THE WOMAN WHO REWROTE HISTORY
A short biography of Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia
by
Claire Lloyd
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Copyright 2011 Claire Lloyd
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INTRODUCTION
Luisa Isabel María del Carmen Cristina Rosalía Joaquina Álvarez de Toledo y Maura, Isabel to her friends, was the 21st Duchess of Medina-Sidonia, one of the oldest aristocratic families in Spain. She became known as the Red Duchess (la Duquesa Roja) because of her political convictions, for which she was imprisoned under the Franco regime. A prolific writer and a controversial historian, she inherited one of the largest private historical archives in Europe, and dedicated her life to its organisation and preservation. Controversial to the end, on her deathbed she married her female companion and secretary to ensure that the archive would remain intact in the ducal palace at Sanlúcar de Barrameda and not be divided amongst her children.
Isabel was the product of generations of aristocrats, politicians, historians, warriors and controversial figures. Despite her strong belief in social justice she never renounced her titles, and is it intriguing to ponder what she saw as the role of the nobility in contemporary Spain, and where she saw herself within that structure. Certainly her titles protected her from almost certain execution following her outspoken criticism of Franco, but she retained them long after his death. How did she resolve the apparent contradiction of passing on the line of Spain's oldest dukedom with her professed Republicanism? Was her devotion to history and her family's place in it stronger than her political conscience? Did she believe in noblesse oblige, the responsibility of the privileged to the less fortunate?
Published accounts of Isabel's life tend to be either sycophantic or deeply critical, depending on the standpoint of the writer. However it became clear to me while reading them that she was neither saint nor sinner, but the product of her unique circumstances. My principle aim in writing this article, therefore, is to paint a more objective picture. Apart from obituaries there is very little written about her in English, so my secondary aim is to bring this fascinating woman to the attention of a wider readership.
PEOPLE AND PLACES
Because Spanish names, especially aristocratic ones, are so long I have used family names for the people who are referred to most frequently:
Isabel: Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo y Maura, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia (1936-2008)
Julia: Julia Herrera y Herrera, Isabel's maternal grandmother, 5th Countess of La Mortera (1884-1963)
Gabriel Maura: Gabriel Maura y Gamazo, Isabel's maternal grandfather, 1st Duke of Maura (1879-1963)
Joaquín: Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo y Caro: Isabel's father, 20th Duke of Medina-Sidonia (1894-1955)
Carmen: María del Carmen Maura y Herrera, Isabel's mother (18??-1946)
José Leoncio: José Leoncio González de Gregorio y Marti, Isabel's husband (1930-2008)
Leoncio Alonso: Leoncio Alonso González de Gregorio y Álvarez de Toledo, 22nd Duke of Medina Sidonia, Isabel's elder son (1956--)
Pilar: María de Pilar González de Gregorio y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Fernandina, Isabel's daughter (1957--)
Gabriel: Gabriel Ernesto González de Gregorio y Álvarez de Toledo, Isabel's younger son (1958--)
María: Maria Montserrat Viñamata: Leoncio Alonso's first wife.
Liliane: Liliane Dahlmann, Isabel's partner, secretary and widow following their marriage hours before Isabel's death, now Life President of the Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia.
The following locations are referred to frequently:
Sanlúcar: Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town of 65,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic coast of the Province of Cádiz, South-west Andalucía. Its strategic location on the mouth of the River Guadalquivir made it one of the most important ports for Spain's Atlantic trade in the 15th and 16th centuries, and ships bearing gold and other goods from the American colonies passed through it on their way up the river to Seville and Córdoba. Columbus, Magellan and various conquistadors sailed from Sanlúcar, and it had a thriving ship-building industry, but it fell into decline during the 17th century. Today its main industries are wine production (notably the fine dry sherry known as manzanilla), prawn fishing and summer tourism, with its 6 km of sandy beaches, close proximity to the Coto Donaña Nature Reserve, and unique horse-racing meetings on the beach.
The Palace: El Palacio Ducal de la Casa Medina-Sidonia, Isabel's ancestral home, located in la Plaza de los Condes de Niebla in the heart of Sanlúcar. The Renaissance-style building was constructed in the 16th century on the remains of a small fortress constructed by the Almoravids, and given to Guzmán el Bueno, the first Count of Niebla, n 1297. Together with a vast archive of documents dating back to 1228 and a large collection of art treasures and antiques, it forms part of the Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia. Guided tours are available in summer, and part of the Palace has been converted into a guest-house with nine unique rooms around a beautiful courtyard garden.
Miguel Ángel: the main home of the Herrera-Maura family, at Calle Miguel Ángel 7, Madrid, where both Isabel and her children spent much of their childhood.
Mortera: The summer residence of the Herrera-Maura family, built by the first Count of La Mortera in the 19th Century in Cuban colonial style with tropical gardens, near the coastal resort of Santander in Cantabria, northern Spain. The palace passed to the Medina-Sidonia family when the daughter of the 5th Countess of La Mortera (Isabel's mother) married the 20th Duke, and Isabel herself was married there. It is now empty and falling into decay, despite having been declared a local artistic-historic monument.
Finca de Pendolero: The country estate of the Herrera-Maura family at Torrelodones, near Madrid, in what is now the Parque Regional de la Cuenca Alta del Manzanares . The palace is now a popular venue for weddings.
CHAPTER 1: THE ANCESTORS
The founder of the House of Medina Sidonia was Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1256-1309), better known as “Guzmán el Bueno” (the Good), one of Spain's most cherished legendary heroes. After defending the besieged town of Tarifa against Moorish troops and sacrificing his own son, whose life was offered in return for surrender, he was rewarded with land and status, including the Señorío de Sanlúcar. Later he helped recapture Gibraltar from the Moors, who had held it since 711. His descendants continued in the same vein during the long process of ethnic cleansing known as the Reconquista, the “reconquest” of Muslim territories across Spain, and were duly rewarded by the Christian monarchs; the 4th Señor of Sanlúcar, Juan Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, became the first Count of Niebla in 1368, and in 1445 the Guzmán family was honoured with the dukedom of Medina Sidonia.
