Isabel: a Disney Legend

By Belinda Duval

The story of Isabel Zamora has never been told before. Her name is well known in the history of Mojacar, but there is no face attached to the memory of this woman, who was veiled like the others in this Spanish hill top village.
'The village of the witches' as it was called. She fell in love with a nobleman who ran the local theatre and loved children. He was also a married man. When their child was born, caught between gossip and guilt, murder and scandal, Isabel flew to America by boat. Crossing the ocean to be with her brother, who lived in Chicago, not far from the Disney family...
Forty years later two Americans came to Mojacar, looking for the birth certificate of the boy called Jose Guirao, whom the world had come to know as Walt Disney. Their search became public and made the headlines. Disney, when asked, replied ;"who knows ?'
Nobody knows, as matter of fact. But the world's greatest imagineer, making dreams come true for millions, appeared to be looking for his own truth in a place far from home. This novel is dedicated to the woman who may have been the one with whom the magic began : Isabel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belinda Duval
• Release date: Jan 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301010196

Belinda Duval

Belinda Meuldijk Duval is an actress and acclaimed songwriter and author. Twelve novels and biographies were published and six television documentaries on dogs and donkeys were broadcasted on national television, with over a million viewers. Belinda is patroness of the Peoples Animal Welfare Society and HASS, and lives with her husband and son and seven Spanish dogs in Holland. www.adogfromspain.com www.belindameuldijk.nl

Book preview

Isabel A Disney Legend

Belinda Duval

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is neither authorized nor sponsored nor endorsed by the Disney Company or any of its subsidiaries. The mention of names and places associated with the Disney Company and its businesses are not intended in any way to infringe on any existing copyrights or registered trademarks of the Disney Company

This is a work of fiction, based on a local legend. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012, Belinda Duval

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Contents:

Preface

1940. Two Americans

The fountain - 1898

El Torreon

Coming to town

The kiss

Disney Studio’s, Burbank, 1940

The lovers of Teruel

The Fiësta

Born In Spain

The iron window

Setting free the birds

The potion

A motherless world

The mine train, Bédar 1898

Gossip and guilt

The search, 1957

Bédar 1899

Disney studios 1965

The emigrants

The letter

Preface

The hilltop village you are about to enter has been mine for the most of my life.

It has a maze of narrow whitewashed streets, a sleepy plaza under the scorching sun with a stunning view of the countryside and the deep blue sea at the foot of the mountain. There is an air of mystery about this ‘village of the witches’ as Mojacar is still called today.

Mystery, like legend, is common part of any two thousand year old pueblo.

However, the legend attached to Mojacar is highly unusual for such a

remote Spanish town. Because it has nothing to do with the Moors or the Christians who have conquered it in the dark ages. Nor with Velasquez or Cervantes or any of the cultural heroes of Spain’s history. No, Mojacar’s legend has it that in one of these old houses a child was born that the world would come to know as…Walt Disney.

His mother, as everybody here knows, was called Isabel Zamora.

A name mentioned with disdain by some, calling her ‘la bicha’, with devotion by others, as if she was an angel. Who can tell.

She wore a veil. She was a poor washerwoman like the ones

that used to be at the fountain, where I still go to fill

my plastic water bottles today. I can feel her presence there,

her spirit is clear. But her story, unlike that

of her child Walt Disney who is in all Mojacar’s books and tourist guides,

was never written down.

So here it is. The story of Isabel. This is where I think the Magic begins…

1940. Two Americans

On a bright winter morning in 1940, two men were walking up on the winding road to Mojacar. Above them was the village, or what was left of it after the Spanish civil war. A village like a dead bird: shattered bones and white feathers spread all over the top of the mountain. And below them lay, glittering in de sunlight, the blue Mediterranean. The road was broken and could be used only by donkeys or pedestrians. It was hard to believe for the men, who had just had to leave their car by the fountain at the foot of the hill that once upon a time in the glorious past the proud horses of the Moors and Christians had thundered by, on their way to the Plaza Mayor.

