Travels with Jose

Click here to read Part I

(Part II)

I must have walked the full length of Retiro in Madrid, this enchanting park of wide walkways and tall swaying trees and sensual statues. My feet were blistered but something in me kept me going. Jose was in my shoulder bag and he too, once armed with guidebooks and a desire to see everything, complained about sore feet. My park walk led me near the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia. After having seen the Thyssen Bornamizsa and the Prado, I felt, despite the near exhaustion, the need to visit this museum.

I dragged myself inside and, without picking up a floor plan, wandered unconsciously up the stairs to the second floor. I entered a large long gallery where, amidst a row of equally sized canvas paintings, there was one huge rectangular piece hanging horizontally, its subject matter completely hidden by the throng of people gathered in front of it.

I shuffled closer to it past a group of astounded Japanese tourists, past a flock of uniformed school children, inching through animated tourists until I could make out two eyes in a ghost body and the face of a bull. I was talking to myself, probably out loud, "Could this be... Could this really be..." again and again until I was several feet away from the canvas, my neck almost tilted upwards. I was standing in front of Picasso’s Guernica.

Like someone having seen an apparition, I surveyed the painting from corner to corner, up and down, assuring myself that I was not dreaming. I heard a soft wheezing coming from my chest. I used to do it as a lonely child anticipating the return of my nanny or when I knew a friend was just around a corner. I slowly backed away from Guernica and at a distance crumpled onto a bench. I had been reunited with this painting, this long lost friend.

I was living in New York in the early ’70s and the most delightful and inexpensive thing to do for the weekend was to visit the various museums. Whenever I visited the Museum of Modern Art, I would go to the current exhibition and my favorite photography galleries. Just before leaving I would take one more escalator ride up a floor to see the Guernica. This 1937 homage to those who suffered and died in the town of Guernica from Fascist bombings was at the MOMA, in exile until, Picasso vowed, freedom returned to Spain. I’d gaze at this powerful black and white painting and just before leaving would quietly say to it, "You’ll go home one day." Being blacklisted myself, those words of comfort were mine to hear, too.

Prodded and perhaps guided by Jose, I saw Guernica back in her homeland. The happy coincidence is that I, too, have returned home. I sat on that bench for a long while; throngs of people shuffled in and out, the intensity of Picasso’s passion and anger etched on their faces. As for me, I had felt that once, too. Now, all I could do was give this painting, this long lost friend, a secret smile.

When I first came to Spain, way back in 1975, I was seated on the plane beside a young woman who introduced herself as Isabel Garcia Lorca. When I asked her, like in Federico Garcia Lorca, she answered, yes, he was her uncle. I couldn’t believe my luck. But this was 1975 and Isabel lowered her voice when she spoke of her uncle/poet. We were on Iberia flying to Madrid with Franco, though ailing, still very much in power. Lorca the dramatist and poet was brutally killed in 1936 by rampaging Fascists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. For all those years Franco was alive, Lorca’s name was not spoken nor any of his works available in Spain.

How the world has changed since then. I arrive in Madrid this time and on the first night I am watching Isabel Garcia Lorca on television talking about her uncle in a two-hour documentary commemorating the 100th year of his birth. In all the bookstores, there are numerous titles about Lorca, his poetry, his plays, his homosexuality. There are exhibitions about his early life and his sketches. There are painting renditions of him in art galleries. On the street, the week’s lottery ticket with 30 million pesetas as prize money had his face and enigmatic smile on it. And on the day of his 100th birthday, I couldn’t resist buying an issue of the conservative paper ABC. Lorca’s face and an article on him took up the whole front page with a title paying homage to the country’s illustrious son. Spain’s exaltation of Federico Garcia Lorca was a lesson on how time and truth vindicate those once reviled. My visit a few days later to the monument for Jose Rizal erected in Madrid in 1996 would again remind me of this lesson.

It was drizzling that morning when I got out of the metro stop and walked the Avenida de Filipinas headed for the Rizal Monument. Jose was in my shoulder bag which I tucked under my raincoat. Aside from its name, the Avenida seemed suburbanish with upscale apartment buildings punctuated by a car showroom and coffee shops.

Looming at a distance was the monument, already quite imposing. I pulled out Jose from my bag and with my hand clutched to his base and with his head looking forward we both approached the huge statue to him. We walked around the base reading inscriptions on plaques and admiring the work and noting to myself (and maybe to Jose) that the sculpture was quite faithful to his likeness. My face wet with drizzle, I was oblivious to a group of school children, led by a teacher, crossing the street and gathering in front of the statue.

