Autocrats, Republics and Monarchs

I'm sure that you remember that Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland had a bit of a problem with Oliver Cromwell. Charles was executed on a cold day in January 1649 and a Republic declared. Cromwell headed up the Republic as Lord Protector and, on his death in 1658, the title passed to his son, Richard. The army overthrew Richard in 1659 and invited Charles I's son to be King. It was all made official with Charles II's crowning in 1661. His first parliament ordered that Cromwell's body, and those of another couple of people responsible for the death of the old King, be dug up and hung. The heads were then stuck on a 6 metre long poles near Westminster Hall. Cromwell's head kicked around until 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge

When the Hapsburg, Carlos II of Spain, died in 1700 he left no heir. The Bourbon family took over and they have kept Spain in monarchs ever since despite a couple of hiccoughs along the way. For instance Fernando VII had his reign interrupted when Napoleon put his brother on the Spanish throne in 1808 but that didn't last long. Fernando was back in 1813. Just one generation later, in 1868, Isabella II was deposed and a new monarch had to be found. Eventually the politicians asked a chap called Amadeo, from Savoy in Italy, to be King but he never took to Spain and abdicated after just five years. There was a very short lived Republic before the Bourbons were back in 1874 but that went pear shaped again when, in 1931, Alfonso XIII and his English wife abdicated in the face of The Second Republic, the one that Franco and his pals put paid to in the 1936 -1939 Spanish Civil War. Franco ruled Spain from the overthrow of the Republic till his death, in bed, in 1975. He named, as his successor, another Bourbon, the still alive Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in 2014 and who is just now running into a bit of a problem around his handling dodgy money during his reign. His boy Felipe is a Bourbon too and our present Head of State.

Funny thing there. Franco was buried inside the basilica in the rather impressive Valley of the Fallen. The new Socialist government is talking about exhuming his body so that it can be buried somewhere a little less showy. At least for the moment there is no talk of heads on sticks.

Now Maggie was sifting through Facebook and came across an article reprinted from the Observer of 1959. I was going to trim it down and pull out the salient points and try to tie that in to rulers of one hue and another. In the end I decided to leave it as it was for you to read or not. The article is impressive in how old it feels; I suppose 1959 is, really, long time ago but it still sounds like the recentish past to me. I particularly noted the idea of the radio and films as engines for social change, the idea of needing a labour permit to get a job in the city and the "bread and circuses" reference to football but you may pick up on something else from an article written at just about the half way point in Francoist rule of Spain.

The Observer piece said that this was an edited extract from an article by Nora Beloff entitled ‘What’s Happening in Spain?’, published in the Observer on 19 July 1959. Here's the text.

One of Spain’s principal attractions to it’s millions of visitors from industrial Northern Europe - besides sunshine and cheap services - is the archaism of the countryside.

You can drive for hundreds of miles and, apart from a patchy and uncertain tarmac under your tyres, there is nothing to remind you of the twentieth century: no poles or pylons, no petrol stations or electric pumps, just the peasants and their children in floppy hats and dateless clothes, women carrying pitchers on their heads and the two commonest landmarks, the donkey and the Cross. All this produces an illusion of permanence: so these people have always lived and so it seems they always will.

The illusion is false: and the tourists themselves are one of the reasons why. Their disturbing impact on old Spain was noted by the National Association of Fathers of Families, one of the major corporations now authorised in Spain, who said at it’s annual congress this year: ‘It is impossible to overlook the danger represented in certain regions of Spain by the tourist current as a vehicle of ideas and customs highly pernicious to our family morality...’

Primarily Spanish farming is being forced away from its primitivism by the reproduction rate of the Spaniards themselves. The population has increased by five million since the Civil War, and a European country with the lowest agricultural yield and the highest birth-rate is condemned to modernise or die. The switching of public investment from industry to agriculture, notable in irrigation, has, in fact, already been decided upon.

