Madrid and the Habsburgs Part 4 by Robert Fullarton Copyright 2019

Madrid and the Habsburgs Part 4
by Robert Fullarton   Copyright  2019


There are a labyrinth of streets and passageways going right through the heart of Madrid, the Calle Major, up the Plaza Santa Anna, through countless bars where parties seemingly never cease and lights never fade.

On the Plaza Santa Anna you can savour the tastes of Spain and Castillian cuisine. In one fine cervezeria, a visitor is greeted with the sight of Jambon hanging on hooks, wooden counters and Spanish tiled surroundings, with South American waiters and photos of Spanish bull fights. The people are laid back, as guests pour into the premises for a late night selection of tapas. Northern Europeans are not accustomed to the late night lifestyle of the Spanish, where most  people eat at 10 o'clock or even 11 at night, (when I start yearning for my bed). While parties throng the streets with midnight revelries that keep me awake, from my hotel bed, surrounded by roadworks and the clamour of traffic.

Madrid is part grit, part glamour, part new world, part old world, historical  with monuments to the past and prestige of its empire scattered across this city of 5 million people and yet at times brash. Standing at 2,190 ft, Madrid is Europe's highest capital and one in which some complain of the altitude and difficulty breathing. Madrid in summertime becomes congested and is known for its smog in the summer heat.

In the Habsburg and Bourbon quarters of old Madrid that grew out of a small town, (a backwater of Castille) to eventually become the capital of the fading Spanish empire. Perhaps in some ways Madrid could not match the imperial, historical and ecclesiastical grandeur of Toledo or Valladolid as the antiquated capitals and centers of power that linked Charles V to his great European empire. However this city became in some sense the project of Phillip II and his future heirs, as the center of their empire, where Habsburg, red Renaissance architecture developed and Bourbon French style, Neo-Classical boulevards were set out in the centuries ahead, as the city grew in time. This would in time become the city of many great artists (such as Velazquez and Goya), poets and writers and witness many revolutions.

In examination, it can be easily stated that Charles failed to unite Europe under one systematic and homogeneous Christian church, as the Reformation had spread and expanded to the north and east of Europe, the intellectual war of ideas too was ongoing with the counter reformation in its infancy. Germany was split in two, with the rebellious Protestant north and the loyal Catholic south of Germany. Turkey remained the main threat and dominant force to be contended with against both Christendom itself and the territories of Charles empire, whose naval dominance of the Mediterranean was only checked after the Catholic Leagues victory at Lepanto .

Phillip II spent his reign trying to fulfill the grand dreams of his father. He now moved his court to the Alcazar of Madrid to be his new capital and to set on expanding the city. But after defeating the French at the Battle of San Quentin in 1557, Phillip decided on building the palace and monastery of San Lorenzo Del Escorial  in homage to both his father Charles V and St. Laurence on celebration of the saint, to whom he attributed his victory to. This Palace was to become an architectural triumph which Phillip supervised and planned meticulously at the backdrop of the Guadarrama Mountains. This Building was designed purposely to look like a gridiron, to represent the one which saint Laurence had been martyred on.

This building represented the religious severity of intensely Catholic Phillip and yet also display his artistic passion for architectural perfection. Treasures of art and scholarship await all who come to this pantheon of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty.

Madrid and the Spanish Habsburgs PART 3 by Robert Fullarton copyright 2019

Madrid and the Spanish Habsburgs PART 3
by Robert Fullarton copyright 2019


The Prado museum in Madrid, hosts Spain's premier collection of art, showcasing many masterpieces from some of Europe's greatest artists. It was for me a much anticipated glimpse of the old Habsburg world of Charles V and Phillip II and the world of the great artist and his patron.

