Tag: Spain stamp

Queen Isabella II was not well regarded. She vacillated politically disappointing all sides. Yet when she was deposed it was her replacements turn to vacillate. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The Queen is gone! Long live the Queen, in Paris exile. So who is this on the stamp. One of the upstart faceless general/ politicians that replaced her. No they don’t inspire confidence and change places so fast there isn’t time to get a stamp designed and printed. So what are Spanish stamp designers to do to show Spain’s best. 19th century European stamp fans can guess. Here we have Espana, the Latin female embodiment of the Spanish nation. The full face gives it away, Royals prefer profile portraits.

Todays stamp is issue A20, a 50 Milesimas stamp issued by Spain on January 1st, 1870. It was a 14 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $5 used. A mint version would be worth $125, proving praise be that the stamp was actually meant to be mailed.

Queen Isabella II was forced into Paris exile in 1868. A group of dismissed former generals/politicians  had landed from exile and most of the Spanish Army had defected to them. A self proclaimed glorious revolution. Unfortunately for the conspirators they were badly divided. They were from the left, so many of the conspirators desired a Spanish Republic. Others wanted a King, not a vacillating Queen. They themselves debated between Isabella’s young son. a German candidate, who seemed most competent but would likely lead to war between France and Prussia, A Portuguese who had served as regent there and Amadeus, the second son of Victor Emanuel I, the King of Italy and head of the house of Savoy.

After a regency that looked more like a military junta, Amadeus was named Amadeo I, King of Spain. Amadeus had previously annoyed his father by marrying a minor Piedmont noble who was rich and therefore made him less reliant on an allowance from his father. Soon after the marriage, she wrote to the King asking him to discipline her husband regarding his infidelities. Victor Emanuel wrote back that he understood her feelings but who was she to dictate how her husband acts and the jealousy was unbecoming in a woman.

Amadeus was not having much luck in Spain. The political party that brought him in relied more on election fraud than popular support. He faced House of Bourbon based uprisings in Basque and Catalonian areas and republican uprisings in the cities. The Army wasn’t much help as the artillery corps went on strike. Amadeus tried to go around the country to bolster his support but then faced an assassination attempt that shot up the Royal Carriage, killing the horses but leaving him unhurt. The political party than instructed Amadeus to discipline the artillery corps. He did that and then immediately abdicated. A Republic was declared and Amadeus made a surprise visit to the legislature declaring that Spain was ungovernable and he was going back to Italy. Any vestige of the glorious revolution ended two years later when the republic failed and Isabella II’s son Alfonso was crowned King. Alfonso had rumors swirling around that his father wasn’t really King consort Francis a homosexual, but one of Isabella’s generals that had conspired against her.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another and toast the beautiful Espana as seen on todays stamp, even though perhaps Amadeus was right and Spain is ungovernable. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting, First published in 2019.

Here is a fun style of modern stamp. The watch out for the Boogeyman stamp, where a country uses the post to warn it’s citizens of a danger. In this case it is the danger of an industrial worker getting electrocuted when mishandling electric wires. So you know, watch out! Also slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, trying not to set your self on fire, take your first sip of your adult beverage, but only the first sip because accidents happen to the tipsy, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp was part of a three stamp safety series. So what hazards did Spain choose to warn. The funniest one is the one where a cartoon style construction worker is falling from great height. Luckily he seems to be falling into a net but what makes it especially funny is his hard hat falling off. We must mandate  chinstraps. The other hazard is fire.

Todays stamp is issue A647, a 16 Peseta stamp issued by Spain on January 25th 1984. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether mint or used or which denomination in the issue, The low value shows there are not enough topical collectors of nanny state issues.

Deaths from man made electricity first happened in 1879. Arc lighting had an early application in the lighting of a theatrical stage and the first death happened when a stage carpenter touched a 250 volt wire. Soon the high voltage arc lighting was becoming common for night lighting of streets and deaths from touching the wires mounted. Interestingly it was noted that the deaths were near instant and left no marks on the body.

