Columbus and the countess

Our taxi driver rolled his eyes. 'Discursos!' Speeches. We were discussing the forthcoming acto institucional due to take place that evening in the park, 'institutional act' being a fancy way of describing a couple of hours of speeches. There would be speeches by - at the very least - the president of the Canary Island parliament, the president of the Gomeran Cabildo (the island council), the mayor of San Sebastián and, as invited guest speaker, the rector of the university in Tenerife. 'Aagh!' cried our taxi driver, throwing both hands into the air, 'Save me from speeches by university professors!'

He was only joking, of course, Spanish people love a good speech. And if, halfway through the third monologue, you feel the magic beginning to fade, you can always sidle away in the growing darkness to one of the bars around the park.

The person responsible for this gathering of dignitaries was Almirante Cristóbal Colón, known in Britain as Admiral Christopher Columbus. La Gomera was his final stop before setting out across the Atlantic into the unknown, on the sixth of September 1492. One of the island's soubriquets is La Isla Colombina, the Island of Columbus, and he is commemorated in San Sebastián by a slightly strange bronze bust, unveiled by the King of Spain in 2006.

We need a little history here, before we get to the gossip. The Admiral's plan was to reach the East Indies - those rich, spicy islands a few weeks' sailing beyond India - by heading in the wrong direction, westwards, to circle the globe and reach the Indies from the other side. In this way he would avoid the irritating obstacle of Africa.

Five weeks into the voyage his little fleet of three ships sighted land ahead. The Indies, already! But no, they soon realised - this was too soon. They found themselves sailing through a broad scattering of completely unknown islands with beautiful white beaches and waving palm trees.

Columbus called the first island he set foot on San Salvador, the Saviour, and today's experts have a lot of fun arguing about which island it was. But it doesn't really matter - he had discovered, entirely by accident, the outlying islands of the Americas, the New World. These islands later became known as the West Indies, perhaps as consolation for Columbus who had failed to reach the East Indies.

He wasn't the first European, of course, to find the Americas. A Norwegian, Leif Erikson, landed on the northern tip of Canada nearly 500 years before Columbus set sail. But being fair, Columbus had no reason to suspect that land up there in the far north of the Atlantic would still get in his way thousands of miles further south.

And also being fair, what Columbus discovered was not the cold north of the North American land mass but the warm, lush Caribbean and, just a little further on, the vast southern half of the American continent. A big find, and he didn't even know about all the gold and silver at that stage.

However, here's the interesting bit. Columbus called into La Gomera ostensibly to stock his ships with food, water and wine and to rest his crew before their big adventure. But he also - if the rumours are to be believed - had a torrid affair with a Spanish countess living on the island.

And not just any old countess, but Beatriz de Bobadilla, widow of the Spanish aristocrat appointed to rule here on behalf of the Crown, a job Beatriz had now inherited.

Rumours perhaps, tittle-tattle, but the evidence for this liaison seems pretty solid to me. Just look at the facts. On his first voyage in 1492, Columbus puts into the port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, a much bigger island than La Gomera. On leaving Gran Canaria he sails no more than a day before making another stopover here in La Gomera. Why does he need to do that? Has he already heard about the beautiful widow?

And he lingers here not just for a day or two but for a month! (It has been suggested that one of his ships required repairs which, as well as being a very boring explanation, also sounds unlikely. Fresh leaks in the hull, after a day's sailing in calm waters?)

The following year, 1493, he sails directly from Cádiz in Spain to La Gomera. Directly! No messing about in Gran Canaria first, or even Tenerife or La Palma, all much larger islands with greater resources. I mean, if this isn't already as clear as daylight...

When he eventually manages to tear himself away from the countess he retraces his earlier route westwards across the Atlantic and discovers the islands we now call Antigua and Puerto Rico.

He then has to wait a few years - difficulties with funding, perhaps - until his third voyage in 1498, when he again puts into La Gomera as his first stop. But maybe things hadn't gone quite so well with the countess the last time, because by now she has already married someone else.

So Columbus sails on, and this time discovers the island of Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela, his first contact with the South American mainland, which must have made him feel a bit better about everything. On his fourth voyage, in 1502, he calls into Gran Canaria for supplies then sails straight past La Gomera without pausing. Nose in the air - see if I care!

