Indian sojourn of a Spanish Diplomat Guillermo Nadal Blanes 1964-1975

Seven years after diplomatic relations were established between India and Spain in 1956, the Mallorcan Guillem (Guillermo) Nadal Blanes lands in New Delhi. He arrives as the Chargé d'Affaires at the Spanish Embassy, even then located at Prithviraj Road. His stay will go on to last eleven years. After later serving (from 1967 to 1969) as Minister Counselor under the mandate of Miguel Teus, in 1969 he was promoted to Ambassador, remaining in the country until the summer of 1975. His departure provoked within him a deep regret from which he would not be able to recover. A year later, (in August 1976) while serving as Ambassador in Ankara, suffering from a brain tumor, he would die in Zurich, on his last trip that took him to his native island. Guillermo Nadal's Indian epoch was extraordinarily intense. And not only in what affected the forging of a relationship that was not especially easy given the general context of this decade and the particular circumstances of both countries, but also perhaps, due to his profound dedication to the various facets of Indian thought, its history, politics and culture. His passionate dedication, his progressive devotion, made India, according to what he wrote to Joan Mascaró (the English translator of the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads), becoming his spiritual homeland. One of his legacies is seen in his films. More than fifty years after they were made, its digitalization allows us to contemplate images of that India, very particularly linked to natural landscapes, popular life and even social spectacles. All of this captures the day-to-day life of a world that navigates between a definitively concluded yesterday and a future that refuses to eliminate any of its hallmarks. The conference by Dr. Gonçal López Nadal, nephew of Ambassador Nadal, frequent visitor to India and guest professor at some of its universities, will try to show, through the selection of various fragments of the aforementioned films, the keys to this intimate communion , unusual, between a diplomat and the country in which he carries out his mission.