In the 1950s my parents would take my sister, Merma (named for her mother, Mercedes, and grandmother, Matilde), and me to what then looked to me a palatial Chinese restaurant, the Dainty Restaurant, on J. M. Basa Street. My father would order morisquita china, fried rice with bits of Chinese sausage, scallions and garlic. My mother's favorite was sopa de nido, chicken broth with pieces of swallows' nests from the island of Palawan. My sister loved camarón rebosado, prawns with their tails on, in a crisp batter. We ate Chinese food with Spanish names and this was some 55 years after the Spaniards left the islands.
The restaurant was the biggest and best known restaurant on what was then the most important downtown street in my hometown, Iloilo. It was in a block of shops near Plazoleta Gay, the intersection of five streets at the foot of J. M. Basa Street. Nobody called the street J. M. Basa; to everyone with whom I grew up, it was Calle Real (spoken as one word, calyereál). I never found out who J. M. Basa was but know now that the Spanish built roads connecting the towns they established in the New World as well as in the Philippines and called the main ones cutting across town the Royal Way.
In 2001, Merma and I visited Spain. Spain and the Philippines are inextricably linked in my memories. Spanish culture and the history of the Spanish domination of the Philippines are at the core of my identity. That visit allowed me to put the stories I read in school about Spanish oppression in context that liberated me from resentment and anger. Seeing for myself where the Spanish conquistadores and later political and religious bureaucrats came from I grew a sense of who these people were and why they went to the Philippines. Like people of today, the Spanish autocrats came in search of a better future for themselves and for their families. I can understand that.
One of the cities we visited on that trip was Valencia, land of Valencia oranges. At our town fiesta, my grandmother always entertained at her big, airy Spanish-colonial house at La Granja. One of the perennial dishes served was arroz Valenciana. In Valencia in 2001, Merma and I had paella. Here was the arroz Valenciana of my childhood!
Catedrál
Puerta de Hierros
Mercado Central
Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciéncias (in Valencian, not Castilian Spanish)
1 comment:
I like what you said about why the Spaniards came to our islands, it was at that time the unstoppable wave of adventurers - men that was looking for God and wealth, for many Filipinos who were educated to hate their hispanic roots i could imagine how hard it is to accept that part of us being Filipinos belongs to what the Spaniards brought to our shores. I've always been proud of our hispano heritage, it has made me appreciate our traditions and culture.
Viva Las Islas Felipenas!
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