On the 9th April 1973 (I still
have my old passport with the date stamped in it), I arrived in San Sebastián for the start of a six-month
study placement. It was a marvellous and unforgettable experience. This elegant
resort city, with its beautiful beaches, rugged hinterland and vibrant social
life, was paradise for a couple of dozen language students from a wet and windy university
campus in England’s industrial heartland. Food and drink cost a fraction of what we
were used to at home, and aside from a few hours a day studying we threw
ourselves into socialising with a vengeance.
There
was a dark side to the experience, however. San Sebastián was, and is, the
cultural capital of the Basque Country – the beautiful, hospitable but
politically volatile ethnic enclave that straddles the Atlantic border between
France and Spain. In the embittered twilight years of the Franco regime, when suspected
Basque activists could disappear in the night, and where an innocent foreign visitor
could receive a police beating just on suspicion of speaking the forbidden
Basque language, the potential for dire mishap was constantly lurking in the
background. Indeed, and tragically, for decades the region was a byword not for
its beauty or hospitality but for terrorist atrocities.
And most
of us were not the types to keep at a safe distance from local preoccupations.
On the one hand, we were cultural explorers well before the age of the gap year;
we were smitten with the idea of
alien cultures and world-views, and constantly open to new ways of living. But at the same time, most of us still revelled, at least to some extent, in an awareness of our
social, economic and educational superiority over the local people (people with whom we
nevertheless forged close friendships and a great deal of solidarity). That mildly patronising attitude of which some of us were guilty – that rose-tinted perception of a rather simple Ruritanian society to whose threats we ourselves were immune – risked blinding us to the very real dangers.
It was
inevitable that some of us would get close to people who were actively engaged
with the region’s deep-seated political tensions, and that one or two might get a little too close for comfort. I know that in my own case,
enamoured as I was with the local culture and not always totally at ease with my lovely colleagues and compatriots,
there was more than one occasion on which things could have taken a dangerous
turn. In later years, I reflected at length on how any one of those rash
moments could have turned out; how they would have affected my subsequent life,
and the person I might have become in one of those parallel universes of causality.
I had long fantasised about setting a novel in that beautiful but potentially deadly setting,
but lacked the literary skills to do so. But over the years business writing, public speaking, teaching, and the successive arrival of children
and grandchildren gave me the confidence to make the attempt. And so it was
that what started out as a more modest memoir and travelogue metamorphosed into
what I have described as “a tense psychological thriller with some quite nasty
bits”.
Inevitably,
the traumatised protagonist of the story is largely me. Or perhaps more accurately an
anti-me – a darker, and (I like to think) more dysfunctional version of myself from an alternate reality in which the
ever-present potential for disaster has actually materialised. And the travels and casual encounters of that summer are pretty much as they happened. But at each stage I have explored
how things might have turned out, and what the short- and longer-term
consequences might have been. Strangely, perhaps, the hardest thing of all was allowing characters I had nurtured into life to be bad people and/or to get hurt.
All the
other characters and the main storyline are entirely fictional, and (in
publishing-speak) no resemblance is intended to anyone living or dead. Even certain
places and establishments have been camouflaged or anonymised out of respect
for the privacy of others. However it is possible, given the genesis of this work, that
some of those who shared the author’s real life experiences may be reminded of
real people or their words or actions. As I say in the Author’s Note at the
beginning of the book, I hope they will take any such parallels as a sign of enduring
affection and respect.
Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who helped to make that phase in my life so memorable, as well as those who have patiently read the manuscript at different stages and given feedback. It's far from perfect, even in my own eyes, but the next one will be better.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS by John C. Bailey is exclusively available via Amazon's Kindle store.
Link to Amazon UK page (Other countries: please search on title from within the Amazon site)
Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who helped to make that phase in my life so memorable, as well as those who have patiently read the manuscript at different stages and given feedback. It's far from perfect, even in my own eyes, but the next one will be better.
THE ENGLISH WITNESS by John C. Bailey is exclusively available via Amazon's Kindle store.
Link to Amazon UK page (Other countries: please search on title from within the Amazon site)