Glasgow
There
was a Spanish poet who found Glasgow ugly and sordid. Now that I´m living in
this warm and open land, understand perfectly why he said that.
It´s
not the same to travel to a city for the mere fact of being retired and freely
use your time as you please, than to have to go jumping from city to city
because a civil war has been declared and you have to save your skin. You leave
behind not only the bullets but the most retrograde ideas of a country that had
been blown up. This is how Luis Cernuda appeared in the Scottish city.
He,
who is taken by British on more than one occasion, had a hard time adapting — and
it seems that he couldn´t — to the climate that reigns above 55ยบ N. We must not
forget that he was born and lived his first years in Seville. If to this we add
the love disappointment that was dragging on, it´s quite easy to suppose that
not even the most trained spirit would endure a new uprooting.
I
write this because I have seen a documentary dedicated to the trajectory of the
Sevillian where — among all the things that were said — it startled me that the
poet and professor said, felt, that Glasgow stood out for its ‘ugliness and
squalor’. If you have ever been there, you will have seen that it rains a lot,
in all seasons of the year, that the stones of many of its buildings have a
strong nineteenth-century smell and that people are imbued with their tasks...
The
way I see it, no city is ugly. It's a matter of humour and finding the right
angle and seeing it cast in 'a silver grey shade'.
From my Borstal.
LDR
