AS the song goes, when you’re in love, there’s nothing you can do about it. Everything seems beautiful and easy.
At least that’s how it seemed to Cecilia and me throughout the month of November 1983.
Our days set into a pattern. In the mornings she went to work in the dental clinic, and
I made sure the apartment was clean and neat. “Don’t bother washing the dishes,” she said, but I did not mind her.
I’d put on some music
on the stereo and do my
exercises. I had to maintain
my weight. By the time she’d come out of the clinic for lunch break I’d wait for her
and together we’d go for
an aperitivo.
We always went to the same place, El Chupito, for a glass
of chilled rose wine—vino de Aragon, of course—and a tapa. Then we’d go home and prepare our lunch. We cooked simple meals. Our favorite
was boiled spinach with a
slab of white cheese. Also grilled merluza, hake fish in
English. Or we’d prepare a
bocadillo with crusty bread.
In the afternoons, Cecilia went back to the clinic, while
I took long walks around Zaragoza. No matter what route I followed, invariably I’d end up at the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar.
Near Cecilia’s apartment there were several places to eat, have a drink, or dance the night away. Our favorite was the piano bar Gala with clusters of seats arranged like a
living room. We went often with Tita Isa and Cecilia’s best friend, Beatrix Arrieta.
We were always lucky to find a place. If Tita Isa was with us the pianist would play “Hey,” the song made famous by Julio Iglesias. Along the same street as Gala was Scratch, the No. 1 disco in Zaragoza.
We went there, often, too. The music was always terrific and the sound system did not blare in our ears. That is
because it was concentrated on the dance floor. The also played slow drag for couples to dance in tight embrace
as they said, “agarrados con musica lenta.”
One day Tita Isa suggested we go to Monzon. Cecilia did not come along as she had work. We took a train early in the morning, and walked around the town upon arrival. We wanted to visit the huge imposing castle on top of a mount.
There was a gentle slope leading to it but we did not know that, and we started to climb the mountain side with its rough rocky terrain. Someone asked us what we were doing and Tita Isa said we were trying to emulate goats trekking uphill.
We turned back and
explored the town. I wondered which one had been my great-great-grandfather’s house. When my great grandmother sold it to move to Barcelona she had the coat of arms in
the facade destroyed so that no one would ever use it.
When we had enough sightseeing we went to a typical restaurant near the train
station and had a very good lunch. In no time, we’d catch the train back to Zaragoza, and have much to tell Cecilia and Beatriz when we went out that evening.
Sometimes we did not go anywhere but remained home listening to music, watching TV, or sharing chilled champagne and tapas we made ourselves. I recalled that at Malacañang receptions champagne was kept cool in its flutes by putting frozen grapes to act as ice. I scored quite a hit when I did it once.
On one occasion Tita Isa,
Cecilia and I went to Calanda for the weekend. There we
met Cecilia’s brother Ismael with his wife Maria whose family lived in Calanda. Our main
purpose was to visit Cecilia’s aunt Pilar Villarroya, Tia Piluja, who also lived in Calanda with her husband Eloy Crespo.
Their house was an ancestral mansion of several stories. On the ground floor Tio Eloy ran a general store that sold anything your heart desired. He knew where everything was and did not have to look at the tag to tell you the price. The Crespo house was back to back with that of the Buñuel family, one of whose scions, Luis Buñuel, was the famous cinema director.
Tio Eloy’s hobby was to make wine in a cellar not
far away from his house. It was mostly young wine which had to be drunk fast. He collected all manner of wine bottles which he used to fill up with his wine. They were conveniently kept in a cellar below the great stairway of the
ancestral home. Having dinner with Tio Siloy and Tia Piluja was always a wine tasting
adventure.
A visit to Calanda also meant a prayer at the parish church, built on the site of the famous Miracle of Calanda. The story brings us back to the first half of the 1600s. A young man from Calanda, Miguel Pellicer, worked in a farm in Zaragoza across the Ebro river.
Every afternoon, as he
returned from work, he would stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar to say a prayer. One day he suffered an accident when the horse of his cart reared and the wheel crushed his right leg.
The leg was amputated and Miguel was reduced to being
a beggar at the door of the Basilica where for several years the people saw him. They also knew that every night before going home he went inside the Basilica to pray and rub oil from a lamp on his stump.
It was not healing well, and Miguel was afraid that eventually gangrene would set in and cause his death. He decided
to return to his parents’ home in Calanda, 100 kilometers away from Zaragoza.
Miguel slept on a pile of
hay at the foot of his parents’ bed, his own room having been rented out to augment the family’s income. Since he had to wake up early to work in the fields, he also went to bed earlier than the rest of the family.
One night at about 10 o’clock, as he slept, his mother entered the room holding a lamp. She looked over Miguel and to her surprise noticed that there were two feet sticking out of the blanket.
Awakened abruptly Miguel thought he was in a dream. Then he explained to his mother that indeed he had been in a dream, wherein his nightly prayer to Lady of Pilar had ben granted. No, he had not prayed for the restitution of his amputated leg.
He had prayed that some-day he be able to go to Zaragoza and pray at the Basilica. In his dream he found himself there, praying before the image of the pillar, guarded by two silver angels.
Then, all of a sudden the
image came to life and so did the angels. The Virgin told the angels, ”put back his right leg,” and so they did. That’s how he came to recover his amputated leg.
Miguel went to Zaragoza and submitted himself to the inspection of the doctor who had performed the amputation. There was no trace of a wound.
From Calanda we returned to Zaragoza with much to
ponder on. The days were fleeting and soon it would
be time for me to return to the Philippines. Cecilia’s feast day came on November 22 and we were invited to an afternoon tea by her mother’s brothers and sisters—Francisco, Luisa, and Ramon Villarroya, as well as Elisa Villarroya de Vallespin, who lived a few houses away in elegant Paseo de Sagasta.
Cecilia and I had made many plans for the coming months. She would come to Cebu to visit in March and April, and we made arrangements to get married toward the end of September 1984
at the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar. Where else?