We shall never know who uttered what kind of wounding words on that fateful second visit, whose passion began to cool, who persistently snored or stole all the bedclothes. Whatever, it seems to have marked the end of their brief affair.

None of the earnest discursos on the sixth of September covered this particular aspect. They never do. A big mistake in my opinion, I guarantee it would keep everyone firmly in their seats.

The illustration of Columbus on his flagship, the Santa María, is from a painting by Emanuel Leutze (1855)

Fernando

'You've heard about Fernando?' Blasina asked, just in case we hadn't. Blasina is the most dedicated of the morning bathers at the beach (see the story After the deluge, 9 December 2015).

Fernando. Picture a plump man in swimming trunks, staggering towards the sea with terrifying uncertainty, waving a walking stick around as a balancing aid like a high-wire acrobat. We watched in dry-mouthed fascination as he wobbled sideways, backwards and occasionally forwards in fits and starts, approaching the water mostly by luck and grim determination.

'Shall I go and help?' But no, even as I spoke I realised this guy knew what he was doing and would resent interference.

He didn't fall over until, reaching the breakers, he advanced a few more paces then allowed himself to topple forwards like a felled tree. He hit the waves face-first in a spectacular whoosh of white water then set off towards Tenerife in a purposeful arms-only crawl, legs trailing like tentacles.

'You're not eating your sandwich.' Picnic on the beach. I took a bite. It was like trying to eat while watching an imminent disaster laid on as cabaret. Ten minutes later the swimmer arrived back in the ripples at the water's edge and we had to watch as he raised himself on arms and legs, wobbling like a newborn calf, before crawling forward to retrieve his walking stick and somehow hauling himself upright.

There was something terrible and wonderful about this performance, humbling in its bravery, inspiring in its success. It was like watching the Dawn of Mankind, the first triumphant steps on two limbs instead of four.

That was the first time we noticed Fernando, many years ago. We soon got used to seeing him, worried less about him, because he was always around. He had suffered some kind of cerebral catastrophe many years ago which had ruined his coordination, and although he could just about walk with the help of crutches he normally propelled himself through the streets on a silla de ruedas, a wheelchair. Later he bought a fancy motorised one with joystick control, chromium spring suspension and flashing indicators, in which he hummed around town at alarming speed to do his shopping.

But he still climbed out of it regularly to take some exercise. A favourite routine was to make his way to and fro on the bridge across the riverbed, clinging to the railings hand over hand.

He used to earn a few euros by selling lottery tickets for the ONCE charity, until he reached retirement age a few years ago. Then he spent his days working through his fitness programme or sitting with friends to argue about football. We got to know him better after the town council installed bright yellow exercise machines on the beach promenade, where we became fellow regulars.

Last Wednesday we greeted him there as usual as he sat twiddling his legs on the static cycle. Then for the next couple of days we didn't see him. People like Fernando are very noticeable when they're not there, they leave an empty space like the clock missing from the sideboard.

He had gone for a swim in the afternoon, Blasina told us, and suffered a heart attack. Other swimmers dragged him from the water, an ambulance rushed him to the local hospital then a helicopter flew him to an intensive-care unit in Tenerife, but they couldn't save him.

We hadn't heard this, we didn't know. As always, such a sudden extinction is hard to accept. 'He looked fine the last time we saw him,' I objected. 'He always looked after himself, kept himself fit.'

'True,' agreed Blasina, 'but really he was lucky to have had so many years. He could have gone long ago, when he first had the brain thing, the attack.'

Well, yes. That's the philosophical viewpoint, I suppose. And the rest of us will carry on until our time comes. But the fact remains, there is now just an empty space where Fernando ought to be.

Four bitches

One of my excuses - and there are many - for spending so much time at café tables is that it's an ideal setting for practising Spanish. Seated under a sun umbrella and wafted by a gentle sea breeze, we take out the e-reader and set to work.

The methodology is this: reading a Spanish novel, I translate a sentence aloud into English which J then attempts to translate back into Spanish. After a page or two, we swap roles. It's entertaining for us and even more entertaining for any locals within earshot.

Now and again we might stumble over an unfamiliar word or phrase that the dictionary doesn't know about either, in which case we are surrounded by expert Spanish speakers to turn to for help.

The other day, for example, I came across the phrase un vestidito de cuatro perras. Translated literally this means 'a little dress of four female dogs', which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Nothing helpful in the dictionary. So I try going online, to a famous multilingual translation website, which comes up with 'a dress four bitches' which makes even less sense.

