Rhinoceros, who are you?

‘I, Dali, deep in a constant introspection and a meticulous analysis of my smallest thoughts, have just discovered that, without realising it, I have painted nothing but rhinoceros horns all my life.’ This is from Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dalí, the Spanish artist, famous for his surrealist paintings and eccentric looks/behaviour. Today marks the 120th anniversary of his birth.

Dalí was born in Figueres, northeast Spain, on 11 May 1904, the son of a well-known notary. He showed artistic talent from an early age, and went to study at the Royal Academy in Madrid, although he was expelled twice and never took his final exams. However, he did become friends with the great Spanish dramatist and poet, Federico García Lorca, and the film-maker Luis Buñuel, with whom he collaborated on several avant-garde projects.

In 1928, Dalí moved to Paris where he met Picasso and Miro, and, in particular, André Breton, with whom he formed a group of surrealists. Some of his most famous surrealist works date from this period - The Spectre of Sex Appeal and The Persistence of Memory for example. Also in Paris, in 1929, he met Helena Diakonova, known as Gala, a Russian immigrant who would become his model, partner and business manager.

During the Second World War, Dalí and Gala lived in the US, with Dalí not only painting but contributing to other artistic fields, such as cinema, theatre and ballet. He became something of a darling in high society, and famous men and women commissioned him to paint their portraits. While in the US, he wrote The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. In 1948, the couple returned to Europe, spending time either at their residence in Port Lligat, Spain, or in Paris.

In the post war period, Dalí became more interested in history and science, and these subjects formed the themes of many of his later works such as Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. During the 1970s, he created and inaugurated the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, which houses a large collection of his works. He died in 1989. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, or a New York Times review of the definitive biography - The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí - by Ian Gibson.

Dalí was not much of a bona fide diarist. A fragment of a diary survives from his adolescence. This was privately printed by Stratford Press in a limited edition for the Reynolds Morse Foundation in 1962, and entitled A Dalí Journal: Impressions and Private Memories of Salvador Dalí - January, 1920. The ‘Salvador Dalí Book Collector’, who runs a blog on Dalí books, is underwhelmed: ‘Here, we find a rather pedestrian Dalí whose time is spent at school, hanging with friends, flirting with girls . . . just an average teenage boy.’

Much later, however, Dalí employed the diary form for what became the second volume of his autobiography. This was first published in France in 1963 as Journal d’un génie, then translated into English by Richard Howard for publication by Doubleday in the US and Hutchinson in the UK as Diary of a Genius. The French writer Michel Déon helped Dalí prepare this book, and provided a forward and notes, also translated by Howard for the first English edition.

‘Dali’, says Déon in his forward, ‘has jotted down helter-skelter his thoughts, his torments as a painter thirsting for perfection, his love for his wife, the story of his extraordinary encounters, his ideas about aesthetics, morality. philosophy, biology. [. . .] This diary is a monument erected by Salvador Dali to his own glory. It is entirely lacking in modesty, it has, on the other hand, a burning sincerity. The author lays bare his secrets with brazen insolence, unbridled humour, sparkling extravagance.’ Here are a few extracts.

15 July 1952
‘Once more I thank Sigmund Freud and proclaim louder than ever his great truths. I, Dali, deep in a constant introspection and a meticulous analysis of my smallest thoughts, have just discovered that, without realising it, I have painted nothing but rhinoceros horns all my life. At the age of ten, a grasshopper-child, I already said my prayers on all fours before a table made of rhinoceros horn. Yes, to me it was already a rhinoceros! I take another look at my paintings and I am stupefied with the amount of rhinoceros my work contains. Even my famous bread [1945 painting] is already a rhino horn, delicately resting in a basket. Now I understand my enthusiasm the day Arturo Lopez presented me with my famous rhinoceros-horn walking stick. As soon as I became its owner, it produced in me a completely irrational illusion. I attached myself to it with an incredible fetishism, amounting to obsession, to such an extent that I once struck a barber in New York, when by mistake he almost broke it by lowering too quickly the revolving chair on which I had gently put it down. Furiously, I struck at his shoulder hard with my stick to punish him, but of course I immediately gave him a very big tip so that he would not get angry. Rhinoceros, rhinoceros, who are you?’

18 July 1952
‘Even though my Assumption is making substantial and glorious progress, it frightens me to see that already it is the 18th of July. Every day time flies faster, and though I live from one ten minutes to the next, savouring them one by one and transforming the quarters of an hour into battles won, into feats and spiritual victories, all of which are equally memorable, the weeks run by and I struggle to cling with an even more vital completeness to each fragment of my precious and beloved time.

Suddenly Rosita comes in with breakfast and brings me a piece of news that throws me into a joyous ecstasy. Tomorrow will be the 19th of July, and that is the date on which Monsieur and Madame arrived from Paris last year. I give an hysterical yell: “So, I haven’t arrived yet! I haven’t arrived. Not before tomorrow will I come to Port Ligat. This time last year, I hadn’t even started my Christ! And now before I’ve so much as come here, my Assumption is almost on its feet, pointing to heaven!”

I run straight to my studio and work till I am ready to drop, cheating and taking advantage of not being there yet so as to have as much as possible already done at the moment of my arrival. All Port Ligat has heard that I am yet there, and in the evening, when I come down for supper, little Juan calls out, as gay as can be: “Señor Dali is coming tomorrow night! Señor Dali is coming tomorrow night!”

And Gala looks at me with an expression of protective love which so far only Leonardo has been able to paint, and it so happens that the fifth centenary of Leonardo’s birth is tomorrow.

In spite of all my stratagem to savour the last moments of my absence with an intoxicating intensity, here I am, finally home in Port Ligat. And so happy!’

1 May 1953
‘I spent the winter in New York as usual, enjoying enormous success in everything I did. We have been in Port Ligat a month, and today, on the same date as last year, I decide to resume my diary. I inaugurate the Dalinian May the first by working frenetically, as I am urged to do by a sweet creative anguish. My moustache has never been so long. My entire body is encased in my clothing. Only my moustache shows.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 11 May 2014.

Route of Father Sarmiento

Martín Sarmiento, a much-admired Spanish scholar and monk, died all of 250 years ago today. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, but he is mostly remembered for his book Viaje a Galicia, or Journey to Galicia, in which he recorded, diary-like, a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The route he took is now known as the Route of Father Sarmiento.

Pedro José García Balboa was born in 1695 and spent his childhood in Pontevedra, Galicia. Aged 15, he entered the Benedictine Monastery of San Martín in Madrid. There he became Father Martín Sarmiento and was mentored by Benito Feijóo, considered the most outstanding Spanish philosopher of the 18th century. There are few details of Sarmiento’s life readily available online, but Camino By The Way gives this brief assessment.

‘Father Sarmiento was an illustrious representative of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that promoted reason, individual liberty and religious tolerance. He fought superstition and ignorance throughout his life and encouraged the establishment of libraries in local towns. Father Sarmiento was an early champion of the necessity to understand, restore and preserve traditions and popular culture; as such, he made a strong contribution to the research and recovery of Galician culture. Improving his country’s economic status was also a major concern, which was typical of Enlightenment thinking at the time. [He] wrote on a wide range of disciplines including linguistics, theology, history, botany and medicine.’ Sarmiento died at the San Martin monastery on 7 December 1772. A little further information is also available at Wikipedia.

Sarmiento wrote several books during his lifetime, some even in the Galiican language. His most enduring legacy, however, is the diary he kept of a three-day pilgrimage he undertook in 1745, from Pontevedra, through the valley of Salnés to Santiago de Compostela. The 20 page manuscript formed the basis of a book edited by J. L. Pensado and published by the University of Salamanca in 1975 as Viaje a Galicia (Journey/Travels to Galicia). Much of this (in Spanish) can be previewed online at Googlebooks.

However, more recently the Salnés Union of Municipalities has published a comprehensive pictorial edition of The Route of Father Sarmiento to Santiago, across Salnés - in English and freely available online. The book contains a wealth of information about the route, as well as the architecture, culture, history, food etc, of the region. It also provides quotations from Sarmiento’s diary translated into English. Here are a couple of them.

