiences as an artillery captain in the Republican Army, which fought its last stand along the Ebro, up and down the valley where Hannibal had marched.\u00a0 The battles here in 1938 were vicious.\u00a0 The most famous memento of the Spanish Civil War is Guernica, Picasso\u2019s lament for the Basque town destroyed by German and Italian bombers in 1937.\u00a0 Any civil war devastates civilian populations caught in the surge of battle, but the Spanish Civil War was particularly vicious because of its ideological rigidities.\u00a0 \u00a0Franco hated the Catalonians, which added to the ardor of the battles along the Ebro.\u00a0 It was a take-no-prisoners world.\u00a0 Ignacio\u2019s father was badly wounded in his leg.\u00a0 I remember him walking with a pronounced limp, always wearing the khaki outfit of the field archeologist.\u00a0 Although he was a prominent professor, he never wore a tie that I can recall.\u00a0 He also never learned to speak English well, although he was proficient enough to publish in English.\u00a0 His accent was very strong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in a city hall of a town,\u201d Ignacio said, recalling what he could of his father\u2019s injury, \u201cwhen German bombers attacked.\u00a0 They made a direct hit and the building collapsed.\u00a0 His comrades started digging people out, and somehow found him alive under all the rubble.\u00a0 The torsos and heads of dead soldiers stuck up from the debris, but he stayed alive completely buried.\u00a0 But his leg was caught against something, and when they tugged to pull him out, it sliced off most of the muscle on his thigh.\u00a0 So he always thought it was ironic that he was injured in the rescue, not the bombing.\u201d<\/p>\n

We arrived in Asc\u00f3 at mid-morning, and called our contact, Albert (pronounced with a hard second syllable, Catalan style.)\u00a0 Albert is an engineer and the cousin of the mayor\u2019s wife.\u00a0 He lives in Barcelona but his family is from Asc\u00f3, and he has restored a family house overlooking the river and Hannibal\u2019s trail.\u00a0 He met us for a coffee, followed by a tour of the village.<\/p>\n

Asc\u00f3 seemed very quiet, even for a Sunday morning.\u00a0 As we drove the few blocks up to his house, Albert pointed out signs commemorating the 500th<\/sup> anniversary of the expulsion of the Moors.\u00a0 \u201cOn Monday,\u201d he told us, \u201cboats will re-enact the expulsion, sailing down the Ebro with people in costume playing the parts of the Moors.\u00a0 Asc\u00f3 was a Moorish city for 700 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

We walked down to the promenade overlooking the river below Albert\u2019s house, where Rafael the mayor joined us.\u00a0 A small, tidily-dressed and affable man, Rafael pointed across the river to where he hoped the golf course would go.\u00a0 The site was flat, but its proximity to the river and the views of the mountains more than made up for the absence of land forms, which the golf course architect can create.\u00a0 The town tucked into a very steep bank rising on an almost perpendicular slope from the river below.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

We were interrupted by the rasp of a loudspeaker, and Albert and Rafael pulled us aside as a tiny car rolled by, followed by four or five young men huffing up the incline, numbers pinned to their chests.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a race for the village,\u201d Albert said.\u00a0 The racers came by first, and after them casual runners, and before too long abuelas<\/em> pushing buggies and men strolling along enjoying cigars.\u00a0 Almost everyone greeted the mayor, who smiled modestly to acknowledge the recognition.\u00a0 Now we knew why the town was so quiet\u2014everyone was getting ready for the run.<\/p>\n

As we walked toward the house of the local caballero, which the town is restoring, Albert and Rafael pointed out bullet holes still evident in the walls of buildings from the fighting more than seven decades ago.\u00a0 \u201cGerman planes bombed Asc\u00f3 in 1938,\u201d Rafael told us.\u00a0 \u201cA lot of the city was destroyed then, and not all of it was built back.\u201d\u00a0 The fighting, he said, went back and forth across the river, with Republicans sometimes in charge, given way and then re-taking the town from the fascists.\u00a0 A lot of artillery shells hit the town.\u00a0 \u201cMy grandfather was a Republican at first,\u201d Albert says, \u201cbut after he was captured he had to change sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Palace of the Caballero<\/p><\/div>\n

