Franco and Angel Guerra on Calle de la Selera in Toledo

The narrative is entirely immersed in turn-of-the-century Toledo, a setting which the novelist dissects with such meticulous realism that it turns out to be… The most accurate picture of our city in those yearsrequires a protagonist who is on his life’s journey, an existential back and forth, intimately connected to the city itself.

It could not have been anyone else, in contrast to a society like that of Toledo at that time, in which the main actor was someone. The personal biography fits quite precisely into the prototype of the revolutionary that has emerged since “La Gloriosa” of 1868was leading the numerous political upheavals that since that historical date sought to bring about a radical change in national history.

This was the angel Guerra whom I accompanied on those Toledo adventures. This was one of the scenarios that led us down that bustling street on a particular day to Toledo’s Calle de la Celeria. Deep down he stirred up his human feelings, his political extremism already in decline, and the memory of his love from another time in a state of oblivion due to sheer extinction.

And I, for my part, with a history of obituaries for someone who served as head of state for a long time, also wanted to revive a humble role – anonymous, shared, and not just personal – A very special memory of that momentFrom that place, from that street in downtown Toledo.

Just to emphasize that Even the most sublime historical episodesthose who alone seem to deserve the lavishness of great celebrations and capital letters for their narrators during the service, They also have a small epicits own language, is perhaps more eloquent in its modesty than those supposedly true to the great changes of history, written with unfortunate repetition by narrators with a fidelity to the truth always available.

As a local example, it was just enough for me Some paragraphs of this text have been saved strictly literally From my adventures with the hero Galdosian.

“Now that each of us had to rely on our memories, I didn’t want to stop telling Angel about one of my friends in the same place. It was the San Antonio Cafeteria on La Selleria Street, probably because I…The most devoted people in Zocodover’s “El Español” have already sensed its coming closure -Close to a certain point, because it is full of Toledo experiments, it continued without giving up until 1982-, an almost obligatory meeting point for the very heterogeneous morning clientele.

In San Antonio…we met every day during the official half hour of the morning break Which many are accustomed to starting at nine o’clock and ending at twelve o’clock, of course to order coffee with churro or carajillo with “sun and shade” for the most experienced people. …But things that morning, for the first time in many years in Spain, were completely different.

The usual clamor, sometimes verging on Spanish shouting, was replaced in an instant by an almost sacred silence. All eyes turned to the television that was placed on one of the shelves in the room. Overwhelmed with emotion and full of tearful pathos, appeared on the screen the image of the head of government, Mr. Arias Navarro, who informed the nation of the first official and solemn news of the death of Francisco Franco.

That image will never be erased from me In fact, even more so than in the picture, was the sudden transition into an ambiguous silence of what, until then almost—though the transcendent truth had already been known since the early hours of the morning—had been the lively chatter of some and others at the morning meeting in San Antonio.

This is what I said to Gerra when he interrupted me for the purpose of finding out the cause of my uneasy anxiety in the face of this strange silence. “Were you afraid of some revolutionary riot, He asked me: Is there any new statement like yesterday’s statements? I could have told you from my own experience that if you are afraid of the clanking of swords, you can be calm. He told me as if he was speaking with knowledge of the facts: “The military uprising will either be victorious in half an hour and seize the centers of power, or in half an hour it will disintegrate.”

I replied that it wasn’t exactly that. He was still “severely bound and bound.”. And beyond the shocking nature of the news, even behind Arias Navarro’s implied cry, even behind the accumulation of doubts that can hide in every soul, each with its own reasons, I seemed to see in that dramatic silence of the crowd in San Antonio the most eloquent testimony, again, until when!, of the eternal division between the two – or twenty, or two hundred, or two thousand, who knows how many! – Spain.

Why is this silent? Out of fear? What is the reason for that man’s silence? The joy that I still can’t express? What paralyzed the tongue of the other? What is true grief at the death of a figure with whose life and work for forty years he and all his people felt so completely identified? What a loud silence – to me forever unforgettable – that November morning in “San Antonio” on La Selleria Street!

I don’t know why, but I had the incurable impression that at that moment they should have started writing again – always starting over – Strange stories of renewed revengelegends of hatred that are already dead, plans to tear down tombstones, and passages of alleged verse judged by a murderer to be not beautiful, such as the one in this Freedom without anger.

