Barack Obama was 26, half empty stomach and doubts about his identity when he visited Spain for the first time today received with honors and he wants to return more calmly, without the burden of the presidency … or backpack.
“This is not my first visit to Spain or Madrid. But I confess that the first time I came to Madrid was not in the (Air Force) ‘Air Force One,” he said Obama today before meeting with king Felipe VI at the Royal Palace.
1987 and Obama was “wearing a backpack” is “moving on foot most of the time” and “cheap eat” he found, he said.
The young Obama went through Madrid and Barcelona during a tour of Europe just before a trip of great emotional importance to him: his visit to Kenya to meet the family of her father , who abandoned him when he was two years and only returned to see when he was ten.
“For three weeks I traveled alone, down one side of the continent (Europe) and up the other, most of the time by bus and train, with a travel guide in hand, “said Obama in his memoir” Dreams from my father “(” Dreams from my father “), a reflection on its origins published in 1995.
” I I had tea beside the Thames and watched children chasing among the chestnut trees of the Luxembourg Gardens. I crossed the Plaza Mayor (Madrid) at noon, with shadows (the Italian painter Giorgio) De Chirico and sparrows swirling in a cobalt blue sky “summed up Obama.
His most vivid memory of Spain is a night in which “expected a night bus in a tavern next to the road halfway between Madrid and Barcelona”.
“A few elders drank wine in small glasses and somewhat dirty. There was a pool table on one side, and for some reason I had gathered the balls and started playing,” recalls Obama.
“When I was finished, a man with a fine wool sweater had appeared from nowhere and asked if he could buy me a coffee. He did not speak English, and Spanish was not much better than mine, but had a captivating smile and seemed to be someone who needed company, “he adds.
The man told him he was from Senegal and was touring Spain to work as a day laborer, hoping to reunite with his wife again in his country “as save enough money” .
“We just traveling together to Barcelona, without saying much either, he turned to me all the time to try to explain the jokes of the Spanish program broadcast in the TV video posted above the driver’s seat. ”
“Shortly before dawn, we stopped in front of an old bus station, and my friend made me gestures to follow him to a low, thick palm,” he says.
The Senegalese then pulled out of her backpack, “a toothbrush, a comb and a bottle of water” that he gave Obama “ceremoniously” and both were washed before returning to shoulder wear backpacks and head for the center of Barcelona.
The young Obama saw something of himself in his traveling companion, although he did not stay with his name.
“As we walked towards the Ramblas, I felt as if I knew him better than anyone, (felt) that, coming from opposite ends of the planet, somehow we were doing the same trip” he said.
“When we finally said goodbye, I was on the street for a long, long time, watching her slender and bowlegged figure dwindled in the distance while a part of me wanted to join him into a life of open roads and other blue morning “.
But Obama soon realized that “this desire was just a romance, an idea, as partial” as the image he had of his father or that had formed in Africa without knowing yet.
“Finally I kept the fact that this man Senegal had brought me coffee and offered water, that was real and that maybe that was all that any of us could hope : a chance encounter, a shared history, a small act of kindness, “he said.
Obama sought their identity on that trip, and soon realized that his decision to visit Europe before traveling to Kenya had been “a mistake” not because the old continent not was “beautiful”, but because it was not what I needed at that time.
“I began to suspect that my European stop was just one more way to delay things, another attempt to avoid facing the old man,” he said in reference to his father, who had He died five years before and whose abandonment had deeply marked him.
The president “never” imagined that on his next visit to Spain would receive the king, as he said today.
He had not expected such a brief stop in a country that “love” his wife Michelle and his daughters Malia and Sasha, and hoped to return for a longer visit after leaving office in January.
Maybe then you can rescanning the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, visit the Seville Cathedral today ran out to meet and compare their findings with those of one twentysomething who walked reflective by Spain of eighty.
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