‘On Monday 19 July I left Pontevedra for Santiago, travelling all across Salnés, Porto Santo, and Puntal point, Lourido, los Gallos point. Campelo, Río del Roboa, Río da Serpe. Combarro. Río de Cela. Chancelas and sand bank and Costoiras point. Samieira. Río de Ama. Arén. Ragió - Armenteira Priory. Bois de Raxó, Island of Tambo; from the sea peeks a tiny bud of an island, called Tenlo, facing Marín.’

‘I arrived on Thursday 22nd at Santiago, keen to beat the Jubilee. I did my diligences on the same Saint’s day and on the Saturday I went to the bulls or xovencos [young bull in Galician] in the morning and in the afternoon, to the college of San Xerónimo. I slept in the same college to see the fires by night, and they lasted nearly two hours. The multitude of people, particularly the Portuguese, was such that they didn’t pay us elders any attention. I heard the Penitentiary Father Goyri tell that on the day of the Apostle there were more than 30,000 people congregated in the cathedral, and many others gathered in other churches, and on the day of Pentecost, there were 22,000 people.

On the Saint’s day I made the offering to the judge of the court Saura de A Coruña. I registered at the archives of San Martiño where I am staying due to the kindness of Master Friar Pedro Mera, a Bishop and my co-disciple in matters of language. There are many precious Gothic instruments, and more than one hundred of them are judged useless.

I registered at the archives of the monks at San Pelaio or San Paio and I went inside two times. Most of the parchments, and there are many, are in the Galician tongue.’

They be permitted to dance

‘They made us a present of great quantities of fish, and the first thing they entreat, all along this channel, is that they be permitted to dance; this we conceded so as not to displease them.’ This is from the diary kept by Gaspar de Portolá, a Spanish army soldier born 305 years ago today, during an expedition he led from Lower to Upper California.

Portolá was born on 1 January 1716 in Os de Balaguer, Spain, of Catalan nobility. He served as a soldier in the Spanish army in Italy and Portugal, being commissioned ensign in 1734, lieutenant in 1743, and captain in the mid-1760s. In 1767, the Spanish monarchy sent him to Lower (Baja) California to serve as governor with orders to expel the Jesuits from the territory. When the Jesuits opposed this persecution, he dealt severely with the rebels, hanging the leaders. He was commander-in-chief of an expedition to Upper (Alta) California, 1769-1770, for the acquisition of the ports of San Diego and Monterey. In 1776, he was appointed governor of Puebla (now part of Mexico), serving until 1784. He retired from active service and returned to Spain where he served as commander of the Numancia cavalry dragoon regiment. In 1786 he was appointed King’s Lieutenant for the strongholds and castles of Lleida, but died later that same year. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Spartacus Educational.

Portolá kept a diary during the 1769 expedition and this he published while still in California. Nearly 150 years later, it was translated into English (by Donald E. Smith and Frederick J. Teggart) and published as Diary of Gaspar de Portolá during the California Expedition of 1769-1770 (University of California, 1909, for the Academy of Pacific Coast History). The book is freely available online at Internet Archive.

21 June 1769
‘The 21st, we proceeded for four hours on a good road in sight of the ocean. We halted in a gully where there was much water and pasture. Here the expedition rested for one day. During this interim, some natives came [to the camp] and one of them made signs that he had come across other people ahead [of us], indicating that in twelve days we would reach the place where they had halted and were living in houses, and that there were [still] other people in that place. This served to cheer us as we thus understood from the chief that the ships were there. In this place we noticed that there were two islands; it is a large bay with the landmarks that Cabrera Bueno gives for the bay of Todos Santos.’

23 August 1769
‘The 23rd of August, we proceeded for four hours and a half, part of the way along the beach. We halted in a town of eighty houses and the number of natives that we saw was about four hundred. Much running water and pasture. They made us a present of great quantities of fish, and the first thing they entreat, all along this channel, is that they be permitted to dance; this we conceded so as not to displease them.’

4 September 1769
‘The 4th, we proceeded for four hours, the greater part of the road was good; the remainder, close to the seashore, was over great sand dunes. It was necessary to go around the many marshes and lagoons, which gave us much labor. [We halted at a place having] much water and pasture, where there came [to our camp the inhabitants of] a village of about forty natives without [counting] others who were in the neighborhood. Here we found ourselves at the foot of the Sierra de Santa Lucia. We observed that the villages have a small number of inhabitants, and that these do not live in regular houses as [do the Indians] on the channel, but they are more docile.’

20 September 1769
The 20th, we marched for four hours over mountains which, as I say, are very high. All the way, a path had to he opened; the most laborious part being to clear the many rough places full of brambles. The account of Cabrera Bueno has good reason for describing the Sierra de Santa Lucia as being so high, rugged, and massive. We inferred that we could not possibly find any greater range as this was twenty leagues long and sixteen wide. We halted in a gorge where there was little water and pasture; here about four hundred natives came [to our camp].’

29 December 1769
‘The 29th, we travelled for three hours by a route different from that we had taken on the outward journey. We halted in the plain which is named the Plan de los Berros. Here a most obsequious native came up and, being apprehensive among [us] all . . . a present of a fabric interwoven with beautiful feathers which in its arrangement looked like plush [covered with] countless little seeds.’

24 January 1770
‘The 24th, we proceeded for five hours, [and made the same distance as in] two marches on the previous journey. On this day we arrived at San Diego, giving thanks to God that, notwithstanding the great labors and privations we had undergone, not a single man had perished. Indeed we had accomplished our return march, through the great providence of God, without other human aid except that, when we were in dire need, we killed some mules for our necessary sustenance.

We found at San Diego that the three fathers were there with the entire guard of eight soldiers in leather jackets which had been left; but of the fourteen volunteers, who had remained, eight were dead. The San Carlos was anchored in the same place where we had left her; but, during all this time, neither the San Joseph nor El Principe, had arrived, although it was eight months since the former was to leave Guaymas and seven months since the latter had left this port. For this reason, and because of the lack of provisions, a council was held, and it was resolved that, in order to make it possible to hold this port longer, Don Fernando de Rivera, captain of the presidio [of Loreto], should set out with a strong force so that he might go to [Lower] California and also bring back the herd of cattle which was intended for this mission. The remainder of the expedition was to hold this important port, hoping that God might grant us the comfort of sighting some ship.’

My unjust condemnation

‘I was with General Lafayette, invited by him to discuss reconciliation with Bolívar. I explained to him the origin and the development of our enmity, the persecution I suffered, the outrages, and my unjust condemnation; I told him that Bolívar was vindictive and proud, and that in my current disgrace I should not neither abate myself nor humiliate myself, and that with these principles he could use me as much as seem convenient and opportune to him.’ This is from a diary kept by Francisco de Paula Santander, one of the founders of Columbia who died 180 years ago today, after being exiled to Europe. His diaries have only been published in Spanish, but a few extracts in English can be found online in Revista Brasileira de História.

Santander was born in the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada, not far from the Venezuelan border, in 1792 to a cocoa farmer and his wife, both descendants of Spanish aristocracy. He studied law, but was attracted by the growing movement for independence. By the age of 18, he had taken up a military career with the federalists. He was promoted rapidly, and was at the front line during several defining battles in the war for independence from the Spanish colonies. He fought under Simón Bolívar for many years, being made a general when only 24. Unhappy with his role, though, he resigned within a few months. In 1821, after the Constitution of Cúcuta (the founding document and constitution for Gran Colombia) was proclaimed, Bolívar was elected president, and Santander vice president; Santander, though, was placed in charge of the government while Bolívar headed to Venezuela to propose a wider union of territories.

As acting president, Santander sent trade missions around the world and managed to persuade Great Britain and the US to recognise Gran Colombia as a state. The new nation, though, was in a turbulent economic state, having endured a prolonged state of war. In time, a rift in ideology developed between Santander and Bolívar  especially over their views on the future of Gran Colombia - Santander seeing its future as a separate country, and Bolívar wanting to create a unified South American state. In 1828, Bolívar declared himself dictator and abolished the vice-president position, effectively cutting Santander off from all political power and influence. Just weeks later, Santander was arrested for an assassination attempt on Bolívar. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Bolívar pardoned him, but forced him into exile. Two years later, Gran Colombia was dissolved, and Bolívar died soon after (aged 47).

Santander returned from exile to New Granada in 1832, having learned much from his time in Europe. Under a new constitution, he was selected to be president, a post he then held until 1836. That same year, he married Sixta Pontón, and they had three children. As president, he ordered the execution of several Spanish officers in captivity and reinstated many of the doctrines that had been overturned by Bolívar  More specifically, he advanced public education, and signed a final peace treaty with Spain. He died in 1840, like Bolívar at the aged of 47. Further information is available from Wikipedia, New World Encyclopedia, and Totally History.

