The Path of Laughter

On a windswept hill called Sacro Monte, just outside Granada (pop. 141,000), lies one of the oldest settlements of gypsies in all of Spain. There, after four centuries, the gypsies still live in caves; but each cave has its altar, and each altar its special photograph, beside the Virgin's image, surrounded by red carnations. The name of the man in the picture is a revered one on Sacro Monte: Father Andres Manjor.

More than 50 years have passed since Father Andres first came to Granada to take over his parish of gypsies. In those days they were a wild, lice-ridden lot, and their children were growing up to be exactly the same. Father Andres tried to get them to come to the school he had set up in his sacristy, but the children, rebelling at being cooped up, refused to stay. Then, one morning while riding up the hill, Father Andres came across an old woman ex-convict named Maestra Migas leading a group of chanting children through their catechism and telling them "how to be good men when you grow up." Father Andres suddenly knew he had the answer to his problem--a whole new type of school that the gypsies would like.

Under the Trees. With 14 pupils, he founded Ave Maria. But this time he knew better than to herd his pupils inside the church. Taking his cue from Maestra Migas, he held all classes outdoors. There were no textbooks or blackboards; students learned by playing games and singing special songs under the flowering trees and warm Andalusian sun.

Gradually, word spread from cave to cave that school was fun. Soon Father Andres found that he could hardly keep up with his swelling classes. Every penny he saved went into the school fund. He begged land and donations from friends, even sold the jeweled decoration that King Alfonso XIII had given him ("What use have I for this fancy bauble?"). He began a special class for future teachers, started his two nephews toward the priesthood. Today, 30 years after his death, Ave Maria still flourishes, run by 75-year-old nephew Pedro.

Father Pedro manages the school with 14 Ave Maria alumni. Each hedged-in classroom plot has a shed to guard against sudden showers, but the only closed building on the campus is a chapel decorated by gypsy painters. Geography is taught on large relief maps that have fresh water coursing through their lakes and rivers. Students cross the Straits of Gibraltar in a stride, hop the Mediterranean, stand on capital and continent while they sing their lessons. As they learn arithmetic, they themselves represent numbers, move about like chessmen singing easy, arithmetic rhymes. In other classes, they act out Spain's history, impersonating the Roman Consul Galba, El Cid or Columbus.

Perpetual Games. From 9 to 5, with an hour off for a bowl of soup, Ave Maria's students play at their perpetual games. And with his black cape flapping behind him, Father Pedro strides among them, swinging his schoolmaster's pointer, stopping to laugh and chat just as his uncle once did. "We have followed the path he has traced for us," says he. "It is a path of laughter, fun and achievement."

Last week, after inspecting all of the city's primary schools, the City of Granada's committee supervising education decided that Ave Maria should have a yearly allocation to carry on its work and that the precepts of Father Andres should be written down and distributed to other community schools. Meanwhile another committee, headed by Granada's mayor, set off for Madrid to ask the government to push Father Andres' beatification by the Vatican. But to the gypsies of Sacro Monte, all this was hardly necessary. "We need no Pope's decree," they like to say, "to know that our Don Andres is now a saint in heaven."

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