Free Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett

but like most people here he was known by his
mote
, or nickname –
Sartén
, Frying Pan. Thesearch for him, with Mariano as my guide, proved comical. Candeleda boasts some bizarre nicknames. Amongst those I would hear as we went around the pueblo were
Cagacantaros
, Pitcher-crapper,
Chupahuesos
, Bone-sucker,
Mataperros
, Dog-killer and
Cagamillones
, ‘He who craps millions’. (This last
mote
, I was told, was given to a man who boasted about his wealth.)
    First, however, Mariano wanted to introduce me to some of those who remembered the Civil War. We started off looking for Feliciano Pérez, who was not at home and, we were told, would be at the funeral of the oldest man in the village, who had died the previous day. We tried the church. This created a serious problem for Mariano. It is quite acceptable to wander in and out and chat to people in church services in Spain, but Mariano refused, on principle, to enter. The priest, he explained, had secretly said a Mass for his deceased father. This had led to a violent argument in the street. A boot, it was suggested, had been applied to the priest’s backside. And, anyway, there was the Church’s past to be considered. ‘You have to understand … the Church, the landowners and Franco were one and the same thing,’ he explained.
    We thought we had the solution to that one when we found the local newsagent chomping on a cigar stub as he stood under the trees outside of the church with a handful of other men. But the newsagent, it turned out, had also sworn never to set foot inside the church, which has a plaque commemorating the local priests killed in the Civil War. ‘Not on my life,’ he said. So, having discovered that anti-clericalism was still alive and kicking, we gave up.
    Eventually we found Feliciano back at home. ‘
Te cagarás
, you’ll crap yourself, if I tell you how old I am,’ he said, by way of greeting . Feliciano was in a good mood. With the previous day’s death he had, at ninety-six, become the new oldest man in town. Unfortunately his memory was fading and his story of how Franco’s Moorish troops took the town was jumbled and confusing.
    Felipe Grande Nieto, a gentle old man in his late eighties, had much clearer memories. We talked to him in the back room of a tiny three-room flat. To get to the kitchen-cum-sitting room, wehad to walk through the bedroom, where his frail stick of a wife lay shivering with cold. Her small body was stretched out and her arms clasped together on her chest like some medieval figure on top of a cathedral tomb. She moaned softly from time to time, giving every impression of preparing for the other world.
    Felipe’s father had been relatively well off and had owned a truck. He was, however, a Republican. The Nationalists took the truck away and his family had lived in relative poverty ever since. Felipe apologised as he talked, because, out of his already rheumy blue eyes, tears began to flow. He found two stories especially hard to tell. One was of a man, known as
el Ebanistero
, taken off at night to be shot with five others. ‘But, for some reason, he did not die that night. When they sent a man to bury them, he found
el
Ebanistero
still alive. “Kill me with the spade, I don’t want to be left alive,” he begged. So two
guardias
came and finished him off. They were buried down by the river,’ he said, the tears running down his cheeks. The other was the story of a man shot as he fled the attacking Moors. His corpse was discovered by a dog. The animal appeared at its master’s door with half a human limb in his mouth. ‘He killed that dog immediately. It had tasted human flesh,’ Felipe said, the tears still flowing.
    After hearing the bloodcurdling tales of Falangist violence and humiliation, the idea of meeting Frying Pan – the alleged Falangist killer – was distinctly chilling. I imagined a hard, dry old man, still twisted by hatred or flushed with brutal pride. Or, just possibly, he would be