A Spanish city pauses to remember an Irish rebel: the night Red Hugh came home
On a mild evening in Valladolid, the kind of dusk that softens stone and throws lamps into relief, the city stopped. Shops shuttered a little early, tourists gathered on narrow sidewalks, and entire families stepped out of apartment windows to watch a pageant that braided two histories together—one Gaelic, one Castilian—across four centuries.
A horse-drawn carriage rolled slowly through the medieval lanes, flanked by torch-bearers whose flames licked drystone facades. Men in 16th-century armor clicked spurs on cobbles; friars in brown habits walked with bowed heads; Irish wolfhounds padded solemnly beside soldiers in ceremonial dress. A lone chanter set the tone, then a piper raised Amhrán na bhFiann and sent the anthem weaving through the alleys like wind through wheat.
It was a reenactment that made history feel breathing and immediate: the royal funeral of Red Hugh O’Donnell—Aodh Rua of Tír Chonaill—who died in Spain in 1602 while seeking support against English rule. For many here, it was also an intimate ceremony of gratitude and kinship, evidence that centuries-old alliances can survive on memory and ritual as easily as on treaties.
Who was Red Hugh? A man of stormy times
Red Hugh O’Donnell was not a king in the modern sense, but a Gaelic chieftain whose life read like an epic. Born into the rugged landscapes of Donegal—Tír Chonaill in Irish—he was a central figure in the Nine Years’ War (c. 1594–1603), the largest Gaelic uprising against Elizabethan conquest. Alongside Hugh O’Neill, O’Donnell led a confederacy of Irish lords that nearly halted English expansion in Ireland before the pivotal loss at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
After Kinsale, O’Donnell sailed for Spain to plead his case to King Philip III. Spain, embroiled in its own continental conflicts, represented a flicker of hope—an ally bound by Catholic faith and common cause. But illness struck while O’Donnell was on Spanish soil. He died far from the heather and bogs of home. Philip III ordered a royal funeral and, in a gesture that has been celebrated in Valladolid ever since, the chieftain was laid to rest in the city then serving as the Spanish capital.
The night’s procession: spectacle and tenderness
The reenactment—now in its fourth year—unfolded like a living tapestry. Organisers had deliberately mixed solemnity with pageantry: King Philip and Queen Margaret (in period costume), Franciscan friars, mounted cavalry, pipers from Ireland and Spain, and former members of the Irish Defence Forces marched together. A wreath-laying in front of the Chapel of Marvels, the site linked to O’Donnell’s burial, drew a hush; Mayor of Valladolid stepped forward to speak, his voice carried on the chill air.
“We honour not only a man but a bond,” said Mayor Isabel Romero, addressing the crowd. “This city remembers because remembrance enriches us.” Her words were met with applause and a spontaneous chorus of conversations in Spanish and Irish, mixing languages as if they were familiar friends.
“It’s a strange and humbling sight,” said Eddie Crawford, a veteran from Lifford who carried the Irish tricolour that night. “I grew up hearing stories of Red Hugh in Donegal. To march here, wearing my uniform, with the people of Valladolid beside me—it’s more than ceremony. It’s homecoming.”
Local color and human moments
There were small, tender scenes that television cameras rarely catch. An elderly Spanish woman, lace shawl wrapped tight against the evening breeze, dabbed at tears as the Irish anthem rose. A group of schoolchildren, clutching miniature flags, shadowed the procession with wide eyes. Near the Chapel of Marvels, a street vendor selling churros watched solemnly, then placed a single flower at the plaque’s base—an unplanned and genuine offering.
The ties that bind: festivals, plaques, and shared archives
The funeral reenactment is the centerpiece of a three-day Hispano-Irish celebration organized by the Hispano-Irish Association of Valladolid, founded 17 years ago. This festival threads history lectures, film screenings, live music, and academic exchanges into a weekend that aims to make the past useful in the present.
“There is something very powerful about the connection the Spanish feel with the Irish,” said organizer Carlos Burgos. “It carries a sense of brotherhood. People here take pride in being guardians of this story.”
Valladolid, a city of roughly 300,000 inhabitants in Spain’s Castilla y León region, has embraced this guardianship with municipal support. The city is twinned with Lifford in County Donegal, a symbolic pairing that draws attention to migration, exile, and how memory crosses borders. The festival has even funded an archaeological dig in 2020 at the Chapel of the Marvels, searching for traces of O’Donnell’s burial.
The Hispano-Irish Association’s voluntary committee hopes to extend recognition beyond Valladolid. Their next ambition is to place a commemorative plaque at Dublin Castle, where a young Red Hugh was once imprisoned and famously escaped as a teenager—an episode that reads like a legend in local lore.
Archives and echoes: Simancas holds secrets
The delegation of Irish guests also visited Simancas, a nearby town whose castle archives—Archivo General de Simancas—hold a trove of documents from the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the papers are O’Donnell’s last will, reportedly dictated in Irish, and correspondence between Irish exiles and Spanish officials. There are even interrogation notes about James Blake, a Galway merchant suspected of spying for England during that fraught summer.
“These documents are fragile, but they are thunderous,” said Professor Elena Martín, a historian at the University of Valladolid. “They let us hear, imperfectly, the last acts of a man who was not simply an Irish chieftain but an actor on a European stage where empires met.”
Why this matters today
Why should a modern audience care about a 17th-century funeral? Because the story of Red Hugh O’Donnell carries forward themes that still resonate: migration and exile, the search for allies across seas, and the small mercies that communities bestow upon those who have come from elsewhere. In a world where borders are again hotly contested and diasporas are reshaping cities, the Valladolid reenactment is both commemoration and conversation.
“History is not a museum piece,” said Hugo O’Donnell, the 7th Duke of Tetuan and a descendant of the O’Donnell dynasty. “It’s a relationship. Red Hugh was a man of loyalty and conviction—qualities that bind people, nations, and generations.”
As the procession concluded and the last torch guttered, people lingered, unwilling to let the spell break. A young Spaniard asked an Irish marcher in weathered uniform, “Why keep doing this?” The marcher smiled and answered simply: “So we remember where we came from, and why we are still connected.”
So I ask you, reader: what stories does your city carry that belong to others? What rituals of remembrance could bridge divides where politics have failed? In Valladolid, under the gentle Spanish sky, an Irish rebel found a different kind of home—one built from empathy, ceremony, and an enduring sense that history needs witnesses.
