Paris, July, 1974

I have doubted, which talking each other is not strange to me because my life is a constant doubt, between doing is brought in here or to do in this affectionate collective blog called Grandfather Chive, in that certainly there is an entry of a marvelous signing of the blog, Fritus, which gives us an idea, with a few strokes, of covered with dandruff that the Spain of the seventies could become, and that that was the Spain, supposedly developed and entertaining. I have chosen for this binnacle, because although what I am going to write has an important nostalgic component, the corollary can have a lot to do with the motto that inspires this space:
Destined to reflect on the state of the left that does not resign itself to having a role merely institutional in the current advanced capitalist society
As it prays in the frontispiece of the binnacle.
It was Paris, it was a July, 1974, from hacía a few months a general with monocle was the President of the Portuguese Republic. My friend, more than friend, Carlos, one of few persons capable of conciliating his form of life with his consistent anarchistic ideology, and I we were occupying, and it might have put it with k because the rent was paid by a few companions who were, possibly, in Valencia, a garret, which had the disadvantage of being on the housing of the caretaker, placed in the number 109 of the rue République, 92800 Puteaux. It was, and it is, a small downtown of the Parisian banlieu, today surrounded with the enormous buildings that compose The Défense. But there we were not living, sensu strictu, only we were sleeping, except some evening in which defeated by the weariness and the famine, and the physical famine is, for me, one of the worst possible sensations, were sheltering there, to listen to music in an old record player. Music of that it was we who liked, in that epoch for me, and for my pal moreover, Rolling Stones, Beatles... etc, there were only the representation of a small-bourgeois and decadent culture, and the fact that in the USSR his discs were not sounding it was looking like to us a revolutionary advance. Ours there was outstanding figure Brassens, Brel, Ferrat, I ironed, as for Spain Paco Ibañez, Llach... etc. The Chilean drama was very recent and we had, when we were trying to forget at home our slightly buoyant situation, a Quilapayún disc sounding contínuamente:
That disc was containing a Russian popular song, Por mountains and prairies, which in the Spanish edition of the disc it was not representing, and I have not obtained it however much I have tried to find it, because that disc remained there. It was not ours, it was a property of Miguel and Manoli: What will have belonged to them? How would I like being able to express the gratitude to them for shelter has given without much ado his guarantee that that of being two communist young people, Carlos was equal of anarchist that today but my influence was great. They opened his house to us and left the keys to us when they went away to Valencia, because they were Valencian, and according to them we were doing a favor to them, because the caretaker, and of this I give fé, he wanted to evict them, something that would do as soon as the house was remaining empty. But the one who was doing the favor to the one who is more than clear. The term companion, an epithet that follows me filling of pride when it is used recounted to me, it reaches, with this way of exercising the solidarity, his important plenary meeting. To understand because of the Spanish edition of the disc it had eliminated this coarse song in spite of knowing the translation that the Chilean group had done of the letter:
For mountains and prairies
it advances the division,
to the assault it is going to take
the hostile position.
Red the flags forest
in the march in the direction of the south:
they are the workers in weapon,
partisans of the love.
The glory of these combats
it will never go out.
Forward companions
we will throw them to the sea!
It will stay in the legend
of this war, this volcano,
the days of Balachaied,
the soldiers of the soviet.
The bandits were finished,
the intervention was finished,
our march has ended
live through the revolution!
To mention the soviet in the Spain of the seventies, was too much to mention.
But most of the days, except the weekends that we usually dropped ourselves for Montreuil where they were living, also companions, Carmen and In July, to perpetrate at his parents what today we might define like a gastronomic saber wound, we were approaching up to the metro station of Pont de Neuilly, that then, now they have extended the line up to The Défense, were a line head, to move, generally after having entered without ticket, up to Odéon or Jussieu, by means of change Châtelet, which was doing the function that had in Madrid the station of the Sun, our Latin quarter explored untiringly: Boul'Mich, Boulevard Saint-Germain, Rue de la Montaigne of Sainte-Geneviève, Rue Saint-Jacques, garden du Luxembourg, etc, to meet almost always the same Spanish, and to celebrate with them, day yes and day also, Franco's death, which in spite of the tromboflebitis would be late moreover of one year in expiring with the succession forecasts, regretting about us of the bad luck of Luis Ocaña, who one year earlier had triumphed in the Tour and trying to make him one-eyed to general Diez Alegría, Chief of Staff of that time and with democrat's certain reputation, to see if it was cheering up and filling the carnations rifles. When the intestines were beginning dreaming we could approach, depending where we were, to the university dining rooms of Mabillon or Jussieu where for three Francs, which then one was changing to twelve fifty, they were giving something similar to meal, and if there was luck there could appear an excursion of Spanish students of holidays, that properly impressed by the fortunes history in ninety per cent fictitious and exaggerated in ten remaining per cent, they could end up by supporting the food. The days that there was pig in the menu, not too much unfortunately, it could be interesting to sit down next to some messmate, possibly, Muslim because if it was observante of his religious prescripts, one could be overfed. But the days were not small that we were eating up a sausage, castigadísima of mustard, sat in the Luxembourg making use of the summer, although in the Parisian summer the rain is not infrequent. In the evening, but we had some of the conspiratorial meetings in which, after stating that Franco, to whom we had given for dead person in the morning, was alive, it was necessary to design a strategy to knock down him, or there was a public act in the Mutualité that equal could be of the F.R.A.P. or of the L.C.R., that then was called L.C.R.-E.T.A. (VI), we could approach Nanterre, where there was always something, cultural or politically speaking, interesting. There we met a singer salmantino called Paco Curto, which was mounting some, they seemed to me, impressive recitations, or sung, of singing of Mine Brave man, and with that then, and along with the rest of assistants, all Spaniards what had consequences that a gentleman must not reveal, we went away of binge, and of course a cent did not wear out. And neither we were wearing out at all when we were "buying", any book in the positions that existed in the street, perhaps because the last step forgot us, consistent on entering the corresponding bookstore to pay the price. This we could not do it when we were approaching the rue Latran, behind the Pahthéon, where there was the bookstore of the Iberian, first Hem because it had been morally reprehensible and also because, after all also they were Spanish, it was impossible, they knew the cloth. In this bookstore, and also in the acts of the Mutualité, I learned to distinguish the Spanish, supposedly secret police officers. He would not be able to define the porqué but they were perfectly recognizable and distinguishable.
And it might continue with this nostalgia attack, really more own than the Grandfather Chive, which of this binnacle. That's why I stop, because I need to reflect on the passed time. The nostalgia tends, inevitably, to stand out, can that praising them, and in this sense spoiling them, the most positive, more agreeable aspects, of the past and I have to do an effort, not excessively big if I am sincere, to remember the bad moments, especially the fear, this fear that there was fixing in the mouth of the stomach when one was raising the stairs of the meter coming to a jump (for not young people or not initiated a jump was a declaration lightning, for which only there was summoned a limited number of the people, a command, with the target to create confusion, in some jumps a limited number of members of the command was taking Molotov cocktails generally to use them against banking institutions) or worse still to a declaration summoned publicly and in that the presence of the police was sure and therefore the careers, with the little that I like the exercise, they had to be inevitable. Or the frontier steps with material prohibited in Spain, and not only for his political character coarsely hidden between the dirty underwear. Because we ran risks, because the transition: that one unjustly risen up to the altars, transition! it was not the way of roses that any of them want to sell to us. Because he had died in Vitoria, because they murdered in Atocha young companions, because they murdered in Montejurra, because a command of extreme right murdered Carlos González, because another command of extreme right, or perhaps the same one, murdered Arturo Ruiz, and I, and many other, it was very close, and in the declaration to protest for this murder, and in that we inform great, the police, straight the police, these police whom not a lot of time later our leading, brave shit leaders, were inviting us, when they were not demanding, to be applauded, it murdered Maria Luz Nájera. We ran a lot of risks and spent, I at least, a lot of fear. But.... Was it worth it?

