English Texts

Fe of the Inquisition, also an attack on memory,
and which is specified in the autos against witches,
against those women who represented the living
archive on which authority aimed to impose itself.
As Foucault knew, the work of the archive
demands suspicion of the archive itself. A reading
of alternative archives more as a form of inversion of
the official archives, a defence of marginal archives
as an impugnation of canonic archives. It is not a
matter of constructing other identities from the
revelation of archives buried in the disciplinary
institutions of society, but of calling into question,
throwing down the archives of a history that claims
to be unique and central.
In Rebelión en Sevilla, the man who was the last
governor of Republican Seville, José María Varela, tells
the story of Señorita Zero, a librarian and archivist of
the city, a militant Catholic activist, whose hobby was
jotting down the names of all those who were to be
sentenced to death and going to visit them in their
places of confinement so that she would be the one
to announce the news of their imminent execution
in person. The story of Señorita Zero goes like this:
‘With a true missionary vocation she found, after 18
July, a missionary land at the very gates of her native
Seville: the prison yards offered themselves as the
China, the Japan, the India or the Congo of her dreams.
There were the heathens. Hundreds of men without
faith. Hundreds and hundreds of heathens on the eve
of death. Hundreds and hundreds of souls she could
snatch from the devil. Her heart leapt for joy when she
received from Burgos that signed order which opened
the doors of the prisons of Seville wide to her so that
she could enter and carry out her missionary task with
no hindrance whatever. Gaols, gaolers, prisoners and
regulations at her disposal. No hindrance for the angel
who was going to announce the good news of the
doctrine of the lord. Free flight for her wings. And she
was the angel. She would be the angel for those wretches
who, day after day, evening after evening, awaited
her lined up in ranks, and saw her arrive, submissive,
obedient, and who in that deep silence showed how
great their respect for her was, she so insignificant,
so tiny, her person so wrapped in holy modesty. “The
new ones, aren’t they? How many? How few today?”
The remark depended on the number of neophytes.
“Look. God has entrusted me with a great mission,
me, so insignificant, so unimportant. You see who I am…
Nothing, nobody. A zero. Nothing more than a zero.
No name and no value whatever. Señorita Zero. Well,
He in his infinite goodness has charged ‘Señorita Zero’
with no less than the salvation of your souls. He, who
sees you in danger, who knows that you are in the
gravest danger, wants to save you. And he is using me
to accomplish that. He wants me to make you see the
abyss you are plunged in and help you climb out of
it. How? By preparing you to confess. By leading you,
repentant, to the feet of the confessor. You’ve never
confessed before, have you? Now you are in the hands
of human justice and that cannot be merciful, as His
is. That is why you must make haste. Today you are
in this world; but tomorrow, perhaps this very night…
Who knows? You are in God’s hands, but He is now
permitting you to be in the hands of human justice
and that is not so indulgent, nor should it be. What
would become of us if the judges always pardoned,
if they were not just, but harsh? You must, then, be
prepared. I am going to prepare you…” She knew she
was with fierce men, men who did not respect God or
the authorities, neither divine nor human law, burners
of churches, ravishers of nuns, torturers of priests…
human scum. They were wild beasts, worse than wild
beasts. She did not dare even look at them. But God
gave her strength to stand before them and talk to
them. And her stomach so delicate, without a murmur,
without nausea, bearing that pestilent stench of cold
food, of human rubbish. How God helped her! All these
would confess a few hours later and tomorrow, if God
allowed them to see tomorrow… all for divine mercy,
of which she was a simple, tiny instrument… The devil’s
advocate, that would be my report if one day a move
were made to canonise that Zero.’
Premature Architecture
A thesis from 1985 claimed that Ciudad Badía could
not be considered a city because of the total mobility
of its inhabitants for work and leisure. The logic of
those journeys, of that total mobility that would make
Badia more of a camp, nevertheless did not extend
to the field of sport. The building of a municipal
sports complex on the outskirts, inaugurated in 1977,
provided a space for pivoting the large number of social
relations that eventually formed the Badia del Vallès
residents’ community. Although the complex was built
on the edge of the city’s radial perimeter (drawn in
the shape of the Iberian Peninsula), from the very first
day it became the most important symbolic space
there, a kind of Atlantis if we continue with the play of
geographical similes. The Badia sports complex was
the largest sports facility in this part of the Vallès,
while Barcelona Autonomous University adopted it as
its students’ own venue. The heated swimming pool
and the football field became the spurs that ‘mobilised’
the people of the district. The membership numbers
achieved by the managing body – only comparable
in Badia to entities like the Peña Flamenca supporters
club – and the success of its footballers made the
buildings a model for the city, encouraging residents’
associations, awakening municipal competence, and
becoming a landmark for the citizens.
Likewise, we can observe a certain symbolic
compensation between the fame of Badia as a city
of crime and its efforts to be recognised for the
sporting accomplishments of its inhabitants. The
most significant case, of course, is that of Busquets,
the outstanding goalkeeper of Barcelona Football
Club, who bore his origins in Badia del Vallès as a
permanent surname. Although his peculiarities –
dissipated life, extravagances in the game, lack
of discipline, etc. – often made that surname more of
a suspicious nickname, the whole of Catalonia began
to recognise Badia in the goalkeeper’s sorties from
the area, in his feints against opposing forwards,
and in his kicks into mid-field.
English Texts 761