![Last Citadel - [World War II 03]](/res/aob/book1.jpg)
It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m ashamed you saw that. I wanted it to be the best bull, for your first day in the
corrida
.’
‘Then it was the best bull. Because you wanted it to be. Thank you.’
His father looked at the knife. He sniffled and smiled at once, a wonderful maneuver.
‘You were fearless out there,’ Ramon told his son.
‘Because,’ Luis said, ‘you wanted me to be.’
An hour later, Ramon de Vega engaged his second bull, the final and the greatest of the six in that day’s
corrida
, and he was magnificent. He won the crowd again and was awarded two severed ears from the wonderfully dead bull. Circling the ring, Ramon held up the ears to the roaring crowd. Luis walked behind him gathering off the ruffled dirt the tossed roses, wineskins, hats, cigars, and ladies’ fans.
The year was 1934. Luis intensified his apprenticeship under his father, learning all the passes, and perfecting his courage as a
banderillero
. He would become the next generation of great
matadors
in the de Vega lineage. One day he came home and told his father his friends had come up with a nickname for him, The Dagger.
But around him, boiling about his family and the bullrings, across Barcelona and all of Spain, was civil unrest. The elected Republican government had for several years begun to unravel the ancient influences of the Church in Spain. Luis’s father despised the Republicans as socialists and middle-class reformers, handmaidens of the Communists. Ramon told Luis many times the government wanted to sweep away old Spain, a society built on Catholicism, monarchy, and the military, buttressed by birthright and honor. The Republicans wanted to reform the country into a little model of Russia, where there was fake equality among men, all were laborers, there were no peasants, no noblemen, and there was no God for anyone.
In Barcelona, a Republican bastion in Catalonia, Luis watched the violence grow. Priests were murdered - he saw a mob force a priest to lie on the ground with his arms spread in the shape of the cross before they chopped his arms off - nuns violated, and churches desecrated. Brawls spilled into the streets, it was the old and the new come to blows. Labor groups became vigilantes in what was known as the Red Terror, they rounded up suspected opponents and held midnight courts and dawn executions. Luis was kept away from the fights and the virulent politics by his father. But revolution was brewing. Even practicing his passes with the
muleta
and his thrusts with the dagger and the
estoque
, Luis saw the revolt coming.
In 1936, the Republican Catalonian governor shut down the bullrings, claiming the events were anti-Socialist. The energies of the people would be better spent building the new Spanish culture, not hewing to old, violent traditions. Ramon de Vega saw no hope for peace; a delirium was in Spain and it had to be thrashed out between the Soviet-backed Republicans and the unyielding supporters of old Spain, the Nationalists. He sent his son away from the bulls, into the Nationalist army, to serve in Spanish Morocco under his old friend, General Francisco Franco.
Within four months, the uprising in Spain erupted. Franco needed his army to come quickly from Morocco, and he got the help he needed from the German
Führer
Hitler. Luis boarded a German airplane with the rest of Franco’s loyal army and headed over the Straits of Gibraltar for the mainland.
For the next three years, Luis Ruiz de Vega fought in the armored division. His tanks were supplied by the Nazis and the Italians. They were all lightly protected, creaky playthings and pitifully gunned. Mussolini sent his CV-35, Hitler his Panzer Mark Is. Neither could withstand a direct hit from the smallest anti-tank guns of the Republicans, and neither stood a chance against the fast Russian
T-26s
with their 45 mm guns. Luis learned to be sly in his tanks, to come from the flank and behind, to
‘I’m ashamed you saw that. I wanted it to be the best bull, for your first day in the
corrida
.’
‘Then it was the best bull. Because you wanted it to be. Thank you.’
His father looked at the knife. He sniffled and smiled at once, a wonderful maneuver.
‘You were fearless out there,’ Ramon told his son.
‘Because,’ Luis said, ‘you wanted me to be.’
An hour later, Ramon de Vega engaged his second bull, the final and the greatest of the six in that day’s
corrida
, and he was magnificent. He won the crowd again and was awarded two severed ears from the wonderfully dead bull. Circling the ring, Ramon held up the ears to the roaring crowd. Luis walked behind him gathering off the ruffled dirt the tossed roses, wineskins, hats, cigars, and ladies’ fans.
The year was 1934. Luis intensified his apprenticeship under his father, learning all the passes, and perfecting his courage as a
banderillero
. He would become the next generation of great
matadors
in the de Vega lineage. One day he came home and told his father his friends had come up with a nickname for him, The Dagger.
But around him, boiling about his family and the bullrings, across Barcelona and all of Spain, was civil unrest. The elected Republican government had for several years begun to unravel the ancient influences of the Church in Spain. Luis’s father despised the Republicans as socialists and middle-class reformers, handmaidens of the Communists. Ramon told Luis many times the government wanted to sweep away old Spain, a society built on Catholicism, monarchy, and the military, buttressed by birthright and honor. The Republicans wanted to reform the country into a little model of Russia, where there was fake equality among men, all were laborers, there were no peasants, no noblemen, and there was no God for anyone.
In Barcelona, a Republican bastion in Catalonia, Luis watched the violence grow. Priests were murdered - he saw a mob force a priest to lie on the ground with his arms spread in the shape of the cross before they chopped his arms off - nuns violated, and churches desecrated. Brawls spilled into the streets, it was the old and the new come to blows. Labor groups became vigilantes in what was known as the Red Terror, they rounded up suspected opponents and held midnight courts and dawn executions. Luis was kept away from the fights and the virulent politics by his father. But revolution was brewing. Even practicing his passes with the
muleta
and his thrusts with the dagger and the
estoque
, Luis saw the revolt coming.
In 1936, the Republican Catalonian governor shut down the bullrings, claiming the events were anti-Socialist. The energies of the people would be better spent building the new Spanish culture, not hewing to old, violent traditions. Ramon de Vega saw no hope for peace; a delirium was in Spain and it had to be thrashed out between the Soviet-backed Republicans and the unyielding supporters of old Spain, the Nationalists. He sent his son away from the bulls, into the Nationalist army, to serve in Spanish Morocco under his old friend, General Francisco Franco.
Within four months, the uprising in Spain erupted. Franco needed his army to come quickly from Morocco, and he got the help he needed from the German
Führer
Hitler. Luis boarded a German airplane with the rest of Franco’s loyal army and headed over the Straits of Gibraltar for the mainland.
For the next three years, Luis Ruiz de Vega fought in the armored division. His tanks were supplied by the Nazis and the Italians. They were all lightly protected, creaky playthings and pitifully gunned. Mussolini sent his CV-35, Hitler his Panzer Mark Is. Neither could withstand a direct hit from the smallest anti-tank guns of the Republicans, and neither stood a chance against the fast Russian
T-26s
with their 45 mm guns. Luis learned to be sly in his tanks, to come from the flank and behind, to
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