- we’ve been so far south we actually crossed over to Africa;
- we’ve been so far north there was nowhere further to go;
- we’ve travelled so far west we made it into the Atlantic ocean and Portugal;
- we’ve travelled so far west we made it into the Atlantic ocean and Portugal;
- we’ve visited the beaches, the mountains, the cities;
- we’ve visited white villages of the south and farm villages of
the north;
- we’ve watched religious procession after religious procession
with those who are, without a doubt, some of Spain’s most religious;
- we’ve partied (and couldn’t keep up) with some of Spain’s
hardiest party animals;
- we’ve learned about conquests, cruelty and Catholic Inquisitions;
- we’ve seen how a country can be so diverse in landscape,
language and culture;
- we’ve eaten everything we shouldn’t have;
- we’ve talked, asked questions, and listened with curiosity as
our brains worked overtime trying to translate what was being said and to say
what we wanted to say.
Why did we do all this? I can only speak for myself but I feel
like I was looking for something. I was looking for some sort of connection. I
wanted to understand.
-
Understand
a culture that has seeped its way into my own and into Philippine society in
general;
-
Understand
(and speak) the language – a language I had grown up around but never learned;
-
Understand
the history of a place that has played such a dominant part in Philippine
history and the Filipino psyche;
-
Understand
this country that my ancestors called home;
-
And
last but not least… to understand me. My roots.
Digging into the family’s patchy history brings up names of
aunties, uncles, grandparents, great grandparents that were from Spain, along
with anecdotes about relative so-and-so was Spanish or from this region or that
region of Spain…yet I would never be so quick to consider myself Spanish.
There has never been a definitive answer about where in Spain these
ancestors were from (maybe because there were so many of them). As a child I
recall my father mentioning that he thought his background was, perhaps, from
the Basque region because of the colour of his skin and physical features – the
dark and hairy variety. Not an unlikely assumption given that the name Martinez de Ubago (Ubago being a town in
the Basque region) appears in his maternal lineage, but even he was unsure.
So I guess this extended stay in Spain has been about ‘feeling’ my
way through to find that familiar connection. We’ve been to the South before
but never to the North so we wanted to check it out. It’s not the most
scientific way to ‘research’ ancestral roots but I’ve always been one to use
intuition (combined with some facts) to make a judgement on things. So here it
goes… this is where I ‘feel’ my ancestral roots lay:
-
Galicia – nope. Very foreign to me. No
connection at all.
-
Basque Country – nope. No connection to this place at
all. Nothing is familiar. Language is completely foreign. Don’t feel a thing.
-
Cantabria and Asturias - beautiful… love these regions but nope. Maybe
in a past life? I’m convinced I must’ve been a peasant farmer living in the
mountains but I felt the same about the
mountains in Austria so I think it’s more do with mountains than the region itself.
-
Cataluna – exposure limited to Barcelona – but
nope.
-
Valencia – exposure limited to Valencia city –
but nope.
-
Madrid – most definitely. The first time I
arrived in Madrid, this felt familiar within the first few minutes of being
there. I was ‘seeing’ aunties, uncles and grandparents in the streets and bars.
I felt like I had finally come home despite having never been there.
-
Andalusia – most definitely. The Force is strong
with this one. So strong that I’d be willing to put money on it. Everything
felt familiar the first time we visited several years ago. That feeling was reinforced
on this trip with our extended stay in Seville and, given the city’s role in colonialist
Spain, I wouldn’t be surprised. Like Madrid, I was ‘seeing’ relatives
everywhere. The physical features my father thought to be possibly Basque, I
can now see are likely more Andalusian. I’ve been told that we have ancestors
from this region – but I’ve been told that of other regions too so no one
really knows.
Given the lengthy colonisation of the Philippines, it’s likely
that every Filipino has a Spanish ancestor but I have yet to find someone,
anyone, in our family tree who is a Filipino ancestor - an 'Indio' - preferably hailing from a province in the Philippines. I have yet to find links to a region in the Philippines – a region
that is not Ermita, Malate or Alabang. Growing up I silently begrudged my
parents (sorry Mom!) for ‘being so boring’ and not having a province we could
go to during summer breaks – like many of my classmates. “How could anyone
possibly not have a ‘home’ province??”, I thought. Now I understand how.
This is one of the reasons why I felt ‘the search’ was in another
country. Travelling through the Philippines trying to find a connection outside
of Manila seemed futile. The only ancestral home on my mother’s side that I
know of is in Malate (old Manila), a stone’s throw away from the University I went
to. My father’s old home, which is now long gone, was along Taft Avenue in the
same neighbourhood.
Someone once told me that when you get older, you go back to your
roots. If this is true, then this explains a lot...and it also explains how little I really know of our family history.
PS. This is a continuation of a previous blog post Musings from My Madrid Rooftop written several years ago.
