My father was a European through and through, and though he always loved the US for having saved Europe from the Nazis and communism, he longed to return to the cultured circles of his formative years.  We might have moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, but for the civil unrest in south France in '62 regarding Algerian independence.  My father chose Franco's Spain as a safe place for his family; though politically repressive generally, this sleepy little country afforded us kids much freedom of movement because the streets were not dangerous (Guardia Civil posts abounded).  My sister and I went to American, British, Spanish and French schools at various times, the family belonged to a rather posh tennis club.  My father's US-dollars salary allowed us to live very comfortably. 

    We lived in a developing part of town, where the emerging middle class and bourgeoisie coexisted with remnants of feudal times and the Civil War era.  I played behind a stone wall, part of what remained of a vast old finca; ladies mourning in black abounded; gypsies in traditional caravans were not hard to find; the trams were slow and rickety, but they ran.  The metro could take me and my friends to the prosperous Plaza de Cataluña and Corte Inglés or the Ramblas or Plaza de España or to Roman ruins in the Old City.  History coexisted with modern life naturally and without drawing comment. 

    I of course never appreciated my life then, never saw how rich it truly was, that I was the product of a US-born mother from a small Great Lakes town, who was nevertheless open and welcome to edifying change in her life, and a father originally from a wealthy and cultured European background, a citizen of the world, both of whom believed in the power of education to bring about change.  My sister and I were exposed to many languages, educational environments and refined culture generally, but we were never taught that we were privileged, that we deserved this.  Instead, we were simply expected to do well in school and to make the most of ourselves generally.  And there was not much available to us to contaminate this experience; much high culture existed but commercial culture (as we knew it through TV and cereal boxes in the US) was largely absent.  Yet this was not at all a colorless experience.  Quite the contrary.  

    What do I remember most about these precious years?  Fútbol, for sure.  I became a Spanish kid and played in the streets like any other boy.  The bread!  A panadería could be found on most any block.  Sold by the 1/2 or full kg. in thick baguettes, the Spanish devoured bread.  (In the Franco years, three things were cheap: bread, wine and cigarettes.)  Frugality: Spanish families who we got to know did a lot with very little.  Our neighbors, the Villanuevas, a family with nine kids and a grandson, managed to live in one two-bedroom apartment in our building.  Yet theirs was the house we went to to watch TV and play cards and eat.  The slowness of life: all things moved the way the tram cars did: slowly but surely.  This could be infuriating  for visiting Americans, but the Spanish taught us how to take life in stride, to enjoy the present, to live, as my mother once remarked, "from fiesta to fiesta".