During his exile in Europe Santander kept a diary, eight notebooks in all, but these were only revealed for the first time in 1948 by the National Museum of Colombia. The diaries were then published, in 1963, with the sponsorship of the Colombian Banco de la República as Diario del general Francisco de Paula Santander en Europa y los EE. UU., 1829-1932. A review of this, in English, can be read at the Hispanic American Historical Review website.

Subsequently, in 1989, the Biblioteca de la Presidencia de la Republica in Bogotá published a two volume edition: Santander en Europa: Diario de viaje, 1829-1830. There is no English edition of Santander’s diaries. However, in 2013, the periodical, Revista Brasileira de História, published an essay, in English, by Libertad Borges Bittencourt on Santander’s diary: To write, to tell, to keep: the diary of Santander in European exile (1829-1832). And this is freely available online at Scielo. Here are a few extracts as found in Bittencourt’s essay.

7 November 1829
‘Today it is one year since Urdaneta [president of Gran Columbia 1830-1831] pronounced my death sentence, violating all the rights and laws of justice.’

6 May 1830
‘I was with General Lafayette, invited by him to discuss reconciliation with Bolívar. I explained to him the origin and the development of our enmity, the persecution I suffered, the outrages, and my unjust condemnation; I told him that Bolívar was vindictive and proud, and that in my current disgrace I should not neither abate myself nor humiliate myself, and that with these principles he could use me as much as seem convenient and opportune to him.’

7 May 1830
‘they were talking with me about the projected reconciliation with Bolívar. I told them decidedly that on my part the reconciliation could be made under the following conditions: 1) that the political regime in Colombia would be republican and partially federative; 2) that General Bolívar, in good faith, would agree to this and govern without privileging any parties and in conformance with the law; 3) that all the outrages and persecutions I suffered would be remedied. On the other hand, I cannot commit myself to anything, because that would mean humiliation and debasement, unworthy of me and prejudicial to the welfare of my homeland.’

26 June 1830
‘There I heard of Bolívar’s new farce in Bogotá in April and read some public documents from Bogotá. In summary there was a movement in Casanare in favor of the Venezuela pronouncement, for which reason the principal neighbors of Popayán sent a petition to Congress, dated 29 March, stating that it was necessary to cede to the nature of things and the impulse of public opinion, forming a confederation to prevent war with Venezuela, which the Granadines did not want to do this because the Venezuelans should not be considered, according to the principles of public law, as factions, since a large dissident part of a state which had the means to support their decisions could not be treated like this. They conclude by asking for the convocation of a Granadine congress and the adoption of a federal regime which is desired on a daily basis by people with an imperious need. Another document signed by General Obando in Bogotá expresses equal feeling and talks of the effervescence in the capital. Based on all of this the provisional government of Bogotá (D. Caycedo, Osorio, Márquez and Herrán), or instigated by Bolívar, who saw that the opinion was decided in favor of the Venezuela pronunciation and the federation, sent a message to the Congress on 15 April inviting it to dissolve and to meet in a new convention in New Granada. This produced a great altercation in Congress when García Del Rio and De Francisco called the provisional government revolutionary and traitors. Nevertheless, the ministers of England, Brazil, and the United States had sent a note to the government, without the interest of intervening in domestic affairs and without being able to appreciate the reasons for the message of the government to Congress, declaring that any secession of Colombian territory would impose on them the duty to withdraw, taking their functions to be finished and that any treaties with Colombia on the part of their respective governments would be considered invalid. This scandalous note produced its effect: the Council declared that it would preserve national integrity and the Council of State proclaimed Bolívar as president, with the debates in the Chamber being suspended. Bolívar returned to his mandate.

27 August 1830
‘To my answer that I was no longer one, because my country was an independent state and called Colombia, they asked me several questions about our army, the way of fighting war, and, particularly about Bolívar; I sought to be moderate about the political conduct of our Liberator and praised his military conduct; the officer answered that irrespective of what I had said there were important men in Colombia who were opposed to the political conduct of Bolívar, which to him seemed doubtful whether or not they were without ambition. My answer was reduced to saying that in effect he had personal enemies and enemies of his political principles, and that time would say with justice which was right. The officer named Sucre as being opposed to Bolívar and, not remembering my name, said these precise words: “There is another general who was president of Colombia when Bolívar was in Peru who they say demonstrated great talent and many services, and who positioned himself completely against the ideas of Bolívar, as he supported the laws of his country.” This praise made me flush, but I did not reveal myself. However, my servant, in a stop to change horses shortly afterwards, revealed who I was, and the officer paid me many flattering compliments.’

16 September 1831
‘I was presented to the king in his palace of Neuilly by Count Saint Maurice; I went with a complete military uniform, and the king, the queen, and Mme. Adelaida, the king’s sister, asked me different question about the geography of Colombia and its political situation. The king told me that we should not fear any attack from Spain, for which it would be necessary to form a government that would inspire confidence in Europe and maintain public order.’

Crushing the slave traffic

‘We met a Brazillian named Jose dos Cento, who came to Whydah a poor man, but has become rich, from his own direct energies, and perseverance, he ships a great quantity of Palm oil, as well as a little in the Slave Trade when a fair opportunity offers, on that point he does not speculate much, I am glad to be encouraged to state that the legitimate [trade] is beginning to Bud, competition has become so great that it has so far enhanced the value of Palm Oil from 2 dollars for a measure of 19 Gallons to six dollars for the same, so it is too obvious, that could the abominable [i.e. slave] traffic be crushed legitimate trade would soon outstay the odium.’ This is from the diary of a John Beecroft, a Yorkshire-born sailor, explorer and colonial governor baptised 230 years ago today. He is remembered for the part he played in helping Britain combat the slave trade.

Beecroft was baptised on 2 May 1790 in Sleights near Whitby, North Yorkshire. Little is known about his early years, but from his teens he was employed at sea, on coastal vessels. In 1805, he was captured by a French privateer, during the Napoleonic Wars, and held prisoner until 1814. Subsequently, he joined the merchant navy and, as master of a transport vessel, traveled to Greenland with William Parry’s expedition searching for a Northwest Passage. The significant part of Beecroft’s career began in 1829 with his appointment as superintendent of works at Fernando Po, an island in the Gulf of Guinea nominally under Spanish control but where Britain was establishing a base for combating the slave trade. The following year, when the island’s governor returned to England on sick leave, Beecroft took over as acting governor, a post conferred on him by the Spanish government with the rank of lieutenant in the Spanish navy.

Britain gave up its settlement on Fernando Po in 1833, but Beecroft stayed on as a partner in a firm that controlled the shore establishments and trading, and despite his status as a simple private citizen, effectively he continued to govern the island, maintaining a court of justice, and generally overseeing the island’s affairs. In 1843, in fact, the Spanish formally made him governor of Fernando Po and two other Spanish islands. During this time, he systematically explored the interior of Africa using steam ships to navigate up the Niger and other river systems further than had been possible previously. The native Africans he employed as crew proved far more resilient to the endemic malaria which had claimed numerous European lives on previous expeditions. In 1849, he was also appointed consul, by the British, of the Bights of Benin and Biafra.

As consul, Beecroft assisted in the British bombardment of Lagos in 1851, negotiated (and was a signatory to) the Treaty Between Great Britain and Lagos, and was instrumental in the deposition of Pepple, King of Bonny, in 1854. He died that same year just as he was about to embark on another Niger expedition. According to Anthony Tibbles’ bio of Beecroft in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, ‘his principle contribution to the abolition of the slave trade was in using his influence with African chiefs to cut off the supply of slaves to illegal slavers and to help provide the more stable conditions required by legitimate traders.’ Further information is also available from Wikipedia, Genealogy, and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required).

In 1850, Beecroft undertook a diplomatic mission to Dahomey (in present-day Benin) to visit its king, Gezo. The mission was part of a sustained effort by the British government to persuade Gezo to collaborate in the suppression of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Although the mission of 1850 was a failure, Beecroft’s account of it - his journal - is now considered an invaluable source for the history of Dahomey, especially for the information it provides on the role of the slave trade within the kingdom, as well as its response to British pressure for the trade’s abolition. The journal exists in a single manuscript version in Beecroft’s own handwriting. It was edited by Robin Law and published recently - in 2019 - as Consul John Beecroft’s Journal of his Mission to Dahomey, 1850 (Oxford University Press). According to the publisher, the book includes extensive editorial annotations and analysis.

