MOVING TRIBUTE TO SPANIARDS KILLED IN OMAGH
Moving tribute to Spaniards killed in Omagh
Ian Hill
FERNANDO and Rocio died thousands of miles from their Spanish homes in the Omagh bombing.
Now, six months on, some 400 souls gathered under the high mosaic roof in the nave of the Protestant Cathedral Church in St Anne's Belfast, to hear, read out for the first time, a letter to the terrorists responsible from Fernando's parents.
"We want to say to all terrorists that they are wrong.
"Violence is not the way to achieve anything. We forgive them and ask God to change their hearts and fill them instead with love and peace."
An hour earlier the lofty nave had rung with the complex lamenting threnodies of Robbie Hannan's Uilleann pipes.
Robbie's melodies were of misguided maidens, a Spaniard's misfortune.
Next had come Janice Kennedy, a slight blonde figure in black, singing mezzo-soprano, a Capella, our own songs of loss, Danny Boy and She Moved Through the Fair and the reverberations ran like the ghosts of the absent around the grey-white Portland stone of the cathedral.
Then came Ian Gordon's Song for Omagh, a change of key, a change of mood, its style escaped from Les Miserables.
High above in one of Morris Harding's stone carvings atop a nave pillar an angel plays Psalm 150 while Anne-Marie O'-Farrell sat at her Irish harp and offered moving celebratory songs form Ireland north and south, from Scotland and Wales.
A slight dark complexioned man, with a beard straight from a Velasquez painting, took up his guitar, blowing on his fingers in the cathedral's chill.
Serranito, also known as Victor Monge, is Spain's greatest flamenco guitarist.
Living near one of the dead boys he cancelled two concerts at home to be here.
Now, only now, in the sudden plangent passions of Spain's dark songs of anger, revenge, sadness and death, could the audience feel not just Ulster's loss, but also Spain's.
David Johnston, head of modern languages at Queen's, said the concert, which was a celebration of the lives of those who died and those who helped, symbolised forgiveness, reconciliation and a realisation that there is a world outside Northern Ireland.
When Salvador Este-basnez Eraso, Director of the Institute Cervantes - the Spanish equivalent of the British Council - organiser of the concert with Johnston, had read Fernando's parent's letter he added a verse of his own after their final paragraph pleading for decommissioning of all arms. His words spoke of the lost boys.
"They came to learn. No, they came to die. No, no they came to be killed. The sad thing is, the lesson was taught by professors of death.
Rocio and Fernando learnt. And then they were killed.
What have the killers learnt?
From another carving up on high, a bearded Moses, carved in stone, looks down. Beneath him runs the legend "Mercy and Love are met Together."
Ian Hill
Ian Hill
FERNANDO and Rocio died thousands of miles from their Spanish homes in the Omagh bombing.
Now, six months on, some 400 souls gathered under the high mosaic roof in the nave of the Protestant Cathedral Church in St Anne's Belfast, to hear, read out for the first time, a letter to the terrorists responsible from Fernando's parents.
"We want to say to all terrorists that they are wrong.
"Violence is not the way to achieve anything. We forgive them and ask God to change their hearts and fill them instead with love and peace."
An hour earlier the lofty nave had rung with the complex lamenting threnodies of Robbie Hannan's Uilleann pipes.
Robbie's melodies were of misguided maidens, a Spaniard's misfortune.
Next had come Janice Kennedy, a slight blonde figure in black, singing mezzo-soprano, a Capella, our own songs of loss, Danny Boy and She Moved Through the Fair and the reverberations ran like the ghosts of the absent around the grey-white Portland stone of the cathedral.
Then came Ian Gordon's Song for Omagh, a change of key, a change of mood, its style escaped from Les Miserables.
High above in one of Morris Harding's stone carvings atop a nave pillar an angel plays Psalm 150 while Anne-Marie O'-Farrell sat at her Irish harp and offered moving celebratory songs form Ireland north and south, from Scotland and Wales.
A slight dark complexioned man, with a beard straight from a Velasquez painting, took up his guitar, blowing on his fingers in the cathedral's chill.
Serranito, also known as Victor Monge, is Spain's greatest flamenco guitarist.
Living near one of the dead boys he cancelled two concerts at home to be here.
Now, only now, in the sudden plangent passions of Spain's dark songs of anger, revenge, sadness and death, could the audience feel not just Ulster's loss, but also Spain's.
David Johnston, head of modern languages at Queen's, said the concert, which was a celebration of the lives of those who died and those who helped, symbolised forgiveness, reconciliation and a realisation that there is a world outside Northern Ireland.
When Salvador Este-basnez Eraso, Director of the Institute Cervantes - the Spanish equivalent of the British Council - organiser of the concert with Johnston, had read Fernando's parent's letter he added a verse of his own after their final paragraph pleading for decommissioning of all arms. His words spoke of the lost boys.
"They came to learn. No, they came to die. No, no they came to be killed. The sad thing is, the lesson was taught by professors of death.
Rocio and Fernando learnt. And then they were killed.
What have the killers learnt?
From another carving up on high, a bearded Moses, carved in stone, looks down. Beneath him runs the legend "Mercy and Love are met Together."
Ian Hill
Further Information
Publisher: NEWS LETTER
Ref: NL/200
Published Date: 17-Feb-99
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