A NEW BEGINNING
Fuentesnuevas was not a totally new town to Roger. One year earlier he spent one week with Doña Emilia, his mother’s oldest sister, who thought it was beneficial for him to come and meet his cousins. Nestled in the lower Bierzo valley, Fuentesnuevas offered Roger new scenic features to behold and to appreciate. He was struck by the picturesque landscape and idyllic surroundings of the town, the newly painted school and the cozy little church just across from it.
While not taken unawares by the physical environment of the town, Roger was pleasantly surprised, however, by the joyful atmosphere around Café Bar Alegría. Being the only bar in town, it was a beehive of activity that Sunday afternoon when he walked into town through a shortcut road with a knapsack on his back. Popular music was playing full blast, creating a climate of rather boisterous enjoyment. This was certainly a noticeable departure from the more traditional, festive music to which he had been exposed in Salas. There, one “tamborilero” (tabourer), dressed in local costume, would accompany his flute with a tabour, to play the only music to which people would dance in the surroundings of the Roman ruins of San Juan’s arch. On that music depended the success or failure of the dance and the festival.
NEW ADJUSTMENTS
Despite this pleasant arrival at his new hometown, and despite his sister Delia’s many kisses and his father’s warm hug, Roger felt some sadness. His move to Fuentesnuevas had been delayed for one week because he begged his parents to allow him to stay in Salas a few extra days. Now, he was with his father and his oldest sister, separated from his beloved mother, his older brothers Joaquín and Antonio, his three other sisters Dorita, Lidia and Esterita and his youngest brother, two-year old Enrique. He experienced sorrow away from his favorite priest, Don Florencio, his admired teacher, Don José, away from so many dear friends… He felt nostalgic about San Martín church and San Juan’s arch; about those rich vineyards that had brought wealth and fame to Salas; about those hills which the girls filled with sounds of folk music on their way back from school picnics and whose soft terrain boys often trampled with their rough games. He recalled the fond memories of Don Sergio and Andresito…
Roger’s thoughts indeed turned frequently to his native village. Every day that first summer in Fuentesnuevas, after helping his father irrigate the land with the aid of a rachitic, legendary donkey, he would go to the national road outside of town and contemplate San Martin’s majestic look over the Bierzo valley. This relished view would inevitably lead him to his most intimate and precious thoughts… Salas meant, then, that much to him…
The summer was nearing the end. The land was not providing the resources it was intended to produce. Roger had still not made new friends. Delia was disenchanted with Don Felipe and the house he had leased to them. Don Antonio resented the landlord’s patronizing attitude and decided to look for another house that would accommodate the whole family. He found one at the other end of town, near the school and the church. He rented the first floor and part of the second.
The owner of the house, Doña Josefa, an elderly rich widow from Madrid, had left the house in the care of Don José Bardó, the parish priest. Doña Josefa was a very shrewd lady. Knowing well the weaknesses of the Spanish society, she would adroitly use each one of those frailties to her own advantage. She knew that, in those days, many Spaniards still thought of rich people as persons rewarded by God for their goodness, and poor people as persons deserving God’s wrath, shown to the world in their need for work. So, every summer, she would come to spend two months in Fuentesnuevas. Every morning she would leave the house with a shopping bag, quite openly displayed, to buy the food she needed for the day. As she moved up the street towards the market, people would ask her the same question which was responded to in the same manner: “Doña Josefa, where are you going so early in the morning?”
“Oh, I am going to the market. I need some eggs.”
“Don’t bother, Doña Josefa. I have lots of them; please, come in and help yourself”.
Doña Josefa would continue her journey through the main street of town until she got every article she needed without ever reaching the market or spending one cent for her food. This went on for quite some time. Suddenly one summer she complained to Roger’s sister: “Dorita, I do not know what’s happening to this town. Before, I never had to buy anything. People gave me whatever I needed. Now, I have to go all the way up to the market and buy everything myself. What happened to these people?”
Those hard-working people had wised-up to her trick, of course, and had evolved in their thinking. She stopped coming to Fuentesnuevas but nobody noticed her absence, except Don José Bardó, who continued to look after her property and collect her rents without having to face her.