Frederick E. Forbes, a naval lieutenant who accompanied Beecroft on the Dahomey mission, also kept a journal, but his was published in 1851 immediately after the mission’s conclusion. Dahomey and the Dahomans: being the Journals of Two Missions to the King of Dahomey and Residence at his Capital in the years 1849 and 1850 can be freely consulted at Internet Archive. Law suggests it is not clear why Beecroft’s journal was overlooked for so long, but suggests Beecroft’s manuscript was much longer and more difficult to decipher than Forbes', and that Beecroft himself expected to produce a revised/edited version which he never did. In any case, Law says publication of the Beecroft journal now serves to redress the imbalance.

Law has edited the Beecroft journal to be an ‘accurate transcription of the original text, with all its defects and idiosyncrasies’. Here are two extracts.

16 May 1850
‘I arose at 5 o’ clock. Ther 74°. washed and shaved in readiness to receive our friend the Vice-Roy as he promised to pay us a visit early, but we were disappointed, he had been carouseing all night, and required sleep when he ought to be have been on his legs, I am extremely sorry that Mr Hutton, has thought fit to take the greater part of the useful community belonging to English Town with him to Badagry, they have been absent about six weeks, it appears rather mysterious, I trust there is not any sinister motive to annoy, still I have a better opinion of Mr Hutton, but it is very annoying as we are in want of people to send the King’s Presents on to Abomey. There are only a few Hammock bearers here, Noon all the Presents were removed from the Fort to Caboceers, he having received orders from his Majesty to leave Whydah for the Customs at Abomey on the 20th inst[ant] this afternoon we waited on Monsieur Casse and Blanchely at the French Fort, and were very kindly received, showed us through the whole Factory, it is well adapted for trading purposes, with large Vats for storing palm oil, they will have a great quantity left after dispatching the Barque Bon Pere she will be completed in a day or two having 300 Tons.

we had previously applied to Mr Hutton for a supply of cowries for the mission, they not having any we were necessitated to purchase from Monsieur Casse at 21 dollars per cwt [= hundredweight] a high price I ordered two casks, and thirty pieces of different sorts of cloth, for use at Abomey We returned at 4 o’clock to the English Fort. We met a Brazillian named Jose dos Cento, who came to Whydah a poor man, but has become rich, from his own direct energies, and perseverance, he ships a great quantity of Palm oil, as well as a little in the Slave Trade when a fair opportunity offers, on that point he does not speculate much, I am glad to be encouraged to state that the legitimate [trade] is beginning to Bud, competition has become so great that it has so far enhanced the value of Palm Oil from 2 dollars for a measure of 19 Gallons to six dollars for the same, so it is too obvious, that could the abominable [i.e. slave] traffic be crushed legitimate trade would soon outstay the odium.

Whydah has many drawbacks, the distance it has to be rolled to the Beach shipment, at a risk these are obstacles not to be easily surmounted, but it only requires the energies & mind of the purchasers to obviate, in a great measure, a moiety of these difficulties and commence a new plan, if the other [trade] was finished the Path would be made perceptible.

Received from the French Fort 1014 lbs of cowries and the 30 pieces of cloth ordered.

After dinner I took a walk accompanied by Capt Forbes and Mr Roberts, round the Fort, on our way we came upon the Fetish peoples performances their superstitious fooleries and rogueries, we were detained a short time, as they belonged to English Town, looking at their distortions, and gesticulations, going round the circle, Keeping time to their rude music of country Drums, and Horns, there were a great number of lookers on with us en passant, at last an aged Lady and three or four more of Grey haired venerables, Old Gents heads of the Fetish, came up and paid their respects to us, we were then in a measure obliged according to the Custom of the Country to acknowledge the same and give them a small present of rum, particularly being Englishmen and strangers, for which they overwhelmed us with thanks and e[n]comiums, shortly after Capt Forbes and myself left and prolonged our walk a short distance into the country, the Path we had chosen appeared a very impoverished soil, Iron stone, and mica, saw several gigantic Bombax Trees, taken possession of by the Fetish and walled in, the country as far as the eye can discern is level, with a Park like appearance, we returned at sunset, on our arrival at the Fort found a messenger from Badagry with letters from Mr Hutton stating that he had remained at Porto Novo, on his way here, the messenger was one of their own people, he of course accosted accosted Mr Roberts in a very friendly manner, it did not seem pleasing to Mr Hastie. Capt Forbes and myself left and retired to our own domicile and talked over other matters more serious connected with our mission we retired to rest at 9 o’clock this day ends with a very find wr. Reported that a very small schooner of 35 Tons [was] taken by Phoenix belonging to a Black man named José liveing at Aghwey.’

26 June 1850
‘daylight dull cloudy wr Ther 75° Forbes took his walk as usual, returned at 7 o’clock took a light Breakfast of Tea and eggs. 10 o’clock the Mayo-gau made his appearance, to report progress it was as I had expected that the King wished us to remain to see the Fetish Custom, and the small Schooner dressed out with Flags and some other fooleries, that would take fifteen days, I told him it would be three weeks for they Procrastinate too much you are never sure of their word, as soon as that was communicated we sent down for 50 dollars more cowries, Noon fresh westerly Breezes Mayo told us the Fetish people were going to amuse themselves with their ribaldry if [we] wished to see them we were at liberty, I told him that I had seen them and got them in my Book. Then at 2 o’clock 78° dined and took a walk to the Gate, where the Fetish women were performing an old Caboceer very polite introduced us to two of the Kings Brothers, and gave us each a Country stool to sit on, sent small decanters of rum, Gin &c &c and a Pot of water and Peto, or country Beer, we tasted of each with them, they were all women performers, a few of the King's wives, and one of his daughters were present, sent for a Keg of rum and presented to the old Caboceer, it was placed in front. The two Kings sons and two Caboceers presented it in due form with a long speech, they returned us many thanks Bah-dah-huu Kings Brother was particularly complimentary. and said it pleased him too much to see Englishmen at Abomey, friends with his brother the King. They sung Praises trusting God would take care of us, and Protect us from harm, they said that they would be glad to see us tomorrow as they were going to sacrifice a Bullock, they then retired and we returned home, we received a few necessaries from Whydah from Mr Hastie they arrived at a very convenient season for we were nearly dry, it is truly Kind and thoughtful of him, he states that he has been confined 8 days, retired to rest at 9 o’clock. the Fetish performers were all aged.’

A director’s loneliness

Happy 70th birthday Pedro Almodóvar. He is surely the most famous of Spanish filmmakers alive today, and second only to Luis Buñuel in importance in the history of Spanish cinema. He is not a diarist, by his own admission, but on one occasion, while making the film Volver, he kept a diary of sorts. It’s full of confessional thoughts - but these are far from private as they were written to be shared with his public, as in this example: ‘A director’s loneliness is sacred. And the director himself should be the first to respect it, without sharing it with you as I am doing right now.’

Almodóvar was born on 25 September 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, a small rural town in the province of Castile-La Mancha. When he was about nine, the family, moved to Madrigalejo, a town in Extremadura, where he was sent to study at a religious boarding school to prepare him for a life in the church. Aged 18, though, he left home for Madrid where he began to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker. Thwarted by the closure of the national film school, he purchased a Super-8 camera and began making his own short films, all the while supporting himself with a variety of odd jobs. At the time, he was much involved with experimental cinema and theatre. In 1980, he produced his first feature film (Pepi, Luci, Bom), and then Laberinto de pasiones, the first of several films with the Spanish actor Antonio Banderas.

In 1986, he joined forces with the producer Andrés Vicente Gómez to make Matador, and in 1987, he and his brother Agustín Almodóvar established their own production company: El Deseo, S. A. His first major critical and commercial success came the following year, with Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Almodóvar’s reputation continued to soar, not least with Todo sobre mi madre in 1999 (All about My Mother), which won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. He was also honoured as best director at the Cannes film festival. He continued to direct films, roughly one every two years, many of which won prizes and were nominated for many more. Volver in 2006 won him the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, and the Best Actress prize for his entire female cast. His most recent film - Dolor y gloria - was released in March 2019. Almodóvar is gay, and has been with his partner, actor and photographer Fernando Iglesias, since 2002. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, IMDB, and The New Yorker.

