Edgelands

The Pyrénées mark a subtle & mutable boundary between two countries, and nowadays even more so. No barriers to wait for, no huts to shuffle past in a stream of vehicles on the A9, only policemen looking dolefully at what used to be a great job, now is dull and meaningless. On the mountain passes, the sunny side is Spain, the shady side is France, though in this picture there's a bit on both sides. You can just walk between one and the other, or, as in our friends Geoff & Susan's case, step over the rivulet bordering their garden...
The mountains have been the edge between life and death in the recent history of the two countries. Resistants and Refugees have stood on both sides, craning necks to see the border, climbed up what looks so inaccessible but where snowfall shows the secret paths. Suddenly, there is more than talk of ancient rescues and regrets - exhibitions, photographs, books of memoires, old men recounting, women also remembering struggling with their families living on the cold beach in 1939, in the camps de concentration.  Today we went to the Shoah memorial ceremony at the Camp de Rivesaltes. More than 70 years of memory there... over 2000 french jews from the so-called Free Zone were gathered and deported to the deathcamps; also gypsies, more spanish refugees, france's "unwanted undesirables" all interned at some point. Even les Harkis were accomodated - Algerians who had fought for the French and could not go home... a part of its history that France is only now starting to examine and accept. A museum has been long promised - today Bourquin's deputy seemed to indicate it would be funded... at the moment 5 stèles sit along the roadside under the slowly turning wind turbines, and the newly-laid flowers mingle their perfume in the chilly air. Les parliamentaires were each given a memorial pebble with an inscription on it, written and read out by sixthformers from the local town's college.