Dear José

April 20, 2025April 20, 2025 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Dear José,

Many years ago you met my grandmother at a fair in London. Did you know what that meeting would set in motion? I guess not. You were young then – younger than me – and you were trying to find your place in a changing world. I often wonder what it would be like if you hadn’t lost your life so young. Would you have been a loving grandfather, or a distant one? From your letters, you seem proud, defiant, caring but also opportunistic, hell-bent on your dream to be a part of the future.

We never met, you and I, but you have always been with me. I tell your story wherever I go. It is what gives me the motivation to get up and work in the morning. It’s a sweeping love story, the one you had with my grandmother, complete with a tragic ending. Perhaps you might not have turned out to be the hero I have built you up to be had you survived. You would have been able to tell your own version of events, and the tale might have faded into the fabric of normality – and you could have lived a life like everyone else’s. But since you departed this world just days after my mother came into it, it falls to me to tell your story.

You were a natural linguist, José. By twenty-five you could speak Spanish, English, Catalan, French and German in an age when it wasn’t especially wise to command more than castellano, which makes you something of a rebel, too. That must have been your father’s Republican blood in your veins. The regime may have got to him, but his spirit lived on in you and your desire to see the world beyond your hometown. Perhaps it is only destiny that your tragic death would lead your daughter and grandson to spend the rest of their lives trying to find their way back to the place you tried to escape from.

I am English, and yet I still bookend that identity with the word “desafortunadamente” (unfortunately) when I’m travelling in your country. I have lived most of my life on this island, with the exception of three wonderful years in Spain – though none of them in the regions you called home. You grew up in the coastal plains of Alicante and plied your trade along the Costa Brava, traveling between Murcia and Barcelona in search of the future. Before I knew I was searching for you, I scoured the other half of the country: the jagged mountains of Andalusia and the wild steppe country of Extremadura. You came to London and fell in love with an English girl. I came to your country and fell in love – though not with a Spanish beauty, as I have so often hoped, but with the land itself.

As a boy, I was infatuated with her wilderness. I saw her marbled fields and the limestone scars of her sierras and I knew I had found a place like nowhere else on Earth. I saw the almond blossom in the snows of Grazalema and watched the midday sun dance off the shimmering surface of the Mediterranean. I saw the lights go out all across the countryside one night and saw my beloved Andalusia bathed in moonlight, as beautiful as a bride on her wedding night, and I started to understand why the Moors had wept when they were driven from this land all those years ago. I was just a boy, then, and I sought her beauty in living things that I could put a name to: chameleons, vultures, ibex and wild boar. But she was always there, waiting in the wilderness, weaving her spell upon me as I wandered about, camera in hand.

As a student, I started to perceive her with a keener eye. I looked beyond the wildlife guides and the history books and saw the people. In my own way, my infatuation turned into an awkward romance – quite literally, in one case. I learned the hard way that Spain guards its beauty jealously, and that, like any wild thing, she is deeply wary of the world beyond. You were brave, José, or at least restless – for you, I think, Spain was not enough. But for every one of you there must have been hundreds who knew that theirs was a beautiful country, and that change – if it must come at all – must be carefully and watchfully scrutinised as a stranger.

I was knocked about quite a bit as I came to terms with my identity. I wanted to be Spanish – I really, truly did – but it was more out of a selfish desire to be anything but English, rather than out of love and understanding. Every comment about my blue eyes, my accent and my figures of speech cut me like a knife. It was a reminder that the car that took your life also took away mine – my chance at being a part of a land and a people that I had grown to love, dashed upon the concrete by a stranger behind the wheel whose name I will never know.

