The Valley of the Fallen
And Other Places
Chapter One
PART I: OTHER PARTS
DISPATCH FROM THE VALLEY OF THE FALLEN
A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
-Thomas Mann
The macabre series of tubes, pumps, wires, and clamps connected to Francisco
Franco miraculously pulsed and wheezed throughout much of the month of November.
In taking so very long in dying, Generalissimo Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, the
Caudillo de España, by the very grace of God was effectively unweaving a
great deal of the heavy matting which had held Spanish society in a political
stasis for some 40 years.
Franco had sought to construct a society blessed by an apolitical serenity.
Spain was to be an outpost of hope in a ridiculous world that still believed
politics to be a matter of popular concern. But one of the wiliest and most
vicious Machiavellis ever to wield a scepter was finally dying, and neither his
32 doctors nor the grace of God was going to save him.
Only six floors above Franco, in the very same ho ... read full excerpt from: VALLEY OF THE FALLEN ebook
