The towpath

by Jesús Moncada

"Until 1971 the town at the centre of this story was a river port at the confluence of the Ebro and the Segre. In its heyday the lower orders - coalminers, bargees, small tradesmen, the clientele of the Quayside Cafe - contributed to the life, vigour and prosperity of the town, while according proper deference to the upper crust - the mine-owners, the fleet-builders and landed proprietors who patronised the Casino de la Roda, kept their favoured pews in church and provided for the maintenance of the luscious chorus girls down at the Eden. There were halcyon years, as during the Great War, when the embattled Powers' insatiable demand for coal turned the place into a boom-town, and the Armistice was greeted as bad news. After that, the downhill slide began, hastened on by Anarchists and left-wingers who fomented trouble in the pits; then the Civil War and its attendant repression, which filled Franco's jails with all too many citizens. But Franco's repression was as nothing compared with