One Monday Morning

Today is May 2nd. It's an important date in Spanish, and Madrid history. It is the reason that the famous Goya painting at the left exists. Years ago I wrote this article for the old TIM magazine.

----------------------------

The 2nd of May 1808. A Monday morning in Madrid. We've had French soldiers swaggering all over the city since March. I blame the old King, King Carlos IV, when he let that lackey of his, Godoy, do a deal with Napoleon to invade Portugal. Imagine that! Our troops fighting alongside all those Frenchy gabachos. Why would we side with that lot after the way they let us down at Trafalgar? Those cowardly Frenchy sailors ran away leaving our lads in the lurch and letting that one eyed, one armed Brit dwarf sink our navy. Lot of good it did the old boy anyway. Napoleon forced him to abdicate in favour of that son of his, Fernando VII, Now old Boney has both our Kings in France at Bayona planning to do goodness knows what with them.

This morning's rumour is that General Murat, Napoleon's brother in law no less, who seems to think that he owns this country, plans to send the last of our Royals up to Bayona. Our worthless puppet government, the Junta de Gobierno, said no but Murat won't take any notice of them. He'll do what he likes. I'm off to the Royal Palace for a bit of a look see. It's time we showed those gabachos that enough is enough.

And that's where it started. Our man, along with a bunch of other Madrileños, the people of Madrid, forced their way into the Palace. Murat had dealt with rioters before. He'd blown a demonstrating mob in Paris apart with canister shot but in Madrid the result was different. Instead of running home and hiding, as the Parisians had done, the Madrileños began to fight.

Murat was confident of his army. The men in Madrid were a part of the Grande Armée of France. The Great and Invincible French Army that had crushed everyone and everything in it's path for years. It included not only Frenchmen but soldiers gathered together from all over Europe, and beyond: Dutch cavalry, Hungarian Hussars, Polish horsemen and the fearsome, turban wearing, desert warriors, the Mamelukes. The finest army in the world against a rabble, ridden with lice, living in hovels and armed with knives and outdated shotguns. That rabble was angry though and in the narrow streets of Madrid hordes of them fell on those fine cavalry horses and their moustachioed riders, overwhelmed them and hacked them to pieces with their long country knives. Dragoons, who had survived the bloodiest battles in history, died in a rain of plant-pots hurled from balconies by housewives.

Spanish troops garrisoned in the city had been confined to barracks before the revolt because the French didn't quite trust them. Two captains, Luis Daoíz and Pedro Velarde, stationed at Monteleón Artillery Barracks, disobeyed orders, joined the insurrection and became national heroes. They organised a handful of soldiers and ordinary Madrileños who not only beat off the first French attack but took the commanding general prisoner. Murat was amazed and furious. He sent a larger force to overwhelm the Spanish defence. Both Spanish officers perished in the attack.

The French eventually regained control of the city. The best figures suggest that over four hundred Spaniards died, many of them before summary firing squads (The Goya painting), when the fighting was over. French losses were about 130.

On June15 Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, was proclaimed King of Spain, leading to a general anti-French revolt. In August, a British force under Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, landed on the Portuguese coast. By mid 1809, the French had abandoned Portugal. In Spain it took longer for the British and Spanish to defeat Napoleon's army and it wasn't till 1813 that the Battle of Vitoria finally saw the French driven from the Iberian peninsula.

Spanish Nobel Laureates

In 1895 the Swedish inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, left money in his will for the Nobel Prize. The prizes are judged by Swedish and Norwegian institutions to recognise academic, cultural and scientific advances. The first prizes were awarded in 1901 in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics and Physiology or Medicine. The prize in Economics was first awarded in 1969, after a donation from the Swedish National Bank to the Nobel Foundation.

To date there have been just seven Nobel Prizes awarded to Spaniards. So the next time you pass a school or a street named for one of them you can amaze your visitors with your knowledge of Spain. If you can't remember who won what plump for literature and the odds are on your side – five literature and two for medicine.

The Spanish started well with an early win in 1904 for literature. José Echegaray y Eizaguirre was a civil engineer, mathematician, statesman, and one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the 19th century. José Echegaray was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama".

Next up was Santiago Ramón y Cajal in 1906 for medicine or physiology. Ramón y Cajal was a pathologist, histologist and neuroscientist. His pioneering investigations of the microscopic structure of the brain have led to his being called the father of modern neuroscience. His medical artistry was legendary, and hundreds of his drawings are still in use for educational and training purposes. His Nobel citation reads "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system"

It was quite a while to the next one, 1922 to be precise, to Jacinto Benavente y Martínez for literature. Jacinto Benavente was born in Madrid and became one of the foremost Spanish dramatists of the 20th century. The Nobel Prize citation reads "for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama".

Nothing in the 1930s or 40s but in 1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón picked up the literature prize. Juan Ramón Jiménez was a prolific writer and poet who received the prize "for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistic purity". Although he was mainly a poet his prose work, Platero y yo - Platero and I, a series of gentle stories about a boy and his donkey, is one of those books that children are made to read at school.

