At a Loss for Words
- fourthquarter
- Jul 11, 2018
- 6 min read
Isaiah Drummond
July 11, 2018
¡Empújalo! ¡Empújalo!
I stared blankly at the two large doors towering before me as a woman yelled frantically over the intercom. Fear quickly began to take over my entire body, immobilizing me in an instant. Here I stood, alone in a foreign country where I understood next to nothing, and I could not even figure out how to enter my new building. Honestly, I was not even sure that I was in the correct place; the Spanish address they sent in the email looked incredibly bizarre and it was entirely possible that I entered it incorrectly in Google Maps. Although I left Houston reassuring my parents that I would fare perfectly fine in Madrid, I lost nearly all my confidence when my taxi driver welcomed me to the country by locking me in his car until I paid an exorbitant amount of money. So there I stood, freshly scammed, without cell signal, and unable to decipher whatever message this lady was screaming.
Now any person with half a brain cell knows that most doors can only be opened one of two ways: push or pull. Yet all I did in that moment was pull. I must have known that I needed to try something else after pulling five or six times, but I persisted pulling. It may be hard to understand why I continued committing an action that I knew was wrong, but there was more occurring in my mind than simply trying to open the door. By repeatedly pulling backwards I was futilely trying to stay within my comfort zone and prolonging my journey into the unknown. Behind those doors was more than just my new room for ten weeks. Inside the building was a quarter of discomfort and the struggle to communicate completely in Spanish. Before me lay an entire world that I had never had access to. With a simple push I would be thrust onto a path of no return, where my whole worldview would be forever altered. And that thought terrified me. Although my body refused to believe it, my brain had immediately translated what the woman was saying as soon as I arrived: push the door open. Finally, after a deep breath and a quick prayer, I did.
Whenever someone enters unfamiliar territory, the best plan of action is to find a guide. Fortunately, one awaited me behind those doors; however, I could not have predicted who she would turn out to be. She was an older woman in an empty nest, with both children having left the home many years ago. Her partner lived in Madrid as well, but he only stayed with her on the weekends for reasons too complicated to describe in less than an hour. Like many other Spanish women her age, her name was María, (though we called her Manina), as all girls born under the former dictatorship were required by law to have Catholic names. With college access for women finally embraced with the democratic transition, Manina was at the tail-end of her graphic design program when I arrived. Yet the most defining part of her personality was her penchant for fierce, oftentimes relentless, debates; oh, and her lack of English.
As my host mother, Manina spent a lot of time with me, though the interactions were not very welcoming. Seemingly every night at the dinner table, Manina would hurl her opinions on complex social and religious issues my way. As my Spanish was embarrassingly weak, I was left utterly unable to respond in a meaningful manner most nights. We differed drastically in our views of religion, and every time the topic was raised I felt us growing even more distant. It would be an understatement to say her comments were sometimes vicious. Though my host mother and I were not incredibly close, our relationship began to improve dramatically after a certain event. In fact, that event had such a profound impact on my entire being that I continue to struggle with what I saw: the Valle de Los Caídos.
The Valle de Los Caídos, (or the Valley of the Fallen), was a memorial created to honor those who fought in the Spanish Civil War during the 30’s. Seated atop a hill next to a massive valley, the site looks hauntingly beautiful from the outside: a 500-foot cross towers over a basilica with a sculpture of a dying Jesus resting above the entrance. While waiting to enter, I saw plenty of people posing outside the entrance as they attempted to capture the perfect photo for social media. Honestly, I could not blame them as the sight was breathtaking.
Now I had come to the site not on my own volition, but instead as a requirement for our “Introduction to Spanish Culture” class. We had read in class about the horrors of the Civil War and the near forty-year dictatorship that came afterwards, but most importantly we learned about the controversy surrounding the valley. Constructed with the lives of those on the losing side of the war, this memorial had its structure cemented together with the blood of political prisoners. But the most abhorrent aspect of the basilica is that victims from both sides of the war were buried together in mass graves while Francisco Franco, the former dictator of Spain, is also interred inside. To make matters even worse, despite the government insisting that the site serves as a memorial, there is not a single piece of information regarding the Civil War, the dictatorship, or the purpose of the structure. These points coupled with the fact that the dictatorship and Civil War are not even taught in schools allow the atrocities of the past to covertly hide behind this massive façade.
Now it is one thing to learn about a topic in a classroom and another to experience it in person. As we entered the memorial, conversations and articles discussing the differing perspectives of the dictatorship floated throughout my mind. At this point in the program I was beginning to feel burned-out from overexposure to historic sites, and I figured that I would not be able to fully appreciate the visit because of this. Yet as soon as I stepped foot inside the main chamber, this overwhelming sense of foreboding swept over me. Though it was midday outside, the interior was dimly light by candlelight and darkness seemed to creep in.
I was completely shocked at what I saw, or by what I did not see: there were no caskets nor evidence of bodies anywhere. Catholic symbolism was scattered across the walls and massive sculptures of archangels wielding weapons stood on both sides, looking as though they were ready to attack anyone out of line. With each step I took, I felt more disturbed until I reached the center. There lay Francisco Franco, under a portrait of the Spanish world conquering the Americas and spreading Catholicism to indigenous people depicted as savages. My chest began to tighten and breathing became increasingly difficult until I finally headed towards the exit and quickly returned outside.
For the first time in my life I felt an atmosphere of evil. I was no stranger to memorials nor have I been spared from the deaths of loved ones, but this time it was incredibly different. Never had I felt on the verge of suffocation by only being in the presence of such intense discomfort. Never had I been so cognizant of my privilege of growing up in the cozy suburbs of Houston at this point in history. Never had I understood with outstanding clarity the distrust that older Spaniards held against the Catholic Church. Never had I felt the necessity to put my Christian faith under the microscope and critically analyze the ways it has been used both positively and negatively throughout time. Yet as I rode back with my classmates afterwards, I realized what a wonderful gift I had just been given.
For just a moment I had the chance to take on a fraction of the pain and suffering that so many have felt, and it appeared that something activated inside of me. When I returned home that evening, it felt a little easier to sit down at the dinner table. As we discussed my visit to the valley, I could hear the pain in my host mom’s voice as she recalled life under the dictatorship and I saw the sadness in her eyes as she described her slow departure from the Catholic Church. Before my eyes I witnessed a new person emerge, someone who did not have all the answers but was instead looking for friends instead of enemies. We sat for hours that night, sharing our thoughts and actively listening to each other. During that dinner we were able to find the smallest semblance of common ground, even if it was just for one meal. But something had radically changed. By the next evening, we had begun to change how we interacted with each other. In place of the occasional angry exhale,
there was the unexpected laugh, and the conversations stopped ending in strained silences. This continued to the following night, and the next one, and the one after that, until I began to lose count. The truth is that our massive ideological gorge did not shrink greatly in size; nevertheless, we were able to bridge our distance through a change in perception. I had viewed Manina as this unapproachable antagonist for so long that it became easy to cast her as an exaggerated caricature of her true self. Only by allowing myself to fully listen to her without offense did I begin to draw near, and our relationship positively skyrocketed after that. Though by program’s end we still maintained many of our previous views, we were one step closer than we had been. And that has made all the difference.
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