Until now, some paragraphs of that text have been restored, and the discussion has continued A unique fellow from Toledo Adventures.

From “San Antonio” that morning, which was already a “new” setting for Ángel Guerra’s abandoned but very relevant love story, There was nothing recognizable. It was a new seat in the inn where the Babel tribe, the decadent and eccentric Dulce family, the novel’s great losers, had stayed, and which carried on its back a devastating ode, caused by the repentant revolutionary.

So, the famous cafeteria of “San Antonio”, like the inner landscape of Toledo which still has many other landscapes – the coffee and ice cream of the Court of La Switzerland, the arcades of Zocodover, the shops of Calle Ancha, the lights and shadows of Los Copertizos, The Taj River still has clear, unpolluted waterOn Tuesday, he is still in El Casco – another one of those who still make our city recognizable.

There, the calendar of unpredictable historical dates, wanted a small number of Toledo’s inhabitants – perhaps a fairly representative sample of what might be called the city’s “middle class” – more than the small space of crowded buildings – to receive the impressive official news, including Arias Navarro’s trembling voice, of the end of a life, In fact, we all knew it was the end of an era.

These days I was wandering down La Sillería Street again.. Without haste, with that slowness that thinks about time more than place, oblivious to the hustle and bustle of invasive tourism, while focusing memory on those past histories.

As if this particular pocket of the city had some kind of hospitality profession that doesn’t change over time, fifty years later – nearly a century and a half if Angel Guerra’s novel is the reference -, Today the San Antonio Cafeteria has had some suggestive successors. Hence, they now share a large part of their old location with an Asian restaurant – a big house, to be precise (!) – and with a formidable hospitality establishment that, with a wonderful respect for history – especially the literary history of the place – has not hesitated to call it, respectfully, “Hotel Posada de la Celeria”.

In this quiet pastime of mine, they came alive again in my memory, and now came out to meet the memory of the obituary of the event that I remembered on these dates, those unanswered questions that I had asked myself before. A loud and strange collective silence Of all those present at “San Antonio” on La Selera Street.

Since the time of the dilapidated fundocha that Ángel Guerra never wanted to reach, there have not been many changes to this day on this sidewalk on this inner city street.. In particular, as if there was a mysterious fate, the frequent hospitality use of that place in the center of Toledo had not changed. Thus, from that dingy inn to our then beloved “San Antonio,” and from that “modern” cafeteria to the present “Posada de La Sillería,” the differences do not seem to have been excessive.

At least that’s what I saw these days when I “resumed” my wanderings with Ángel Guerra at some point. Your questions without my answers, and my questions without your answers. The truth is that in the end it seemed to me that nothing had changed.

Above all, my indisputable realization, my sad impression, is that many of the bad feelings I felt were hidden beneath the soil of that noisy collective silence, which almost coincided with the television broadcast of “The Spaniards: Franco is dead.” They live among us todayas invulnerable to change as that interior scene of Toledo Street in La Selera itself.

Again without any company, –Only with the knocks of my conscience and in my mind those unanswered questions, hardly answered with gloomy and discouraging warnings.– I continued walking down La Sillería Street. Behind him he left the Casón de Los López, on the corner of the street, Christ crucified and carved in stone, and almost immediately, the entrance to the hidden and blocked-off Plaza de Montalbanes.

The itinerary is short. The street goes no further. Although my somewhat tired step is still enough to confirm this with inevitable sadness Many of these questions have undesirable answers today. And that almost all the doubts that morning in San Antonio at La Selleria became a certainty that we never wanted to have.

At the end of my journey, the back door of the house immediately opened for me. Church of Saint Nicholas. I entered it at that hour when the bells of its tower were ringing, calling for noon mass in its penultimate call.

In the empty temple, with all its deserted and desolate seats, I was surrounded by that solid silence, so similar to the silence of that morning that still lingers in my memory. Too far. Just similar. It was another silence. Not everyone is the same. This has now freed me from loneliness. So much so that I was quite sure that I was not alone, that someone was listening to some words which, just from feeling, barely uttered, left my lips. Peace, reconciliation and brotherly embrace. I don’t know why, as there is another record of my thoughts, also in Spain, and also in Toledo.

I have the impression of that It was the closest thing to prayer.