DON QUIXOTE’S DELUSIONS

British travel-writer France (Bad Times in Buenos Aires, 1999) seeks to understand how the Spanish view themselves and their country.

There is more than just a little of Quixote in the Castilian mindset, she suggests; as a political theorist writing during Cervantes’ time noted, Spain is “a nation of enchanted people who live outside the natural order.” Of course, what France finds during two extended sojourns in the country, as a student in 1988–89 and again during a passage through Castilian towns in 1998, is more complex than that. Yet there is a fascinating interplay between the value and interpretation of truth throughout Spanish history that bears an uncanny resemblance to Quixote's sortie against windmills. Among her examples: the Spanish state’s trumping-up of a threat from the Moors, the nation’s chimerical wealth during the reign of Philip II, the Church’s solace and oppression, the mirage of fundamental change during the Republic, when independent institutions of democracy and compromise never took hold, even France’s own self-deluded relationship with a radical young Peruvian during her schooldays. This is not only an extended psychic evaluation of the Spanish anima; there are also stunning and intimate descriptions of Salamanca, Avila, Toledo, Burgos, and Segovia, often enough accompanied by descriptions of strange personal encounters. Yet whether talking of Quixote or the transvestites who live across the street, the author is most interested in coping with life's complexity and uncertainties, considering whether it might be best to follow the example of Quixote and “create a philosophy, a pattern, and force yourself to follow it. If others reject it, so much the better—you can consider yourself misunderstood, but in the right.” France herself has no urge to be judgmental; she loves Spaniards too much, with all their idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes.

A portrait out of time true to the author’s vision about the force of belief.