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Cultural Migration in Autobiography Grundtvig Partnerships 2009-2011

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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105

Tunnels in Madrid

Jorge Gonzalez

Never before that tunnel had I felt such perfect darkness. I was scared to make any steps ahead because I had the feeling that any moment then that emptiness before me could become un unpredictable wall and I could not even hold on anything around me, as we would undertake such adventures in our school breaks, I could not lean against the dirty damp side walls and then go back to classes all soiled and muddy. In the ninth grade I was fourteen year old and it was the first time I had experimented the liberty of trying out new sensations, without the impediments placed by my parents. The area between our school and Ciudad Universitaria was a place so rich in vegetation that the first year of liberty, when we didn’t have to stay within the schoolyard in the breaks, was to me the first sign that life was more than a boring succession of ordinary facts. I and two schoolmates would go up in the trees and climb the walls of the American Museum, jump over fences for the simple pleasure of discovering what was behind them.

So we discovered the tunnels which, after our first examination in complete darkness, we explored with flashlights and lighters, and so one day we came across an empty and half-deserted building of the Medical School, in an old lab where they would store on shelves samples of human organs kept in jars of formol. Later I learnt that those tunnels had been the first line in the defense of Madrid when in 1936, with Franco at the gates of the city, the Madrilians refused to surrender to him, and so for the next three years, the general had been persecuted constantly but remained invincible, and so he had to conquer the rest of Spain to have the capital under his rule. Unlike me, the heroes of the tunnels did not fight the possibility of a wall that would stop them from their way, but real enemies that would murder them mercilessly.

For me that was my first encounter with the unknown, without having to listen to my parents’ cries behind (Jorje, watch out! It’s dangerous!); that experience I have never forgotten and I always remember it every time I’m driving into a new country or when I’m venturing into a new city, overwhelmed by an sudden and subtle attack of panic, but enjoying the satisfaction of having to use up all my strategies to feel once again the anxiety of being alive.