There is no indication among these biographical details that Almodóvar is a diarist. Indeed, Paul Julian Smith in an essay entitled Almodóvar’s Self-Fashioning (to be found in A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar - see Googlebooks, page 31) quotes Almodóvar himself as saying ‘I’m not a diary writer.’ Nevertheless, on at least one occasion, he did keep a diary of sorts - during the making of Volver. This was published as Volver: A Filmmaker’s Diary in a collection of essays, All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema, as edited by Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Some pages can be read online at Googlebooks. It is worth nothing, though, that the ‘diary’ does not meet a couple of the requirements usually applied to diaries: firstly, none of the entries are dated, and, secondly, they are often addressed directly to his reading audience (rather than to himself). Here are several extracts from the ‘diary’.

‘On the other side of my desk, in my office in El Deseo, sit three of the actresses who will star in Volver. Each of them embodies an important return. The most anticipated is that of Carmen Maura, but there are two additional returns, full of sense and sensibility: Penelope Cruz, with whom I’ve worked twice before [in Live Flesh and All about My Mother], an actress and a woman whom I adore both on and off the set; and Lola Dueñas, with whom I worked in Talk to Her (she was a nurse, a fellow worker of Javier Camara, and I felt like repeating the experience).

I am extremely agitated about the meeting. Despite the fact that the role assigned to me in this circus is that of the master of ceremonies, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy for me to break the ice. But that’s what it means, among other things, to be a director - at least, in a European country. I’m the icebreaker, the chimney that warms the atmosphere, the mother-father-psychiatrist-lover-friend who, with a simple word, can help you regain your self-confidence.’

***

‘Films, the collection of all the processes that make up a film, entail a wide array of questions - hence the adventurous nature of a shooting. The adventures worth isn’t proportional to the number of answers one finds along the way, it is proportional to the resistance of the people involved. What happens is that the director is driving a train with no brakes, and his job is to make sure that the train doesn’t derail. That’s how Truffaut saw it.

My first question is always similar: Will I feel the same passion I felt the last fifteen times about the new story? Without an answer to this question, it is best to avoid getting involved in a new project.

With Volver the answer is certainly, “yes.” Once again, I have the feeling of handling a story - a fable, a treasure, and a secret - in which I am anxious to engross myself.’

***

‘The first week of shooting is over. I came to Madrid on Friday, at the end of the days work. The “girls” and most of the team stayed behind in Almagro. I miss them, and I like that. I can concentrate better in the solitude of Madrid and I prefer to feel homesick for the shoot and to see it from a distance, in perspective. I leave Almagro in order to miss it. I feel that my films are getting progressively more autobiographical. At least, I am much more aware of how my memories stroll along the sets, like the breeze along the streets of Almagro at night.’

***

‘We leave Almagro today. I am writing from a patio that is swamped with electric material and rocking chairs with “No sitting” signs. It is one in the afternoon and all the shots we have to do today take place in the street and its impossible to shoot until at least four because the sun multiplies on the white walls; the light is blinding and far too flat. We have to wait. The team has disbanded; at this point I like to stay in one of the lifeless interior sets and enjoy the solitude, the clutter of objects, and the silence.

During these two weeks, contact with the villagers has been wonderful. Both with those we cross in the streets and with those who have worked with us as extras. In most of the sequences of La Mancha there are groups of women and men, and, I must say, I’ve never had better extras. There is something priceless about them; everything that they are supposed to do in front of the camera mirrors their own lives. Their presence has given depth and truth to the sequences in which they participate. Women from this land know well what it is like to clean a tombstone, to pray at a wake, to greet the neighbors. And the faces of the men, slowly weathered by the sun and the wind, have a weight and an expressiveness that would be impossible to improvise.’

***

‘Do you like films with ghosts?

Not normally. I am interested in how Buñuel or Bergman treats the apparition of the dead without changing the light or resorting to special effects. Ghosts appear in front of the person who is thinking about them without pyrotechnical effects. They are inner ghosts. I like Hitchcock’s Rebecca [1940] and Vertigo [1958]. And Sunset Boulevard [Billy Wilder, 1950], where the leading character, who is floating dead in the pool, talks about himself when he was alive, as if he were a ghost trapped by the desires of another ghost (Norma Desmond, who in turn is cared for by the phantasmagorical Erich von Stroheim). William Holden when alive is the ghost of the drowned William Holden. A wonderful use of the offscreen voice, endlessly imitated since then. I also like Tourneur, when he tells stories about beings of other species. In general, I don’t like horror stories with ghosts (M. Night Shyamalan), or films with angels, or with U.S. presidents who keep on saving the world.

What ghost does Volver evoke?

It isn’t a ghost, but the whole film is infused with the presence of my absent mother.’

***

‘This week is less intense; we are shooting many of those sequences necessary for credibility, where actors go in and out of houses, stop cars and park them, etc. Everything is important in them, but these sequences, required to locate the action and establish its geography, are hard for me. In La Mancha there were doors also, but people left them wide open so they didn’t interrupt action, but allowed it to flow instead. Those shots of entrances and exits from cars or houses are a requisite of him orthography, even if in quite a number of thrillers the screenwriter and the director decide to make characters appear at each others spaces effortlessly, disregarding all obstacles. Take a look at Basic Instinct [Paul Verhoeven, 1992] and you will see what I mean. Characters show up inside other people’s houses as if they walked through walls. And that’s not right.’

***

‘There is a moment, during each of the processes involved in making a film, when I go to pieces and think that I have irretrievably lost control of my movie. It happens when I write it, while we are shooting (when editing I suffer more that one crisis) and, certainly, when the film is ready and no one has seen it yet, that’s when I truly shit myself.

In order for the crises to be short-lived, you need to have a very close relationship with what you are shooting. I know these crises; I’ve experienced them in every single one of my fifteen previous films. Always. As with all passions - and for me, making movies is essentially a passion - crises evaporate when one irrationally loves what one is doing. (And it has nothing to do with whether the film afterwards turns out to be good or bad, whether the crises were justified or not; often crises arise out of very specific problems. I’m talking about the crises that surface without a justifiable reason and still manage to drag you down into a sea of confusion.)

I am currently living one of those moments. I feel (and I am sometimes absolutely positive) that all I am doing is a mistake, including this “dear” diary. Experience tells me that the only thing that I can do is to take the plunge and closely watch every movement, every shot, every phrase, every pause, every tear, and every joke. I shouldn’t be talking about this. A director’s loneliness is sacred. And the director himself should be the first to respect it, without sharing it with you as I am doing right now.’

First circumnavigation of the globe

Half a millennium ago this very day, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan launched a Spanish expedition that would complete the first ever circumnavigation of the world - it is, thus, one of the most famous exploration voyages in history. Magellan himself, however, was killed in a battle with native Philippines, and four of the expeditions five ships, along with most of their crews, were lost. Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar and explorer, kept a journal of the entire journey. Although the original was lost, four manuscript copies - one in Italian and three in French - survived. Of these, one held by Yale University is considered the most complete and handsomely produced. Digital images of this are freely available online, as are texts of the journal in English.

On 10 August 1519, Magellan set sail with 270 men and five ships - the Armada de Molucca - from Seville, descending the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river, where they remained more than five weeks before finally setting sail on 20 September. The main goal of the expedition - largely financed by King Charles I of Spain - was to find a western route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands (as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the terms of a treaty). The expedition crossed the Atlantic and discovered the strait that bears Magellan’s name, allowing it to pass South America into the Pacific Ocean (which Magellan named).

The fleet reached the Philippines, where it remained for some while, engaging frequently with the local indigenous people, some of whom were friendly and some not. Magellan was murdered in a battle on 27 April 1521, as were many others. Within a few weeks, the fleet was reduced to two ships, with Juan Sebastián Elcano eventually captaining the Victoria. By November, the expedition had reached the Moluccas - completing its mission. The following month, Elcano sailed for Europe, but the other ship - Trinidad - remained behind for repairs, and was eventually captured by the Portuguese then wrecked in a storm. After numerous other hardships during the three years, not least mutinies, starvation, scurvy, storms, only 18 men and the one ship (the Victoria) completed the return trip to Spain, arriving at Seville on 8 September 1922. Further details are available at Wikipedia.

