Books by Govert Westerveld

Blanca has many things to offer to anyone wishing to enjoy this small village of the famous Ricote Valley. It is a beautiful place to walk around and observe the natural beauty of its landscape. Blanca offers the traveller a chance to enjoy an adventurous type of tourism which includes a descent of the River Segura, hiking, and pony trekking among other activities. Another attraction is the Holy Week of Blanca, a tradition that exists since the XVI century in Blanca. Despite having so much potential for tourism Blanca's share of international arrivals is still insignificant. To overcome this problem there is a real need of communication between the village and foreign visitors. That is the reason for this English book which tells you about the Brotherhoods of the Holy Week - to discover the ancient secrets of this small village.

Very little is known of the circumstances of the life of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi. Most authors do not see any difficulty and claim that our calligrapher was a native of Vicenza but moved to Rome around 1508. Others state that he was born to a poor family in a world where good positions required much money to purchase the position in the papal chancery. Many questions remain unanswered and that is the reason that the literature about him up to now is full of speculations. Arrighi was not an ordinary person, because he came from noble origin and enjoyed in his youth an excellent education. He was a man of the world who used to travel at an early age. His ability to go unnoticed, when the circumstances deem it to be necessary, makes of him an interesting character, because just like a chameleon he is able to adapt to new scenarios. This book gives sufficient information to follow the life of Arrighi after 1527.

Thousands of articles and books have been written about La Celestina and scholars still do not know who was the mysterious Aragonese author of this book. The literature continues saying that Fernando de Rojas is the author of a large part of La Celestina. The scholars have spent many years in research and obtained excellent dissertations and articles. However, La Celestina continues to be a mystery and one cannot escape the impression that scholars continue working in a vicious circle. Fortunately we have great researchers such as Jordi Bilbeny who stated that el Lazarillo was written by Juan de Timoneda and that the author of La Celestina came from Valencia. On the other hand Manuel Civera argues that the story recounted in La Celestina took place in Sagunto. This book documents my research of the last four years of this personage's life and gives sufficient information to initiate the identification of the unknown mysterious Aragonese author of La Celestina.

Lucena was the son of the prothonotary Juan Ramírez de Lucena, ambassador of the Catholic monarch in Spain. He wrote a book called Repetición de amores y Arte de Ajedrez con 150 juegos de partido that was published in Salamanca around 1497. Around this time he also wrote another book called Tractado sobre la muerte de Don Diego de Azevedo, but this book was lost. One thing is clear - the name Lucena disappeared and we find it in France in some chess manuscripts and that is all. This has been our research. Its path has not been easy, but thanks to a new authorship recognition program it was possible to detect various books with Lucena's marks. This book reflects the result of four years' research and describes the possible life and work of Lucena in Italy, where he became a very famous person at the papal curia. Consequently thanks to this research students have a new line of investigation about the whereabouts of Lucena for 30 years in Italy at their disposal.

When our personage decided to live in Italy, he changed his name and continued his profession as writer and bookseller. On the other hand he also worked himself up to an expert in another profession and so became a very famous man in Rome. Due to his great ability to move in the influential cultural spheres of social life in Rome and other Italian places he was informed about all new books and so we see that he was involved in the translation of various Italian books which then found their market in Spain. Everything comes to an end and so he had to escape to other places after the sack of Rome. He survived the sack. However, he was not sure about his life and therefore our mysterious author adopted another pseudonym and continued working in his field in his new residence. There he had old friends and was soon back in the highest cultural sphere. In the meantime he became older and decided to return to Spain. There we see him again involved in several books, because books were his life.

This book at this moment is one of the most profound, rigorous and well-documented investigations ever into the history of draughts or chess. In this monumental work, around one thousand books dealing with history, bibliography, technical treatises, literature, general culture, etc. were carefully studied and referenced. The intersection between the games of chess and draughts was much greater than was first thought, as the present research demonstrates. And as could not be otherwise: with the work and cooperation of one of the all-time great figures of the history of draughts and a chess historian specialized in the medieval and renaissance period and technical bibliography, everything would out. Indeed, a solid foundation on which to accommodate a truth that had so fiercely resisted the light of day. If this were not the case, without this team work, a lot, and maybe too much, time would have gone by until everything would have finally settled into its rightful place.

Como no sabían nada de ella, ni siquiera cómo era su nombre en árabe; la llamaron a semejanza de una montaña negra. La elección resultaba ser un gran error y no podía ser peor, porque todo el mundo hablaba de su hermosura y belleza. Aquellos que estaban de viaje, no perdían ocasión para admirarla. A su vez, y de alguna forma, ella era su admiradora. No bastaba que su nombre estuviera en boca de todos, ya que era venerada en los corazones de una multitud de ilustres personajes. Y en efecto, ¿Cómo podía olvidarse quien le hubiere visto, de aquella hermosa y noble presencia divina? Su intensa vitalidad se manifestaba por una emanación deslumbrante de luz; expresión privilegiada de la vida. Ese haz de luz de una intensidad indescriptible, era conocido por todos los transeúntes; a tal punto de llegar a considerarlo un signo de la soberanía divina. Desde el principio, los visitantes se dieron cuenta de que ella era algo especial.

