Franco’s funeral and refusing to whitewash his racism and oppression

Madrid was a riot of red flags and banners, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple on May Day ten years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comeford)

Patrick Comerford

As I watched the news reports over these two days on the reburial of Franco, memories came back of waiting up on many long nights as a young journalist in The Irish Times, waiting for Franco to die so the city editions could run his obituary.

But the dictator died on 20 November 1975, on a night that I was off work. The same happened to me three months earlier when Eamon de Valera died on 29 August 1975, once again on a night when I was off after sitting through many late shifts.

I had joined the staff of The Irish Times from the Wexford People less than 12 months earlier the previous year. Who was I to complain at the time that after two consecutive runs of long, late-night shifts I never got to shout the old hackneyed phrase: ‘Hold the Front Page’?

And over these two days, memories came back too of spending May Day in Madrid ten years ago.

I had long avoided visiting Spain. At first, my excuse was the Franco regime and the lack of human rights. Later, in my own stupid snobbery, I pretended I was being deterred by images and prejudices created by popular package holidays and high-rise beach resorts.

Eventually, Ryanair persuaded me I was wrong, and I spent the May bank holiday weekend in Madrid in 2009. I quickly realised the city is one of the architectural capitals of Europe with some of the finest art galleries and museums, including the Prado, with its collections of Goya and Velazquez, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which houses Picasso’s Guernica, and the Thyssen Bornemisza, with major works by Titian, Goya, Picasso and Rubens.

I set off early one morning to see some of those magnificent sights that I had seen from the outside from the top of the red bus the previous day. But I had forgotten it was May Day, and – of course – after the decades of fascism and oppression Spain had endured under Franco, May Day is celebrated with style in Madrid, and the workers have a day off.

From Plaza de Cibeles to Sol, Calle de Alcala was a riot of red flags and banners that May Day, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and with a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple.

If the right-wing can be triumphal in the Catedral de la Almudena, then at least on May Day the streets of Madrid belong to the left and to the workers. In Plaza de Cibeles, even Cybele and her chariot were bedecked in red and republican colours.

It is disturbing how politicians, journalists and amateur historians have tried to rewrite and sanitise Franco’s story since he died in 1975. The ‘fake history’ stories include a claim that Franco saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any other single person.

Franco may have had some Jewish ancestry on both his father’s and his mother’s sides, but no-one knows for sure … and even he may not have known. The name Franco is particularly associated with Jewish families in Spain before the Inquisition, and rumours of Franco’s Jewish ancestry were reported by Sir Robert Hodgson, a British diplomat, and repeated by Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador in Madrid during World War II. The Nazis ordered an investigation, but this was inconclusive.

However, we know that Franco generally spoke in vile terms about Jews and openly expressed his antisemitic prejudices.

But we know that Franco generally spoke in vile terms about Jews and openly expressed his antisemitic prejudices.

At his victory parade in May 1939, Franco vowed to remain alert to the ‘Jewish spirit which permitted the alliance of big capital with Marxism.’ A few months later, he severely criticised Britain and France and justified the persecution of what he referred to as those races marked by the stigma of their greed and self-interest.’

Later, the Franco regime claimed there was an international conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons against Spain, the contubernio judeo-masonico.

Franco met Hitler on 23 October 1940 in Hendaye, near the Franco-Spanish border. Franco’s demands included Gibraltar and parts of French north Africa, but Hitler is reported to have furiously declared that he ‘would rather have three or four teeth pulled out’ than spend more time with Franco.

Throughout 1940 and 1941, Spain issued strict orders against allowing refugees to enter its territory. Despite this, about 20,000 to 30,000 Jews entered Spain. But they passed on through Portugal to Britain and the US. Many other Jews were arrested by the Spanish authorities who intended to return them to France. This would have meant certain death for them.

On 5 May 1941, Franco’s Dirección General de Seguridad ordered each civil governor to compile a list of ‘all the national and foreign Jews living in the province … showing their personal and political leanings, means of living, commercial activities, degree of danger and security category.’

