Introduction

I first came to know Spain in the mid-1960s when I served as Assistant Cultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Madrid. Friends on both sides of the Atlantic have wondered how someone with my politics and interests could have wanted to serve in the United States government. The answer is simple: when John Kennedy, in his inaugural address, said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” I took him quite literally; I wanted to be part of Kennedy’s New Frontier and joined the diplomatic service in 1961, my first post, Argentina. Part of my enthusiasm, no doubt, came from having grown up at a time of great confidence in, and enthusiasm for, the federal government as an agent of meaningful change. My parents believed, and imbued me with these same ideas, that Franklin Roosevelt and the federal government had saved the economy of the United States through the New Deal, had vanquished the Nazis and the Italian and Japanese fascists, and was the great force struggling to put an end to segregation in our country and poverty and disease worldwide.

The fact that I would be entering the United States Information Agency in particular added to my pleasure, for I would be doing cultural work overseas, and what better preparation for representing American society and culture overseas than an M.A. and an A.B.D. (all but dissertation) Ph.D. in American Studies?

Also important was that Edward R. Murrow, America’s greatest broadcast journalist (the focus of a movie in recent years, Good Night and Good Luck), would be, however distant from my humble station, my boss. A hero who as much as anyone had vanquished the McCarthyism of the 1950s, Murrow, like so many of us attracted to government by Kennedy, had left his normal pursuits—CBS Television—and was now Director of USIA. He would be my boss and Kennedy would be his. Could any young man in his twenties have imagined a more promising situation in which to begin his professional life?

A book also had some influence on my decision to enter the diplomatic service. It was William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick’s 1958 popular, though undistinguished, novel, The Ugly American. Taking place somewhere in Asia—though clearly Vietnam was intended—the novel, while suffused with idealism, exposed how poorly prepared American diplomats were for overseas work. They knew neither the language nor were they familiar with the culture where they were posted. I regarded the novel as a personal challenge to prove to foreign peoples that Americans were by no means stupid and unsophisticated, that some of us, at least, were not ugly Americans—though, ironically, the character in the novel known by that name is actually the hero. Years later I would read Graham Greene’s brilliant 1954 novel, The Quiet American, concerning, in part, America’s earliest blunders in Vietnam, and realized that it might have better prepared me for the realities and challenges of the diplomatic service than Lederer and Burdick’s book.

But back then USIA and government in general seemed exciting, the place to be. This was before the disillusionments of Vietnam and Watergate and before the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. It was a hopeful time in American life, and I was delighted to be part of it.

I was then, and remain, an American patriot. The only difference is that, back then, I was naively unmindful of my country’s imperfections. I firmly believed that we were the good guys and that ours was the very best country in the world. I wholly bought into the myth of American exceptionalism which isn’t patriotism but nationalism. I had not yet learned that my country, like any other, could make mistakes and even be capable of great evil.

And I had yet to learn that there were a host of other nations in the world to admire, among them, of course, being Spain. Spain, more than any other country, would prove to be immensely appealing to me, and it remains so to this day.

When I left Spain in the last days of 1967 I was sad, not just because of my affection for that country and pleasure in my work and life there but because my next diplomatic assignment was Vietnam. It was an index to the obsession of the United States with Vietnam that it would want to send someone like me there. For by that time I was virtually a native speaker level in Spanish and had just completed, in my spare time, my doctoral dissertation involving Argentina and the United States (I had been posted to Argentina before Spain). I would have been happy to stay on in Spain indefinitely or to go anywhere in Latin America. The fact that my government insisted on sending me to Vietnam was a page straight out of Joseph Heller’s classic novel, Catch-22: if you didn’t want to go to Vietnam, they would send you there; if you did want to go, they would assume you were crazy and send you elsewhere.

