Iberia

by James A. Michener

  In the lengthy investigation conducted by Don Rodrigo there were four principal witnesses: Gabriel Espinosa, the servant girl who had appeared with him in Madrigal, Fray Miguel and Doña Ana. A special ecclesiastical judge was brought in to try Fray Miguel and the nuns, and torture of the most severe sort was applied to all but the latter. One innocent bystander who was questioned was sentenced to four years in the galleys, but this was rescinded when the judge found that in his questioning, the man had been so severely tortured, he would never again be able to use his arms.

  The charge was treason. Fray Miguel and Gabriel de Espinosa, whoever the latter might be, had cooked up a scheme whereby Portugal would be detached from the throne of Spain, where it rightfully belonged. In addition, a convent had been violated, a royal nun had been seduced and jewels pertaining to the royal family had been stolen. The outcome of the trial was known before it started. Don Rodrigo had found a way to ingratiate himself with the king and nothing would prevent him from pursuing his advantage. What the trial really came down to was a fourfold mystery. Who was Espinosa? Was he widely supported in Portugal? And to what extent was Doña Ana de Austria involved? In particular, King Felipe insisted upon knowing whether the little girl was Doña Ana’s daughter by the pastry cook, for if so she was a member of the royal family and Felipe felt that this changed everything.

  The process against Gabriel continued for more than nine months: questions, torture, compare the answers, questions again, torture again, compare again and repeat the cycle. A particularly obnoxious aspect of the trial, if it should be called such, was that on the surface it was an ordinary trial for treason, conducted honorably, but at each step Don Rodrigo sent King Felipe a summary of what was happening and sought from the king advice as to what to do next. It was therefore the king who conducted the trial, and always he wanted to know, ‘Who is that little girl?’ A good deal of the torture was an attempt to find a satisfactory answer to that gnawing question.

  If Doña Ana was not put to the torture she received little consideration otherwise. Early in the process she felt herself so abused that she wrote a strong letter of protest to her uncle, King Felipe, which we have, and his response, better than anything else in the case, shows how Spain was governed at the time.

  My dear niece:

  I have received with surprise your complaint against Don Rodrigo de Santillán and I regret that this judge has become involved in a dispute with you that I wish could have been entirely avoided. You are a person who, because of dedication and piety, lives withdrawn from the world and has no knowledge of administrators of justice, whose great severity must be tolerated and even applauded, first, because they act in Our name and know how to see that it is respected, and, second, because with their harsh severity they keep evil people cautious and fearful of punishment, thus preventing many crimes. For the common good it is better that they be harsh than lenient, because leniency is not understood by such people as mercy, but rather weakness, and they take advantage of it, multiplying their crimes and doing great injury to those who lead good and honest lives. Don Rodrigo de Santillán is perhaps more severe than he needs to be, but this is owing to the zeal with which he serves Us and has served Us all his life. As for disrespect, if there should be any such as may be to the detriment of Our dignity (since you are so close a relative of Ours, the daughter of Our most dear brother), We should not hesitate to punish Don Rodrigo most severely if there were good reason for it; but if the disrespect is perhaps more apparent than real, it is wise of princes not to allow anyone to understand that it is even possible for a vassal to show them disrespect. It is better to leave well enough alone. The two persons whom you sent to me with your recommendation that the one be made a corregidor in the Indies and the other provisioner of Our armies in Flanders have been taken care of, but We beg you, Our dear child, not to be so soft-hearted with office-seekers, because they will eat Us out of house and home. I know that certain people are going to Madrigal to see you so that you may serve as intercessor with me in the affairs of Portugal. The Duque de Coimbra and two other important gentlemen of that kingdom, who have spent some days in the Capital, have told everyone that they would not seek an audience with me until they can present themselves with your letters of recommendation for me. This affair is very serious and I wish you to proceed with great prudence and slowly, and to inform me of everything secretly, to which end I have ordered relays of post-horses to be stationed along the highway, so that your letters can reach me within twenty-four hours. Receive these people, listen to them, communicate to me immediately what they say to you, and do not again receive them, under pretext of illness or with some other clever excuse, until I shall have written to you, counseling you as to what you should tell them, because in these affairs of Portugal it is necessary to proceed very alertly, and you can discover more than I could if I were seeing them, because with you they will not be so much on their guard. May God keep you many years, my very dear child, and do not forget in your prayers to plead with God for your uncle.

  The King Don Felipe

  Finally the judges handed down the sentences, first having received initialed authorizations from the king. Doña Ana was deprived of all privileges due her as a member of the royal family; for four years she would live in solitary confinement; she would be allowed to attend Mass only on feast days; on Fridays she could eat nothing but bread; and for the rest of her life she could have contacts only with the least-educated members of her order. The nuns who helped slip the past cook into her quarters were given harsher sentences.

  Espinosa’s serving girl, having confessed under torture that the child was hers and not the daughter of Doña Ana or some other noble lady, was given two hundred lashes, which must have nearly killed her, and was then banished.

