Jánovas

Today we visited Jánovas. Franco had no compunction about booting out inconvenient peasants when he had a grand project in mind; in this case, as in many others, a dam for a hydroelectric project. In the 1950s about 300 people lived in this prosperous village on the bank of the river Ara, surrounded by rich pasture. Not surprisingly, they didn't want to go. When they refused to leave, the hydroelectric company simply dynamited them out of their centuries-old homes. One day in 1966, the company broke down the door of the school and forcibly removed teacher and pupils. Even that wasn't enough, so they cut down the olive and fruit trees, destroyed the acequías (watering systems) and cut off electricity and water. A single couple hung on until 1984. Was the dam ever built? No. It wasn't economically viable.

But that was during the dictatorship. Surely things have improved since then? In many ways yes. But the families concerned are still trying to obtain compensation; the best offer they've had so far is the value of the houses at the time of expropriation, adjusted for inflation. Hardly enough to restore houses that have been dynamited and left in ruins. They are still waiting for justice, but in the meantime they have gradually started rebuilding, starting with the school.

Jánovas is not an isolated case. Many other villages were destroyed for various reasons (but perhaps the underlying one was alwaya a refusal to submit to fascism). In Andalusia we visited a village from which all the residents had been evicted on suspicion of harbouring resistance fighters. For decades, Europe harboured a dictator who maintained a population of peasants in desperate poverty, evicted those who stood in the way of grandiose projects, imprisoned, tortured and killed dissidents, stole thousands of babies to hand them over to good Catholic families. All the while, European democracies accepted this without a murmur of protest, as far as I recall -- and even as they were condemning apartheid in South Africa. I wonder how long Franco would have lasted with effective economic sanctions and a boycott of cheap holidays in Spain?

I mentioned la Ronda de Boltaña yesterday. The group was formed in 1992, to revive a tradition of wandering musicians which had been lost, and with it the sound of the gaita, the local version of bagpipes. They are made of goatskins, but dressed in frilly floral fabric (you can just glimpse one in yesterday's blip). Other instruments are guitars, lutes, accordions,and the trompa -- a type of oboe, seen on the left of yesterday's blip. The music is lively, catchy, and sounds very traditional, but many of the songs have been written by Manuel Domínguez, who is not a local, but surprisingly has managed to integtrate himself to the extent that one of his songs, País Perdido, has become the official hymn of the Sobrarbe region of which Aínsa is the capital. Havanera Triste describes the scandal of Jánovas:

Every time my mother did the washing
my house turned into a yacht
with sails of white sheets
stretched out in the wind of these mountains

A ship of stone in the valley
anchored for centuries on the banks of the Ara
across from the island of la Velilla
between the coasts of Fiscal and Boltaña

How could I imagine, I
who dreamed of the sea
that a cursed reservoir, ayayay
would drown my house.

And although many years have passed
I will never forget that morning
when I discovered that pirates
were not just for fairy tales.

When they boarded the village
and we had to leave home
my childhood suddenly vanished
on seeing my mother’s tears.

To Jánovas, la Velilla and Lacort
I say goodbye.
Goodbye little wrecked boats.
Goodbye my poor country, forever.

It does strike me that perhaps Jánovas was exceptional, in the sense that the families remained united and have never stopped fighting to reclaim and restore their homes. The first thing they did when they set up their association was to build a large U-shaped stone table next to the spring they once served to water livestock, so that they could get together and discuss their plans.