What Happened When the War Was Over; further stories of Gonzalo Llorente and Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon by Rebecca Pawel

Author:Rebecca Pawel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: spain, sequel, spanish civil war, puerto rico, mystery series, mystery detective, mystery story, death of a nationalist, carlos tejada alonso y leon fictional character, gonzalo llorente fictional character, madrid, 23f
Publisher: Rebecca Pawel

*****

Notes on “Hostages”

This story was written before all of the others, right after I finished Law of Return and before I started work seriously on The Watcher in the Pine. In fact, it was in some ways made redundant by The Watcher in the Pine, since I really wrote it to find out a little bit about how Tejada’s marriage worked out in practice after the “happily ever after.” I also wrote it because of my father’s response to Death of a Nationalist. “It’s almost too sad, and the only thing that makes it bearable is the knowledge that everything works out all right in the long long term.”

This was also the story that introduced Carlito, a character who becomes important in “The New World.” For reasons that will become obvious, I eventually made him a history major. However, I must admit that I was tempted to have him study Classics, continuing the Iliad theme which shows up in Death of a Nationalist and the Odyssey references in Law of Return with a few references to the Aeneid, another late-composed sequel which makes the fall of a proud city bearable by supposing an ultimate victory for a later generation.

“Hostages” is the only one of the stories based on a specific historical event, namely the coup attempt by Colonel Tejero on the evening of February 23, 1981. I have taken a specific poetic liberty here. All the accounts of the evening in question (there are quite a number on the web, and will probably be more in 2011, on the thirtieth anniversary of the coup attempt) specify that the movie on television that evening was Bob Hope’s comedy The Princess and the Pirate. I have changed it to Gone with the Wind, a film more dramatically appropriate for the evening, and for Tejada and Elena’s relationship.

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