I had almost given up on that hope until I found you. One day, the scales of that pretentious longing fell away and I remembered the reason I had set out on this journey, all those years ago – the journey laid out before my feet by my mother, who had far more cause to feel the pain of your loss than I. When I found your family, at last, everything suddenly came together. If I had any doubts, they were lost forever. I did have a family in Spain: cousins and uncles and aunts, as many as I could ever have hoped for and then some. And I found you, José, together with your mother Mercedes. Did you like the flowers I left for you? I am sorry I did not leave any there this year. I will make amends for that before the year is out. But know that you are always in my prayers. Every time the rosary is in my hands, or there is a prayer on my lips, there too is your name – for you have been my guiding light ever since.

You probably don’t want me to put you on such a pedestal. And I’m old enough now and wise enough to know that pedestals are usually set at the feet of false idols. But if it weren’t for you, my life would be half a life. If you hadn’t met my grandmother all those years ago, I might never have seen the things that I have seen. Sure, I might have lived a happier, more grounded life as a full-blooded Englishman. I might have taken a regular job – whatever that is – and been content to settle down with a girl from the city.

But your Spanish blood changed all of that. Mixed in with that steadfast appreciation for order and eccentricity in equal measure that is so English runs an unquiet vein that demands adventure and passion – something greater than the ordinary, something beyond. I have railed against it and wished for stability and the loving arms of a girl who will ground me, but again and again I feel it, the call of the homeland, the maddening restlessness that drives the swallow south every autumn. I have gambled my life upon that restlessness, trading friends and normalcy for that fleeting dream that is always just beyond my reach. I am still here on this rock, teaching your language and culture and spreading your love of music wherever I can, but always I hear the call. It is fierce, elemental, like the thunderclouds of spring or the waves of the Atlantic.

I do not know where I belong. I don’t think I ever have, and that’s why I’ve always drifted, loving and cherishing friends deeply while they were near, and then letting them slip through my fingers as the current carried me on. The stability I long for and the restlessness in my heart make for strange bedfellows – they are more like ships in the night. I have no home beyond my work, and my work is my anchor. You were no teacher, José, but we are kindred spirits, you and I: languages are my trade just as much as they were once yours, and while you used yours to build a bridge to England, it fell apart when you died, and I have spent the rest of my life building another one, both for me and for all of the children in my charge. Not all of them will follow me across that bridge, but if I can share with those few that do just a fragment of that brilliant light that waits on the other side, I will have done something to honour your legacy.

Watch over me, dear José. Give me the courage to chase my dream over the horizon, wherever it may lead.

Watch over me, dear Mercedes. Give me the wisdom and the words to tell my stories, and I will carry you with me everywhere in my journal just as you once did.

Watch over me, dear Mateo. Give me the power to face my fears head-on, the way you did when the government forced you out of your job. You found love in the middle of a war and dreamed of building a library. Perhaps that’s why they came for you. I am at least halfway to realising your second dream. Guide me toward the light of realising your first, also.

I don’t know what your take was on faith, José. From your letters, I don’t imagine you had an awful lot of time for it. But I do.

So watch over me, Blanca Paloma. You were with me when I was just a boy and you showed me that Paradise had a name. You walked with me on the Camino along with the spirits of my ancestors. You introduced me to the hoopoe, the kite, the ibis and the lynx. And you healed my heart when nothing else could. I know you are with me – I feel it in my heart.

I do not know if I am on the path you intended for me, José, but I know that it is the right path. And someday, I will close the circle. I will finish what you started.

Your grandson – linguist, adventurer, romantic and man after your own heart. BB x

Rewind, Reset, Refocus

March 14, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Diary Entry: 14th March, 2012. Ten years ago today.

Heavens above, the first night of Fiddler is less than a day away! This year has flown by… Today went by in a similar blur: four frees (essentially), Spanish and English raced past with a quick thrashing of Peter at chess over lunch and a Yearbook planning session. The dress rehearsal was superb – a lot to be ameliorated for the night itself (apparently) but otherwise very good. I must say, personally, I’m impressed with everyone. Our Tevye in particular: he’s come a long way since only just deciding to put his oar in… One of the big five is almost out of the way! The only question is… what next?

