I felt something sharp poking me in the back just about where my right kidney was.
We were having fun in Barcelona, my four new school-teacher friends from Chicago and me. I had met them in Paris in early July of 1972 as we were being frustrated trying to get a train ticket to the festival in Pamplona. All of Paris heads out-of-town on holiday in July and there was not a free seat on any train heading south. Diane, Pam and Linda were lovely, and Robert was middle-aged and seemed fun, so I had a great idea.
"Let's rent a car and drive," I said, hoping to spend more time with lovely blond Diane.
We rented one the next morning on my expired Pennsylvania license, which the young clerk couldn't read as expired, and off we went through the murderous Paris traffic with Diane driving first. We were going to visit the Palace of Versailles, but got hopelessly lost and took all day to get to Chartres, where we visited the magnificent cathedral and then had a wonderful dinner. Wonderful except for the Steak Tartar which Linda ordered, not knowing it was raw ground beef. We drove all night and then through the mists and peaks of the Pyrenees Mountains at dawn, where the local peasants were going out to their fields with their donkeys and lunch pails and wine skins.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona was a two-week orgy of drinking, partying and dancing that went on day and night. On the first morning there we tried to eat Spanish ham-and-eggs, but in those days fascist Iberia was so backward it didn't have refrigeration. Both the eggs and ham were rotten and we gagged as soon as our plates were set down in front of us.
"Is it better in America?" our nasty waitress scoffed at us.
"Just different," Tom, who spoke Spanish, told her.
She took our plates away in a huff.
Then it was off to Barcelona by train, where we visited the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey in the mountains over the city and wondered at the unfinished fantastical La Sagrata Familia Cathedral by Antoni Gaudi. We were at the harbor photographing the statue of Christoper Columbus when I felt that nasty jab near my right kidney.
We stood innocently in front of some sort of government building. I turned around and there he was, a young dark very serious Spanish soldier still with his bayonet at the end of his rifle pointed at me. He jabbered something in his native tongue, which I could not understand. Since we were having so much fun, and I was a wine-sodden wise-ass, I gave him a glib response.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish."
He didn't speak English, but he did understand a smart mouth when he heard one. A torrent of Spanish curse words few from his mouth as he poked his bayonet at me in the air again and again.
The bayonet I understood. We moved on, this example of fascism in action the worst, but not the only, we had experienced so far.
The Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, with the daily running of the bulls, had been two weeks of uninterrupted debauchery. It was allowed by the government of its fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. He understood that the uninterrupted discipline and terror of his reign needed needed an outlet when the people could cut loose. They were allowed their tawdry festivals celebrating the country's saints. That seems quite a paradox now, but not then.
The Spanish people were not much fooled by this, except for those who supported Franco. Still, they partied their faces off, because they had to or go crazy.
Franco had come to power in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, with the help of the church, Hitler's Nazi German and Mussolini's Fascist Italy. The Nazis bombed Spanish cities to try out their new techniques of aerial murder and supplied military hardware and advisors, as did the Italians. As all civil wars are, it was a terrible, brutal conflict with brother against brother and family against family. Hitler's and Mussolini's assistance proved decisive. Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls to document the atrocities by each side.
We stayed in Pamplona with a humble family that rented out rooms in its apartment during the festival to earn extra money. The Spanish people are warm and welcoming, at least the ones who aren't fascists are, and we were feted with their hospitality and kindness. I spoke enough pidgin Spanish to ask the head of the household what life was like under Franco.
He shook his head and lowered his eyes and gave an answer I did not understand.
"He said everything is in order and you can make a living but there is no freedom," Tom translated. "It is no good."
We moved on to other topics.
We wanted to go out, so he said his son and his cousin would take us to show us the places Spanish people went and how they partied. The two young men, both portly and tall and proud as only Spanish men can be, led us from bar to bar. Their method of drinking was to enter one bar, order a round of glasses wine for all, drink them down and then immediately move on to another bar, where the same procedure was followed.
With my tongue loosened after several of these visits, I still wanted to know about life was under Franco.
"What's it like living under a dictator?" I asked loudly, in our sixth bar.
Our Spanish cousin looked as though he had seen the ghost of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor during the Inquisition. His eyeball were huge and on the hot night sweat poured off his forehead.
"Is not a dictator! He is not a dictator!" he yelled out in English, looking around desperately.
What had I done? Was this man going to be arrested because of my simple naive question? I learned later that the Franco government still had spies everywhere, two men in every bar and restaurant, always, to ferret out dissent.
After our time in Pamplona and Barcelona, my teacher friends and I parted ways. I headed to Madrid to fly home and they continued their journey through Spain, but fascism wasn't quite done with me yet. I was sitting in a small park near my hotel on the night before my flight home when there was suddenly an awful racket. It was a band playing with about a hundred revelers cheering and stomping their feet as they followed the music. Television cameras were following and preceding, recording the event. This entourage stopped before a podium where several pudgy little men in suits with mustaches ascended to the stage and began speaking, one at a time. They raised their fists and shouted in anger. The crowd cheered and also raised their fists in anger, supporting them in anger, while the TV cameras filmed.
This went on for a while. Then the little men in suits stopped talking, thanked the crowd, ascended from the stage and walked away with the band following them while playing happy martial music. The crowd dispersed and silently went their separate ways.
I realized I had seen my first fascist rally. The crowd must have been paid to cheer. The politicians were as false as the make-up and bleached blond hair of our current politicians.
I understood these rallies were taking place all over Spain to cement Franco's power and had been for years.
I had been poked in the back by a bayonet, put my friends in danger by asking rash questions about fascism and heard again and again how awful Francisco Franco was from his own population. And I knew about the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.
I had seen and heard all this and can still feel the point of that bayonet in my back, but by far the most dangerous thing I had seen during that visit to Spain so long ago was that fake rally.
I knew then and I know now the most necessary thing a fascist can do is take over the minds and hearts of the people with rallies, television and lies.
That still goes on today.
