Alice Mascarenhas launches second book in a month

Former Deputy Editor of the Chronicle, Alice Mascarenhas, will today launch the seventh edition of Alice’s Table, comprised of columns published in this newspaper over the past year.

Ms Mascarenhas will launch Alice’s Table today at BookGem where she will be signing her book from 11am to 1pm.

She said it is incredible to have published over 300 interviews and stories over the past seven years.

“When it started, I could have never imagined the journey this column has taken,” she said.

“I think incredible to have this still going on over seven years down the line and its just a privilege to write about so many people, and to write about our history.”

“I never tire of saying it. It is important to write down our stories and our history because a lot of this will be lost and I’m lucky I have convinced many people to write down their histories.”

She added that Gibraltar is a melting pot of cultures, and she hopes Alice’s Table helps in this understanding of Gibraltar and its culture.

“It is vital that we tell our stories,” she said.

For Ms Mascarenhas, this marks the second book launch in less than a month, the first being a book about her late father Manolo Mascarenhas, broadcaster and journalist who was well-known locally for his 1960s Radio Gibraltar programme ‘Palabras al Viento’.

She will be talking about her book ‘Palabras al Viento’ on Sunday, November 16 as part of the Gibraltar Literary Festival.

Ms Mascarenhas always knew she would write a book on her father, but the idea really took hold a decade ago when she found an old box in her house of original typewritten Palabras al Viento from the early days in 1965.

“The minute I started researching, I realised that there was no way I could just do the Palabras al Viento, even though probably that is the most important thing that my father ever did for this community,” she said.

“There was so much more than just the Palabras al Viento, because that box also included several scrapbooks with cuttings of a lot of my father's work going back to 1946, right the way through to the 50s, and when he was writing for the Gibraltar Post as well.”

She found cuttings from several newspapers where he also wrote under the pseudonym Cyril Perkins for around 18 years.

The research for this book has meant she has rediscovered her father.

She described growing up in GBC in the old Wellington Front days while her father was at work.

“I was around a lot of those big stories that were happening at the time in the 1960s and into the early 70s,” she said.

“I saw him in a working atmosphere. One of my earliest recollections was him directing the Gibraltar Song Festival of 1970 in the first outside broadcast band that GBC made outside St. Michael's Cave.”

“I remember being in the gallery in Studio B in Wellington Front. I was always there.”

“GBC played a huge part in my growing up. The people who were there became my family, really.”

“But I didn't really know my dad because I was 15 when my father died.”

She described how she understood he was important person, but it wasn’t until later in life she recognised the work he had done for Gibraltar.

“Through this book, I discovered a lot more about him. I would talk to my mum about him as well,” she said.

Through her research she learnt about his passion for bullfighting and how he knew all the prominent bullfighters at the time.

She also discovered how her father was immersed in British and Spanish culture.

She pointed how he wrote about cricket in Spanish and could equally write and speak in perfectly in English.

“I started researching more, I found a lot of sides to him,” she said.

“The book covers his early years, it covers his years during the war as well, and he also worked in intelligence at a very young age, at the age of 19. It's almost inconceivable in my mind that that could happen. Then there's the years of 1946.”

“He's only 22 when the war finishes, and that's when he starts writing. That's when he starts poetry. Mainly poetry in Spanish or appreciations in Spanish about bullfighting.”

He then moved on to writing for various newspapers.

Another side to Manolo was his love for theatre, acting and singing.

Ms Mascarenhas is known for her love of theatre, but she didn’t know about her father’s passion until researching for the book.

“I always wondered why I had such a passion for theatre,” she said.

She described how her father had worked in the MOD and left a “safe job” in 1958 to join Radio Gibraltar.

“He was one of the originators of Radio Gibraltar. He was there right at the start,” she said.

Manolo was the first head of news and production where he worked alongside the first general manager of GBC Henry Ramagge.

“That was when they started the Palabras al Viento. Henry supported my father 100%,” she said.

She recalled childhood memories of listening to her father working on his typewriter in the dining room.
“I remember the tap-tap-tapping late into the night,” she said.

“Today I know that he must have been writing the Palabras al Viento because he would then go and report them on a Saturday or a Sunday morning before they went out at 2.30pm in the afternoon where everybody listened to them.”

His words are remembered to this day, with Ms Mascarenhas is stopped regularly by people commenting about Palabras al Viento.

“My father's words was about a community being able to rebuild itself and strengthen in its path,” she said.

She said her father gave people the truth, and boosted the spirits of Gibraltarians.

“My father, remember, could not go to Spain. Because had he gone to Spain by 1966, he would have been arrested and thrown in prison. There's no two ways about that.”

Ms Mascarenhas will be talking about her book ‘Palabras al Viento’ at the Girbaltar Literary Festival on Sunday, November 16 at 4pm at Grand Battery House.

Tickets are still available via: www.buytickets.gi