The Man Who Saved Spain: A Latter-Day Baron Munchausen

By Hugh Hosch

L. Sidney Camp is a professor of Medieval Spanish Literature at a midwestern college, and he is returning to Spain for the first time since his only previous visit as a freshman in 1960. He has not kept up with the news about Spain (or anywhere else), concentrating on his pet subject, medieval Spanish literature. But now he decides to return to Spain. After all, he speaks Spanish although it is of the medieval type, like someone speaking Shakespearean English today. As a result of a series of serendipitous happenings while in Spain, people confuse his name, L. Sid Camp, with that of el Cid Campeador, medieval hero of Spain, and believe he is the great Cid reincarnated. With his newfound friend Pancho Zinsano, Sid seemingly performs miracles and saves Spain!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524693824

Hugh Hosch

Hugh Hosch has had a love affair with Spain since his first visit in 1958. He worked there as a young man and has continually visited and traveled there ever since, on his own and as part of his work in the group travel business. He is the U.S. Delegate for the Club Taurino of London and regularly attends taurine ferias in Spain. This is his sixth book. He has written hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles on Spain and other subjects, as well. Drawings purportedly done by main character L. Sid Camp were actually done by the author.

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© 2017 Hugh Hosch. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/29/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-9383-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-9382-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908413

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Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

Books by Hugh Hosch

The Fantastic Journey of Walter von Windsack

Felipe Marlo, Bullfight Shamus

Escape from the Amazon Leopard People

Manolete Is Alive and Living in South America

A Dirt Cheap (and Different) World

The Man Who Saved Spain

For Nat Peters, my inspiration for the new Cid

In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.

— Federico Garcia Lorca

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The main character of this book, a professor of Medieval Spanish Literature, speaks fluent Spanish, but of a Medieval Spanish variety. Since the book is in English, I have tried to capture the feeling of his speech by using a form of Medieval English for the professor’s spoken words.

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Lionel Sidney Camp as a student in Spain in 1960

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El Cid Campeador II on his return to Spain

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Sidney’s destinations in Spain

FOREWORD

Professor Sidney Camp understood the Spanish language. Indeed, he was the most revered professor of Medieval Spanish Literature at Northwestern Central Kansas Southern State University. True, he spoke Spanish the way Shakespeare spoke English, in antiquated fashion (to us today), but Spaniards could usually understand him. So when the tough-looking, thirtyish and mustachioed man of the Spanish National Intelligence Center (CNI) in Madrid who leaned over the back of the straight-backed chair in the windowless room shouted at him, Sidney understood the man.

"Señor, we believe you are an enemy of Holy Spain!" A gold crucifix dangled on a chain from the man’s neck.

Nay, nay, I loveth Spain! cried Sidney in his medieval Spanish, truly perplexed.

Then why were you trying to damage our wind turbines? shouted the CNI man. Sweat formed on his upper lip.

Twast a mistaketh! wailed Sidney. A no more brain than stone mistaketh!

Why do you talk so funny?

And so began Sidney Camp’s return to Spain – for the first time since 1960.

CHAPTER 1

Professor Lionel Sidney Camp, a confirmed bachelor, had been at Northwestern Central Kansas Southern University, home of the Fighting Wombats, in one capacity or another since 1959. Majoring as an undergraduate in Spanish literature, he took his first and – up to now, only – trip to Spain at the end of his freshman year, in 1960. He traveled over much of the country and loved every minute of it. Upon his return to NWCKSC (It was college then, not yet university), he continued his education in Spanish lit, moved on to graduate school, and in time went on to become, first, an instructor, and subsequently, a professor. Now he was the doyen of all the school’s language professors, the region’s leading expert in Medieval Spanish Literature. And for the first time since 1960, he was going back to Spain!

Sidney was a relatively mild-mannered fellow, but his physique was misleading: he was big, six-four, two-fifty, and he had an amazing wild crop of curly gray hair atop his head. And a very commanding voice: deep, resonant and loud. Students in the back row could hear him clearly.

Although his first name was Lionel, the professor did not like it nor use it. It was his father’s name, and he wanted his own. The name Lionel also reminded him of an electric train set he had when he was a child. So he went by Sidney, or Sid.

And now he was going back to Spain! Sidney was excited, although he did not know what to expect. He had not kept up with the goings-on in Spain since his trip in 1960. Rather, he had concentrated on his pet subject – Medieval Spainish Literature, that glorious period comprising roughly the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, the greatest work of the epoch being the epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid, written in about 1140 by an unknown poet. Sidney gloried –nay, wallowed – in this stuff. But he was blissfully ignorant of most of what had gone on in Spain – or in Europe or anywhere else, for that matter – in the interim. On his return to Spain, Sidney would truly be a babe in the woods.

CHAPTER 2

Sidney’s first trip had been by boat (ship, actually), several days’ tourist class passage on a vessel of American Export Lines which docked in Gibraltar. From there Sidney had traveled by bus to Seville, and thence by train to Madrid. It had taken forever, so he was quite naturally stunned when now it all took place quickly and comfortably, with travel from New York to Madrid via a sleek new jet airplane in just a few hours. Sidney remembered the old, slow, coal-burning locomotive from Seville to Madrid and the soot blowing through the passenger cars’ open windows. What a difference!

Anyway, here Sidney was in Madrid. He went to a small pensión he remembered from 1960, a hole-in-the-wall place called el Pensión Jamal Sabla, just off the Puerta del Sol in the city center and run by a family of Spanish Moroccans. He remembered paying fifteen pesetas, or twenty-five cents U.S., for his bathless room in 1960; now it was fifty euros, or about fifty-three dollars U.S. What was going on? And what was all this euro stuff about? What had happened to pesetas?

Well, he would have to get about. And now that he was at least relatively affluent – certainly compared to his student days in 1960 – he figured he could afford to rent a car in which to roam the land. So he walked to a U-Drive office near the Plaza de España and, feeling rather carefree, rented a white, canvas-topped Jeep, automatic transmission, four wheel drive, the works. Then he began making his plans to travel about Spain.

Sidney spent a couple of days just re-exploring Madrid, and then on the third day he drove across the Manzanares River, passing through the little town of Consuegra, in La Mancha. Eventually, off to the right along the top of a ridge, he saw a line of modern wind turbines, those white, three-bladed propeller wind machines atop tall poles, generators of electric power. He had read in a magazine on the airplane coming over that Spain was the world’s fifth biggest producer of wind power, and that a proposal was in the works to build the greatest wind power production facility in the world, in the sea off southwestern Spain, on the spot of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. The proposal

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Bibieca, Sidney’s rented jeep

had been met with strong opposition from Cadiz and towns in that region, and even by the British, who feared that any such development might destroy archeological evidence of the historic battle. But progress is hard to stop, and Sidney, being nothing if not a rigid traditionalist in all things Spanish, worried. He stopped his Jeep off the highway and stared at the line of wind turbines cresting the distant hill.

God alast! he cursed in his Medieval Spanish, unlike him. He let out the clutch and had