Meanwhile, the whole Fernández family had settled in their new home. The two-year lease to the land that had been so hard to keep had expired. Don Antonio had rented new land right next door. It extended from the house to the road in front of the cemetery. This land too, had been abandoned and, though adjacent to the house and more manageable than the previous one, it created quite a few headaches of its own.
By this time too, Joaquín, the oldest of the Fernández children and David, a cousin, had joined a force of volunteers to fight in the Blue Division, so called because they wore a blue shirt with their red beret. The formation of this army unit was, perhaps, an unofficial way for Franco to show gratitude for Hitler’s help in the Spanish Civil War, while officially remaining neutral during World War II, as Madrid maintained at the time and Washington confirmed years later.
The Blue Division consisted of about fifteen thousand young soldiers who volunteered to help Hitler against the Allies. They went to Germany led by General Muñoz Grande, but were soon sent to fight at the Russian front. Very little news arrived from either Joaquín or David, two of the three youngsters from Fuentesnuevas who participated in World War Two.
At the time, Roger understood little about war, but felt deeply about Joaquín’s absence, for Joaquín was more than his brother. Joaquín was also Roger’s godfather, his model as a dedicated son and his main teaser. Roger often relived with relish Joaquín’s frequent teasing, however cruel it appeared at the time it happened. He remembered with fondness the time when he, Roger, had the mumps. While he was lying in bed, half scared to death about his swollen face, Joaquín came to see him, touched his throat, and, as confident as a learned doctor said: “Yep, tomorrow you’ll die! Do not worry, though, you’ll be in heaven!” Despite this comfortable thought, despite his brother’s insistence that he was just joking and despite his mother’s reassurance of the same, Roger spent a sleepless night, looking at the clock, agonizing over the approaching final hour, feeling good only after the next day was really over.
It was a joyous day when Joaquín came home, unexpectedly, from the war. He brought home some books in German, but also lice and fleas on his person and in his clothes. It took weeks before the family finally got rid of these pests and continued living without the shame that it had brought upon the household.
What mattered, however, was that Joaquín was home, and so were the other members of the Blue Division. Most of them returned in good health, but others lost their lives and some came back fatally injured. Such was the case of Joaquín. He was hit by close-range artillery fire. The doctors at the field were unable to remove all the ammunition splinters, some of which continued to travel through his body until they reached his heart and caused his death nine years later at a sanatorium in Zamora.
SCHOOL HAPPENINGS
For his part, Roger started to warm up to Fuentesnuevas when the whole family moved in. He finally set foot on the school that had impressed him at the time of his first visit. Unlike in Salas de los Barrios where boys were taught by a man and the girls by a woman, in Fuentesnuevas both boys and girls were taught by a man, Don José Tahoces (no relation to Roger’s rich uncle Daniel Tahoces).
He was tough, but effective. He was very strict, but became frequent target of his students’ tricks, in spite of being both respected and feared.
Roger liked his new teacher, who taught him how to make quick calculations in his head, how to write clearly and how to recite a poem with meaning. Don José used to have frequent tests and reward the first five winners. In mathematical calculations, Roger was unbeatable. It was good that the teacher had many other types of competition, so that other students could be recognized. Unfortunately, Don José Tahoces is better remembered for his method of disciplining his students than for the teaching method he so effectively used. Every now and then he would look at the students’ fingernails. If he found them to be unclean or long, he would ask the student to stretch out the hand with fingers tightly pressed together, and then mercilessly hit the fingers with a ruler, producing an excruciating pain on the student in the name of healthy habits.
0ne of his favorite ways to punish students who disturbed the class was to send them in front of the room and make them kneel on garbanzo beans (chick-peas). Occasionally, though not often, he would slap the student. Roger was, at one time or another, disciplined in any one of those ways. An incident that he would never forget occurred when he was sent to the blackboard with other students to solve a mathematical problem. To his right was his sister Dorita, and to his left was a very pretty girl, Pepita whom Roger liked a lot. Believing that the teacher was not looking, Roger helped Pepita solve the problem. Don José rushed to the board and slapped him on both sides of the face. Roger ran out of the classroom and went home crying, not because he was hurting, but because he had been humiliated in front of the class and, particularly, in front a beautiful girl for whom he felt some affection.
