Return to Valencia
Emilio Signes Lagos
June 18, 1995
It was like a dream; something I'd imagined ever since 1988, when
I first learned of the Benidorm Sevens: a Signes returns to the
land of his father and succeeds in what he loves to do best.
The Benidorm Sevens actually takes place in the small Valencian
town of La Vila Joiosa (Villajoyosa in Castilian). La Vila
is only a few miles from Gata de Gorgos, another small town from
where, some 75 years ago, a 17-year old named Emilio Signes
Monfort, deciding he didn't want to pick olives all his life,
left, all alone, and boarded a boat heading for the US, to create
a better life for himself and, hopefully, a family-to-be.
Although Emilio had dropped out of school at the age of 8 (he was
very proud of the Elementary School Equivalency he earned many
years later in the US), and was a laborer all his life, he
fathered three children who were to receive graduate degrees and
achieve many of the things that poor immigrants wish for their
children.
His namesake also developed an addiction to rugby, one that was to
yield its share of euphoria and depression.
The ultimate rugby-induced satisfaction for me, Emilio Jr., may
well have come in May 1995 when my own creation, Atlantis, won a
prestigious sevens tournament in a place I can't help thinking of
as "home."
"La capital del món" -- the capital of the world -- is how my
father referred to this part of Spain, and for a brief moment in
the evening of May 21, 1995, it was certainly the capital of
Atlantis' world.
Atlantis first took part in the Benidorm Sevens in 1988, and won
the women's bracket in 1992. With this victory in the 1995
international bracket of one of the well-known European sevens
circuit events, I hope I have achieved a certain degree of closure
in what has seemed to be a never-ending quest for perfection.
Although he's been dead for 25 years now, I tried to think of what
my father would have thought of all this. Certainly the
rugby for rugby's sake wouldn't have impressed him: peasants in
the Valencian countryside grew up in an environment where
organized sport didn't exist. The one time he watched me
play rugby, in the late 1960s on Randall's Island, he simply used
his favorite expression, that most Valencian of all words, "Xe!"
whose meaning can only be deduced by the accompanying tone of
voice and facial expression. (He was frowning disapprovingly.)
But the entire experience would have been overwhelming. The
last time he was home, in the mid 1960s, more mule-drawn carriages
than cars traversed the main road from Valencia to Alicante (even
then, the richest of his family had a horse; the others,
mules). Very few people had televisions, telephones, indoor
plumbing, or even running water. Franco had forbidden
the use of the Valencian language in the schools, on signs, and in
the media.
To be in rural Valencia of the 1990s, where not only do people
have the same amenities as you and I, where the Valencia-Alicante
run is a high-speed toll road bypassing the towns of Gata,
Benidorm, and La Vila, would have been amazing enough. To
see his son not only coach the winning team at a tournament where
games were broadcast live -- in the Valencian language --,
conclude a TV interview with a thank you in Valencian (moltes
gracies!), and conduct a sevens practice for the local club (in
Castilian, sorry about my Valencian, Dad), would have certainly
caused him to say, with an expression of amazed wonder, a smile, a
nod, and a twinkle in his eye, "Xe!"
If we ever get to play sevens in Cuba, I'll tell you about my
mother . . .