Which Spain?

My continuing exploration of the Spanish psyche, albeit through the medium of British writers, has continued with my reading ‘¡Guerra!’ by Jason Webster.

Webster uses the chance discovery of an unmarked Spanish Civil War mass grave near his remote home to explore the questions raised by that conflict. He takes a very personal approach and uses his journeying around the country as the basis for his narrative and his political and social analysis.

His style can be summed by the opening paragraph:
“Begoña stood at the entrance to the house, leaning on her staff as her little mongrel, Rosco, panted nervously at her feet. A straw hat was tied under her chin with a dark-blue scarf, partly shading a worn, landscaped face, and eyes that shone like cinnamon stones from within layers of protecting skin.”

If you like that sort of thing then this is the book for you. I found myself thinking that certain sections of it could be used as fairly simple exercises for an A Level English Language class to analyse the use of language and the various narrative tricks that he employs. For me his ‘in your face descriptions’ and obtrusively writerly style get in the way of what he is trying to say about the discoveries that he made about the darker side of Spain. This is the Spain that both wants to sustain el pacto del olvido (the act of forgetting) and at the same time to know everything about what happened in reality in the dark days of the Civil War and the even darker ones which followed during the imposition and sustaining of the Dictatorship of Franco.

His insights, and there are some, are always muddied by his style which forces itself towards the reader in a most unbecoming manner. Webster seems not to have decided whether he wants to write a novel or a travel book with the end result that he writes neither.

Not a book that I can recommend.

Today I saw the outside (at least) of premises that might be suitable for a new school. Who knows? Tomorrow a meeting with a representative of the owner and a glimpse inside the walls and shuttered windows!

Also today something of a dream come true: cut price stationery in a shop which has decided to call it a day and close down. I have taken the opportunity to restock my depleted supplies of A4 coloured card, buy one or two sundries and also bought a fountain pen.

For me fountain pens fall into the same category as books, watches and indeed laptop computers: you can’t have too many of them. And when they are half price they are irresistible.

I remember a deep and meaningful conversation with the head of maths in my last British school (!) where we realized that both of us had shared a childhood delight in visiting Boots the Chemist. We had spent many happy periods in our young lives delighting in the sheer plenitude that inexpensive stationery afforded: sheets of paper; silver chains of paperclips; golden piles of drawing pins, sleek biros; different coloured inks; exercise books with alluring covers; pristine pencils and other riches too highly priced to be anything other than the objects of hopeless lust. Things like typewriters, office tape dispensers, long arms staplers!

Perhaps I have said too much, but stationephiles are much more common than you might think.

Is there one in your home?