When I was seventeen, lists to me were everything. I think it was a long hangover from the teenage bird-watching days: garden lists, patch lists, year lists and lifers. That kind of thing. I wasn’t really the kind of kid who had it all figured out from the beginning, but I did appreciate a tick list to motivate me. I must have the original “bucket list” of fifty miscellaneous tasks I wanted to achieve before the age of fifty stored away on a memory stick, buried deep beneath a hundred other forgotten half-finished jobs, books and games. The irony isn’t lost on me.

I still remember the big five, though. They were the “ultimate goals”, the quests that I had to complete, come Hell or high water. It went something like this:

~~Play the part of Motel in~~ ~~Fiddler on the Roof~~
~~Get a place at Durham University~~
Travel from Cairo to Cape Town
Get married
Publish the book

You’ll notice that two of them are struck through. Completed. Dicho y hecho. You might well think it more than a little foolish that I managed to get two of my five “great quests” completed within six months of each other, and by the age of eighteen, to boot. You might also question the logic of making the First Quest so very specific, which relied upon a great many external factors, but as the descendant of a lost Jewish family driven into hiding, Fiddler on the Roof holds a very special place in my heart. I was also uncommonly blessed with a musical director for a mother, so I did, I admit, have a significant advantage in achieving one of them early on.

“*Is there a blessing for a sewing machine?*“

Durham? Durham wasn’t even up for debate. I simply had to get there. And though I do my very best to advise my own students against such stubborn folly, I was more than prepared to take a gap year and have a second shot when I didn’t get a place at the university of my dreams the first time around. Call it madness, but I wasn’t prepared to accept anywhere else. It was a gamble I ended up making good on, shored up by a much more favourable set of A Level grades. A combination of luck, hard work and stubborn pride secured me the Second Quest.

Of the remaining three, one was swapped out a few years back for a new quest:

3. ~~Find the family~~

As I got older and my desire for reckless travel steadily fell away – the pressures of holding down a job and being in a relationship will do that to you, I guess – the idea of making the great overland trek from Cairo to Cape Town by any means at hand drifted further and further into the nether realms of lost dreams. Living in Uganda very much whetted my appetite for all things African, but in the years since I’ve been made to question that interest so often, through the lens of anti-colonialism, BLM and the downfall of my Gospel Choir. Eventually, the risks outweighed the allure. I buried that dream a long time ago, and replaced it with a much more personal Third Quest: finding the lost family I had never met.

I found them. That was five years ago – you can read the story here, if you missed it. Of all my quests, the search for my family has been the most precious, and I live in its afterglow twice a week every week as I guide my youngest cousin towards his English B1 exam.

That leaves only two of the original five: arguably, the two chambers of my heart. The book, and the one. I’m not afraid to admit that my single greatest ambition since childhood has been one and the same, and combines those two into one; and that is to read my own stories to my own children one day. It’s an image I’ve had in my head for almost twenty years: sitting on the edge of the bed, my life’s work in my hands, putting on all these silly voices and painting the world I’ve spent decades creating for my children. Leading them there, chapter by chapter. Watching them grow up with my heroes, until they find stories of their own and take up the mantle my great-grandparents passed on to me.

Of course, there’s a small but fundamental stepping stone that must be crossed first: the Fourth Quest.

Getting married and publishing the book. The two quests go hand in hand. That, perhaps, is why coming out of a long-term relationship has been a bit more jarring than I thought it would be. The derailing of two quests at once. A future rerouted, rewritten, a page of thoughts and ideas and names scrubbed blank. It’s not disheartening – nothing can be when the birds are singing and the year is on the turn – but it does leave you knocked out of orbit.

Ten years ago tonight, I was psyching myself up for the first night of Fiddler on the Roof. Tonight, Russian forces continue to cut a burning path through Ukraine. Kiev shelled. Mariupol in flames. Hospitals in ruins. As Motel, I took my young family and fled west into Europe. The radio today was talking about how the British government is offering a tax-free allowance of £350 per month to those willing to put up Ukraine’s refugees. According to the Beeb, some 43,000 have already signed up to help, only five hours in.

