Brits tend to see Trafalgar (search) as the stage on which British naval hegemony was established. The French official view, on the other hand, is that it is just another anniversary. For some Spaniards, meanwhile, apart from being a reminder of the perils of entrusting project management to the French, it recalls imperial glory (we’re still daisy-chaining) and serves as an inspiration to future grandeur.
Ricardo León’s Cristo en los infiernos (1941; previous post) promotes the Franco line (Burgos speech on taking of Bilbao in 1937?) of three great ages in the history of the Spain, the third of which had a prologue written by Primo de Rivera and was seen to have commenced in earnest in 1936 on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar, in Spanish Morocco:
Torre Alazor took its name from an old fort from the time of the Arabs, raised long ago on a rock above the sea to defend the coast, and restored by the Duke’s son in order to preserve some relics of the castle and to be able to retire there and give himself over to a love of the sky, the mountains and the sea.
Bid farewell with heroic salvos by the thunder of the waves that shook with hoarse peals the rock, battling gusts from the Levant, Pablo rode impatient over the mountain path, each bend an immense balcony overlooking the immensity [sic] of the horizons that unfold between Europe and Africa, between Lances de Tarifa and Cape Trafalgar.
Climbing, Pablo reached the final bends of the trail leading to the peaks that control the Straits. A magnificent stage–all crags, sky and sea–in the great theatre that is the world. Doors to beyond, closed for hundreds and hundreds of years until Spain opened them with a love of Christ and men. A wonderous pass in which, as in few other places on this earth, geography transcends history, space time, and time eternity.
And you can get there on Ryanair.
(Most people outside Old Europe commemorate Trafalgar as Bobby Trafalgar, the great Romanian transvestite multi-instrumentalist.)
Pablo Guzmán salió de Torre Alazor, la finca brava y costanera de su padre el duque de Ayamonte, por el camino fragoso abierto entre los canchos y las lunas de la Sierra.
Torre Alazor traía su nombre de un vieja alcazabilla del tiempo de los árabes alzada antaño para defensa de la costa en un peñón sobre el mar, y restaurada por el hijo del duque para conservar algunas reliquias del castillo y retraerse allí en ocasiones al amor del cielo, de la montaña y del océano.
Despedido con heroicas salvas por el retumbo de las olas que estremecían con roncos truenos el peñón, bajo los ventarrones de Levante, Pablo cabalgó con impaciencia por el camino serraniego donde cada recodo es un inmenso balcón a la inmensidad de estos horizontes desplegados entre Europa y Africa, entre los Lances de Tarifa y el cabo de Trafalgar.
Monte arriba, Pablo alcanzó las últimas revueltas de la trocha hasta las cumbres que señorean el Estrecho. Magnífico escenario, todo peñas, cielos y mares, del gran teatro del mundo. Puertas del “más allá”, cerradas siglos y siglos hasta que España las abrió por el amor de Cristo y de los hombres. Paso maravilloso en que trascienden, como en pocos lugares de la tierra, la geografía a la historia, el espacio al tiempo y el tiempo a la eternidad.
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