The Lions of Catalunya Read online

  Most of all, he learned from the old man, Abuelo. As a tiny child he had sat at the old man’s feet listening to tales of Catalunya, tales of the Catalan heritage. Abuelo was passionate in his story telling, and little Joan absorbed all the stories with relish and excitement. Hanging in front of the little baker’s shop was a small Catalan flag, yellow with its four red stripes. Many of the little shops in La Ribera had similar flags. The story of the flag was one of Joan’s favourites, and often he would ask Abuelo to repeat it.

  “Tell me again about the golden shield!” he would clamour, and Abuelo would reply:

  “Many years ago, when Catalunya was a new country, we had a great hero, Guifre el Pelos. He was not our king. Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona was our king. Guife el Pelos was one of his knights, and a fierce warrior with a golden shield.”

  “Golden like my curls!” Joan would interrupt.

  “Yes, golden like your curls! Well, Guife el Pelos was a brave bold knight. First he defeated the armies of Castile, and then he defeated the armies of France. Catalunya was at last a free country, free of the yoke of the Castilians, free of the tyranny of France. But in the last great battle, Guife el Pelos was mortally wounded. He had given his life for Catalunya.”

  “Tell me about the shield, and the fingers of blood,” demanded the excited boy.

  “I was coming to that,” continued Abuelo, “As he lay dying, the King of France, Louis le Pieux, dipped his hand into the wound in the side of Guife el Pelos, and taking the Count’s golden shield, dragged his four bloodied fingers down it, giving us the four red stripes on our yellow flag. We call it our senyera.”

  “Our senyera: and to this day, we have the four red stripes for Cataluyna,” exclaimed Joan, “And Castile only has two stripes!”

  “The four blood red stripes from our first great hero!” rejoined the old man.

  “Do you think he really was hairy?” asked the boy, knowing that the question would send the old man into fits of laughter.

  As he grew older, Joan’s patriotism grew stronger and stronger, and with it, a growing awareness of the divisions and inequalities in the city. Unlike many other such feudal societies, Barcelonans, and indeed most Catalunyans, were acutely aware of the iniquities in their lives. They did not accept their station in life as God-given and there was a constant ferment of unrest in La Ribera, which sat unhappily alongside the general good nature of daily life. Marta had little or no interest in politics when younger, but was gradually brought into the discussions as Joan got older and grandfather continued to tell the stories of the history of Catalunya.

  “Always remember, my boy,” said the old man, “When I am gone, and you younger people take up the fight, we have enemies on all sides. Castile would like to grab us back and France still has designs upon us. Barcelona is a wealthy port, and a great city, and would be a great prize for either of our neighbours. We must never let our guard down.”

  “And who would fight for us, Abuelo?”

  “We fight for ourselves! When the call goes out we must all be prepared!”

  Joan found the politics of his city and state hard to understand, especially within the context of all the problems he saw daily. As he ran around La Ribera on one errand or another, he saw all the cruelty and casual violence of his feudal inheritance. Sometimes he wondered if he was the only one horrified by the vicious punishments meted out by greater and lesser nobles upon their hapless servants.

  He was even more horrified and angered that witch hunts continued in the city. Now and again, the cry “Witch!” would be heard, and the people of the slums would rush to see who the wretched woman was, and if she would be hanged. Marta would watch the anger in Joan’s face, as he would turn away, clench his fists, and grind his teeth. “No more,” he would mutter. “When can this madness stop?”

  As he got older and stronger, Marta was fearful that he would take matters into his own hands, and intervene in one of these witch hunts. If ever he was foolish enough to do so, he would himself surely perish at the hands of the hysterical crowd.

  When in one of these private rages, Marta would pull him towards her, hold him against her warm bosom, and rock him gently, calling him again, “Little One” even though now he was as tall as she. He never told her the story of the death of his mother, indeed he did not remember it clearly himself, but Marta guessed the cause of his anger and fear, and held him tight during such times.

