When I was five years old I forgot all my English. I had stayed on in Spain as I had a viral infection that affected my heart. My aunt, Mari Luz, offered to look after me. I had a great time.

When I eventually flew back all I could say was Yes, No and Harold Wilson, the name of the then Prime Minister. Even today some people think I am ‘not from here’. It’s true; I don’t really belong anywhere. Neither fish nor fowl. I dream in two languages and wear my nationality lightly. When I hear people talking about ‘being British’ I often wonder what they mean.

My mum and dad should never have met. My mother was from Valladolid, an ultra conservative town in the heart of Spain.
My dad was the only son of a communist, from a village in the East Durham coalfield, who was getting out of his National Service by working in Jersey. They were staying in the same guest house. It didn’t take them long to decide they wanted to be together.

My dad passed his driving test, and on the same day, drove down through France to Madrid, to get married in a language he didn’t speak, to a woman he barely knew. His father and mother travelled by boat and he picked them up from Bilbao just in time for the wedding.

They spent a few days of the honeymoon travelling with the newly weds. One day, my grandad went off to buy a roast chicken. They were staying with my mother’s friends in Alicante, and he wanted to thank them for letting them stay. Two hours passed – and no sign of my grandad. They went searching, and found him shortly afterwards. He had gone into a bar to ask for directions, and, having no Spanish, had begun to walk around the bar imitating a chicken, hoping they would understand what he was after.

When he was finally discovered, he was sitting at a large table, surrounded by a group of men with whom he shared no common language – and was clearly drunk. Somehow they had managed to entertain one another for quite some time. Brandy had been consumed. When they parted he embraced every one of them in turn, as if they were old friends.

It was 1960, and Spain was under a fascist dictatorship. My grandfather was a secret member of the communist party – and yet in that bar they found a bond, a common sense of humanity, a desire to connect. They had, in effect, created a small – admittedly tipsy – community.

All of us here in the Performance Ensemble are connected, we are becoming a community; we are beginning to understand one another and care for one another. We see this every day. We sense it in everything we do together. We share our aches and pains and moments of laughter or frustration. In these times when people are seeking to drive us apart, we simply refuse to be divided, separated; told we do not fit.

I am Antonio-José Elliott. Son of Harold and Margarita, a migrant who came to Leeds to train as a nurse, who never thought she would fit in, but who made lifelong friends. It didn’t matter to her where they were from. She understood that our common humanity is far more powerful than any politician’s will. We know this too.