We call for help to Susana, the café waitress, who has no trouble sorting things out for us. This phrase simply means 'a cheap dress', she explains (in Spanish). Cuatro perras is a very small sum of money.

We've captured her interest now, though. 'I think,' she says, 'a perra was a couple of céntimos. A two-céntimo coin.' (A céntimo was a hundredth of a peseta.) Wanting to be sure about this she grabs a passing Gomeran, a senior citizen with a flat cap and a stick who might remember such things: 'Una perra. Was that a two-céntimo coin, when we still used the peseta?'

He rubs his chin. 'I think it was five,' he says. 'A five-céntimo coin. We're talking about a long time ago, though. They stopped making them, the perra was almost nothing, wouldn't buy you the foam on top of that beer glass.'

Another pensioner seated at a nearby table looks up from his newspaper. 'Ten céntimos. The perra was ten céntimos.'

For any self-respecting Spaniard, being contradicted is the surest way to transform a half-formed opinion into rock-solid certainty. 'No, no, you're wrong, it was five,' insists the man with the flat cap.

He turns for support to the beer delivery man who has just arrived and probably has no idea how much a perra was but provides cautious backing: 'Could have been five. Either that or ten.'

The discussion spreads to the other tables, two more passers-by, the postman and the deputy mayor on his way back to the office. Impassioned argument is an essential part of the Spanish way of life and everyone is entitled to wade in.

On this occasion the resolution is particularly harmonious because it turns out that both combatants are right. Everybody's right! There were two different varieties of perra! A little one, the perra chica, which was the five-céntimo coin and the perra gorda, literally the 'fat bitch', which was ten céntimos.

Offering thanks all round, we return to our e-reader.

'Then, of course,' muses the ten-céntimo man with the newspaper, 'there was the duro. You remember the duro?' He nods at the guy in the flat cap, who is hanging about in the hope of more excitement.

'Five pesetas,' he responds. Disappointingly, nobody challenges this, it's correct, there was only one duro and it was the five-peseta coin. Even I know this, an ignorant foreigner, because shopkeepers and waiters used to tease visitors by demanding veinte duros, twenty duros, instead of a hundred pesetas, which was the price of a beer, coffee or bottle of water in those days.

No more duros now, of course. We have only the euro. I love the euro, especially the fact that the coins circulating here are not only Spanish but also Irish, German, French, Dutch and others of more mysterious origin, bearing portraits of distant royals or presidents. But as far as I know, nobody has invented colourful nicknames for the euro menagerie.

Unless you count the diminutive eurito, a little euro, which is a perfectly normal euro but softened by the -ito ending. It's a way of charging you a euro while indicating that a euro is nothing very much at all. But there we're into a whole new topic, which I think I'd better leave for another time.

Try not to look scared

The shop was empty - no other customers, nobody behind the counter. There is something unsettling about an empty shop, especially one with a security eyeball watching you from a corner of the ceiling.

I wandered around for a minute or two, examining the lamps and switches and reels of cable on the shelves, vaguely searching for the kind of wall socket I'd come to buy. But in an electrical retailer's you always have to ask - the thing you want will lurk somewhere within a dark forest of shelving through a doorway at the back.

With British restraint I waited another minute or two then leaned across the counter and called towards the storeroom: 'Hola! Hay alguien?' Anyone there?

I leapt backwards as two paws thumped onto the counter top, closely followed by a black snout, white teeth and a make-my-day glare. A very large Alsatian was standing on its hind legs behind the counter, tall enough to look me in the eye. It twitched its ears expectantly, waiting for me to make the first move.

Never turn away, is the first rule. Maintain eye contact and try not to look scared. Then you can slowly back away. Or if really desperate, grasp the hem of your shirt and pull it up over your head like a sail to make yourself look bigger, but I'm not sure if that's only for rhinoceroses.

For long moments, the dog and I contemplated each other warily across the counter.

The whole dog situation on this island has slowly changed over the years. When we first set foot here dogs were almost exclusively employed as guardians, like this one. (I'll get back to the story in just a moment.) Many of them would spend their entire days and nights chained to a shed made from scraps of timber, guarding a few goats that lived inside.