The House of Medina Sidonia was entitled to rents and produce from much of what are now the Atlantic-facing Andalusian provinces of Cádiz and Huelva, including the ancient almadrabas of Conil and Zahara where huge quantities of tuna were netted each year. From the Port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, located on the mouth of the Guadalquivir River which forms the border between the two provinces, successive generations exported dried tuna, livestock, wine, grain and oil to Northern Europe, North Africa and the Americas. They became one of the richest families in Europe and their wealth enabled them to build up an impressive collection of art and furniture.
The Duke best known to British readers was the seventh, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1550-1615). Despite his self-professed lack of military experience, poor health and tendency to seasickness, King Felipe II appointed him to command the Spanish Armada in 1588 in his disastrous attempt to overthrow Elizabeth I of England. A few years later his slow response to the English fleet's attack on Cádiz was blamed for giving the English enough time to sack and burn the city. He has gone down in history as an incompetent buffoon, although there is evidence that he may just have made the best of a bad job.
The 9th Duke, Gaspar Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1602-1664), was one of the architects of the Andalusian Independence Conspiracy, an unsuccessful plot against Felipe IV of Spain with the aim of installing the Duke as King of Andalucía. He was fined heavily, exiled from court, banned from Andalucía and stripped of some of his titles. That was effectively the end of the “Golden Age” for the House of Medina Sidonia and consequently for the town of Sanlúcar.
The Dukedom continued to pass through the Guzmán family line until 1779, when the 14th Duke died without heirs and the title passed to his cousin, José María Álvarez de Toledo (1756-1796).
The 16th Duke became, in 1805, one of the first Spanish nobles to relinquish his feudal privileges. His wife, María Tomasa de Palafox, was an artist and a member of the Madrid Academy. In one of his best-known paintings, Francisco de Goya portrayed her with paintbrush in hand, taking a rest from her easel.
The 17th Duke was exiled for being a Carlist sympathiser and the ducal assets were seized. In 1847 Queen Isabella II lifted the seizure and the family was able to return. He became Minister of Naval Affairs and was responsible for the construction of Spain's first steamship. His son, the 18th Duke, trained in a military academy and later entered politics, becoming Senator for the Province of Cádiz in 1876.
José Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo y Caro (1865-1915) was more interested in agriculture than following a military or political career. However when he became the 19th Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1905, he inherited huge debts and had to sell various family assets to pay them off, including a palace in San Sebastian and the Coto Doñana hunting grounds on the other side of the river from Sanlúcar (named after Doña Ana de Silva, wife of the 7th Duke, and now one of Europe's most important nature reserves).
Isabel's father, Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo y Caro, therefore inherited a greatly reduced legacy when he became the 20th Duke in 1915. He refreshed the family fortunes in 1931 by marrying María del Carmen Maura y Herrera, descended from one of Cuba's wealthiest aristocratic families. The marriage also served to refresh the family bloodline, since the Duke was the son and grandson of first cousins. Isabel was their only child. A few years after Carmen's death he married María Gracia Faria Monteys Robles, but they had no children.
Julia de Herrera, Carmen's mother, was the 5th Countess of La Mortera. The 17-year-old Ramón Herrera left his home town of Mortera, near Santander, early in the 19th century and emigrated to Cuba, then a Spanish colony, where he made his fortune building ships and producing beer and rum. He was awarded the title of Count of La Mortera in 1876 and returned to his homeland a rich man.
The Herrera estate in Havana was expropriated by the state after the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, and their palace is now the home of the Havana Club rum museum. In 1986 Isabel, a strong supporter of the Revolution, turned down the offer of compensation negotiated by the Spanish government for the confiscation of the family's assets.
Julia's husband, Gabriel Maura Gamazo, was awarded the title Duke of Maura in 1930 for his services as a politician and historian. He served as Labour Minister in the last elected government under Alfonso XIII, which was replaced in 1923 by the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. As a historian he was best-known for his critique of that dictatorship, Bosquejo Histórico de la Dictadura. He left Spain during the Civil War and during his absence much of his historical archive was destroyed.
Gabriel was the son of Miguel Maura Gamazo (1887-1971), a monarchist turned moderate Republican and Minister of the Interior in the 1931 Republican government, and grandson of Antonio Maura y Montaner (1853-1925), Prime Minister of Spain on five occasions between 1903 and 1922. Antonio entered politics originally to fight the culture of caciquismo (despotic tyranny by local landowners and employers), which he considered a cancer within Spanish politics and the main obstacle to genuine democracy. However his brutal repression of a working-class uprising in Barcelona in 1909, culminating in the execution of its leader, created an outcry throughout Europe and ended his political career.
Another branch of the family produced the award-winning film actress Carmen Maura, star of many films by Pedro Almoódovar including Women at the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown and Volver, in which she played Penelope Cruz's deceased mother.
CHAPTER 2: CHILDHOOD
Isabel was born on 21 August 1936 in Estoril, a Portuguese resort near Lisbon, where her parents, the 20th Duke of Medina Sidonia and his wife Carmen, had gone into exile during the Second Spanish Republic. Estoril was a second home for many exiled dignitaries from Spain including the family of Juan de Borbón, third son of Alfonso XIII who had stepped down as King and left the country in 1931 following the declaration of the Second Spanish Republic. Juan's son, Juan Carlos, was restored to the Monarchy following Franco's death in 1975 and is still on the throne.
In July 1936 a military coup against the elected Republican government kicked off the Spanish Civil War. The coup was led by General Francisco Franco and backed by various right-wing factions including the fascist Falange. Joaquín, Isabel's father, refused to accept a commission but fought as a private on the side of Franco's insurgents, who became known as the Nationalists. During the war he suffered post-traumatic shock after seeing some comrades blown to bits in a crater, and Carmen, a military nurse at the time, had him transferred to hospital in Seville so he could recover. A priest later told Isabel that her father had once saved a lorryload of Republicans from being executed, and the Nationalists wanted to execute him as punishment; only his title saved him.