Severo Ochoa de Albornoz was a physician and biochemist. Severo Ochoa won the medicine or physiology prize in 1959 by which time he had moved to the USA and taken on American Citizenship. He worked alongside Arthur Kornberg  so the citation reads "for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid"

Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo was born in Seville in 1898. Vicente Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977 "for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars". His poetry is generally free verse, very surrealistic and often sad.

The latest winner to date was Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia in 1989 for literature. The Trulock part of Camilo José Cela's name comes from an English grandparent though his mum was Spanish. Because he is more recent you may find that his work is better known - titles to remember are La familia de Pascual Duarte and la Colmena (The Hive). He liked to shock with his statements and in an interview on telly he offered to demonstrate his ability to absorb litres of water via his anus. You can see why the Nobel citation is for "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability"

11-M; the 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

On Thursday 11th of March 2004 between 7.0 and 7.15 in the morning, thirteen backpacks, each containing about 10kg of explosive, were loaded onto four trains as they passed through Alcalá de Henares station. About half an hour later, in the two minutes between 7.37 and 7.39, ten of those bombs exploded on crowded commuter trains in the heart of Madrid. 190 people of 17 nationalities died and over 1800 were injured. The bombs, at first reported to be the work of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA, were later ascribed to independent Islamist terrorists.

The explosions occurred during the morning rush hour, targeting a busy commuter rail line into Atocha station from Alcalá. At 7.37 four bombs, planted in different carriages of a single train, exploded inside Atocha station. Two minutes later three bombs exploded on a train held at calle de Téllez by a red signal just 500 metres out of Atocha. The presumption is that the bombs were planned to go off inside Atocha, Madrid's busiest railway station. Meanwhile, at El Pozo station, two more bombs detonated at 7:38 on another train. A single bomb, also at 7.38, killed more at Santa Eugenia station. Four trains and ten bombs. Bomb disposal teams found and detonated two more bombs in controlled explosions on the train at calle de Téllez. Another unexploded device, which was apparently of a different design to all the others, had been on the El Pozo train. It was later discovered, inside Vallecas police station, where it had been taken with other items. One reason given for that bomb not going off was that the timer had been set twelve hours late in a confusion between am and pm.

11-M, the Madrid Atocha bombings, are the worst terrorist attack in modern Spanish history. They wrested that unhappy record from the 1987 attack by ETA on a Hipercor store in Barcelona with 21 dead and 40 injured. In fact the attacks were the deadliest in Europe since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. More people died in the Atocha train bombings than died in Paris in November 2015.

The bombings had an important political effect. Spain was just three days away from a General Election when the bombs went off. Opinion polls at the time were predicting a victory for the ruling Partido Popular led by José María Aznar. Government sources pointed the finger at the Basque terror group, ETA, though they quickly denied any involvement. The suggestion is that Aznar thought that the public would perceive an ETA attack as the death throes of a terrorist organisation throttled by a firm Government. An Islamist attack on the other hand would be seen as the result of him deploying Spanish troops in Iraq. One was good politics, the other bad. That's probably why when, for instance, the police found a stolen van containing detonators and Arabic language materials near Alcalá station and later, as the evidence of an Islamist attack mounted, the PP stubbornly maintained the ETA hypothesis.

Aznar lost the elections. José Luis Zapatero, the victor, fulfilled his promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. Nowadays, the view is that the surprise victory had more to do with the public reaction to what was seen as the Government disinformation rather than a direct Iraqi war link.

During the investigation seven men including two suspected ringleaders of the bombings blew themselves up as police closed in on them. The blast killed a policeman. Twenty eight people eventually went to trial in what the original trial judge described as a mixed bag of Islamic extremists. Twenty one of them were convicted but seven were acquitted including one of the alleged masterminds. Four of the sentences were later overturned

-------------------------------------------

Just a word of warning. In writing this article I came across multiple factual contradictions and differences in what should have been simple information. I tried to steer through but I cannot be certain that there are no errors in the account.

Fighting for a parking spot

Saturday morning in Pinoso – parking at a premium; nothing in Calle Lepanto, Trafalgar or Bailén. Hmm? Now there's a theme. The streets are named for battles. I did a bit of checking. Nearly 400 battles were listed as important in Spanish history with sixteen as absolutely key. With the limited space available my choice has been a little arbitrary.

Skipping chronologically over Guadalete, Covadonga, Navas de Tolosa and Ceriñola we arrive at the Battle of Otumba in 1520. This was the one where Hernán Cortés crushed the Aztec Empire and opened the way to the conquest of what is now Mexico. He did it with the help of lots of locals but let's pretend, as Spaniards often do, that Hernán, his horses and a few lads from Extremadura did it alone.

