Spain is the favoured destination of millions of British holiday-makers and retirees, but few who visit today are aware of the many links, stretching back hundreds of years, that have bound together these two ancient kingdoms on the western seaboard of Europe. As with most relationships, it has had its ups and downs. Visiting the Basque country to teach English, the author realised how little he knew of those links and set about finding out more. The result of eight years research, Espana Britannia is the first book to bring together so many fascinating episodes and reveal how much more there is to Anglo-Spanish history than the Armada and Gibraltar. One of the first surprises is to be reminded that once the lands of the Kings of England in Gascony bordered on those of Castile in the Pyrenees. Dynastic alliances, such as that between Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, were arranged to secure this boundary. The Queen’s death is commemorated by the Eleanor crosses, one of which, Charing Cross, is in Central London not far from Trafalgar Square – another Spanish link. Catherine of Aragon was the first of Henry VIII’s six wives. Later religion, imperial rivalry and piracy made Britain and Spain bitter enemies both in the Old and the New Worlds, culminating in the Armada and Spain’s attempted conquest of England. In the early eighteenth century, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain sided with one of the claimants to the Spanish throne and captured Gibraltar, which has since remained British. During the Peninsular War British troops under Wellington once more fought beside the Spanish to drive out the French and restore a Spanish king. The present king’s English grandmother was a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. In the twentieth century many Britons fought in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. In the Second World War a Spaniard was one of Britain’s most important double agents, who tricked the Germans into believing that the D-Day landings in Normandy were a decoy for a much larger landing near Calais. All places in Spain associated with the events described in the book are shown on a specially compiled map and there is an index of place names at the end.
Editorial Reviews
Review
ANGLO-SPANISH CHRONICLER MARKS GIB AS SYMBOL OF STRENGTH — Gibraltar Chronicle, March 24, 2004, Jonathan Sacramento
It takes us entertainingly through the peaks and troughs…we highly recommend this book. —
Everything Spain May/June 2004
This enjoyable read finds all sorts of connections that have both divided and united us. —
Living Spain May/June 2004, Hermione Summerville
From the Author
In September 1992, I travelled to the Spanish Basque country to take up an English teaching post at the Inlingua Idiomas language academy in Irun. One day the director of the academy mentioned that the Duke of Wellington had once passed through the area. I had always been very interested in history so was intrigued to find out more. I had heard of a book called A Guards Officer in the Peninsula and asked my sister, who worked in London at the time, to buy it and send it out to me. The book, edited by Ian Fletcher, contains the letters of John Rous who, as a sixteen-year-old in 1812, had travelled to the peninsula to join Wellington’s army, then busy trying to push Napoleon’s army back into France. What fascinated me most was that five of the letters were written from a camp or lodgings near Irun. I decided that the next time I was in England I would go into Foyles in Charing Cross Road to see if there was anything else to read on the subject. When I got there, it was a beautiful sight. There was a whole bookcase crammed with books on the Peninsular War. I picked out four including Julian Paget’s Wellington’s Peninsular War which was destined to become my most-thumbed book. After a year in Irun I moved to another Inlingua academy in Murcia, in the south-east of the country but in December 1994 felt the time had come to return home. I had thoroughly enjoyed my two years and three months in Spain. I had travelled about quite a lot and knew I would be back every year to see more of that fascinating and enchanting land. Because I missed Spain, all my reading was now related to the country. There are a huge number of great books on the subject, from autobiographical travel books like As I Walked Out One Midsummer’s Morning by Laurie Lee to contemporary studies like The New Spaniards by John Hooper. However, I was most interested in reading about those events in history that involved both Britain and Spain. At first I thought such shared moments in history could be counted on the fingers of one hand – the Peninsular War, Catherine of Aragon, the Armada, pirates and Gibraltar – but, as I read on, other major events and personalities were added to the list until there were fifteen.I started taking notes which, eight years on, have expanded into España Britannia. I hope that after reading this book you will enjoy your visits to Spain even more. I hope also that you will feel the urge to leave the beaten track and view the more remote parts of that beautiful country travelled by so many other Britons in such wildly different circumstances so many years ago.
About the Author
Alistair Ward taught English as a foreign language in the Basque country. Espana Britannia is the result of 8 years’ research.
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