Читать книгу His Counterfeit Condesa - Joanna Fulford - Страница 3

The Napoleonic Wars provide the backdrop for this novel, which is set in Spain in 1812 in the Peninsular Campaign. The story takes place in the months between the Siege of Badajoz and the Battle of Salamanca.

I was once lucky enough to live in the Spanish capital for a while. Madrid is a beautiful and vibrant city, and also provided a perfect base for exploring the rest of Iberia. The impressions and experiences from that time have stayed with me ever since, and from them I have drawn much of the local material for this book. Other sources of inspiration came from Sunday morning visits to the Prado Museum. Goya’s paintings—in particular Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo—give a real flavour of the Napoleonic period and the brutal struggle against foreign oppression. The Spanish waged a highly effective guerrilla campaign against the French, and this forms a strand of the subplot in my novel.

However, El Cuchillo is entirely my own invention. Like so many Spanish towns, Ciudad Rodrigo is a wonderful place to visit—rather like taking a journey back in time. It isn’t hard to imagine Wellington and his staff walking through the halls of the Palacio de los Castro, or red-coat soldiers manning the walls of the town. These still bear the marks of the bombardment. The castillo no longer has a military function; these days it is a parador, one of the many historic state-owned hotels.