The Art of La Verdadera Destreza (III) - White T-Shirt

"He was not the most honest or the most pious man, but he was a brave man" P. Reverte.

If you lived dangerously and your life was hanging by a thread, if you defied authority, defending your reason and rights with the proud point of your sword, if you sacrificed yourself and were generous and human, if you were fearless, reckless, arrogant, brave, adventurous, seductive, rogue, loyal, if you were capable of the most heroic but also the meanest actions, if you were guided by your code of honour, if you sought glory on the margins of society and the law, if you lost your innocence in the face of the harsh reality of mud and blood, and if, disenchanted, everyone abandoned you. .. then you were probably an Old Thirdsman, a tired hero in rusty armour, a forgotten anti-hero like a cursed Alatriste.

"He was not the most honest or the most pious man, but he was a brave man" P. Reverte.

If you lived dangerously and your life was hanging by a thread, if you defied authority, defending your reason and rights with the proud point of your sword, if you sacrificed yourself and were generous and human, if you were fearless, reckless, arrogant, brave, adventurous, seductive, rogue, loyal, if you were capable of the most heroic but also the meanest actions, if you were guided by your code of honour, if you sought glory on the margins of society and the law, if you lost your innocence in the face of the harsh reality of mud and blood, and if, disenchanted, everyone abandoned you. .. then you were probably an Old Thirdsman, a tired hero in rusty armour, a forgotten anti-hero like a cursed Alatriste.

Under the reign of Carlos V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and his son Felipe II, Spain became the first world power, the champion during the Golden Age of that vast empire in which "the sun did not set." He assumed the old idea of ​​establishing a universal Empire of supranational and spiritual unity, an ideal of an Empire successor to the European Tradition (the medieval Christianites, the Romanites of the Roman Empire) against the Protestant currents, the Europe of Nations and against the thriving Ottoman Empire.

While the “Civilizing Empire” spread across America and the world (Hispanity), the emperor managed to face the threat of the Turks (Vienna and Lepanto —Felipe—). But the expansion of the Protestant Lutheran Reformation and the hostility of France and other countries such as Belgium, Holland or England frustrated (Westphalia) the realization of the ideal of Empire - that continuation project of the wisdom tradition, the East / West Indo-European tradition and Pagan tradition through which we can transcend through the initiatory and warrior path, through grace, the fruit of our works. As a consequence, the predatory Empires and the Europe of the sovereign Nations of the modern world appear.

Would you bet on a maimed, lame and one-eyed man to face the "Perfidious Albion"? In view of the outcome, it would be stupid to say no ... Our half-man is called Blas de Lezo and he is remembered for having shaken the English by directing the defense of Cartagena de Indias during the British siege in 1741, where with just 6 ships managed to heroically resist the attack of 195 ships during the bloody battle.

This intrepid Gipuzkoan at only 17 years old would lose his leg with a cannon shot in the hard battle of Vélez-Málaga in 1704, at two years old a splinter from another cannon shot would blow his left eye off. Some time later, with 26 compliments, during the War of the Succession he would be left maimed by a bullet. Since then, the nickname of Almirante Palpalo would always accompany him. He had already become a legend, but it would be as commanding general in Colombia that he would go down in the annals of history as one of the best strategists in the Spanish Navy for his extraordinary feat and glorious victory against the humiliated Englishmen of Admiral Edward Vernon in Cartagena de Indias.

[T-shirt proposed by Joaquín Lista de Pando]

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Endless attacks and fierce defenses planned on his figure. Considered one of the best generals of his time and one of the great heroes that our mother earth has produced, the Black Legend describes him and his elite troops, the Tercios, as an ambitious, brutal, sadistic, cruel and savage guy. , without empathy, who applied terror and extermination, a true tyrant. Renowned experts and historians deny all these extremes, other important and serious ones say otherwise.

In any case, to say that he is a relevant character, for better or for worse, in the history of Spain, he was a trusted man of Emperor Charles V and his son Felipe II. Wherever the imperial cause had to be defended, the Duke of Alba met there. We see him in Vienna against the Ottoman expansion, in Tunisia overthrowing Barbarossa returning the control and power of the Crown over the Mediterranean, in Mühlberg defeating the German Protestants, his campaigns in Flanders, putting down the revolts in the Netherlands, defeating Luis de Nassau and Guillermo de Orange, or conquering, for the Empire, Portugal. He lived through the splendor of the Golden Age and shared arms and camaraderie with his good friend, the poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Still, he turned out to be the champion of the idea of ​​Empire — Generating / Civilizing Empire or Predatory / Colonizing Empires? - and his actions favored the undisputed apogee in the international concert during the SXVI.