Provincial governors were ordered to look out especially for Sephardic Jews, descendants of those expelled from Spain in 1492, because their Ladino language and Hispanic background helped them fit into Spanish society. ‘Their adaptation to our environment and their similar temperament allow them to hide their origins more easily,’ said the order issued in May 1941.

These lists of 6,000 members of ‘this notorious race’ helped to compile the Archivos Judaicos, which Franco’s regime maintained at least until 1944. El Pais claimed in 2010 that, as Spain negotiated its possible entry into the war on the side of the Axis powers, the list was handed to Heinrich Himmler.

Among the Sephardim, the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain by the Inquisition in the late 15th century, at least 550 Sephardim in Thessaloniki in Greece had Spanish papers.

In an example of singular bravery, the Spanish consul general in Athens, Sebastian Romero Radigales, mounted an heroic effort to save them, managing to move some to the relative safety of the Italian-controlled zone, and – despite their deportation to Bergen-Belsen – ensuring another 365 were brought to Spain by train in February 1944. However, Franco insisted the Sephardim could move through Spain but not remain there.

In German-occupied Hungary in March 1944, two Spanish diplomats in Budapest, Angel Sanz Briz and Giorgio Perlasca, issued passports, letters of protection and placed Jews in rented buildings under the Spanish flag. These two men saved the lives of around 5,200 Hungarian Jews. Sanz Briz was later honoured at Yad Vashem.

I am reminded this week too of the story told by Ronnie Drew in Sez He and by many others of how Brendan Behan decided to go to Spain on holidays while it was still struggling Franco’s brutal regime.

When he arrived at Madrid Airport, Behan found the police had obviously been advised about his political views and were waiting for him at the passport checkpoint.

‘What is the purpose of your visit to Spain, Mr Behan?’

‘I have come to attend General Franco’s funeral.’

‘But the Generalissimo is not yet dead.’

‘In that case,’ says Brendan, ‘I’ll wait.’

It is said he was deported soon afterwards.

As I strolled in the atmospheric streets south of Plaza Mayor that May Day ten years ago, elderly couples proudly displayed lapel pins with the flag of Republican Spain. They had endured decades of suffering and oppression and cruelty throughout the Franco years, and now they were having their day in the sun. Those who survive must be relieved that Franco has been removed this week from his place in the sun in the Valley of the Fallen, built built by the forced labour of political prisoners.

Franco’s planned burial in Madrid’s Catedral de Almudena has not taken place (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Anglicans on a quiet corner in Madrid

Madrid: a modern office block reflects an older church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Patrick Comerford

I had long avoided visiting Spain. At first, my excuse was the Franco regime and the lack of human rights. Later, in my own stupid snobbery, I pretended I was being deterred by images and prejudices created by popular package holidays and high-rise beach resorts.

But my interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue should have brought me to Spain many years ago: the Iberian Peninsula was part of the Islamic world for more centuries than Spain has been regarded as a Christian country. The Moors gave Spain a wonderful legacy, including Alhambra, Grenada and Córdoba.

Eventually, Ryanair persuaded me I was wrong, and I spent the May bank holiday weekend in Madrid. I quickly realised the city is one of the architectural capitals of Europe with some of the finest art galleries and museums, including the Prado, with its collections of Goya and Velazquez, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which houses Picasso’s Guernica, and the Thyssen Bornemisza, with major works by Titian, Goya, Picasso and Rubens.

The Royal Palace … built by the Bourbons in the style of Versailles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

But Madrid’s history really only begins in the year 852, when the Moors built a fortress near the banks of the Manzanares River. Those Moors had crossed from North Africa in the early eighth century, conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula within a few years, and established an independent emirate based in Córdoba.

In the year 852, as part of his plans to protect the northern approaches to Toledo, Emir Muhammad I built a fortress (alcázar) on the site of the present Royal Palace in Madrid. A small community grew up around this fortress or alcázar with the name Mayrit, which gives us the present name of Madrid.