This quickly lead to the idea of an electric chair as a humane form of execution for criminals. The first use of the electric chair was in the 1890s in New York. The first use was kind of a fiasco. William Kemmler had been sentenced to death for killing his common law wife Tillie with a hatchet. He was shocked with 1000 volts for 17 seconds and declared dead by a doctor. Then witnesses noticed that he was still breathing and the prison warden had the chair restarted at 2000 volts and Kemmler’s body caught fire and the room was permeated with the smell of burning flesh.

In regard to how common accidental electrocution is in the workplace, the answer is not very. There was a study of five years of electrocution deaths in the Egyptian Journal of Forensic Sciences. Who could have imagined there was such a thing? The methodology was the autopsies on 4000 unnatural deaths. 15 percent of the deaths were by burning and 15 percent of those were caused by electrocution. Every case was accidental. They found about half of the deaths were at home and only 22 percent in the workplace. Doing the math we get that about .5 of one percent of the unnatural deaths in Egypt are caused by accidental workplace execution. Usually the culprit in the death was handling small appliances. Maybe it is time for Egypt to do a stamp on this.

One interesting detail coming from the Egyptian study was that almost 90% percent of the electrocution deaths were of males, most commonly between 18 and 40 years of age. For once it wasn’t women and minorities hardest hit. You can read the study here, https://ejfs.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41935-018-0103-5

Well, my drink is empty. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Memories can be long in politics. 100 years before a liberal secular regime in Spain had confiscated Church lands and thereby closed Poblet Monastery. Generalissimo Franco did not approve of this and sought to put things back together. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Under Franco’s long reign in Spain, much was done to restore physically what was done to the many historic and Holy places that had once belonged to the Catholic church. The result of this was a long series of stamps from Spain that showed the beauty and majesty of these sites. While by the end of Franco’s rule in the mid 70s this style of stamp was looking somewhat out of style, I can understand why Franco felt the restoration of the sites was an achievement that should be remembered.

Todays stamp is issue A285, a 3 Peseta stamp issued by Spain on February 25th, 1963. It was part of a four stamp issue in various denominations that honored the restoration of the Poblet Monastery. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Poblet Monastery was founded by Cistercian monks from France on land in Catalonia retook from the Moors. The Cistercians believed in a simpler form of monastic life that involved austerity and physical labor as part of the journey to God. In the 14th century and later it became the burial site of the Kings of Aragon.

In the 19th century, Spain was under the reign of Isabella II. She was at first represented by a regency and there was much back and forth between liberals and moderates in her administration. Into this situation came Juan Alvarez Mendizebal. He was quite liberal and a banker of Jewish background. He was first Finance Minister and the Prime Minister, albeit for only nine months. He enacted a program for the confiscation of Church lands. This was  put forward as a benefit to the poor but worked to transfer much land to already wealthy landowners. This was done with no payment to the church and indeed most of the properties seized were ransacked and burned, including Poblet Monastery. The Royal tombs were desecrated but a parish priest from a nearby town was able to save most of the remains. Mendizebal was eventually sent into exile in London and Queen Isabella II was eventually forced to abdicate and go into exile in Paris.

Franco was on the winning side of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. He promised peace through law and order and respect for the Church and the Spanish heritage of colonization or as he put it nation building. In the particular of the Poblet Monastery, in 1940 a new group of Italian Cistercian monks were brought in to repair the monastery and get it going again. The royal remains were returned and the tombs restored. To the credit of all, the monastery was allowed to keep going after the end of Franco’s regime and still exists today as an active monastery. It currently has about 30 monks and is on its 105th Abbot.

Well my drink is empty and yes I am going to pour another and toast Generalissimo Franco. At least on this one thing, he was on the side of the angels. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

In the period after Franco, there was a good deal of rehabilitating figures that sat out Franco in exile. Seems a strange thing to do as the average person can’t just leave because they don’t agree with the politics of their leaders, so you end up honoring the elite who have choices. Here we have poet and writer Juan Ramon Jimenez. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelists.