When Roger arrived home, he complained bitterly to his mother about the treatment to which he had been subjected. He protested vehemently that he did not want to go back to school. Since his mother would not have any of that, he kept insisting that he should be allowed to go to the Instituto Nacional in Ponferrada where he would learn more without being abusively treated. However, the teacher had dismissed the class, and went to talk to Roger’s mother. When Roger told him that he should not have slapped him, the teacher said: “What did you expect, a piece of candy?” This did not pacify Roger, but his mother’s reasoned rejection of his impractical request did. He went back to school next day, albeit with anger in his face.
Don José Tahoces’ pupils had their moments of revenge, however. One year he decided to conduct classes during summer mornings and afternoons. His students failed to appreciate his dedication and tried anything to avoid going to class, or at least reduce the hours of their hated attendance to a minimum. Every afternoon, instead of going directly to school, Roger and the boys would go swimming at the “Cachapón”, a pond with warm and clean water. After enjoying a good hour of swimming, they would slowly walk to school. As they were approaching the building, Don José would rush downstairs to wait for them with a belt. As they entered, he would swing the belt with pleasure and hit their behinds with satisfaction.
The boys would not change their routine. They would rather feel the belt than miss the enjoyment of swimming. However, they considered themselves at war with their teacher on this point. One day at the “Cachapón”, they decided to take stock of the past, examine the present and plan the future. They came up with a strategy that they were sure would work. They went to school as in previous afternoons. The teacher was also waiting for them downstairs ready to strike, as it was his custom. This time, however, the students rushed into the building like a stampeding herd of cows, making it impossible for him to swing the belt. He could not hit anyone. The plan worked…. for that day… The teacher had the last laugh, however. He went to each student’s house to talk to their parents, and that was the end of the swimming and of the use of the belt, but also the beginning of longer school hours.
While people’s memories of Don José Tahoces stress his severity as a disciplinarian, some remember him as the good teacher he really was. Many of his pupils went on to further their studies and rose to prominent positions. One of Roger’s fondest memories of him was his ability to organize educational excursions with students from surrounding villages.
One such excursion that most fascinated students was to the construction of the Térmica, a most impressive factory in the process of being built to produce electricity, using water from the river Sil. Not only was this site formative and intriguing, but the road to it had a view of distinct human interest. On their way to the Térmica they had to pass near two hills, known to the region as “Las Tetas del Bierzo” (The Teats of el Bierzo), so called because they lay at each other’s side, producing the curious geological sight of a woman’s breasts. This part of the Bierzo’s landscape attracts everybody’s attention and did not go unnoticed by the youngsters.
COPING WITH DEPRIVATION
Though life in Fuentesnuevas became rather normal by 1948, it still was not easy for the Fernández family. The children found it difficult to adjust to the new situation wherein acts of political vendetta were still being perpetrated locally as well as nationally. As a result, their economic condition grew worse, and the family had extreme difficulty to make ends meet, as did most families around the country at the time. Their best meal was always the Christmas meal. The mother would make sure that nothing would be lacking on that happy day, except the gifts that in the Spain of the time were always given on the sixth of January, the feast of the three Kings.
On the night of the fifth, before going to bed, the children would leave their shoes outside their room door so that, at night, one of the Kings would come to fill them with gifts. Then, on the morning of the sixth, the children would get up and go straight to their shoes to see what the kings had left for them. In one of those occasions, Roger received an onion as a gift. So hungry and happy was he that he went to the kitchen and ate it with a small piece of bread.
There was another regional tradition that made the sixth of January special to the children of the Bierzo. In the afternoon they roamed the town by groups singing “villancicos” (Christmas carols). People would give them presents, sometimes candy, but most frequently fruit or land produce. When the bag was full, they would run back home to empty it and then continue their merry journey through town. In the household of the Fernández family, the treats embodied good tidings for quite a few days.