The family home, the Ducal Palace in Sanlúcar, had been in reasonably good repair when they decamped to Portugal, but on their return at the end of the Civil War they discovered that the Nationalists were using it as a barracks. Joaquin used his connections to evict the troops and the family were able to move back in.
Before the Second World War, Isabel's mother Carmen had been a supporter of Hitler and had travelled to Berlin. She wrote accusing letters to her grandfather, the Republican Miguel Maura, who had to flee from Spain in 1936. We can only assume that her experiences in the Civil War, when she worked as a military nurse, led her to view the world differently. In the 1940s much of Andalucía suffered near famine conditions, partly as a result of years of neglect of the land by absentee landlords and partly because of Franco's desire to punish this strongly Republican region for its resistance. What little food was available was strictly rationed, and often deliberately withheld from supporters of the former Republic. People were literally dying of hunger; others survived by scavenging in the countryside for snails and edible thistles.
Isabel watched her mother taking in homeless families and organising food relief for the local people in the square at the front of the Palace; the family ate the same food themselves. Carmen also set up a small infirmary in the Palace, which can still be seen today. The locals believed she could perform miracles and cure blindness. When Isabel visited Sanlúcar after her father's death, one blind man thought she was her mother and asked her to cure him. Not wishing to turn the Palace back into a hospital, she told him she would happily pay the oculist's bill.
Though we cannot tell whether Carmen's charitable acts stemmed from compassion or a sense of aristocratic duty, there is little doubt that they helped to form Isabel's lifelong concern for social justice and welfare. Given the Palace´s location in the heart of Sanlúcar, from an early age Isabel was literally surrounded by poverty and hardship, in contrast to the privilege and luxury of her own social class.
Joaquín and Carmen's relationship had deteriorated by this stage. The family depended on the Mauras for financial support and Carmen frequently had to ask her father for money as Joaquin was spending their generous allowance. She also wrote to her aunt complaining about her husband's violence towards her. Joaquin, according to his youngest grandson Gabriel, was a womaniser, a gambler and a drunk, who was never close to his daughter and may have resented the fact that the Dukedom would for the first time in history be passed to a female. However Isabel later claimed that she got on reasonably well with her father until his second marriage, after which his new wife, Mara, made him stop speaking to her.
Carmen and Isabel were very close, possibly closing ranks against Joaquín. Isabel, an only child, was spoilt and allowed to run wild, scandalising family friends and relatives with her tomboyish behaviour. Her grandparents had given her a pony, and she used to race it on the beach. She preferred to play with the local children than with those of her own social class. She learned one of her first lessons in social justice when her mother persuaded her to hand over a favourite toy to a child who had none.
Carmen was also a painter, sculptor and writer. Shortly before her death she wrote a book, Résumen de mi Actuación Médica Durante 14 Años de mi Vida (Summary of my Medical Activities during 14 years of my Life). She died of cancer when Isabel was just ten years old, and Joaquin sent his daughter to live with the Mauras in Madrid, offering a monthly payment for her keep.
Isabel was deeply disturbed by the move and by the loss of her beloved mother, but she soon became the apple of her grandfather's eye, being the only child of his favourite daughter. She was just as spoilt as she had been in Sanlúcar, if not more so – a cousin later recalled that she was always allowed to have her own way and was not even disciplined for throwing stones at windows.
A naturally rebellious and inquisitive child, Isabel was expelled from various convent schools. One schoolfriend told how she used to arrive in a chauffeur-driven car each morning and share her lunch with the boarders; it was far better than what they were given at school. Isabel never completed her bachillerato - Julia did not think girls needed qualifications so would not let her take exams - and later complained that her formal education equipped her only to be an accomplished society lady and wife. "I was taught French. They tried to teach me English and I was taught how to drink tea. Nobody ever expected I would need to learn anything else."
She maintained a passion for horse-riding, and entered many competitions. Years later she said in an interview: “Riding my horse through the countryside, speaking with the people I met, and at night retiring to my room with my books, I learned the lives of people like Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, self-made men who influenced my character, teaching me directly about life, people and history.”
The Falangists, represented in her life by her father, detested Communism but were strongly anti-Monarchist, whereas the Mauras had supported the Monarchy. One of Isabel's earliest acts of defiance as a young girl was to cry “Viva el Rey” (Long live the King), in front of General Franco at an equestrian event, causing a number of civic dignitaries to cross themselves and a number of senior military men to chuckle quietly.
She was fascinated by history, heraldry and ancient documents, vowing that she would return to its rightful home in Sanlúcar the Medina-Sidonia archive, which was then languishing in a warehouse in Madrid. Her grandfather, the historian Gabriel Maura, encouraged her interest, teaching her how to interpret the documents. He would give her a date or a name, and send her off to libraries and archives to find the documents he needed for his research. But occasionally this led to problems in the classroom, when she would contradict the official account of events, having seen evidence to the contrary.
She was not flirtatious, didn't have boyfriends and didn't enjoy parties. She believed herself to be unattractive. One of her favourite novels was Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which attacks mankind's vain attachment to worldly goods and superficiality. When she was fifteen her father bestowed on her the title of Marquesa de los Veléz, presumably to make her a more attractive marriage prospect; by family tradition she should have become Condesa de Niebla at the same time, but this honour was withheld.
CHAPTER 3: HEIRESS, WIFE AND MOTHER
At the age of 18 Isabel was presented into society on the same day as Pilar de Borbón, sister of the future King Juan Carlos I. They had known each other in Estoril. By this time Isabel had embraced Republicanism, and she teased the future monarch by referring to him as "Citizen Borbón". She also raised eyebrows in titled society with her vehement atheism.
But her free spirit and controversial opinions did not save her from a conventional aristocratic marriage. She met the dashing and handsome José Leoncio González de Gregorio y Martí, a member of the Condado de la Puebla de Valverde, through her love of riding; he was a champion horseman and rode in the Spanish Olympic team. Another factor in his favour was that he was not in the Military. She was eighteen and he was six years older.