The events described in Fiddler took place in 1905. More than a hundred years later, the parallels seem alarming. They put one’s troubles in context. Personal quests and family pride must be denied and set aside and mortified and all that. Perhaps it’s high time I set myself a new quest. In the meantime, there is work, and work is good for the soul, even if marking GCSE translations is a far cry from any soul food I’ve ever eaten. BB x

Tevye: Work hard, Motel. Come to us soon.
Motel: I will, Reb Tevye. I’ll work hard.
Fiddler on the Roof, Act II, Scene 8

Athene noctua

February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

The students have gone home for half term. Silence hangs over the school. The corridors of the boarding house are dark, and a little cold, too. The floorboards creak under my foot with the kind of volume that only darkness can amplify. The dull glow from the torch on my phone casts long shadows. A friend of mine once explored an abandoned hospital on a dare. I did not go with him then, out of some primordial fear of the darkness within. And yet, here I am, haunting the empty corridors of this old house by night, the last man standing. Filling up a water bottle from the cooler on the Year 10 corridor becomes a quest in its own right.

I’ve had a lot of time to think lately. I guess coming out of a long term relationship will do that for you. One of the things I thought I might be able to recover was the fierce reading streak I had on my year abroad, but I just can’t find my mojo for that right now. Time just seems to slip through my fingers when I’m not at work. I wonder what the world does when it’s not working? I guess that’s what television is for, or Netflix, or whatever streaming service is in right now. But then, I’ve never been good at sitting down to movies or TV shows. My brain wants to be involved. There’s a precious few I’d happily watch over and over and over again, but it’s rare that I find a new picture out there that sinks in.

There’s not a day goes by where I don’t feel a genuine fulfilment in my line of work. Teaching is in my blood, a duty that my ancestors have carried out for generations. Knowing that I am the torch-bearer for my generation gives me a sense of purpose that is utterly unshakeable. And it’s not as though that purpose hasn’t been tested over the years. It’s just that, whenever something comes up to shake its fist in my direction, I know instinctively that there’s a greater mission behind it all, and that’s reason enough to persevere – even when my core beliefs are thrown into disarray. I wonder if my great-grandparents, Mateo and Mercedes, ever had such doubts?

There’s a little owl calling outside. It’s been piping away from the upper branches of the Atlas cedar in the drive for half an hour now. The foxes have been quiet for a week or so now. I suppose their noisy January antics in the front quad are over for the year. Three buzzards were soaring over the grounds the other day during morning break, but none of the students seemed to notice. The redwings and the fieldfares have moved on and the snowdrops are out. The daffodils will be on their heels soon enough. I escaped to Richmond Park a few weekends back, just as the first blooms were sprouting. It was good to see the wide world again, even if only through my own eyes.

The meltwater of the long Covid winter is starting to run. Just like the birdsong and the subtle shift in the light over the last couple of days, change is in the air. Piece by piece, the last fragments of the old world are coming back. At the request of one of my students, I blew the dust off my long-neglected violin and rocked up to orchestra this week. I’m about as good on the thing as I ever was – that is, haphazard at best – but I’d forgotten how much fun it used to be. It’s one of those things that simply slipped through my fingers over the last couple of years.

I think I’ll take up the guitar this half term. A zealous diet of sevillanas have powered me through the darkness of the winter months this year, and I’m done with being able to sing along but never sing alone. At the very least it will give me something to do until my provisional arrives and I finally confront the long-delayed challenge of learning to drive, which I have put off for far too long.

I’m done with playing games. It’s high time I went on another adventure. The Easter holidays aren’t far off, and I could do with some more writing fuel. And spring is always such a hopeful time of year. BB x

Living out of a Book: Adventures with a Journal

January 16, 2022January 17, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The Red Book (my first “Renaissance” journal) at the feet of Washington Irving, Granada (March 2016)

Let me tell you something for free: full-time employment is a writer’s bane. You knew that already, so neither of us lost anything in that transaction. Except me, and the ever-increasing gaps between the dates in my journal.

