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00:05In 1543, a father wrote a secret letter of wise advice for his teenage son.
00:13Always follow God's will, he wrote.
00:16Don't take decisions in anger.
00:19And don't have too much sex.
00:22It can damage your health.
00:24But this was no ordinary father and son.
00:26The father was Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.
00:32And the son, Philip II, would be the champion of Catholicism,
00:38the ruler of a world empire and King of Spain
00:42at the very apogee of its golden age.
00:48Philip saw himself as more than just a ruler.
00:52There was no limit to his ambitions for Catholicism and Spain.
00:57He built this forbidding palace as the projection of his sacred mission.
01:03San Lorenzo dell'Escorial.
01:05The headquarters of a king who married one English queen
01:09and sent an armada against another.
01:12Whose enduring legacy to Spain is its capital, Madrid.
01:16And on whose global empire the sun never set.
01:20For seven centuries Spain was a Roman province.
01:25For another seven centuries it was Muslim.
01:29Its reconquest in the name of Christendom lasted 300 bloody years.
01:36In this final episode, I'll take you from Spain's magnificent pinnacle under Philip II,
01:44through its decline, to its conquest by Napoleon,
01:48its vicious civil war fought over by Hitler and Stalin,
01:51right up to General Franco's dictatorship and today's democracy.
01:59God, gold and glory, beauty and death.
02:03This is the story of how Spain was made.
02:18Philip II was born in 1527 in the city of Valladolid, northern Spain.
02:25His parents were Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal.
02:30Though their empire stretched across Europe and America,
02:34they ruled on the move, with no permanent capital.
02:38But they often stayed in Valladolid,
02:40in this small palace belonging to the Pimentel family.
02:46In 1527, in a small room upstairs,
02:50Empress Isabella endured 13 hours of labour.
02:54When a kindly lady-in-waiting suggested that she scream
02:58to relieve the pain, she replied regally,
03:02I shall not scream.
03:03I would rather die than make any noise.
03:08His mother died when he was 12.
03:10His father was always away fighting.
03:14He loved dancing, painting.
03:16He loved flirting.
03:18Yet Philip's vision was clear.
03:19He was God's vice-regent on earth,
03:22in the service of the monarchy and Catholicism.
03:25In 1554, his father, the Emperor,
03:28asked him to make a dutiful marriage
03:30to gain yet another kingdom for God and the Habsburgs.
03:34It was England.
03:39Philip's English bride was Queen Mary,
03:42the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
03:45She was nicknamed Bloody Mary
03:47because of her fervent execution of Protestant heretics.
03:51For Spain and Catholicism, it was a favourable match.
03:56The contract was negotiated before the couple met
04:00and Philip was disappointed when they did.
04:02She was squinty, pale, paunchy and plain,
04:07and missing a few teeth.
04:09But she was thrilled with her gold-bearded young husband, King.
04:14Their wedding night was so energetic
04:16that she spent four days afterwards resting in bed.
04:22She wept when Philip finally left England for the continent.
04:28Philip, now King of England, spent months there,
04:32encouraging Mary's restoration of Catholicism,
04:35her persecution of the Protestants
04:36and trying to father a Catholic heir.
04:39They both knew that they needed a child of this marriage
04:43who would then inherit England.
04:46Finally, she believed that she was pregnant,
04:49her belly swelled,
04:51but tragically it was a false pregnancy
04:53and probably the beginning of the cancer of the stomach
04:57that later killed her.
05:01Mary died in 1558.
05:04According to their marriage contract,
05:06Philip ceased to be King of England
05:08and the throne passed to Mary's half-sister,
05:11the Protestant Elizabeth.
05:14For Philip, England was unfinished business.
05:20Yet his focus was already global.
05:23He ruled Spain as regent,
05:25until in 1556 his father, Charles V,
05:29gout-ridden and weary, abdicated.
05:32At 29, Philip became Philip II of Spain,
05:36the Netherlands, Milan, Sicily, Naples and the New World.
05:42It was the greatest empire on earth.
05:46This burden lay heavy on Philip's shoulders,
05:50yet his ambitions were limitless.
05:52He called himself the prudent king
05:55and was determined to rule in his own way.
06:01I'm travelling a few miles from Philip's birthplace
06:04to the castle of Simancas.
06:11Behind its ancient stone walls,
06:13Philip preserved the means by which a prudent king
06:17should rule a great empire...
06:19..with paper.
06:23Philip ruled from his desk.
06:26As one chronicler wrote,
06:29he could make the world spin from his seat.
06:34Today, Simancas houses 14 miles of royal documents.
06:41The archive director, Julio Rodriguez de Diego,
06:45has pulled out some of Philip's personal papers.
06:48They reveal his driving obsession
06:51to control an empire so vast
06:53that it might spin out of control at any time.
06:57It's truly awesome to be here
06:58in the presence of some actual letters of Philip II.
07:02So, you know, you know him so well.
07:05What sort of man was he?
07:07Nothing is wrong with him.
07:09All his students speak
07:11that his table is full of papers,
07:12that he works day and night.
07:15And this document is precisely
07:17accredited.
07:19At the end, he says,
07:20If I don't make a mistake,
07:23make a mistake,
07:25make a mistake,
07:25that it's the one
07:26and I'm sleeping with everything.