The change is being accelerated by the penetration into rural Spain of Western notions of progress. This comes partly from the tourists, but also from a plentiful provision of American films (very cheap and available in local currency under the American Aid Agreement) in village cinemas and from the spread of radio. But the decisive fact has been the migration of surplus labour into the cities, so that hardly any peasant family is without a cousin, brother or child to bring it into touch with the modern world. An old lady from a remote mountain village in the Asturias said she had had seventeen children, but added with a chuckle that her eldest daughter had married in the nearby town and had had only three;’They are cleverer these days...’

Crowding into cities is a common enough feature in the modern world but in Spain it has reached catastrophic proportions. Madrid (now two million) and Barcelona (one and a half million) are in a state of siege. Every day police patrol the platforms when the trains from the west and south arrive and peasants without labour permits are sent back on the next train at public expense. They find other ways of slipping back.

There are today 120.000 of these immigrants grouped in the outlying slums of Barcelona. Some we visited have built their homes on the beaches by the railway track, regardless of the stench, where the sewers tip their contents into the sea. You can see them with buckets trying to fish food out of the filth. Bureaucrats have visited the site, declared it insalubrious, and forbidden further building. So now when, as frequently happens, the waves knock down existing shacks, families have to move in together.

Leaving aside the sub-proletariat of the slums, who sell their services far below the minimum wage, labourers have suffered far less from inflation than white-collar workers and school teachers whose standard of life has sunk far below conditions before the Civil War. Many Spaniards will tell you that the Government is deliberately pursuing what an orange-dealer from Valencia called the ‘cretinisation’ of the Spanish people: demoting and starving the intellectuals (who are traditionally anti-militarist, anti-clerical and anti-Franco) and boosting the current football craze (which has now ousted bull-fighting in popular favour) by radio, television, liberal allocation of newsprint to sports papers, and the building of colossal stadia.

Impeccable words

My main armament against the weeds in our garden is a Dutch hoe bought in the UK and transported (minus handle) in my hand luggage. There was an interesting discussion at customs in Stansted as to whether a hoe head was safe to take on board an aeroplane or not. The weeds are unstoppable, it's simply a holding action.

Whilst I weed I often listen to the podcast of a Spanish documentary programme called Documentos. I've learned a lot about Spain, Spanish personalities and Spanish History from Documentos. Over the past few weeks we've had stuff about the cyclist Miguel Induráin, the story of a Spanish comic, the illustrated paper kind, called TBO, the 1922 Flamenco competition held in Granada and something about Ava Gardner in Spain. This week the programme was about Blas de Lezo and his 1741 defence of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia against a British fleet led by Edward Vernon in the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Now, as it happened I'd read a novel about Blas de Lezo who is sometimes referred to as Mediohombre, Half-man, because, by the age of 27, he had lost his left eye, his left leg below the knee, and the use of his right arm. The Spanish title of the book translates as, Half-man: The battle that England hid from the world. You may be able to guess, from the title, whether the author, Alber Vázquez, had any sort of bias in his book.

In the Documentos programme there was passing reference to an earlier battle at Porto Bello now Portobelo in Panama where Vernon, had an easy victory over the Spanish. Apparently it's the place where Francis Drake died in 1596. Francis Drake is always referred to, in Spanish, as El pirata Francis Drake. I'll leave you to work out the translation. I was intrigued and had a quick look at Wikipedia to see what I could find about Drake and Porto Bello. In the process I ended up reading the entries about Blas de Lezo and the defence of, or the attack on, Cartagena de Indias in the Spanish and English versions. Just as an aside the Spanish version mentioned that Rule Britannia was composed as a tribute to Vernon's taking of Porto Bello. The Wikipedia entries about the Blas de Lezo stuff in both languages was similar but different. Here are the opening paragraphs.

