Is Ronda "neat"? Cadiz, the Old City

Ronda- a far from “neat” history; Cadiz- a bit like Venice; but then not

“It’s a neat town”, said a member of an American tour party sitting nearby. “Neat”, applied to Ronda, probably translates as “dramatic, well-preserved, easily navigated on foot, and with good facilities for visitors”.  All true. But to an English ear, “neat” also suggests “tidy” or even “tame”. Applied to Ronda’s recent history, very much untrue.

The hotel in which the neat-pronouncer was sitting was once the town hall of Ronda. Imagine a screen-fade, as in a 1940s film, the scene re-established in the summer of 1936. The screenplay is an adaption of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. (Actually there is such a film, released in 1943, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. But I don’t know whether the “Ronda” scenes are recognisably “Ronda”, being filmed in a Californian sierra.)

A key passage of Hemingway’s book is given over to events situated in a fictional version of Ronda (not named in the book, but confirmed as such by Hemingway).

The principal landmarks are Ronda’s famous gorge and the Town Hall on the Square by the Gorge, now the hotel. The events are narrated in unflinching detail by one of the novel’s characters. The events take place on a day shortly after Franco launched his rebellion. In response to the news, in many places across Spain, especially in southern Andalucía, peasants and workers rose up, took over villages and towns, and exacted vengeance against the “Fascists” – landlords, businessmen small and large, and the priests (a time which came to be known as the “Red Terror”).

In Hemingway’s reconstruction, the peasants (belonging to or supporting anarchist organisations) storm the Guardia Civil barracks. The survivors stoically submit to being shot by the peasant leader, who has just finished off the wounded. It appears to be accepted on all sides that nothing else is to be done, or expected. This is just a prologue to events more and more gruesome.

 Twenty or so “Fascists” have been seized overnight and taken to the Town Hall, where they are praying with the priest (also seized). The triumphant peasants are formed into two lines, stretching from the doors of the Town Hall, across the Square, to the edge of the Gorge. They are armed with flails, clubs, scythes and other improvised weapons.

Some of the “Fascists” are forced out of the Town Hall, one by one, to walk the gauntlet of the lines. They are either killed by blows or flung over the cliff.

Many peasants become drunk on looted liquor. Hemingway describes the growing blood lust and cruelty of what becomes a mob; a mob that finally breaks into the Town Hall and kills the remaining Fascists, and the priest, hacking them to death. (Some peasants are troubled by the fact that the priest does not “die well”.)

The character that narrates these horrors admits that what started as a disciplined, if pitiless, demonstration of the peasants’ shared determination to eliminate their enemies, degenerates into something altogether shameful. She describes it as the “worst day” – until the day, three later, when Franco’s troops arrived (beginning the so called “White Terror”, lasting into the 1940s).

The narrative is uncomfortable to read. Whether it is based on true events in Ronda has been difficult to determine. One Hemingway scholar who has investigated the civil war history of Ronda doubts whether there were any quasi-ritual cliff executions. But he confirms that in Ronda, before the Nationalists arrived (later than three days) there was a lot of killing of Franco supporters, and clergy.

As elsewhere in Spain, the favoured method of death squads on both sides was to cart victims off in a lorry to location way from town, and shoot them. This was known as taking someone “for a walk” (paseo). The victims usually dug their own graves. One can understand that there might be hygienic grounds for not using the Gorge in Ronda for executions, even if ammunition was in short supply.

Sit in the hotel into which the Town Hall has been turned. Read the pages of Hemingway, or consider the actual events of 1936/7.

Ronda is not neat.

Cadiz’s Old Town

One pitfall for a stranger driving into or from the Old Town is the appalling (even by Spanish standards) road signage. The magnificent new bridge, now the principal way to the north, is named after the 1812 Constitution and, a bit like the political fate of the Constitution itself, nowhere registers. This is bewildering when one is trying to leave town. When entering, the trick is to get near to the sea (on either side) and head north, as there is something of a cobbled ring road.

There is a Venetian feel about the Old Town, once you are there, insofar as there is sea on nearly every side. Venice has its causeway attaching it to the mainland. Cadiz is on the point of a narrow spit of land forming one side of its vast and historic harbour. But Cadiz is Venice without canals, its so many palaces and churches, its crowds and their selfie-sticks. Its narrow medieval streets are much like many in Eastern Venice, although disconcertingly a lot of vehicle traffic is permitted, leading to much jumping into doorways as taxis and delivery vans bustle past.

Apart from the cathedral and the grim new Parador hotel, with its air of a small modern airport terminal, buildings in the Old Town are not high. The narrow streets lead on to lovely spacious squares, full of strange trees.

The large cathedral is relatively late, begun in the eighteenth century and finished in the nineteenth. It is a monument to, among other things, Cadiz's prosperity as the monopolist port for the trade with Spain's American empire. It is built in a mixture of styles, reflecting the fashions which prevailed during the period of its construction - Baroque, Rococo, and Neo-classical.

The Cathedral is less overwhelming than some of its medieval counterparts, such as Toledo, wherein the mighty religious and temporal power of the Church is almost tangible. and for the most part the Cathedral's iconography is less (how shall I put it) "vivid" than is usual in the Spanish tradition. There are a couple of exceptions.

One group of statues shows a smiling priest with his arms around the shoulders of two children, doubtless in tribute to the Church's work with the poor or orphaned. But these days, the group inadvertently suggests another reading in the light of priestly scandals.

There is nothing inadvertent about the other image. It is a Crucifixion carving - but the Christ being crucified is a Child. 

My first reaction was that perhaps an ageing religious artist suffered from an extreme version of the "policemen always seem to be getting younger" illusion, but this conjecture hardly explains the gruesome, if highly stylised, image of Infanticide.

I later discovered that such Child Crucifixion imagery probably derives from the visions of an eighteenth century nun in Ecuador, one of which was of the Christ Child anticipating his crucifixion. The theological explanation, apparently, is that Christ was aware of, and eager for, his ultimate act of redemption from the earliest age. The image symbolises this awareness and eagerness. Make of this what you will.

Cadiz seems happily to lag a generation or two behind the intensive development that is characteristic of the Andalucían coast.

A large monument and a museum are devoted to the Constitution of 1812, the culmination of Cadiz’s finest hour in modern times.

When Napoleon invaded Spain and imposed his brother as the new King in the early 19^th century, the Spanish parliament, or Cortes, defied the invader and retreated to Cadiz. The French laid siege to the city between 1810 and 1812. The defendants were now allied to the British (under Wellington). British sea power kept open a lifeline to the city, and British victory on land finally forced the French to retreat.

During this time enlightened Spanish politicians agreed on a new liberal constitution, a chief feature of which was the denial of Royal absolute supremacy and the framing of a constitutional monarchy.

The relevant monarch at the time, Ferdinand, was in exile until Napoleon’s defeat. Then he returned, spurned the Constitution and asserted his absolute rights as the King. Ferdinand reinstated the Inquisition for good measure.

A few years later there was a rebellion to restore the Constitution, which succeeded at first. Then, ironically, French troops were sent by France’s restored monarch to Ferdinand’s aid and the constitutional movement was once again crushed. After that, with exception of another short period, the Constitution languished as a fine expression of liberal intentions rather than an instrument of government.

Today’s Cadiz has inherited something of the spirit of 1812. Recently it elected as its mayor the candidate of the local affiliate of Podemos, the new, and pretty successful, leftist political party in Spain.

June 2016