New reign in Spain

The Kingdom of Spain always sends outstanding ambassadors to the Court of St James, none more so than the appropriately named Santiago de Mora–Figueroa, Marqués de Tamarón, who was en poste when José María Aznar was the Spanish premier. Santiago is also a highly regarded poet, and he has a further advantage. He looks like a Grandee of Spain as painted by Velázquez or Goya. So during one of his recent visits, a good audience assembled to hear him.

There was an obvious agenda: Catalonia, the closely fought left/right conflict in Spanish politics, and Spanish attitudes to Brexit.

We took wit and charm for granted, while awaiting enlightenment and controversy. We waited in vain. All diplomats need to be able to play the forward defensive stroke but no one has ever deployed that essentially negative tactic more stylishly than Santiago. He said nothing that could have embarrassed the current ambassador or the Spanish government. Indeed, he said nothing at all. It was masterly.

The Tamarón family still owns the castle at Arcos de la Frontera, which they captured from the Moors during the Reconquista. The evening’s chairman, Ignacio Peyró of the Instituto Cervantes (Spain’s equivalent of the British Council) also has links with the Reconquista. His family come from León, that ancient mountain kingdom which kept Spanishness alive under the Visigoths and the Umayyads, and which is on the pilgrim route to Compostela. In some places, León has a bleak landscape: baking rock below, a pitiless sun above. This has bred a wiry race of men, accustomed to adversity. Formidable fighters, they are easier to manage on the battlefield than on the parade ground. But there is also good agriculture, including viniculture.

Ignacio Peyró’s family have an interest in Losada, a fascinating winery near Bierzo, a village not far from Compostela, and the centre of an ancient wine-growing region.