If one remembers moments like this one, moment in which someone, on behalf of the Communist Party of Spain he signed the most infamous of the capitulations, it is not doubt of the answer. If to me, and as to me, they had said to many which was going to be the result of our risks and our fears, it is possible that we had acted otherwise. I did not risk, I did not spend fear to come to this. Then he was thinking, it was the correct and majority analysis, that we were calling the bourgeois democracy, like that of that time and like that I keep on calling it, it was a necessary evil in the way towards a better world. Today I have not left another remedy than to modify partly this affirmation talks each other of an unnecessary evil, and also counter-productively. Today we have not left any more remedy that to play in this stage, because we have no force to change it, because the force that we had, that it is possible that it was more than they were making us believe, they squandered it, they us her squandered, they stole it from us, gave it in our name in exchange for agreements, chalaneos and shady deals.

Nevertheless, personally, I believe that it me was worth it. I learned many things, forged a character and especially I placed a few beginning, politicians basically but also ethical, that I feel today more fortresses that never, although someone, I believe that affectionately, it considers me to be as a reactionary. I always knew that the kings magicians were El Corte Ingles, the gifts Pável Korchaguin always brings them to me. And especially because I, which obviously I did not inform in the May, 68, as to Rick and to Ilsa, and which always hated Laszlo always fucks me me will have left, the memory of this Paris, in which I could dress myself of blue when the whole Spain was dressing of gray.