The equestrian statue of Felipe III in the Plaza Mayor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

In time, the resistance to the Muslim Moors grew, and Ramiro II briefly occupied Mayrit in the 932. Eventually, in their drive to capture Toledo, the sleepy outpost of Mayrit was taken by the army of Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085. Despite these upheavals and a failed attempt by the Moors to retake the fortress in 1109, Mayrit remained a sleepy village outpost. Its remote location attracted many monks and new monastic settlements, and Madrid soon had 13 churches – more than enough for its tiny population.

Madrid’s Catedral de Almudena was not completed until 1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

It was not until 1202 that Madrid acquired the status of a town. But it was still dominated by Church interests, and when a dispute arose over hunting rights in the area, a compromise was worked out recognising that the Church owned the soil while the local people, but the local people, the Madrileños, had the rights to hunt everything above the soil.

Those hunting rights soon attracted the ruling Castilian royal families, who made the area their own hunting ground. In 1309, the first royal cortes or parliament was called in Madrid, and in 1339 Alfonso XI held court in Madrid. However, Madrid remained a provincial town, and in 1498 – six years after Columbus reached America and the Inquisition had expelled the Jews from Spain – it was necessary to issue an edict banning pigs from roaming freely through the streets of Madrid.

Spanish unification was completed in 1521, and by then – despite the failure of the Spanish Armada – Spain was unrivalled as a military, naval and political power. But it was forty years before Felipe II moved the capital from Toledo to Madrid in 1561. Within four decades the population of the once remote provincial town had grown from 20,000 to 85,000.

The interior of the Catedral de Almudena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Through all the political changes and upheavals of the centuries that followed, including the Habsburg dynasty, the 14-year War of Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic occupation, coups, revolutions, dictatorships and civil wars, and even a brief period when the capital was removed to Valladolid, Madrid continued to grow and expand, with some of the most beautiful experiments in public, ecclesiastical and domestic architecture.

Colegiata de San Isidro seen through an arch in Plaza Mayor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

The dome of Santa Cruz rising above the streets of Madrid (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Apart from Madrid’s new Roman Catholic Cathedral, many of the churches I tried to visit on May Day were closed – including Colegiata de San Isidro, which served as the city’s cathedral for centuries, the Basilica Pontifica de San Miguel, now run by Opus Dei, the parish church of Santa Cruz, next door to the Foreign Ministry, Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, where Goya is buried, and the Anglican Church of Saint George.

Saint George’s is on a quiet corner of Calle de Hermonsilla in the Barrio de Salamanca, a pleasant residential area near the city centre developed as a middle-class suburb by the Marqués de Salamanca in the 1860s. Over a dozen nationalities make up the weekly congregations in Saint George’s, where the chaplain is the Revd Ian Hutchinson Cervantes.

A street sign in old Madrid (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Saint George’s was consecrated in March 1925, but the Book of Common Prayer was first published in Spanish by SPCK in 1839 and there has been an official Anglican presence in Madrid since 1864, when the Revd William Campbell was appointed chaplain to the British Embassy and began holding services in a small room in a private house.

Today, Saint George’s holds three services on Sundays, two mid-week services that provide quiet and reflective moments in the middle of busy lives in this bustling capital, and hosts a number of week-day activities, including self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers, and two mother-and-toddler groups.

Madrid has a rich architectural heritage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Larger premises were soon provided by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and in 1900 the coach house of the old British Embassy was converted into a church. Later on, a generous bequest from Edgar Allen and contributions from the English-speaking community were used to build the present church.

Saint George’s is among Madrid’s listed buildings of historical interest. It was designed by a Spanish architect, Teodoro de Anasagasti, who used elements of the Spanish Romanesque style, including the cruciform plan, semicircular apse, bell tower and tiled root, and the characteristic brick -and- stone style of Spain’s unique “Mudéjar” tradition. He blended these with specifically Anglican forms such as the porch or the chancel with its dossal, and skilfully introduced light into the nave through the children’s chapel under the tower.