Here we have in the main foyer of the museum at the Goya entrance there is an impressive Bronze statue of Charles V the titular emperor of the Germans, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, the Indies and Italy, striking a serpent with a fantastic spear in the spirit of Hercules and the 12 labours. Move down a little, through the great hall and you will see Titian's painting of the great Habsburg monarch, and the greatest equestrian portrait of all time. It has Charles on horse, holding reign will the stallion prances as if in joy, with majestic strokes at the setting of a victory against the German Protestant princes. The painting equates the antiquated equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, and its propaganda gave the message of an emperor who was in control, despite the many enemies and threats which he could not in fact conquer, like his gout which crippled him into retirement!

Following suit Phillip II heir and successor to the Spanish throne and the fanatical Catholic vision of the Habsburg dynasty sought out Titian in Milan where we have his grand portrait as duke of Milan as a young man, in battle armour and with an iron rod, next to Charles' famous equestrian portrait. Down this hallway we have a whose who of historical figures in both Spanish and Habsburg history. We have Rubens, and his equestrian portrait of Phillip the II, (whom we know as the loser of the First Spanish armada) and Phillip III his eventual heir (and unremarkable monarch whose participation in international wars set Spain's empire into a slow decline).

We can see the portraits of Habsburg queens and cousins, showcasing the infamous Habsburg long jaw and puffy lips, as the incest of intermarriage between Austrian uncles and Spanish nieces crisscrossed to create unhealthy and morbid figures such as Charles the II "the bewitched" last of the Habsburg kings, (a man with water on his brain, a giant protruding chin, infertile, balding and interested in digging up dead relatives for examination). The legacy of Emperor Charles V and his grandfather Maximilian was not only ruined by generations of inbreeding but by the successful actions of various English governments and Dutch rebels that thwarted the Habsburg vision for European hegemony and Catholic totalitarianism in Europe.

However this was a Golden age of art with the blossoming of Spanish  and Italian masters in the 16th century, often through royal patronage, we have the wonders of Flemish art which were sponsored by both Charles and Phillip, (the later in particular bought up much Flemish art for his own personal collection) with the works of Hieronymus Bosh, Peter Bruegel the elder, Rogier Van der Weyden and Rubens. In the paintings of Bosch we have the recurring theme of human baseness and badness and divine purity, judgment and the dissolution of the sky and the earth. Bosch's world is like a fantastic medieval Where's Wally not for childish amusement but for moralistic and spiritual edification. Each corner of the painting perplexes, excites and frightens, as men are devoured by demons, as hybrid animals eat men, and bosch himself appears in the Garden of Heavenly delights as a dismembered giant, whose body is inhabited by monsters. Such were not meant to be children's tales on canvas but as eternal warnings against a world always on the edge of the apocalypse and the judgement of humanity.

Madrid and the Spanish Habsburgs- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2019 Part 1 and Part 2

Madrid and the Spanish Habsburgs- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2019Part 1

I went on a holiday to Madrid for several reasons. One of the foremost reasons was to trace the history of the Habsburg empire in Spain back to the days of Charles V (the Holy Roman emperor) and Phillip II, as the man whose armada disastrously failed to invade Elizabeth's England.

In those days, Charles V inherited an empire which stretched from the newly discovered Indian territories of Peru and Mexico, across Spain, the Low countries, Milan, Naples to the Austrian territories. Charles V was in 1519 voted by various electors and princes to be Holy Roman Emperor- in the line of emperors since Charlemagne in 800AD- to be Christ's official hand on earth, king of the princes of the German states and defender of the central Christian states. It was a mysterious and sacred tradition to the common folk of the time, having been seen as the supreme secular authority in corroboration with the sacred authority of the Pope in Rome. For almost a hundred years before, and for another 500 years after, that title and authority, that power and prestige would rest in the hands of a Swiss family of nobles who rose in rank and power, to become the first archdukes of Austria.

Through the dynastic ambitions of Charles' grandfather Maximilian I, Charles became sole inheritor of many Kingdoms and thrones, with his younger brother Ferdinand I inheriting the junior position- and one of subservience to his elder brother. Maximilian's ambitions ran into the spheres of myth and legend. Here was a man who forged his own family tree and genealogy so that his family and name would be connected to Noah from the Old testament, the mythical figure of Hector from the Illiad, and as a direct descendant of Emperor Augustus. Here to was a man who used the power of art for political means, and who hired such artists as Albrecht Durer to portray him and his future dynasty in a glowing new prestige. Art presented the King as a mythical figure, a man whose cenotaph (and empty tomb in Innsbruck) is guarded by life size statues including the King's personal hero, King Arthur.

