A Barcelona Heiress (8 page)

The jury retired to deliberate and, upon its return, issued its decision, responding to five questions from the court regarding the content of the process, finding Joaquín Caballé guilty and Rosa Mestres innocent. A short while later the sentence for my client was read before a crowded courtroom: fourteen years, eight months, and one day of incarceration—three years less than the prosecution had asked for, which reflected the mitigating circumstance I had petitioned of his being a minor. The two defendants cried, though for different reasons. El Chimo’s aunt, who had entrusted me with the boy’s defense, began to shout that she would not accept the sentence. The wife of one of those wounded by the bomb, who had attended the trial, fainted and had to be taken to a nearby pharmacy.

After the trial a large crowd lingered in the Salón de San Juan, animatedly discussing the sentence handed down. Although the trial had been followed closely, it had been far from illuminating. I never believed that my client, El Chimo, was guilty and, even if he were, all the testimonies indicated that all he had done was transport the device. He did not make it nor, of course, was he the person who decided to use it. Then who was behind the incident? The sentence included nothing about this. The only result of all the months of investigations and a trial that had the whole city talking was that a kid was going to go to jail for an attack he clearly had not orchestrated. How could a jury issue this verdict and a judge sanction this sentence, just like that, only compounding the confusion surrounding the event with even more confusion regarding those behind it?

Apparently I was not the only person harboring such thoughts, for as I stood conversing with one of the clusters of people outside the courts, I felt someone slip something into my jacket pocket. I spun around, but, amid all the commotion, it was impossible to tell who it had been. I took out the paper and read, in large, poorly scrawled letters:

“D
o you really think justice has been done?
”

How odd, I thought.

At two in the afternoon Joaquín “El Chimo” Caballé and Rosa Mestres were once again transported to the prison, the latter being released soon after.

* * *

I spent a good part of my youth in Barcelona’s Plaza de Medinaceli, which was at that time a Versailles-like corner of the city complete with a garden, an iron gate surrounding a pool graced by swans and in the center of which stood a monument to Admiral Marquet, romantic benches under idyllic palm trees, and, rounding out the unforgettable setting, opposite the sea.

When my parents died, just weeks apart in the deadly flu epidemic of 1917, I decided to keep the spacious apartment they had rented in this square. I refurbished half of it to use for my law practice and the other half for my residence. Basilio, a trustworthy clerk just slightly younger than myself, assisted me in my practice. In my home I retained the services of my mother’s maid, Señora Lucinda, a reserved and energetic Galician who had watched me grow up and would have laid down her life for me. She would hurry about the house dressed in a black satin maid’s dress, which my mother had ordered for her, complete with a high collar and golden filigree buttons, cooking and overseeing the daily cleaning with an iron fist. She had a young assistant who she treated in a motherly way. Señora Lucinda slept on the far side of the apartment, which had its own entrance from the stairs so that I did not bother her when I returned late, whether from burning the midnight oil at the office or the occasional party.

After the trial against El Chimo, I met Basilio at a modest restaurant near the courthouse. We ate together and, after taking my leave of him, I made my way down on foot (for I most enjoy walking) to those quarters which I sometimes call my offices and sometimes my home. I did not go directly, but rather seized the opportunity to take a stroll, descending from the Salón de San Juan, leaving behind the monument to Mayor Rius y Taulet and the Palace of Fine Arts, with its garden and fountain dedicated to Hercules. I entered the extensive Ciudadela, the city’s ample park, and continued walking toward its southern end, where a large terrace offers views of the sea. For a good while I watched the waves break as I savored a Cuban cigar and meditated contentedly on the human and divine. It took me a while to shake off my drowsiness, recover my energy, and set off again, down Paseo de Isabel II toward home, passing by the coffee roastery filling the Plaza de Medinaceli with its unmistakable aroma unknown to those today who believe that a little dark powder mixed with water is anything close to real coffee.

When I entered the office, a visibly shaken Basilio was waiting for me.

“Here, read this. They just brought it,” he said, reaching out to hand me a note.

It was from Rosa Mestres’s attorney, my colleague Mariano Sorogoyen.

