Alesandro still
thought of himself as an academic but, while visiting a friend in Barcelona, the
miners went on strike in the mining towns of Asturias in 1934. It was Dolores Ibárruri, standing on the back of a flat-bed truck with no megaphone, and only the
rhetoric of passion, that awakened his genes passed down
from the father and mother he’d nearly forgotten. He realized that the
embers of his calling had been smoldering: a vocation that would be ignited in
Barcelona and quickened in the mining towns of Asturias.
Trains, controlled
by the Anarchist CNT, were loaded up with other hopefuls like himself and crossed
the width of Spain bound for Asturias. Especially ironic was that the same trains were
then loaded up with the Guardia Civil and Moroccan Regulares by the Generalissimo
of the Republic, Francisco Franco, to relieve the garrisons besieged by the CNT
in the cities and villages of Asturias. The well trained and equipped veterans
of the Moroccan Regulars were especially brutal and had been given free rein to
suppress the region by what was then the right wing government of the Republic in
Madrid.
The miners had
been waiting behind the barricades by the time Alesandro had gotten through to
the hills above, and far beyond Oviedo, to an eagle’s aerie of a small mining
town nestled on the side of a precipice. The town was fortified with a
barricade against the single road that led up a winding track to it and backed
by the steep slopes behind leaving no room for retreat. He’d been issued an
antique WWI Mauser that he had no idea how to even load or shoot before he was
posted at the barricade, nothing more than a pile of furniture, mattresses, a
row of oil drums filled with water, a sandbag here or there, and the dreams and
hopes of a people.
The spirits were
high among his comrades as men and women stood watch together. None suspected
that help they called for from the CNT wasn’t coming to reinforce them. He’d
befriended a courier tyke called Huérfana by the others. The Guardia Civil had
orphaned her in the days leading up to the strike before they’d been evicted,
forced out of their barracks, by axes and shovels, a few hand guns and old
rifles, by men arising from dangerous mine shafts and the women who been
widowed and children orphaned. Her father was a respected organizer of the miners but was caught on the road with his Romani wife as they were announcing the fall
of the garrison at Oviedo to the miners there. Iniga slipped away at her
mother’s urging into the gathering crowd of onlookers witnessing the rifle
shots of their execution. It was their execution that began the uprising in
this village as the outrage that had been simmering so long came a boiling
point.
Unaware of her abilities and thinking of her
as only a child, Alesandro made the mistake of showing patronizing pity for the
orphan when first met her. She had brought him wine with stale bread and he
warned her, “Be careful, Huérfana, don’t go poking your pretty little head over
the ramparts.”
“You be careful!”
she snapped. “You don’t even know how to handle that rifle…. Do you?”
“I know how well
enough.” He lied.
“I can show you
around in case you get scared and need to hide.” She parried.
“How old are you
Huérfana?”
“My name isn’t
Huérfana,” she glowered, “It is Iniga and I’m ten.”
“Ten, really?” he
challenged, as she looked no older than eight.
“Nine and a half
then.” She admitted, trying to stand taller.
He liked her
attitude, “Iniga? That’s Euskara, eh?”
“Yes, it is Basque
and it means Fiery One!” before skittering away and out of sight she stopped
and turned, stomped her feet and snapped her fingers over her head flamenco
style, added, “I am Gitana too. What’s your name?”
“Alesandro. Gypsy, I am also
huérfano.” He laughed at her Chaplinesque image in canvas trousers stomping her
bare feet and making dust instead of the percussion of the clacking of heels.
“Alesandro, that isn’t
Euskara,” she scowled impishly.
“Yes it is, Alesandro
Zúñiga…” He offered her a crusty piece of the bread she’d given him. “Then you
are my sister.”
“Zúñiga, my father
spoke of a Zúñiga from Barcelona he knew when he was young.”
“Eder Zúñiga?”
“I think so. But
we are orphans… we have no name but one we choose.” Her expression changed from
a serious tone to expectantly cheerful. “I am an orphan and my name is only
one.”
“Then, please,
take this bread I offer,” he extended his pathetic crust of bread.
