The moon shines brightly out of an inky black sky.

It is 8am and Jerez de la Frontera still waits for dawn. Although Jerez is a full six degrees of longitude west of the Greenwich Meridian, it is in the same time zone as Vienna, 16 degrees to the east. Thanks to General Franco's determination to align Spain with Fascist Italy and the Third Reich, the inhabitants of this corner of southern Spain begin their winter mornings in darkness, while their Portuguese neighbours a few miles to the west rise an hour later, in daylight.