Rafa and some peeps in Alfacar at the end... Possibly one of the most interesting teachers I've ever had in College.
OK, so Friday, I took a trip with a small group of my classmates to a couple pueblos called Viznar and Alfacar. It was SUPPOSED to be everyone from the two Rafa poly sci classes, but of course some people just weren't interested. I, however, was and went, along with probaly 15 others.
A view of the Pueblos
Anyways, we showed up at the bus stop at about 10 for the 10:30 bus and we hopped on it over the the first pueblo. Granada is considered a 'ciudad' and viznar and alfacar are 'puebles', right because they are smaller and like suburbs of Granada.
Anyways, we get to Viznar, which is like, a strong communist town and we see some sights, and we start walking through the country side behind the town and we get to this trail. We didn't realize it at first, but it was a trail that over a thousand people had followed to their deaths.
We were walking to the mass grave of Alfacar/Viznar (it was right between). During the Spanish Civil War when General Franco organized an army to overthrow the Second Republic, they murdered thousands of people with contradicting ideals... sometimes even if they didn't have those ideals. I recall Rafa telling us about a man whom he had talked to who told him, "The captain told him to shoot the man... and the soldier replied, but why, he says he's not against us." And the captain replied, "because you have to shoot that man."
The Mass Grave. People still bring flowers to mourn their deaths. They were all family members of the towns people made examples of during the war. There were three of them within the 200 square feet or so area we were in.
We sat around the steps around the grave for a while and talked, and Rafa gave us some history of the area and also some stories that he had heard from the locals.
He told us, during the war, everyone in the towns were mixed. So the soldiers being with Franco, when he occupied the area with his military, would be used to murder the members of other families in the town. So years later, when their children grew up, they all decided to not talk about any of it, because no one wanted to keep the old affiliations from the war, and no body wanted to remember. Because if they did, everyone would be accusing everyone of whose father killed who, and it would be a huge mess.
It was tranquil... but with an air of morbidity.
There were lots of stories like that from the towns members. Another was of how Rafa said he talked to a man who told him he could actually remember the sounds in his head of the gun fire when they would march people up the hill over the the lip of the pit, and shoot them, leaving them to fall into the pit of bodies and die.
There were loads of people that died there during the war and the years that followed. But the local celebrity was a native named Fredrico Garcia Lorca, a gifted writer from Granada. As the story goes, after he returned from his voyage to New York, he lived in Madrid. And after the war broke out, he informed his family that he wanted to move back to Granada, despite their warnings of danger. After he got back, he was singled out by military personnel and brought up to the pit. Some have accounts of him being taken away to another area beyond the hills though. In fact, Rafa spoke with man from the town who told him,
"No, I WAS THERE. And I saw Lorca being taken beyond those hills right there *points*."
Supposedly Lorca may not be in the mass grave, but instead by a tree further down the road that we visited later. The interesting part comes with the knowledge of the fact that Lorca was close friends with a Francoist writer, and was not at all politically affiliated. So when the soldiers came, his family argued this point. But of course they took him anyway. His family also bothered the military with requests to recover the body to be taken to a proper burial ground, and some even say is was excavated and brought outside of Andalusia... But who knows.
People also left notes on the trees about their feelings for Lorca and those who were murdered.
After we finished talking about the horror stories from the war, we took off down the road towards Alfacar. On the way we passed the tree that many people suspect is the current resting place of the remains of Garcia Lorca...
This is the tree that is suspected to be the alternate grave of Lorca...
Rafa pointing at something off in the distance. Probably giving a bit of history about the pueblos or Granada.
We stopped at another Lorca park that was quite pretty (even more so when its functioning I'm sure) and stopped at the center of Alfacar to have lunch.
We went into one of the famous bakeries where we got some bread for 50 cents a loaf and bought some cheap condiments. Everything was very cheap, which made me happy.
After eating, we caught the bus back to Granada and talked to Rafa about how many languages he knew and how surprising it was that he knew English. See, during his class, he never speaks in English, because its a spanish course of course. So we never really knew. But we suspected because when someone doesn't know how to say a word in spanish, they will say it in English, and always seems to understand. NOT ALL of the teachers speak english too. So when he busted out the english while talking to a woman from Holland in Alfacar with us at the bus stop, we were all surprised! It was pretty good too.
So anyways, we got back and I headed home to study and that was that! I felt a little off that night so I didn't go out or anything (there was noone in town anyways) and I went to bed.
Thats my story of Alfacar and Viznar! It was a fun time, and definitely one of my little treasures from Granada that I will remember, because it was so experiential. Sitting out next to the history that we were learning about. It doesn't get much better than that.
Until laters
Paul G
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