The Writer on the Right
It was in 1967 that I made my first trip outside the UK, a short holiday to Majorca with a mixed bunch of us, seven guys and two girls. We were all in our teens, between 18 to 19 years old. Spain had decided in about 1965 to open up their tourist industry, and for many of us rebellious baby boomers, it was an exciting opportunity to expand our horizons.
Since the end of their civil war in 1936, Franco had been in power, appointed by his fellow Generals. Under his authoritarian rule, he sympathized with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy during World War 2. After periods of brutal repression of anyone who opposed his regime, Spain came close to a famine in 1940. Still, the reality of world politics changed their economic system until 1953, when they allowed the US access for the staging of 4 military bases on Spanish soil and when they were allowed into the UN.
By 1966 they had begun to change the laws to allow limited freedom of the press and some easing of the economic situation by increasing and encouraging their tourist industry.
Thinking back to those days, it must have been quite a shock to their quiet catholic society when so many of us British began invading them on our annual summer holidays. Their authoritarian symbols were to suddenly come up against all these arrogant teenagers full of the rebelliousness of the “swinging sixties” of music, free love, and the birth control pill.
Both countries have had their controversies, we were fighting our way out of what we considered too many rules and regulations, and the authorities in Spain suddenly had to handle the corrupting influx of young Brits. I think that our generation had a small role in contributing to the gradual changes in democratic government after the death of the Generalissimo in 1975 up until 1978. It was like something was in the air, a loosening of international parental bonds.
Boys & Girls Come Out to Play
Our Majorcan vacation started out well, especially with introducing the “Spanish spirit measures” in drinks like the Cuba Libre, Bacardi Rum and Coke, or the Lumumba, a local Brandy and Chocolate drink. As a boisterous crowd of Londoners, we generated a lot of attention, and we soon found our group growing daily as other girls latched onto us. The sun, sand, and Sangria, well-known on Spanish holidays, took hold, and we were seen as ‘faces’ in many clubs and bars across the seaside resort of Arenal. Naturally, when things got too loud, we were asked to leave some. (see pic above)
Our hotel had an annex section across the road which was ideal for our crowd as it kept us from prying pious locals and allowed many comings and goings of unmarried teenagers — the freedom made for holiday romances in abundance. One evening, I was perched at the hotel bar waiting for some friends when a Barman and two British youths developed an argument. I believe it was over a misinterpreted joke that had upset the Machismo of the large barman. The Spaniard flew quickly under the flap and reached for a bar stool that my feet were resting on, pulling it out sharply and raising it behind his head, nearly knocking me over in the process. He shouted something about a knife fight with the two jokers and swung the stool, ready to hit his tormentors. It was too easy for me; I snatched the stool legs as he raised his arms, yanked it out of his possession, and bashed him over the head and back hard enough to take him down and stop the fight. It seemed the sensible quick-thinking thing to do at the time!
Things calmed down, and we enjoyed the rest of our holiday until the day designated for leaving. That morning we all gathered together after breakfast, laid all our excess coinage on the table, and kept ordering drinks, paying for them with those coins. We couldn’t take them home as only paper money was exchangeable.
Our time had come to get on a shuttle bus to the airport, but three of us were singled out and ordered suddenly at gunpoint into the manager’s office by a large Spaniard claiming to be Polizia. Our friends had no option as they were hustled onto the coach, not knowing when they would see us again. In the office, the cop, with the manager acting as interpreter, quizzed us about whence all the coins had come. They had some cock and bull story about someone breaking into a pinball machine and taking coins, which for them, proved our guilt. All the time, this cop was making a point of spinning his revolver toward us. Threatening us was the order of the day, but we were giving as good as we got. We were cocky, east-end kids and stood our ground until they eventually had to let us go. They had no proof, just their threats.
When we got away from the cop and the manager, two lovely girlfriends who were staying on at the hotel paid for a taxi to rush us to the airport. We arrived just as the travel company courier waited, having already seen our pals through to the check-in desk. We boarded the plane and sighed in relief once we left Spanish airspace.
The week following that departure, the girls sent us a message informing us that we were framed because of the barman’s humiliation. The hotel later fired him when he tried to break into one of the girl’s rooms; apparently, there was some hurt ego because she preferred us, and he was later caught stealing from other rooms and was arrested by the same cop.
