Return to the Europa Hotel in Belfast, the most bombed hotel in the world

«A few years ago, I visited the attic of the Hotel Europa and I could see the remains of the old bar-stage.

The views were incredible ... And the bar was a kind of

style club

. The photos from that era perfectly express that old Belfast style, exquisite and crappy at the same time.

He was the Belfast Omphalian. »David Keenan, a Scottish writer of Northern Irish origin, talks about Europe, the main setting for his novel

, recently published in Spain by Sexto Piso.

His histori

a is more or less easy to explain.

Belfast, 1976: Tom and his friends, some badass from the Catholic neighborhood, become

.

Brute and fearless, the boys are successful and rise within the Republican Army, where they receive increasingly serious assignments.

But as they also retain an innocent and dreamy part, the new terrorists yearn for havens in which to forget about the violence of which they are perpetrators.

Its parallel worlds are science fiction comics, Bob Marley records, punk concerts, and

t.

The conflict between that tribal loyalty and that desire for escapism and sophistication leads to drama: Tom will insist on blowing up Europa, despite the fact that the woman who is his lover (the one who has been his victim and, at the same time, the one who manipulates it for mysterious purposes) works on it.

Europa is both a desired and a hated setting.

Eros and

. «Among Republicans there was a perception that the hotel was

Keenan explains.

“My father, who was a Republican and lived in Scotland, stayed at the Europa when he went to Belfast. He thought it was an elegant place, the place to be.

The relationship with Europa was schizophrenic.

Entering their halls meant being successful, being someone, and escaping for a few hours from the war environment.

At the same time, there was a resentment towards everything he stood for.

It is similar to the relationship that existed with London, a mixture of hatred and admiration.

The fact that it was called Europe was also, in a way,

.

It was a sordidly glamorous place. ”The most specific information about the Hotel Europa is in a BBC documentary entitled

.

A summary: the 1960s had been a time of prosperity and relative cosmopolitanism in Northern Ireland and its culmination was the opening, in the center of Belfast, of an international-style luxury hotel:

branded,

Frenchified, cabarets in the

... That sort of thing. Unfortunately, in the midst of the works of Europa, Northern Ireland entered its phase of self-destruction.

The United Kingdom sent its troops to ensure security (or to suppress protests by Catholics) and the IRA and its Protestant peers entered their most violent period.

The new hotel had to be recycled, ceasing to be the little Ritz that its owners imagined to become something else: a meeting point between the two sides, a nest of spies, a journalists' refuge and a rather large brothel.

in pious Ireland.

For the IRA it became a symbolic target:

Any attack on Europe received worldwide coverage.

But his manager, Harper Brown, insisted on keeping the hotel open.

Despite the bombings, Europa did not close a single day until it had to renovate its facilities. The history of Belfast included in

basically speaks of something else: of

, of the places where Protestants and Catholics lived together.

Did they exist?

"Yes.

They were often spaces related to the subcultures of the time.

The Huns and the Tims [Republicans and Unionists] mixed, for example, in the punk scene, and that's how it appears in this book.

Although it sounds incredible,

.

People had children, they dated, went to the movies ... Of course there were absolutely no-go areas on both sides, but The Clash concert in Belfast was an incredible moment where the two sides got together and danced pogo together, ”Keenan explains. Were there groups of friends that mixed Catholics and Protestants in 1970s Belfast?

Mixed couples?

Secular neighborhoods?

In the BBC documentary on the Hotel Europa, its former employees claimed that the

he was mixed and his coexistence happy.

By contrast, Keenan's characters prided themselves on not knowing a single Protestant. “I'm pretty sure that if I had grown up in the Ardoyne area [a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast] in the 1970s, I would have been very hostile to Protestants. , the British Army and the RUC [Ulster Police] ”, says Keenan.

"And I'm sure if I had grown up in Shankhill [a majority Protestant neighborhood] I would have sympathized with the UVF [unionist paramilitaries].

The claim to have moral superpowers that would make us immune to sectarianism and violence is a fantasy.

I understand that violence and revenge can have a narcotic effect.

I feel sympathy for the two boys on both sides, but this novel is not about to make a balanced portrait of the two sides, with their injuries and grievances.

, of its essence. ”There is something more to tell: in 1997, the representatives of the two communities reached an armistice, the Good Friday agreement, which had to be ratified in a referendum.

In that campaign, initially uncertain, Europe also had its role.

Its owners hung from its facade a large poster calling for a vote in favor of the peace agreement.

Once again, the hotel became a promise of another way of life.

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