Spanish. The siege or Battle of Cartagena de Indias, from the 13th March to the 20th May 1741 was the decisive episode that marked the outcome of the War of the Right to Board (The War of Jenkins' Ear) (1739-1748), one of the armed conflicts which took place between Spain and Great Britain during the 18th Century. It was one of the greatest naval disasters in English history and one of the greatest Spanish naval victories comparable to the victories at the Battle of Lepanto or the English Armada. The defeat caused an enormous number of deaths among the British though the greatest number of deaths, on both sides, was due to Yellow Fever and not to combat

English. The Battle of Cartagena de Indias was an amphibious military engagement between the forces of Britain under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon and those of Spain under the Viceroy Sebastián de Eslava. It took place at the city of Cartagena de Indias in March 1741, in present-day Colombia. The battle was a significant episode of the War of Jenkins' Ear (Guerra del Asiento) and a large-scale naval campaign. The conflict later subsumed into the greater conflict of the War of the Austrian Succession. The battle resulted in a major defeat for the British Navy and Army. The defeat caused heavy losses for the British. Disease, especially Yellow Fever, rather than deaths from combat, took the greatest toll on the British and Spanish forces.

This morning I was reading the news reports about the pending implementation of article 155 of the Spanish Constitution in Catalonia - the article which allows the Central Government to take over an autonomous community. I read English language versions from the Observer, the Guardian and El País in English. The Spanish language versions were from 20 Minutos, Diario Público, El Confidencial, El Pais and the Spanish edition of the Huffington Post.

It was very much like reading the two Wikipedia entries. The British newspapers talked about the overthrow of a democratically elected leader and the overwhelming majority in favour of independence in the recent referendum. The Spanish newspapers talked about the illegal referendum, support from the EU and the manipulation of democratic processes. The Guardian, for instance, said, in the opening paragraph of an article that Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, announced that he was stripping Catalonia of its autonomy and imposing direct rule from Madrid in an attempt to crush the regional leadership’s move to secede. Stripping and crush are hardly neutral words. Later in the same article the direct quote from Mariano Rajoy is "We are not ending Catalan autonomy but we are relieving of their duties those who have acted outside the law." A slightly different reading of the same statement.

  

It takes all sorts

A Facebook group that I'm a member of, Spanish International Alicante, advertised a bilingual history evening in the nearby village of la Romana some 16 or 17 km down the hill towards Elche. The title, or at least one of the titles, was Spain's Transition to Democracy.

I turned up. It looked to me as though the room for the meeting had only recently been finished because it was all a bit sparse. There was a decent enough crowd, mainly Spanish and British. A couple of people made a point of greeting me so the welcome was warm enough even if the room was a bit chilly.

We started pretty much on time, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes late, with a welcome from the Deputy Mayor of La Romana. He was young and dressed in a sort of modern teddy boy style. We went to a very strange parade in la Romana once. Maybe alternative is something they cultivate.

The woman who gave the talk was called Anabel Sánchez. She'd given herself quite a task, to cover the years from the proclamation of the Second Republic, in 1931, through to the stable democracy in Spain in 1981. She had an hour and she did everything in English and in Spanish. Fifty years in sixty minutes or thirty minutes for each language. It could never be anything other than a quick and superficial overview but she did a good job in my opinion.

A lot of the talk centred on the Spanish Civil War and the resulting dictatorship because that's the period from 1936 through to 1975. Anabel's viewpoint was openly anti Franco and pro woman. She poked fun at the Francoist view of women's roles. She stressed the repression and the misery of rationing in Francoist Spain which caused some bubbling amongst a couple of members of the audience who pointed out that Britain had also suffered rationing during and after the Second World War.

At the end of the talk people were doing that milling around thing. I heard one of the organisers of the event ask one of the audience what she had thought. I expected the usual sort of "very interesting" answer but, instead, the attendee said she thought that it had been a terrible talk and that the speaker was obviously biased, that her views should be balanced by inviting a more conservative speaker to the group and that the root cause of the turmoil in Spain for all those years was the destruction of political order wrought by the Republic.

Even now it makes me laugh. It's fair enough that people have a range of political views but the idea that someone could even vaguely defend an incompetent and bloodthirsty dictatorship forty years after its demise is so ridiculous that it didn't cross my mind to be angry or repelled.

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The photo by the way is a house that was code named Posición Yuste and was the last headquarters of the Republican Government in Spain in the nearby town of Elda

The Mercedes

Arturo Perez Reverte is a well known Spanish author. I've read a fair few of his books. Even in Spanish he's easy to read and often there is an informative element to the novels which I like. The last one I read was called Un día de cólera. It was written back in 2007 but it was new to me and I found it fascinating. It was about the 2nd of May street revolt in Madrid in 1808. We're with Napoleon, Trafalgar, Arthur Wellesley and all that. It's one of the few times that Britain and Spain have been on the same side. It's a period we bumped into a lot when Maggie lived in Ciudad Rodrigo because the town had been one of the battle sites as Wellington moved against the French inside Spain.