Walking in the dust of the ages, on the trail of the kings, they wiped the sweat of their brow and did not look back, but cursed and unbuttoned their collars.

So how many more blistering bends before we get to the top? There’s blood coming out of my shoes, I tell you! This had better not be a goddamn fool’s errand , said one.

Just think of your bank account,said the other, panting.

Yeah, right, I’ve been doing so ever since the Bureau send us to this godforsaken hell hole.

No sweat, it’s a special. They said we’re getting paid no matter what we come back with.

They did not say we would be landing in the dark ages! There are people still living in caves here, or haven’t you noticed?

Just follow the yellow brick road, man.

Right o.We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.

They passed by the cave dwelling in the bend up the road belonging to la tia Cachocha, and walked underneath the ‘balcony-house’ of the old Flores, who was sitting there, smoking his last cigar. But they did not greet him: their coming to Mojacar had nothing to do with the living memory of the village. They crossed the plaza without even looking at the amazing view towards Bédar at the foot of the Cabrera mountains where the silver mines used to be, or from here towards Garrucha with its harbour and fishing boats. All they wanted to do was to find the way to the Santa Maria, the church.

Jacinto Alarcon, who would later become mayor, saw them arrive. He took them through the labyrinth of narrow streets to Father Federico Acosta, the priest of Turre who was visiting that day.

They were two Americans from the FBI, looking for the birth-certificate of a man called José Guirao, he later told his nephew.

Guirao? That’s a common name in these parts. Whatever for?

They wouldn’t say. But I could not help them, because all the records were burned in the war. None of us was ever born, and none of us ever died. On paper, that is. For once paper gone to dust before any of us.

Guirao? What year?

They asked me to look anywhere between 1890 and 1900.

Impossible. That has all gone.

So I told them, but they were very persistent. They crossed the ocean, all the way from America, for just that particular certificate.

Then it’s got to be important. Did they say anything else?

They asked for a letter from America, that had been sent here back in 1925.

A letter from whom?

No idea. Must have been burned too, I guess.

Quien sabe…who knows…

So they came all that way for nothing. But you know what…they seem to have met tia Tica on their way back!

Ha! I wonder what kind of advice the old crone gave them.

She probably told them that Mojacar is cursed, so no love between man and woman can last in this place. That is what she tells every stranger, doesn’t she?

Sure. They must have found that very interesting. Anything else?

They asked her if she’d ever heard the name Guirao.

Guiréyo?yelled the old woman, with her hand cupped behind her ear. She was not as deaf as all that, but tia Tica did not like strangers and preferred not to understand what they were saying.

The moment the men had seen this old widow, all dressed in black and bending over her walking stick, they had stopped.

The vision of the old woman crossing the plaza, with the rugged cliffs towering in the background and the deep hills below, seemed like a picture from a fairytale.

And although they were on their way back down to their car and on their way back to civilisation as they knew it, on the way to their aeroplane, on the way to the United States of America, having, if unsuccessfully, completed their mission and dreaming of a Scotch and soda, they stopped nevertheless and repeated their question.

Pardon, ma’am, but do you know anyone by the name of Guirao? asked the one.

We are doing a background check on his family,added the other.

Tia Tica squinted, trying to see through them in the bright sunlight. They had spoken Spanish, if you could call it that. She had never heard that accent before.

So she cupped the other ear and yelled :Qué?

They repeated once more.

Oh, Guiráo!she then nodded,yes…I know a few of them. Relatives of yours, would they be?

The men hastily denied it.

No ma’am, we’re investigating…proof of identity of persons who may or may not be the legal parents of…

Yes? shrieked tia, who was wondering what she could get out of it if she were able to reunite these nice gentlemen from America in their pinstriped suites, with their long lost family.

A José Guirao,proceeded one of the men.

‘His mother’s name was…"

Yes?

He took a piece of paper from his inside pocket and unfolded it.

