Virtues (and Mysteries) (368 pages) is Xesús Fraga’s fourth work of adult fiction and won the Spanish National Book Award in 2021, as well as the Blanco Amor and Galician Critics’ Awards. Xesús Fraga is only the fourth Galician writer to win the Spanish National Book Award in the category of fiction.

The book is divided, like the London Underground, into six zones. In Zone 1, the narrator, Xesús, describes his grandmother, Virtudes, who emigrated to London and has lived there for 25 years, working as a cleaner, which has permitted her to provide for her family and raise three daughters. Whenever they return to Galicia, Virtudes is weighed down with presents, their luggage is almost always over the limit. Her husband is absent – in Venezuela, where he went to make his fortune. Little is known of him – he may have adapted to life so well that he is unlikely to return, or he may not have the money. Xesús discovers that he is the spitting image of this mysterious grandfather. Virtudes – Betty, as she is known to the residents of the houses she cleans – is much appreciated by her employers and, when she retires to Galicia, they write to her. Not only has she raised a family, she has managed to buy a property and see her grandchildren go to university. She doesn’t put up with nonsense. If an employer doesn’t treat her well, she won’t go back. She continues working even after she could retire at sixty. Xesús and his family have returned to Betanzos in Galicia, and Virtudes sends them large boxes with presents. Xesús goes to stay with her in the summer, in her small room on Kensington Square, where she lets him have the bed and sleeps on the floor. One of her neighbours is a Colombian woman who works as a nanny and has a telephone. Xesús and his grandmother drink a pint in the local pub or by the river. They also visit other Galician emigrants who have settled in London – mixed couples like Amalia and her boyfriend from Mozambique, or Celia and her Pakistani husband. It was Celia Virtudes travelled with when she first went to London in 1961. On the way to visit these people, Virtudes would sometimes squat between the cars to do a pee, as if she was in a field of maize in Galicia. In her first job in London, Virtudes was treated so badly she became weak from hunger. The local priest got her a cleaning job in a local hospital, where she was able to recover. She went on to work in two other hospitals, Guy’s and St Mary Abbots, where lots of the cleaners were from Spain. When cutbacks in the NHS began in the late 1960s, they were often the first to go since they were the least visible.

In Zone 2, Xesús finds it difficult to extract any information about his grandfather, Marcelino, from his grandmother and must content himself with the analysis of old photographs. Marcelino was born in the Royal Hospital of Santiago in 1921, the son of a single mother. He went to the local school, where the teacher thought he could become a teacher himself, but Marcelino preferred to work with his hands and, after an apprenticeship, he set up his own workshop in Betanzos as a cobbler. He married Virtudes in 1943, and they had three daughters: Isabel (Xesús’ mother), Leonor and Elena. But it seems he didn’t like having to justify his expenses (such as going to the cinema), having to scrimp and save, and in 1955 he emigrated to Venezuela, leaving behind three young children. There is no correspondence from the years that follow – perhaps it was lost or destroyed – only a couple of photographs of Marcelino, briefly with a moustache, and a reciprocal photograph of Virtudes and her three daughters (which is the cover of the Galician edition of the book). In her husband’s absence, Virtudes takes on multiple jobs in Betanzos – from harvesting grapes and hops to stuffing chorizos, working as a waitress and washing clothes. All the same, their financial situation is not good and she asks her husband to send money, but he says he doesn’t have any. Nor does he want to return to Galicia or her to travel to be with him in Venezuela. She is about to go unannounced when a priest suggests the reason may be that Marcelino has another family. So Virtudes emigrates to London instead, leaving her children with her mother.

In Zone 3, Isabel, Xesús’ mother, grows up in the village in the care of her grandparents. She attends primary school, but there is no secondary school in Betanzos at the time and no money to move to Coruña, so she must abandon her dream to do teacher training and help support the family. At the age of eighteen, she goes to join Virtudes in London. She spends the first year in a convent, where she looks after an aged countess and helps clean. She also studies English. In autumn 1964, she moves to live with her mother in the basement of the nurses’ residence of Guy’s Hospital, where she continues to work as a cleaner. When she has a little money, she buys herself a typewriter. She goes to learn French, as well as English, in an academy in Holland Park, where she meets a wide variety of people: Rita from Switzerland, Astrid from Germany, Hyde from Sri Lanka, and an Ethiopian political refugee, Joseph. She also passes her Lower Certificate in English. By the age of 21, her prospects are looking up, even though her childhood (in a village under Franco’s dictatorship) has been so different from that experienced by someone from England. On a return trip to Betanzos, she is surprised by the attitude of some people to emigrants: they send money home, but live in a more liberal society, which is not to be trusted (Spanish women travel to London to have abortions!). Having passed Proficiency, she is tempted by an offer to do a secretarial course in Coruña, which, she is assured, will be followed by a job. She returns to Galicia, completes the course successfully, but no job is forthcoming – all the incumbents are handpicked, Isabel as an outsider doesn’t stand a chance. Her family buys an apartment in Betanzos, and she starts to give private English classes. It is at this time that she meets her future husband, Tito. Tito’s mother died when he was only four, so he and his brother lived with their grandparents until he was twelve. At thirteen, he started working – in a bakery and then in the building trade. He took great pride in his work and preferred to do something himself than to let it be done badly. Their family was known as “The Lamp Extinguishers” since they were responsible for lighting and extinguishing the street lamps.

