SHOW ME YOUR ID CARD!

I hope you have your "documentacion" my Spanish friend said, as we were getting out of his car and into the throbbing street party that lasted all summer long in this tiny town high up in Spain's Pyrenees. "My what?" I asked, a question I often had to in my early days in Jaca, as my mind struggled to connect sounds to the words I had so often read in my Spanish Literature and Language texts. "Do-cu-men-ta-cion," he repeated slowly. I still did not get it. "OK," he said, now a bit exasperated. "Pasaporte, papers." I suddenly grasped what he wanted to know. Was I carrying some form of identification? Such as my passport. What a strange query, I thought. He knew who I was and I certainly knew me as best I could. It was eleven pm, the hour the party really started to swing in the new socialist Espana. Why would I need a passport? I was carrying hard cold 'pesetas,' not traveller's cheques. Was this handsome young man, introduced by a girlfriend, a little "loco?" I wondered. I'd have to have a chat with her in the morning.

To him, I said: "No, I don't have any ID on me. Why?" He ran his fingers through his thick, long dark brown hair and said three words, "La Guardia Civil." Now, I was slightly more alarmed. Those words — la Guardia Civil- Spain's paramilitary force, put the fear of Spain's Catholic God into its citizens, more than a decade after the country's dictator Generalisimo Franco had died. La Guardia Civil were men and women who wore green uniforms and were distinguished by their three-cornered hats, and a definite no nonsense attitude. You just did not mess with them. Not in Franco's days and not then, in the eighties, when the dictator had long been buried. It mattered little that Spain was now a modern country, that Africa did not start at the Pyrenees as the rest of Europe used to say or that with their new freedom, many Spaniards were abusing sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was of little consequence that some Government Ministers confessed they smoked a little Moroccan hashish from time to time.

Indeed that night, Spain's new generation would be rolling "canutos" — joints, spiffs — on the sidewalks, as they drank their beer or knocked back their whiskeys on ice. By day the narrow cobbled streets of old Jaca belonged to the lorry men in their Seat vans, but at night, these alleys were the domain of this first generation to reach adulthood without the help of Franco's iron grip. At times, the clouds of hashish smoke were thicker than the throngs of young Spaniards drinking and dancing in the street. Despite all this apparent liberation, there remained vestiges of fascism everywhere, like warts on a frog. The Guardia Civil was one, as was compulsory military service after high school. Another dangerous leftover of the fascist days was the need to always carry "documentacion" at all times or you could be arrested forthwith. The Socialists might be hip, but they were not fools. Despite their rhetoric about freedom and Europe, it was convenient for them to hold onto any Franco policy that suited their purpose. They justified the need to carry  "documentacion' by arguing that they had little choice because of the northern Basque terrorist group ETA, which since Franco's days had been fighting for a separate Basque State by blowing up military and police headquarters. I knew I was in trouble that evening, or rather I could be. It would be difficult to keep a low profile, as I was the sole "morena" (brown skinned girl) in town. So, I went home early.

After that I would always have my passport on me, though it seemed pretty silly because I was the only "morena" in town and everyone, including the Guardia Civil — knew exactly who I was. I felt as if I had no rights, that I ceased to exist, without "documentacion". The sense that I was defined only through the State's records and thus, the feeling that I belonged to the State would only increase after I decided to settle in Jaca. Now, as a resident, I had to be "regularised". That procedure took place at Jaca's municipal police station. I didn't relish entering there, either, since the local police, though less fierce than the Guardia Civil, still wore what I deemed the Franco posture and attitude. Before I wrote this column, I searched unsuccessfully for the ID card I got that day, to publish it with this piece. If you saw it, you would be drawn to two things. The first would be the scared expression in my eyes. Or maybe not. You might hardly notice this, as all ID photos give the impression that their owners have been startled by the flash of the camera. What would really catch your eye is the right side of the "documentacion", for there, in indelible black ink, is a perfect impression of my right index. That fingerprint was more important to the Spanish authorities than my photograph. I was now tagged like the rest of Spain's citizens.

From that day, I never let my "documentacion" out of my sight.  To not have it, meant arrest. To lose it, would have meant a hassle of affidavits accompanied by suspicious glares, as if ETA were recruiting Trinis to drive cars with bombs.  Whether to the river, to ski, to party, I had my "documentacion" to produce on command, rain, snow or shine. It was more important than cash or a credit card. You just never left home without it. And on the first occasions I was asked for it, even though I knew my ID card was in my wallet, I still felt a moment of panic, nevertheless. For months I had this image of this “ morena" locked in a Spanish jail, waiting for someone, anyone to identify me, to claim me. Would I be allowed a phone call to Diego Martin, I wondered. On my return home to Trinidad and Tobago in the early nineties, I refused to apply for a TT ID card. I still don't have one and never will. I hope never again to feel as owned and tracked by the State as I did in Spain. Those years of having to carry and present "documentacion" have left a mark on my psyche as dark and indelible as that fingerprint was on that ever-present
Spanish "documentacion."

Suzanne Mills is the editor of Newsday.