Once there lived a man, and Juan was his name,
given a task too heavy for his frame:
to balance the books and lift Spain from her shame.
He opened the doors where the monks once did hide,
and put up their lands and orchards, denied
no longer to buyers, so the treasury's need was supplied.
But the men who came to bid already knew the price,
for they had friends who'd rigged it, not once but twice,
and the farmers just traded masters, no paradise.
Spain had balanced her books, so the story was told;
Juan had done as instructed, quiet and controlled,
and owned, in the end, no more than of old.
And in the halls of the ministry, new words were spoken:
"Behold, the chains of the old order lie broken;
the soil of Spain returns to her people, as a token."
The presses spoke of common land, promised in loads,
of convent silver melted down to pave the roads,
of a Spain unburdened, free at last from her codes.
Yet such debt came untold,
Queen and country sold,
To men without faces abroad standing bold.
Her greedy ministers speak of glory retold,
of Spain unchained and boundless and bold,
while the ledger books stay carefully rolled.
And far in the fields, unnamed and unpolled,
stands Juan, who did as he was told,
and owns, in the end, what he owned of old:
nothing