  Fray Miguel presented a special problem. As a friar he could not be condemned by lay authority, yet clearly he had been the manipulator of the whole plot. In Lisboa he had observed the Portuguese royal family at intimate quarters and had known how to find someone who looked like the king and then coach him in his role. He had done a great job. Many Portuguese nobles were convinced that Espinosa was their lost king. Fray Miguel paid dearly for his fling but could not be hanged because as a priest his person was inviolate, even to the wrath of the king. However, Judge Santillán, after conducting scrupulous investigations into his background, developed the interesting theory that since Miguel’s parents had come from Jerez de los Caballeros, where we found Balboa’s birthplace, he must be a secret Jew because Jerez was known to contain many such, and as Santillán pointed out to the king, ‘never has there been an evil of any importance or a crime of any seriousness where a converted Jew hasn’t played a part.’ At any rate, a weak-willed Spanish archbishop was finally found who was willing to strip the friar of his ecclesiastical privileges, whereupon the lay arm of the government grabbed him, led him through the streets of Madrid with chains about his neck, then dragged him back for public humiliation in Madrigal, after which he was hanged.

  Born workers on a farm, Don Alipio Pérez-Tabernero Sanchón and his brother accumulated wealth and became masters of four of the greatest bull farms in Spain.

  That left a problem. Who was this pastry cook? The strange thing is that no one ever knew. One fantastic rumor, which I both heard in Madrigal from people who swore it to be true and found in the Encinas book, is reflected in the genealogical chart on this page, but kept within parenthesis since it can only be legend. King Sebastián’s father was John of Portugal, who failed to attain the throne because he died prematurely in 1554, eighteen days before Sebastián was born. When a mere youth he had married Princess Juana, daughter of Carlos V, and when the young couple were living in Valladolid, John of Portugal fell in love with the very beautiful daughter of a pastry cook who worked in Madrigal, and by her he had an illegitimate son who was given the name Gabriel de Espinosa. Later, by Carlos V’s daughter, he had a legitimate son, Sebastián. Gabriel and Sebastián were thus half brothers, which a
ccounted for the unquestioned similarity between them and also for the fact that when Gabriel returned to Madrigal he had a pastry shop waiting for him.

  A second rumor was thoroughly explored during the trial and came to be the one generally accepted by members of the government. According to this, Gabriel was a child who had been abandoned in the torno of a Toledo convent and had grown up reckless and willing for any adventure. The turmoil in Portugal attendant on King Sebastián’s crusade attracted him and he may or may not have gone to Africa with the king. On subsequent travels through Europe he learned German and French but how he fell into the hands of Fray Miguel was not known. Furthermore, the very fact that he had been abandoned secretly in a torno added fuel to the suspicion that he was the offspring, legitimate or otherwise, of some noble family.

  The third rumor was the one that Espinosa himself had used when wooing María, the alcalde’s daughter. He was the acknowledged son of a noble family and for some reason wished to travel incognito for the time being.

  And, finally, there were many in both Portugal and Spain who believed that he was indeed the lost King Sebastián, and that King Felipe knew it. Just as Felipe had tried in 1578 to cause his nephew’s death by denying him the army and navy he needed, so he now in 1594 ordered his horrible execution.

  At Felipe’s direction Gabriel de Espinosa, whoever he might be, was taken back to Madrigal de las Altas Torres and was there paraded through the streets in a wicker basket. His tour ended at a gallows, where a discalced priest jammed a crucifix into his mouth every time he sought to address the crowd. He was hanged, cut down, beheaded and hacked into quarters, which were nailed to trees on four different roads leading out of Madrigal. The head was exhibited in an iron cage hung from the tip of a pike in the town itself as a deterrent to the next man who might want to challenge the right of Felipe II to rule Portugal.

  Fray Miguel, when he faced death, recanted prior confessions made under torture and insisted that Espinosa was King Sebastián. On the gallows, Espinosa conducted himself like a true king and convinced many. It seems to me that the most damning evidence against him was twofold: when he was locked in his cell, without recourse to the dye pots of an apothecary, his hair grew in almost white, so that he looked more nearly sixty than the forty that Sebastián would have been; but as an old man in Madrigal pointed out to me, ‘Think a minute! He was under such torture that his hair turned white.’ And, as Judge Santillán skillfully brought out, he could not speak Portuguese.

  Especially ironic was the fact that even if Espinosa had escaped hanging by Felipe, even if the plot had worked, he was doomed, because under torture Fray Miguel confessed that he intended using Espinosa only until Portugal gained its independence. Then Fray Miguel would have denounced Espinosa as an impostor. He would have been executed and a real member of the Portuguese royal family called to the throne. As for Doña Ana, she was a giddy nun and was expendable. As a matter of fact, such deviousness was not necessary, for in 1640, by what might be termed natural processes not requiring the existence of a King Sebastián, Portugal regained her independence from Spain.

