Journalist and author of the biographies ‘Los exiles de Ramón Cabrera’, ‘Ramon Cabrera, a l’exil’ and the historical novel ‘Piano a cuatro manos’.
The Anglican Reverend Stephen Sizer has been removed from his position as parish priest of Virginia Water, Surrey County, about thirty kilometers from London, for having shared on the networks, in 2015, an article that suggested that Israel could have been behind the attacks. attacks of 9/11. A Church disciplinary committee has found that the priest had engaged in “anti-Semitic activities” and that the text was “virulently anti-Semitic”.
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A fallback.
The dissidence would not transcend beyond the English media if it were not for the fact that it rains and it pours in the bucolic English countryside, whose center is the Christ Church parish, of Virginia Water, a fertile ground for Spanish political dissidents since the Carlist general Ramón Cabrera (Tortosa ,1806-Virginia Water,1877) became the owner of the eglogical places, now converted into the luxurious urbanization of Wentworth, home of European golf. Rev. Stephen Sizer, 69, led the Virginia Water pulpit from 1997 to 2017. He preached his sermons, in a dissenting tone, under a marble tombstone dedicated to the 19th-century Spanish Catholic exiled there.
What has not changed from the 19th to the 21st century in Great Britain or Spain is the mixture of religion and politics. The parson has paid for his political insinuations with early retirement and dismissal; Ramón Cabrera paid with exile, a golden exile in which he evolved ideologically, since he changed “religious unity” for “tolerance of creeds.” He married a Protestant in 1850, how could he defend religious unity for Spain? He started with religious tolerance and moved on to political diversity. He abandoned absolutism and the monarchy of divine origin and adopted the parliamentary bipartisanship that recognized different political ideas among Spaniards. It took him more than twenty years to consolidate his ideological metamorphosis (slow, compared to today’s Toni Cantó), but he took the step in March 1875 by splitting from Carlism.
The Reverend Stephen Sizer questioned theological issues of Anglicanism during his ministry, however, it has been a text that insinuated, on social networks, the possible participation of Israel in the terrorism of 9/11, the straw that broke the camel’s back. dissent. A priest of today involved in politics and a 19th century politician involved in religion have met in the green valleys that surround the Christ Church of Virginia Water, whose main benefactor was the so-called Countess of Morella and Marquise del Ter, wife of Ramon Cabrera. Near the Anglican temple is the Sandhurst military academy, which the Prince of Asturias entered in 1874, when his tutors decided that he should learn English liberalism instead of sending him to a religious boarding school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Spanish prince’s stay at Sandhurst was short-lived. In December 1874 he traveled to Paris to spend Christmas with his mother, Elizabeth II, exiled for having used the crown to enrich herself (sounds current?). The prince did not return to school, since he was proclaimed king, Alfonso XII, by a coup on the 29th of the same month. The 17-year-old Spanish prince’s stay in the county of Surrey was short, but enough to see the Carlist dissident and attract him to his cause.
The famous banker José de Salamanca arrived at the Wentworth country residence, inhabited and owned by the Cabrera-Richards family, in addition to Alfonso XII’s tutors, in January 1875, sent by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, seeking Ramón’s support. Cabrera to the recently inaugurated Restoration; Before that, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta arrived, commanded by Juan Prim, in search of support for the Revolution of 1868, and kings and Carlist leaders came there in search of support and money from the man known as Mastership Tiger for his leadership in the First Carlist War (1833-1840). All dissidents of Spanish politics until some were legitimized, as was done then, by coup d’état or military pronouncement.
The Sandhurst Manifesto, signed on December 1, 1874, by Alfonso de Borbón, defended a constitutional monarchy (sounds current?) and was presented to Cabrera to adhere to it during the Carlist War in Spain, especially in Navarra and the Basque Country. Wentworth was a hotbed of political conspiracies, which lasted until the burial of the Catalan in May 1877 in the church, reproduced here, which is now in vogue due to the dissent of the parish priest.
The internationalization of Britain’s politics is embodied in bucolic meadows, forests, rivers and roads strung together like bobbin lace. The Virginia Water prairies began the 21st century with the presence of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, under house arrest (1998-2000), pending extradition, requested by Spain, for crimes against humanity. The former Chilean head of state returned to his country for reasons of age and health after being visited by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the rented house in Virginia Water while Reverend Stephen Sizer alluded to them from the nearby pulpit.
To this day, the neat courses of the Wentworth Golf Club adjoin the gardens of the residence of the Russian oligarch, Petr Aven, on the list of those sanctioned by London for his ties to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin. Petr Aven, and his partner, Mikhail Fridman, at least, can tell what happens to them, since other oligarchs who took refuge in Virginia Water ended their lives there. Mikhail Tolstosheya was found dead in March 2022; Alexander Perepilichnyy died while making footing through streets that bear names such as Tortosa, Ebro or Morella, in homage to Ramón Cabrera; and Boris Berezovsky, whose untold fortunes began to decline when he clashed with Putin, committed suicide in 2013.
The small Christ Church was enlarged at the end of the 20th century with glass walls and ceilings. The cemetery that surrounds it has been filled with small, almost tiny tombstones in tribute to the deceased (restricted) in the neighborhood. The tomb of Ramón Cabrera remains haughty and stands out among rickety crosses and the grass that grows to its liking. Reverend Stephen Sizer, during his ministry, asked on more than one occasion: What did Ramon Cabrera really do to be there? The answer could be: he lost a war that he led in Spain, and, what is commonly said, he gave a blow to England.