  Thankfully the witch hunts were infrequent, and despite the many political pressures upon Catalunya, life in the Ribera slum was mostly peaceful. The winters were mild, and the summers hot, and rain or shine there was always demand for the oven and the baker’s skills.

  No-one seeing Joan striding through the lanes would dream how skinny and emaciated he had been when Marta rescued him all those years ago. The light dusting of flour which constantly followed him, gave an added glow to his rich tan complexion. His unruly blond hair grew into a lion’s mane. His strong arms became accustomed to the massive weights of bags of flour, and his muscled legs developed with the constant rushing back and forth in the neighbourhood. Famous for being barefoot all the time, he became a well-known character of La Ribera, popular and admired. His big baker’s hands often had a morsel for a beggar or street urchin, and as he went about the business of the shop, he would often be followed by one or two hopeful waifs and strays.

  Aduelo grew older and more frail. He had, after all, expected to do little in the shop once his daughter had married her strong baker husband, and it had been a stressful and exhausting time supporting Marta though the deaths of her husband and child. Once Joan was big enough and strong enough to carry all the heavy work of the baker’s, Aduelo was pleased to take a back seat once again. Gradually he had spent more and more time in bed in the darkness of ‘indoors’, with Marta and Joan checking him regularly, bringing him food, and listening to his stories.

  Joan loved the old man, and forgot that he wasn’t his grandfather, and when he quietly slipped away from them, was as distraught as Marta. Marta sewed her father into a cloth, and Joan carried him in his arms to the burial ground at Monjuic where he was laid to rest alongside Blanxart the baker, and little Jordi.

  With the old man gone, the little room indoors, seemed empty to Marta, and she asked Joan to sleep there, but he couldn’t. After so many years of sleeping on the floor, he couldn’t sleep in grandfather’s bed. Indeed, when he was at last persuaded to try, he didn’t last half an hour, and crept back to his usual hard floor beside the oven.

  At first he did not notice the admiring glances from many of the young women in the barrio, and when Marta told him of his admirers, he was bashful, and in denial. He tried to tell auntie that she’d be the only one for him, but she would laugh, and push him away, and tell him that one day soon he will be caught.

  His routine took him twice a week to the flour merchant, where Violeta would pout and prance before him; regularly to the fishermen on the beach near Santa Maria del Mar, where a certain Anna would be waiting for him; and once a week to the wine merchant, Senor Dominguez, where Emilia would peep from behind a curtain whilst her father let him taste the recent Rioja. Senor Dominguez was a fellow businessman in La Ribera, and was much respected for his successful wine shop deep in the centre of the slum, not far from the Blanxart bakehouse.

  Violeta repulsed him; he hated all that make-up and perfume, so incongruous in the miller’s dusty warehouse. Anna had no attractions for him either, and when she got close, she smelled of fish. For Emilia, however, he showed some interest. From the little he saw of her, he could tell she was demure and pretty, and she didn’t thrust herself at him like so many other girls. One day, the wine merchant took the initiative. After the usual small talk and wine tasting, he suddenly said, “Have you met my daughter Emilia?”

  The girl immediately vanished behind the curtain from whence she had been peeping, but the merchant turned, and pulled the curtain to one side, revealing the girl. Joan was shocked by the merchant’s
unexpected behaviour, didn’t know what to say, and as in any such crisis, remained dumb. Emilia curtseyed and Joan made a funny little bow, desperately trying to think of something to say, but managing only to stutter.

  The merchant smiled to himself, and pulled the curtain back as if finishing a performance of some kind. “Well, young man,” he said, “What do you think?”

  “I know not what I think,” muttered Joan, “But she is indeed pretty.” And with that, he lifted up the flagon of Rioja and fled into the street.

  Hurrying back to the bakehouse, his mind was in a whirl. Why had the wine merchant behaved like that? Why had Emilia looked at him that way? And why had he been so completely speechless? At the shop, he dumped the flagon, and turned abruptly on his heel, and ran to Santa Maria del Mar. Marta watched him go, smiled, and said to herself the single word, “Smitten.”