1981 was the birth century of Mr. Jimenez and he got just a ton of recognition. Not only this stamp but a similar image of him graced the back of the 2000 Paseta bank note. At the University of Maryland, where he had taught Spanish and Portuguese in the later years of his self imposed exile, in 1981 he had a new dormitory named for him.

Todays stamp is issue A605, a 30 Paseta stamp issued by Spain in 1981. This was a six stamp issue put out in two sets of three depicting great Spanish men. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Juan Ramon Jimenez was born into a rich family in Moguer, Spain. He studied with the Jesuits and at the University of Seville, with an eye toward the law. He instead switched to writing poetry and in this was heavily influenced by Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario and the modernist movement in poetry.

In this phase Jimenez would suffer bouts of depression which he would self medicate by sexual promiscuity and then a stay at a sanitorium. Dirty stories of his escapades were the main body of his prose. Around 1912, he was in residence at a sanitorium in Madrid that was staffed mainly novitiate Nuns. When his dirty stories got back to the Mother Superior, Jimenez was thrown out of the sanitarium. It is not known whether the stories actually happened.

You are not going to get a Nobel Prize in Literature for chasing around young Nuns with cold feet and even worse talking about it. Luckily for Mr. Jimenez he was about to enter a more productive phase. He wrote a full novel called Platero and me about a writer who travels around his the rural area of his childhood with a donkey named Platero. He did a good job of showing the simple love between the animal and his master. The book was his masterpiece and was a hit throughout the Spanish world and beyond.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Jimenez relocated first to Puerto Rico and then Florida. He was hit with another bout of depression and his literary output reverted. He put out a collection of the romances of Coral Gables. I have to assume that Coral Gables in his period was not the retirement community it is today. Luckily the committee of the Nobel Prize in Literature was still thinking more of Platero the donkey from 40 years before than the cold footed young Nuns or the hot flashing seniors of Coral Gables when they awarded Jimenez the Nobel Prize in 1956.

Mr. Jimenez died in 1958. Perhaps his home town Moguer had better ideas of how to best honor the author. They erected a statue to Platero the donkey.

Well, my drink is empty. I have perhaps been a little harsh on Mr. Jimenez. He could not be expected to deliver a work that so vividly described a time and place after abandoning his homeland. I wonder if he considered that before leaving? Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Samuel Johnson once inquired if there was one peaceful, empty dessert in the world that went unclaimed by the Spanish Empire. It was a critique about Spain doing nothing with all their territories. A tradition that continued in to post colonial status of territories. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Franco era Spain was one time where there was slight outreach to the former colonies. Hence a convention of mayors in Spain from around the old Empire. Two fun things they included on the stamp. One is the gold filled? Spanish galleon ship. The second is including Portugal. They share a peninsula and lost together big parts of empire thanks to Napoleonic trouble at home. Why not include them in the party to remember old ties?

Todays stamp is issue A352, a 1.50 Peseta stamp issued by Spain on October 10th, 1967. It was a single stamp issue celebrating the fourth congress of mayors. These congresses no longer happen. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents unused. Interesting and a little depressing that when my collection contains a mint stamp, it is one where being mint does nothing for the value.

I am framing todays article contrasting Spain in regards to their old Empire in contrast to the modern British Commonwealth. This should make sense to stamp collectors as being within the British one is such a big part of their stamp issuance. The fact that there is very little outreach today from Spain shows a different route. That does not mean there is no Spanish commonwealth.

For one, Spanish is the second most spoken native language in the world, second to Chinese. This from a home country that contains less than one percent of the world’s population. The Catholic Church, though not originating in Spain, owes much of it’s worldwide spread to the Spanish Empire. Remember Empire was also the time of the Church inquisition, that limited practice of other faiths in the colonies as well as at home. Compare the prevalence of the Catholic Church in the old Empire to the Anglican Church in the British. The trade routes the gallion on the stamp reminds of the new foods that entered Europe from the Spanish colonies like corn, potatoes and yes beans, and the meat and livestock introduced to the colonies like horses, cattle, and chickens.