The Mauras did not approve of her choice; they thought he was promiscuous (he had two illegitimate children) and not particularly bright. His family were only minor nobility (the house of La Puebla de Valverde was created in 1925), and well below the House of Medina Sidonia in social status. This sort of “mixed marriage” was still frowned on at the time, so maybe defiance of convention was another of Isabel's motives. Another consideration was that she was three months' pregnant. The wedding took place on 16 July 1955, at Mortera – the bride wore black.
On 11 December that same year, Isabel's father died intestate. The following April the courts declared her the official and sole heir to the House of Medina Sidonia, and a year later she became the 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia, 18th Marchioness of los Vélez,17th Marchioness of Villafranca del Bierzo, 25th Countess of Niebla, and a Grandee of Spain three times over.
Isabel and Leoncio had three children. Leoncio Alonso, hereditary Count of Niebla, was born on 3 January 1956, six months after the wedding; María de Pilar was born a year later, and Gabriel Ernesto a year after that.
Isabel's romantic notion of married life did not last long - three children in quick succession and a husband with whom she had nothing in common except a love of horse-riding saw to that. She did not adapt comfortably to motherhood, caring for her babies herself because there was no alternative, but she much preferred reading and studying. She claimed to have become fonder of them when they became old enough to hold intelligent conversations with.
Isabel and Leoncio were complete opposites; she was unconventional and intellectual, he was rigid, unimaginative and conservative. They fought bitterly then drifted apart, formally separating in 1960 (divorce was not then legal and it was not until 2005 that the marriage was officially terminated).
From then on, Isabel had a series of relationships with women, discreetly referred to as secretaries or companions. Years later she told a friend that she had always known she was a lesbian, but was obliged to marry and have children because she was an only child and the family line had to continue. It was almost unheard of in those days to come out of the closet – yet one can't help wondering why, when she had no qualms about openly declaring her non-conformist religious and political beliefs, she kept quiet about her sexuality.
Following the separation the children went to live with their great-grandparents, Gabriel Maura and Julia Herrera, who had brought up Isabel herself, at their home in Calle Miguel Ángel in Madrid (Isabel's own parents were both dead by then). This act of “abandonment” was used as a weapon against Isabel for the rest of her life, not least by the children themselves.
Despite Julia's best efforts they were not allowed to enter the Jesuit school because their parents were separated. They were taught instead by Maristas, Little Brothers of Mary, a religious order which specialises in schools for the underprivileged. This social stigma left its mark on them, especially Leoncio Alonso, the eldest.
Julia, the Cuban heiress, was by all accounts slightly eccentric. She wore long mauve Chanel suits and a black plastic visor to protect herself from the sun, was obsessed with the softness of toilet paper, and had to be carried up and down stairs by servants because the lift made her claustrophobic. According to Gabriel, the youngest child, she treated the children rather like family pets, referring to them as ratonzucos (little mice).
Gabriel remembers a strange person in a black leather jacket, who he thought was a delivery boy, knocking at the door. It was Isabel demanding to see her children. Pilar and Leoncio Alonso were horrified and refused to believe she was their mother. Julia, fearing Isabel's atheistic influence on the tender souls of her ratonzucos, had her thrown out of the house. After several more visits, Isabel persuaded a judge that she had a right to see her children and they were taken in the chauffeur-driven Herrera family car, an old grey Ford, to stay with her in Sanlúcar. Isabel was dismayed to find the children accompanied by an entourage of servants, and tried to deny them entry, to the Palace, but when the governess threatened to turn round and take the children back to Madrid she capitulated.
The Palace was dirty and unkempt, full of family heirlooms covered in dust. The only items which made it feel remotely homely were Carmen Maura's paintings on the walls. It was like a commune, full of strange but friendly people who spoke with unintelligible Andalusian accents. Isabel had inherited her grandmother's habit of ringing the bell for servants, but often nobody turned up.
Leoncio had instigated legal proceedings to gain custody of the children and 1968 he won his case. The courts decided Isabel was unstable because of her political activities. The children, then aged between ten and twelve, went to live at his parents' home at Zurbano, in Madrid, but they did not see much of their father because he was working away on the family farms most of the time. They felt confused and let down; he was unpredictable, often unfair, and did not keep his promises.
Life was very different under the strict discipline of their paternal grandparents, who lost no opportunity to portray Isabel in an unfavourable light compared to their virtuous and hard-working son. They were not allowed to talk about their mother or their life at Miguel Ángel. The González de Gregorio family were staunch Franco supporters, and even had the crest of the Fuerza Nueva, an extreme right-wing group, on the family linen. Isabel was a “Red” and therefore beyond the pale.
Their grandmother, María Leticia, was blonde, blue-eyed and urbane, and had lived in northern Europe. She took a shine to Pilar, also blonde and blue-eyed, and modelled her in her own image. She was less interested in, at times disdainful towards, the two boys who were dark and Hispanic-looking. This was a fairly common attitude amongst the “pure blooded” Castillian Spanish towards the “mixed blood” of the Andalusians.
According to Gabriel, there was a change in his mother's behaviour towards the children around this time. Previously she had maintained, in private at least, the attitude that they had been the result of weakness on her part when succumbing to her hormones and her husband, and hence almost disowned them as being a part of her. But when she became a public figure she needed public support, and the public does not support bad mothers. She started a lawsuit against their father to try and regain custody, claiming that he was neglecting their schooling, but had to abandon it when she went into exile.
She saw the children two or three times a month and occasionally took them on trips, which never went according to plan because she would make friends en route and end up staying with them for several days. Concerned with the poor schooling they were receiving under their father's care, Isabel took them to historic monuments and tried to teach them about architecture and art. Leoncio Alonso was very close to his mother at this time and appreciated her attempts to educate them. He later acknowledged that he owed his love of reading and history to her. Gabriel, on the other hand, claimed that she made him feel stupid because he couldn't answer her questions.