Saint George’s Anglican Church in a quiet corner of Salamanca (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

The chancel in Saint George’s has remarkable stained-glass windows representing Saint George, patron of England, Saint James the Great, patron of Spain, Saint John, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The windows in the nave portray Saint David of Wales, Saint Andrew of Scotland, Saint Patrick of Ireland and Saint Francis of Assisi. The windows in the north choir depict Saint Cecilia and Saint Antony Abbot, and thee is a window in the porch depicting the Nativity.

The other Anglican presence in Madrid is provided by the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church (Iglesia Española Reformada Episcopal), which traces its apostolic succession and the three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons to the Church of Ireland in the 19th century. The late Archbishop John Gregg, who frequently visited the Reformed Episcopal Churches in Spain and Portugal, once described them as “the adopted children of the Church of Ireland.”

The Spanish Church has full membership of the Anglican Communion and is in full communion with the Old Catholic Church and part of the Porvoo Communion and European Anglican and Scandinavian Lutheran Episcopal Churches.

The Church dates from the 1870s and 1880s, when dissident priests from the Roman Catholic Church, including Juan Bautista Cabrera, wished to reform Spanish Catholicism along Reformation principles but to maintain apostolic succession.

Bishop Juan Bautista Cabrera, first Bishop of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church

In 1878, the Church of England declined a request from Cabrera to consecrate a bishop for these priests. Two years later, the Episcopal Church in the US sent the newly-consecrated Bishop Henry Chauncey Riley from Mexico to Spain and Portugal to help organise the dissident congregations in both countries, each with synodical government. After the Spanish synod in Seville in 1881, the Bishop of Meath, William Conyngham (Lord Plunket, later Archbishop of Dublin) visited Madrid in 1884 with the Bishop of Down, and expressed an interest in consecrating bishops for the two emerging churches. However, those plans were opposed by the 1888 Lambeth Conference and by Archbishop Edward White Benson of Canterbury, but on 23 September 1894 Cabera was consecrated as the first bishop of the new church by Archbishop Plunket and Bishop Charles Stack of Clogher and Bishop Thomas Welland of Down.

When Bishop Cabrera died in 1916, the Spanish Church was left without a bishop. Eventually, the Church was placed under the episcopal authority of Archbishop Gregg of Dublin, and from 1924 he made regular visits to Spain for confirmations and ordinations, even at the height of the Spanish Civil War.

During the civil war, and then under the Franco regime, the new Church suffered persecution and felt isolated, with churches and schools being closed forcibly. Then in 1954, Archbishop James McCann of Armagh – assisted by the Bishops of Minnesota and Indianapolis – consecrated Santos M. Molina as the second bishop of the Spanish Church.

Since then, the Church has experienced new growth. Many restrictions on the Church were lifted after the death of Franco in 1975. Tthe Church gained legal recognition and full liberty in 1979, and in 1980 it became a full member of the Anglican Communion as an extra-provincial diocese under the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today, the Church sees itself as continuing the tradition of the ancient Hispanic Church, and has its own liturgy, known as the Mozarabic Rite or Visigothic Liturgy. The term Mozarabic describes the Spanish Christians who lived under the Muslim rulers in al-Andalus, and the rite, which dates from the seventh and eighth centuries, is attributed to Saint Isidore of Seville, who played an influential role at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633.

The Church had one diocese and 20 parishes, served by one bishop, the Right Revd Carlos López-Lozano, and 22 priests, including one woman. The Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church is divided into three administrative areas, each with an archdeacon: Catalonia, Eastern Spain, and the Balearic Islands; Andalusia and the Canary Islands; and Central and Northern Spain. Apart from Madrid, there are parishes in Salamanca, Valencia, Valladolid, Seville, Oviedo, Tarragone, Murcia and Alicante.

The Cathedral of the Redeemer on Calle de la Beneficencia, near the Municipal Museum, was built in 1880 by the architect Enrique Repullés, and its congregation, organised in 1869 by the Revd Antonio Carrasco, is the oldest surviving non-Roman Catholic congregation in Madrid.