07:28Philip also crossed things out in these letters,
07:31corrected spelling mistakes.
07:33And in this case here,
07:35he's actually cut out a section.
07:37What's going on in this letter?
07:52So what do you think this naughty young priest had done?
07:59Well,
08:00Well,
08:00you can suspect that
08:02probably his sexual orientation
08:04was not the most orthodox.
08:06What's that?
08:07That's a doubt.
08:08You don't know.
08:09Philip II took it with him.
08:11The doubt.
08:14Micromanagement was one way
08:16that Philip kept a tight control
08:18on the sinews of so many kingdoms.
08:21In 1561,
08:23this sensible manager saw that his government needed a centre,
08:26just like other monarchs in Europe.
08:32Madrid.
08:36Now a grand European city
08:38and Spain's capital.
08:43It's Philip's most enduring legacy
08:46and, for him,
08:47a permanent seat of government.
08:52Until Philip,
08:53the capital of Spain had really been where the king was.
08:56But now he decided Madrid should be the capital,
08:59a formal capital,
09:01in the middle of the country,
09:03just as a heart is located in the middle of the body.
09:08At the time,
09:09Madrid was a provincial backwater of narrow and squalid lanes.
09:15Yet for Philip,
09:16its very insignificance was its strength.
09:19Away from the vested interests of conspiring grandees,
09:22he would rule through his own ministers.
09:25This map is the first map ever made of Madrid,
09:28from 1656, almost a century later.
09:31I'm here in the Plaza Mayor,
09:34planned by Philip and built by his son.
09:37It's still right at the heart of the Spanish capital.
09:43Less than a century after the last of the Islamic rulers
09:47were driven out of Spain,
09:49Philip possessed the political acumen fit for the king of a golden age.
09:54And now he wished to create a palace that radiated his faith and power.
10:01He chose a site at the foot of the Guadarrama Mountains,
10:06north-west of Madrid.
10:11And this is it.
10:14San Lorenzo dell'Escorial.
10:19This place is called Philip's Seat,
10:21and the king actually used to come up here
10:24and oversee the construction of his beloved Escorial.
10:28He wanted it to be the eighth wonder of the world,
10:31and being Philip,
10:32he micromanaged every detail,
10:35writing hundreds of memos to his poor architects.
10:39In one case,
10:40he started to worry about where the lavatories would be.
10:42I wonder if bad smells will emanate from these holes
10:45he wrote to the architect.
10:47Are they too close to the kitchens?
10:49Send me the plans again.
10:51For Philip, the devil was in the details.
10:54God, even more so.
11:00An Escorial was simultaneously political headquarters,
11:05dynastic mausoleum,
11:07personal library and cathedral monastery.
11:11Its design, a vast gridiron,
11:14to commemorate the one on which Philip's favourite saint,
11:17San Lorenzo, was martyred.
11:20Its splendour to emulate the Temple of Solomon.
11:26Its magnificence embodies Philip's role
11:29as champion of Catholicism on earth.
11:32God's work and mine, he said, are the same thing.
11:36If there's one building that came to symbolise
11:39the glory of imperial Spain,
11:41it's this one.
11:53Philip II's Hall of Battles really gives you an idea of his world view,
11:59his need for magnificence, his Catholic mission.
12:04Looking at this, you get a grasp of how Philip saw himself
12:09and how he saw the world.
12:12Although he only saw battle once,
12:14as a young prince, Philip was a supreme warlord
12:17commanding the best armies in Europe.
12:21In his 42-year reign, there was just six months of peace.
12:26Now the empire reached its greatest extent,
12:29including the Philippines, named after him.
12:32And through his mother, he added Portugal and its far-flung empire.
12:36And this painting here, in the Hall of Battle,
12:40shows his fleet taking the Portuguese Azores.
12:43He now had 50 million citizens under his control.
12:48Truly, one could say that non-sufficet orbis,
12:53his motto, a world is not enough.
13:01As his armies marched across the globe,
13:03he committed himself to war on several fronts.
13:07His first duty was to fight the infidel.
13:10In 1571, Philip put together a holy alliance,
13:14which annihilated the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto.
13:19Yet the biggest threat didn't come from Islam.
13:21It came from within Christendom itself.
13:26The tide of Protestantism sweeping Europe.
13:29The greatest crisis, the weeping sore of his entire reign,
13:34was the revolt of the Protestant Dutch.
13:37He tried to crush them, but everything failed,
13:40and the revolt went on.
13:42Ultimately, the war against the Dutch Protestants
13:46would lead to a greater war against England.
13:51In the island kingdom where he'd once been king,
13:55Queen Elizabeth defiantly undid all Mary's work.
13:59She promoted Protestantism in growing opposition to Philip.
14:03She funded his rebellious Protestant subjects in the Low Countries.
14:08Her ships plundered Spanish colonies and fleets.
14:11Philip had suggested marrying Elizabeth of England,
14:15but now he decided to kill her.
14:19He declared her a tyrant and ordered her assassination or capture,
14:23and her replacement by her Catholic cousin,
14:26Mary Queen of Scots.
14:27For almost 20 years, he planned to send an armada, a fleet,
14:32to conquer England.
14:34And then, in 1587, his mind was made up.