Maximilian became Holy Roman emperor in 1508 to rise above the dukes of Austria by forging a new title, that of Archduke, and he solidified his power in the blood of his family through a marriage with the daughter of the duke of Burgundy and the Low countries, (Charles the Bold) Margaret of Burgundy. His son Phillip "the Handsome"married Juana of Castile, the daughter of Isabella I and Ferdinand of Aragon. Phillip would become King Phillip I of Castile, but would not reign for long, as he died prematurely (though it was suspected that he died of poisoning from his own father in law Ferdinand of Aragon).

At age 6 Charles would rise to inherit and reap the rewards of the dynastic ambitions of his grandfather Maximilian, as the apogee and zenith of Habsburg Power was approaching and the dawn of the Spanish empire or Habsburg domination of Europe was rising, with the emptying of Incan treasures, great fleets were being built and new lands were explored in the name of King Carlos I of Spain.




Part 2

As i walk by the window of the Hotel restaurant, I spot the name Cajamarca, it invokes back to me a memory, of a book I have been reading on the Spanish conquistadors, and  on the episode of Francisco Pizarro and the conquest of the Inca empire. At Cajamarca, Atahualpa the Inca emperor had only just defeated his own brother Huascar in a civil war of succession, and on that very day in the central square, Pizarro and his men set a trap to capture Atahualpa with Arquebuses and cavalry concealed through each passage and entrance of the square. The sound of cannons and smoke brought down the kings guard sending men in chaos in all directions, as the charge of "Santiago" was shouted and the Spanish fired in all directions unto the crowd of Inca warriors. Atahualpa was captured and a large sum of Gold and silver was offered by the Inca emperor in ransom for his life.

Names, episodes and incidents from history are abound on the calles and plazas of the city. Madrid itself was once a small town, a backwater, of dirt, sewerage and poverty. Toledo was the majestic old medieval capital of the Spanish Empire, and was only downgraded during Phillip II's subsequent desire to decentralize the power of Toledo. A new Capital was sought and the Moorish alcazar became the Habsburg palace of reigning emperors.

Today Madrid is a city of hustle and bustle, of wide avenues, teaming with life, with loud boisterous parties spilling out from the Plazas unto the side streets.  Tapas bars and old cevezerias can be found on the Plaza Santa Anna, some of which I found to be quaint, atmospheric and friendly. Hot chocolate is a must in this city, a thick dark variety, similar to the old Peruvian equivalent, it is an acquired taste, and often eaten with deep fried donuts called Churros. There are wide avenues in Madrid, huge roads converge on the Plaza de Cibeles, (named after a pagan prophetess of ancient Greece) beside the white neo-classical, marble, resplendent town hall. This is an intersection between the calle de Alcala and the Paseo del Prado. From the north of the city, at across from the City hall, this is our point of entry and our point of embarking from the autobus to the hotel on the Calle de Alcala.

The sight of roadworks, of the Sevilla metro line all dug up along the Calle Alcala are a dismal sight, with buildings covered up for renovation and much of the sidewalk fenced off, crowds of people of all walks of life, crowd past as human traffic huddles and congests this city, which at times could remind you of some of the big and imposing buildings in Manhattan. This is indeed a cosmopolitan city. Much of the old Habsburg buildings have been replaced or dwarfed by the sheer construction and expansion of the city that has happened under the subsequent Bourbon, Socialist and Francoist regimes. However the heart of old Habsburg city, traced back to the time of Phillip II and Phillip III can be seen in the impressive red bricked facade of the Plaza Mayor and the Plaza de la Villa. Classical and renaissance architecture speaks of the old  colonial empire, with arches and cobbled streets to match the modern changes to the city, as indeed the old back street waste and its clientele indeed live well at night. A city has one face by day and another for the night, a city has one character by light and another in the darkness!