As I strolled in the atmospheric streets south of Plaza Mayor on May Day, I noticed many elderly couples proudly wearing lapel pins with the flag of Republican Spain. I thought how they and any others, including members of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church must have endured decades of suffering and oppression and cruelty under the Franco regime. And I rejoiced in their freedom and in mine.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the monument commemorating Cervantes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2009)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay was first published in the June 2009 editions of the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine(Cashel and Ossory).

The website of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church is: http://www.anglicanos.org/

May Day in Madrid

From Plaza de Cibeles to Sol, Calle de Alcala was a riot of red flags and banners, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple (Photograph: Patrick Comeford)

Patrick Comerford

Thursday, 30 April

5 a.m: I’m waiting in the early morning in Dublin Airport to board a Ryanair flight to Madrid. I’ve failed to cross paths with my nephew, Ciaran, who is heading off at the same time to Kinshasa to take up a new posting in DR Congo. It’s good that the older generation can find heroes in the the younger generation, and not just find heroes and role models in the past.

5.30: Two familiar faces appear 20 metres away – Anthony Coughlan, formerly of Trinity College Dublin and the Irish Sovereignty Movement, and Declan Ganley of Liberas.

I always found Tony Coughlan’s take on the European project a bit too hard to swallow. It appears isolationist, irredentist and too close to a form of nationalism that I find bleak and frightening.

As for Declan Ganley and Libertas, their blend of anti-European rhetoric and all the phobias of the far-right frighten me when I consider the prospects for the next referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

These two men are obviously happy in each other’s company. But why does that cause me concern? Who’s the adviser and who’s the planner? I’m glad they’re not going to Madrid.

5.40: Boarding flight FR 7158 to Madrid. Michael O’Leary is there himself, scanning the barcodes and tearing the stubs off the check-in printouts. Whatever you think of the man’s attitude to his workforce or his crude way of gaining publicity, Michael has done more to bring the people of European capitals together than all the people in Libertas and the Irish Sovereignty Movement ever did.

He smiles, and I’m going down the steps to the plane before I realise who he is. Should I go back and ask for a refund for my cancelled flight from Stansted in February?

9.30 a.m. Spanish time: Flight FR 7158 arrives on time in Madrid. There’s the usual cavalcade of trumpet sounds from Ryanair. Michael O’Leary takes his turn in the queue to leave the plane.

Do the flights he’s on always arrive on time? Is he ever late? Is he told he has too much baggage? Is he ever stupid enough to buy one of those silly scratch cards they try to sell me on every flight? I’m much more interested in getting my money back on my cancelled flights. But he was sitting in row 3, and is gone before I can get my one bag out of the overhead bin. Perhaps I should have thanked him for his own contribution to making Europe more united, more pleasant and more attractive.

11 a.m.: I’ve checked in at the Foxá 32 Hotel, close to the strange leaning Torres Puerta Europa at Plaza de Castilla and the former water-tower of Sala del Canal de Isabel II, now used for photographic exhibitions.

After a walk around the block, a short Metro journey to Plaza de Alonso Martinez, coffee on Calle de Genova, and a stroll through busy working streets, it was time to hop on an open-top bus at Plaza de la Puerta del Sol, and get a first impression of the principal sites and Madrid, and get my bearings.

My first impression is of a city that is endowed richly with centuries of architectural heritage and that has plenty of parks, trees, green spaces and fountains.

Back at Sol, its time to start walking and to see some of those sights close up.

2.30 p.m.: Plaza Mayor is full of mime artists, buskers, bands and street artists. It is tempting to linger just a little longer over late lunch, but I only have two days and I want to continue seeing some of those sights closer up.

The west end of Calle Mayor opens across to the Catedral de la Almudena. It is difficult to grasp why a modern cathedral, completed as late as 1993, should be built in High Gothic style, rather than reflecting contemporary, post-Vatican II understandings of the liturgy and the place of the people in the Church.

The frescoes in the apse are theologically exciting, but the shrine to the Virgen de la Almudena is overpowering and in the worst possible taste, while the side altar shrine to the founder of Opus Dei, José María Escrivá de Balsguer, is another distressing symbol of the darker undercurrents of Spanish Catholicism.

