A treasure from the time of the Spanish War of Independence that was hidden for decades.

Jewels of incalculable value, stored in the deepest recesses of a dozen of wooden caskets where they seemed doomed to suffer a worse destiny than being destroyed by the inexorable passage of time: oblivion. That is what researcher Gonzalo Serrats Urrecha – a San Sebastián native—when he opened twelve old trunks that were stored in his old family house, and that held the memories of a whole lifetime: the life and times of General Miguel Ricardo de Álava, to be precise. A Basque military man who had the honor to be the only one to fight both in the Battle of Trafalgar and in the Battle of Waterloo, and who for years was the right hand of the Duke of Wellington, the architect of Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat, and the man who helped to expel the French from the Iberian peninsula.

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