“Then you are my
brother. I give you a Euzkara name, Gotzon…an angel…, but an innocent angel.”
She accepted his offer of bread but disappeared for about ten minutes,
returning with a bundle of butcher paper holding two huge sausages and a fresh
stick of bread.
Her other hand held
five cartridges that she passed to him smirkily saying, “Here’s some ammo for
the rifle you don’t know how to shoot.”
He handed her the
rifle and she showed him how to load it. While she went through the rudimentary functions of the rifle for him, Alesandro thought of the differences between vigorous folk dances of the Basque, the wild frenzy of Gypsy flamenco, and the more restrained but equally fiery flamenco of Catalonia. A friendship of a lifetime was formed
that day and her tiny feet pounding up the dust on an Asturias barricade brought a smile to his face in the harder times of the years to come.
Two days later the
siege began. The town was overrun easily by the professional Moroccan veterans even
though the miners fought ferociously and valiantly. Exhausted, Alesandro retreated
to an alley he’d used before that was now closed off with rubble from the
pounding of artillery. Hoping to escape he found himself almost trapped.
He moaned, “This
is where I’m going to die.”
Leaning up against
what was left of a broken down wall he listened helplessly to the sounds of
firing squads and cries of children and women that were coming from every
direction. His handful of cartridges had been used and all he had of his old
Mauser rifle was the stick of its barrel he’d used as a club even after the
butt broke off of the stock. He heard a child screaming curses from over the wall
of rubble.
Thinking, “If I’m
going to die, I might as well die fighting.” He mustered enough strength to
hurl himself over the ruins, landing squarely on the other side to see a
Moroccan with his pants down to the knees, hips thrusting away, on the
screaming child underneath. Alesandro swung
wildly with the barrel of his busted rifle smashing into the side of the child rapist’s
head. The child he rescued was the huérfana, Iniga. Her face, bloody and
bruised, and her body, naked from the waist down, was clothed in a sheet of
blood. He tried to lift her… to take her away… where? No telling… away, that
was all.
She wriggled out from
his arms, fists pounding at his face indignant, “Cerdo, hands off…” Then she
opened her eyes to see his face, “Oh… it is you.”
He gave her his coat
to cover her, “We need to get out of here.”
Had the occasion
not been so horrific, little Iniga almost looked comical in the oversized coat.
She found her trousers that had been tossed aside and pulled them up and on
over her bloody legs. She rolled the Moroccan over face up and pulled out a
knife from the sheath on the Moroccan’s belt that was unbuckled still hanging
below his knees. Alesandro stood aside stunned and watched as she grabbed him
by the balls and in one quick slice cut them off. He came to.
“Puta! Puta!” He screamed in agony as she held
them up like a trophy. These would be his last words.
A thick bile rose
in Alesandro’s throat… he was about to vomit… he choked anxious, “Let’s go
before someone hears…”
“Someone hears
alright!” She picked up a heavy block of rubble with both her small child’s hands
and slammed it down… slippery with fresh blood… like an eel out of her hands…
picked it up again… pounded down and down again repeatedly on Moroccan’s skull
long after his body stopped jerking and he’d stopped breathing.
“Follow me!” She finished…
Alesandro followed
as though in a dark dream. He followed her through the maze of rubble and
broken down walls to a hiding place through a hole burrowed out under a slab of
concrete.
“I was digging
this out when that castrati found me,” she whispered, “C’mon, there is room
enough for you.” They watched from under their cover as truck after truck-load passed
by hauling away what was the left of the villagers. Some were taken out to the
side of the road to be shot… falling over into the arroyo. Others that were
left were taken away the first concentration camps of the era. Three thousand
were killed throughout the province as one after another, and another, thirty
to forty-thousand were imprisoned.
Iniga had saved
Alesandro that night as she led him out through the cover of darkness;
sheltering by day, and walking by night, the several kilometers to Gijón on the
coast. There they would be smuggled out by Basque fishermen in a small fishing
boat to safety across French border all the way to the port city of Bayonne.