I spent so much of this weekend powering through marking after a week of KS3 assessments that it only occurred to me as I filed my Year 9 papers away that last weekend was the first time I’d given my novel some serious thought in a year and a half. Since you can chalk that “blip” up to the first lockdown, it’s probably safe to say the last time I made any real headway with my book was before I took up a post in a boarding school back here in the UK. That is to say, back when I was living in Extremadura, now almost four years ago. If it weren’t for the fact that I still carry a journal around with me, I’d have made no progress in that time whatsoever.

But since I’m more of a glass-half-full kind of guy, I’m going to focus less on the killing instinct of working life and more on the magic of keeping a journal. Because, as always, there’s a story behind it – and in my case, it’s a lot more personal than I ever knew.

I’ve written reasonably extensively about my journalling habit before, but in case you missed it, click here for an earlier piece on one of my favourite journals, the Red Book.

Sketching the windy peaks of Montserrat (April 2019)

I don’t think I’ve ever been without a sketchbook of sorts. Going back to my parents’ place for Christmas turned up quite a few of my oldest surviving books, dog-eared, half-filled and almost all of them featuring the same cast of characters that share a space in my head and my heart to this day. Studying Art for GCSE and A Level naturally fed the habit, though I seem to remember having separate sketchbooks for school and for myself right the way through. I suppose I should reach out to a couple of early inspirations here: to Mr Howe, for his no-holds-barred approach to sketchbook work (“unfinished pieces are often more interesting than finished pieces” has stuck with me); to my old friend Freddie, whose handwriting I secretly admired and have long since adapted into my own; and, of course, to my own mother, who must have kept several journals of her own when she was younger.

These first attempts were more art than word, though. It wasn’t until my eighteenth year that I took the craft of journalling more seriously, riding off the back of having successfully kept a diary for a little over a whole year – to date, the longest successful writing streak in my life. With many long months to go until the first day of my degree, I picked up a small flip-journal from Waterstones and penned some thoughts. At first, it was just lists: locations in my novel, possible pen names, key elements for fantasy fiction. On the second page I branched out and jotted down some facts that I found interesting, for a change of pace (my brother was quick to point out this was a considerably less interesting way to use a journal). I guess not everybody needs to know that the underside of a waterfall is called an undercutting; that Mullah Omar donned the mystical Cloak of the Prophet to drum up support in 1996; and that Dr William Bryden was the sole survivor of the Khyber Pass massacre of 1842.

Three pages in and the novel is the back in the limelight – and so it continues. Every so often, I find something in a book or on the news that I deem worthy of recording, but as a rule, the bulk of my pen-and-pencilwork concerns the fate of my cast of characters and the world in which they live, ever-growing, ever-crystallising. Sketches in pencil duck and weave through the gaps like weasels, giving over onto full page illustrations when I really found my mojo. It’s a formula I have deviated from very little for nine years now.

Gypsy Legends and Grenadine Gifts (2020)

When I was younger, and I still had these crazy notions (as the young and reckless always do) of embarking upon death-defying expeditions to Afghanistan and beyond, I remember thinking that, if something should happen to me, the world in my head that I had spent all but the first seven years of my life creating would disappear completely. That is, unless I left enough material behind for somebody to pick up the pieces. I suppose that morbid justification stuck, because there is now enough information spread across my various journals for somebody to put together the various stories I have always wanted to tell.

The rain in Spain on the plane (August 2019)

And perhaps there’s a logical explanation for that mindset.

