The first book is about a lost way of life when Spain was still a medieval country under the iron grip of the Franco re gime.
Soldiers accompanied the country buses to discourage bandits. The author joins in the fiestas, and serenades the seņoritas on their balconies. He is taken in by peasants, fed and befriended, and eventually comes to live in a village where he is the only person besides the priest who can read and write, and so becomes the village ears and eyes on the outside world, before the television and a less repressive education system make him redundant.