  Once in the church, he trod quickly over the flagstones to a side chapel, and knelt; but no words of prayer would come into his head. Instead it was full of Emilia. Emilia’s smile, Emilia’s eyes, Emilia’s hair, all he could see was Emilia. A priest started to approach him, and he quickly crossed himself and stood and left the church. Instead of going home, he turned the other way towards the sea, and walked briskly along the shore, carefully avoiding Anna the fisherman’s daughter.

  Eventually he found himself at Monjuic, not far from the resting place of Abuelo. “Oh Grandfather, whatever’s the matter with me? I’m never like this. I get on with the job, I’m a good baker now, and I’m making a good life for Auntie.” He stopped and sat on a large rock and stared out to sea. “I could run away to sea,” he thought, and then shook his head and laughed out loud at his own stupidity. “What will be, will be,” he told the circling gulls, “What will be,” he shouted, “Will be.” And standing and stretching, he let himself whisper the name, “Emilia. Emilia Blanxart. Yes, I like that.”

  That evening he was humming and singing as he went about the chores of the bakehouse, and even continued to hum loudly during their late meal. “Are you OK?” enquired a much-amused Marta.

  “Yes indeed,” replied Joan, “It’s just this stew is so good, it makes me feel good.”

  “It’s the same stew we always have. Beans and oysters. We’ve been eating the same stew for years.”

  “But tonight it’s especially good!” he assured her, and she laughed with him.

  The time came for his weekly visit to the wine merchant’s, returning the empty flagon to be refilled with Rioja. He found himself anticipating the visit with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Would the same little ritual take place again, with the merchant showing his daughter with a flourish of the curtain? And would he be capable of speech this time?

  To his surprise, the merchant was not there, nor was there any sign of Emilia. The merchant’s wife served him at the shop, with a great deal of smiling and even winking at him. He smiled back, but thought it inappropriate to wink.

  As he turned into his own lane with the full flagon on his shoulder, he thought he saw Senor Dominguez, the wine merchant, leaving the baker’s shop. And surely that could not have been Emilia with him? He started to run, but the heavy flagon made it hard for him to hurry without spilling the precious Rioja, and the merchant and his daughter were gone before he could catch them.

  Entering the shop, he found Marta in a state of excitement.

  “Put down the wine before you drop it.” she said.

  “Was that….”

  “Yes indeed, it was. I have had the most extraordinary conversation with Senor Dominguez. How shall I tell you? Where shall I start? Oh dear, such a conversation.”

  Joan picked up the flagon and poured a cup of wine for her. “Drink this, and then start from the beginning,” he said.

  “Senor Dominguez has only one daughter, Emilia, and no sons. It seems many children died in childbirth or as babies. You know Senor Dominguez is a successful wine merchant, and he has no-one to leave it to. Oh my goodness! Give me some more of the good man’s wine!”

  With increasing anxiety, Joan refilled the cup. His heart was beating hard.

  “Senor Dominguez has been looking for a son to marry his daughter Emilia, and inherit the wine business. He has been here to talk to me about it. Me, a widow who knows little of these things. I had no idea. He has been watching you, watching us, and he likes what he has seen. He is offering his daughter to you, with his business as a dowry!”

  Joan reacted as he always did at times of great emotional stress; he was struck dumb, and simply stared at Auntie. Silently, he reached for the cup from her hand and drained it himself. He continue to stare.

  “Well, say something,” said Marta.

  “I know not what to say.”

  “That my little boy the baker, should become a wine merchant as well. You will be the greatest business man in La Ribera. The grape and the grain. What a marriage. But you will always be my little one. Come here.”

  And she pulled him into her bosom as she had done some many times before, and the tears and laughter flowed, and they danced a little jig right there in the shop, and were interrupted only when a customer called out, “Are you selling these cakes, or shall we just help ourselves?”

  As soon as the customer had been served, Marta turned to Joan with a more serious look on her face. “He had just one question I did not expect,” she said. “He asked if you are a good loyal Catalan. Of course, I said to him, of course he is. He has his grandfather to thank him for that.”

