Word: luisa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Dictator Francisco Franco's insensitive police had, for the fourth time in three years, arrested Dona Luisa Maria Narvaez y Macias, Duchess of Valencia, the handsome, strong-willed first lady of Spain's monarchist movement. Before a military tribunal in Madrid last week, she faced charges of sending an anti-Franco letter to President Truman and distributing copies of it in Spain, using the mails for subversive propaganda and attempts to form a monarchist underground...
...call it off," he had urged. "Luisa Maria has suffered enough. She is far too lovely to waste her life in that horrible prison." But the governor had insisted that trial take place. In the anteroom, before the proceedings started, General Rodrigo had kissed the duchess' hand, murmuring, "Good luck, Luisa Maria...
...lawyer, a printshop owner, a printer and Don Bernardo Bernardez, an elderly monarchist leader and onetime banker. Having been fired from his post at the Banco Iberico, Don Bernardo deemed himself a ruined man. But as a Spanish caballero, there was one thing more he could do for Luisa Maria. He could, in spite of his wife and ten children, take the rap for the duchess. Don Bernardo stoutly denied that she had any connection with his political activities. Said he: "If the facts are criminal, I myself am the only criminal...
...Patrician Rebel. When the duchess heard of Bernardez' arrest, she still had time to flee. Instead, she chose to stay. When she was nine and a convent student, Luisa Maria had upset a plate of bean soup in protest against the quality of convent food. Reprimanded, she upset the inkwell on the mother superior's desk. Last week, still a rebel, the duchess made the rounds of Madrid's foreign embassies and newsmen, hoping that publicity would help her arrested friends...
...curls flying, she motored to the Associated Press office near the Puerta de Alcala. When her black Cadillac convertible (with ducal escutcheon enameled on its door) halted, a taxi pulled up just behind. From it hurried two men in the typical trench coats of the secret police. They blocked Luisa Maria's way. "Duchess," one of them said, "you must come along with us. The chief of police wants to have a talk with you at once...