NARCISO, JUANA Y VICENTE (IN ENGLISH)

My previous blog had to do with three persons who came across in my life, whom I'm very proud to have known.

NARCISO, was our driver when I worked for Cmdr. John Rigge, ex-Naval Attaché of the British Embassy and who was at the time, head of Hawker-Siddeley, the British company that made the "Concorde" with France, for Spain and Portugal. Narciso was always very withdrawn, sad-looking (I imagined he was one of the defeated in the Spanish Civil War). He was married and had two daughters. Years later when I saw him again, I found out that his two daughters, one was a doctor and the other a university professor. Narciso was a happy man and very, very proud.

JUANA, was a professor at the University of Ottawa. She was the daughter of a construction worker and a cleaning woman that when she went to a religious school in Madrid, she had to wear a different uniform and had to enter the school through a back entrance (I couldn't believe it!). However, she was very bright, she won a Fulbright Scholarship and studied in the States and there she was: a university professor.

VICENTE, he was an exile in Canada who worked with me at the Spanish National Tourist Office. He was Juana's partner. He had been a very important member of the Spanish Communist Party, actually, second to Carrillo. He had been illiterate until he was twenty-two years old. He told me that during the Spanish Civil War he ate grass because there wasn't anything else to eat. When he was twenty-two he went to work at a Marquis' house as a servant. The Marquis realized that he was a bright young man and had him learn how to read and write. He learned. Afterwards, he read all the books in the Marquis' library, thereby, becoming a very learned man. A scholar.

This is my tribute to many of my dear bloggers who are now professors, journalists, teachers and whose family were poor but who, nevertheless, helped their children to study and overcome their handicaps and become great professionals.