Nights Q+A

I have been asked a lot of questions since I started the blog nearly four months ago, coupled with all the google searches that brings you lovelies to me every day. So I thought I would gather up all the most asked questions and tried to cover as many as I can in one answer.

Q: Who is Canna?

Short answer – I am. Canna is a fictional character that I write, see “Nights Wants to Forget” under the Blogroll or the “About Nights” section. I am not writing myself I can assure you, I have been asking many times if I am drug addict, and the answer is NO! To follow me you can do that here, on the OF board where you can read Canna and Luna, on Twitter, and my fun blog Canna After Dark.

Q: What is Night Wants To Forget?

Night Wants To Forget is a beautiful song by Mario Frangoulis. It is also the name of my first novel, due for release Christmas 2011 (see “About Nights”) Night is chased away by day, but is the winner again at dusk.

I also have “Blood in the Soil” (AEWID) in the blogroll, which is another story to follow, but I post the information, such as the Spanish civil war information on this blog. If you find Canna a bit dark, or also like a mystery/drama, you will like Luna. Luna’s story is slated for publication in 2012.

Q: What happened to Carlos Marin?

He became more talented and hotter than before! But seriously, I am not surprised this is the most searched for subject, and the constantly the most popular articles are about the one and only Carlos Marin. I have endless info about Carlos, including Spanish articles translated into English (and there Spanish links are there too) so just go to the Carlos Marin category (bottom right) or the tag cloud (right) and you will be flooded with information and pics. To answer the most popular questions – as of today, June 2011, Carlos Marin is single, he is not getting back together will Geraldine Larrosa, he is not dating anyone, he lives in London but has a home in Madrid, and he is not leaving Il Divo. For a history of Carlos check my “Il Divo” page (top right), or Carlos’ 2011 website under my Blogroll on the right. Carlos is on Twitter here and on Facebook here

Q: Il Divo 2011 concert schedule?

Il Divo play the London Coliseum August 1 and 2, Bratislava Castle August 11 and Killruddery Castle August 19 and 20. There may be more coming, see Il Divo for details. The moment something new comes up I will have it.

Q: Carlos Marin Madrid concerts?

Carlos Marin and Geraldine Larossa performed in Madrid 23-24-25-26 June. I have all the videos, all the pics, and all the reviews. They are regularly trending and easy to find, otherwise go to the Carlos Marin and / or Geraldine Larrosa categories or tag cloud links.

Q: Il Divo are playing Bratislava?

Yes! August 11 at Bratislava Castle. And bad news, tickets are no longer available, they sold in a few days, surprising given there there was no notification about this at all. Bratislava Ticketing. For information about the show, type in Bratislava in my search function for information.

Q: Il Divo 2011 and Il Divo in Japan?

Easy! The guys have only come out of hibernation after a long break, so all the recent news is here on Nights, just scroll your way through the few hundred posts I have, mostly are about recent Il Divo news. For Il Divo’s recent trip to Japan, I have multiple posts, clips and lots of pictures, just type “Japan” in my search field, or for the movie launch “Andalucia” may also come in handy in the search field.

Q:Geraldine Larossa, Innocence information?

A popular lady indeed. As of June 2011 ( and indeed for several years now) Geraldine has been a relationship with Sergio Arce Tula, one of the fabulous dancers associated with her and Carlos’ Innocence projects. Geraldine lives in Madrid with Sergio, so sorry fans, Geraldine and Carlos are not reuniting, they are all very close and happy friends. I have many articles with Geraldine on the site ( see categories on the bottom right or in the tag cloud), as well as links to her personal and Innocence websites on the right. Geri is on Twitter here

Q: Carlos Marin en Que Tiempo Tan Feliz / Carlos Marin appears on Que Tiempo Tan Feliz?

This is the programme when Carlos Marin sang “Maria” live. Click here to see. Another massively popular link is the Carlos article when he said he was going to marry a Bollywood actress, but is most definitely NOT going to now - here

Q: David Miller and “The Magic Flute”?

Yes, David has a magic flute. Well, he did on the on stage production in April. Good news, the entire show is available on mp3, the full broadcast, flick me a message if you are interested. Otherwise whack “The Magic Flute” in the search bar for pics and reviews about the fantastic show. David Miller has his own category and tag cloud here on Nights all everything on the man (including history in “Il Divo” on the top right), and David is on Twitter here

Q: Urs Buhler 2011 / Sebastien Izambard 2011?