One mongrel we got to know in our very first year lived in a rusty oil drum, which it perched on during the day as a lookout post. (It had also discovered that by sticking its snout through a gap in the goat shed's timbers it could reach an udder and get a free drink of milk. A bright dog that deserved a better career than guarding goats.)

The other principal occupation for a Gomeran dog was, and still is, to go hunting with its master. This is a special, elite breed of dog capable of bounding across steep hillsides to flush out rabbits and partridges. There are strict controls on hunting: gun licences, quotas and restrictions, you can't go around blasting anything that moves. And the season is specified down to particular days and hours, so even these privileged dogs only get to enjoy life in brief bursts, but I suppose a few days' holiday a year is better than nothing at all.

Nobody in our early years here would have considered keeping a dog as a pet. Young Debora, daughter of a neighbour, dared to broach the idea of a puppy to her father and was told that if she wanted a dog it would live outside the house like any other animal and she'd have to find the money to feed it. She didn't get one. Well, not just then, anyway.

Gradually, however - and I'm not sure why this happened, perhaps it's a sign of increasing affluence - dogs began to creep into Gomeran life in new guises. Firstly came the big, tough breeds, the Alsatians and Dobermanns and mastiffs, which young men with tattooed arms would equip with spiked collars and weapons-grade steel chains to parade as fashion accessories.

Then the other kind of dog began to appear, the mascota or pet, the spoiled, fluffy creatures you can decorate with ribbons and sit on your lap to feed with cucumber sandwiches. These days most families get a canine mascota sooner or later, they're more popular than cats.





I could have done with a passing cat in the electrical retailer's shop, to divert the Alsatian's attention. Remembering survival guide advice to appear confident, I bid the slavering beast a cordial 'Buenos días,' good morning. It put its head on one side, apparently making some kind of judgement. Then it disappeared behind the counter.

While I was looking anxiously towards the storeroom door to see if the proprietor had noticed what was going on, I heard the dog's paws thump onto the counter again. Just in front of the paws there now lay a plastic carrot. Well chewed and lacking most of its upper leaves, but recognisably a carrot.

The Alsatian eased backwards a little and lowered its head towards its paws, the universal doggy gesture that means play!

I hesitated for a moment because this could be a trick, couldn't it? Victim moves forward, grasps the carrot and bingo! - another set of fingers to chalk up on the side of the kennel. But in those big brown eyes there now seemed to be a pleading, an anticipation. There was plenty of empty space behind the counter. I picked up the plastic carrot and threw it into a far corner. The dog jumped into the air, spinning round as it went, and skidded across the shiny floor tiles to retrieve it.

Carrot back on counter, brown eyes gazing at it expectantly, willing it to fly again. I picked it up and threw it towards the opposite corner.

This went on for several minutes until the owner finally arrived. 'Disculpe! Sorry. I had to pop out for a moment to...' He paused. 'Oh, he's got you doing that, has he? You'll be here all day.'

I purchased my electrical socket, wished dog and owner a good day and headed for the street. As I left I heard the cheerful plimp of a plastic carrot bouncing on a tiled floor.

The Three Dons

Don Carlos, Don Fernando and Don Salvador. They often played dominoes together, seated around a table in the shade of a palm tree. Or chatted over a glass of wine in a bar, snacking on jamón serrano, the famous Spanish cured ham which comes in expensive and distressingly thin slices.

Don and doña are terms of respect in Spanish, courtesy titles, much superior to the plain old señor and señora which simply mean Mr and Mrs. You can ascend to the title don or doña in various ways. The simplest is to open an account with an electricity company, because their monthly bills will address you thus. But this is just commercial toadying and not to be taken seriously.

More convincing is another common method, which is to become very old - or even more reliably, to die, when the obituaries in the local newspaper will award you the title posthumously.

Far more appealing as an approach, although much less easy to achieve, is to have lots of money. Our Three Dons all had lots of money.

We got to know Don Carlos on the beach. While we swam he walked briskly up and down the tideline in the sunshine, a dignified figure in bathing shorts and a big, prosperous belly. From initially nodding cheerfully to each other we progressed to pausing for a word or two, and gradually we learned a little more about him. Born on the island, he still owned property here but had married into business interests and a different way of life on the Península, the Spanish mainland. 'I come back here to relax,' he told us. 'Un pequeño paraíso.' A little Paradise. No argument there.