“Dear Pablo,” read the note. “My client was killed on her way home. Alongside the body was a note taking responsibility for the crime, which was signed ‘Danton.’ I need to see you at once.”

The unrest plaguing Barcelona made it necessary for the authorities to resort to calling up the military over and over, led by men such as the captain general of Catalonia, Joaquín Milans del Bosch, and the region’s military governor, who wielded considerable power. This duo had been joined by a third general, Don Eugenio López Ballesteros, at the helm of the Civil Government. As for the security force that was attached to this institution, all the heads and officers had to proceed from either the Army reserves, or from the Guardia Civil, as was the case of Miguel Beastegui, the police chief, who took direct orders from Don Eugenio. What a paradox it was to have such a number of generals in charge of civilian affairs. It was fortunate that at least the city’s mayor had no military affiliation, though during that time when the exceptions were becoming the rules, anything at all could happen.

Following the infantes’ appearance at The Ritz, General López Ballesteros summoned me to his office in the austere, square building constructed under Carlos IV to serve as the Barcelona Customs House, which was later converted into fine lodgings for illustrious visitors and, finally, the Civil Government headquarters.

There I stood before that imposing and sturdy man, with his jug ears and cleft chin, and the vigor characteristic of many of his profession, in part due to his innate physical constitution
and in part because he had spent half his life outside and exercising. López Ballesteros emanated a profound sense of self-confidence and a remarkable energy.

Hailing from Galicia and trained at the Academia de Infantería de Toledo, he had swiftly risen through the ranks to captain, at which point he volunteered to fight in the Philippines. His performance in a series of particularly brutal assaults earned him a promotion and multiple decorations. As a lieutenant colonel he served in the war in Morocco, where he fought in the Battle of Hidum Hills, the occupation of Nador, and the conflict at the Zoco del Jermís de Beni-bu-Ifrur, scoring a series of victories, always heading up Catalonia’s Rifle Batallion. He returned a full colonel, and so much was made of his feats that the king of Spain named him his assistant. In this capacity he was notable for not mincing any words and letting the monarch know just what he thought, which perhaps contributed to the abbreviated duration of his service in the position. He was later the director of the Academia de la Infantería, and soon rose to brigade general until His Majesty’s government named him Civil Governor of Barcelona, endowing him with what were, rumor had it, broad and sweeping powers.

On his desk lay a huge stack of papers, telegrams, books, phone messages, dismantled bombs, and pencils in a range of colors that must have included the red, censor’s pencil, which at that time was wielded liberally against the city’s newspapers, whose columns were often gutted by the authorities’ interference.

“You asked for me, General.”

“Look, Vilar, we’re going to make some history here. In 1917 the General Union was established, comprising all the disaffected classes of workers, and ever since then the incidents in Barcelona have only multiplied. First it was strikebreakers being pelted with stones, and then personal assaults. The General Union, in addition, targets for violent attacks those workers not
belonging to the organization and refusing to support its efforts. They are blacklisted from ever getting work and condemned to going hungry. You will recall how in 1917 and 1919 the city and all of Catalonia suffered general strikes, which made daily life insufferable and could have had the most catastrophic consequences. The General Union even issued a call to its members, encouraging them to create a red army and organize for an uprising.

“I remember that story. They sought to create a kind of Catalonian soviet. And they may still be at it.”

“If I have taken over the Civil Government and assumed authorities which I normally would not possess, it is because Barcelona’s employers and its respectable classes, not to mention its ordinary citizens, had repeatedly pressured the captain general, the government ministry, and even the president of the Council of Ministers on multiple occasions, complaining that the situation had grown unbearable. If I accepted this responsibility at the president’s behest, and even that of the monarch himself, even though I am versed in neither civil affairs nor politics, it is because Barcelona’s business community contended that terror and crime reigned in the city, and that the authorities sat idly by, contemplating the situation with an inconceivable indifference.”

“And so it proved. We have been through terrible times. Even the most upright and decent had to carry guns on the street. And it is not at all clear that this is over.”