If the boys have done it this year, I have it here, just look under the Categories list or in the tag cloud, which will bring up all their information. Also the “Il Divo” section (top right) has their history and personal life info if you need to brush up. Sebastien has a new son Jude Izambard, and I have the release sent out by Seb about that in his category, and for this latest Ascot visit and other exploits such as Popstar to Operstar in there too.

As for our Urs Toni Buhler, as many search for him under, he was never in a motorcyle accident and is perfectly fine. No, he is not single (see “Il Divo” top right) and no, I don’t have his email address. Short answer is you cannot contact the guys at the moment. I also do not know where either Carlos, Sebastien or Urs live in London, and if you are looking, perhaps stop and take a look at yourself, you are causing divas worldwide harm. Same goes for calling them in hotels while they are travelling and working.

Sebastien is on Facebook here, Urs in not on fb or Twitter.

Q: Sarah Joy Miller’s new album?

Sarah Joy is very popular! I have a Category and tag cloud for her here, including her work in Rigoletto in May, and her new website has just launched (link on the Blogroll), or follow her on Twitter here She has said her new album will be out later this year.

Q: Carlos Marin: Sera un divo en solitario

Si, el enlace en español y inglés, clic aqui The article - It will be a “Divo” solo is here

Q: Il Divo Dov’e L’Amore lyrics / letras

Yes, I have the lyrics to Dov’e L’Amore in English, Espanol and Italiano, along with the clip here Dov’è L’Amore

Q: Vittorio Grigolo, Alfie Boe, Mario Frangoulis, Rolando Villazon, Alessandro Safina, and Les Miserables?

For information on these amazing artists and my running Les Mis clips, just click on their names in the tag cloud on the right and it will bring up all I have. Otherwise their external links are in the Blogroll. I have Vittorio’s recent La Scala Romeo et Juliette performance on here, the search function can help you. Vittorio and Mario were both at the Athens Special Olympic last weekend and I have both clips in their tag cloud. I plan to expand all these sections in the coming months, and also plan a Ramin Karimloo section very soon.

Q: Spanish civil war?

Anything I have posted on this subject is in the Spain tag cloud or category. I also have the Memorica Historica external link in the Blogroll. I do have the link for the map of civil war graves in the Spain category.

So…. there you go, about 100 questions crammed in together. I hope that helps. Anything more just let me know! 

Spain’s buried past

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Spain’s Second Republic. But with many mass graves from the Civil War era still not excavated and those who dare probe the crimes of the past facing legal action themselves, the country still appears reluctant to face up to its violent past.

The families of many of those who fought for the Republic believe Spain has still not acknowledged their loved ones. Photo: James Blick.

By James Blick

A true city of the dead, five million bodies lie buried in Madrid’s Our Lady of the Almudena Cemetery.  And bar the towering cypresses, it’s a monochrome landscape of powerful granite tombs and austere crucifixes.  Winding through the graves, half lost, I finally glimpsed a flash of colour.  Red, yellow and purple – the flag of the Spanish Republic.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Second Spanish Republic.  A short lived affair, running from 1931 to 1939, the Republic was ring-fenced by dictators.  And for many left-wing Spaniards it represents an oasis of progressive secular government – women’s rights, civil marriage and divorce, clear Church and state separation – before being torn apart by civil war and buried under Franco’s 36- year repressive rule.

The Republican flag I’d seen was one of several as a couple of hundred Spaniards gathered at an old brick wall down the back of the cemetery.  It was April 16, two days after the date the Republic, back in 1931, was legally established.  They’d come to pay tribute to the men and women who had defended, unsuccessfully in the end, the democratically elected Republican government against Franco’s uprising.  And, more specifically, to remember the over 2,500 Republicans – among them bakers, teachers, poets and labourers – who were, between 1939 and 1944, lined up in front of this brick wall and shot.  Having won the war, Franco purged Spain of thousands who had opposed him.

Scores of black-and-white photos, portraits of those executed here, hung temporarily from the brick wall.  They were a mix of young and old, some well dressed, others clearly poor.

And hanging interspersed amongst the faces of the dead were hundreds of red carnations.

Songs were sung and speeches made.  But it was when the ceremony was over and people approached the photographs for their own private tributes that it was clear how fresh and deep the wounds of Spain’s fascist past remain.  Many of those gathered were the children, grandchildren and even siblings of the dead.

Two middle-aged women sobbed as they kissed carnations held in their hands and, calling out, “bonito!” (beautiful), hung them next to the old photograph of a young man, a cigarette sagging from his smiling lips.