Many Brits Defy the Oppressive Guardia Civil
Six of us decided to take a longer holiday across France and Spain a couple of years later. We hired a six-berth campervan that slept all six with two pull-out beds below and two hammocks above. We packed a large tent also for when we might stay for more than a couple of days. The motor caravan was an old Commer Highwayman. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/46529088@N05/13120037994)
That model gave a new meaning to “Rock & Roll,” as that was how the ride felt when driving across the Pyrenees via Andorra and around the mountain passes into Spain. It was scary but fun, loaded with six young guys, luggage, and as much booze as we could carry along the way. We eventually ended up in a small Costa Brava town called Tossa de Mar. We found a campsite on the edge of town and set up our pitch.
On an adjacent pitch was another gang of British youth whose camping car was just a plain workman’s van and some pup tents, which they spread haphazardly. It was fun bantering with them as they were from south London, and we soon became a gang of drinking buddies out for a laugh and to see which girls would latch onto us for some evening parties.
So we all hit the town together one night but were constantly followed, it seemed, by two of the local Guardia Civil, that harsh, arrogant semi-military, part political, Spanish cops who held sway over everybody. They were renowned for throwing their weight around and were never impressed with young Brits who never gave them any respect.
No matter which bar or club these two were always around, they often bullied staff for free drinks, waved their pistols, and laid them on the bars to intimidate the bar owners and staff. This night while most of us laughed at them, some cat-called them, but we never gave them much notice other than that we were all witnessed in the same places all night.
They hadn’t noticed that one of the South London gang had stolen their moped while they were drinking. It must have been hard pedaling that bike without the keys to start the engine, but the cop had gone apeshit when he looked for his bike, but could not blame us as we were still in the bar. It was hilarious watching him pace up and down; even the bartenders laughed.
The moped was hidden in the woods, covered with dead leaves next to our pitches. As soon as daylight came, though, around sixteen British guys were in those woods frantically digging a massive hole with their hands and any other implement until we got that hole deep enough to bury his bike without a trace. We took his ID badge off it and buried that further away.
Very soon after, we all hit the road again as two different parties, never to meet again, but I often wonder whether the Guardia ever found that bike. We certainly never gave the political police any respect.
Part 2: Dodging Bullets in the Dying Days of the Franco Regime
A couple of years after our part in burying a Guardia Civils motorized bike in the woods of Tossa De Mar, three of us decided to pack up our jobs and go traveling. I guess it was that era’s version of the gap year as we backpacked across France, living in a small tent. Our original aim was to get work along the way grape picking for the French wine harvest, but that was late, so we started thumbing onwards to the Costa Brava. We made no plans apart from getting to the Spanish coast and maybe finding work in the tourist spots.
A French guy in a beaten-up old Citroen 2CV loaded with plastic dancing ducks to sell stopped and squeezed us in on top of our backpacks. Of course, he had to have the canvas roof rolled back to get us in. Sitting on top of the ducks and rucksacks, with half our heads poking out the roof, it was a hairy ride, but we all got through the customs checks at Port Bou, and the mad duck seller dropped us off at the resort of Estartit.
Looking for work proved difficult as a prominent British tourist agent had gone bust, and those couriers already there had got to the jobs first. So we had to make do with a few tips for putting out deck chairs and small menial tasks until Jeff blagged a job as a sailing instructor for a German boat hirer after convincing them he was an experienced sailor. Unfortunately, his only real experience was from a one-day instruction on the local park lake. That job didn’t last more than a day after letting a family drift out of the bay so severely that they had to send a speedboat out to tow them back to base.
We had limited funds, so we rationed our daily spending, which usually saved enough for a couple of beers at the end of the day. We decided to carry on as beach bum hippies until something else might happen. Lady luck did us proud as while walking through the town at lunchtime, we saw three guys we knew from our back home rugby club. One of those strange coincidences the universe throws up at opportune moments as they were flush with holiday cash, and we were bums low on funds. They took pity on us out of loyalty, funded us for a couple of days’ food, and were determined to get us out partying. That probably wasn’t their best idea, as we had been away from home for a month or so by then and were almost teetotal and out of practice as far as wild rugby-style drinking was concerned.
The Beach & the Boys
It was 1972, and at the fag end of Franco’s rule, the cops were still unduly harsh, and the semi-political cum military police, the Guardia Civil, could more or less make up their own rules. They often had problems with British tourists and business owners who gave them scant regard. Freedom-loving Brits and their useful idiot youths constantly pushed the boundaries of the strict catholic regime. I’d like to think we had a small part in his demise.
