What Are We Going to Call Ourselves?

Ángel Medina and I used to produce and edit a monthly newspaper a decade ago called El Indalico which ran for around 108 editions. 

Ángel has now begun to record some of his essays on a blog here.

Here's one I translated.

...

Among the stories that I am going to publish on this blog there will be some related to Mojácar, the town where I have lived for more than thirty years. And they will be part of what I will call “Stories of Mojácar”. 

They are unusual and fantastic because the pueblo and its inhabitants are quite strange.

In every sense. 

Little by little, I will reveal what this place is like, which was on the verge of disappearing as a municipality after the Spanish Civil War due to the abandonment it suffered from its inhabitants thanks to hunger, a lack of resources, a fierce lack of communications with the surroundings, plus the aridity of its lands, always yearning for those drops of rain that never seemed to fall.

The town was lucky to have Jacinto Alarcón, a providential mayor who in the 60s managed to cause a National Parador hotel to be built and also, by giving away ruins or plots of land to diplomats and others, attracted personalities and investors who started the take-off of the town as an international tourist attraction. 

Many people later following his line consolidated this projection by building apartments, housing estates and hotels.

One of the many who believed in that future was Pedro García, who built and ran the Hotel Continental for many years, which is still there today.

Pedro, a restless and hard-working man, wanted to contribute in some way to that local development and thought of forming an association of hotel entrepreneurs who would join their efforts to achieve that definitive take-off of the town. And with his best spirit he met the businessmen of the area for that purpose one afternoon on the terraces of his hotel.

'The first thing is to find a name for the association. I propose ASEMMOJ (Association of Businessmen of Mojácar)', he proposed.

'No', replied one attendee, 'ASEMHOMOJ would be a better bet (Association of Hotel Entrepreneurs of Mojácar)'.

'Why only hoteliers? What about those of us who have bars?', another participant jumped in, 'it should be called ASEMHOYBARMOJ (Association of Hotel and Bar Entrepreneurs of Mojácar)'.

'You forget that we must limit the association to those of us who are forming it, who are neighbours of La Rumina and El Palmeral', said Pedro. 'I propose we go with ASEMHOYBARRUMPALMOJ (Association of Hotel and Bar Entrepreneurs of La Rumina and El Palmeral de Mojácar)'.

Then said another: 'And you haven't counted on the merchants who are here? Let's call our association ASEMHOYBARYCOMRUMPALMOJ'.

And so the initials were added until the session became a brawl and those present, shouting, did not stop arguing and demanding more and more absurd and complicated names until one of them, the since deceased Manolo Picardo, manager and owner of the Hotel Río Abajo, gave his verdict.

'That's enough! Silence!' And he continued with the greatest expectation: 'the Association will be called ATEM, which is META ('ambition') backwards and means that we will never get anywhere.

Which, give it its due, it didn't.