And Daniel, 91, with a small Republican flag pinned to his cardigan, pointed with his walking stick to the photo of a handsome, fine-featured man wearing a suit, his hair slicked back.  It was his brother, killed here in 1941.

José Luis, in his fifties, told me his family’s woeful history.  His grandfather was imprisoned and tortured after the Civil War, his father survived the fighting but was condemned to forced labour, building an airport that is still used today. One uncle was killed in battle and another uncle shot here.

The silenced victims

Their stories tie into the broader narrative of the many Spaniards who continue to grieve, without closure or catharsis, the fate of their Republican relatives killed during and after the Civil War.  Thousands of Franco’s opponents still lie in unmarked communal graves throughout the country – their bones buried in fields, in ditches, or thrown down wells.  And over the last 10 years a growing number of families have begun tracking down their relatives’ remains in the hope of finally giving them a dignified burial.

But the pain felt by those who had congregated at Madrid’s sprawling cemetery is intensified by the fact that they have little hope of finding the bones of their relatives, or even knowing if bones still exist.  Given the secrecy that surrounded the executions, families were typically not told of their relatives’ fate and, with the climate of fear that pervaded Franco’s Spain, they never dared ask questions.  The bodies of the executed remained mostly unclaimed and were eventually dumped in the cemetery’s common grave, rendering them untraceable.

José Luis, who described the situation as Kafkaesque, has oral evidence to suggest that around 1980 his uncle Tiburcio’s remains, among those of others, were exhumed and incinerated.  Tiburcio’s family was never informed of his execution.  They knew he’d been arrested, but 29 April 1940 – the day of his death – was, for his family, the day Tiburcio disappeared.  Only in 2005, when José Luis became interested in family history and began to investigate, did he discover his uncle’s fate.  And only then did José Luis’s father, now 91, finally learn what had become of his own brother.

Without bones or a known place of burial the families have no grave where they can grieve or leave flowers.  Only a small plaque set into the old wall – the result of lobbying by two historical memory associations – pays tribute to the dead.  But it’s so small as to be barely noticeable and certainly negligible given what happened here.

Yet nearby, in the same cemetery, lie marked graves and a large memorial to the Condor Legion, the German pilots who, sent by Hitler to help Franco win the Civil War, rained bombs on Madrid and, famously, obliterated Guernica.  And opposite is another sizeable memorial to hundreds of Franco’s Nationalist troops who died, as “martyrs” reads the inscription, fighting the Republicans in an early Civil War battle.  Both memorials pay tribute to the dead as having fallen por Dios y por España – for God and for Spain.

In 2008 the families of the Republicans executed against the old wall wrote to the conservative Mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, asking that a memorial be built in the cemetery.  They were not only asking for somewhere they could pay their respects, but also for a monument that would afford their relatives the same recognition that, just a stone’s throw away, had been granted to Franco’s men.  More than a thousand signatures supported the letter.  The Mayor never replied.

The lack of a memorial, or even a reply, is not surprising given the thorny politics surrounding the issue of historical memory in today’s Spain.  In 2008 a high-profile Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the Civil War and post-Civil War disappearances and executions of 114,266 Republicans.  Moreover he accused Franco and 34 of his henchmen of crimes against humanity.

Garzón on trial

But in a bizarre turn of events that signals Spain’s persistent unwillingness to fully confront, or universally condemn, its fascist past, Garzón now finds himself on trial.  A right-wing group accused him of contravening the Ley de Amnistía de 1977 – the 1977 Amnesty Law – which Spain enacted as it made the transition to democracy.  The law guarantees amnesty for political crimes committed during the Civil War and the subsequent Franco regime.  But what was employed as a tool to prevent the fledgling democracy from becoming mired in blame and recriminations is now obstructing the investigation of, and responsibility for, Franco-era crimes.

Garzón has been charged with overstepping his authority and, if convicted, could be forced off the bench for up to 20 years.  He is currently suspended pending the outcome of the trial.

Those who support a thorough examination of, and accountability for, Francoist Spain blame the 1977 law for not only creating an amnesty, but also an amnesia. They accuse the ‘pact of silence’ that followed Franco’s death – the tacit agreement that permeated Spanish society not to discuss the dictatorship or the Civil War – for leaving the country’s history only half told.

