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101 unique events. They wanted to plant our feet solidly in common, familiar soil and make us part of an extended family. Without this communal link, they regarded us as rootless, shallow in our underpinnings, and susceptible to bending and breaking from the mildest winds. They insisted by their raising that we would not be free of moorings or anchorless. We would have a touchstone , many touchstones. If ever in our future we felt adrift, we would have those moments and memories of good people, sensible people whom we could call upon in the darkest hours for strength and guidance, reassurance and spirit. They would steel our minds and restore joy to our hearts. They became rocks—Gibraltars, one and all. With beret, scarf, sash, and bells, with skirt, headdress, leg laces, and moccasins , with wine and wood, granite balls and piercing screams, ribbons and sticks, jotas and porrusaldas—through them all—year after year, Mom and Dad forged links in a long chain that stretched from Elko to Spain and thence into antiquity. Boundless and unending, the links reached to aunts and uncles and cousins, Grandma and Grandpa, anguished faces bombed in Guernica, oak trees and convents, fishermen and farmers, battles won and lost, whale and cod, endurance and survival. The chain grew long and strong—no iron compared. Each link became wider by its length. As time inched forward, a new duty arose in me to carry and not shun the links to those who came before me. I walked in the footsteps of my fathers’ past. In carrying this chain of my forebears, I found nothing but the lightness of honor. 13 Eight days of our Spanish trip had made Dad tired. He slept well each night, took his heart pills, and napped each afternoon, but the riding, walking, and visiting wore down his seventy-eight-year-old body. As we drove from Palencia, he leaned his head against the window while I bore on to Mondragón, one of our final stops. Within twenty minutes, Dad’s breathing turned to snores as we passed a few houses, a bar, and a couple of shops. A sign said leaving torquemada. I knew the name. After the ascension of Queen Isabella in the fifteenth century, Torquemada, 102 her private confessor, became the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Under his ministrations , the Inquisition grew from a single tribunal in Seville to a network of Holy Offices, including at the Cathedral of Palencia, to ferret out Jews, Muslims, and Marranos, Christian converts who secretly practiced Judaism or Islam. He pursued orthodoxy of faith while zealots in church and government crafted a campaign of sangre limpia—clean blood—a crusade that transformed Torquemada ’s ambitions into practical application. To purify Spain, he turned to the Spanish people, who obeyed lest he point a bony finger in their direction and inflict punishment on them. He issued guidelines instructing people to observe their neighbors and turn them in if they wore fancy clothes, cleaned their homes on Friday, lit candles at night, ate unleavened bread, began meals with celery and lettuce during Holy Week, or prayed facing a wall while bowing back and forth. During his fifteen-year reign, more than two thousand souls burned, but the manner of death, the intensity of pain, and the duration depended on the willingness of alleged offenders to confess their sins, denounce their gods, and accept Christ into their hearts. Torquemada sought to nurture and protect Spain’s Catholic ascendancy. After the Moors were conquered in 1491, and Granada surrendered a year later, the Jews felt pressure from the sangre limpia campaign. Two influential Jews went to Isabella and offered thirty thousand ducats to allow their kind to stay in the country. When Torquemada heard of this, he told Isabella that “Judas sold his Master for thirty ducats. You would sell Him for thirty thousand. Take Him and sell Him, but do not let it be said that I have had any share in this transaction.” Within a year, his life’s work culminated in the Edict of Expulsion, which commanded Jews to leave Spain and never return. Torquemada then retired to the monastery of Saint Thomas in Avila, where he died six years later. Approaching Burgos as Dad snored deeply, I considered Torquemada’s villainy no great surprise since evil men littered the pages of history and often enlisted common citizens to aid their campaigns. I found no surprise either in a queen who purported to...

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