14:38Elizabeth executed Mary.
14:40That was the last straw.
14:46Now Philip excitedly ordered the building and provisioning
14:50of the greatest fleet in history.
14:53His secretary noted,
14:55I've never seen the king so animated
14:57by any other piece of business.
15:02And this is the desk where the prudent king
15:06came up with his reckless master plan
15:09to conquer Protestant England.
15:11He ordered that the Duke of Medina Sedona would sail from Spain
15:16with 130 ships,
15:1820,000 men along the English Channel
15:20and join up with the 30,000 men of the Duke of Parma
15:26waiting at Dunkirk in the Low Countries.
15:28Both commanders hated this plan.
15:32How on earth would you coordinate the two forces joining hands
15:36at the mercy of the hostile English navy?
15:39But Philip swept aside all objections.
15:44Human prudence may suggest uncertainties, he said,
15:47but God will remove them.
15:49After all, he added, I do God's work.
15:54As Spain waited, the royal family knelt in prayer night and day.
16:03By the 6th of August, 1588,
16:06Medina Sedona and the Armada were moored off Calais.
16:10At the same time,
16:12the Duke of Parma and his men
16:14were embarked on ships at Dunkirk.
16:16But fatally and predictably,
16:19the message hadn't reached him in time.
16:21It was too late and the Armada were sitting ducks.
16:27Many of them were attacked by English ships.
16:33The storm scattered them.
16:35And some of them had to sail all the way around Scotland and Ireland
16:39to get back to Spain.
16:40It was disaster.
16:42A third of the ships never made it home.
16:4415,000 men died.
16:49God had not smiled on Philip's divine enterprise.
16:55After the failure of the Armada, Philip's health deteriorated.
16:59The man in black retreated to his rooms,
17:02exhausting himself on his paperwork while devoting himself to prayer.
17:07As he lay here, priests would bring in his beloved relics
17:11and lay them on his aching limbs and open sores.
17:16As he sunk into unconsciousness,
17:18the only way his daughter had to rouse him
17:21was to pretend that someone was near those relics
17:24and might touch them.
17:25Don't touch the relics, she'd say,
17:27and he'd suddenly wake up.
17:30But people in the kingdom started to say,
17:34if the king of Spain doesn't die soon, the kingdom will.
17:38And finally, on 13 September 1598, he did.
17:50As he took his final breath,
17:51the choristers were singing morning mass
17:53in the monumental basilica next to his bedroom.
18:00Philip II left the monarchy still at the zenith of its power,
18:05the achievement of a ruler of impressive diligence and acumen.
18:10There were failures, like the Armada.
18:14Yet after Philip, every Spanish ruler
18:16would try to emulate his greatness.
18:22The challenge now was for Philip's heirs
18:25to maintain the power of this expensive empire,
18:29an empire so vast,
18:31even the gold of the Americas couldn't cover it.
18:34It was constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
18:38And there was another problem.
18:40In 1621, Philip IV inherited the throne.
18:42He was 16, but he lacked the talent to rule on his own right.
18:46Instead, he needed to choose a trusted courtier to rule for him.
18:52These favourites were called the Validos.
18:55The Validos were hated for their power and corruption.
19:00They were compared to mushrooms that grew up suddenly overnight
19:04out of a bed of excrement.
19:06But the greatest of them all was Gaspar de Guzman,
19:10the Count of Olivares.
19:14Olivares knew that to rule Spain,
19:16he needed to rule Philip IV.
19:20I've come to the Prada Museum in Madrid
19:22to find out about Philip and his favourite
19:25through the work of the court painter of the day,
19:29Diego Velasquez.
19:31Here's Philip IV painted astride a rearing horse.
19:36More than anything, he wanted to be seen as a soldier king,
19:40though his real hobbies were hunting duck and chasing actresses.
19:46The Lafquiffe's assessment of the young Philip
19:49was that he mistrusts himself and defers to others too much.
19:56But when you look at his face in this portrait,
19:58there's something in the eye, something in the face,
20:01that shows how nervous he was.
20:05He wanted to be a great king, but he wasn't quite sure how.
20:13Right next to Velasquez is Philip IV,
20:15is his portrait of the Count Duke of Olivares.
20:19The compositions complement each other,
20:22yet here the eyes betray no hint of doubt.
20:25On Philip's accession to the throne,
20:27Olivares declared,
20:29now everything is mine.
20:32This is the man who taught Philip IV how to be a great king.
20:38He was larger than life, swaggering, flamboyant, neurotic,
20:44hypochondriacal, hysterical, explosive, but also brilliant.
20:49He was eccentric.
20:50He wandered the corridors of power late into the night with documents stuffed into his hat,
20:56his pockets, even his boots.
20:59But he was a supreme courtier too.
21:02Once, when a young Philip was annoyed with him and shouted that he was sick of him,
21:06Olivares simply kissed the brimming royal chamber pot and withdrew.
21:11He would take the young king on boisterous male escapades in the back streets of Madrid.
21:17But really, Olivares was all about business.
21:21This is how he saw himself,
21:23international strategist and supreme commander of the greatest power on earth.
21:33Olivares was in power for just two years before his statesmanship was dramatically tested by the arrival of visitors from
21:40London.