In 2007 the current Socialist government passed the Ley de Memoria Histórica – the Historical Memory Law – as a way to break the silence and tell the other side of the story.  Officially the law recognised the victims of both sides of the Civil War, but its principal raison d’être was to balance the scales.  It set aside money and greased the bureaucratic rails for those families trying to trace the fate and the remains of their Republican dead.  And in May the government finally released, as it promised it would under the 2007 law, a map of the more than 2,000 known communal graves throughout the country.

But while the law has practically benefited individuals searching for information about, or the burial places of, their relatives, it stops short of requiring that the government take an active role in the search.  This means that while the state is willing to publish a map of where Franco’s victims lie, it’s not willing to do any digging.

That Spain remains unable to confront its past as a unified nation is not surprising given the strong ideological divisions that continue to split the country.  The policy of keeping silent on the Civil War and the Franco years is supported by the powerful and conservative opposition Popular Party (PP).  Its leader, Mariano Rajoy, has said opening the wounds of the past serves no purpose.  But the Popular Party traces its origins back to Francoist ministers and the party remains reluctant to endorse any policy that might appear to condemn the Caudillo’s regime.

A swing to the right

And with Spaniards having just delivered the PP a decisive victory, and the ruling Socialists a humiliating defeat, in the May regional and local elections, odds are Rajoy’s party will form the country’s next government.  Voters return to the polls for general elections early next year at the latest and it’s predicted they will again punish the Socialists for an economic crisis that has no end in sight.  For his part, Gallardón, the mayor who never answered the families’ request for a memorial, won another term in May by a wide margin.

So as Spanish politics swing to the right it appears the onus will remain on those who gathered to remember at the old cemetery wall, and on other families, academics and historical memory associations throughout the country who continue to uncover the past in an often personal and largely piecemeal way.  José Luis said to me, “Only once I had reconstructed the history of my family was I finally able to reconstruct the history of Spain.”  His experience, undoubtedly not unique, suggests the overlooked pages of his country’s history will, for the foreseeable future, continue to be narrated principally through individual resolve and perseverance.

Original article by Iberosphere

Carlos Marin in concert videos – Jesus Christ Superstar and Innocence performs Call Me

Jesus Christ Superstar

Call Me

Carlos Marin in concert video – Hay Algo Ahi, On Broadway and El Reloj

Carlos at the beginning of the show -

 

Clock not tick the hours Reloj no marques las horas 
because I am going crazy Porque voy a enloquecer 
She will go forever forever Ella se ira para siempre 
When the sun rises again. Cuando amanezca otra vez. 
Now as tonight we have Nomas nos queda esta noche 
to live our love Para vivir nuestro amor 
And your ticking reminds me of Y tu tic-tac me recuerda 
of my incurable pain. Mi irremediable dolor.
The Clock will take you away Reloj deten tu camino 
Because my life is extinguished Porque mi vida se apaga
She is the star Ella es la estrella 
that will not let me be Que alumbra mi ser 
without your love I am nothing. Yo sin su amor no soy nada.
Stop the time in your hands Deten el tiempo enn tus manos 
Make this perpetual night Haz esta noche perpetua 
to never leave me Para que nunca se vaya de mi 
So you never dawn. Para que nunca amanezca. 
The clock will take you away Reloj deten tu camino 
Because my life is extinguished Porque mi vida se apaga 
She is the star Ella es la estrella 
That not let me be Que alumbra mi ser 
without your love I am nothing Yo sin su amor no soy nada 
She’s the star Ella es la estrella 
that will not let me be Que alumbra mi ser 
without your love I am nothing. sin tu amor no soy nada.

Carlos Marin videos – Es El Momento, Somos Novios and Music of the Night!

Es El Momento

Somos Novios

We lovers Somos novios
For both feel mutual profound love Pues los dos sentimos mutuo amor profundo
And with that win and the greatest of this world Y con eso ya ganamos lo más grande de este mundo
We love, we kiss Nos amamos, nos besamos
As lovers we want and sometimes even for no reason Como novios nos deseamos y hasta a veces sin motivos
And why we get angry. Y sin razón, nos enojamos.

We lovers Somos novios
We maintain a clean and pure affection Mantenemos un cariño limpio y puro
Like everyone else, we seek the darkest Como todos, procuramos el momento más oscuro
to speak Para hablarnos
To give the sweetest kisses Para darnos el más dulce de los besos
Remember what color are the cherry Recordar de qué color son los cerezos
Without further comment, we have been engaged Sin hacer más comentarios, somos novios

Music of the Night