The Crocuses- Copyright Robert Fullarton

The crocuses
by Robert Fullarton

Each year this crop yields
and grows
a delicate flower
a crocuse
whose saffron stems
were sought in ancient Persia
picked in fields
and sold to sultans
a precious spice
carried on ships across
seas and times
Venetian curiosities,
Dutch conquests
where the orient calls
the exotic window
 opens
in my porch
a short lived time
heralds a summer
of times of joy
and light returning

Truth under fire.. Part 1 Christian.Apologetics by Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

Truth under fire.. Part 1   Christian.Apologetics 

by Robert Fullarton

Copyright 2017

These days in the modern world, one looks around the circumference of belief systems and likes to nibble upon each one, enjoying the benefits but ignoring the contradicting believes, or even difficult questions that arise. Its has become a truly “liberal” and “modern” approach to the depths of life. But whatever we see among the scholars and elites of our society, the objective and constructive truth of our forefathers is very much one belief system not to be considered or certainly embraced, because it is the one which is being very cunningly demolished. To often people will be lead by their emotions to ignore the entire process of justice, of what one considers to be evil, and whether evil needs to be eliminated and if so how could it be dealt with. These are metaphysical perils and trials which the ancients have wrestled with over and over again. Truth has not been exterminated by the changing of the times, whether one becomes a modernist or a post-modernist, a vegan or a cannibal, truth remains eternal, despite the many injunctions we have brought against it. Truth is in respect to the many deep questions we ask, which we see in the world today, they corroborate with the deep internal radar we call conscience. We cannot use science against the moral questions of humanity, but rather I believe it supplements the issue, as the ongoing need for not just preservation but elevation of mind, from ignorance to true knowledge, being needed. But knowledge of the truth correlates to knowledge of reality, for he who has not knowledge of the truth will have a foggy and murky view of reality. If men have indeed been called a “fallen creature” then why not consider it to be a truth, as it can be evidently seen, like an ongoing experiment in the social jungle around us. Man’s badness relates to man’s strange desire for something better, despite the social Darwinist’s protestations that the professor makes...

“man is this thing? Who just happens upon this other thing, who happened to come into being one day, but was exterminated another day and really life is just about extinctions in the space of great lengths of time and nothing can really be known or learnt about life, because you see everything you learn makes no sense, and so I understand everything, despite really knowing nothing. But why do I have this preference and this perspective, Yet again I don’t know why, but I do hate that ancient primitive view of there being good and bad, of there being this god who watched me all the time, and made me go to Sunday school, who seemed to be the god of timetables and rule books,  I was told what to do in school, of where the teachers told me that I had to do my homework before Monday morning class commenced and my father really gave me a hard time and told me that if I drank behind the bike shed, that I would be expelled from the church, excommunicated from the school and abandoned by various religious uncles and cast unto the outer reaches of the universe and yes man is a really mean and unkind creature, which I am opposed to, but not why, since I have been conditioned to think so, but cannot agree upon anything being true, other than the meaningless bouncing of atoms in a wide open space in time!”

However the war on objective truth is not just upon metaphysics but concerns the entire spectrum of conservative, traditional and even scientific fact (for instance the changing stance on gender and sexuality and the moral issues of humanity) which represents rather the bent and sway of ideology rather than scientific fact, against proven results and consequences, which are ignored by the supposedly omniscient and omnipotent media, who promote the lies. I can only relate this contagion of untruth to the media manipulation used by the worst dictators of the previous centuries. However the time has come and is really coming when one can call night, day and day night and state blue to be green and green to be blue and murder to be, justifiable and free speech to be a dogmatic crime or taboo. To be honest human power when used wrongly, by the wrong hearts and minds, corrupts absolutely, but also these days tries to destroy the truth in the process. These changes are what Frederich Nietzsche, the German nihilist philosopher predicted where he stated that he wanted a “transvaluation” or re-evaluation of the Christian value system and where he wanted the roots of Christianity to be removed in all traces from society. Of course in time the relativistic and pluralistic society we saw grew in time, and its cannibalising of society and institution only served to bring the house and stage, the mountain atop of man, with the great robustness of Christian society down to a squabbling race of bureaucrats, social deconstructionists, media men and agenda pushers.