21:41It was the start of one of the strangest diplomatic crises in European history.
21:48On 17 March 1623, there was a knock at the door of the British ambassador's residence in Madrid.
21:56An Englishman, who gave his name as Mr Thomas Smith, insisted on speaking to the ambassador in person.
22:03On the other side of the street, another figure lurked in the shadows.
22:09When the ambassador came down, he was amazed to discover that Tom Smith was none other than the Marquis of
22:17America.
22:17King James I, minister and favourite.
22:21And John Smith, hiding across the road, was Charles, the Prince of Wales.
22:29Both were in full disguise and wearing false beards.
22:34This absurd, reckless escapade was the culmination of years of negotiations
22:39for Protestant Charles to marry the Catholic infanta, Mariana.
22:45Hugely complicated by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War between Europe's Catholics and Protestants.
22:52Charles and Buckingham were playing with fire.
22:55These vain popinjs on a romantic adventure had placed themselves in the power of the ruthless Count Olivares,
23:03who, like everyone else in Madrid, expected that Charles would never have travelled halfway across Europe
23:11if he was not willing to convert to Catholicism.
23:14These shenanigans would infuriate Olivares, bewilder Philip,
23:19and reduce Charles' father, James I, to senile weeping for his wee boys.
23:30Prince Charles regarded himself as a chevalier in pursuit of his passionate prey, the Infanta.
23:36Olivares finally allowed him to see her in a carriage,
23:40and there he thought her maidenly ardour was expressed in little blushes that he thought he saw on her face.
23:48In fact, the Infanta had no intention of marrying a heretic, a Protestant.
23:54Olivares appreciated these perilous complexities.
23:56Unless he could win the prize of a Catholic England, he was determined to derail the match.
24:03He now demanded that all Catholics in England be liberated, their rights restored,
24:09and this was much more than Buckingham and Charles could ever deliver.
24:15Soon, the negotiations became dangerously fraught.
24:18The two favourites, Buckingham and Olivares, hated each other, insulted each other,
24:23and soon they were at daggers drawn.
24:28Charles found himself a prisoner in Spain for over six months.
24:32He only got away by pretending to agree to Olivares' terms.
24:39Charles didn't get his bride.
24:41Olivares was now more trusted by Philip IV than ever.
24:48Olivares could now launch his master plan, which was, in his words,
24:52to resuscitate Your Majesty's monarchy.
24:54This popular Madrid park was the setting for a great pleasure palace built by Olivares.
25:03There are few vestiges of the colossal Buen Retiro Palace itself,
25:08but this was the spectacular expression of Olivares' dream of a resurgent Spain.
25:15I'm about to see its forgotten throne room.
25:18There are no tourists here.
25:20It's all that remains of Olivares' mission to glorify the monarchy and its young king.
25:34This is it, the Hall of Kingdoms, in all its faded grandeur.
25:40Here, on these walls, Olivares celebrated the far-flung territories of his king.
25:47Each name a story from the annals of Spanish history.
25:51There is Granada.
25:53There is Milan, for example, and Naples.
25:56There is Flanders, the Low Countries.
25:59There is Sicily, Peru, Mexico, Portugal.
26:04This was the Spanish Empire in its late, great phase.
26:10Olivares' ambition was to unite these kingdoms in a military union of arms
26:15to fund the empire and its wars.
26:18Yet his vision of Spanish greatness meant entering the devastating Thirty Years' War.
26:25As an overstretched monarchy began losing the war,
26:29Olivares' scheme didn't unite Spain.
26:31It brought it to the verge of destruction.
26:35The Portuguese rebelled, Catalonia rebelled.
26:39Olivares' dream, Olivares' gamble, had failed.
26:45He was finished.
26:51After over 20 years in power, Olivares' enemies were circling.
26:57Finally, Philip IV had to break up their strange father-son relationship.
27:03In January 1643, he dismissed the Valido.
27:08Olivares, obese and neurotic, went almost mad with bitterness and regret.
27:15The Inquisition started to investigate him.
27:18He was close to being arrested and possibly executed.
27:22He died aged 58 before that could happen.
27:26King Philip was finally a man.
27:28But the Spanish Empire was now a wounded giant.
27:35And after over a century of rule, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty was in trouble.
27:41It was not merely the hubris of empire.
27:44Its nemesis came from within.
27:49And after over a century of rule, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty was in trouble.
27:50San Lorenzo dell'Escorial celebrated the Habsburgs' elevated view of their own peerless royalty.
27:58But now the dynasty would perish precisely because of that haughty pride.
28:05Down these steps, deep under the altar of the basilica, is the sacred pantheon of kings,
28:11the final resting place of the monarchs of Spain.
28:28I come to find the tomb of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs.
28:34Philip's son, Charles, known as the Bewitched because of his grotesque appearance,
28:39including a jaw so huge that he could barely eat.
28:44His plight was the result of generations of family into marriage.
28:49The Habsburgs were made by marriage and destroyed by it.
28:56I'm meeting geneticist Professor Gonzalo Alvarez.
29:01He's made an analysis of Habsburg intermarriage across 16 generations
29:06and its fatal effect on the bloodline.
29:10The most famous characteristic of the Habsburg family was the Habsburg jaw.
29:16Was this the result of their notorious interbreeding?