“Indeed. Therefore, upon taking over the reins of the Civil Government, what could I do, declare martial law? I could not, for Barcelona had endured that for several months, and it constitutes an emergency situation which complicates things and entrusts the army with a series of responsibilities that normally fall outside its purview. As a lawyer I suppose that you yourself had to participate in numerous trials held under the military authority in power at that time. Not
only do we not have enough people, but neither is it our responsibility to assume those functions. But the alternative is not good either: the courts ceded to pressure, and juries dared not issue guilty verdicts for fear of retribution by union gunmen. Often out of intimidation, and other times out of sympathy, they released people whose guilt had been clearly established. And that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.”

“Excuse me, but how do you plan to prevent it? The judicial system cannot be modified without a sweeping process affecting all of Spain and undertaken by the appropriate authorities.”

“I’ll tell you what I am doing: first, strengthening civil bodies. For years Catalonia has had the benefit of a kind of civil army, its somatenes, made up of, as you know, law-abiding defenders of order who take it upon themselves to conduct patrols and prevent delinquency, men who have done much to keep order in the most remote towns and villages. I have spoken with the leaders of the somatenes and have been successful in persuading the government to furnish them with more resources, weapons, and training.”

I was very familiar with the institution of the somatén, a long-standing tradition in the Catalonian countryside in which towns lying far from the authorities and Guardia Civil headquarters organized citizen militias in order to provide for local security, and especially to combat banditry. In all of these places it was local leaders and the upper class (the mayor, the main landowners, and merchants) who headed them up. The members of each somatén took turns conducting night watches, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolling the outskirts of each city as well as particularly troublesome areas. Fruit of the historically egregious impotence exhibited by the State and its provincial representatives to guarantee the populace’s safety, since the early twentieth century the institution had evolved into a bulwark against union-based violence in the cities too. By 1920 Catalonia boasted more than forty thousand somatenes.

López Ballesteros cleared his throat and continued. “But I have also met with representatives of the General Union’s rival organization, the Free Union. Are you aware that, upon taking charge of this city’s governance I received more than seven thousand letters from workers denouncing the persecutions to which they were subjected and demanding justice? Well then, while the Free Union is certainly every bit the workers’ organization, with its own list of insistent demands, due to the social roots and the Carlist and traditional convictions of many of its members, it possesses a much more constructive spirit than the General Union and its revolutionaries. I have already given the men at the Free Union a very simple bit of advice: defend yourselves. Meet violence with violence. Fair defense and fair retaliation.”

I was appalled.

“But General, you are a representative of the law and, as I understand it, a Catholic. And the principle you are proposing is neither legal nor Christian! Rather, it is ‘an eye for an eye’ at its purest.”

He rested his hand upon my shoulder.

“Is what happened in Russia legal? Was it legal how the soviets put the imperial family to death? What about the slaughters which followed the Revolution in October 1917? Are the anarchists’ endless demands, day after day, for the abolition of all law; the expulsion or extermination of all religious communities; the dissolution of the Judiciary, the Army, and the Navy; the commandeering of the railways; the expropriation of the credit banks; and the arrest of all the men, both civil and military, who have ever governed in Spain, and their immediate incarceration until they are exonerated or executed … is any of this legal or Christian? No, I believe that they represent a series of schemes carefully calculated to lay waste to Spain.

“Make no mistake about it, my friend: we are engaged in a full-blown war, not the class war which Marx prophesied, but a cultural one—that of chaos versus order, anarchy versus work, nihilism versus faith, the disintegration of customs versus our civilizing principles, the tyranny and despotism of union councils versus the freedom of a constitutional monarchy’s citizens. It is a war, and if we do not fight it tooth and nail, street by street, man by man, negotiation by negotiation, all we have known and held dear, the entire world in which we were born and reared will disappear and be mercilessly wiped from the face of the earth, as occurred in Russia. Is this what we want for Spain? Because you can be sure of one thing: if Barcelona falls, the Spanish monarchy will follow. Thus, we have to win this struggle in which we are engaged here, respecting the law insofar as is possible, but without being shackled by the fine print. And then we must initiate social efforts to shore up our work.”