One of the 18 survivors of the voyage was the Italian Pigafetta (see The Diary Junction) whose detailed journal has become the most important primary source of information about the expedition. He was born into a rich family in Vicenza in northeast Italy, around 1480-1491 (his exact birthdate being unknown). He studied astronomy, geography and cartography before serving the Knights of Rhodes on board their vessels. Until 1519, he accompanied the papal nuncio, Monsignor Francesco Chieregati, to Spain. He was in Seville when he heard of Magellan’s forthcoming expedition and was taken on as a supernumerary with a modest salary. He was wounded in the same skirmish as Magellan was killed, but survived the expedition, and returned to the Republic of Venice where he wrote up his journal, and made handwritten copies for distribution to European monarchs. He died around 1531.

Although the original journal kept by Pigafetta has long since been lost, four hand-written copies of the manuscript have survived into modern times - three in French and one in Italian. At least one of these can be viewed online at the World Digital Library, which says of it: ‘This version, in French, is from the library of Yale University, and is the most complete and handsomely produced of the four surviving manuscripts. It includes 23 beautifully drawn and illuminated maps.’

Published versions of Pigafetta’s journal have appeared over the years in various forms. An English translation (by Lord Stanley of Alderley) was issued by the Hakluyt Society in 1874 - see Internet Archive. But in 1906, a more rigorous edition was published by The Arthur H. Clark Company as Magellan’s Voyage Around the World (also available at Internet Archive). This was translated, edited and extensively annotated by James Alexander Robertson, who says: ‘The present edition first gives the English reader access to a translation of the true text of Pigafetta [. . .] together with the original Italian of Pigafetta [. . .] (the oldest and most complete of the four existing manuscripts).’ For more on the 500th anniversary of the Magellan voyage see The Magellan Project, España Global, VCentenario or The Daily Beast

Meanwhile here is an extract - detailing the death of Magellan - from the 1906 edition in English of Pigafetta’s text.

26-27 April 1521
‘On Friday, April twenty-six, Zula, a chief of the island of Matan [Mactan, and island in the Philippines] sent one of his sons to present two goats to the captain-general, and to say that he would send him all that he had promised, but that he had not been able to send it to him because of the other chief Cilapulapu, who refused to obey the king of Spagnia. He requested the captain to send him only one boatload of men on the next night, so that they might help him and fight against the other chief. The captain-general decided to go thither with three boatloads. We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock. At midnight, sixty men of us set out armed with corselets and helmets, together with the Christian king, the prince, some of the chief men, and twenty or thirty balanguais. We reached Matan three hours before dawn. The captain did not wish to fight then, but sent a message to the natives by the Moro to the effect that if they would obey the king of Spagnia, recognize the Christian king as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute, he would be their friend; but that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see how our lances wounded. They replied that if we had lances they had lances of bamboo and stakes hardened with fire. [They asked us] not to proceed to attack them at once, but to wait until morning, so that they might have more men. They said that in order to induce us to go in search of them; for they had dug certain pitholes between the houses in order that we might fall into them. When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, those men had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries, two divisions on our flanks and the other on our front. When the captain saw that, he formed us into two divisions, and thus did we begin to fight. The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly; for the shots only passed through the shields which were made of thin wood and the arms [of the bearers]. The captain cried to them, “Cease firing! cease firing!” but his order was not at all heeded. When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no purpose, crying out they determined to stand firm, but they redoubled their shouts. When our muskets were discharged, the natives would never stand still, but leaped hither and thither, covering themselves with their shields. They shot so many arrows at us and hurled so many bamboo spears (some of them tipped with iron) at the captain-general, besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend ourselves. Seeing that, the captain-general sent some men to burn their houses in order to terrify them. When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury. Two of our men were killed near the houses, while we burned twenty or thirty houses. So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and so many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance. The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away. So we continued to retire for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore always fighting up to our knees in the water. The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spear four or six times, hurled it at us again and again. Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others. Thus did we fight for more than one hour, refusing to retire farther. An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain’s face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off. The Christian king would have aided us, but the captain charged him before we landed, not to leave his balanghai, but to stay to see how we fought. When the king learned that the captain was dead, he wept. Had it not been for that unfortunate captain, not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats, for while he was fighting the others retired to the boats. I hope through [the efforts of] your most illustrious Lordship that the fame of so noble a captain will not become effaced in our times. Among the other virtues which he possessed, he was more constant than ever any one else in the greatest of adversity. He endured hunger better than all the others, and more accurately than any man in the world did he understand sea charts and navigation. And that this was the truth was seen openly, for no other had had so much natural talent nor the boldness to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done. That battle was fought on Saturday, April twenty-seven, 1521. The captain desired to fight on Saturday, because it was the day especially holy to him. Eight of our men were killed with him in that battle, and four Indians, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed by the mortars of the boats. Of the enemy, only fifteen were killed, while many of us were wounded.

In the afternoon the Christian king sent a message with our consent to the people of Matan, to the effect that if they would give us the captain and the other men who had been killed, we would give them as much merchandise as they wished. They answered that they would not give up such a man, as we imagined [they would do], and that they would not give him for all the riches in the world, but that they intended to keep him as a memorial.’

The death of Lorca

The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was assassinated 80 years ago today by right wing military forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War. The circumstances of his death have always been controversial, indeed Lorca’s biographer, Ian Gibson, has written an entire book on the subject. Although Lorca himself was not a diarist, in 2012 the diary of a young male lover surfaced, shedding new light on Lorca’s last days. On a personal note, my own diary reveals not only that I met Gibson several times, but how I realised that his book on the death of Lorca had played a part in inspiring me to be a writer.

Lorca was born in 1898 near Granada, Spain, into a wealthy landowning family. He was educated at Granada and Madrid universities. While studying in Madrid, he lived within the Residencia de Estudiantes, one of Spain’s first cultural centres, where he became friends with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí among many other creative types. In 1919-1920, he wrote his first play, The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, which was not well received, and, in 1921, published his first book of poems. Collaborations with the composer Manuel de Falla and more poems followed before Lorca’s second play, Mariana Pineda, with sets designed by Dalí, opened in Barcelona in 1927, to great acclaim.

In 1929-1930, Lorca travelled to New York, where he studied English and continued writing poetry; he also visited Vermont and Cuba. Back in Madrid, the newly established Second Spanish Republic appointed him director of a student theatre company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca, charged with bringing theatre to rural areas of Spain. During the next few years he wrote his most famous plays, Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. But, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, he was assassinated, on 19 August, by fascist supporters of General Franco - the leader who, in 1939, would win the war and rule Spain for more than 30 years. The circumstances of Lorca’s death have long been controversial, and his body was never found. Biographers continue to argue about whether it was Lorca’s left-wing political beliefs (though he had friends in both factions of the emerging civil war) or personal animosities to his homosexuality that was most to blame for his death warrant.

In the 1960s, the Irish-born Ian Gibson, a Spanish literature academic working in Britain, moved to Granada for a year to write a doctoral thesis on Lorca, but ended up publishing (in Paris) a Spanish-language book about the playwright’s death - La represión nacionalista de Granada en 1936 y la muerte de Federico García Lorca (1971). It was banned in Spain; and subsequently it was also published in English as The Death of Lorca (1973). Gibson concluded that Lorca was, indeed, shot by nationalist militia, along with others, as part of a wider campaign to eliminate left-wing radicals. Gibson, by this time domiciled near Granada, went on to publish his major, and very highly respected, two-volume Spanish biography of Lorca in 1985-1987, and then two years later, a one volume edition in English.

In 2015, the Guardian claimed that documents it had obtained (written in 1965 at the Granada police headquarters) contained ‘the first ever admission by Franco-era officials’ of their involvement in Lorca’s death. The article goes on: ‘The resulting documents suggest García Lorca was persecuted for his beliefs, describing him as a “socialist and a freemason,” about whom rumours swirled of “homosexual and abnormal practices”. After police carried out two searches on his home in Granada, he fled to a friend’s house out of fear. In August 1936, just one month after the civil war broke out, officers surrounded the house where García Lorca was hiding, while his friends tried to intervene on his behalf. García Lorca was arrested and taken by car to an area close to the place known as Fuente Grande, along with one other detainee, said the documents. He was then “executed immediately after having confessed, and was buried in that location, in a very shallow grave, in a ravine”. No details were given as to the content of his confession.’ Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Andalusia.com or Poets.org.