The disturbing priorities of the cathedral planners and builders are reflected in the decision to build the church facing south rather than the traditional eastward orientation, so that the principle façade faces out onto the Royal Palace, providing the royal family with the opportunity to stage its regal entrances on grand occasions.

8.30 p.m.: The Spanish gave us the Siesta, so it would have been churlish not to enjoy the pleasure of one, even if it was late and brief. After that, it was back to Plaza Mayor for dinner. This vegetarian was worried that Spanish omelette might have been the only alternative to tappas, tortilla and paella. The restaurants rimming the square may be tourist traps, but they offered good fare and good value, and with the buskers and street artists still filling the square it was as good as being in any pricey restaurant pretending to offer a floor show.

10.45 p.m.: The hotel bar is closed, but across the street Laredo is a working class bar offering a warm welcome. Few tourists probably stray in here, and the welcome and atmosphere are both authentic.

Friday 1 May:

After breakfast, it’s time to set off to see inside some of those magnificent sights that I only saw from the outside from the top of the red bus yesterday. But I had forgotten. This is May Day. Monday is the public holiday back in Ireland. But Spain endured decades of fascism and oppression, and of course May Day is celebrated on May Day in Madrid.

Art galleries such as the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza are closed – the workers have a day off.

But from Plaza de Cibeles to Sol, Calle de Alcala is a riot of red flags and banners, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and with a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple. If the right can be triumphal in the Catedral de la Almudena, then at least on May Day the streets of Madrid belong to the left and to the workers. In Plaza de Cibeles, even Cybele and her chariot were bedecked in red and republican colours.

The Prime Minister made a brave decision to turn up as most of those who spoke at the closing rally condemned the close link between the government and Spain’s financial institutions, and blamed the government for a share in Spain’s current economic woes.

I was impressed by the speed with which the streets were cleaned up afterwards – the workers of Madrid looked after their city. The churches I tried to visit were closed – including Colegiata de San Isidro, which served as the city’s cathedral for centuries, the Basilica Pontifica de San Miguel, now run by Opus Dei, the parish church of Santa Cruz, next door to the Foreign Ministry, Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, where Goya is buried, and the Anglican Church of Saint George.

But as I stroll in the atmospheric streets south of Plaza Mayor, elderly couples proudly display lapel pins with the flag of Republican Spain. They endured decades of suffering and oppression and cruelty throughout the Franco years. Now they are having their day in the sun. May Day is a day to celebrate for those who have struggled for human rights and the rights of workers.

Saturday 2 May:

8.30 a.m.: Instead of getting the Metro back to the airport, I opt for a taxi. On the north side of the city, looking back towards Madrid, the leaning twin towers of Torres Puerta Europa at Plaza de Castilla stand out above the skyline. Madrid is an architecturally exciting city and Spain is a modern democracy that can be proud of its pace in Europe today.

9 a.m.: Waiting at the Ryanair desk in Terminal 1, I wonder if Michael O’Leary will be on the flight today. Then there’s an announcement: a flight has been delayed for an hour. I think it’s mine and stroll off for a much needed espresso. If the flight is delayed he can’t be here, and there’s no point in looking for that refund.

But I was wrong. Flight FR7159 is not delayed … it is a flight to Marrakech that is an hour late. I rush back, and board the 10.10 flight to Dublin.

On board, I catch up with what’s been happening in Irish politics. Declan Ganley spent May Day in Rome, sharing a platform with a Spanish activist who demands a “white Europe,” and disturbingly far-right politicians from the Czech Republic, France, Poland and even one from Italy who is unrestrained in his admiration for Mussolini. So much for May Day and workers’ rights.

11.40: The plane arrives on time in Dublin. And another fanfare of trumpets. Once again, Ryanair has succeeded in bringing the capitals of Europe closer together. Declan Ganley and Tony Coughlan can keep each other and their friends. Give me Michael O’Leary any day. I’m glad I spent May Day in Madrid and not in Rome.