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Dispatches - Giles Tremlett |
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Written by Andy Johnson
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Giles Tremlett's book, 'Ghosts of Spain,' is based on the Guardian correspondent's 20-year immersion in Spanish culture
Photography by Živile Viteikaite
With a backstory that includes moving around the world from an early age as, in his words, “an army brat,” Giles Tremlett had his first formative taste of Spanish life over the two years he lived in Barcelona in the mid eighties. After a period in Lisbon and then in London, he returned to live in Spain for good at the advent of the 1992 Olympics. He currently lives in Madrid with his wife and two children aged 8 and 10. Tremlett’s sharp eye for cultural detail is clearly honed by a background in Human Sciences which he studied at Oxford.
Fully integrated into Spanish life, Tremlett is nevertheless vocal and honest about his inability to shake off some of the trappings of his “anglosajón soul.” What he envies most about the ‘Spanish character,’ if such a homogenous thing can really be said to exist, is a certain level of what he calls “social intelligence” in the people of Spain; “being sociable. The way Spaniards can go round en masse and do things in groups; protest by the millions and hang out at a botellón with hundreds of people and there’s no punch ups ... The ability to get along in large groups ... is almost an art form.”
'Ghosts of Spain,' Giles Tremlett’s first book is the intensely personal journey of an eminent foreign correspondent around a Spain that was changing at a pace which at times he found almost too fast to keep up with: “I’d certainly say that the book belongs to a particular period, which ends in early-to-mid 2005.
In Spain, you have to say that because by 2008, things had changed a lot. It’s about a certain period—the end of the Aznar period and the beginning of the Zapatero period.”
In such a fast moving country, socially and politically, it’s a wonder anyone is able to keep up with the news day to day. He reads four newspapers every morning, “El Pais, El Mundo, La Vanguardia and ABC. You have to know where everybody’s coming from ... what everyone represents ... go out and do it yourself, go out and talk to people; write. It’s fun, loads of fun. It’s fantastic.”
It is telling that Tremlett appears at this interview having just got off the phone with the helicopter pilot involved in the incident of the death of the three British climbers who perished in the heavy March snow on the Sierra Nevada. Towards the end of the interview he receives a call on his mobile to dictate his finishing touches on the then breaking story of the imminent auction of three of Franco’s oil paintings.
He admits that problems really arise here when a writer stops to try and take something of a longer view: “The good thing about news is that by definition, it’s fast moving. It only lasts for 24 hours. The whole thing about writing for newspapers is that it will be on someone’s breakfast table the following day and on the bottom of the bird cage the day after. So for news [Spain is] fine, it’s exciting. When you try and take a longer look it gets complicated.”
Spain has been attractive to writers from throughout the ages. Perhaps, Tremlett
Suggests, this is down to some die-hard ‘Wild West’ aspects of the country: “Adventurous travelers coming to Spain to have adventures and write adventurous books about adventurers ... They wanted Spain to be wild and barbaric with bullfights and passionate red hot flamenco dancers and cigar girls from Seville. You have to say that they came looking for it, but they also found it.
There was certainly a touch of Wild Western-style banditry and (albeit unwittingly) a captive audience glued to their own screens for the antics of a number of army commanders and troops loyal to Spain’s most recent dictator on February 23, 1981. In 'Ghosts of Spain' Tremlett suggests ‘23-F’ as perhaps the last gasp of “la transición“—Spain’s conversion to democracy following the death of Franco in 1975: The fateful day when Coronel Antonio Tejero stormed las Cortes in an attempt to stage a military coup. Tremlett suggests that this may have been the last clash of the rattling sabers of the forces of ‘old’ Spain against ‘new.’
Would he revise this presumed last stand of la transición in light of ‘el caso Mena’—the move by the commander of the army’s territorial forces, José Mena Aguado in February to threaten the Spanish parliament with army action in Catalunya if the devolution plan, el estatut were to be ratified? “I don’t think la transición has a curtain moment where the final curtain came down and hey presto! It’s all over ... You know, people are worried that things are getting out of hand again but I think that’s politics as normal really ... The old historical constraints have gone and so the political debate has got a bit rougher and tougher. People don’t feel as constrained as they [did] and I think that’s probably helpful. Spaniards are able this year to talk about the Civil War. Twenty years ago they couldn’t do that.”
Taking a longer look at another ‘social artform’ in his book, Tremlett investigates the ubiquitous presence and exploitation of the notion of “enchufe” in the lives of Spaniards across the country (enchufe being the working of personal connections in order to gain employment or social advantage): “I would say a defining national characteristic of Spain is that everybody believes that enchufe exists … Nobody really knows how much it’s there and how much it isn’t but there’s a kind of assumption that somebody somewhereis not playing by the rules … Or maybe there’s a fuzzy zone in the middle of what’s certainly acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. Maybe that fuzzy zone is a bit bigger here than it is in other places … In England we call it wheels within wheels, don’t we? … Enchufe exists but to what extent it’s a major problem [in Spain], I don’t know.”
The examples he cites in 'Ghosts of Spain' include using journalism contacts to oil the wheels of the service industry, cheating on exams and lying about children’s illnesses in order to get leverage on school application forms. It could be argued that all of these kinds of things are common in pretty much every society to a greater or lesser extent and also that the application of an aptitude in this area is often a necessary social skill in a world where only 30 per cent of jobs are actually advertised. Indeed, “it’s quite an art in some cases.”
In his line of work it is par for the course: “A journalist will do pretty much anything to get hold of a story. If you need to pick up your contacts book and ring someone for a favour to ring someone for a favour to ring someone for a favour, you do it.” In Spain, Giles Tremlett is well and truly in his element.
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