Heroes in Spain

Abstract

George, a driver in the convoy of the Unit to which I managed to attach myself from Barcelona to Valencia, was formerly a cellist in a Corner House orchestra. Fat, frank, spectacled and intelligent, he had learned to drive a lorry on the day of his arrival in Barcelona: he drove with too much concentration, leaning over the wheel to fix his attention short-sightedly on the road. In a moment of emotion, when we were driving along the moonlit coastal road between Tarragona and Tortosa, he told me that he had only wept three times in his life: once, at the Wembley Tattoo when the whole crowd was hysterical with imperialist fervour, and looking round he had a sudden vision of what it all meant and was leading to; once, when after playing musical trash for months in the restaurant, he went to Sadler’s Wells, and hearing Figaro performed, realized what music might be and what the standards were by which he earned his living; once, that very morning in Barcelona, when he realized, as he put it, that `the people in this town know they are free.’