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Goodbye España
“Now I don’t mind if I die, I’ve returned to Spain.”
February 7th, 1968. Thirty seven years after being exiled, Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg, the ‘English Queen’, finally returns to her beloved Spain. Thanks to a special permit from General Franco she will be allowed to attend the baptism of her great grandson, don Felipe de Borbón, Prince of Asturias. During the five days that she spends in Madrid, she is bombarded by memories of the past. Victoria Eugenia will relive the critical historical events that she experienced together with her husband, King Alfonso XIII: the constant intrigues and deceptions of the Marquis of Viana, the brutal terrorist attack by the anarchist Mateo Morral on their wedding day, the traumatic escape from the country after the proclamation of the Republic, the terrible resulting stigma that her two sons suffered and that drove them to their deaths, Alfonso’s repeated infidelities...This literary masterpiece recreates a life full of shadows. Deeply in love with the young Alfonso, Victoria Eugenia didn’t hesitate to convert to Catholicism so that they could get married, help her husband politically, or to work to provide succour to the most vulnerable, but she was also accused of being a spy during the Second World War and of having an affair with the Duke of Lécera...