His mothers name was Isabel Zamora.

Isabel Zamora Asensio?asked Tia, from Espiritu Santo?

Espiritu Santo? Do you mean the Holy Ghost? the man was grinning.

Well, what do you know, it is Jesus we’re looking for! the other one smirked.

Tia’s eyes were on fire.

‘That was the name of the barrio where she lived,"she hissed, jabbing her stick in that direction as if to prove it.

Oh, right, yes, naturally. And…can you apprise us of the current location of this woman ?

Tia’s stick moved to and fro, missing their noses by an inch, pointing towards the sea.

‘There,she said,they have sailed away. Isabel and the baby. To the Americas. Gone forever."

All three stood for a moment looking at the blue horizon, as if the ship that had gone with Isabel and her son were still visible in the distance.

And the father, Guirao, did he accompany them on this…uh, voyage?

Guirao? Guiráo was not the father! She hissed again, and the men stepped back. These stuck-up Americano’s, what did they know?

Even now they did not get it, the idiots.

It was a bastard!She whispered, glaring at them scornfully, eyes flashing like magnifying glasses. After all these years it was still a sin. There was a silence.

Breaking it, one of the men coughed, and having come to the end of their investigation with no useful results, he casually asked the only thing that was strictly off the record, the only thing he should never have mentioned:

And…does the name…uh…Disney mean anything to you?

Disney?asked tia Tica. She chewed on the name for a while like it was tobacco, and then she spit it out again.

Disney. Not a Christian name.

‘No…"nodded the Americans.

Don’t know that name,’concluded tia Tica,its not from here."

And that was the end of the conversation. Whether Tia had put them under some exorsism spell or whatever magic powder she had managed to sell them, for chronic disease, corns or heartache, she would never tell later on.

The gentlemen in their neat suits had followed the road back down, that was all. Maybe they had stopped on the way to their car and noticed the unusual shimmering of the sea, but more likely they would have walked all the way straight down to the fountain where they came across the veiled washerwomen, with their water jugs filled with water sloshing on their heads. There they would have stopped at the sight of them, a puzzled frown on their face. "Great Scott, I thought I was in Arabia for a moment!

Darn weird Spaniards!the other agreed,"those women were chewing on their veils, did you notice?

For Pete’s sake! Are they hungry or somenthing?

They were never to know that here, in this enchanted spot in the last stronghold of the Moors in Europe, woman - when their hands were occupied - would clutch the tip of their veil between their teeth to keep their faces partly covered, in order not be called ‘sin verguenza’ or ‘shameless’.

And indeed, they were never to know that here, hidden from the prying eyes of the world, the truth they were seeking was passing them by, along with the water from the well carried on women’s heads. Material for fairy tales lasting a thousand-and-one nights.

Fancy a hamburger? asked the one.

You bet, said the other,’let’s go back to the future, then!"

A moment later their car vanished in a cloud of dust, on the road to the airport.

‘Disney?"asked the nephew of Father Federico Acosta, when he heard the story later that night in the church-office.

Yes, that’s what Tia Tica said: ‘Disney’. Doesn’t ring a bell now, does it?

Yes it does: it is an American,the nephew said, who lived in Madrid where Disney’s Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs was soon to be released at the Cine Doré.

A motion picture?Acosta asked.

Animation! A cartoon!declared the nephew.

Oh, drawings. For children. It no longer interested father Acosta.

I thought it would be someone important. From the American government, por ejemplo.

Of course: a spy, wanted by Franklin Roosevelt!

Well, if some Americanos from the FBI come all the way over here to look for the birth certificate of Guirao, and mention the name of Disney…

Maybe they were looking for a gold mine, ha ha!

And besides they also mentioned the mothers name. Isabel Zamora, they told tia Tica.

Well, then it’s all clear. Did our wise old witch not know her?

Yes she did. Tia Tica knows everybody! Isabel was a washerwoman, she said. A very pretty one too. La bicha" she was called. Not a very nice nickname.