So we ignore Pavia and San Quintín and move on to Lepanto in 1571. This was a naval battle between the Turkish Ottoman Empire and an alliance of Christian powers sponsored by the Spanish King. Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote, was there and he was wounded – fortunately in his left hand, not the one he wrote with. Lepanto was fought off the coast of Greece. The Ottomans lost which halted Turkish expansion and established Spain as a naval power.

No space for the Battles of Rocroi or Villaviviciosa but I can't miss out Almansa. After all Almansa is only fifty minutes from home. This was a battle fought in 1707 as part of the Spanish War of Succession between the French backed Bourbons and the Austrian backed Hapsburgs with Spaniards on both sides. In the battle the Duke of Berwick, the illegitimate son of James II of England serving in the French Army, beat the French Henri de Massue, leading British troops. In fact we Britons backed the losing side, the Hapsburgs, but it was a good war for us. The treaty of Utrecht, signed at the end of the war, gave us Gibraltar.

Next up is Trafalgar and unless you were asleep when they did this at school you know about Nelson taking apart a combined fleet of French and Spanish ships but dying in the process. It was fought off the coast of Cádiz in1805 and basically after Nelson's first onslaught the French ran away leaving the Spanish fleet to be smashed to smithereens. It was the end of Spanish naval power and the battle was hugely influential in the future of Europe and Spain's American possessions.

By the time that the Battle of Bailén was fought in 1809 the Spanish had joined the British against Napoleon's French in what we call the Peninsular War. This was the start of Wellington's campaigns all the way to Waterloo. Completely against the grain a Spanish Army, commanded by General Castaños, beat a French Army in direct battle. It was the first time that Napoleon's Grande Armée had been beaten. By the way it was at this time that the Spaniards invented Guerrilla warfare, attack and run. Guerrilla means little war.

No space for the battle of Ayacucho in Peru in 1824 when the Spanish lost control of mainland America or for the 1898 naval battle of Santiago de Cuba when the Spanish fleet was pulverized by the U.S Navy. The Spanish lost Cuba (and the Philippines) their last American possessions as a result.

The last battle on my list, the 1938 Battle of the Ebro was the bloodiest and longest battle of the Spanish Civil war. The Nationalist victory put paid to the Republic and paved the way for the next 37 years of dictatorial government in Spain.

Los Indianos

When I was a little boy I wondered why Indians, the ones from India, had the same name as the ones we cowboys didn't care for; the ones with tomahawks and feathers in their headdress. I thought it very confusing having two lots of people with the same name.

So when Colón, that's Columbus to us, persuaded the Spanish Royals to bankroll his expedition he told them he reckoned he could get to the spice rich East Indies by sailing West; the wrong way around the, newly appreciated not to be flat, Earth. Spices meant big money. If Colón were right underwriting his three boats would be a shrewd move for the Spanish Crown. So, when on 12th October 1492, Colón bumped into an island in the Bahamas, he thought he'd got to the Indies. He referred to the locals as Indians and the name stuck.

Thanks to Columbus lots of Spanish adventurers followed his route and went in search of their fortunes. Because of them Spain developed a huge empire and, even when the United States kicked the Spanish out of their last toeholds in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, the link between Spain and South and Central America remained strong.

Spain has a history of people emigrating. Hordes of young Spanish men and women headed off for Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico to seek their fortunes, particularly those from communities with an Atlantic coastline. Sometimes they went simply for the adventure. Often they left to escape the grinding poverty at home and, in some cases, they went to join other members of their family who had found overseas success. For many Spaniards emigrating, making it big, was a dream rather than a possibility. The Americas were a favourite destination. Into the 19th Century much of South and Central America was Spanish soil, still Spain, and, even as the countries gained independence there was still a shared language. Of course many of the emigrants failed, they left Spain poor and stayed poor in their new homes. They never raised the money for the return ticket and the chance to tell their tale. On the other hand many of those who did prosper, eventually, headed back for Spain. And guess what the collective name for these returnees was? Quite right, they too were Indians, well Indianos which isn't quite the same.

In general this emigration was a phenomenon of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Indianos often became important figures in business and in society. It was these men, and they were nearly all men, who would pay for improvements in their re-found communities by building, schools, hospitals and town halls. The casinos were theirs. They piped in water and introduced electric light. These were the men who bought noble family titles and bought up and restored old palaces or built flash new houses that mixed American and local styles. These Indian Houses, Casas de Indianos. can be seen all over Spain though the majority are in the provinces that provided most emigrants. Nearly all of these houses have palm trees in the garden as a symbol of their owners overseas adventure. 

And how was it that there was so much money to be made? The answer lies in slaving. Many of these men either dealt directly in slaves or bought them to work their land. Gaudi, for instance, the famous Catalan architect of the Sagrada Familia, was sponsored by Eusebi Güell. of Parc Guell fame. Eusebi's dad was an Indiano and almost certainly made his money from slaving.

Choosing sides – cowboys or Indians – isn't quite so straightforward as it once was.