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International Socialism, Mid-December 1973

 

Judith Barker

The Pueblo

 

From International Socialism (1st series), No.65, Mid-December 1973, p.32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

The Pueblo
Ronald Fraser
Allen Lane, £3.25.

IN 1957 Ronald Fraser spend the summer in the Spanish mountain village of Tajos. He interviewed many of the villagers, from the landowners and civic officials to the poorest day-labourers and share-croppers. When he returned for a new series of interviews fourteen years later, the nearby coast had become the Costa del Sol. Concrete hotels, bars and nighclubs had mushroomed.

Fraser sets side by side the two groups of interviews, and lets the contrast show the effect of the tourist tidal wave on village life. In 1957, the poverty was appalling. All the villagers spoke of their unrelenting struggle against hunger, and the attenpt to scrape a crop from the thin mountain soil.

In 1970, most of the land is deserted; the young people find employment in th building sites, hotels and shops of the coast, earning three times as much as their parents. Yet their viewpoint is as narrow and ignorant as if they had no contact with anything outside their village.

Among the older people, the feudal society had bred a class consciousness as strong as that of an industrial city, yet not the militancy or organisation to make it effective. Among the young, only those who have worked abroad in Common Market factories, or elsewhere in Spain, have this awareness. Many are unhappy at the intrusion of foreign standards into their traditional attitudes, but can’t resolve it. As one young bank clerk said, ‘the biggest threat of tourism is that we’ll all become pariahs ... these foreigners have become the bosses of everything’.

Because Fraser lets the villagers speak in their own way of their experiences, this is far more compelling and readable book than any straight socological textbook could be. Anyone interested in Spain should read it.

 
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