One thing about Madrid - there are plenty of street names to celebrate the memory of the Great and the Good. Those whose efforts during their lives served to make the world a better place, a wealthier place (at least for the family that bears the name in question) or a place in keeping with the politics of the times. Which is why there are so many generals you've never heard of but who, you just know, did Great Things on the Republican side during the Civil War. And why there are practically none of those 'Plaza del Generalísimo' left. Or, for that matter, any statues of the old sod.
I did see one 'Franco Square' in the small granite pueblo of Pelahustán (Madrid province) the other day if any 'progres' are reading this. There may even have been a 'José Antonio' street round the corner...
In keeping with the rest of Spain, in Mojácar, Almería, the town where I have lived for most of my life, there are no street names to honour 'the other lot'. In Mojácar, however, the 'other lot' are the better than sixty per cent Northern Europeans (well, Brits) who live there. Registered on the padrón or not.
There are no streets, avenidas, glorietas, public buildings or anything else to mark the passing of the Brits in Mojácar, whose lolly, sorry to say, must be responsible for 99% of the wealth of the whole community. There's no 'Calle Paul Becket' or 'Museo Fritz Mooney' or 'Avenida Bill Napier' (yep, my Dad). There's not even a 'Glorieta Walt Disney' because you see, although they claim him as a mojaquero de buena fé, he has a 'furrin' sounding name.
There once was a foreign street. When the Mojácar mayor of the day decided to open the pueblo to trash tourism, we were greeted with the 'Avenida Horizon' which stretched - briefly under that name - from the fuente to the Plaza Nueva.
There is another: An alley in the town is called 'Calle Pedro Barato'. It was put there by 'Cheap Pete' himself and no one, so far, has bothered to take it down or re-name it 'Calle de Gibraltar Español' or something equally stupid.
There are lots of place-name streets on the coast. There's a Calle España and a Calle Francia. A Calle Romania and a Calle Ecuador. But not a Calle Reino Unido, Inglaterra or even Europa.
So how about it RosMari? How about pulling the place together with a bit of positive integration?
1 comment:
Dear Spanish Shilling,
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You may have received an e-mail from me or one of my interns last month, but I'm so interested in getting your RSS feed onto GlobalPost that I thought I'd risk being redundant with another letter.
My job is to build a list of blogs that will appear on GlobalPost where we will have approximately 65 correspondents in some 46 countries. We are looking for enlightening, informative posts from bloggers writing (in English) in those countries.
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