Roger established a good and friendly relation with the village priest, Don José Bardó. Though this rapport with the spiritual leader of the town never reached the same level as with Don Florencio in Salas de los Barrios, it still provided an opportunity for Roger to be very involved in the religious life of town. He became an altar boy as he had before. He would recite church prayers in front of the congregation with ease, prompting the parishoners to exaggerate that he knew as much as Don José Bardó. Being an altar boy provided him with an opportunity to participate fully in the life of the town, as was the case in weddings.
It was the tradition in Fuentesnuevas that the priest and the altar boys were to be invited to the wedding banquet. Consequently, Roger attended many such banquets. Normally, he would sit at the children’s table. On one particular occasion, a fifteen year-old boy sat with the children and offered Roger a cigarette. Not knowing how to smoke, Roger inhaled the smoke. By the end of the banquet and the dance, with the mixture of smoke and wine in his stomach, Roger was feeling no pain. He finally went home very late at night singing happy songs and trying to kick balls that were nowhere to be found. When he arrived home his father opened the door for him and, seeing the condition he was in, slapped him in the face yelling: “Is this the way you come at this God forsaken hour?” Stars burst out of Roger’s eyes and he never smoked or got drunk again.
Unfortunately, these were moments of great need in Spain. The world had turned its back on a nation with limited supplies and unlimited demand. What’s more, the national government’s policies of sequestration and rationing of goods were not working as intended, for they were left in the hands of people who had vested interest in keeping things as they were.
Sequestration empowered government officials with the right to determine the amount of food products allowed in each household. Anything in excess of that set quantity was to be surrendered to the government which would then distribute it among the needy. What developed eventually was a very active blackmarket that created greater scarcity.
Similarly, the rationing that was supposed to be carried out by “abastos” (supplies of provisions) failed to produce equity in sharing, which was its original purpose, but provided public officials with an excellent opportunity to cheat or to abuse. The full amount of supplies accumulated through these two policies never reached the targeted population, and deprivation continued unabated.
Almost everybody in Fuentesnuevas can remember these trying times, and could recite chapter and verse of steps they took to cope with this oppressive situation and to alleviate its burden. Some were perhaps more imaginative or ingenious than others, but they all had in common the will to survive. When fruit became ripe, no matter where, it became the object of common prey. Now that things are plenty, people recount with glee their exploits to get coveted, but forbidden fruit.
Like any other boy in town, Roger had his share of the activity. One incident he recalls vividly is a visit that he and two of his friends made to a cherry tree that belonged to the towns’ mayor, just to get a few cherries.The mayor had the reputation of been watchful of his property and unforgiving to trespassers. So, Roger stayed outside of the property to relay the message in case the mayor showed up. One of his two friends stationed himself under the tree to warn the one picking the fruit, the mayor’s own nephew. As expected, the mayor showed up. Roger relayed the message. The second boy panicked and left running full speed without warning the boy who was on the tree picking up the cherries. The mayor arrived at the tree and started pulling the boy by the pants. Thinking that the one pulling his pants was his friend, the boy kept saying: “Not yet. I do not have enough cherries.” He finally looked down and saw his uncle there. He jumped to the ground expecting a beating, but to his surprise, his uncle just reprimanded him.
In times past, people would take fruit from anybody’s trees or grapes from anybody’s vineyards and think nothing of it because there was abundance, and it was just a traditional act of common sharing. The phrases: “Vamos a las cerezas”, or “Vamos a las uvas.” (Let’s go to pick cherries or let’s go to pick grapes) meant just that, anybody’s cherries, anybody’s grapes; like an extension of “Mi casa es tu casa” (My house is your house). But in this period of common deprivation, however, they became less the expression of people’s love for the preservation of tradition than a public statement of the need to satisfy real communal hunger.
This became very evident to Roger one day when, going with his father to “pick grapes” he asked him: “Dad don’t you think that God is going to be angry at you because of this?” His father gave him an answer Roger has never forgotten: “God would be angrier, in fact, He would never forgive me, if I left all of you starve.” Fortunately, few years later there was abundance in the land, life became normal again and boys like Roger would not have to worry about picking cherries or grapes any place in town.
