Homage to a Born Insurgent

A volume, four stories of Enric, his boyhood as a child undercover agent in the Spanish Resistance to Fascist rule after the Civil War. Fiction based on the true life of Enric Torres, narrator in the novel To the Death, Amic

 

Hospice

Enric, the boy of To the Death, Amic works as a smuggler for The Organisation, the resistance movement in Barcelona. From France, over the high country, he brings in ammunition, leaflets. This time his job is to smuggle a young woman north, across the French border, over the Pyrenees.

 

Where the night air is so cold I tell you, I piss icicles.

 

As a Bird, South

MOTHER was at the treadle. All I could see of her, by the sewing-bench lamp, were fingers as swift as shuttles, a scarf at her shoulders, and at the hollow of the throat her silver crucifix.

Mama, I said, I'm home. I was home from the prison, so expected a welcome.

 

Home from his prison sentence, for smuggling an illegal over the north border, Enric is summoned by the Organisation, the resistance, south to Cartagena. His age, at twelve, makes him a favoured courier for the underground, since living around the streets has trained his cunning beyond his years.

 

Barcelona Honours the Prostitute Maria Lopes

General Francisco Franco is to pay Barcelona a State Visit

 

The day chosen in secret for his reception here in Barcelona was no surprise to us, since the garrisons on the waterfront at Atarazanas and in the castle atop Montjuic were now crowded with the regiments of Navarre and with African Moors; the Guardia Civil enforced the nighttime curfew with companies on horseback, and factories were closed for three days so smoke would not entice rain.

 

Markswoman Jacinta Llano Moya, member of the anarchist cell named after the revolutionary prostitute Maria Lopez, prepares her welcome for the dictator.

 

An Old Lag's Guide to Barcelona

This guide, the now older Enric, shows off the history of the Old City where his boyhood was spent during the Civil War, as the narrator Enric in the novel To the Death, Amic

 

Walk LaRamblas, everyone does. This is the promenade. The centre concourse is a mall. Bulbs light the trees like stardust. Stalls stock newspapers in any language. Bird breeders sell pigeons and small parrots.