There is no evidence that Lorca was a diarist (see A Companion to Federico García Lorca by Federico Bonaddio, 2007, Tamesis). However, in 2012, the 91 year old Juan Ramirez de Lucas, who had been Lorca’s last lover, died leaving behind a box of mementoes including letters and a diary - instructing his family to make them public. As was widely reported at the time (see El País for example), the letters (from Lorca) and de Lucas’s diary prove that Lorca, 38 years old, and de Lucas, only 19, had been planning in the summer of 1936 to flee to Mexico. Lorca, though, insisted that de Lucas seek permission from his family - permission that was not forthcoming, his father refusing to issue the necessary papers. Had the lovers left Spain at that moment in time, Lorca would not have died so young, and who knows what literary works he might have produced.

The Telegraph, for its take on the de Lucas story, contacted Gibson, who said: ‘It’s terribly exciting to learn new material exists that may shed light on his final days’, and ‘Lorca was very promiscuous and prone to infatuation but we never definitively knew who his last lover was or why he delayed leaving.’ Gibson revealed de Lucas’s name had come up during his own research on Lorca (which had begun while Franco was still in power), but that he had refused to be interviewed. ‘One can only guess that he wanted to keep his association a secret especially during the Franco years. It wasn’t easy being gay and especially if it was a relationship with someone as famous as Lorca.’ The Telegraph article concluded with another quote from Gibson: ‘We can only hope that the papers will be made available soon.’

Unfortunately, since 2012 there has been no sign that the letters/diary might be published, as was suggested at the time. In 2014, the British theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh, when writing a play on the death of Lorca, inspired by the de Lucas find, tried to find out what had happened to his papers, but was stonewalled at every turn. The play - The Unquiet Grave of Garcia Lorca - premiered in London in October 2014 - see The Evening Standard.

On a personal note, I met Ian Gibson several times at his home in Restabal, near Granada. My friend Rosy, and her husband Andy, had bought a holiday villa in the area, but it was only after being there for a while that Rosy discovered a cousin, whom she had not previously met, living nearby - Ian Gibson - and they soon became firm friends. One winter, I visited Rosy, with my seven-year old son, Adam, and she took us to Ian’s place. It was not until I was in his house, and browsing his bookshelves that I realised Ian had played a part, some 20 years earlier, in inspiring me to become a writer. Here is my diary entry:

15 January 1995
‘Ian proved a hearty fellow and quite charming. He loved Adam and the way he’d fallen asleep in his house without disturbing anyone, and he seemed on good form the thrice I saw him - on this evening, later in the week at a party, and then on New Year’s Eve at his party. But I must recount why my meeting with him was so significant.

In the mid-1970s, after my travels and when I was living in London with Harold, I think, I saw a modern ballet at Sadlers Wells, created by Lindsay Kemp and performed by Ballet Rambert. I can remember parts of the ballet to this day. It was called Cruel Garden and it so inspired me in some way that I wrote my first ever piece of fiction (apart from the shorts in my travel diaries) and I called it Cruel Garden, although it had nothing to do with the ballet or its subject (at least I don’t think it did). The point is that the ballet Cruel Garden was based on the life of Lorca and, in part, on Ian’s book The Death of Lorca. I did not even realise I had read the book until I started delving into my memories surrounding The Cruel Garden.’

Go and wash and see

Miguel de Unamuno, one of the most influential Spanish thinkers of his time, was born 150 years ago today. A scholar, writer, and rector of the University of Salamanca, he is considered to have been an early existentialist, but was often in trouble with the authorities for his political views. An early insight into both his intellect and the themes that would preoccupy his writing over the next 30 years came with a diary written during, and in response to, a kind of spiritual (or, indeed, existential) crisis he experienced in 1897.

Unamuno was born in Bilbao, Spain, on 29 September 1864; and, as a teenager, he witnessed a siege of the city by Carlist forces (in the so-called Third Carlist War) - a formative experience according to biographers. Aged but 16, he went to study philosophy and belles-lettres at Madrid university, and then did a thesis on the Basque language. From 1884, he worked as a private teacher, but was also writing articles. In 1891, he married his childhood sweetheart, Concha Lizarraga, and they would have nine children.

The following year, having failed to find an academic appointment in the field of philosophy, Unamono took up the chair of Greek at the University of Salamanca, an institution to which he would stay attached for the rest of his life. Around this time, he began writing the essays that would be published in 1902 as En torno al casticismo. His first novel - Paz en la guerra (Peace in War) - was published in 1897, and a second - Amor y pedagogía (Love and Pedagogy) - in 1902. By then, still in his 30s, he had been named rector of the University of Salamanca. In 1905, the García brothers opened Café Novelty in Plaza Mayor, and it soon became a focus for the city’s political and cultural life - Unamuno was a regular patron, often giving talks.

Unamuno was a man of wide interests, with a passion for poetry - he published several collections - and for languages. He read a dozen or more modern languages, as well as Latin and Greek, all the better to understand philosophers from their original texts (he learned Danish to read Kierkegaard, for example). He was also a renowned Lusophile. As a philosopher, he became recognised, latterly, as an early European existentialist.

Unamuno’s most important work - Del sentimiento trágico de la vida - was first published in 1913, and translated into English in 1921 as The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and in Peoples. In 1914, Unamuno was dismissed from his post as rector by the Minister of Education, for political reasons. But in 1920, he was elected fellow in the philosophy and arts faculty, and re-appointed rector in 1921. By 1924, though, his attacks on the king and the dictator, Primo de Rivera, led to him being forced out again. This time, Unamuno went into exile, first to Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, where his house is now a museum, and from there to France, first Paris, and then Hendaye, a border town in French Basque country.

Unamuno remained in Hendaye until after the fall of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, and in 1931, he was reappointed, for a third time, to be rector of the University of Salamanca. At first, Unamuno welcomed General Franco’s Second Republic, but he soon became disillusioned with the regime’s harsh tactics. In 1936, he had a public quarrel at the university with the Nationalist general Millán Astray. He was sacked again, and put under house arrest. He died ten weeks later, on the last day of that same year. There is not much biographical information about Unamuno online in English, but try Wikipedia (and a translation of the Spanish entry too) or Kirjasto. Fundación Zuloaga has a Spanish language page on Unamuno.

In 1897, Unamuno underwent a deep depression, a kind of spiritual crisis. This is well documented in his biographies - see Stefany Anne Golberg’s essay at The Smart Set. During this time, he kept a diary, although only a few entries are actually dated, and most of them are philosophical ruminations. These writings were somewhat rough and ready, yet he copied and circulated them to friends. They were not published in English, however, until 1984, as part of Princeton University Press’s seven volume series, The Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno. Volume 2 is titled The Private World - Selections from the Diario Intimo and Selected Letters 1890-1936, as translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Allen Lacy and Martin Nozick.

Lacy’s introduction explains that Unamuno’s Diario intimo, most of which was written in the months immediately following his crisis, in five bound notebooks, was circulated (except for the brief and scanty entries from 1899 to 1902) to several of the author’s closest friends between 1898 and 1901, then hidden among the papers in his study. He continues:

‘The Diario intimo is by no means a polished piece of work. [. . .] Even in the abridged version which is given in the present volume, few readers will fail to notice that it is obsessive, extremely repetitious, and often self-conscious in a rather theatrical way, nor that it lacks the literary merit that, even for relentless non-believers, distinguishes such other examples of confessional writing as St Augustine’s Confessions and Pascal’s Pensées. But it is an important document for two reasons. First, it announces many of the themes that were to occupy Unamuno in later years, especially in The Tragic Sense of Life and The Agony of Christianity. Second, it provides a vivid picture of a sensitive and deeply intellectual man.’

Here are a few snippets from Diario Intimo.

Notebook 2
25 April 1897
‘Quasimodo Sunday. A conventional Mass at the parish church, a sermon by the priest about the fact that many believe that going to church is doing God a favor, when it is we who need God, not He us.

How is it that I imagine myself to be a great personage, one destined to create a sensation in the Church, my conversion providing a model for others? How many ways has pride of surviving!’

28 April 1897
‘Read the ninth chapter of the Gospel of St John. I am a blind man in whom the works of God must be made manifest. Anoint my eyes with clay, Lord, and lead me to wash in the pool of Siloam, in the confessional, so that I may return with sight restored. Give me strength, for I have no will.