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Custom t-shirt inspired by the Beatles album "Abbey Road", about our great kings in the history of Spain. Those already mythical kings who created the so-called Spanish Empire, that generator empire, in contrast to the predatory Empires, of which the philosopher Gustavo Bueno speaks. The symbolic representation of that idea of ​​Empire represented by the Catholic Monarchs (Isabel and Fernado) and the Emperor Carlos V and his son Felipe II.

[Design proposed by Lara Salas Justicia]

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Cancel culture is the withdrawal of support, be it moral, financial, digital, and even social, from those people or organizations that are deemed inadmissible for their comments and actions. Those, those or "those" who transgress the new established order. The perfectly orchestrated trolls and bots to boycott and stigmatize the heretic. Everything fits here, we have all seen the virtual lynchings of those who criticize the system, who do not adhere to any side, and are tightly controlled by the thought police. Artists, writers, rockers, metalheads, famous freethinkers who use "non-inclusive" language and have been defenestrated and burned in those public bonfires. It is the new modern inquisition that limits freedoms and censors all dissidence.

Through newspeak —what is language but the soul of peoples transmitted from generation to generation! We think through it and it guides our behavior—a new change in mentality, another step towards cultural hegemony, a new victory to surrender to this modernity. That revisionism and that political correctness that subjects masters like Tolkien or Lovecraft, to comics like Tintin, Conan, the classics and popular tales and a very long etcetera...

Allow us the outburst and exaggeration, but we believe they will end the great works and authors of Literature. The rich language provided by the geniuses —such as Quevedo, Lope, Calderón or Cervantes— of our Golden Age, full of beauty and greatness, as well as comedy, satire and scathing baroque insults, will soon be persecuted and we will have to apologize because these soldier poets, eager for a spirit of adventure and militia, were born in our bull's skin. The century of arms and letters will be cancelled, its virtues and its universal themes of truth, honor, love, spirit, courage, heroism, chivalry or country will be reduced to ashes in this "reversal" of the politically correct.

Cancel culture is the withdrawal of support, be it moral, financial, digital, and even social, from those people or organizations that are deemed inadmissible for their comments and actions. Those, those or "those" who transgress the new established order. The perfectly orchestrated trolls and bots to boycott and stigmatize the heretic. Everything fits here, we have all seen the virtual lynchings of those who criticize the system, who do not adhere to any side, and are tightly controlled by the thought police. Artists, writers, rockers, metalheads, famous freethinkers who use "non-inclusive" language and have been defenestrated and burned in those public bonfires. It is the new modern inquisition that limits freedoms and censors all dissidence.

Through newspeak —what is language but the soul of peoples transmitted from generation to generation! We think through it and it guides our behavior—a new change in mentality, another step towards cultural hegemony, a new victory to surrender to this modernity. That revisionism and that political correctness that subjects masters like Tolkien or Lovecraft, to comics like Tintin, Conan, the classics and popular tales and a very long etcetera...

Allow us the outburst and exaggeration, but we believe they will end the great works and authors of Literature. The rich language provided by the geniuses —such as Quevedo, Lope, Calderón or Cervantes— of our Golden Age, full of beauty and greatness, as well as comedy, satire and scathing baroque insults, will soon be persecuted and we will have to apologize because these soldier poets, eager for a spirit of adventure and militia, were born in our bull's skin. The century of arms and letters will be cancelled, its virtues and its universal themes of truth, honor, love, spirit, courage, heroism, chivalry or country will be reduced to ashes in this "reversal" of the politically correct.

La Verdadera Destreza, the Spanish tradition of fencing based on geometry—the mathematics of combat: angles (for the hands and arms) and circles (for the feet and distances) against the enemy—that dates back from the beginning of the Golden Age to the 19th century, represents a titanic effort to bring order to the chaos that a sword duel entails. This Spanish martial art was documented for the first time in the treatise "On the Philosophy of Weapons and their Dexterity and Christian Aggression and Defense" back in 1582.

[In the image a swordsman with rapier and dagger on the circle of Rada]

[T-shirt proposed by Carlos Loscertales]