Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Pepito’s death sealed our condemnation. On that very day, England’s diplomats began to look for a negotiated solution to the situation. And — just look how things turn out — this time they really did find their solution in a trice: Charles was to renounce the Spanish throne and remain in Vienna forever; Little Philip, in turn, should renounce his claims to the French succession (in the event of the Beast’s death) and stay in Madrid forever. War over. Move along, please, nothing to see here.

France dragged its heels, but it was exhausted; Charles objected, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Without military support from England, and especially without her financial backing, he wouldn’t be in a position to keep fighting for long, not as much as three months. So everybody accepted the English proposal, more or less. From then on, it was only a matter of haggling and pinning down the minor details.

And the Catalans? Surely you’re joking! Neither Charles nor the English deigned to inform the authorities in Barcelona. As you can imagine, even the Red Pelts would have expressed some outrage! And so our Miquelets went on dying in the mountains, our citizens went on paying exorbitant taxes to support a war they could never conclude, and all the while our own king was digging our grave. Diplomatic negotiations move slowly, all the more so when you’ve got a world war involved, and between 1711 and 1713, the Catalans kept on fighting, like dumb pawns, for a king who had already sold them out to their executioner.

I can’t help a brief digression here. The chroniclers have written that Pepito died from smallpox, a story I’ve always thought sounded rather fishy. There’s no such thing as a single victim of smallpox; either you’ve got an epidemic or there’s no smallpox. Imagine the coincidence that it should be Pepito, of all the people in Vienna, who was the only person to contract the illness.

Relations between the two brothers had been sour for some time. Out of fraternal solidarity, Pepito had been spending vast sums on a distant war, and he was as fed up with the conflict as all the other chanceries in Europe. According to what I heard from an old Viennese courtier, the final letters that Pepito sent Charles took this tone: “My dear brother Karl, enough of this endless war! So the Catalans love you and the Castilians hate you? Well, how would this be for a solution — how about Philip as king of the Castilians and you as king of the Catalans?”

The fact that this option was not merely a comment between brothers but an official policy was demonstrated by the fact that all the Austrian newspapers published the proposal as a definitive solution. Charles didn’t think the idea was the least bit funny, and he sent the next letter to his brother via an agent who put arsenic under his fingernails. Smallpox! What do you think, my dear vile Waltraud? Did he kill him like Cain killed Abel? Well, shut up, then, your opinion isn’t worth a damn anyway.

Where were we? Oh yes, Charles being named the new emperor of Austria. He packed his bags and raced over to Vienna for the coronation ceremony. He left his little queen — now also the empress of Austria — back in Barcelona as a pledge of eternal fidelity to the Catalans.

I say it again: An excess of civilization transforms upright people into simpletons. Because it was quite clear that Charles was never coming back and that the queen — who, to tell the truth, had been left as a political token — would use the first opportunity she got to follow him. She spent a year in Barcelona, yawning her way through the opera. And then, when the time looked right, a very goodbye to you! What still gives me shivers, and riles me no end, is the reason that the old tart gave for leaving. In her own words, she needed to go, owing to “the great matter of the hoped-for succession.” In other words, that great matter was urging her to open her legs to her Charles, which was much more important than the destiny of an entire nation.

Now, would you like to guess what the Red Pelts did when Charles’s little queen announced her noble reasons for leaving us in the lurch?

They let her go without a word of complaint! Those very men, the Red Pelts, the gents of the noble ruling class! The only card that a nation without a king might be able to play; the final guarantee that an entire country would not be disemboweled alive. And they waved it goodbye with full honors! The entire government went off to the docks, and the only thing they cared about was getting a place near the queen so as to be seen during the farewell.

Let me tell you what they should have done! They should have sent a sealed letter to Vienna swearing that we were going to put Her Majesty in the room with all the rats, and that she wouldn’t change her petticoat until Charles had worked European diplomacy to achieve every political, diplomatic, and military guarantee that Catalonia would remain free and safe. But that was not how it happened; the Red Pelts were too civilized for that. The world was going to slit our throats, and they were busy fretting about powdering their wigs!

With his hands free now, Charles signed the ominous Treaty of Evacuation with the Bourbons. According to its terms, the Allies were to withdraw all the troops they still had on the peninsula, that is, in Catalonia, which was the only territory under their control. From then on, things happened fast. When the queen fled to Vienna, the post of viceroy of Catalonia was filled by an Austrian soldier, Marshal Starhemberg.

It was on Starhemberg’s shoulders that the burden fell of carrying out the most heinous and monumental mass execution in recent times. Early in 1713, the drama was ready to come to a head, all the cogs in the machine set for the sky to fall in. All that was needed was for the lever to be activated. And Starhemberg was that lever.

The Beast and the Allies had formalized their agreement behind the scenes. The messenger arrived in Barcelona: Starhemberg should order and direct the evacuation of all Allied troops from Catalonia. Dutch, Germans, and Portuguese boarded the English fleet anchored at Barcelona. Didn’t this mean handing over this most faithful of countries to slaughter and butchery? Of course it did. And so what? It is not in the interest of England to preserve the Catalan liberties . Nor their lives.

Just imagine the astonishment of the Barcelonans when the news was made public. At first no one wanted to believe it. A wave of fatalism silenced every soul. On streets and in taverns, the inevitable was being discussed, and drunks sang the most gruesome ditties:

The Portuguese have signed the deal!

The Dutch will soon comply.

The English up and left us here. .

It’s time for us to die.

The walls of Barcelona were covered in posters, some of them of the very blackest humor:

The Comedy of Evacuation

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Spain, as the friar’s ass; our freedoms, as a toilet brush; slavery in a number two role; and all the Allies playing the part of shit.

The positions, titles, and boons that Charles had signed lost all their value overnight. There was one clown who would go around ringing a bell, throwing confetti over passersby, shouting: Es venen senyories a preus d’escombaries! Titles for sale, at the price of wastepaper!

The thing is, sarcastic humor has always helped people keep control of their fear. One day I ran into Nan and Anfán very close to our home, in the popular Plaza del Born, where they were acting as street performers. The dwarf was performing in the nude — if you don’t count the funnel on his head — like a deformed Adam. He had bent his left leg back as though he were one-legged. He had tied a ham bone to his knee, extending the apparently mutilated leg. From the front, he looked like a creature with a pig’s leg and trotter. He was using a penknife to scratch the bare bone in search of the last little bits of flesh. He was feigning terrible pain, and as he swallowed the minuscule pieces of ham, he seemed to be weighing the pleasure he got from tasting it against the torture he was inflicting on himself. Meanwhile, Anfán walked among the spectators, holding out an open bag, asking for contributions, and singing a little rhyme that was very popular in those days: Entre Carlos tres i Felip cinc, m’han deixat ab lo que tinc! Between Charles number three and Phil number five, they’ve left us with barely enough to survive!