Don Carlos had a heart problem and had been told to take gentle exercise. The problem was something to do with swollen blood vessels - let's not be too gory - and although it was operable, the cardiologist had warned him there was a one-in-three chance of failure. 'One in three chances that they'll kill me!' he roared, outraged. Two in three that they wouldn't, then, but Don Carlos was clearly not a gambler and had decided just to cross his fingers and keep walking.

Maybe his friend Don Salvador played some role in this decision. He was a pharmacist, addressed as don perhaps from respect for his expertise, or his age, or more probably because like Don Carlos he had inherited property. By the time we met him he had retired, but he still lent a hand now and again in the pharmacy.

I went there one day with a sore back to ask if he knew anyone who could massage it better. 'There's a curandero,' replied Don Salvador, shrugging eloquently. A curandero is someone who claims to heal without being conventionally qualified.

Don Salvador could have tried to sell me pain-relief pills, but it turned out he also suffered from back pain and as a fellow sufferer, he showed me his cost-free solution. 'Look,' he said, coming around to the front of the counter. 'The best way to treat a sore back is this.'

Bending his legs, he leaned backwards against the edge of the counter, positioning it between two of the knobbles of his spine. Then he leaned back a little further and wriggled, like a brown bear rubbing its back on a pine trunk. 'Like this, you see?' Rising a little to position the counter edge between the next two knobbles, he wriggled again. Whether it was doing any good I've no idea but he was clearly enjoying it.

A while ago the town council installed some bright yellow exercise machines near the beach, one of which has a big rubber roller that achieves much the same effect. Any brown bear would love it.






And then there was Don Fernando. Who had a secret.

We got to know him a little better than the others through chatting in the bar of the Club Náutico, the Nautical Club, a pleasant venue half buried in a cave and not as grand as it sounds. 'We call you people the golondrinas,' he told us. The swallows, who arrive in winter and depart in spring, until some of us forget to fly off again.

A man of wit and wisdom, and also of great patience, Don Fernando listened to our baby Spanish with elegant politeness rather than hysterical laughter and occasionally helped us climb over a pronunciation hurdle. I can still hear and see him demonstrating Archipiélago Canario, the Canarian Archipelago, leaning forward for emphasis: 'Arr-chee-pee-AY-lago!'

Like his two friends, Don Fernando owned land and property, including a large farm in one of the island's many valleys where he, or rather his handful of loyal workers, grew bananas on a commercial scale. And avocados, oranges, grapes, apricots... anything will grow in this rich, volcanic soil, you just have to throw down a pip, spray a little water and stand back.

He invited us to call into the farm one day, which of course we did. 'Have a banana!' A banana picked yellow from the growing bunch is a revelation, rare and wonderful. For export the bunches are cut down while still green, because if you try to transport bananas already yellow they arrive looking like discarded work gloves from an oil rig.

At this stage Don Fernando didn't know us well enough to confess his secret. That came later, over a glass of wine or two in a restaurant. Eccentricity being not only permitted but expected of a don, he drank his wine from an ordinary glass tumbler as used for water: 'Much better than any wine glass, look at all that air above it for the bouquet!'

As our conversation progressed from the humdrum to deeper probings and the broader-sweep stuff about work, life and the Universe, he suddenly became pensive. 'Luck plays a big part in life.'

'Well yes, but you have to…'

'Do you know,' continued Don Fernando, lowering his voice, 'how I came to own my farm, all that land?' We had assumed it was inherited, but he shook his head. 'I have my wife to thank for that.'

'Ah, so the land was hers and…'

'No. I won the lottery. A big prize, mucho, muchísimo.' He mimed a huge bag of money, golden doubloons. 'I'd have spent the lot, wasted it,' he admitted with endearing honesty. 'Fortunately my wife had more sense and insisted I buy land. I couldn't see the point, but she was right. Look at it now.'

He topped up our glasses from the bottle. 'Sensible woman. Here's to my wife.' We clinked glasses.

'And also to health - salud! And happiness - felicidad!' And while we're at it, let's add luck as well - suerte! When you think about it, all you really need is luck.


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A postscript for the pernickety
In English we capitalise the titles Don and Doña, whereas in Spanish they do not. Nor do they capitalise our Sir and Dame, which looks a bit odd, as in 'sir Francis Drake' or 'dame Maggie Smith'.

Whatever happened to Sebastian?

