Growing Up in Spain Under Franco and the Opus Dei — My Spiritual Journey, Part 1
Sometimes privilege and oppression combine in strange ways
Dragged kicking and screaming to the Opus Dei
When I was seven years old, my father dragged me kicking and screaming up seven flights of stairs to a children’s club run by the Opus Dei. It was as if my current progressive persona had possessed my younger self. In reality, what happened was that I had overheard my parents say that Opus Dei would turn me into a good boy. I was having none of that.
My temper tantrum stopped the moment they opened the door and I came face to face with Elías, a popular boy in my class who had become my best friend. I was short of friends, having moved to the town of Santiago de Compostela in the Celtic country of Galicia (northwestern Spain) just a couple of years before. So I stopped crying, played it cool and checked the place out.
That was the only time I saw Elías in that Opus Dei club, the Club Senra. I guess his parents were not as conservative as mine.
