sometimes, from the hidden corners of her heart, calls the haunting question:
What can be built through silence?
They are calling the Hotel Castellana Hilton here “The Forty-ninth State” and with some justification, because only in America does there seem to be more Americanos. . . .
. . . There are diplomats and generals, admirals and hill jumpers, phony counts and real ones, movie actresses trying to look like movie actresses and non-actresses also trying to look like actresses. Some of the steadies have been here so long now that they have to cut them loose from the bar stools. And there is usually a magnificent assortment of weirdies.
. . . I have seen faces around here that haven’t emerged since the old contract-letting days of World War II. They crowd the bar and give cocktail parties and search endlessly for “contacts,” for Spain is opening up more and more to outside trade, and there is, of course, big dough to be made in the construction of the military bases here.
—ROBERT C. RUARK
from “Call Hotel Hilton The 49th State”
Defiance Crescent News, Defiance, Ohio
March 1, 1955
3
They know he’s a tourist.
It’s not the camera that draws their stare. It’s his clothing. The eyes of the locals pull first to Daniel’s mud-dulled boots. Their gaze crawls over his denims, pausing briefly at the belt buckle displaying the silhouette of Texas. A quick survey then continues north over his plaid shirt, but as soon as they see his camera, they quickly turn away.
People look at him, but no one speaks to him.
Two small boys walk by a newspaper stand. The front page of the paper features a picture of Spain’s leader. The boys stop and raise their right arms in salute to the photograph.
¡Franco! El Caudillo de España.
Daniel snaps a picture.
The words and Franco’s photo, in various configurations, appear everywhere. On the country’s coins, postage stamps, trolley cars, and street signs. Daniel looks at the newspaper photograph. General Franco is short with a bland face and retreating hairline. His tiny mustache is perhaps his only distinguishable feature. Small in stature, his grip over the country looms tall, absolute.
“Dan’s six foot one now,” bragged his father recently. “Isn’t that right, big man?”
Wrong. Height doesn’t make a man big or powerful. He and his father look through different lenses.
* * *
As he exits Retiro Park, noise erupts like a clowder of screaming cats. Motor scooters blister down the scalding pavement, darting between wheezing buses and honking cars. A little girl in a ruffled dress sits on the handlebars of a motorcycle as her wild driver whips through traffic.
Daniel pauses on the sidewalk. Madrid roars with an exotic energy of deep colors. Cars and shoes are black, blending with street tapestries of charcoal, Goya brown, and dark currant. The churning scenes are accented by swirling exhaust and snaps of Spanish. His mother, born in Spain, is adamant he speak the language of her country. For the first five years of his life she spoke to him only in Spanish. Although the language is familiar, all else in Madrid is foreign.
On the corner near the entrance to the park, tired donkeys pull lumbering carts. Vendors hawk souvenirs. A pencil of a man stands behind an assortment of Spanish folding fans. He holds several at once, flicking them open to flutter like painted butterflies. The vendor motions to the badge hanging from Daniel’s camera strap, asking if he’s a journalist.
“¿Periodista? ¿Americano?”
Daniel nods at the half-truth and continues walking. The camera was a high school graduation present from his mother. The badge is from a local paper back home in Dallas.
“I want to be a photojournalist,” he announced recently at the dinner table.
“Trust me, you’ll grow out of it,” said his father.
He won’t. Photographs are spontaneous and exciting, something that he creates, not inherits. They’re a story of his own making, instead of an ancestral narrative steeped in oil fortune. He thinks of the typewritten letter at home in his desk drawer.
* * *
Dear Mr. Matheson,
Congratulations, you have been selected as one of five finalists for the 1957 Magnum Photography Prize.
His portfolio is due in September.
His father doesn’t understand. Daniel won’t tire of photography, but he is tired of frugal listeners who are generous with opinion. And the opinions are many:
He should pursue football instead of boxing.
Photography’s a waste of time.
The family oil business will be his happily ever after.
Those who think they know him best don’t really know him at all.
Girls were no different. “Daniel Matheson. My, my,