THE LIFE O’REILLY IN CADIZ

OLÉ, OLÉ, OLÉ, OLÉ

YOU’LL sometimes overhear English-speaking tourists at the Alhambra in Granada discussing the signpost to Generalife. They’re puzzled how an insurance company has managed to blag themselves an office in the middle of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

I was particularly glad on one occasion to witness two Americans discover that Generalife (pronounced ‘henneral-eeffy’) is derived from the Arabic ‘Janna al-Arif’, the Gardens of the Architect, and nothing to do with third party, fire and theft. Pleased, because I had been similarly mystified, but not brazen enough to ask anyone.

You can thus imagine my caution, when, as I strolled through the ancient cobbled lanes of Cadiz a few hundred kilometres to the west of Granada, I spotted a street with the name ‘O’Reilly’.

But this time no need for correction.

This sleepy city of Cadiz appears to be a quintessential southern Spanish city with the scent of orange blossom and jasmine filling the air. You could barely be anywhere more Spanish. You’re 1500 miles from Ireland, so what was the story about Mr or Mrs O’Reilly?

The wonderful Museum of Cadiz provided the answer. It seems that the Irish of Cadiz arrived some 300 years ago, on business. In 1717, a trade monopoly between Spain and her huge New World empire was granted to Cadiz – consequently the port became a magnet for merchant adventurers. The opportunity was not lost on the Irish.

Those who emigrated were Catholics, mainly from the south-east. Back home, they were barred from business by the Penal Laws; but dynamic, Catholic Cadiz posed no such restrictions.

These new Cadiz citizens formed a tight community, and O’Reillys, O’Donnells, Hennesseys, Crowleys flourished, and played a vital part in the development of Atlantic trade. Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto of Oxford University had this to say: ‘Until recently the activities of these Irish merchants were almost unknown to scholarship, yet their place in the commerce of the day was primordial in importance... and their enterprises touched almost every inhabitant of the Atlantic shore from New England to Brazil and from Waterford to Guinea.”

Sadly, these Irish merchants have all but been forgotten by history.

So, what better way to celebrate this enterprising branch of the Diaspora than to sit in the old main square of Cadiz, glass of sherry in hand, and cast your mind back a few centuries.

Watch the bats swoop in the lantern-light of the cathedral, listen to the crickets chirruping in the palm trees as the sun sets over the Atlantic.

Then raise your glass to these Irish exiles who would have watched the same huge red globe sinking below the Spanish Atlantic horizon, knowing that it would also be setting more than a 1000 miles to the northwest — over an Ireland they knew they were unlikely ever to see again.

MONK TURNED BAD

WE mark the 38th anniversary of Ireland’s only airline hijack next month.

In May 1981 Aer Lingus flight No. E164 departed from Dublin bound for London with 113 pas- sengers on board. Five minutes before landing a 55-year-old man, Mr Laurence James Downey, rose from his seat, went to the toilet and doused himself in petrol. Presenting himself at the pilot’s door with a cigarette lighter — in effect, a low-tech suicide bomb — he demanded the plane divert to France.

Ireland’s first, and to date only, aircraft hijacking was underway.

The plane eventually landed at a remote airport in Normandy. The hijacker, a defrocked Trappist monk, revealed his demands: he needed to know the Third Secret of Fatima.

At that time the only person in the world who had the info for Mr Downey was His Holiness, Pope John Paul II.

In the event, Mr. Downey — who had been expelled from his monastery for punching a superior — failed in his attempt to summons the Pope.

It’s not clear if Albert Reynolds, then Minister of Transport, actually contacted the Vatican.

But the hijack was resolved after French special forces stormed the plane and apprehended the hijacker.

Mr Downey, none the wiser about the Visions in Fatima subsequently received a fiveyear jail sentence — although being a Trappist monk, a spell in jail was presumably a hefty step up the ladder of luxury.

The Third Secret of Fatima was revealed several years later: basically it’s about the impending loss of faith in the Church, which tends to support that handy observation that things most people tell you in confidence aren’t worth passing on.

BAD SHOTS

LAST year I reported on an axe-throwing bar in London. That’s right – axe-throwing! Like darts, only you use axes. So, axe-throwing, alcohol, drunk people — it’s hard to see what could go wrong.

A couple of guys in Arkansas (aged 50 and 35) seem to have taken it one step further. Armed with a .22 calibre semi-automatic rifle and a bulletproof vest, they took it in turn to shoot at each other. Drink is certainly believed to have been a factor.

Sadly, I have to tell you this is not a recommended tourist pursuit. The two men were arrested for assault, although it’s not clear if this will stick in court, as neither of the two men filed a complaint.

YOU BET JURASSIC

RESEARCHERS have reported the discovery of fossil remains of a new species of ancient fourlegged whale found in 42.6-million-year-old marine sediments off Peru, among the oldest ever found. In Ireland we have plenty of our own native footprints. Head south-west for Kerry, and cross the sea to the island of Valentia. On this green morsel of land lying half a mile off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula they have footprints there going as far back some 385 million years. And there’s absolutely no truth in the rumour that when they were discovered some original Mrs Brown’s Boys’ scripts were found in the silt nearby. The footprints of these primitive four-legged animals, the ancestors of all land things, were found on a trackway in the shadow of Jeokaun Mount.

About 200 prints of one or more tetrapods can be spotted making tracks across the island — clearly visible in the purple siltstone at Dohilla.

As they struggled on to the land they likely thought to themselves, “Hmmm, I wonder if this is a good idea . . . . ”

Fossils can also be found in great profusion on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England – 95 miles of sweeping beaches, dramatic cliffs, blustery headlands, sheltered coves. The fossils here go back 185million years; this really is a walk though time.

And with the seamlessness of a yard of linoleum, we segue from fossils to fish and chips. The south coast of England is, by common consent, a centre of excellence for that quintessential British institution.

But chips are, in fact, a Spanish invention. The first fish and chip shop in Britain opened in Whitechapel in London in the mid-19th century — the country had been chipless until then.

Sephardic Jews brought chips with them from Spain, where a tradition of deep frying stretches back to antiquity. Except, of course, the frying there is done in the very best of olive oil.

Not so in Whitechapel – good olive oil being very scarce at that time. Thus began a tradition where potatoes are fried in cheap fat that never quite gets hot enough – giving the chips that unmistakable, soggy, yet tasty texture. Britain was on its way to becoming the first nation in the world to eat its evening meal at the bus stop.

In Ireland, it’s believed the first fish and chips were sold by an Italian immigrant, Giuseppe Cervi, who mistakenly stepped off a North American-bound ship at Cobh in the 1880s.

He made his way, on foot, to Dublin and started selling fish and chips from a handcart.

Ireland was soon to become one of the world’s great chip superpowers, along with England, Scotland and Belgium. Soon colourful traditional customs, such as the late-night chip van brawl, would become part of the social fabric of the country.