29:19I think that no.
29:21I think that the size of the jaw is a genetic aspect of the family,
29:27like the color of the eyes that is transmitted from parents to children,
29:30but it's not a particular aspect affected by the consanguinity.
29:35So, what were the mental and physical effects on poor Charles II of interbreeding?
29:42It's described as if he was low in height, he had the head big.
29:48When he was 30 years old, he seemed like an old man.
29:51He spent the last years of his life practically without being able to get out of bed.
29:56He had a number of intestinal problems, like diarrhea, vómitos,
30:01with multiple diseases throughout his life.
30:05And, despite having two women, he was unable to conceive a single child.
30:10How closely related were his parents?
30:13His parents, Felipe IV and Mariana of Austria, were a son and a son.
30:19But the level of consanguinity of Carlos II was the level of consanguinity
30:24that is produced in an infestuous union, like the union between brothers
30:30or a union between father and daughter or mother and son,
30:33due to the effect of consanguinity accumulated during generations.
30:40When Charles II finally died, his autopsy made pitiful reading.
30:46His brain was full of water, his veins had no blood
30:49and his single testicle resembled a black coal.
30:55With two possible cousins as his heir, one Austrian, one French,
31:00Charles chose the French.
31:03That plunged Europe into the war of Spanish succession.
31:07Which put a new dynasty on the Spanish throne, the Bourbons of France.
31:14They brought French enlightenment and a more informal style.
31:18And for the first time, they united the separate kingdoms
31:22into one kingdom of Spain.
31:27In 1789, the French Revolution overthrew their Bourbon cousins in Paris.
31:34As the monarchs of Europe tried to suppress the revolution,
31:38Spain needed a strong monarch.
31:40Unfortunately, the king was Charles IV, nicknamed the Hunter,
31:45because he did very little else.
31:49It was the queen, Maria Luisa, who was the real ruler of Spain.
31:53And the man she wanted at her side was not the king.
31:57He was an ambitious young upstart.
31:59A handsome royal guardsman, Manuel Godoy.
32:02Godoy.
32:07Godoy almost certainly became the queen's lover,
32:10and at the age of 25, she appointed him chief minister.
32:17Spain was now ruled by a menage a trois.
32:23The queen herself proudly referred to it as the earthly trinity.
32:31It was certainly earthly.
32:34The menage a trois was more of a fulsome,
32:37because Godoy's favourite mistress was Pepita,
32:41whom he had painted twice by Goya.
32:44He was very proud of her,
32:47but he was even more keen to show her at her best.
32:51And he would show this portrait in a tiny private room.
32:56He would pull a curtain to reveal Pepita in all her dazzling sensuality.
33:12Godoy wasn't just juggling powerful women.
33:16First, he backed the monarchies of Europe
33:18as they tried to crush revolutionary France,
33:21and then he joined France in a plan to conquer England's ally Portugal.
33:29This is the residence of Godoy.
33:31Godoy, he revelled in his splendour,
33:34but his timing was unfortunate,
33:37and it happened that he coincided with the greatest soldier-statesman
33:41of all European history, Napoleon Bonaparte.
33:45In 1808, Godoy and Napoleon agreed to cooperate
33:50in the carve-up of the Kingdom of Portugal.
33:53But when the French troops arrived in Madrid,
33:56they never left.
33:59100,000 French troops poured into Spain.
34:03Godoy, his king, his queen and his mistress had to flee,
34:06but rumours spread that the rest of the royal family
34:10were about to be murdered.
34:12On the 2nd of May, 1808, a mob gathered here outside the royal palace.
34:20A locksmith named José broke in and appeared on the balcony.
34:25Death to the French, he cried.
34:28They've already stolen our royal family, our king and our queen.
34:31Now they wish to take the rest of them to Paris.
34:34The mob went crazy.
34:36They turned on the French troops,
34:38pelting them with rocks, pouring boiling water on them from rooftops.
34:42And all hell let loose.
34:44The French opened fire randomly on the crowds.
34:47Hundreds were killed.
34:48French and Spanish blood ran in the gutters of Madrid.
34:55The French general ordered immediate and ruthless reprisals.
34:59Men were rounded up almost at random.
35:02A gardener, a singer, even a priest.
35:06As they were marched through the streets,
35:08some builders on a scaffolding threw rocks at the French troops.
35:12They too were arrested and added to the party.
35:15The next day, the 3rd of May,
35:17all 43 men were executed by firing squad.
35:26Their deaths were immortalised by Goya in his famous painting,
35:31the 3rd of May, 1808.
35:35They were murdered.
35:36Under the incongruous shadow of cable cars,
35:38in the tiny cemetery of La Florida in Madrid,
35:42they lie buried.
35:4343 ordinary men who stood up for Spain's national pride.
35:50Their actions were glorious, yet futile.
35:56As Spain became a mere province of the French Empire.
36:05Napoleon forced the Bourbon Royal family to abdicate,
36:09and he appointed his own brother, Joseph, as King of Spain.
36:14Emperor Napoleon came here himself to defeat the Spanish army.
36:20But the Spanish people rose up against the French.
36:24They launched the first guerrilla war.
36:27The word itself, guerrilla, comes from this conflict.