My great-grandmother Mercedes was a woman ahead of her time. In a Spain teetering on the brink of Civil War, she found love with a poet and musician called Mateo. They corresponded in verse, quoting Oscar Wilde and Keats and Plato and Engels. Their handwritten letters to each other – safeguarded by my family for over fifty years – tell of a truly devoted husband and wife on an equal intellectual footing, flying in the face of the dictadura and the expectations of women outlined in the Guia de la buena esposa. Mercedes was well-known about town for her journal, which was as much a part of her character as her glass of brandy and cigars. Though her locally legendary journals themselves are lost to time, it is chiefly through her precious letters to her Mateo that I can see through a window in that past. It is a past which comes clearer into focus the more I get to know my family out there. The fatalist in me cannot help but wonder at the sequence of events that led to me arriving at my family’s door with little more than my journal in hand, unconsciously carrying the one item that would prove my connection to a great-grandmother I never had the chance to meet. Mercedes left this world the very same year I came into it.

I spent the greater part of my search for my family focused on the grandfather I never knew, but it is my bisabuela Mercedes who guides my hand these days. I’m a strong believer in upholding family traditions, and it doesn’t half lend a sense of purpose to the scribblings in my journals, even if they never lead anywhere. My ancestors left me a literal paper trail and I must follow.

Have you ever kept a journal? I’d highly recommend it. It’s less onerous than a diary and a beautiful thing to look back on. Through mine, I can read the world around me through the strokes of my pen: the euphoria of success in the a cappella semifinals; my bewilderment at Brexit; the shockwaves of the fire of Notre-Dame; and my bottomless love for the country of my ancestors. It’s all there, and since boarding school life makes it nigh-on impossible to knock out a couple of chapters a week like I used to, my journals do a thumping good job at telling the story.

And maybe, one day, that’s exactly what they’ll do, when they fall into the hands of my grandchildren. I’d like that. I think Mercedes would have liked that, too.

BB x

The Strength of Blood

May 19, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Seat eighty-six, coach two. A sky full of flat-bottomed clouds. The immensity of La Mancha racing by in a haze of olive green, dirty white and wine red, with scarlet carpets of poppies laid out in the tall grass of the wheat-fields. Ruined farmhouses crumbling amongst the endless vineyards, men and women bent double as they work the fields, and a lonely oak tree standing tall. Woodpigeons scattering in the wake of the train; a single kestrel perched high upon a telegraph pole; a pair of harriers wheeling overhead on slender wings, the female a living shadow of the earth below, the male a silver spirit of the sky above. I cannot see the bustards I saw on the way here, nor the rabbits or hares or even the magpies. But far off to the south the land rises, and I can see the blue hills of La Solana and Infantes, the vanguard of the sierras of Andalusia. Andalusia: where all of this began.

It seems strange, now, to imagine this whole Spanish adventure without my family at the heart of it. All those years spent wandering in the shade of the stone pines of Doñana, hiking in the scrubby mountains around Grazalema and anchoring myself in one way or another to an ancient, characterful little corner (literally) of the province of Cádiz… I question why, a cup of café con leche in hand, we did not simply come straight here to La Mancha, where the family is, was and always had been, rather than go chasing the same Andalusian dream that ruined so many British families before us. It would have made a lot more sense, certainly. But such is the way of things, and if we had, would I have half the story to tell? Would I even be where I am today? I think not.

The high sierras of Ronda. The stone pine forests of Huelva. The scent of snow in the Alpujarras, the Arabic lettering on the walls of the Alhambra and the pillared forest of the Great Mosque of Córdoba. And of course, the unspoilt wilds of Extremadura, from the plains of Cáceres to the paradise hills of La Vera. That is the Spain I know. The Spain I have come to love with all of my heart. Just as an athlete needs to warm up before a race, so too did I need to wander before finding my way. My mother chose the destination; I chose the road.

As I continue my wandering in the streets of Alcázar de San Juan, waiting for the connecting train to Madrid, I pass a small and modern church. Families pour out onto the street, shaking hands, exchanging kisses, the children playing chase in the street. I say to myself, aloud, “así habría sido mi vida, quizás…”. I walk in the direction of the windmills, knowing full well I will not make it there and back in the forty minutes at my disposal. I find a small park on the way and stop to eat a semicurado sandwich in a concrete ring decorated with painted tiles telling the story of Don Quijote. I must read that book, I really must. It’s nothing short of a crime to have come this far with my Spanish and not to have read the book.

