The Assassin's Mark by David Ebsworth
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The dead are sacred. Impartial. Unbiased. So Franco runs his tours on the strength of them. And just being able to run them shows that the Nationalists are legitimate. Winning. It is hard to imagine going on a tour of northern Spain during the Spanish civil war in 1938 and being guaranteed a safe passage? Was that possible when the war was still raging? On the one hand there was plenty of evidence of the abject poverty and devastation although the tourists generally had lavish accommodation, experiencing the wonderful Spanish cuisine whilst others starved. Living in this luxury inoculates us from the horrors of it all. The tours had been organised by Franco and boasted of witnessing atrocities in defeating and annihilating the Reds. A one-sided lesson. It's even harder to imagine being taken hostage and used as a pawn in a deadly political game. Seeing history in the making or being a part of the history where your life is endangered. This is what makes the book riveting f...