36:35As Napoleon's brother, King Joseph, tried to rule from the royal palace,
36:40Spain got help from the old enemy.
36:43Britain sent Sir Arthur Wellesley, its best general.
36:47He defeated the French, earning the title the Duke of Wellington.
36:53He drove King Joseph Bonaparte out of Madrid,
36:56and in 1814 invaded France, contributing to Napoleon's downfall.
37:02Spain was left weakened and divided.
37:06A liberal constitution promising democracy delighted half the country.
37:12But the other half preferred Catholic absolutism.
37:16Spain was tortured by these conflicting visions,
37:20and a humiliating international decline.
37:25Professor Jose Alvarez Junco is an expert on the 19th century.
37:31One of the biggest effects of the Napoleonic Wars was not in Spain,
37:35but was abroad. What happened to the Spanish Empire?
37:37Between 1810 and 1825, 90% of the American Empire declared its independence from Spain.
37:45The Spaniards lived on a fantasy that they were still an imperial power,
37:52because they kept Cuba and Filipinas and Puerto Rico.
37:56But in 1898, they finally lost that, also.
38:02What was the effect on Spain itself of this loss of empire?
38:06The effect was enormous, tremendous.
38:09Spain had been a big power between, let's say, 1500 and 1800,
38:16between the Catholic kings and the Napoleonic Wars.
38:19And they suddenly realised that they were not a great power.
38:23They were not a superior race.
38:26What was the effect of the struggles and wars of the 19th century?
38:31There were constant military coups, there were civil wars,
38:36the socio-economic inequality, particularly in the rural world.
38:43In other words, the Catholic Church in Spain was widely hated.
38:48It was disastrous.
38:49And that led, for instance, to the impossibility to have common symbols.
38:55The Spanish national anthem has no words.
38:58We don't agree.
38:59Conservatives would like to sing the glories of the Spanish Empire
39:03and the defence of Catholicism.
39:05And liberals, or leftists, would like to sing the defence of freedoms.
39:09So, in the end, there are no words.
39:12Sometimes, funny things have happened.
39:15For instance, the players of the national soccer team,
39:19when they have won a championship and the music has begun,
39:23they sing things without any meaning.
39:25For instance, chum-da-chum-da-ta-chum-da-chum-da-chum-da-chum-da-chum-da-chum-chum-chum.
39:31Because they need to sing something.
39:33That's extraordinary. That's totally extraordinary.
39:37Early in the 20th century, Spain managed to stay out of World War I,
39:42yet economic depression reinforced its gizms.
39:46And the hapless King Alfonso XII was discredited
39:50when he appointed a general as dictator.
39:54In 1931, he was deposed.
39:57Spain was a republic,
39:59and after 200 years, the Bourbons went into exile.
40:04The Republic was the first time in Spanish history
40:07that the country had been ruled by a leftist, moderate government,
40:12elected in a true democracy.
40:14And it brought in many progressive measures,
40:17votes for women, workers' rights,
40:21and water in working-class districts,
40:24like this fountain here that still bears the date, 1934,
40:29and the Spanish Republic.
40:32Yet the right, from landowners to industrialists,
40:35believed that the Republic was a communist conspiracy
40:38to destroy traditional Spanish values.
40:41Its anti-Catholic measures proved to its enemies,
40:45the generals, the church, and the growing fascist militias,
40:50that it was an anathema.
40:52They were determined to stop it.
40:54In 1936, the socialists won elections that were the last straw.
41:00Tit-for-tat killings by leftist and fascist death squads
41:04meant the generals had an excuse.
41:07They reached for their guns.
41:09The Republic was doomed.
41:11The generals planned a nationalist coup.
41:15Among them was the 43-year-old commander of the Canary Islands,
41:19a Spanish outpost 1,000 miles away.
41:21He emerged as their leader.
41:25He was extremely uncharismatic.
41:27He was a dreary, notoriously bad speaker,
41:31with a high, womanly voice.
41:32He was paunchy, small, and balding.
41:36But he was not all he seemed.
41:39Francisco Franco had been Europe's youngest general since Napoleon.
41:44He'd made his name as the brutal commander in the colonial war in Morocco,
41:50where even his Moroccan troops regarded his bloodthirstiness with reverence.
41:56He loathed socialists, Marxists, Masons, Jews,
42:00and believed they should be annihilated like aliens.
42:03Above all, he possessed the will to power.
42:07But for now, he watched and waited.
42:11His time had almost come.
42:22In July 1936, Franco left the Canary Islands for Spanish Morocco in North Africa.
42:30He planned to deploy his devoted Moroccan legion to crush the Republic.
42:38Yet he lacked transport to get his legionaries across to mainland Spain.
42:45He appealed to the fascist dictators, Hitler and Mussolini.
42:50They saw a way to promote fascist power.
42:54Hitler sent the planes, and ever the fan of Wagner,
42:58he named this operation Operation Magic Fire.
43:05While Britain and France chose to remain neutral,
43:08the extreme ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism,
43:13began a war of annihilation and a tournament of power
43:18in the bloody bullring of Spain.
43:23As Franco marched north, the killings started all over Spain.
43:2820,000 were executed in the first days of the coup.
43:35Franco's nationalist forces headed for the capital.
43:38It would have fallen.