Intrigued by the Perez Reverte book I hunted around for a book to increase my knowledge of the War of Independence (Peninsula War) without overtaxing my age enfeebled brain. A likely candidate was a book by a chap called Adrian Galsworthy. I think the name's a giveaway. He's not Spanish and I decided it was stupid to read a book translated into Spanish from an original English language source. The clincher was that it was cheaper in English than Spanish.

It was Father's day last week. I got a day off work. Adventurers that we are we went to the MARQ archaeological museum in Alicante to see a temporary exhibition about the frigate Mercedes. The Mercedes was a Spanish sailing ship sunk by the Royal Navy in 1804. The Mercedes, along with the Medea, Fama and Clara, was on it's way back from America to Spain loaded with taxes for the Spanish exchequer, generally in the form of silver pieces of eight. The ships were bound from Montevideo which was, at the time, a part of Spain referred to as the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Just one day out from home the Spanish ships were intercepted by four British frigates. The British Government knew about the money on the ships and they were keen that it did not eventually find its way into Napoleon's war chest. Europe was involved in persistent warfare at the time with alliances being formed and broken constantly. Despite Britain and Spain being at peace at the time the British ships demanded that the Spanish ships follow them to a British port. The Spanish ships refused and the commander of the British detachment, Sir Graham Moore, opened fire. During the battle the Mercedes exploded with the loss of two hundred and sixty three lives. The British won and the three Spanish ships were all taken to Britain.

Two hundred and three years later a treasure hunting company, Odyssey, found the ship and plundered what was left of the cargo. They didn't take much care about the archaeological merit of the ship and seemed instead to be simply after the treasure. Odyssey were taken to court in the United States and the Spanish Government eventually won the case. Everything found on the remains of the Mercedes was returned to Spain and much of it was used in the exhibition we saw. It wasn't at all bad. Spanish museums have definitely improved in the last ten years (see last post.)

Back in Culebrón with a cup of tea in one hand and the Galsworthy book in the other I read this morning about an attack on Copenhagen by the British in 1807. Apparently the Danes had a nice little fleet. Denmark was neutral in the wars being waged all over Europe but the British Government was concerned that Napoleon would take no notice of that neutrality and go and steal their ships. If he did that the supremacy of the Royal Navy might be threatened. So we British went and nabbed the ships first.

But for living in Spain I don't think I'd ever have known about the tiny footnote of history that is the Mercedes. And what is this about fighting the Danes? Isn't that the place with Lurpak and Carlsberg? Interesting stuff you find in novels and museums.

The Battle of Almansa

The Battle of Almansa was an important battle during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was fought on 25th April 1707. Almansa is about 50 minutes from Culebrón.

The commentator was really positive. "Just look at that rainbow, how beautiful, one of the best I've ever seen!" True enough. Mind you he was in a nice cosy and dry caravan whilst we were suddenly in fear of drowning to death sitting in the stands. We found the beauty of the rainbow hard to appreciate.

When the Spanish Habsburg King Carlos II died in 1700 he left no direct heir. There were two rival claims to the throne - the Hapsburgs, through the Archduke of Austria and the Bourbons, through the French King. We British backed the Austrian claim but several European powers weighed in behind one side or the other. Between 1701 and 1714 battles raged all over Europe and in North America and there were even some skirmishes in the Caribbean.

At the Battle of Almansa, just outside Almansa in Castilla la Mancha, 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. Odd eh?

In the end the British were on the losing side but the Treaty of Utrecht signed near the end of the war handed Gibraltar over to the British. We're still there.

According to that same commentator the participants in this re-enactment, still something relatively unusual in Spain, had come from several European countries just as in the real battle. The Russians and Ukranians had apparently driven all the way. The Irish had brought their horses. Shame it rained quite so much.
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