Other long lasting interactions were less positive. The Spanish tradition of spastic shifts from right wing to left wing and back again Claudillos remains throughout the former empire. There was also the specter of otherwise far separated peoples interacting bringing fourth new diseases. So indigenous people suddenly get small pox and Spaniards come down with syphilis.

Doing little to recognize Empire saves Spain a lot of money. A budget hawk might have questioned the value of Franco importing all those mayors for a party. Budget hawks were however never a strong Spanish tradition.

Well my drink is empty and so I will wait till tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The Generalissimo Franco died a mere four months before this stamp was issued. Despite the continuity supposedly represented by the King, the other half of the story, and just that half, could now be heard. Well and good. The architect and city planner Secundino Zuazo abandoned his ongoing projects and fled to Paris when Franco came to power in 1939. His politics and his patronage were with the Republican side, but he never again designed an important building despite living another 30 years. Strange perhaps for a proponent of rationality in his architecture. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I mentioned the continuity provided by the King. That can be seen on this stamp. No Mr. Zuazo is not someone who would be recognized under Franco even if his politics lined up. His work mainly consisted of Madrid government offices and upscale apartments for those that man them. The right views such people as leaches. Where you see the continuity is in the style of the stamp that is very traditional. So for the average not stamp collector who may not pay much attention, everything seems normal.

Todays stamp is issue A460, a 15 Peseta stamp issued by Spain on Febuary 25, 1976. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations showing prominent Spanish architects and their most famous work. This one shows Secundino Zuazo and his House of Flowers apartment building. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Secundino Zuazo was born in Bilboa, Spain in 1887 and studied architecture in Madrid where he settled. At first he was an architect in the traditional style. However a trip to Holland brought him in touch with the new rational movement in architecture that began in Italy and spread. The movement did not reject traditional architecture  but thought less decoration and more functionality were called for. A typical apartment building of the time in Spain would have elaborate decoration especially at the four corners but small rooms with little light let in from small windows and little airflow. The toilet facilities were communal and consequently sanitation left much room for improvement.

To answer these issues, Zuazo created his most famous work in 1932, the House of Flowers as seen on the stamps. The apartments were larger with private bathrooms and higher ceilings and larger windows. The recessed structure next to it is not a parking deck but a structure of terraces with elaborate flowers. Notice however that the façade of the building is very plain in keeping with the modern rationality.

After the House of Flowers, Zuazo got his biggest commission, the Nuevo Ministeros in Madrid. The large structure had a large center courtyard for the government workers to enjoy away from the private eyes of the public. As the Civil War in Spain ground on progress on the complex was very slow. In 1939 Franco emerged victorious but the complex was still unfinished. Zuazo had been quite close with the previous government and decided to flee Spain for Paris. Franco eventually brought in a new team of architects that finished the complex but did not stick to Zuazo’s plans. Zuazo eventually returned to Spain but his career was in shambles.

The rational international school of architecture eventually evolved taking on more influence from industrial architecture with less respect for what was built before. This was also reflective of the great masses moving to the cities from rural areas and culminated in the brutalist school of architecture. This was most prominent in the east and I did a Polish stamp celebrating it here, https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/20/poland-1976-would-it-be-too-brutal-to-try-this-again/     .

Well my drink is empty and I am wondering of the dichotomy of someone who promotes rationality in his profession but runs away when politics don’t go his way. It was perhaps lucky that Franco’s grip on power was so long. Imagine all the uprooting Zuazo would have to do if the government was changing every four years. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

There are a lot of reasons not to like Franco, a claudillo who actually relished the term. Yet this stamp succinctly makes the case for him. He ended the bloody civil war and managed the not easy task of staying out of World War II. Franco understood the value of peace to the average citizen while his opponents constantly upsetting the peace through assassinations. Even in death, Franco cannot rest in peace. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp is a little more elaborate than the bulk mail Franco issue of the time. 10 Pasetas was high valuation and so we get more colors, a subdued military uniform and his best political slogan presented as a truth. Of course that on a stamp during a politician’s lifetime is a pretty good indicator of a dictatorship.