Foreign visitors, seeing things with fresh eyes and holiday-sharpened curiosity, are inclined to ask difficult questions. There is plenty of material here for difficult questions, just in the capital San Sebastián itself. For example:

What's that big tower thing in the park?
The first serious footprint of the Spanish Conquistadores - a military fort built around 1450 as a refuge against attacks by the island's native population, the guanches. (This turned out to be a sensible precaution.)

Who is Cristóbal Colón, and why is there so much fuss about him here?
The adventurer we know as Christopher Columbus, for whom La Gomera was the last port of call before sailing on to discover the Americas. Mind you, he discovered them many thousands of years later than the people already living there. And local tittle-tattle claims that while staying in La Gomera he launched a torrid affair with a certain Beatriz de Bobadilla, who at that time ruled the island in a style much like Margaret Thatcher's.

We now have trained tour guides able to cope with all this stuff, but it's the off-the-cuff questions for the rest of us that cause problems. A foreign visitor who really stirred things up many years ago was my mother, who had spread her winter wings to join us for a couple of weeks. On a visit to view the effigy of San Sebastián (Saint Sebastian) in his little chapel, she spotted the one thing that's really strange about him and that nobody here ever mentions. (Actually there are two strangenesses, but I'll come to the second one later.)

We couldn't answer her question ourselves so later that day, while chatting to our neighbour Isabel in the evening sunshine, we asked her what she knew about Saint Sebastian.

'He's the santo patrón, the patron saint of the town.' Well yes, but what we really wanted to know - what my mother wanted to know - was why he'd got little arrows stuck all over him.

Isabel was a genuine dyed-in-the-wool Gomeran, born in the village and lived here all her life, but this was something she'd never thought about. Couldn't explain it. No idea.

She called up reinforcements in the shape of her husband Víctor who was sitting in the shade cutting seed potatoes into single-eyed pieces. He too could shed no light on Saint Sebastian's arrows, and didn't seem too bothered about it. But the fact is that no Spaniard, and still less a Canarian, finds it easy to admit they don't know something then just let it go. At the very least they will have an opinion, inventing one on the spot if necessary.

'Has to be something to do with South America,' Víctor decided. 'The Indians. He was a missionary in South America and got killed by natives with bows and arrows. Obviously. No?'

He looked at us for approval of this scenario. A very likely one: many Catholic missionaries came to grief one way or another in the Americas. Many others made vast fortunes one way or another in the Americas, but that's a different issue.

'Venezuela,' Víctor added, fleshing out the theory.

'They don't have Indians in Venezuela,' objected his wife. Many Gomerans still have relatives in Caracas, descendants of those who fled there during the long, terrible years of the Franco regime, and none of them have ever ended up pierced with arrows.

Víctor waved a seed potato dismissively. 'Well, wherever. Colombia. Peru. Ask the priest.'

In those days there was a weekly service in our village's chapel, an evening Mass, and my mother had already decided she would like to take part. She couldn't speak a word of Spanish but was very good at smiling, which is really all you need in order to make friends. Neither had she been to a Catholic Mass before, but the local ladies took charge of her and presumably (I wasn't there) prompted her to stand, sit or kneel as necessary. Judging by the photo I took of them all afterwards, she had a great time.

The priest was able to speak to her in English, which must have greatly impressed his little flock, but it was a big mistake because this evident rapport emboldened Isabel to ask the question: 'This lady wants to know why Saint Sebastian has got arrows stuck all over him.'

I suspect that the priest wasn't altogether sure of his ground about this. He reportedly fielded the question to the other ladies and was duly shocked when it turned out that none of them had the faintest idea. They tried a few guesses, the consensus favouring Víctor's South American theory. Sebastian had achieved his martyrdom as a missionary in the dark, dangerous rainforests of the Americas.

No. This would not do, the priest scolded. This would not do at all! Saint Sebastian was the patron saint of the island's capital yet nobody in this village knew what had happened to him? He promised to give them a sermon about it the following week. (Which - I'm being unkind! - would give him chance to refresh his memory about the details. I recall this ploy from my early incarnation as a teacher.)

By the time he gave his sermon my Mum had already flown back to the British winter, and when we asked our neighbours about it they had forgotten much of what the priest had told them. But in brief, it had nothing to do with South America. It was all the fault of the Romans and was actually a little less romantic than the arrows suggest. For those with a thirst for knowledge I have appended a summary below.

