Mr Witt en el Cantón

-
Mr Witt is a local bar. It's a nice bar. I recommend it even though the service at table can be a bit slow. They also put too much ice in the cubatas - the mixed drinks -  like rum and coke or gin and tonic. Strange name for a bar though.

The penny dropped one day when I noticed a book on a shelf behind the counter, Mr Witt en el Cantón, written in 1936 by Ramón J Sender. The bar was named for the book and the book tells the story of an English engineer who was living in Cartagena at the time of a short lived Cantón proclaimed in the town in 1873.

The Cantons were a sort of city republic. Several sprang up in Spain as a response to the policies of the newly constituted central government of the First Spanish Republic. Most of the Cantons were very short lived but the one in Cartagena lasted longest. Cartagena has always been a military town because of its splendid harbour and good defensive position. The military sided with the uprising so the Canton had plenty of weapons and lots of trained men. Amongst other things the crews of four of the Navy's most powerful frigates happened to be in Cartagena and sided with the Canton. Even then the movement didn't last long; just six months.

On land the Canton tried to incite rebellions in the area around Hellín in Castilla la Mancha but the expeditions were a bit of a fiasco. At sea they did a lot better both in obtaining help from other towns and in engagements with the part of the Spanish Navy that had remained loyal to Madrid. The Canton also had some problems with the German Navy and the Royal Navy when a couple of the Canton's ships were arrested as pirates.

The city was besieged and shelled and starved into submission. Apparently 70% of the town was completely destroyed. The town was left to rot for the next twenty years but as money started to flow in from the new mining operations out La Unión way the newly rich families found they had plenty of space to build their grand modernist buildings which are still the trademark of the city.

I bought the book from a second hand book fair a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I went to have a look at the street where Mr Witt lived and, when I was down to the final chapter, it seemed appropriate to finish Mr Witt in Mr Witt. So I did.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit bigger than 12 gauge

-
Image
If you ever feel the need to launch armour piercing shells weighing 885kg and loaded with 18 kilos of TNT a little over 35 kilometres out to sea then I know where you can find exactly the device to do it. 885kg by the way is about the weight of the current Fiat 500 car. Just down the coast from us at Azohía there is an abandoned, but well maintained, fortress that houses two rather fearsome looking cannons. The fortress was constructed between 1928 and 1936. The guns themselves were built by Vickers. Their barrels are 17 metres long with a calibre of 38cm. Not quite wide enough to launch that Fiat but pretty big nonetheless. You're going to need 20 pals to help you fire each gun and you'll probably need to fill in some official paperwork, this being Spain, but it would make you the envy of anyone who thought they were pretty cool because they owned a pair of Purdeys. Fabulous location too. Nice bit of the coast.
Read more

Shopping

-
Image
Closing in on 30 years ago now I went to a Spanish class in Peterborough with a teacher called John Richardson. On the first night he asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. I said that I wanted to be able to buy a beer. He lied to me and said that would be easy. I still have trouble getting a beer. Other people in the group said that they wanted to learn the language because they had just bought a house in Torrevieja and wanted to be able to talk to their neighbours. I distinctly remember John saying that it seemed that half of Peterborough had a house in Torrevieja. So there have been Britons in Torrevieja for over 30 years and it shows. We went there to buy specs. We went to Specsavers because I had heard that they were cheap. From the initial phone call to the final fitting everything was transacted in English and the only Spaniard I encountered (to my knowledge) in the whole process was the optician. Specsavers is in a shopping centre and the principal language throughout the...
Read more

Second class citizens

-
Image
We have house guests at the moment - some of Maggie's family and their lovers. Generally all we've done is to walk, eat and drink with the occasional museum stop to imitate cultural longing. Yesterday we boarded the Tourist Boat for a gentle tootle around the harbour. It's a while since I've been on the boat so I was a bit surprised when there was no recorded "to the left the such and such fort and to the right the old fisherman's quay" - commentary. It used to come first in Spanish and then in English but now all is silence. Anyway we stopped at Fuerte de la Navidad - Christmas Fort. Non Spanish speakers were directed one way and Spanish speakers another. We got to see an English language film extolling the virtues of Cartagena and then we were left to stroll the fort at leisure. As we walked and nosed I realised that the Spanish speakers were getting a detailed introduction to the fort. I joined in. Interesting stuff I thought. Lots about the de...
Read more