Snap and Scribble

 

This is the last part of the four part story of my life in Basque Country, in 1984. Part one is here…

I’m afraid it’s been so long since i wrote part three that if you were following it, you’ve probably lost track.

Anyway, after i got back to Vitoria from the crazed hitchiking trip to Portugal i felt that time was rapidly running out there for me. I’d almost come to the end of my savings and there was no prospect of getting a job. Winter was coming, too – and as Vitoria is high in the mountains, winters there are very cold. It was time to reluctantly pack up my few belongings and head back to London.

As far as i remember, i stayed in Vitoria for about three weeks after i got back from Faro. I don’t remember much about it, except that the festive feeling of summer was receding and there were less people out at night, in the streets and in the bars. I was sad to be leaving, but it felt like i’d done my time there – for now, at least.

I decided to give the ferry a miss on the way back and catch the bus, which went all the way from Vitoria bus station to London. The bus started its journey in Bilbao and when i got on, there were already some passengers on board. I sat in the seat in front of the back seat – which was already taken by a couple of typical Basque punk women.

The punks had a cassette player which was playing punk music and they asked me if it was too loud. I turned round, smiled, and said “no, turn it up”. Well, i didn’t, i mangled the Spanish a bit and said “put it stronger” – but they knew what i meant and smiled back. Their names were Mamen and Dione, and i got to know them quite well on that trip – and i’m still friends with them today, even though i don’t see them nearly enough now.

I remember the bus stopped for a short break at Bordeaux and we all got out. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but Mamen shouted “hijo puta” (sort of equivalent to “bastard”) at some minor incident. The she noticed a couple of nuns nearby and turned and apologised to them. It stuck in my mind because it was quite a funny scene – a tough looking punk chick apologising to a nun for a bit of mild swearing. A British punk would never have done that – but, then, the Basques are considerably more civilised than the British in every possible way.

I don’t remember anything about the bus ride through France, or about getting on to the ferry at Boulogne. But when we were on board the ferry and out of the bus, Mamen and Dione went off to change into their smart clothes to go through British immigration control. In those days, before Spain was in the EU (or the EEC as it was back then) they didn’t need a visa, but they had to get an entry permit on arrival and immigration at the Channel ports was notoriously unfriendly.

When they came back in their “smart” clothes, they barely looked any different to how they’d looked before, and it was obvious they were going to have a hard time at immigration. They almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed into Britain. I tried telling them this, but they didn’t believe me. Then someone else from the bus said it too – and it finally sunk in. As well as their appearance, they hardly had any money – and they didn’t have a hope in hell.

There was, however, one possible solution. We could tell the immigration officer that they were coming to stay with me, as my guests, and that i would support them and make sure they left the country when their entry permits expired. It was a long shot, but it was their only chance.

We decided that they’d try on their own first, and i’d keep an eye on them to see how they were going. If they had trouble, i’d go and help them. Of course they did have trouble and they clearly weren’t going to be allowed in, so i went over and spoke to the immigration officer. She was speaking Spanish to the two punks and i joined in in Spanish too.

We’d exchanged a few sentences when the immigration woman said “Why are you speaking Spanish to me?” Oh! I said, it hadn’t even registered with me that i was! I’d been speaking nothing but Spanish for most of the last three months or so, and it just came naturally now. So i switched to English – which, naturally, had a beneficial effect on my dealings with the immigration officer.

I don’t remember the details of it, but i do remember it took a long time and a lot of negotiation, but eventually Mamen and Dione got the stamps on their passports and we were back on the bus and on our way to London. The other passengers gave us the usual dirty looks that you can expect when you’ve been hassled by immigration to the point where you’ve held everyone else up.

I can’t remember how long they were allowed to stay, but it certainly wasn’t longer than a month. I’d promised the immigration woman that i’d make sure they left the country at the end of it. But i didn’t see my role in life as an enforcement officer for the immigration department – who i had no respect for whatsoever – and i certainly wasn’t going to start now.

The two women had friends in London to stay with, but i told them they were welcome to stay in my flat if they needed somewhere. At that time, i had a pleasant, squatted flat on the Downs estate in Hackney, in north east London. I can’t remember what the exact story was with it then, but i think one of my flatmates had moved out while i was away and the other one was planning to move out soon – which would leave me with a three bedroom flat to myself. They said they didn’t think they’d need anywhere to stay, but we’d keep in touch anyway.

We hadn’t been in London for very long when they decided they did need somewhere to stay. I’d decided i was going to move out of that flat anyway, as i wanted to move into a squatted house in Dalston with some other friends. So i ended up giving Mamen and Dione my flat on the Downs and they lived there until the place got evicted, quite a few months later as far as i remember.

I think they went back to Bilbao after about nine months in London, and i went to live in Australia a few months after that. I got to know their friend Begoña the following year, when i was back in London for three months, but we lost touch completely after that.

In 1995, i was in Chiapas, in Mexico. I was an international observer at a couple of rounds of peace talks between the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the Mexican government and i met three guys from Bilbao who were doing the same thing. (That story is here – in my 1995 travel blog, Travelling By The Moon.) One of them knew Mamen and told me she lived in a squat in Calle Prim, in the old part of Bilbao. He gave me the address and i wrote a letter to her there.

I never got a reply to my letter but, a couple of months later, i went to Bilbao and tried to find her. I found the house in Calle Prim (which had never been a squat, in reality) but Mamen didn’t live there. They knew her though, and they knew who i was, as she’d told them about me when they passed my letter on to her. But they didn’t know where she lived exactly – although it was in a town some distance from Bilbao.

Anyway, i wrote the story of that trip to Bilbao at the time, in Travelling By The Moon, so i’m not going to write it again here. If you want to read it it’s here.

I lost touch with the Basque women again after that visit. In those days it was hard keeping in touch if you moved a lot – there was no internet or mobile phones and even if you knew their phone number, international calls were very expensive. Letters were the only way, and none of us were very good at keeping in touch that way – and when you move, the letters stop arriving anyway.

But i was back in England again in 2002 and flights from the nearby airport, Stansted, to the mainland were cheap, so i decided to go to Bilbao for a week, in the hope of being able to track them down. Amazingly, i succeeded again – and now we keep in touch via Myspace and email. Mamen’s band, Puro Chile, has a Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/purochile. Hopefully i’ll make it over to Bilbao in the next few months and catch up with them again.

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