An hour passes. The train sails through the lush greenery of Aranjuez. My mind races back to an August afternoon, many years ago, when my parents decided to break up the long drive south to our new home with a visit to the royal palace there. Twelve year-old me, with little to no idea what I was getting myself in for, crouched down over a pond staring at pumpkinseed fish. Leaving England behind meant nothing to me, then. I was going to live in a country with pumpkinseed fish, and eagles, and hoopoes, and vultures, and Cola Cao. I knew my priorities. These days I’m not so sure. I know what they are – that much I have learned – but which are the most pressing priorities, the ones I truly cannot live without… that is hard to say.

Without England, I would not have my music. My gospel choir. My a cappella group. My funk band and the chance to pour all my heart and soul into the most powerful necessity on the planet. But without Spain, I would not have my greatest love. I would not have my family, my ever-changing, ever-constant paradise, and the happiness machine that is the Spanish language itself (forgive the overuse of the word “my” – it is so very easy to feel possessive about the things you care the most about). For the last three years I have been forced to choose between the two, and it has done its level best to tear me apart.

Seat forty-eight, coach one. Getafe rises up and out of the fields, heralded by an advance guard of red tower blocks on the horizon. The wilderness is behind us now; the metropolis ahead. Last night I dreamed I was climbing a steep forested hill, when out of nowhere a stag, huge and thunderous with broad antlers, bolted out of the bushes, cleared the fence to my left in a single leap and came to a halt on the other side of the path, looking back at me as though to challenge me. Google says to dream of a stag is an augur of caution against making hasty decisions, and that a running stag foretells a great deal of luck in family life. It sounds like superstitious stuff and nonsense to me, but in truth, I have not had a dream so vivid in a long time. And I have been known to avoid walking under scaffolding.

By eight thirty tonight I will be back at work. With exam season in full swing I could hardly ask for more than I already have. But I return home full of light. Spending the weekend with my family has been everything I wanted it to be and more besides, just like it was this time last year, and the Easter before that. I have never known a happiness quite like it. Seeing the shock, the joy and the tears on my little cousin’s face when he saw me in the church of San Blas… it is a memory I will never forget. Last year it was the novelty of discovery that shook me. Now it is the strength of love and blood, the strongest of all ties. And it will keep me strong until we meet again. That much I know. BB x

Family Reunion: Part Two

March 31, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

When all is said and done, there is surely nothing more important in life than family. I always knew that. A hundred books and films tell you explicitly what your parents don’t have to. But my mother did, in one way or another, and one way or another I set my heart on finding my lost Spanish family years ago. It makes me proud, prouder than I’ve ever been, to say that I’ve done it. It was nerve-wracking and emotional, but I did it. My world just got five sizes larger over the space of a single night. I’m happier than I’ve been in years and not even a third repeat of Charlie Puth’s How Long over the bus radio can dampen my spirits. Not today.

“How did you know where to find us?” they asked.
“You’re Spanish,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

Twenty-four years on and none of my relatives had moved so much as a mile from where they were before. God bless the Spanish and their strong family ties.

I had so many questions when I pulled into Villarrobledo on Thursday afternoon. I got so many answers that I almost ran out of questions by the end of it all. Now it all makes sense! The great-grandmother from Albacete, the school in Teruel, the letters from Cataluña, the ties to Murcia and the car accident in Alicante. I had all the pieces, but I needed somebody who knew how to assemble them. Luckily for me, my grandfather’s cousin Encarna was just that person. Born in Alicante, raised in La Mancha, educated in Murcia and displaced to Cataluña for a short time, my grandfather Pepe covered in twenty-nine years just about every corner of Spain that I haven’t in twenty-four. Between the two of us we have the whole peninsula in our hands. I still have so much of his world to see, but I’ve made a great start, and that’s always the hardest part.