  Long after the executions of Fray Miguel and Espinosa, long after bitter Felipe II was dead, the dismal affair at Madrigal ended on a note of gracia. Felipe III, who had already reigned for twelve years, relented at the thought of his cousin Doña Ana de Austria’s being immured in a cell and appointed her, when she was forty-two years old, abbess of the largest and most important convent in Spain, Las Huelgas, and there she ruled for many years, firm, able and disposed to listen sympathetically when young nuns came to her with emotional problems.

  IX

  PAMPLONA

  Word had circulated through Europe and America that the. mob was gathering in July for the feria of San Fermín at Pamplona. The two British bullfight experts Angus Macnab and Kenneth Tynan were to be there. The American aficionados Darryl Zanuck, Orson Welles, and Conrad Janis had reservations. Hemingway’s mentor Juanito Quintana had assured us that he was coming, and although the queen of bullfight fans, the stately Tigre from London, couldn’t make it, she was sending as deputy her son Oliver, a most attractive young man fresh out of Eton with a penchant for running a few inches in front of the largest bulls. The ineffable Matt Carney, whom I had not met, was coming down from his bizarre occupation in Paris, and I looked forward to making his acquaintance, and Bob Daley, who had just published a good book on the bulls, would be there, but what was most attractive to me, Robert Vavra, in charge of illustrations for this book, was to be on hand, as would be the American matador John Fulton, who was flying in from Mexico. I wanted to talk to both of them. So with a good deal of cabling for reservations and renting of cars, the mob set out for Pamplona.

  My reasons for going were fourfold and none was connected with bullfighting, much as I enjoyed it. First I wanted to see the Navarrese city of Tudela; then I wanted to talk about music with Don Luis Morondo; next I wanted to study Pamplona’s curious cathedral; and finally I wanted to picnic once more in the enchanted Pass of Roncesvalles. I would have traveled a considerable distance to do any one of these things and the happy prospect of doing them all and in conjunction with the celebration of San Fermín was enticing.

  Tudela is a small city on the right bank of the Río Ebro and has little to commend it except a public square with some fine arches and a few church buildings that might concern an architect but which had no interest for me. I was drawn to Tudela by a crowded district which huddled along the river’s edge; eight hundred years ago this area had been a warren of narrow streets from which a great man had fled to adventures so preposterous as to make him one of the major travelers of history, and it was to him that I wanted to pay homage, for I was indebted to his work.

  He was known simply as Benjamin of Tudela and probably he had no other name, for he was a poor Jew who lived in the local ghetto, but in 1165 he decided to see something of the world, and long before I had ever seen the city of Tudela, I had imagined him saying goodbye to the miserable Jewish quarter and sailing down the Ebro to some port city that gave him access to the Mediterranean and the known world of that time.

  Now, seeing the Ebro as it passed Tudela, I doubted that he could have sailed it. He must have walked, perhaps to Zaragoza and then over to Barcelona, where he entered upon the Mediterranean. At any rate, in the years following 1165 Benjamin wandered through the Near East, trading and listening and making notes. He visited more than three hundred places, and wherever he went he asked about the condition of Jews in the region and compiled a census of all families known to be Jewish, so that today it is from Benjamin that we know about the Jewry of that time. He was especially careful to note conditions in the Holy Land, where the Crusades had pretty well eliminated Jews in 1099. But when he reached these supposedly destitute lands he discovered several enclaves in which Jewish families had persisted for a hundred generations.

  Strings of garlic.

  Benjamin was an indefatigable traveler and apparently a man of courage, for he penetrated to areas that other Europeans had not seen, and if his report, existing only in manuscript till 1543, lacked the literary quality of Marco Polo’s narrative, it surpassed the Venetian’s account in factual matters and antedated it by more than a century. I owed Benjamin of Tudela much, for from his tight and cautious writing I learned things that I required to know in writing one of my novels, and now as I stood in his native city, looking at the narrow streets that he must have known and from which he had fled, I felt very close to him, for he had traveled the lands that I had traveled, and he had written of things I had written about, but he had done it when to do so required both imagination and courage. I wish I had known this doughty old Jew; I wish I could have sat with him on the shores of Lake Galilee when he noted in his journal that fourteen Jewish families had now crept back to this village or that, where all had been expelled or murdered half a century before. I found in Benjamin a great resilience of spirit and it was gratifying to walk the streets he had walked.

>   There was another reason why I wanted to see Tudela: here I would catch my first glimpse of the Río Ebro, to which the title of this book is related. In pre-Roman times this river was known as the Iberus and those who lived along it as Iberes. To the Greeks the eastern half of Spain was Iberia, and thus the word entered classical history. The French writer Jean Descola in his A History of Spain (1962) offers quite a different derivation:

  At about this time the country acquired a name. The Hebrews called it Sepharad, ‘border’ or ‘edge.’ The Greeks christened it Hesperia, ‘the Occident,’ or He Spania, ‘the sparse.’ More significant, however, was the term ‘Iberia,’ which derived from the Celtic word aber, ‘harbor’ or ‘river.’ And indeed, the first known inhabitants of the peninsula were precisely the Iberians who came from the valley of the Ebro.