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. The good side can point to the second world war, and Spain keeping out of the Allies’ way. They can also point to modern Spain, which would not have been possible without Franco.
There is a paradox. Go to Madrid. As in any western European capital, you will find yourself in the company of lawyers and technocrats and cosmopolitans. I have never known a political elite which takes so much of its identity from the country’s supposed future, so little from the past. As that future is bound up with the EU and the euro, this is a stressful business, and it is not the whole story. Modern Spain is a palimpsest. Go down one layer, and you find the civil war. Another, Goya’s heart-rending portrayals of suffering. A third, and you are back to Philip II and the Inquisition. A fourth, the Catholic kings and the Reconquista.
Think of the Andalusian landscape: the sierras, the hill forts, the harshness, the constant shortage of water. Somehow, men fought through the hardships, for Spain and for God. A few years ago, there was a splendid Spanish ambassador: Santiago, Marqués de Tamarón, who looked like a grandee of Spain painted by Velázquez and who still owns the castle at Arcos de la Frontera, captured by an ancestor from the Moors, when it was indeed the frontera. What a country; what a people; what a national spirit.
What food and drink. The Spanish understand the pig and the sea. Forget prosciutto — girlie-man’s ham which helps to explain the Italian performance in the Western Desert in 1941. Jamón: the best of that would be a worthy repast for a fallen duke on his first night in Valhalla. There is a new restaurant called Hispania, just along from the Bank of England, where I had a splendid dinner the other evening. The best anchovies I have ever eaten. The finest Albariño I have encountered. Outstanding jamón. Excellent Ribera del Duero: a range of good Riojas. If (like me) you enjoy Pedro Ximénez, that dessert sherry which tastes of figs, they have a delicious example. They also have fine Spanish brandies, the colour of Armagnac, except more so, and easy on the head… when taken in moderation. One warning: the staff are a delight, and wholly immoderate in their enthusiasm for their cuisine and those who enjoy it.
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