In Zone 4, Xesús’ parents, Tito and Isabel, are married in 1970 and decide to emigrate (in Tito’s case, for the first time) to London to seek a better future. They have contracts to work in a private school near East Grinstead, but Isabel is now pregnant, and the two of them are dismissed. They return to London, where Virtudes has got them jobs working in the kitchens of St Stephen’s Hospital. Isabel, because of the pregnancy, cannot continue, but Tito applies his usual dedication and takes on other jobs in his free time with a builder and at a local pub, where he coincides with the Trinidadian actor Oscar James. In early 1971, Xesús, the author of this book, is born. Things go well for them in London, and they are able to buy an apartment in Coruña. Tito starts to work for the building company full time, which he prefers to working in the kitchens. Isabel goes back to cleaning and also to studying. However, given how much Tito has to work (“It’s amazing what one has to sacrifice in order to save a little”), Isabel feels isolated and tired. She writes a diary during these years, until 1975, and in 1976 Xesús starts a diary of his own, which recalls episodes at his primary school, Our Lady of Victories in Kensington. That summer, however, after six years in London, they decide to return to Galicia – the reasons why they do so are not clear, but it could be because another eleven years until Xesús finished compulsory education at sixteen seemed too long a time to wait, because the buildings in the road where they lived were going to be renovated and so they would have had to move, or because Isabel, despite her studies, could never aspire to a job that wasn’t cleaning. They take all their belongings with them.

In Zone 5, they move into their apartment in Coruña, opposite the famous Hercules Tower (which reminds the author of Roger Lancelyn Green’s book Tales of the Greek Heroes) and the Atlantic. But the best time is the weekend, when they go to visit their family in Betanzos and stay in the apartment paid for by Virtudes. Xesús enjoys the pancakes prepared by Virtudes’ sister, Ermila, and the views from the other sister, Lourdes’ apartment of the balloon that is launched on the day of St Roch (16 August, Betanzos’ patronal festival). Lourdes had spent a couple of years in the Dominican Republic, which her husband, Alfredo, had described as “paradise” – that was until he had an extreme case of appendicitis and they had to return to Galicia, where he recovered. The author’s aunt, Elena, takes him to drink from a fountain that has since disappeared, but he still remembers, while his other aunt, Leonor, takes him to the town hall and hands him sweets. Betanzos is a source of such fun and wonder the author is overjoyed when his parents decide to move there on a permanent basis. In London, they had plenty of work, but little family. In Betanzos, they have plenty of family, but not enough work. Tito buys a plot of land, and Xesús learns the rudiments of construction and cultivation. From his mother, he learns the importance of saving. A reproduction of The Hay Wain by Constable, which in London was to remind them of rural life in Galicia, now brings to mind the museums of London and the ordered fields of England – nostalgia for their native land has become nostalgia for their land of adoption. This feeling is reinforced by the author’s reading of Paddington by Michael Bond (Paddington also being an emigrant from Peru). People are taken aback by the way Isabel and Xesús continue to converse in English – some are even offended, but English has gained importance, and their sitting room becomes a classroom with books and objects that serve to give an impression of London. Xesús acts as his mother’s teaching assistant. There is the possibility of emigrating once again, but the cost of living and the fact they would have to repeat all the paperwork dissuades them. They visit London, however, and stay with Amalia, a Galician who cleans for Sean Connery and Terence Conran among others. It is not the language or practical knowledge that make Xesús feel at home there, it is the presence of his grandmother, who will eventually return to Betanzos.

In Zone 6, the author is now married and has two children. He continues to search for his own identity, including meetings with Michael Bond and Billy Bragg in London, and also to re-establish contact with his mother’s friends from her time in London – except for Joseph, who has returned to Ethiopia and remains elusive. In Betanzos, he sleepwalks with an empty suitcase, claiming he has to return to London. He wonders what his life would have been had he stayed in London as a six-year-old boy. It is tempting to think one’s life would have been better, though it could, of course, have been worse. He wonders what his life would have been if his parents had not been dismissed from the private school near East Grinstead, but he also learns that the headmaster there was a bully. And when he returns to his primary school, Our Lady of Victories, and buys the tie he never had as a child, he finds it’s too small for his adult chest. The author also imagines what life would have been like for his parents if they had stayed in London, working in the building trade, perhaps having an allotment or buying a council flat, which they could have sold when they did finally return to Galicia. He also imagines what life would have been if his grandmother had never emigrated to London in the first place – the financial difficulties their family would have had to go through – or if she had emigrated to Venezuela, as was her first intention.

Meanwhile, it seems there has been communication once again with Marcelino, the absent husband/father/grandfather. His business dealings in Venezuela didn’t go well, owing to a disloyal business partner, and he has been taken in by a family there. Virtudes invites him to return to Betanzos, saying the plane ticket will be paid for and he will be received with open arms. In 1999, more than forty years after his outward journey, Marcelino returns to the embrace of his family. He is taciturn, a bit of a dreamer, his projects are not very practical, perhaps this is why he never managed to succeed in the way Virtudes did in London with her determination and hard work. They have a few years together before Virtudes contracts cancer and dies, followed by Marcelino less than a year later and the author’s father. The author ends by wondering what sounds, what words, what stories his own children will remember, turning them into memories.

This is an astonishing narrative, especially the return of Marcelino from Venezuela after so many years. It involves determination, courage, and the paradox of being at home in another country and not at home in one’s own. It is quite understandable that the jury of the Spanish National Book Award for Fiction should have decided to give the award in 2021 to this book, which is the story of one family, the author’s own, but could be the story of any family. The text is interspersed with photographs, which the author sometimes describes in detail. It reminded me of another pearl of Galician literature, The Low Voices by Manuel Rivas, another autobiographical novel. And it is clear that the author has gone to great lengths to corroborate the information he has received first hand, as the journalist he is. The text is well researched and well written.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne