Spain: an easy country to enjoy; very hard, even for Spaniards, to understand. I remember a dinner party, sitting next to a girl who seemed to want to talk about what had been on television the previous night. She was pretty enough, but I feared that I was in for a long evening and a complete unmeeting of minds. Spanish, she was also dark-complexioned, so in desperation I asked for further and better particulars. She was from Andalusia, which helped to explain the duskiness, and she was the cousin of a duke, who bred fighting bulls. Oh good: something to discuss, a long way from trash TV.
In 1936, the reigning Duque was only 14, but had reached manhood in courage. He set off on a horse, at the head of his tenantry, carrying an ancestral war banner, to fight for Franco and Spain and God. He did not return.
We moved on to the Alcázar at Toledo, besieged by the Republicans — the evil side, who would have delivered Spain to communism. They captured the commandant’s son. It being Spain, no one had thought to cut off the phone line. So the terrorists called the commandant, to inform him that unless he surrendered, they would kill his son. The father asked for him to be put on the line. ‘My boy, I have only two things to tell you. The first is to say your prayers. The second, that the greatest glory human life can offer is to die for Spain.’ The girl and I were now moist-eyed. We raised a glass to the ducal paladin, his valour and his sacrifice.
He did not die in vain. The bad guys have the poets, novelists and historians: Lorca, Hemingway, Paul Preston.
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