And later I will say, to your glory: yes, I am he who sat and begged for human glory. Jesus took clay and anointed my eyes and said to go to the pool of Siloam, and I went, and once I had washed, I saw.

The Lord has made clay out of the dust to which I reduced everything by means of analysis in my passage across the desert of intellectualism, and He has placed it upon my eyes, so that I might desire to see, and then go and wash and see.’

Notebook 3
10 May 1897
‘Yesterday, Sunday, at Canillas. What peace there! If one could live and die like they do. We went to the burial at Calzada of a poor fellow who had died of paralysis. I kept thinking about spiritual paralysis. They told me that he died saying: “What a sweet dream!” He seemed asleep there, at the door of the church.

Later the fields were blessed. The young girls brought all their presents in a procession, shawls, kerchiefs, all strung up on a pole.’

Notebook 5 [which contains only a page and a half of entries - here are the last few]
9 May 1899
‘How is it suddenly, today, the 9th May, 1899, in the midst of my studies, I am overcome by a craving to pray? I have had to lay down my book and retire to my room to say a brief prayer and to read in the Imitation the prayer asking for light for the spirit.’

15 January 1902
‘Today, the 15th of January, 1902, in the middle of reading Holtzmann’s Leben Jesu, p. 102, I again take up this diary.’

Our Father
Always the Father, always engendering the Ideal in us. I, projected to infinity, and you, who are projected to infinity, meet. Our lives, parallel in infinity, meet, and my infinite I is your I, the collective I, the Universe I, the Universe made person, and it is God. And I, am I not my father? Am I not my son?
Thy will be done’

El Senor de las Lettras

Today is the centenary of the birth of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, an icon of Spanish literature but one whose novels have never been translated into English, and who is more or less unknown in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, the University of Albany, New York, where Torrente taught for a few years in the 1960s having been ostracised by Franco’s regime, is planning to publish his diaries.

Torrente was born on 13 June 1910, in Ferrol, Galicia, and studied at the universities of Santiago de Compostela and Oviedo. After travelling in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including a sojourn in Paris, he aligned himself with Franco’s Falange party. In 1932, he married Josephine Malvido (with whom he had four children), and in 1939 he took up a university post in Santiago. His first novel, Javier Mariño, was published in 1943. A few novels - often steeped in the myths and witchcraft lore of his native Galicia - followed but it was his talent for theatrical criticism that brought more praise.

In time, Torrente distanced himself from the Falange, leaving the party in 1942, but not directly opposing it until 1962 (by which time he had married Guisande Caamaño Fernanda Sanchez with whom he had five children) when he was expelled from teaching for having sided with striking workers in the Asturias mines. As a consequence, in 1966, he moved to the US, with his large family, to accept a specially-created chair of literature at the University of Albany, New York. From 1970, he began to revisit Spain, and by 1975 (the year of Franco’s death), he had moved back permanently - to Salamanca where he remained until his death in 1997.

This last twenty years of Torrente’s life were the most fertile in terms of novels. His fame certainly increased in the 1980s when Spanish television serialised his trilogy Los Gozos y Las Sombras (The Delights and the Shadows) which had been written 20 years earlier. Thereafter, his fame increased to the point where he was considered an icon of Spanish literature, and was known as ‘El Senor de las Lettras’. In 1985, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary prize in Spain. None of his novels, it seems, have been translated into English, nor is there much biographical information about him in English on the internet. Spanish Wikipedia has a much longer article than English Wikipedia, and there are useful obituaries on The Independent and New York Times websites.

Earlier this year, the University of Albany, where Torrente had taught, announced that it would publish, later this year, the first of a series of Torrente’s diaries. The author, it said, had donated the diaries in 1967 but only under the condition that the writings would not be published or even consulted until 10 years after his death. That moment was reached in January last year. The documents held by the university were written between the late 1940s and 1950s and contain ‘reflections of a political character’. They also provide a view of Torrente that, according to his son Álvaro Torrente, is ‘little known and that, without doubt, will be revelatory for many people.’

Two days in Alicante

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day I met Manu in an Ibiza cafe, a lovely man with whom I am still in touch today. But that encounter only happened because, after a fated bus ride from Madrid, I’d missed a boat by minutes and been stranded in Alicante for two days. Here is how I wrote the story in my diary all those 30 years ago.

3 April 1980
‘At first I didn’t even know if I wanted to go to Ibiza, I thought I might go to Barcelona and thence to Menorca. So, right at the beginning, I was full of indecision. As the weekend turned itself over slowly, though, I began to make plans to go to Ibiza.

Pepe rings a friend who works for the shipping company. Although the boat is already booked up, she says she will get me a ticket. On Monday I go to collect it - leaving at midnight Wednesday 2 April.

In the afternoon, I go to the Corte Ingles travel agency where I’m told there is no place on the Wednesday afternoon train to Alicante, I swear under my breath, and let her book me on the morning train. I am not happy because this means I lose the Wednesday but I still have work to do. Back at the flat, I talk with Pepe and Pia, who suggest I go by bus. It takes some effort, but eventually I get the number for Estacion Sur and am told there is a bus leaving at 2pm on Wednesday. I run to Estacion Sur, but, on arriving, my heart sinks at the sight of the long queues. I suffer two hours of waiting. Fights and arguments break out everywhere, tempers are high. I finish a novel before arriving at the ticket office. Once at the buying window I discover there is an even later bus at 3:30pm (arriving at 9pm) as well as at 2:00, so I buy a ticket for that bus and head back for the apartment. I am pleased with myself that I’ve managed to sort out an itinerary.

The following morning between work appointments I squeeze a visit to the Corte Ingles to cash in my train ticket. I lose £2.50 on the refund, but at least everything is organised. I begin to look forward to Ibiza. I spend Wednesday on the telephone working, but none of the work proves useful, and I could so easily have taken the 2:00 bus.

On the 3:30 bus - all the way there are long queues of holiday traffic, and long, long waits, and the bus is three hours late. A taxi speeds me through the streets, clocking up pesetas, faster, faster, down to the port, along the quay, but by the time I get to the quay, the boat has left - 10 minutes earlier! Now there isn’t another boat for two days.

I am by the stone columns of a church that is now three-quarters cinema and one quarter cafe. . . I walk around the old city of Alicante, looking for a smile, a meeting, a hand to touch. One area seems very alive with hip youth. They move about from group to group, bar to bar, stand around drinking wine and rolling cigarettes fuelled with grass. Not far away another mass of people - the old, the mourning, the middle-aged, the regimented young, the crippled and the scarred - are pouring out of mass.’

5 April 1980
‘I made it. Ibiza. I managed to use the wrongly-dated ticket, but only just. My adrenalin was on its racing track. There was some confusion as I was checked against the cabin list but the official failed to notice the wrong date.

In the queue to get on the boat I befriended Ronny, a guitarist, who says he can live from playing, but is not good enough to get rich. He has blond hair curling all over his brown-tanned face. He has just spent two weeks on a boat skippered by his brother. It’s a half-a-million job and its owner hasn’t been near it in 18 months. He tells stories of contracts with ATV and MAM and the guitar centre in Palma where he hopes to work. When he has money he spends it, first class all the way. He doesn’t believe in guarding it at all, and explains why: he had a girlfriend who had used all her savings to start a hairdressing business, then, after a year or so when it was going very well, she was riding her bicycle and was killed by a lorry. He tells me that he also knew the daughter of the pilot that was flying a Trident in which a hundred people were killed near Heathrow ten years ago. Apparently, the pilot had a heart condition and put the wrong signals into the computer!

Although it started to rain on arriving, I was not unlucky. Within half an hour, I met a man called Manu. He happens to be at the Lecoq school in Paris and knows my friend Harold, and has a house on the other side of the island. Manu’s father, a German painter, lives half in Berlin and half in Ibiza. Manu himself speaks at least five languages, and is an accomplished musician. Right now, though, he’s into theatre. We drink yierba at Ibecenco and wine at Pepi’s with home cured sausage and baked bread.

Alicante, as it happens, only got better and better. I discovered El Castillo de Santa Barbara and some beautiful terraced houses. I watched Easter processions with all those shiny satin clothes and dunce hats. I wrote my business report. I ate a meal, I talked to some English people. I took lots of photos. The two days weren’t so bad after all.’