BRITISH CEMETERY IN VALENCIA A STEP INTO THE PAST

Spain has always attracted entrepreneurs.

The British engineer Walter Craven-Bartle arrived in Madrid in1851, drawn by industrialization and the construction of railways in. He found work on the Valencia-Tarragona and Xàtiva- Almansa railways, and went on to build one of the first iron foundries in Valencia. Since 1886 Walter Craven- Bartle's remains have been resting in the city's British Protestant Cemetery, a small burial ground near the General Cemetery, whose 19th-century air remains intact. It was one of the first Protestant burial grounds in Spain, says the historian Miguel Ángel Catalá in his book on the General Cemetery.

A green-painted iron grille closes the gateway to some 350 graves in the yard, which has belonged to the British Crown since 1880. In a 2005 report on cemeteries, the Valencian regional government's Council for Culture mentions the need for conservation work, “not just on funerary elements but in whole areas, which is the case of the long-closed British Protestant Cemetery.” This is a view shared by Trevor Nicholas, the retired industrial engineer who has managed the site since 1975.

Within the cemetery, an ornamental façade designed in 1879 by the Valencian artist Antonio Martorell, and the chapel and portico by the architect Vicente Sancho i Fuster, hold out as best they can against the passage of time. Gravestones and crosses have not always been so lucky. “In recent years people have carried off decorative strips and carved angels, and damaged some stones,” says Nicholas.

Though British in name, the cemetery also harbours the remains of Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish Protestants; of German and Turkish Jews who, as such, could not be interred in the usual public cemetery until 1889, and even of some Catholics who found their way to this serene and peaceful corner of the city.

The cemetery bears witness to the history of whole families — Morris, Eknes, Barkeley. Not to mention the merchant ships that carried them here, and the railway- building epoch that brought them here to stay; the havoc wrought by the Spanish flu of 1918; the commitment of the International Brigades volunteers who defended the Spanish Republic with their lives; and even the origin of the Valencia Tennis Club, whose founder's remains rest here.

The cemetery is now closed, as the Crown supplies no funds. Nicholas calculates that some 60,000 euros is needed to rehabilitate the cemetery, bringing back its grace of 100 years ago. Meanwhile the epitaphs in English, German, French and Swedish remain as treasures, hidden from the daily trickle of people who pass by its gates.