But equally interesting is the other strangeness about Saint Sebastian. We got this from a volunteer guide in a church in Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the north of Spain, which houses effigies not only of Sebastian but of many others of his saintly companions.

Here it is: San Sebastián is the only Catholic saint to be depicted near-naked, apart from Jesus Christ himself. He wears a modest loincloth, a bit of drapery, but nothing else. Some versions have him handsome and virile in Michelangelo style, while in others he appears more vulnerable and approachable. Our local version is - well, almost cuddly, and the arrows don't seem to hurt at all. Perfectly suited to the island he lives on, and what can be wrong with that?


The legend of Saint Sebastian
A slightly mysterious figure, Saint Sebastian. Nobody seems to know much about his early years except that he may have been born in southern France but was educated in Milan. He joined the Roman army in 283 AD (I've no idea how we know this so precisely) and did so well at soldiering that he was promoted to the Praetorian Guard of Emperor Diocletian.

Unfortunately, Sebastian was also a clandestine evangelist who converted many of his comrades and local dignitaries to Christianity. Emperor Diocletian was notoriously intolerant of Christians and when he found out, he sentenced Sebastian to an exemplary punishment: he was roped to a stake and used for target practice by the archers.

Astonishingly, although riddled with arrows he survived and was rescued by a fellow Christian, a woman called Irene, who nursed him back to health. So far so good, but at this point the story turns even uglier. Once recovered, Sebastian boldly but foolishly confronted Diocletian in public, haranguing him for his persecution of Christians. The emperor had him clubbed to death, this time successfully, and his body was thrown into the Roman sewers.

Another Christian woman, Lucina, recovered the corpse and he ended up decently buried in the catacombs beneath Rome, from where, some time later, the remains were distributed as relics to various Catholic sites around Europe.

Sebastian is now the patron saint of soldiers, athletes and - bizarrely - archers. He is also credited with protective powers against the plague, which derives from ancient beliefs that this disease was hurled down as arrows from the sky by angry gods. Sometimes these things get a bit muddled.

How they stopped the hooting

 A well-heeled gentleman called Don Antonio González Martín launched the invasion way back in the early 1920s, proudly importing the very first. It was unloaded from a ship at the quay near Vallehermoso, in the north of the island, dangling inelegantly for a while from the pescante, the dockside crane, before settling its wheels gently and irrevocably on the ground. Probably to excited cheering and throwing of caps into the air.

Don Antonio couldn't do very much with his new car because there were no roads to drive it along. The only highways were the narrow, stone-paved donkey paths called caminos reales which wriggled their way along the hills and valleys. He reportedly made a few pesetas by giving people paid joyrides around the town in the first car they'd ever seen. (In a nice irony, tourists can now get a paid ride around San Sebastián, the island's capital, in a horse-drawn carriage.)

Less than a hundred years later, the four-wheeled invaders had multiplied to the point where they were causing serious headaches for the Traffic and Road Signage team of San Sebastián's Ayuntamiento, the Town Council.

I imagine Señor Enrique, let's call him, talking one day to his young assistant: 'You hear that, José?' Nodding towards the window.

'Hear what, Enrique?'

'The hooting.' Somewhere in the distance a car horn is blaring, pausing, blaring again with increasing desperation. 'That, José, is the sound of failure.'

'It's just someone who can't move their car because some other blighter's blocked them in.'

'Exactamente!' shouts Enrique. 'Exactly! People park wherever they want. If there's no space they park anyway. They just stop the car, get out and leave it. Blocking those already parked, blocking the traffic. It's chaos. It's anarchy.' Enrique waves a finger menacingly towards his assistant. 'This fine and ancient town has become nothing more than a huge, messy car park. It cannot go on, José. Think of something.'

Within a week, José has the solution. They will paint lines along every road in the town to guide correct parking behaviour - white for 'Yes you can, sometimes', yellow for 'No you can't, except perhaps on Sundays', and zig-zags for 'Don't even think of it'.

'José.' A couple of weeks later.

'Enrique?'

'Nobody is paying the slightest attention to your paint, José. They still park anywhere they like. The yellow no-parking lines are already beginning to wear off from being scrubbed by tyres.'

Gomerans are a proud and independent people, not noted for docile obedience. José sighs and reluctantly has to admit, there is only one answer. 'We'll have to enforce it.'