43:41Instead, Franco diverted troops to Toledo,
43:44once the capital of Visigothic Spain, which was under siege.
43:52He was making a point.
43:54In 1085, King Alfonso VI had taken the Muslim city of Toledo
44:00to launch the Christian reconquest of Spain.
44:04Franco felt that he was doing the same thing.
44:08Now, he declared, this is not a civil war.
44:11This is a holy war.
44:12We are the soldiers of God.
44:17The church blessed Franco's cause and portrayed him as the saviour of Spain.
44:23In November 1935, after taking Toledo,
44:28Franco's crusaders broke into the capital.
44:31The nationalist rebel forces,
44:33spearheaded by their battle-hardened Moroccan legionaries,
44:37fought their way right into the centre of Madrid,
44:39right to these university buildings.
44:43These bullet holes tell their own story.
44:50The fighting was ferocious.
44:56The Republic desperately needed arms and men.
44:59The arms came from Stalin and Soviet Russia.
45:03And the men came in the form of the international brigades,
45:07who rushed here.
45:08Individual volunteers from all over the world,
45:12united in the fight to stop fascism.
45:16Madrid held out for three years,
45:19the ultimate symbol of republican resistance.
45:24Franco fought on,
45:25now backed by 80,000 troops sent by Mussolini,
45:29and Hitler's Nazi Condor Legion,
45:32which invented terror bombing and devastated Guernica.
45:44Sensing that this was a rehearsal for the coming World War,
45:47writers poured in to cover the agony of Spain.
45:50It caught the imagination of a generation.
45:53The most famous of them all was Ernest Hemingway,
45:57and he was a regular at this bar.
45:59He used to sit right over there.
46:03It was full of smoke, he wrote,
46:05singing men in uniform and the smell of wet leather coats,
46:08and they were handing out drinks over a crowd
46:11that were three deep at the bar.
46:14Hemingway saw this as a war against fascism,
46:17and he helped publicise the desperate glamour
46:20of the republican side.
46:22His novel, For Whom the Well Tolls,
46:24is one of the great war novels of all time,
46:27and it catches the folly, the heroism,
46:31and the sheer chaos of the republican side.
46:33It's still a timeless read,
46:35and some of the romanticism that is attributed
46:39to this most vicious of conflicts
46:41is down to Hemingway's masterpiece.
46:54The reality was savage.
46:56For an unglamorised version,
46:58I've driven 200 miles to the site of one of its bloody battles.
47:05Belchite in Zaragoza,
47:07a ghost town left exactly as it was at the end of the civil war.
47:14It's still haunted by the atrocities perpetrated by both sides.
47:20For the republican side,
47:22the greatest symbol of hatred was the church.
47:26This is just one of the many they destroyed,
47:28and across Spain,
47:29they exhumed the bodies of nuns and priests,
47:33mocked them and exposed them to public view.
47:36But much worse,
47:37they also killed 13 bishops and 6,000 clergy,
47:43and what became known as the greatest clerical bloodletting in history.
47:49All together, the republicans killed 55,000 people.
48:01Republican death squads, often led by communists,
48:05organised mass killings.
48:07The nationalists were better organised in every way.
48:10I will occupy Spain, said Franco,
48:13town by town, village by village.
48:17Half of the Spanish people were to be treated as aliens
48:21and annihilated on sight.
48:24Anyone suspected of socialism, atheism, liberalism, communism
48:30were hunted down by right-wing death squads and executed.
48:36All together, during the war,
48:39200,000 people were murdered by the nationalists.
48:44In March 1939, the republicans finally disintegrated.
48:50Franco marched into Madrid and declared total victory.
48:54In the next five years, he ordered further killings,
48:57an estimated 200,000 people executed as enemies of Spain.
49:03There was no reconciliation.
49:06There were no pardons.
49:13With his regime secured, Franco was keen to promote his place
49:18in Spain's imperial history.
49:21On the first anniversary of the nationalist victory,
49:23he announced the plan to build a monument to those who fell for the cause.
49:30He chose this valley, which is coming into sight now,
49:33because right next door, just over there,
49:36is the escorial, the magnificent palace monastery
49:40of Spain's greatest king, Philip II.
49:43You can see exactly the way his mind was working.
49:46Franco saw himself as among the great, heroic,
49:49conqueror kings of Spain's history.
49:58Dominated by its 500-foot Holy Cross,
50:02the Valley of the Fallen encapsulates Franco's Spain,
50:07a strange mix of Catholic, Imperial and Conservative,
50:13fascist and nationalist.
50:16Christian symbolism infused with fascistic imagery.
50:23Such are the dimensions of our crusade, said Franco,
50:28that we cannot commemorate this with simple monuments.
50:32We must raise stones that resemble the grandeur
50:36of the monuments of old that defy time.
50:39Well, whatever we think of Franco,
50:43we must say he succeeded at least in that.
50:49As Europe plunged into the Second World War,
50:52Franco identified with Hitler and Mussolini.
50:55He called himself Il Caudillo, the leader, the warlord,
50:59to match the Führer and the Duce.
51:01He felt he was on history's winning side,
51:04and he didn't want to miss out on the prizes.
51:07Yet Spain was weak and ruined.
51:11By 1940, Europe shook with the triumphs of Hitler's blitzkrieg.
