In Abyla the Phoenicians had filled their tetremes with tortoise shell, elephant’s teeth, odoriferous gum, mallow-coloured cotton, stibium to tinge the eyes and honey from the cane called sugar. And from Abyla, they tacked off into the unknown – beyond the Pillars of Hercules, to Africa, India, even to South America whither Senator Zamora’s great-grandfather had migrated in 1870.

Senator Zamora’s thesis argued that Abyla was the Phoenician settlement of Exilissa mentioned in the Hecatœus of Miletus and in the works of Pliny, Strabo and Ptolemy. For the enlightened professors at the University of Oran, Senator Zamora’s intepretation of Abyla’s role as a Phoenician staging post had its undeniable fascination. “There is no need to worry about the state of learning in North Africa while works like this one are being produced. A work of genius, and we do not use that epithet lightly.”

Its submission to Oran had followed a rejection by the University of Cadiz, which found it a work of paralysing tedium. The expression of Senator Zamora’s conviction, while admired for its earnestness, had, however – and this was something regretted by his examiners across the Straits in Cadiz – not been accompanied by solid evidence.

The Phoenicans of Senator Zamora’s Abyla had neglected to leave behind either literary or monumental evidence of their existence. In the absence of records, the University of Cadiz had judged that Senator Zamora’s thesis, while in his words “sanctioned by every probability”, would not survive searching criticism.

Lesser men might have been content with the honorary doctorate from Oran, or else consigned the thesis to Señora Criado’s oven. Not Senator Zamora. The reason no particulars from that remote era had arrived at his desk was this: the events took place before the first stirring of Greek history. That the truth of his argument should be repudiated by some learned barbarians across the Straits who lacked imagination to envisage a time when every sail from Carthage to Cornwall was a Phoenician sail was not merely unreasonable. It was incredible. Not for nothing was Senator Zamora a correspondent member of the Spanish Royal Academy. In time, he would shake their faith.

There was one catch. Senator Zamora had reached a point where he could not read his own handwriting. He had never learned to type, not even in the period when he had been editor of El Faro. What did men do in these situations?

This was the question Senator Zamora had been asking when Pablo gave him the estimation made by his computer of Hercules’ height.

On the other hand, a green cardigan such as the Senator had worn for the emergency debate on Tuesday, signified to his household that he would be spending the day at the Casa del Gobierno.

Green was the colour of the opposition party, Abyla Independiente, of which Senator Zamora was reluctant leader. The party was opposed to the terms of the Straits Treaty and to Governor Menendez’ tunnel, both guaranteed to rob Abyla of its patrimony as Tyre was affected by the causeway Alexander had constructed from the mainland.