Between the minstrels who sang the news in verse and the current buleros there is no more distance than that of centuries. And we have lost out, because now the ‘fake news’ doesn’t even make for a bad rhyme. The happy fake news runs like the water of the Guadalquivir in the new novel by Daniel Bilbao, the seventh installment starring the left-handed goalkeeper Güiliam de Canford. Our man in Córdoba (Mong Publishing House), A nod to Graham Greene’s famous spy novel, it places us in a world of competing powers and political intrigue, in which information is power.
Daniel Bilbao changes Greene’s Havana for 15th century Córdoba, where the main Christian nobles have mobilized, preparing to take Granada under the orders of the Catholic Monarchs. There, the left-handed archer Güiliam de Canford, a mercenary with a license to kill in the service of His Majesty Fernando de Aragón, will try to find the whereabouts of his companion, Dr. María la Gatusa.
Meanwhile, in the maze of Cordoban streets, in the shadow of the night and the minarets, a unique struggle for power will take place. Double agents, monks, prostitutes, Christian and Muslim soldiers – and even revived corpses returned from hell itself – connect the upper echelons with the underworld in a hilarious plot in which Gülliam, like a James Bond advance the letterstruggles to separate truth from lies, despite his boss’s cynicism. “The populace swallows everything if it is told with conviction and repeated often,” says Fernando de Aragón (who would have been even more dangerous if he had had a handful of journalists within reach of WhatsApp).
Bilbao, by dint of pure fiction, shows the truth of these great imperial deeds. Neither the Catholics were so Christian nor the Muslims so foreign: there was collusion between leaders of both sides when mutual interest took precedence. And factions always existed more than two: Muslims fought among themselves, and Christians rubbed shoulders with each other for a piece of the pie. Mercenaries like El Cid changed sides depending on who paid (although this historical fact is not very popular today).
Bilbao also shows, in an elegant pacifism that permeates the entire story, how absurd war is. In one passage, the Christian Güiliam and the Mohammedan Karim contemplate together from a distance a clash of civilizations on the battlefield: “From here everything seems an unreal spectacle,” says Karim. There are few things more absurd than killing oneself in the name of God, but this is how we continue in the middle of 2025.
Reading the novel in parallel with current events is a fascinating exercise; and it is appreciated that Bilbao shows through the filter of humor – and love of humanity – the hypocrisy of violence, the very current rise of intolerant people and the manipulation of public opinion. “Truth is the first victim of war,” Güiliam says at one point, shamelessly stealing the phrase attributed to Aeschylus, who is not going to complain either.
Daniel Bilbao was born in that same city, in 1960. After graduating in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford – where he won the Cyril Jones Prize for Hispanic Literature – he settled down in Madrid. From the saga of The Chronicles of Güiliam de Canfordthe seal Mong Publishing has published –in addition to Our man in Córdoba– six other deliveries: The Wolf of Valtravieso, The barking dog, The black cat, The Gift Horse, The legit bastards and The arm of God.
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