Walt Was Here

I first came to Mojácar in 1966 with my parents who bought two apartments here (I’ve just found the escritura) for – apparently – 90,000 pesetas: that works out at just 260 euros per apartment.

We lived in the one upstairs with the three bedrooms and a roof terrace and rented the downstairs one to Michel for 1,000 pesetas a month, which he could never afford, and he would generally stay for dinner on rent-night instead.

One of the stories I heard (when not in school in the UK, polishing my Latin) was that a local woman had fallen into disgrace around 1899 and had taken ship to the Americas to hide her shame. She ended up in Chicago and found employment with the Disney family and after she died giving birth, the child was adopted by them.

A mere 25 years later, Walt Disney’s climb to fame began.

This seems unlikely as she wouldn’t have written home saying – I’m about to give birth to Walter (not an easy name to say), who will one day be a household name.

Furthermore, the Mojaquero version has it that the child was called José Guirao Zamora and that his dad was the Mojácar doctor of that period – who also apparently suffered from prescience.

Not that the family hasn’t always strenuously denied the tale.

We would tell of the two FBI agents asking to see the Church Registry sometime in the fifties, so as to keep the matter secret (why we would think that they must have come for Disney if it was a secret, is a secret). The twist is that all the documents were destroyed in the Civil War so no one could prove anything one way or the other.

It was all a good story, and while the Disney Corporation would tremble in outrage at the suggestion of their Founder being a Mojaquero, there wasn’t anything much to prove that he wasn’t.

Well, except for a birth certificate (which has never been found) or a Certificate of Baptism currently on display in the San Francisco Disney museum (‘Walter Elias Disney: 5 December 1901).

The old mayor of Mojácar Jacinto Alarcón once told me the story of Walt Disney. In his version, he and Diego Carillo (the village doctor) were once reading a magazine which had a picture of Walt Disney in it. ‘Coo’, said Jacinto, politely dropping the ñ, ‘he’s the spitting image of you. I bet you’re related to him’. 

Thus, after another round of Anis del Mono, was a legend born.

All Good Stuff, one might say, and we can’t dine out on Gordon Goodie the Train Robber (he had a beach-bar in Mojácar) for ever.

When asked if he was from Mojácar – so the story goes – Walt himself replied ‘Who knows…?’

Despite the fact that if he was, he certainly never came back – unless he was one of those FBI agents, of course.

So, fifty or sixty, or probably seventy years later, the Mojácar City Fathers have decided that, well, yes: Walt Was Here.

So now we have two enormous murals in the village, vast wall paintings of Mickey Mouse welcoming the tourists to come and buy some souvenirs. There’s to be a Plaza de Walt Disney and even a Walt Disney festival to be held in late November (unless they hear about it in San Francisco).

One little town in Andalucía has painted itself blue to accommodate the Smurfs, and now another has grown a pair of huge mousey ears – to please the shopkeepers.