'Do what?'

'Fine them. If they park on a yellow line you stick a multa, a parking ticket, under their windscreen wiper.' José once spent two weeks in Madrid on a student exchange scheme.

But this seems to Enrique a somewhat dismal idea - and in any case, where will they find a Gomeran prepared to stick a parking ticket on a car they know perfectly well belongs to Uncle Manolo, their neighbour Juana or their third cousin Alberto from up the valley?

I'm not sure how the next step happened, the escalation, but I don't believe anyone here would have proposed it seriously. A traffic management adviser from Gran Canaria, perhaps, or Barcelona.

People laughed in disbelief when they saw the newly-installed parking meters. Little boys found them great to swing around, whooping. Dogs loved them. People hung their jackets on them conveniently while they locked up their car for the day.

The Ayuntamiento responded robustly by employing uniformed strangers from Tenerife to apply penalty tickets.

'José.'

'Enrique?'

'Do you know what we found in the Council letterbox this morning?'

'Umm...'

'A large pile of parking tickets. All torn in half.'

The parking meters rusted and died.

José, being a resourceful young man, set about analysing traffic flow to see what could be done statistically, logistically or geographically to ease the bottlenecks and discourage antisocial parking. He came up with a clever rerouting strategy involving the extensive application of one-way streets, No Entry signs and white arrows painted on the road at approaches to junctions.

I remember discussing the results of this with Lorenzo, who lives near the centre of town. The main problem was that nobody knew how to get anywhere. 'You need a lookout standing on the car bonnet,' Lorenzo complained, shielding his eyes like a sailor peering through the storm. 'Junction coming up, left turn at fifty metres! Straight ahead for a bit... sharp right here... whoops, it's no entry, back up, back up!'

It took only a couple of months before the signs were removed and the white arrows painted out. Then followed a long, injured pause while nothing happened.

Or nothing seemed to be happening. In reality, José was incubating a final, draconian solution to the town's traffic problems.

'Say again, José?'

'Remove the cars, Enrique. Keep them out altogether.'

'You surely can't be suggesting...'

'Install traffic barriers. Pedestrians only. Replace the asphalt with paving stones, ornamental trees, benches for the elderly. Return the streets to the people.' Flushed and excited, José feels he is on the verge of making history.

Others feel the Council has lost its sanity. Public consultations are characterised by impassioned soliloquys about urban dictatorship, misuse of public funds and the foolish idealism of woolly-hat environmentalists.

In every bar and café along the proposed pedestrianisation routes are heard howls of rage and protest, mostly from the proprietors. 'People park outside here to pop in for a quick coffee and a sandwich. This lot are trying to put me out business!'

This is the nub of the problem, of course: people habitually park outside everywhere just to pop in. To snatch a quick coffee or beer, to buy their newspaper or groceries, to check their lottery winnings... This is precisely what José is trying to combat.

He is helped by the known principle that outrageously bold and expensive schemes are always much easier to fund than pussy-footed tinkering. Europe steps in and gives José all the money he needs. The big yellow diggers arrive and the town's main shopping street becomes a nightmare of mud, trenches and wobbly little bridges.

When the diggers finally move out again, and teams of extraordinarily patient artisans finish the job by laying little blocks to cover every square centimetre, the street is unrecognisable.

It looks wider and brighter. It's strangely quiet. A lingering scent of fresh cement has replaced the acrid stench of car exhausts.

Over the following weeks and months, slowly, timidly, café tables begin to spread into the street from their doorways. People take to strolling to browse the shop windows. In the evenings they stroll to do nothing much at all.

Something magical has happened. The place has begun to look like Paris.

Meanwhile the cars get parked tidily in new parking spaces on the outskirts. Nobody has to hoot any more, and people perhaps feel a little fitter from having to walk a few metres.

Not long afterwards, the other main street gets pedestrianised as well.

Urban Design magazine devotes an entire issue to the extraordinary success of this visionary scheme, José lands a top job in the Traffic Planning department of Torremolinos and Enrique is voted Spanish Civil Administration Man of the Year.


There's a touch of poetic licence in all this, I admit (with grovelling apologies to the Ayuntamiento de San Sebastián). But it's wonderful when a bold, controversial and ridiculously expensive scheme turns out to be a really good idea.