While Isabel was in prison, the children were looked after by their great-aunt Julia, Carmen's sister. She wrote them copious letters and they went to see her in the chauffeur-driven car, complete with nannies and picnic hampers, attracting considerable attention while queueing up along with the gypsies on visiting day. Aunt Julia tried to use her connections to get an early release, but Franco would not concede.
CHAPTER 4: NOVELIST AND ACTIVIST
Following her accession to her father's titles and the breakdown of her marriage in the late 1950s, Isabel moved back into the Palace at Sanlúcar. The building was up for sale, but she acquired the shares of various uncles for one million pesetas and started work on its restoration. The archive was rescued from its warehouse in Madrid and transferred to the Palace in 1962.
She managed to reclaim a number of family treasures which had found their way into the Church of La Merced next to the Palace. Brandishing a pistol, she entered the church, defied the priest and retrieved all the paintings, crucifixes and other valuables . The action led to her excommunication by the Bishop of Cádiz.
Isabel soon began to follow in her mother's footsteps and became involved in voluntary work among the local farming and fishing communities. A fervent believer in land reform, she also gave away some of her inherited land to form rural co-operatives, a practice she continued until she owned little more than the Palace itself. The authorities regarded her as eccentric but harmless, in an honourable Spanish aristocratic tradition. Just five feet tall and slight of build, she seemed an unlikely revolutionary.
However her open criticism of the Franco regime and defence of Republican ideals and liberties led them to revise their opinion. Still a young mother in her early 20s, she became involved with the struggle of local vineyard workers against the near-feudal conditions imposed by the “sherry barons”, boldly denouncing members of the same land-owning class into which she had been born. She helped organise a strike, and the strikers won.
She set up a co-operative for the fishermen of Sanlúcar to establish and fight for their rights, and helped establish Comisiones Obreras (Workers' Commissions) so that agricultural workers could become unionised. In 1964 she was convicted of leading an illegal demonstration by striking fishermen, but refused to pay the fine.
In the early '60s she moved back to Madrid, and made contact with various left-wing groups opposed to the dictatorship. She wrote her first novel, La Huelga (The Strike), based on her experiences in Sanlúcar. Telling the story of a strike by vineyard workers, it pulled no punches in denouncing the police brutality and judicial sleights of hand involved in suppressing the working class under the system of caciquismo, elitism and privilege prevalent throughout Andalucia. It was promptly banned in Spain, but brought out in both French and Spanish by a publishing house in Paris.
On 17 January 1966, a collision in the skies over the fishing village of Palomares in Almería between a USAF B-52 bomber and a KC-135 refuelling plane caused one of the most serious nuclear accidents of the Cold War. Conventional explosives in two of the B-52's hydrogen bombs detonated, spilling radioactive material. Three of the bombs were located and a fourth, which fell into the sea, was found a few weeks later. Negotiations to try and get the US government to pay for the clean-up are still going on to this day.
Two years earlier there had been a similar accident in the Coto de Doñana, on the other side of the river from Sanlúcar, but all details were officially silenced. Anxious to avoid damage to Spain's burgeoning tourist industry, Franco again tried to suppress any publicity hinting of plutonium release at Palomares.
When she heard what had happened Isabel went to Almería, used her title to get past the security cordons and met with the labourers whose small plots of land, on which they depended for food and work, had been contaminated. She returned to Madrid and, after failing to get official acknowledgement of the contamination from the government, she sent details to the French radio station Europe 1. This was the start of an international campaign demanding compensation for the labourers, culminating in a demonstration on 17 January 1967. The Nuclear Energy Board were forced to send an inspector to the site and reveal the results of medical examinations on the local population, who finally began to receive the treatment they needed.
Isabel's second novel, La Base, dealt with the effects of the establishment of a military base on the material and mental well-being of the local population. It was a thinly veiled fictitious account of what happened at Rota, just a few miles along the coast from Sanlúcar, now home to a huge military airfield and naval supply base used by NATO and the USA as their “gateway to the Mediterranean”. La Base was published in France by Grasset in 1971, while Isabel was in exile.
The third novel in the trilogy with La Huelga and La Base was La Caceria (The Chase), which described the unlimited power and moral hypocrisy exercised by a decadent ruling class over their peasant tenants and labourers in Andalusia. It was published by Grijalbo in 1977, following Isabel's return from exile.
Isabel also wrote two other novels: Presente Infinto, set in the period of Spain's transition from fascism to democracy, and La Ilustre Degeneración, inspired by a series of crimes committed in the 1990s and highlighting the lack of correlation between criminal pathology and social class.
Mi Cárcel (My Prison), a compilation of letters and newspaper articles published between 1969 and 1970, was published by Harper & Row (New York) in 1972. It led to some minor improvements in Spanish prison conditions but did nothing to improve her standing with the authorities.
The book Palomares: Memoria, based on testimonies of eighty people affected by radiation after the nuclear incident and banned by Franco in 1968, was finally published in 2002.
Isabel wrote numerous articles for French magazines and journals, including Le Monde and Libération. She also wrote eleven historical works based on the archive. Copies of all her books are available from the Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia in Sanlúcar, and some of her works can be read online on the Fundación website.
CHAPTER 5: IMPRISONMENT AND EXILE
Public demonstrations were illegal under Franco and after the Palomares march Isabel was arrested. One report claims that because of her high public profile she was offered her freedom in exchange for her silence, but she refused to keep quiet. At one stage she tried to protest her innocence, denying her participation in the demonstration and claiming that others had merely used her name. In an article published in Sábado Gráfico in June 1968 she claimed that she would never do anything to harm her country's “liberators”, i.e. her father's friends, and the article referred to the children of “Señora de Gonzáles de Gregorio”, the only time she ever used her husband's name.
But her lies fell on deaf ears. She was judged by a military trial, at which the Nuclear Energy Board inspector gave evidence, and found guilty. She was condemned to 13 months in prison at Alcalá de Henares and released in November 1969, her sentence reduced to eight months for good behaviour.
