by Carl Halling

Created on: April 03, 2008   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

The Innocence of pre-Movida Spain/Gambolling Baby Boomers

The dreamy, introspective aspect of my nature became increasingly marked in 1972-73, and I fantasised about fame and adulation as Rock or movie star as never before, and so throughout '73 built an image based on one of my greatest Glam Rock idols, spiking my hair like him, and then even peroxiding it at some point. Understandably given these facts, I didn't fit in at all in my new home town, a deeply unfashionable outer suburb then as now, that is not until later in the decade. My brother on the other hand was far more suited to the area with his strong London acccent and laddish ways, and wasted little time in becoming part of a local youth scene. I was just as much into Soul music as him and by the middle of the decade I was starting to join him at local discos, but rarely at football matches, except on one occasion when we went to see Queens Park Rangers play together. By the end of '75 I was a fully-fledged discomaniac.

However, I came into my own in Spain, or rather Santiago de la Ribera on the Mar Menor near Murcia, where the family had been vacationing since about 1968. I think it was towards the end of my summer '73 holiday that I finally started to be noticed in a big way by the local youth, most from either Murcia or Madrid, and so la Ribera became vital to me in terms of my becoming a social being among members of both sexes. A group of us became very close and remained so for four summers running. Spain was such a sweet and friendly nation back then in the relatively innocent early seventies, and the youth of La Ribera as happy and carefree as I imagine southern Californians would have been in the pre-Beatles sixties. It was really a great time, and probably signalled the start for me of a lifelong love affair with the Spain and the Spanish people, indeed with Latin and continental Europe as a whole.
In the early 1970s, everything seemed to be mine for the knowing, for the tasting, for the taking. It was a time of constant, frenetic change and I greedily eyed the fruits of a revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged on my behalf in the sixties. I was soon to feast on them...never once considering the welfare of those fated to follow in my wake, to come to maturity in a world in which baby-boomers like me had lately gambolled like so many senseless, sensuous fauns. Pity their poor souls.

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