A second visit to the Old Town of Gibraltar
On the first stirrings of adolescent emotions; the start of my formal education, the playing of childhood games and the poetic street names which encapsulate my fascination with this area to this day.
On the 2nd April of this year, the Gibraltar Chronicle carried an article ‘Old Town-Old Memories.’ I never expected this unremarkable story would have such a positive resonance among so many former inhabitants of the old town. One thing was clear: I wasn’t the only one who recalled those days and places with deep nostalgia and a sense that we had lost something precious when, in the search of better housing, we moved away from streets and passages with magical names like Chicardo’s Passage and Boschetti’s Steps. Some of us ended up with addresses like Repulse House, Warspite, Ark Royal and other names which only evoke Gibraltar’s naval and military history. The exotic mingling of Spanish, Genoese and Portuguese names was left behind and only our colonial status now seemed to matter.
Two very young girls lived near my flat at 52 Castle Road. They were my childhood friends and we played indefatigably until our respective parents went hoarse calling us for supper. The roads then did not pose a threat; traffic was sparse and infrequent; neighbours were caring and helpful. The two girls were cousins, but they could not have been more different. One was quiet, reserved, timid and rather cold - I think Milton’s line, ‘Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure/sober, steadfast and demure’ would be a perfect description of her character; the other was feisty, vivacious, very beautiful and flirtatious. I think I was half in love with her, but never summoned the courage to tell her; anyway, we were too young and inexperienced and falling in love only happened in teenage magazines and Hollywood films.
Before the arrival of video games, the Internet and the virtual world, we had to improvise games with whatever came to hand. Marbles were a great favourite, commonly called ‘mebli’.
These games tested your skill in flicking a marble towards your opponent’s. Our usual play area was the wide step in front of Silvestre’s cobbler workshop. Occasionally, we got on his nerves, and he would shout: Niños, ya me tenéis harto. Iros a casa a dar la lata a vuestros padres! We just giggled and carried on playing while he got more and more irate.
After St Mary’s School, where my teacher was Miss Xerri, a saintly woman who loved her pupils, I was sent to Castle Road School. Miss Xerri had noticed I was naturally left-handed, so she called in my parents and gave them the dreadful news: left-handed pupils were usually awkward, retarded and a social nuisance. My poor parents had no educational knowledge - for them, the teacher’s opinion was law and unquestionable. So, with the teacher’s encouragement, I was urged to use and train my right hand to write legibly. I was quite happy to acquire a new skill and the upshot was I became ambidextrous! In fact, now I can write with both hands and even use my left hand to write backwards. My wife, however, scolds me and comments what is the point of all that manual skill if my handwriting is illegible!
The start of middle school was the beginning of my disillusionment with mainstream education. We had an English teacher who had a nervous tick - he was always blowing his nose, clearing his throat and smearing his plentiful mucus on his sparse moustache. I could hardly make out what he was saying as his lesson was drowned in a cacophony of snorts and coughs. I think he meant well, but his physical quirks made comprehension well-nigh impossible.
Secondary school, starting in Lourdes School and then the so-called Grammar, was a nightmare. The old building is still standing there at the end of Castle Road, for me a standing reproach to poor teaching and the cruel treatment of pupils. I still have a vivid recollection of the punishment meted out for the slightest infraction of school rules; worse still, for what was judged to be sloppy work or lack of application.
My English teacher set us a homework task: memorise Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Do You Remember an Inn, Miranda?’ Now Belloc was a third-rate versifier and a Catholic bigot. I spent the weekend conning the poem and knew it off by heart. When the dreaded moment came, I went blank and got stumped after the first stanza. ‘Come out here, boy.’ This was the prelude to a thrashing. This teacher possessed a strap made from the hide of some pachyderm, a hippopotamus or rhinoceros. He gave me ‘six of the best.’ To this day, my hands burn when I recall that shameful display of sadism. This teacher is still alive - I don’t know if he regrets his appalling behaviour. The Christian Brothers were no better: they believed that terrorising their pupils was the best way to instil knowledge and understanding. They were sadly mistaken and should never have been allowed to go anywhere near children. No wonder there are so few Christian Brothers now teaching in Irish schools. The sexual abuse scandal has also tarnished the Order’s reputation. They were neither Christian nor brothers. I think I became a teacher to prove that teaching could be done differently: respecting your pupils and instilling a love of knowledge.
