Book Description

Based upon his diary entries, personal contacts, conversations and dispatches, My Mission to Spain chronicles American historian and politician Claude G. Bowers’ time in Spain as U.S. Ambassador. This fascinating historical record, which was first published in 1954, details Bowers’ travels throughout the country, as well as the hectic politics that foreshadowed the Spanish Civil War. “For six years, during the most dramatic period in Spanish history since the crusade against the Moors, I was accredited Ambassador to Spain by President Roosevelt. I loved Spain and had admiration and affection for the Spanish people. “In driving thousands of miles through this magic land I came to love its mountains looming on the horizon everywhere, enveloped in their blue or purple haze, the quaint old dusty villages soaked with history, the old cathedrals with their works of art, the romance of the aged cities, the laughing, happy people. “Across the stage will pass distinguished non-political figures of international renown—Benavente, the dramatist; Unamuno, the philosopher; Madariaga, the historian and biographer; Belmonte, the famous matador; Zuloaga, the painter; Margarita Xirgu, the actress; Argentina, the dancer; and Ramón del Valle Inclán and Pérez de Ayala, the novelists. “The political leaders in the forefront behind whom the totalitarian conspiracy was hatching are all here as I knew them—Azaña, Lerroux, Gil Robles, Count Romanones, Martinez Barrio, Juan Negrin, Prieto, and all the others. I have tried to paint their portraits with fidelity to the truth.”—Claude G. Bowers