Letter from Spain #5

Martin Amis in Spain ... this time next week ... and a final call to review.

I was very sad to hear that Martin Amis had died from oesophageal cancer at his home in Florida yesterday, at the age of 73. It’s probably unfashionable to say it, but I much preferred his very early books that were published in the 70s - The Rachel Papers, Dead Babies and Success - than his ‘heavier’ work in the 80s and 90s. In fact, The Rachel Papers and Success both had a huge impact on me, published in 1973 and 1978 respectively, although I didn’t get to read them until around 1980, aged 20. But more about that in a moment.

Reading the articles and obituaries about Amis last night and today, I was fascinated to discover that he had a connection with Spain. It was something I’d never realised - and I probably would have warmed to him even more if I’d known (hispanophiles tend to warm to other hispanophiles). I dug into the Amis-Spanish connection after reading that he’d been educated at schools in the UK, Spain and the US, before going to Oxford.

The son of Kingsley Amis, his parents were separated when he was 14, and according to the obituaries his education was ‘rescued from ruin at the last moment’. His mother, Hilly (née Bardwell) ‘took the children [Martin had a brother and sister] to a villa in Mallorca that their father had already rented for an experimental year abroad, hoping that her husband would follow’. But he didn’t.

Amis apparently then ‘moved from school to school’ and it was only after he attended ‘no fewer than 14 establishments’ that he finally made it through A-levels and to Oxford. I haven’t found what school he actually attended in Spain, but it might have been while he was in Mallorca, or it might have been in Ronda in Andalusia …

At a book presentation in La Central in Barcelona in 2015, Amis said the following: ‘The truth is that I have a big relationship and connection with Spain. I would say that Spain is my country in Europe. France and Italy are not. My brother and sister live in Ronda. My mother lived there from 1975 until her death.’ He gave an anecdote, saying that ‘at that time, during the period of Franco, it was still prohibited to be in a bikini on the beach, and that one had to wear a one-piece bathing suit’. He said that his sister, when approached and ticked off for wearing a bikini instead of a one-piece, asked what piece she should remove.

He said that his mother ‘transmitted this love for Spain’ that he had, and he felt he had something in common with the Spanish people: ‘the sense of humour, which can be quite cruel, but also very educated’.

Bearing in mind Amis also spent two years in Uruguay with his second wife, Isabel Fonseca, before moving to the States, his grasp of the Spanish language was probably very good. Researching him further, he is quoted as once saying: ‘Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.’

I’d also assumed his books were almost unknown in Spain, as over the years when I’d mentioned his name to others, I’d been met by blank stares. Then I found out that not only all (or at least most) of his work has been translated into Spanish, but that an old friend and work colleague of mine, Enrique Murillo, actually translated the book Money into Spanish. Small world.

OK … so, as far as the impact that The Rachel Papers and Success had on me in my early twenties … I guess I should have read this quote by Sebastian Faulks regarding The Rachel Papers: ‘By virtue of its verbal brilliance, the book killed the genre of the young man’s coming of age novel dead. There was no point in anyone else trying after that.’ But I did …

I wrote my first ‘novel’ at the age of 18, called Green for Queen, about a bunch of kids in a 'Boarstal’-style youth detention centre. As I’d never been to a youth detention centre, I don’t think I knew what I was writing about, and after a sufficient number of rejections, I gave up approaching all the Bedford Square (at the time) publishers with it. Then followed my second ‘novel’ at the age of 19, called Billie and the Kid, which never got published but received enough ‘encouraging rejections’ to make me want to keep writing. Then I read The Rachel Papers and Success - and wrote a third ‘novel’, Girl, Non-Smoker, Own Room, at the age of 21 or 22. I was working in London for Condé Nast and the novel was about living and flat-sharing in London … but as I wasn’t actually living or flat-sharing in London, it didn’t work and again I failed to find a publisher. But reading Amis (and many others) made me want to write more and more - and after a fourth unpublished novel (Round Robin, this time a real ‘near miss’), I eventually found my subject matter: Spain. Through trial and error, I guess I learnt ‘to write about what you know’. RIP, Martin Amis.

Elections

This time next week, we’ll know, more or less, how the voting has gone in the regional elections in 12 of Spain’s autonomous regions - Aragón, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and the Valencia region. At the same time, we’ll also know the results of the voting in local town and city elections throughout the whole of Spain.

Whilst these regions all hold their elections on the fourth Sunday in May every four years, Andalusia, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia don’t. In the case of the Basque Country and Catalonia, I imagine it’s because they simply don’t want to do things like the rest of Spain, but I’m not sure about Andalusia and Galicia. As for Castilla y León, they had an election last year, which is when the far-right Vox party entered a regional government for the first time. Suffice to say that I’m hoping this isn’t going to happen elsewhere after next Sunday, but I fear it might. We’ll see …

Final Call

This is a final call if you’d like to receive a review copy of The Barcelona Connection. Simply use this link below and follow the instructions:

https://booksirens.com/book/PWQDW3O/JZ59FRL

Book Sirens (which is a brilliant platform) are currently offering a few slots for people to download, read and then review the new book on Amazon (or even Goodreads, I think) … and hopefully you might really enjoy it! Or, of course, you could BUY the book from any platform you like by clicking here!