  Joan spoke at last. “And is Emilia a good Catalan?”

  “She will do as her father says. And he has the flag with four blood red stripes outside his shop, does he not?”

  “Then, with your blessing Auntie, I shall marry her!” and he hugged her again.

  Thus it was that in a few short days, their lives were turned upside down. Auntie and Senora Dominguez met, and had a great deal to speak about, and supervised a number of meetings between Joan and Emilia; and Joan in turn had several meetings with the wine merchant. It was easy to agree that they should be married by a priest at Santa Maria del Mar; and it was even easier to plan a wedding breakfast with the joint resources of a baker and a wine merchant. What was much harder, however, was the question of where they should live.

  Joan should, of course, bring his bride back to his home; but his home was a small room where Marta slept. He could hardly expect his young bride to bed down with him on the bakehouse floor. Both Auntie and his future mother-in-law were adamant – the wedding could not take place until the problem of where they would live was resolved.

  One morning, early, Marta was woken by noises overhead. Startled she jumped up and went to wake Joan, but he was not to be seen. Going out into the lane in the semi-darkness, she spotted him, standing on the roof.

  “Whatever are you doing?” she called. “Watching for the sunrise?”

  “This is where we’ll live, Emilia and me, when we’re married. Look around you Auntie, everyone’s doing it, building up, and we can do it too. Why at Senor Dominguez’s, Emilia is used to going upstairs to her bedroom. So shall she here!”

  “And who will do all the building?”

  “I will, of course, Auntie. I’ve seen it done, and I can do it myself. You’ll see, we’ll have a proper house, and the chimney from the oven will go right up through the room.”

  This gave the older women plenty more to gossip about, and Senor Dominguez gave the project his blessing: “As long as you do it well, and give my daughter a beautiful bedchamber, I can’t see I can object. Get it right and you’ll have the morning sunrise one side, and the evening sunset the other.”

  “It will be a love nest for us,” whispered Joan to Emilia, “And I’ll build it right across the bakehouse and Auntie’s room. You’ll see, it will be very fine.”

  After that, Joan worked harder than ever. Rising early for the regular chores of the bakery, he would get all the daily tasks finished by noon, and then he could start on building the house. Some days wo
uld be spent dragging timber from the timber merchant, other days would be hammering and sawing up on the roof. Progress was slow, and inevitably he fell clean through to the bakehouse floor several times. Auntie would screech that the dust and dirt was upsetting the baking, and he learnt to move slowly and carefully, and save any very disruptive work for when Marta had gone to church.

  Poking around the back of the shop, to decide where to put the outside staircase, he disturbed a little dark corner, and a strange feeling came over him. What could be there to raise the hairs on his neck? Somehow a distant memory came to him – this was where he had slept those first nights in the Ribera slum. Looking up, he saw Marta nodding and smiling at him, sharing the memory, and it felt right to be building the next stage of his life on that special spot.

  Emilia would come and visit some afternoons, and Auntie below would hear the work stop and a suspicious silence descend. She would bang on the ceiling with her broom, and hear the laughter of the couple, and work would resume.

  Finally the job was done, with glass in the windows and a good rug on the floor; and first Auntie and then Senor and Senora Dominguez came to inspect the upper floor.

  The wine merchant was impressed, telling them all that it was indeed, “a light and airy bedchamber that any noble would be pleased to grace.” He then announced that he would like to give the young couple, “his second-best bed, and the hangings and bedclothes to go with it.”

  Joan Blanxart and Emilia Dominguez were married in the church of Santa Maria del Mar, on Emilia’s saint’s day, the eighth of May 1619. Joan was nearly eighteen years old, and his bride just seventeen. They prayed together at the shrine of his namesake, St Joan the Baptist, gave special prayers for St Joan Gonzales after whom he was named, and then enjoyed a remarkable feast of a wedding breakfast, held at the wine merchant’s house. The couple went finally to their new bedchamber, just as the sun was setting, and as planned, they watched the sunset from the new room. Nervously they got into the ‘second-best bed’ and held one another tightly.