They say that the women, mothers and grandmothers, sang. The survivors of the defeat, some without a husband and with children, weakened in spirit and increasingly impoverished, fulfilled with pinpoint accuracy what Cervantes had already described: “Who sings his evils scares”. Color had not yet reached that reality. It was raining lead. It was when anti-Francoism did have merit. And danger
In good weather, the air currents of the patio, of the moonlight (I don’t know why I like it better), carried an impudent waft of untraceable sofregits and songs. As every Friday, the apotheosis of sardines and herrings went upstairs. Brine tuff and smoke from the coal stove. A catalog of smells and riddles: “Must they be the ones from the first?”. “Again those from the third one with the onion stir-fry?”. Unpleasant times of an implacable dictatorship. And of fear And of truths in gray, in a low voice. But there was a lot of singing – except for Holy Week, which, due to the imperative of national Catholicism, everything was muted -, there was singing.
And in a potpourri of voices, the housewives – let’s say in the old expression – sang a meandering of pessimistic or festive or stealthily suggestive songs. A polyphony of songs, each for its own sake. Joy against pain, and vice versa; singing in those days must have been an arduous therapy. A repertoire of great diversity: zarsuela, copla, some regional song, flamenco fillets, perhaps L’emigrant…
Oral tradition and especially radio melodies. Certainly the radio was, is and, probably, will be the eternal and permanent companion of solitude. Then the benign shadow of the vanquished, such as technological objectors. And the insomniacs. And the sun And of well-educated people who keep their sorrows, silences and forced unsociability a secret. Could it be that the auditory stimulus is more suggestive than the visual one? That the hyperrealism of the screens goes against imagination and creativity? It seemed that that almost magical, immovable piece of furniture that was present in every house would be endangered with the advent of television. Like the cinema cornering the theater, like the book victim of the e-book. Sometimes the prophets of pessimism are also wrong. Fortunately