Before that came to pass, however, Roger used his position as the main altar boy to its full potential. In that capacity, he had to ring the church bells to call the faithful to Mass and to announce any other event of importance, like the existence of a raging fire within the town’s boundaries. Since Don José Bardó was not in the habit of saying Mass daily, Roger found it conveniently necessary in summer, to go to the rectory after siesta hours to inquire whether there would be Mass next morning. When the doors were closed, which was most of the time, he would call Don José from the street. The priest would open his window, listen patiently to the question and give the answer. What prompted Roger to make these special visits to the rectory was less his interest in finding out about next day’s Mass than obtaining from the priest the half-awake invitation to enter the garden and help himself to the fruit of his choice. Quite frequently, he extended such an anticipated enticement to Roger’s delight.
Until the Franco regime built the Bierzo canal, numerous brush fires erupted as coal-driven local trains crossed the dry corners of the valley, especially between Ponferrada and Fuentesnuevas. The forty-mile long canal ended all that and brought wealth and beauty to the already picturesque region. With the opening of the canal, government property that till then had remained untouched and barren, was distributed to the citizens to dispose of as they wished. The vast land, known as “La Dehesa”, was divided into parcels and then allotted to the peasants.
To be entitled to a parcel, an arbitrary requirement of a three-year residency was established. The Fernández family was denied share of the land, for they had lived in Fuentesnuevas two years and ten months, not three full years. Don Antonio considered this a political maneuver to avoid giving him his due. All this time he had faithfully contributed to the life of the town. He had fulfilled the required duties of any other head of a household and received no benefits. He had been there to repair the streets after torrential rains. He had been there to help extinguish, ravaging fires and save people from drowning. Yes, Don Antonio had been there with unselfish dedication to serve a town in need. But the town was not there to postpone for two months the allotment of national land and reward him and his family with property they could claim as their own. It was clearly a political maneuver. Once again, Roger and his brothers and sisters were victimized for their father’s political stand which happened to displease an all-powerful mayor. Once again they felt like strangers in a town unwilling to extend its welcome to a deserving family in need.
Each town has its own character, its own personality. This was the darker side of an otherwise generous and joyous Fuentesnuevas. As hard as it was for the Fernández family, they continued living there and, as time went by, they managed to forgive and forget. In the main, they all have good memories of Fuentesnuevas and yearn to go back and visit a town that is truly blessed with a “gusto de vivir” (savoring of living).
This pleasure of living is clearly manifested in its culinary customs and exhuberant merrymaking, for Fuentesnuevas displays, with its local tasty cuisine and, two main religious celebrations in June and August, the best of what attracts people to the Bierzo region from April to September. It is within those two months that life becomes really exciting in the valley with the weekly festivities that enrich the local color in every town, large or small. Corpus Christi in May or in June, and Our Lady of the Assumption on the fifteenth of August, also known as La Fiesta de la Sardina (Festival of the Sardine), are the two festivals in which Fuentesnuevas rightfully takes great pride.
At the time when Roger was a shepherd in Fuentesnuevas, Corpus Christi was more than a religious celebration. It was also the opening of new pastures in the green meadows that had been off-limits since November. The first activity of that day’s celebration was taking cattle early to pasture, a very easy job indeed, since the animals had plenty of grass to graze on and the shepherds plenty of time to play before going home to dress up for the ten o’clock High Mass.
That day also represented the inauguration of new clothes. Every boy and girl in town would go to church and show off their new outfits. This then became the topic of conversation at the dinner table. Since for some kids these would be their only new clothes for the whole year, this day was awaited with great anticipation.
The other religious festival observed in Fuentesnuevas, held on the fifteenth of August to honor our Lady of the Assumption, initiated the tasting of the first grapes. This time of the year, some vineyards in the “Cogolla” hills were ready to be often visited till harvest time in October. Then, children would help themselves to those succulent grapes while jumping on passing oxen-driven carts, under the owners’ watchful, but consenting eyes.
