The war in Spain had ended not with the roar of artillery, but with the strange stillness that follows a storm.
In Madrid, the royal standard fluttered over the restored palace, its colors vivid against a sky still streaked with the pale haze of burned powder.
The city's streets, once choked with barricades and rubble, now rang with the hammering of reconstruction, iron on stone, rivet guns clattering, saws whining.
From the moment the armistice was signed, Berlin, Rome, and Moscow moved with the precision of vultures and surgeons alike.
Cargo ships crossed the Atlantic daily, carrying not just steel and timber, but the promise of a new Spain.
German engineers surveyed rail yards, Italian architects redrew the waterfronts, and Russian dockworkers, hardened veterans of Murmansk, helped rebuild the great port at Valencia, their breath steaming in the cool coastal mornings.
