Now compare the previous plate with the sad reality, on the following page.
Devastating. Incongruous. Dislocated jaws, a heap of shapeless lumps. Or, as Vauban would have defined it technically, more circumspectly, a “composite fortress”; that is, an ancient site that has been patched up to meet the demands of modern warfare.
The old city walls had been supplemented with a few pentagonal bastions. There was no small number of them, and each had its own name, its own story; in themselves, they were real characters who were dear to the Barcelonans. But all those bastions had been built in different periods, with no overall plan and as though merely patched up. A few stretches of the wall were so long that the gunfire from one bastion could not serve as backup for the next, being too far apart. As for the dry moat that had to stretch around the outside of the fortifications, the less said about that, the better. It was so full of waste and debris, and so shallow, that you could see the ears of the pigs that grazed in it. A bankrupt government would find it hard to allow for whole squads of cleaners. The sieges at the end and beginning of the century had damned whole stretches of the perimeter. Amazing as it may sound, nobody had bothered to repair the holes. That is the position we found ourselves in. And now we had the barbarians ad portas. A devastating military machine, ignited by a hatred toward the “rebels” and trained through their experience in a long decade of campaigns. In under two weeks, they would be pitching camp outside Barcelona.
One might want to formulate this entirely legitimate question: If war came to the peninsula in 1705, and between that date and 1713 there were eight long years to fortify the city, how was it possible that the Catalans, who had their own government, never took care of the defenses of their city? This is one of my private torments, an argument that fills my nightmares and the distress of my wakeful hours. What could have happened? You should never have recourse to an “if. . ”; that “what if. .?” can kill. Because the answer, curiously, is neither political nor military. It doesn’t even have anything to do with matters of engineering.
Vauban was indeed the greatest military engineer of all time. But he was also French. In his study, using only ink and paper, he could create fascinating systems of defense, optimal and perfect, overwhelming in their geometric beauty. There was one problem with Vauban’s system of fortification and one only: It cost a lot of money.
Human imagination can develop at no cost, right up until the point at which it comes into contact with contractors. Tons of material, thousands of stonecutters, carpenters, and laborers, dozens of local specialists — or, more frequently, foreign ones, charging astronomical fees. Suppliers cheat, swindle, and defraud the government’s finances. The work drags on, the budget increases by a factor of three or four. And once the work has begun, how can it be suspended? A site that has been half-fortified is more useless than a half-built cathedral. You can praise God in a potato patch, but you cannot defend the city until the very last échauguette has been erected, humbly proud, on the point of the bastions. Even the most slow-witted of vegetable sellers understands that a wall needs to be closed up. Progress on a wall is in plain view of everybody, which puts considerable pressure on those in charge. They resign themselves to corruption. Opportunist agents in league with the technicians, the former supplying inadequate shipments and the latter signing for the receipt in exchange for an illegal “commission.” Money, always money. Themistocles was already saying as much: War is not a matter of weaponry but of money — whoever is the last person holding a coin. (All right, maybe it wasn’t Themistocles, it might have been Pericles, I don’t remember, but really, what difference does it make? Put any name you like to that quote. Anyone but Voltaire!)
There was another significant reason for this utter defenselessness. In 1705 there was every indication that the war would be over in a matter of months. After their troops had landed at Barcelona, the Allies would advance on Madrid, they’d depose Little Philip, and Charles would become the king of all Spain. Castile would learn, at last, that it was not the cock of the walk, and the Catalans would make Spain a confederate kingdom, modern and prosperous, with an English parliament, a Dutch fleet, and a bourgeoisie competent to hold the reins of the finances. But it didn’t happen like that. The war dragged on. Charles, from his base in Barcelona, asked for more and more loans from the Catalan authorities to defray the costs of his multinational army. Wars are won in attack, not in defense, and the government gave in. The ultimate result of this was the drama of 1713 and 1714.
I did my calculations that very night. An unusual calm reigned at home. Nan and Anfán were playing together, strangely pacific, next to the fireplace, in which we were roasting peppers and green tomatoes. Next to them, in a rocking chair, Peret was reading by the light of the fire. He had never learned to read in his head, and he was muttering aloud like a monk. They were lines of verse by Romaguera, and they were shockingly bad, and they seemed worse given our situation. Perhaps that is why I remember them.
She envies you, the butterfly,
For being happy so,
For her love’s destined soon to die
While yours can live and grow. .
Amelis was more affectionate than usual. She wanted to set aside the calculation tables, the paper and inkwell, and take me to bed. I brushed her away with a burning feeling under my skin. They hadn’t realized what was awaiting us; they didn’t want to, as though ignoring the future might make it disappear.
According to my most optimistic calculations, the city would be able to resist exactly eight days of actual siege conditions. Not a day longer. And after that, blackness.
12
The weeks immediately preceding the arrival of the Bourbon army were very useful ones. The Coronela companies paraded up and down the Ramblas — more than anything, to raise the people’s morale — and did shooting practice. The conscripts took it all as a terrifically fun exercise, revelry that was hardly military at all. They got hold of two large dolls of semi-human shape, filled with straw, behind which they erected a three-meter-high wooden barricade. They called one of them Lluís and the other Filipet, Bourbon scum. Every day a hundred rifles would shoot at them ten times. Without that much success, if I’m honest. To the question of how accurate they were, all I need to tell you is that the surrounding windows were boarded up.
It is impossible in such a short space of time to transform companies of tinsmiths and tanners into professional units. That was not the aim. The bonds that hold men together are much more important than the quality of their marksmanship. And that camaraderie, in turn, has to be knitted together with confidence in the officers. In this regard, Don Antonio was unique. Nowadays an insurgent France is scattering an endless supply of revolutionary generals right across the world; from one day to the next, they have gone from wearing a tavern apron to a marshal’s sash. But in my day, the senior officers were quite different. In my ninety-eight years, I have encountered dozens of colonels and generals who knew nothing of their regiments but the color of their coats.
Don Antonio was a real soldier, a man of battle and trench. His love for the army came from his family. In fact, Don Antonio having been born in Barcelona was an accident, as I’ve told you, since around that time, his father was posted in the city. I’m telling you: a man with a destiny. Because to the Red Pelts, he never stopped being Castilian and, as such, an intruder, while the Bourbons did not even recognize his status as Catalan. Years later, Jimmy showed me a copy of the list of the main players to be arrested once the city had fallen. (He did it to persuade me that he’d had nothing to do with the repression, as they had been detained after he left Barcelona. He was lying. If he didn’t give the order, neither did he prevent it, well aware of what would happen.) By Don Antonio’s name, they had not written “Castilian” but, very significantly, “not Catalan.”