Years later, the festivities of August fifteenth came to include the celebration of the sardine. Thousands of pounds of grilled sardines are consumed every year with just bread and wine during the festival dances that attract people from the surrounding towns.
Though the reasons to celebrate those two occasions were different, the festivities themselves followed identical patterns. The band contracted for the music would parade through the town the day before the festival. The morning of the observance there was a religious procession, with fireworks exploding simultaneously in the air as the procession weaved through the streets on the way to a High Mass. Then came, for some, the visit to the bar with friends, and for others, the “ronda” (singing from winery to winery) until the main meal at three in the afternoon. In present-day Spain, the “ronda” from bar to bar still exists, but the singing has all but disappeared.
At five o’clock in the afternoon the town was treated to popular sport activities, such as bicycle racing and a soccer game. To Roger and to the boys and girls of his age, this was a real bonus, for none of them had bikes, and the only soccer balls they played with were balls they themselves made of cloth to play small matches, even under the rain.
Following the sports, dancing would then start until about ten thirty at night when people would go home for supper. Dancing would resume at about midnight to end at four o’clock the next morning. The celebration went on for four days and concluded after drinking hot chocolate and the performance of the last dance by the old people of town at five o’clock in the morning.
MOORS IN TOWN
Festivals in Fuentesnuevas were few and far between. Life was rough, demanding and perilous. A detachment of soldiers was stationed there, as in many other villages. First, the Moors came to maintain order, but they had to be replaced by Spanish soldiers because the young people of town made fools of them at night. Challenging the imposed curfew, the youngsters would divide into four groups which would then proceed to the four corners of town. Following an agreement, one group would make noise, yelling insults at the Moors. To enforce the curfew, the Moors would rush to where the disturbance was occurring, only to find out half-way to the scene of noise that the commotion had moved to another part of town.
The Moors would spend sleepless nights roaming through town trying to catch the curfew violators. The Moors had played an important role in Franco’s ultimate triumph in the Spanish Civil War. They were an integral part of the initial force that struck north from Morocco and carried Franco to victory. At the end of the war, some remained in Spain for a few years as part of Franco’s personal palace guard, and others were stationed throughout the country to help secure the stability of the new regime. In Ponferrada, there was a large contingent of Moors with barracks at the entrance of the city. Their customs and beliefs clashed with regional traditions and religious faith. This produced suspicion among local women who feared for their own personal security, and distrust among the young men who ridiculed their mode of dressing with turbans and balloon trousers.
The small detatchment of Moors that was dispatched to Fuentesnuevas was soon replaced by Spanish soldiers. The town again returned to normalcy, becoming another farming village, that is, ploughing the land, feeding animals, sowing seeds and pruning vineyards and trees.
Meanwhile, Roger grew very attached to his mother who continued to be a source of inspiration to him. He would remember in later years the high esteem he had for women because of his mother’s example, and the determination he made that no woman would suffer ever because of him. He will eternally be grateful to her for the sacrifices she made to provide food for the family in general, and to secure a promising career for him in particular, as future events will show.
NEW FAMILIES IN TOWN
At the end of 1946, three families moved to Roger’s neighborhood. Two came from Andalusia, in the Southern part of Spain, and the other from Palencia, a province of the Old Castile. The three families had children of Roger’s age and would play a significant role in his life. Their arrival in this part of town made the neighborhood a pleasant place in which to live. It was called “el barrio de la alegría” (the neighborhood of joy), for there was always good understanding and sharing among the six families that made up that happy section of town.
The Martínez family had come from Andalusia and occupied the second floor of the Fernández’ house. Roger’s family was using the first floor. The oldest girl, Paquita, was engaged to get married. Orencio and Roger were of the same age and played iron-wheel racing and other games together. Orencio now lives in Madrid and works for the Spanish government. His younger sister, María Josefa, was full of life and brought much joy to the neighborhood. In later years, she married and moved to León. Don Orencio Martínez, the father, was inspirational as a dedicated and hard-working man. In the summer, he would get up at four o’clock in the morning to irrigate his garden with his future son-in-law, Eliseo. To draw the water from the well they