The Duchess also used her aristocracy as a means of intimidating the courtroom. When told by a judge that she should call him Your Honour rather than just “you”, she replied: "In that case you will address me as Excellency, since I am a Duchess and a Grandee."
It was during this period that she was awarded the soubriquet “Red Duchess” by the labourers she had helped, though she never used it herself. In the context of Franco's Spain, when death squads executed without trial anyone suspected of being a socialist, anarchist or communist until well after the end of the Civil War, the term “Red” had far stronger connotations than it does today. She rejected Communism outright, stating that "I would have to accept a whole series of things I don't accept: the loss of freedom of expression, of press, of gathering - precisely the deprivations against which I'm fighting in my own country." When asked in 2007 what she thought of her nickname, she said “If 'Red' refers to dialectical materialism, then yes, that is my way of seeing the world, of working, of being. But in no other sense. I conform to no orthodoxy.”
Of her imprisonment she wrote to her elder son as follows: “On reflection this little spell in the shadows has turned out very well. I have learned things I would never have discovered in the street. It's like the epitome of the country's problems, a synthesis which you won't find anywhere else, and which lets you get to the bottom of things which are hidden in the outside world. You have a mother who knows much more than she did a year ago. As you will see, we must carry on learning – always remember that learning is knowledge.”
In an interview in 2007 she confessed that she had also learned how steal from letterboxes (though she never put it into practice) and also that many good people were locked up, who stole purely because they had nothing to eat.
In 1969 the clandestine circulation of La Huelga and other articles published in the magazine Sábado Gráfico brought her to trial once again, for supposedly insulting the police and the judiciary. In total there were four prosecution reports against her, including one requesting a ten-year sentence. All were as a result, in her own words, of “having used freedom of expression which is respected in any free country, and which one hopes will be respected in future on the part of the Spanish state.” A press tribunal set up to handle offences against the country's censorship laws cleared her of all charges, but in a year later the verdict was overturned by the Spanish Supreme Court and she was sentenced to a month and a day in jail.
Unwilling to spend another term behind bars, she fled to France, taking with her as much of her grandmother's money as she could lay her hands on. She divided her time between Hasparren, near Bayonne in the French Basque Pyrenees, and Paris, where many Spaniards who could not live under the Franco regime for various reasons had already found a safe haven.
During her stay in the Basque region she frequented the Playboy Club in Biarritz, in the company of transvestites and gays. There are also rumours that she associated with members of ETA (Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna or Basque Homeland and Freedom), which first emerged in the 1960s as a student resistance movement bitterly opposed to General Franco's repressive military dictatorship. Under Franco the Basque language was banned, their distinctive culture suppressed, and intellectuals imprisoned and tortured for their political and cultural beliefs. ETA's early acts of resistance did not involve mass civilian bombings, although a number of police were killed in exchanges of fire. In December 1973 they assassinated the Prime Minister, Franco's close confidant Luis Carrero Blanco, in retaliation for the execution of five of Franco's political enemies, an act applauded by many opponents of the fascist regime.
In Paris she lived in a garret of 15 square metres, whose only source of daylight was a window overlooking the Politécnique, but through which passed many of those would later become the first democratic politicians of Spain. Forcibly separated from her loved ones and short on home comforts, she directed her energy towards research, reading, writing, meeting and talking with like-minded people, travelling and expanding her knowledge and experience of the world.
She visited Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Canada, denouncing the Franco regime at every opportunity, and inevitably alienating herself from those of her fellow-countrymen whose ideological plans for post-democracy Spain did not coincide with her more radical vision. In her essay Sin intermediarios (Without Intermediaries) she questioned why societies were incapable of defending themselves against the political or economic aggression to which they were submitted. She analysed the historical, economic and social aspects of European peoples, inviting the reader to look at them from a new perspective based on ethics and objectivity, rather than from the status quo. By maintaining this anti-capitalist stance she effectively ruled herself out of a role in the government of post-Franco Spain.
The children's father would not allow them to speak to their mother by telephone during her exile, let alone visit her, but the letters she wrote to them during this period displayed both a deep affection and a strong desire to teach them the values in which she herself believed – liberty, justice and solidarity.
In 1975 Franco died and in October the following year, taking advantage of the declaration of an amnesty for his former critics, Isabel was free to return to her homeland, hailed as a figurehead of Spain's emerging democracy. An arrest warrant, based on a statement to the Swiss press and two letters she had written to the head of the armed forces requesting that gas rather than firearms be used to subdue demonstrations, was dropped. Her eldest son, Leoncio Alonso, made the arrangements for her return.
After six years in exile Isabel's physical appearance and her demeanour had changed considerably. She was met on her return by Gabriel and Pilar, then aged 18 and 19 respectively. Leoncio was away on military service at the time (conscription did not end till 2001). They described her as scruffy, drinking too much, and failing to use deodorant. She appeared to have disposed of most of the inheritance, and was on her uppers. She had a missing tooth, which she couldn't afford to fix, and chain-smoked cheap black Celta cigarettes. Gabriel declared that she showed him no warmth at all and Pilar found her intolerant, unpredictable and judgemental.
Three months after her return she was detained in her house in Mortera, which she was visiting along with Leoncio Alonso and her secretary Gloria Barrero. Six police officers searched the house and also her French-registered Volkswagen. She did not hesitate to remind them of her nobility, exclaiming “You can't lay a hand on me, I am a Grandee of Spain!”
She told a reporter from El País that she believed the French police had informed their Spanish counterparts that she was carrying “something illegal”, which she feared had been planted. She had fallen foul of French authorities eighteen months earlier when, emerging from the Playboy Club in Biarritz early one morning somewhat the worse for drink, she fired on a baker's van which she thought contained Franco's spies out to get her. They found nothing, but she was arrested for assaulting an officer – hard to believe, given that she was frail and only five feet tall – and sentenced to six months' house arrest.
