Once
every four years, comes an event that has me glued to a television set or
computer monitor for days. That is when the European UEFA football championship
is played: where the best European soccer teams vie for the title cup. I am big
soccer fan and although Spain is my favorite team, there are other countries
that I follow as well.
As
I was looking forward to the games with anticipation, my niece asked me if I
knew what the capital of the Ukraine was. I told her it was Kiev. “What is the
capital of Poland?” she then asked. My reply: “Warsaw”. So finally she asked me
if I knew where Spain would be playing and I told her “Gdansk.” Suddenly, I felt drawn back in time.
I
felt like I was in a science fiction movie, where you see the eyes, and then a
wormhole appears to transport the person to the past. It evoked lyrics to a song that mentions the Polish workers taking a stand in solidarity. A song I heard long ago in Spain.
I
also recalled the history of that city: In 1980 there was a worker’s union
strike in Poland at the Gdansk shipyards. An electrician by the name of Lech
Walesa led the strikers: it was an anti-fascist movement, which promoted better
working conditions. The movement became know as “Solidarity”. Since Poland was
a communist country and belonged to the Eastern Bloc, the strike was also
symbolic of anti-communism. Solidarity
continued even when there were obstacles in its way. Little did anyone know,
that this would change the course of history.
By
1985 the greatest fear of the Western European countries was that Communism
would be running rampant. This was true to a
certain extent. I know this because I lived in Spain at the time.
I
was an American immersed in the lives, cultures and languages of Spain. Being
there afforded me the chance to see the good as well as the bad. My friends and I shared the expense of renting
a flat in Madrid one summer, and then lived with a local family another year. Sometimes in the evenings, we would frequent the
neighborhood pub. Not only was it a social gathering place, but also a literary
salon, a soccer fan club and a political hotbed of discussions. It was where I
made new friends and where I first heard that song of long ago.
It
had been ten years since the ravages of General Franco’s dictatorship regime
had ended; nevertheless by the time I was there, the Spaniards were still trying
to adjust to the economy and joblessness.
At times some people even felt that perhaps communism was a better
choice for them.
A
couple of years after that last stay in Spain, the Berlin wall came down and I
cried. I wept because I remembered what
my newfound friends would tell me about their hopes, their dreams and their
disillusionments. The collapse of the wall gave them courage to face their
future. I understood.
These
events were brought to mind because of the connections to Gdansk. More importantly, history became alive and
meant more to me because I was fortunate to have traveled.
I
love to read; I love to write. Traveling, however, ignites my senses. The
sights, sounds, tastes, scents, and the people provide me with an extraordinary
palate of memories that will remain with me forever.
My
soul is awakened when I travel.
If
you can, then travel. It will enrich your experiences. And, if you can stay somewhere foreign for a
longer time, it will transform your life forever.
M. Raquel Aguilar
