Life and career of late Manolo Mascarenhas remembered

At 2.30pm on Sunday, the words of the late Manolo Mascarenhas reverberated across Grand Battery House.

His daughter, former Deputy Editor of this newspaper Alice Mascarenhas, played one of the few remaining broadcasts of his radio programme ‘Palabras Al Viento’, which would have been heard across Gibraltar at 2.30pm on Sundays in the 1960s.

The weekly show was on the airwaves for five years on Radio Gibraltar.

Now 60 years on, Ms Mascarenhas has written a book chronicling her late father’s life and work titled after the programme he was best known for ‘Palabras al Viento’.

She discussed her father’s work and legacy in a panel discussion at the Gibraltar Literary Festival alongside Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia, former Chief Minister Adolfo Canepa, and former GBC director and producer Ralph Lima.

Ms Mascarenhas opened the talk with an overview of her father’s work.

“A voice on Radio Gibraltar, a seasoned journalist and broadcaster,” she said.

“He became the voice of Gibraltar when he defended the rights of the Gibraltarians, when he defended their homeland, when he raised their morale, the spirit of the Gibraltarians, and responded to all that was being said in the Spanish media about Gibraltar and the Gibraltarians.”

Manolo was a persona non grata in Spain during the closed frontier era.

“In a way, my father touched our hearts in many ways because he was defending, and they knew his good intention in their defence,” she said.

“Having listened to their words in the street, he was always out and about talking to people.”

“That's one of the things I remember the most. My father always talking to everyone out in the street. He gathered their opinion, and he was always informed.”

Most of the Palabras al Viento recordings were lost when GBC moved premises from Wellington Front to South Barrack, but Ms Mascarenhas found the original scripts at home, which would become the basis for the book.

In total, there are 48 Palabras al Viento in the book.

She estimates around 260 Palabras al Viento would have been recorded over five years from 1965 to 1970.

“I began researching, it very soon became very clear to me that the Palabras al Viento, without a shadow of doubt my father's most important contribution to this community, was just a small part of his enormous contribution throughout his entire life,” she said.

Her father wrote in several newspapers including the Gibraltar Post under the pseudonym Cyril Perkins.

The book is a record of her father’s work, including his poetry and love for bull fighting.

The panel discussion centred around their memories of the time and Manolo, describing how his work boosted the morale of Gibraltarians during a difficult time.

“Raising people's hopes, people's aspirations,” Mr Lima said.

“I think no one really valued what we were doing at the time, and this now is a great tribute to him.”

Mr Canepa added that his broadcasts mobilised Gibraltar and its people, and everyone would look forward to 2.30pm on a Sunday afternoon.

“I can recall Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, very often at Europa Point, sitting with the family and tuning in to those words which had a tremendous impact on us, on our morale, and the only pity is that at the time, and perhaps subsequently, I don't think Gibraltar both have recognised to the extent that we should have done what Manolo did for Gibraltar,” Mr Canepa said.

Mr Garcia said Manolo comes across as a “fascinating and versatile character” who covered politics in newspapers and on radio and television.