WE HAD OUR OWN moments of silence yesterday at noon, just as they did in Paris.
Miguel, controversial, long-term mayor of decades back, had been going through the market saying ‘We are going to have a minute’s silence’. Nem con, apparently. But when he actually called for the silence somebody I couldn’t see, over by the town hall steps, must have challenged his authority
‘I am doing this because the mayor is away’ declared Miguel in no-nonsense tones, ‘and somebody has to take responsibility. In the name of the corporation one minute of silence now.’
I stood in the shadow beside the post office. Most people were in sunlight on the far side of the little square, beyond the stalls. They stood in silence, quite still. The market traders were silent.
The only problem was a woman just near me. The noise of a squawking chicken came from her shopping bag. Repeatedly. She stuck her hand inside the bag and after a moment of agitation the squawking stopped. It turned out to have been a children’s’ toy, inaudible, I hoped, except in my little corner.
The clock struck 12 and everybody clapped. It was a most moving moment, embodying the dignity and restraint that Spanish crowds can show – quite contrary to stereotypes of Spanishness held elsewhere in Europe. It reminded me inescapably of the Atocha bombings of 1984 when 199 people, mostly poor and including many Muslims from the proletarian suburbs, were killed by bombs as the trains the bombs were placed on approached Atocha station in the early phase of the Madrid rush hour. There were 1,400 injuries. If the bombs had gone off simultaneously when the trains had arrived in Atocha, as was presumably the intention, the carnage would have been on an unbelievable scale.
We were in Andalucía during those days, touring our way around with visitors and getting first news of the event as it unfolded in its horror. In the main square in Marchena the next morning, there was a minute’s silence, then as now. Parents and schoolchildren stood bareheaded, in respect. The children from the nursery school came in in check pinnies, holding hands.
That evening we were in Osuna, again in the town square, again in a dense and sombre crowd. The mayor came out on the town hall balcony to urge solidarity, peace, calm and a minute or maybe it was two minutes – of silence. This passed in dignity and total silence.
Soon after that the then crown prince, today’s Felipe VI, together with his sister, bareheaded and in pouring rain, led a mostly silent procession of millions through the streets of Madrid. There were no calls for vengeance that I remember.
There were certainly newspaper reports of anger in demonstrations that followed but even so the contrast with France since the events of last Friday night could not have been stronger. In the name of liberty and all those many virtues espoused by France, the reaction has been one of vengeance and aggression. Not quite the Spanish style.