[An English traveller in Franco's Spain.] Corrected typescript of an unpublished book by R. G. Dixon, titled 'Spanish Holiday'.

223pp., 8vo, of typescript, with additional manuscript page: 'Carbon Copy | Spanish Holiday | by | R. G. Dixon | during | May-June | 1960.' Typed single-spaced, with occasional minor manuscript emendations. Each page on a separate leaf, the whole held together by a metal clasp. In beige card folder with the following on inside cover: 'R. G. Dixon | April Cottage | Fernlea Close | Ferndown | Dorset'. The front cover of the folder carries part of a label from the previous use of the folder, providing a clue to the author's itentity: '"D" Co[mpan]y. Towcester Batt[ery]: | Home Guard. | <...> Gun Training Organisation Document File. | R. Graham Dixon. ['(Sergeant Major)' added in manuscript] | Moor End Cottages, | Yn'. In fair condition, on aged and worn paper, with rusted clasp. Seventeen chapters, and an 'Envoi'. A well-written account of a 'pilgrimage' to Spain, with the emphasis firmly on the pleasurable aspects: eating, shopping and sightseeing at palaces, museums, and in particular cathedrals (Barcelona, Valencia, Grenada, Seville, Toledo, Burgos, Tours, Chartres), the last of which 'enshrine so much of the life, the history, the very soul of a city and country', as well as the mosque at Cordoba and the Sinagoga del Transito at Toledo. Entertainments include a gypsy zambra in 'the caves of the Sacro Monte' at Grenada, and corridas in Madrid and San Sebastian. A number of hotels and restaurants are mentioned (the Osborne, Ostend; the Ambassador's, Paris; the Crillon, Avignon; the Prince Phillippe, Le Perthus; the Madrid, Seville; El Condestable, Burgos; Canciller Ayala, Vitoria; Maria Cristina, San Sebastian; the Grand Hotel, Tours). Of one of the last hotels visited, the Royal Gascoigne at Bordeaux, he writes that it 'remains in my recollection as the one outstanding horror of the tour'. The author describes himself as 'an amateur of wines', drinking from a bota in Le Perthus, and sampling Sangria in Seville. 'A brandy in Spain', he observes, 'appears as a more generous drink than in our miserable and benighted country.' The author is well-travelled ('I have seen some lovely things in my time' he writes) and well read (Roy Campbell, G. K. Chesterton and Salvador Rueda are quoted), but afflicted with a strain of misogyny ('When a woman takes a stroll around a town, the things she cares about seem to be the shops.' he writes on one occasion, and on another, 'there are other things besides women, and more satisfactory in the long run, about which to be romantic'). His outlook is fundamentally conservative, his sympathies being with the Falangists rather than the 'ruthless Reds' (he gives a long account of Colonel Moscardo's 'self-sacrificing heroism' at the Siege of the Alacazar). (Perhaps the only reference to the political situation is a description of how the 'Franco regime runs three kinds of state-owned catering establishments'. The itinerary is as follows. After a trip 'on a beastly little Belgian packet-boat to Ostend', Dixon and his companion 'Babs' travel to Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Montpellier. After Perpignan they come to 'the wild, craggy gorges of these foothills of the Pyrenees, with our road winding round hairpin bends, ascending all the time until we finally struck the little township of Le Perthus at the head or top of a kind of pass through the mountains. Here was the frontier, here France ended and Spain began [...] these folk, though legally and nominally French, are originally of the same blood as those Spaniards across the frontier'. In Spain they pass through the Costa Brava, 'with its little fishing villages and newly fashionable resorts and its abominable road surfaces', and drive through Figuera and Gerona to Barcelona, which is described in Chapter Four, with Chapter Five devoted to Valencia. They drive through Gandia to Benidorm, which, anticipating thousands of his compatriots, he finds 'a very delightful resort, with lovely, sandy bathing beaches; we got into conversation with an English couple who lived there, and who loved it. Why I don't pack up my traps, sell out, and go to live in Benidorm or some similar little paradise, I shall never explain to myself! The folly of men!' From Benidorm they travel to Alicante, then Elche, Murcia (with its 'bad reputation', as 'during the Civil War of 1936-9 most of the crimes of violence are known to have been committed by Murcianos'). He is struck by 'mysteriousness' of Grenada. From Antequera they travel to Seville ('If Grenada is a lustrous and magical city, then Seville is gay and flower-girt.'). Next come Cordoba ('There is no place of all those I have visited, and I have seen some lovely things in my time, that astounds the visitor quite so unequivocally as this wonderful interior of the Mosque of Cordoba.'), Montero, Ocana and Aranjuez. Madrid is followed by Toledo, Burgos, Vitoria, Tolosa, San Sebastian, Irun, Fuentarrabia. Entering France, they 'paused for tea at St Jean de Luz', then travelled to Biarritz, Bordeaux (of which 'the less said the better'), Poitiers, Tours, then back to Paris, and a channel ferry back to England. 'Spain', he concludes, 'is not Europe. Spain is a kind of island, cut of by the seas and by the huge barrier of the Pyrenees from the rest of Christendom. Furthermore, it is not one country, not one people, but several. Most European are the Catalans, and Barcelona is frankly a city most European in its looks, its atmosphere, and its attitude. Yet the Catalans are Spaniards, though a restless, politically minded lot who have caused lots of trouble in the past, and no doubt will do so in the future. Of all the Spaniards, the Catalans hanker most after "progress".'