Truth concerns the spiritual reality of a spiritual being, whose personality is reflected in the physical being called Jesus Christ, this truth shines into the material world we live in and is seen in the matters of conscience, observed in the forms of excellence in material life which we have beholden, but only understood when such was rightly revealed in proper context, from proper source and understood in proportion to God, measure by measure, the conundrums of reality, that make sense through a revelation. To understand the personality and character of God, is to understand the eternal nature of what is good, complete, perfect in time, essence and morally sacrosanct in the face of untruths. If men choose one idea over another what makes him think such is so and that it is a universal truth, let him examine his own belief system and weigh it up in time and that too is why I believe in God, because I believe it all to be true, this has been a journey, and this has been a rough road to walk, but why walk it, because it is worth it, because it is true. I believe to be so.

Even in difficult times, a man can write, a man can live, men will speak the truth and be punished as they were in the days before our comfortable democracies. Telling the truth has once again come with a prison sentence. These chilling times, come with a passive hatred, a chilly wasteland contains the anger beneath the layers of media based propaganda, hoping once again to rise from the layers of their insincerity.

It is easy to adopt a fashion or a fad, it is easy when a man believes in nothing, because he risks nothing, his reputation can be an insincere facade. However, what is true, is worth defending against the critics for all that is good and sacred, at all times, testing its validity and quality. Step out and risk your reputation and legacy, what have men to do or say? The world of men is so easily damnable and flawed that it is obvious. Who can take man seriously? It is easy to jump into the path of the moving tide and not to go against the aggressive waves of violent atavistic mob rule.

A birth is a difficult thing By Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

A birth is a difficult thing

By Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

A birth is a difficult thing

But not a burden

As every life

be it good or bad

passed through the thinnest

Shaft of light

I looked at the baby

Struggling to breathe

And wondered long

And hard about its pain,

My sense of reason

Behind the feeling

Connected my mind

To the great truth beyond

From the worm unto

The whale,

The star unto the supernova

The baby was born

And another story began its

Painful path once more

For this is the way of the world

Until these painful contractions

Give way unto a new creation

ad infinitum, ab aeterno, for all time

From the Fields came forth.. By Robert Fullarton

From the Fields came forth..

By Robert Fullarton

Copyright 2017

I surveyed the darkness

At the edges of the fields

And waited for the fierce

Frosts to carpet the sleeping earth

I saw darkness within myself

Appearing like a vision

As I journeyed through

Unto the panorama

That revealed a mystery

Unbeknown to me before

There is beauty and there is tragedy

A world of tears

Like porcelain cups

Or lives thrown against the cliffs

This is winter

I told myself

And youth was spring

From which another man inhabited

The roots of furtive thought

And rich living in which I stole the sun

From the point of no return

The boy was hardened

Like clay into the baking oven

Tested by the rough winds

Of the world

Away from this isle of the dead

By the weeping willows

I ask myself these questions

“what is destiny and what is fate,

What part do I play in the great

Wrestle against the colossus?

How can I live? How can I dream?

When my body has been crushed?

I am one of those men who disbelieve

And fail to take the golden

Opportunity afforded

And delivered as a miracle from God.”

I’ve seen these dreams

Like re-runs,

They speak as voices

From the other side

Over the man made wall,

The man made ignorance

That scoffs in the face of authority,

The outstretched arm

And heart calls through

A man made clamour

Just to reach you

Where you are

Into the corners of a darkened winter

Where the light does not dwell

I aspire to think

“of day being resurrected

And man rising henceforth like flowers

Where once the earth and bones

Were dead, henceforth

The man shall dwell in the court

Of the heavenly gardener

And all the earth is alive again

And man’s song is most beautiful

Once more, with no melancholy

But joy, not so subtle

But so powerful, once more!”