51:17Franco wanted to emulate the style, the ideology and the conquests
51:23of Hitler and Mussolini, his brother fascist dictators.
51:27He created an anti-Semitic, fascististic party,
51:31and he declared,
51:32we have conquered the scum of the Communist, Masonic, Jewish conspiracy.
51:38He wanted to create a new Spanish Empire,
51:42but only Hitler could give it to him.
51:47After German forces had conquered even France,
51:51Franco wanted to join the war, but he had his price.
51:56On 23 October 1940,
51:59Franco and Hitler met at Hende railway station,
52:03near the Spanish border in France,
52:05to discuss terms.
52:08It started well.
52:10Delighted to see you, Führer.
52:11Finally, an old wish of mine fulfilled, Caudillo.
52:17And then they repaired to Hitler's train, Erika,
52:20to begin the talks.
52:25Führer.
52:28Franco started to demand a long shopping list of imperial territories
52:32he wanted for Spain.
52:34Gibraltar and Portugal, of course,
52:36but also bits of French Catalonia, French Morocco,
52:40swathes of Algeria and West Africa.
52:42Hitler was outraged.
52:44He despised Franco.
52:46He said that Franco's whining voice resembled the Muazin,
52:50the Muslim call to prayer.
52:52He called him a Jesuitical swine.
52:55He lost his temper.
52:56He treated Franco to one of his foam-flecked rants.
53:00He stood up to end the talks, but was persuaded to return.
53:03But it didn't end well.
53:06He said he'd prefer to endure three or four teeth being pulled out
53:10than to spend another minute with Franco.
53:13Spain didn't get its empire.
53:16Germany didn't need Spanish help.
53:21Franco stayed neutral.
53:24But when Hitler fell, he adapted, swiftly dropping his fascist style,
53:28embracing a Catholic authoritarianism.
53:34For over 30 years, he lived here at the El Pardo Palace.
53:39His name appeared on stamps and coins.
53:43He was protected by a Moroccan bodyguard.
53:47He could even appoint people to titles
53:49and gave away dukedoms and marquises.
53:52He was king in all but name.
53:57He never actually abolished the monarchy.
53:59His plan was to restore the Bourbons after his death
54:03in a new hybrid regime, a Francoist monarchy.
54:09In the 40s, he allowed the young Prince Juan Carlos
54:13to return to be educated in Spain.
54:15In 1969, he finally announced his decision.
54:20He would be succeeded by Juan Carlos as king on his own death.
54:24But, while he thought he was playing the Prince,
54:28the Prince was also playing the old dictator.
54:35As he planned the succession, Franco knew where he would be buried,
54:39at the Valley of the Fallen, within the giant basilica,
54:44like a warrior king.
54:55It really is an extraordinary place.
54:58It's impossible not to be impressed by it,
55:01but also horrified.
55:06It's pervaded by death.
55:12I feel I've entered sacred political theatre,
55:17orchestrated by Franco himself from beyond the grave.
55:21On 20th November 1975, aged 82,
55:26the last dictator of the 30s died.
55:44Was this the requiem for the age of dictators?
55:48Or the overture for an enduring tyranny?
55:58When the lights went out, and the bells rang,
56:01and the choir sung,
56:03I wouldn't have been surprised
56:05if the four horsemen of the apocalypse
56:07had clattered into the hall.
56:13Two days after Franco's death,
56:15the young Bourbon, Juan Carlos,
56:17took the oath as king of Spain.
56:20He never intended to be the figurehead for the Francoists,
56:25and after 40 years of tyranny,
56:27the nation was hungry for freedom and democracy.
56:30The young king immediately started to move towards a new Spain.
56:36He oversaw the dismantling of the dictatorship
56:39and the creation of a parliamentary democracy
56:43without a drop of blood being spilt.
56:46Within 18 months,
56:48Spain hurled its first democratic elections in 41 years.
56:59Today, democracy is established.
57:02Spanish society is diverse.
57:05Spain has offered citizenship
57:06to the descendants of Jews expelled in 1492.
57:12It was the third country in the world to allow same-sex marriages.
57:17Catholicism still has its place, yet no longer dominates the state.
57:24For many millennia, Spain has been the borderland,
57:28the crossroads, the battlefield of empires, faiths and peoples.
57:34Its extreme position at the edge of Europe
57:37has intensified the extremity of its rages, its furies, its conflicts.
57:44Carthaginians versus Romans, Muslims versus Christians,
57:49Catholics versus Protestants,
57:52Fascists versus Communists.
57:54Spain has always been, throughout history,
57:58the cauldron of civilisations, the furnace of faith.
58:03Today, the scars of civil war are still raw.
58:09Juan Carlos abdicated.
58:10His son is now king.
58:12And regionalism remains strong.
58:16Blood and gold from the caliphate to the kingdom.
58:21This is the story of how Spain was made.
58:29If this story has inspired you and you'd like to find out more,
58:34go to the address given on screen and follow the links to the Open University.
58:45Coming up next on BBC Four, from ski resorts to terrifying rock falls,
58:50Ian Stewart presents 10 Things You Didn't Know About Avalanches.
58:55The End
58:55Part 2
58:56The End
59:06Transcription by CastingWords
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