La guerra que yo viví: mi vida y tiempo

The War I Lived Through: My Life and My Times is the vibrant portrait of a one-of-a-kind figure, a true Sevillian whose work left an indelible mark on his homeland and even across the seas. An agricultural engineer, a staunch liberal, and a discreet yet forthright gentleman, Moreno de la Cova navigated the distinction of Spanish grandeur and the harshness of the native countryside with natural elegance. This revised and expanded reissue, which revives his memoirs--the first since 1984--strips the myth of its trappings to reveal the man: an ocean of contradictions and virtues who embodies the very essence of a stately, conversational, and eternal Andalusia. The protagonist's journey in this book is, like that of an entire nation, marked by the outbreak of the Civil War. Enlisted in the Artillery, he survives the siege of Garabitas and the tragedy of La Marañosa, and the brutal scenes he witnesses, coupled with the fatal loss of dear comrades, inevitably forge his character. The future mayor who sought to transform Seville into a Southern European metropolis devotes these pages to his admirably encyclopedic recollection of the world that shaped him--that hidden history of horror and heroism (and everyday life) that only he could recount. His testimony humanizes an era depersonalized by the official narrative. He served as a deputy in the Spanish Parliament, held the honorary mayorship of municipalities both in Spain and abroad, possessed the keys to six American cities, and was named by Oklahoma City "chief animal brander on the other side of the Great Blue Waters." But before that, Félix Moreno de la Cova had fought a thousand battles. Here he recounts them.