CHAPTER 6: RETURN TO SANLUCAR
In 1977 Isabel took up permanent residence in the Palace. Gabriel, who was studying forestry at Cádiz university, went to live there too as did Leoncio Alonso who had just completed his military service. Pilar, unwilling to give up her home comforts and glamorous social life, stayed with her father's family.
In Isabel's absence planning permission had been granted for flats to be built on the Palace site, and parts of the estate had already been built on. With the aid of the renowned architect and historian Fernando Chueca Goita she had it declared a BIC (Bien de Interés Cultural, or Historic-Artistic Monument) in 1978, putting an end to any possibility of redevelopment. Meanwhile Isabel carried out extensive restoration work on the building and installed the rest of family's magnificent collection of paintings, Flemish tapestries and 16th century furniture. She set to work cataloguing the six million documents in the archive, a job which took her ten years to complete – the catalogue itself consists of twenty volumes.
She set up two schools in the Palace, one for children and one for adults, using state-trained teachers. Each year she paid for the three brightest to go to university. One of the beneficiaries was Pitu, who went to the palace at the age of eight. Isabel took her Paris, where she met and married a French Duke and became director of Renault España.. Caridad, who went to the Palace school at the same time as Pitu, ended up working as Isabel's secretary for thirty years until her death and still works at the Foundation as an archivist.
Isabel donated a plot of land in the town to build flats for the poor. One of the tenants, Rafael, recalled that she did a lot more for the townspeople than the King ever did, but some of them didn't always appreciate what she did and gossiped about her. Others had a great affection for her, and regarded her as one of their own. She enjoyed going down into the town and having a drink with them in the bars.
In January 1979 Isabel was absolved of a charge of contempt of court for having written a letter to the authorities following the violent death in strange circumstances of a 27-year-old man in Sanlúcar. In reality she had written it on behalf of the father and widow of the man, who were illiterate. This was just one of several similar charges during that period, indicating that despite Spain's return to democracy she was still regarded with suspicion by the authorities.
Rafael Manzano, a member of the Royal Academy of History, had dinner at the Palace with his wife during this period. The other guests included a beautiful Indian princess, a Bulgarian dressed up as a Russian prince, and two local fishermen. He couldn't understand a word any of them said. In the room next door, one of the servants was giving birth and midwives were coming and going. After eating the best fish stew he had ever tasted, the brandy started to flow and they talked enthusiastically about local history. She gave him a tour of the Palace, which was littered with holy relics and works of art in poor repair. When the returned to the dining hall, the baby had been born and the fishermen were singing and dancing flamenco to celebrate.
Isabel had a strong sense of humour and irony. Manzano recalled a fancy dress party where Isabel and her then partner dressed as medieval lepers, complete with bells to warn other guests of the danger of contamination from their company.
In 1982 Miguel Ángel Arenas, a well-known musical director known as “Capi”, was invited by Isabel to spend summer at the Palace. He was a childhood friend of Leoncio Alonso's and later became friendly with Pilar and Gabriel. He paints a vivid and somewhat seedy picture of life there, with strangers coming and going, drinking, promiscuity, male prostitutes working under the Palace wall - a veritable Liberty Hall. The only prohibition was the use of drugs.
There was never enough food – Isabel lived mainly on fried eggs – and there was no money for soap or detergents, so the sheets were never changed and plates were washed in dirty water. Gabriel wore second-hand clothes given to him by his elderly uncle. Once Isabel went to London to sell a diamond bracelet that belonged to one of her children. Noevertheless there was no shortage of amontillado sherry and coñac, which everybody drunk round the kitchen table in the evenings while Isabel told tales of her life in Paris and boasted of using her grandmother's inheritance to finance the May '68 Revolution.
Capi also claimed that Isabel was paranoid, always accusing people of stealing from her. She evicted a gypsy whom she had been harbouring, along with his two children, because she thought he had stolen some silver. At Leoncio Alonso's wedding she hid some of the smaller art treasures, leaving obvious patches on the walls, in case any of the guests decided to take a souvenir. She was constantly in fear of a terrorist attack, ordering people to hide under the table if she heard noises in the garden.
After Capi had returned to Madrid Isabel came to stay with him when she had to petition the King in order to obtain approval for her eldest son's wedding. She couldn't stand Leoncio Alonso's fiancée, or her mother. Wearing muddy boots and old clothes but accompanied by the Madrid glitterati, she stood in the entrance hall of the Royal Palace and loudly declared “You all know I am not in favour of this wedding – but I will do my duty”.
The Movida Madrileña was in full swing at the time, a hedonistic cultural explosion and breaking of old taboos after decades of repression. Later that night Isabel, Capi and their entourage went on the town ending up at an exclusive discotheque where they bumped into the Duke of Huéscar, son of Spain's best-loved aristocrat the Duchess of Alba. Isabel threw her arms round his neck but he didn't recognise her. “I am Medina-Sidonia!” she declared, “and you are nobody! So is your mother!” He was too polite to retaliate, and her companions quickly whisked her away.
Isabel's own version of the Madrid experience is somewhat different. She sampled the Movida for a few weeks, to see what kind of life her children were living, and was appalled. Hedonism, she claimed, is the enemy of progress and the transition was a sociological disaster, leaving behind an amoral and vice-ridden generation, its critical senses destroyed by drugs.
Leoncio Alonso's wedding to the “Catalan nobody”, María Montserrat Viñamata, took place in Sanlúcar on 12 December 1983. Capi, who was Master of Ceremonies, recalled that they had difficulty persuading Isabel to wear women's clothes. They finally got her into a black velvet gown, with no adornments or jewellery, and she kept her boots on. Immediately after mass she ran out of the church to get changed.
The reception at the Palace was an interesting affair, with seven hundred guests and just two bathrooms. There were gays from all over Spain wearing fake medals, local gypsies who quickly ate all the food; and assorted aristocrats. Gabriel was ordered by his mother not to let her get drunk and the waiters were ordered not to give her whisky, but she got some anyway, pretending it was for another guest. At five in the morning, there were still people throwing up, fornicating in dark corners, or unconscious.