Today stamp is issue A302, a 10 Pesetas stamp issued by Spain on April Fools Day 1964. It was a 14 stamp issue, this the only one with Franco, celebrating 25 years since the end of the Spanish Civil War. We are now past the 50th and 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, No stamps, don’t want to talk of Franco. Trump will have this trouble after he is gone. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents unused.

Peace has to be the greatest achievement of Franco. Right after the end of the Civil War ended in 1939 World War II started. After France fell in 1940 to Franco’s German friends, Hitler had his eye on Gibraltar the British colony controlling access to the Mediterranean. Operation Felix was formulated that would have seen 2 German Corps pass through Spain. The plan assumed a British response of landing in Portugal followed by a German invasion of Portugal from Spain. Napoleon all over again for the Iberian peninsula. Refusing Hitler could not have been easy but saved Spain.

Lets give Franco a little more of his due. Franco could always point to assassinations carried out by the Left that disturbed the peace. Remember the Spanish Civil War started not when the left won the 1936 election. Jose Calvo Sotelo was the leader of the Right in opposition. He was assassinated leaving a void for Franco to fill and galvanizing the right.

The next assassination to talk about was then Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. He was attempting to return from Mass when his car, a Dodge 3700, was car bombed. Franco was fading by then  and the Prime Minister was running things day to day. An aside, as car buffs might guess from the name, a Dodge 3700 was a license made Dodge Dart with a slant 6 225 engine. A fairly modest vehicle for a Prime Minister!

The third disturbing of the peace happened only last year. After Franco won the Civil War he created a “Valley of the Fallen”, to honor the fallen of both sides. As the left doesn’t want to remember a war they lost, it became a center of remembrance for the right side of politics. Indeed Franco himself was laid to rest there. During left wing administrations the complex was usually closed. The current lefty government decided to go further and have Franco’s tomb desecrated and moved by government action. People are more peaceful now, but how could that not galvanize the political right in Spain.

Well my drink is empty and Franco is too much a mixed bag to toast. I am still thirsty though so perhaps a toast to 25 years of peace. The next 25. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Coming together was a slow process many centuries ago with Spain. In the 1970s and 1980s several regions demanded more autonomy from a more weak central government. This stamp celebrates the granting of autonomy to Aragon in 1982. Since then they have granted more and more. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

What stands out to me most on this stamp is showing the flag of the old Kingdom of Aragon, Not even alongside the Spanish flag. Sometimes the left’s disdain for flag waving gets in the way of the gentle reminder that Aragon was still a part of Spain.

Todays stamp was issue A652, a 16 Peseta stamp issued by the Kingdom of Spain on April 23rd, 1984. It was a single stamp issue although there was a similar stamp later in the year celebrating the autonomy granted Madrid. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Aragon was part of the Roman Empire until that collapsed and the area was occupied by the Visigoths. In 714, the Muslims arrived in the area and set up the Taifa of Zargoza. Later the area was liberated by the Kingdom of Pamplona under Sancho the Great. Aragon was then a province of Pamplona. As Sancho’s royal line petered out after the death of Sancho IV, a new royal line emerged from Aragon. In 1469, Philip of Aragon married Isabella of Castile and Spain was united and Christian. There was quickly some tension with Aragon as Castilian Viceroys were appointed to govern Aragon.

After the death of Franco in 1975 the central government of Spain took a hard turn to the left. Soon there were large protests in Zargoza demanding self rule for the region. This was granted in 1982. A local parliament was set up called a Cort. It did not have much power but created many more available positions for out of work would be lefty politicians. Perhaps realizing that the people had been had and their cause subsumed, the people demanded and received further devolutions of central government power in 1992 and 2007.

One thing Spanish from the many would break away regions to consider is this. If and when the Muslims come for Aragon as they did in 714 AD. Will the amount of autonomy granted mean the then Spanish King will decide it is their job to handle. After all, nothing says freedom and independence like a reconstituted Taifa of Zargoza.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait for tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.