I have always found Sacred Heart Church particularly appealing. Fr Pons was the curate there at that time and he became a good friend. We used to circumambulate the church building while he spoke about theology and church politics. He also kindly offered to introduce me to Latin, a step which somehow influenced my later studies. He had the habit of placing his cigarette in a metal cigarette holder, and puff away like some nineteenth-century aristocrat, straight from Lampedusa’s The Leopard. When I asked him for the reason behind this peculiar mannerism, he declared solemnly: ‘I don’t want to touch the body of Christ with nicotine-stained figures!’ I was impressed by his refined sense of propriety and delicacy.
There is a stone slide on the side of the steps leading on to Police Barrack Lane. Boys and girls congregated there and dared one another: who could slide fastest down that pyramid of stone? The boys usually won as their thick shorts protected their bums; the poor girls emerged with shredded knickers and scratched thighs. I tried to comfort one victim of the bumpy slide. I told her to tell her mother we were playing ‘catch’ and I had been too rough, but she gave me a sceptical look as if to say, ‘My mother won’t buy that!’
Unamuno wrote poems consisting mainly of the names of remote villages in Castilla: Medina de Rioseco, Fontiveros, Gredos, and Peñas de Neila. The mere sound of the names evoked for him the anonymous lives of the inhabitants, most of whom would have been dead by the time Unamuno conjured them up. He also detected a whiff of Don Quijote in the abandoned windmills and dilapidated shacks. We have our own poetry in the names of our streets, alleyways, and steps in the Old Town. Pezzi’s Steps is strangely evocative, especially if we recall its colloquial name, Escalera de Maqui, a word which resonates with the French resistance movement during the German occupation, though I am sure there is no connection. New Passage is ironical as it was the location for the oldest profession: prostitution. Its Spanish name, Calle Peligro, must have sounded as a warning to prospective punters! Manolo Galliano’s superb book, A Rocky Labyrinth, mentions how Gibraltar was dotted with bordellos. There was even a street called Calle de la Mancebía. Maybe the Old Town, with its dark corners and narrow passages, was the ideal place for plying that unsavoury trade. I lived for two years at the bottom of Hospital Steps, in a very noisy flat. Sadly, there was no magic about this name, as the steps just led to the old St. Bernard’s Hospital. My favourite location, though, was Johnstone’s Passage, as the garden wall on the left as you climb the steps always reminded me of lines in Eliot’s poem, Burnt Norton, where a rose-garden becomes a place consecrated to childhood memories and love trysts. Also, it is a secluded spot, a quiet place, set apart from the traffic of Prince Edward’s Road.
The narrow streets used to reverberate to the cry of ‘Calentita’ from a street vendor by the name of Paloma. Paloma carried his ‘calentita’ inside a metal tray, precariously balanced on his head, and he would cut generous slices of the succulent dish for his customers, who always asked, ‘Cómo la haces tan buena, Paloma?’ He wasn’t going to divulge any trade secrets and said he didn’t know as someone else was the chef!
My house had two terraces (azoteas), the smaller one for hanging up the laundry and the larger one for collecting rainwater, which was then directed to a cistern under our kitchen. A pump enabled us to bring the water to the kitchen level and fill up the many pails and ‘tinajas.’ From the larger terrace I could scan Hector Cortes’ terrace just below ours. Once he caught me ‘spying,’ as he was putting on a display of his vast collection of plastic soldiers. He saw me and invited me to join him to play. I had a meagre army of about 200 soldiers; Hector had around 2000! However, the disparity in numbers did not affect our games, as he very generously swelled my puny regiment with his reserve veterans!
There is so much to say about the life we enjoyed, in spite of, in some cases, no running water, outside toilet, few shops, a poor bus service, and little in the way of entertainment (even hearing people returning home from the Queen’s Cinema was an event). You always knew your neighbours as they were more like extended family; you were not hounded by the plethora of cars and motorbikes that now rule the roads; there was always time for a leisurely stroll up Willis’s Road to enjoy the view of the Bay and the blue hills behind Algeciras. It was, in fact, more like the Gibraltar portrayed in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Excellent, as usual. Very evocative.