One of the witnesses in the bride's party was Liliane Dahlmann, a young German historian then living in Barcelona. She had been warned about Isabel by Maria's family, and advised not to speak to her. But when they met at the supper before the wedding Liliane was completely captivated by the diminutive 47-year-old “Red Duchess” with her combination of historical knowledge, philosophical wisdom and irreverent wit.
The attraction was mutual. Isabel went to Barcelona to see her again, and invited her to come and stay at Sanlúcar; Liliane accepted, initially intending to stay for just a few months. However she was soon installed as Isabel's “secretary” and the previous incumbent, Esperanza, a popular local girl, was sacked without compensation. This caused a lot of bad feeling locally, and her family along with half the town wanted to set fire to the Palace.
This was a turning point in Isabel's life. She gave up the wild Bohemian life and attempted to become respected, if not respectable. Maybe it was to impress the impeccably polite and well-turned out Liliane, maybe she realised how badly she had alienated the townspeople over the dismissal of Esperanza, or maybe she had just had enough of acting a role that went against her true nature.
Liliane remains loyal to her mentor to this day, eulogising her personal integrity and her incredible capacity for hard work. She spoke through her writing, Liliane told Íñigo Ramírez de Haro, but she was always anti-establishment and so the establishment, in the form of universities and publishers, closed its doors on her. In their early days together they received many social invitations, which Isabel felt obliged to accept even though they often put her in bad humour. With her acute nose for bullshit and zero tolerance for dishonesty and hypocrisy, she often ended up giving offence. Liliane persuaded her that it was not only acceptable but sensible to turn down the invitations, and their social life was gradually wound down.
CHAPTER 7: REWRITING HISTORY
From then on Isabel spent her days in the library researching in the family archive, the Archivo de la Casa de Medina Sidonia, a unique collection of six million original documents dating back to 1228 and the largest private archive in Spain, possibly in Europe. The documents include not only details of the property and goods owned by the family, and their occupations and titles, but also their public and private relationships and how they spent their leisure time. It is a rich source of information about the Middle Ages, especially the reigns of Carlos V and Felipe II.
Isabel continued to court controversy with her historical works, making extensive references to the archive to declare that much of the conventional wisdom of Spanish history was in fact patrañas (humbug). Over the next twenty years she published a number of books contradicting received wisdom and managed to alienate most of the Spanish academic community, especially the Academia de Historia, with a number of claims which were widely regarded as heretical. Here are just a few examples.
The Andalusian Independence Conspiracy was all made up
In 1641 there was a plot amongst the aristocracy for Andalucía to secede from Spain, similar to the successful movement which had resulted in Portugal's independence. The ringleaders included the 9th Duke of Medina Sidonia, Gazpar Alonso de Guzmán, who, it was claimed, wanted to install himself as King of Andalucía. The family had got into financial difficulties due to their luxurious lifestyle and he had taken out numerous loans. In his military capacity the Duke had been called on to fight against the Portuguese rebellion, led by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Braganza (later King John IV of Portugal). He did this with such agonising inefficiency that it was easy to conclude that they had come to some sort of mutually beneficial deal.
Evidence began to materialise against the 9th Duke, and to avoid imprisonment he made a confession to the Count-Duke of Olivares, a minor branch of the House of Medina Sidonia, who made him believe he would use his influence as the King's favourite in the Duke's favour, but instead took the confession straight to the King as evidence of his guilt. He managed to avoid the death sentence but was exiled from court, fined heavily and banned from returning to Andalucía.
In Historia de una conjura (History of a Conspiracy), published in 1985 and her first major historical work, Isabel questioned the traditional interpretation of the rebellion and the role of her ancestor, claiming that there never was a conspiracy; it was all an invention of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who was jealous of the Duke. According to Isabel, the Duke's failure to attack Portugal was not because of a pact with his brother-in-law but because of the weakness of the Spanish army on the frontier – a mere 3,000 men. Letters found in the archive between the Duke and the King in 1640 and 1641 provide evidence of this.
Don Sebastian of Portugal did not die a hero in battle
Felipe II y Portugal was a detailed study of Felipe's reign, his military and economic policy, and Spain's relations with Portugal following its secession. She questioned the almost Arthurian legend of Don Sebastian, the heroic young Portuguese king who was popularly believed either to have died a hero's death on the battlefield, or to have escaped in order to return one day to regain his throne. She claimed instead that he was executed in Sanlúcar by the 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia, under orders from the King of Spain.
The Spanish Armada never intended to conquer England
In 1588 a Spanish fleet led by the 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia sailed for England with the aim of overthrowing Elizabeth I and putting an end to the constant attacks by English privateers (authorised pirates such as Francis Drake) on Spanish merchant ships in the Atlantic and Pacific. The fleet's mission was to transport an army, led by the Duke of Parma, across the Channel from Flanders into South East England. The Armada was spotted off the coast of Cornwall, but the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth harbour by the incoming tide; instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to disable the English ships, Medina-Sidonia sailed east, claiming that any such attack had been expressly forbidden by King Felipe. As the tide turned, the English took advantage of the wind and the superior mobility of their ships to bombard the Armada with cannon fire.
Instead of taking shelter in the Solent and regrouping, Medina-Sidonia took his fleet into open sea and on to Calais to await Parma's army there. The English attacked by sending in eight fireships, scattering the Spanish fleet. They attacked again along the coast at Gravelines, and five Spanish ships were lost; the rest fled north, pursued by the English who by then had run out of gunpowder. The Spanish sailors were suffering from thirst and exhaustion, and the only option left to Medina-Sidonia was to lead them back to Spain via the northern route, round the coast of Scotland and Ireland. Severe storms took their toll in the Atlantic and more than twenty ships were wrecked off the Irish coast. Many more men died of hunger, thirst and disease, and only 10,000 out of the original 30,000 made it back to Spain. Although the King didn't lay the blame at the Duke's feet for the failure of the expedition, he lost credibility and was made the object of derision at home and abroad.
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