Bahía de Biarritz, desde la terraza del Hôtel du Palais, 22 marzo 08. Foto JPQ.

De Eugenia de Montijo a ETA y los GAL, ¡qué fabulosa historia, la de Biarritz..!

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Fernando Castillo cuenta con mucho brío, erudición y amor la saga / fuga de la ciudad en su nuevo libro, Memoria de Biarritz (Confluencias).

Fernando reconstruye con mano maestra, paso a paso, los orígenes, historia y metamorfosis de la ciudad.

Los orígenes del turismo moderno, entre Monte Carlo y la Normandía proustiana, la historia política y diplomática hispano – francesa (el Tratado de los Pirineos se firmó en la Isla de los faisanes), los sucesivos destierros de dos guerras mundiales, las conspiraciones con aspiraciones subversivas (no solo monárquicas), la matriz de la moda contemporánea (Coco Chanel), la ciudad balneario donde se cruzaron los personajes y fantasmas de Picasso, Olga Khokhlova, Raymond Roussel, Ortega, Irène Némirovskt, entre un largo etcétera, confieren a Biarritz una personalidad única, a caballo entre varias disciplinas.

Historiador emérito del urbanismo y el gran arte madrileño, cronista implacable de las miserias y corruptelas de los servicios de seguridad en el París ocupado, observador atónito del Madrid ciudad aborrecida, viajero ilustrado por el Tánger ciudad de frontera, el Nápoles mediterráneo … Fernando recurre a su erudición y sabidurías íntimas para reconstruir la historia de las metamorfosis de Biarritz.

La leyenda majestuosa del gran Biarritz de finales del XIX, años 20 y 30 del siglo XX, terminará siendo el escenario negro donde se cruzaron el terrorismo etarra y el terrorismo de Estado de los GAL, en una geografía que tuvo otros días de gloria.

Fiel a la leyenda, recuerdo que Biarritz tiene un puesto propio en la historia de la literatura universal, a través de Vladimir Nabokov, que conoció de niño la ciudad balneario, y allí descubrió su primer amor (la matriz primera de Lolita), allí afirmó su pasión por las mariposas, evocadas en euskera, entre Carmen y una corrida de toros, en San Sebastián, en un relato breve muy bello, First love:

«… on the following day the Sud Express, which, on its way to Madrid, dropped us around ten p.m. at the La Negresse station of Biarritz, a few miles from the Spanish frontier.

Biarritz still retained its quiddity in those days. Dusty blackberry bushes and weedy terrains à vendre bordered the road that led to our villa. the Carlton was still being built.
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Along the back line of the plage, various seaside chairs and stools supported the parents of straw-hatted children who were playing in front on the s and . I could be seen on my knees trying to set a found comb aflame by means of a magnifying glass. Men sported white trousers that to the eye of today would look as if they had comically shrunk in the washing; ladies wore, that particular season, light coats with silk-faced lapels, hats with big crowns and wide brims, dense embroidered white veils, frill-fronted blouses, frills at their wrists, frills on their parasols. the breeze salted one’s lips. At a tremendous pace a stray golden-orange butterfly came dashing across the palpitating plage.
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Professional bathers, burly Basques in black bathing suits, were there to help ladies and children enjoy the terrors of the surf such a baigneurwould place you with your back to the incoming wave and hold you by the hand as the rising [ .. ] From him I learned, and have preserved ever since in a glass cell of my memory, that “butterfly” in the Basque language is misericoletea—or at least it sounded so (among the seven words I have found in dictionaries the closest approach is micheletea).

On the browner and wetter part of the plage, that part which at low tide yielded the best mud for castles, I found myself digging, one day, side by side with a little French girl called Colette.
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She spoke in bird-like bursts of rapid twitter, mixing governess English and Parisian French. Two years before, on the sameplage, I had been much attached to the lovely, suntanned little daughter of a Serbian physician; but when I met Colette, I knew at once that this was the real thing. Colette seemed to me so much stranger than all my other chance playmates at Biarritz!
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During the two months of our stay at Biarritz, my passion for Colette all but surpassed my passion for butterflies. Since my parents were not keen to meet hers, I saw her only on the beach; but I thought of her constantly .
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She used to give me warm handfuls of hard candy. One day, as we were bending together over a starfish, and Colette’s ringlets were tickling my ear, she suddenly turned toward me and kissed me on the cheek.So great was my emotion that all I could think of saying was, “You little monkey.”
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I had a gold coin that I assumed would pay for our elopement. Where did I want to take her? Spain? America? The mountains above Pau?” “Là-bas, là-bas, dans la montagne,” as I had heard Carmen sing at the opera. One strange night, I lay awake, listening to the recurrent thud of the ocean and planning our flight. the ocean seemed to rise and grope in the darkness and then heavily fall on its face.
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My memory retains [ .. ] our evading pursuit by entering a pitch-dark cinema near the Casino (which, of course, was absolutely out of bounds) [ .. ] a jerky, drizzly, but highly exciting bullfight at San Sebástian…».

Con el título de Colette, Nabokov publicó First love por vez primera en el New Yorker, en 1948, diez años antes de incluir ese relato, muy bello, en Dozen.

Mi fotógrafo no persiguió a Ava Gardner en Tossa de Mar (1950) sino en Biarritz (1957), durante el rodaje de The Sun Also Rises.

Vladimir Nabokov, Vera, Lolita, Ada, Marilyn y… muchas otras mujeres y encantamientos.

Fernando Castillo, defensa de la fotografía analógica, en blanco y negro.