It’s hard to know what was the very best moment of the last three days. Rafaelín’s insatiable curiosity. Encarna’s spectacular cooking. Natalia’s “en Semana Santa no se pega”. Hanging out with a generation of cousins I never knew I had. Jokes about vegans, vegetarians and hapless Brits abroad, three spine-tingling saetas, and Jesús brought back to the church in what looked like a body-bag by the Guardia Civil to protect him from the rain. I’ve never felt closer to the spirituality of Semana Santa and the family were only too happy to introduce me. I’ve only ever seen it through the eyes of a curious outsider before, hooked – like so many guiris before me – on the magic of the spectacle. But now it’s closer. It’s not just wishful thinking on my part. Finally, I belong.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all came out of my notebook. In all cases but this, I’d have loved to have my family with me for the reunion, but in this instant, I’m glad I came out on my own. Were my mother or father about, they’d have told me not to bring the notebook. They’d have said it was “showing off” or being “unsociable”, perhaps. That was what they always used to say. But if I hadn’t had it on me, I would never have found out that my passion for carrying a notebook everywhere I go is not just a strange quirk of my own – it’s a family affair. You see, my great-grandmother Lucía María Cruz de la Concepción Mercedes – Mercedes for short – was also a prolific notebook keeper, who liked to sit on her balcony on a sunny day with a cigarette, a glass of brandy and the radio on, jotting down whatever she found interesting and penning her thoughts between her doodles. Quite by accident, I’ve been channelling my great-grandmother’s spirit all this time, and I never knew.

Well… I’m home now. There’s always something a little sad about the end of a great quest. The journey there is filled with hope, excitement and a host of well-wishers who spur you on like a good wind in your sails. Every step is a climb and the end of the road, as short and sweet as it may be, is the most beautiful of rewards by far. But there comes a time when home calls, and every adventurer must gather their things and return to reality, and the road home is quieter. My quest is my family, and it will go on forever.

It isn’t all too often that you get to be your own wishmaker. But every once in a while you just have to get over your fears and go for it, whatever it is. And if the last week has taught me anything, it’s that whilst something as simple as making a phone call still has the power to cripple me, nothing and nobody will stand in the way of me and my family. Fate tore us apart years ago. My mother gave me the tools, Don Rafael gave me the opportunity, and I have put us back together again. Whatever happens in the remaining nine months, 2018 will go down as one of the greatest years of my life.

P.S. As if today couldn’t get any better, when I got off the bus I was met with the screams of Villafranca’s swifts, back from the winter in Africa, and when I got home, I found a letter from nothing other than the wonderful Kate Brocklesby waiting in my letterbox. Today has been a very good day!

Family Reunion: Part One

March 29, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

10:52

It begins in Salamanca. It’s not exactly where I thought it was going to begin, but it’s a more auspicious starting point than Villafranca, I guess. The other passengers around me are reshuffling their seats on the bus. The lady on the seat next to me scrolls blindly through her Instagram feed. Flighty pigeons patrol the bus station roof and a few fluffy clouds pepper the sky. Suitcases roll in, buses roll out and people chat about what they’ll be having for lunch. It’s just another day in Salamanca – but not for me. Today’s the day I find my family.

It’s hard to say exactly how I’m feeling right now. Three days ago, when Rafael called, I was nervous. So nervous I waited until the call went through to my answerphone so I could deal with the matter calmly and indirectly. I’d already gone through the business of psyching myself up a couple of weeks ago, when I first made plans to visit. Spurred on by Coco, and some of Bella’s heartbreaking family stories, I decided I could wait no longer. Then Rafael’s sudden hospitalisation put our reunion on hold and I had to wait.

Now I’m racing across the sunny fields of old Castile with the cathedral of Salamanca shrinking into the distance, and my new quest – perhaps the greatest quest of my life so far – has begun.