In Paris, Barcelona and in Madrid, I paused many times, quite touched to see schoolchildren being led around by teachers headed for a Gauguin painting at the Musee D’Orsay, in wonderment among the Egyptian mummies at the Louvre, and in rapt attention in front of a Gaudi building in Barcelona. Schoolchildren as young as kindergarten to pimply- faced teenagers trekking everywhere, through the parks, around tombs, below frescoes, on ancient streets, all following and listening intently to their teachers.

Now, a group of little girls and boys were in front of the Monument and I made Jose look at them because he loved children and loved being a teacher while exiled in Dapitan.

"He died for love of his country..." the comely teacher said to her attentive boys and girls, all of them still with water dripping from their tiny yellow and blue raincoats.

Nervously stroking Jose’s head, I whispered to him, "Look, they are honoring you this morning, these people you also loved so dearly." As the children and the teacher walked quietly away, Jose and I stood there in front of his statue somewhat lost in mixed emotions. Warm silky tears had replaced the cold morning drizzle on my face.

It was my last day in Madrid. I had one more place to go–to Hotel Ingles a walk away from Plaza del Sol. A banquet was held there in 1884 soon after the ecstatic news that at the Exposicion de Bellas Artes, Juan Luna y Novicio won a gold medal of the first class for his painting Spoliarium and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, a medal of the second class for his Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho. Along with their fellow Filipinos bursting with pride, a divergent group of people from Spanish artists to right-wing politicians attended the banquet. Despite the mix, most came to acknowledge the implication of this double prize: Filipino artistry was the equal to any the mother country could offer.

I walked the hotel’s lobby and read a Philippine Government plaque placed on a wall signifying the event. I asked for the dining room where the banquet was held and the concierge sadly apologized, pointing out a hotel garage that had replaced the site of the dining room.

I walked outside, crossed the tiny street and stood facing the garage once banquet hall. I picked up Jose from my bag and held him in one hand, his eyes directed at the hotel. On the day of the banquet the frugal Rizal, having not eaten the day before, must have looked forward to this feast.

There were many toasts and speeches to the two artists but it was Rizal’s speech that caused the greatest stir. As he exalted and praised the artists, as he raised the abiding affection, love and cultural links between Spain and the Philippines, he subtly but clearly impressed upon the audience that this bond thrived and lasted only in the midst of equality and mutual respect.

The audience must have gasped when Rizal intoned how Spain would be remembered even after her "flag might disappear". And he did not mince words when he called on Mother Spain to "implement soon the reforms she has contemplated for a long time". Both gracious and piercing, the speech revealed Rizal’s mettle and his future role as his country’s conscience.

Jose and I took a long look at the hotel and in the quiet of that narrow street I strained to hear, emanating from the hotel garage, a distant echo of a young and hungry student toasting his compatriots and proclaiming the rights due his countrymen.

I walked in the direction of the Avenida del Prado and found a bench between the trees to sit on. It was a brilliant spring day, the kind where people, affected by the weather, meandered happily in front of me, smiling, laughing, all slightly touched and zany.

I didn’t want to be a dark cloud through all this cheer but I was deep in belated thoughts. This odyssey that I began wasn’t just a fitting centennial project. It was also to make up for a long period of time when I cared little for Rizal and the ilustrados living in Europe.

There was a time when it was politically correct to trash the ilustrados as burgeois reformists. The revolution was at home, started by the Katipunan. Period. I believed that line for a long time. Ironically, I believed that line while living abroad, denouncing a dictatorship from afar. We were called the "steak commandos". In an extreme form of self-deprecation and guilt, I didn’t want to appreciate or acknowledge the role the ilustrados played in our history.

Here I was on a park bench in the middle of the Avenida del Prado in the middle of grinning, giggling tourists and I’m looking at the clear blue sky, apologizing. Apologizing to this brave band who endured so much, battling with sheer wit, poetry and trenchant words, the aspirations of their people. I pulled Jose out and made him look at me. Pretty stupid of me huh, Jose? He took no notice. He seemed to look right past me, to the sky, savoring this last afternoon in Madrid.

* * *

Yikes. The movie on this flight is about some neurotic curmudgeon who we’re suppose to sympathize with. Gad, what happened to the good guys? No, young man, I won’t need the earphones but you can bring me another glass of white wine.

Here, Jose, you sit right on this tray and join me for a cocktail. We’ll look out the window and see the earth below. We’ll fly over Germany and you can point out Berlin and where you finished the Noli. Let’s make the Rhineland our next trip.

We’re going home, Jose. We’re going home.