Ignacio took a deep breath as he looked across the river.\u00a0 Later, as we were driving back to Barcelona, he said, \u201cI tried to see my father out there, a young man fighting for his country.\u201d\u00a0 It is probably impossible to ever learn whether or not Ignacio\u2019s dad fought in Asc\u00f3.\u00a0 The Republicans burned a lot of the archives as they were preparing to flee Madrid, and almost all of the participants in those events are now dead.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Ignacio became a citizen of Spain, after a law was passed welcoming back children born of refugee parents.\u00a0 He was glad he could take advantage of this law, but Ignacio was also cynical about the reason for it.\u00a0 \u201cIt was not so much to honor the victims of Franco as it was to get more of \u2018us\u2019 in Spain\u2014that is \u2018real\u2019 Spaniards, rather than immigrants.\u00a0 You know that story\u2014it\u2019s a kind of variation of what\u2019s going on the USA now\u2014\u2018taking the country back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ignacio and the Cooling Tower, Asc\u00f3<\/p><\/div>\n

And of course modern Spanish history begins with the conclusion of the centuries-long wars known as the Reconquista<\/em>\u2014the expulsion of the Moors, which the people of Spain would be celebrating the Monday after we left Asc\u00f3.\u00a0 Spain\u2019s ascendency to power in early modern Europe was accelerated by the simultaneous discovery of the New World, with all its riches.\u00a0 Not just the Moors were expelled from Spain, but the Jewish countrymen, too\u2014excepting the ones who agreed to convert to Catholicism.\u00a0 So the Spaniards took their country back, with consequences that resonate to this day.<\/p>\n

In the United States, part of the tea party rhetoric espouses \u201ctaking our country back.\u201d\u00a0 The obvious question, apart from \u201cwhy?\u201d is \u201cfrom whom?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 President Barack Obama, of course, whose life has followed a uniquely American trajectory\u2014risen from humble roots solely by merit, like the greatest of our presidents, Abraham Lincoln–seems somehow \u201cforeign\u201d to his fanatical opponents, who raise spurious issues like his place of birth.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the immigrants from Mexico who really spark the ire of the tea-partiers.\u00a0 They are somehow \u201ctaking\u201d the country.\u00a0 Many of these immigrants are descendents of people conquered by the Spanish in wars perpetrated by soldiers who learned their trade expelling Moors from Iberia.\u00a0 They called their north American possessions the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and its territories stretched north to\u00a0 modern-day California and the southwest, including Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ignacio\u2019s father excavated many famous Aztec sites in the valley of Mexico, and part of his research was supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints\u2014the Mormons.\u00a0 Their theology led them to believe that the golden tablets would be found in Mexico.\u00a0 Ignacio\u2019s dad was happy to take their money\u2014he couldn\u2019t know for sure what he might find.\u00a0 While he was teaching in Carbondale, Ignacio\u2019s dad, whose name was Pedro, went up to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Mormons had one of their first important settlements, before suspicious nativists drove them out and burned down their town.\u00a0 It was an early American example of \u201ctaking our country\u201d back.\u00a0 Pedro was doing an archeological reconnoiter\u2014and this long before the modern restoration of Nauvoo which has taken place over the last couple of decades.\u00a0 Mormonism floats securely in the mainstream of modern America.<\/p>\n

So here was a bearded, limping middle-aged foreigner wearing workmen\u2019s clothes walking around places the local constabulary decided he didn\u2019t belong.\u00a0 His strong accent betrayed him.\u00a0 He was arrested for vagrancy and put in jail.\u00a0 After a couple of days his absence was noticed.\u00a0 This was the pre-Miranda era.\u00a0 And so it was that a distinguished professor languished in an Illinois jail cell in 1959 because he looked as if he did not belong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s economy is in a death-spiral, with unemployment approaching 50% for people under 30 and holding at nearly 20% overall.\u00a0… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,176,18,17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf-course-architecture","category-business-travel","category-lifestyle","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/06\/Milano-Misc-2010-also-Spain-024.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}