America’s obsession with Vietnam took many forms. Our embassy in that small country was by far the largest in the world, and embassies elsewhere were, as a result, managed by skeleton crews of diplomats. It was as if no country really mattered except Vietnam. In recent years a similar absurdity made Iraq the largest United States embassy in the world. In both cases the waste of those wars was echoed by the waste of the time, efforts, and expertise of American diplomats and a deterioration of our relations with the rest of the world.

I could not imagine what a cultural attaché would do in Vietnam during the war. Could I really interest the Vietnamese in American society and culture, talk to them about Mark Twain and jazz, while they were dodging bullets and bombs, many of them ours? And by that time I had begun to see that the war was a tragic mistake.

I also had three little children I was unwilling to abandon in such a dubious cause; diplomats, after the Tet offensive of early 1968, during which the embassy was overrun by the Viet Cong, could no longer take their families to Saigon.

Finally, I did not wish to devote thirteen months of my life to full immersion study of Vietnamese at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State to get myself to the same level in that so very foreign language that I had reached after only sixteen weeks of Spanish. I could not imagine many opportunities for using the Vietnamese language outside of Vietnam. My Spanish, on the other hand, has been a source of great richness in my life during and subsequent to my days in the diplomatic service.

So, although I had thought of a career in the diplomatic service, had hoped some day to be an ambassador, I resigned. I did feel a little guilty. This was silly because, not only had I served my country for seven years in the diplomatic service but, earlier, I had been drafted into the United States Navy and had served in my country’s military too. I had been trained as a medic and sent to Japan, where I worked at the United States Naval Hospital at Yokosuka in a locked psychiatric ward that treated Navy and Marine mental patients. Twice I had come close to being murdered by crazed patients in that place. “Friendly fire,” they might have called it had my attackers succeeded or covered it up completely. In any case, there are no purple hearts when your own side attacks you. I told myself that I didn’t owe America anything more, but I still felt that, in resigning from the diplomatic service, I was, somehow, letting my country down.

Later I would see that it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I had always been conflicted between my political and artistic sides. Circumstances may have forced a choice, but, luckily, more than anything else, I had always wanted to be a writer, and now I would have that chance.

As for my deep affection for Spain, leaving the diplomatic service has not precluded visiting that country whenever I like. I seem to be back in Spain almost every year, invited to lecture or read from my works or on vacation with my family and seeing friends. Spain has been, and remains, a great pleasure to me and a continuous source of adventure. Some of the things that happened to me, especially during my embassy years in Spain, were extraordinary, so I thought it might interest others were I to share these experiences. Hence this book.

The four years I served with the embassy were when my impressions of Spain were freshest and each day a revelation. I hope it is of interest to readers just how Spain appeared to an American over four decades ago. I am sure that my memories of that time are conditioned by my experience of Spain since, but I have tried to focus on the key events of those years as best I remember them. Still, memory is a tricky thing. There is the danger that one remembers what one chooses to remember. And I do write fiction—hopefully not this time.

The Spain I knew then was still very much the Spain of the Franco dictatorship, and the 1960s there were very different from the 1960s in the United States. Franco had ruled Spain with an iron fist since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, through the years I served in Spain, and until his death in 1975. The government’s slogan during my years there was “25 Años de Paz” (Twenty-five Years of Peace). It is true that Spain remained relatively peaceful during those years, but at what cost?

Even so, Spain was an enchanting place for me. American writers have long gone to Spain and been attracted to its culture. It happened to Washington Irving, it happened to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it happened to Ernest Hemingway, and, if I may be so bold as to list my own name in such august company, it happened to me. I have traveled the world, lectured in some twenty-five countries, but I always go back to Spain. Were it possible for me to have a second country, I would choose Spain.

Like my own country, Spain had, and has, its obvious defects, but it was in Spain where I learned to enjoy life. Disfrutar (to enjoy) is such a beautiful word. In Spain I discovered great food and wine, a dramatic, ever changing landscape, and warm and admirable people. I guess I fell in love with Spain. I daresay that I still am.