While they were on vacation, our Rugby club pals and their spouses adopted us and our bar tab. So on their last day, we joined them for a wonderful lunch, including wines, spirits, and beers. They were happy getting rid of the residue of their holiday money on us poor backpackers, and a great day and afternoon of drinking followed. Sometime during that afternoon, a gorgeous Swedish girl latched onto us, and our drinking went on into the evening as we discovered the enormous 3-liter jugs of San Miguel on draught. She took a shine to our pal Dave and attempted to smuggle him to her rented apartment above a travel agency for some free loving. That didn’t go down well with Jeff as we three had done everything together up until then, and he promptly threw his pint over Dave’s head. Jeff was never one to do things without making his point, and it was the sort of thing we did to each other when one was getting above himself or being selfish.
Put one beautiful girl amongst three rampant rogues, and it is bound to go wrong! The girl decided to take Dave up to her room, but the quaint old rules of the church and state back then would not allow that, and the tartar that ran the pension would not let her up with a guy while they were not a married couple. So Jeff and I being generous souls gave in and told them to go to our tent at the campsite on the hill.
Jeff and I carried on drinking and wondering what to do with our time now our only bed had been taken over, so we staggered down to the beach. It was dark, the bay was empty of people, and we wandered through dunes. One side of the bay was just sand leading to the water’s edge, cut in half by a stone pier, of which the other side was a marina with many yachts and motorboats moored. So we sat for a while, meditating on the half-moon light across the water, and I was enjoying the peace and listening to the waves lapping gently at the edge.
After a while, Jeff got bored and nudged me, eagerly saying, “Let’s get a boat out to the island offshore; it’s only about a half mile.” I laughed and told him not to be stupid. “If you think I’m going out to sea in this state, you can f… off.” With that, he disappeared into the darkness. I sat still and did some yoga breathing for what felt like half an hour in the beautiful silence of nature. Until I heard sounds from the marina, a few “Brrrm, brrrm, papapa’s” in succession, the unmistakable noises of an outboard motor being primed, the cord pulled and let go. I chuckled to myself at the audacity of my pal when out of the darkness, he came rushing over, full of glee. “Byron, I’ve got a boat. We just need to siphon some petrol from somewhere!”
“You’re effing mad, mate, but I love you,” and I prepared to get dragged into another misadventure. Then suddenly, from the sea wall a couple of hundred meters away, we heard a shout in Spanish to see a couple of Guardia Civil’s tricorn hats near a street light. Somebody had probably called in about the potential boat thief. They shouted a warning before firing a couple of shots into the dunes nearby. “Oh shit,” we said to each other and promptly hit the decks.
We did the GI crawl across the bay in a curve as far away from the sea wall where the two cops were while they continued to shout “Halt” or similar and fire a short salvo. You’ve never seen two guys move so quickly on their bellies, encouraged by that same sound we used to hear in the old cowboy movies, that ‘ping’ and long ‘wheee’ as the bullets whizzed behind us.
We got to a low part of the sea wall as far across the bay and away from the Guardia Civil as we could get, clambered over it and ran across the road, somersaulted over a fence into someone’s garden and kept on running, through other hacienda gardens, back streets and alleys across the town until we climbed the hill to our tent on the campsite.
We were out of breath, pumped full of adrenalin, and nervous laughter as what we had escaped from dawned on us. But, before we relaxed, we sat on a rock looking down into the town, ensuring no pursuit. Then, over at the tent, we whispered, “Dave, let us in. Hurry up.” But all we got was “F… off.” Exasperated, we tried to explain we needed to hide away, and he didn’t care and told us he would be another hour. So Jeff and I sat on the big rock for a while before deciding to go in anyway; it was our joint home.
So we joined the two nude lovers, now sleeping in the coma of post-intercourse pleasure. I woke later with my arm across the girl’s body as we both giggled, then heard a shout from outside as the campsite security guard tried to enforce silence. As I turned to look where she was laughing, Jeff had grabbed something to stifle his guffaws, and a lacy pair of white panties hung out of his mouth. However, it was all good-natured, and the four of us shared the tale of the adventure in the bay over breakfast. If the cops were out looking for two boat thieves, they only saw four young friends enjoying the sun.
