Lo Pola at the NODO
The Marina Cinema was one of those huge theatres with a sloping floor from the entrance to the screen, designed so that the entire audience could see the film comfortably, without being bothered by the people sitting in front of them. It had a capacity of about five hundred people between General and Preferential seating. My friends and I were sitting in Preferential seating, which covered the entire ground floor. My mother preferred us to pay two more reales and avoid catching lice, or worse still, bedbugs, from the audience that filled the General seating.
The lights went out. It began with that patriotic music. Even though we were used to hearing it, it made us all feel deeply depressed. It was the NODO newsreel. They always showed the same old stuff: Franco inaugurating a dam. Franco fishing in Ferrol on the yacht Azor. Franco hunting…
But that day, a surprise awaited the audience at the Marina cinema that would leave us breathless: An eleven-year-old Spanish boy had been found trying to cross the Polish border from Germany, thirty kilometres from Berlin. Apparently, the boy had been reported missing two years earlier while playing in the street in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. Antonio Cazorla disappeared along with another child of French nationality, who apparently froze to death while crossing the neighbouring country, according to the survivor. This child has shown the world the strength and tenacity of this new breed of Spaniards who, from a very young age, feel the thirst for adventure that this new Spain has instilled in the spirit of all young people and blah, blah, blah… Little did those unfortunate, foolish reporters imagine that if Pola made it to Poland, it was because once he left Barceloneta, he didn’t know how to get back, and he kept walking in the hope that someone would recognise him and take him home. What the ten-year-old boy couldn’t have imagined was that it would take so long. The authorities of our country, with the collaboration of the Civil Guard, have taken charge of the child, together with his family, at the border of La Jonquera, where the authorities of the neighbouring country have handed them over in an emotional ceremony, and again: blah, blah, blah. Generalissimo Franco has taken a personal interest in the boy’s state of health. An investigation has been launched, with both countries collaborating to clarify the reasons that led these poor children to run away from home. We couldn’t believe it, Pola was alive and, what’s more, he was a hero. The entire cinema fell silent. It was as if we were watching a painting by Goya; no one moved a muscle. Suddenly, cheers and applause erupted, people went wild, the lights came on, and riot police were almost called in. The Cazorla family, known to everyone in the neighbourhood as the Polas, were originally from Roquetas, in the province of Almería. They were fishermen, and the couple had five children. Antonio, known as Pola, was the second oldest. The mother was certain that her son had been kidnapped to extract his blood. At that time, there was a rumour that some wealthy consumptives often went down to the poor neighbourhoods to buy blood for transfusions, something that these vampires considered as natural as changing the oil in a car today, but which, seen from a more honest perspective, is more akin to organ trafficking. More than one child had disappeared before, tricked into getting into a stranger’s car with the line, ‘Would you like a sweet, handsome boy?’ So the Pola case had been, according to the mothers in the neighbourhood, a clear example of why we should never talk to strangers. It was clear that they would have to find another example.