Según la crónica de López de Ayala, don Pedro dejó a la reina doña Blanca dos días después de su boda, para volver a reunirse con María de Padilla. Por otra parte la muerte de doña Blanca, con solo 25 años, nunca se ha podido aclarar. Hay varias versiones de su muerte. Hasta ahora la única monografía en un libro que se ha escrito sobre la reina doña Blanca de Borbón ha sido un librito de 80 páginas del Dr. Juan Antonio Martínez Gómez-Gordo (1924-1913), alumno predilecto del doctor don Gregorio Marañón. Creo, por tanto, que en la historia de don Pedro I no se ha estudiado suficientemente el papel de Francia. Vale la pena estudiar más a fondo las actuaciones de los hermanos de doña Blanca; la actuación del rey francés Charles V, cuñado de doña Blanca; la actuación del visionario Jean de Roquetaillade, y la actuación del franciscano, el infante Pedro de Aragón. Sin duda alguna la temática de esta obra llena el vacío que existía en la literatura nacional.

El Archivo Municipal de Murcia es una verdadera joya, donde se tienen documentos desde el siglo XIII hasta hoy. Por eso es tan sospechoso que en esta rica documentación, con respecto al reinado de Pedro I, falte el Cartulario Real entre los años 1355 y 1367, y también los Libros de Actas Capitulares del reinado, a excepción del correspondiente a 1364-1365. Por lo tanto, una de las épocas más difíciles para la historia de Murcia es tal vez aquella, cuando don Pedro I estuvo al poder en Castilla. Murcia siempre fue fiel a su rey y le defendió constantemente durante su reinado. Lógicamente escritores como Bellot, Zurita, Cáscales y muchos otros no estaban al tanto de la correspondencia secreta del Papa Inocencio VI (1352-1362) con don Fadrique, Maestre de la Orden de Santiago. Probablemente ahora, con estas nuevas investigaciones se podrán ver con otros ojos las actuaciones del rey castellano. Por tanto, con esta obra pretendo llenar un vacío en los libros de historia en Murcia.

La Orden de Santiago ayudó constantemente a sus respectivos Reyes en la conquista de territorios. Ayudaron a conquistar el reino de Murcia y en 1243, por el tratado de Alcaraz, el Valle de Ricote se incorporó a la Corona de Castilla. En aquella época el Valle de Ricote contaba con los pueblos de Abarán, Negra, Ojós, Ricote y Puerto de Losilla. A partir de 1285 la máxima autoridad de la encomienda era el comendador. Ricote era por los siglos XII y XIII cabeza del Valle que lleva su nombre y el comendador tenía allí su sede. Hasta ahora el conocimiento que tenemos de nuestros comendadores es muy limitado, puesto que no hay libros que hablen sobre sus actividades. El propósito de este libro ha sido llenar este vacío con el fin de que sepamos poco a poco quiénes eran los comendadores del Valle de Ricote y como era la vida de los mudéjares en Blanca. La investigación ha durado bastantes años, pero ahora por fin sabemos algo más de este siglo XIV, siglo tan difícil para escribir nuestra historia.

El cronista del rey Pedro I, el canciller Pero López de Ayala ha resultado ser un buen historiador. Lo que si se ve en la crónica es que el canciller oculta a veces ciertos hechos ejecutados por don Pedro u ocurridos durante su reinado. No explica el canciller por qué motivo don Pedro I abandonó a su mujer, doña Blanca. ¿Era cuestión de dinero? Otra razón por la cual don Pedro abandona a doña Blanca podría ser su concubina María de Padilla, que había dado luz a su primera hija, Beatriz, en marzo 1353. Y finalmente podría existir otra razón por la cual don Pedro tuviera más que suficientes motivos para abandonar y encerrar a doña Blanca. ¿Tal vez en esta decisión influyeron los amores entre doña Blanca y su cuñado, don Fadrique, el Maestre de la Orden de Santiago?

Every checkers player knows about Woldouby's famous position. This 21 year-old Senegalese drew a lot of attention in Paris in 1910 when he won against all challengers in his store located in the Senegalese village of the Exposition of Jardin d'Acclimatation zoologique. No one understood how this player could win all the games that fast. After Amadou Kandie Woldouby was the second African who participated in a checkers tournament in Paris since he became the city champion in 1911. In 1911 he left France and no one knew his whereabouts since then. In this biography we show that Weiss' golpe (shot) actually was Woldouby's golpe, since he won against Isidore Weiss with it. On the other hand we want to show that Woldouby returned to Senegal in 1911 to take the place of a checkers runner-up in 1913. His biography deserves a worthy place in the history of checkers, as he was the prominent predecessor of the famous Senegalese checkers player Baba Sy.

This book should be considered a historical book, as it is the draughts'' career of Baba Sy, a prominent Senegalese player. He was able to be the best in the world without reading any books. He had a natural talent and was a self-made man thanks to the game of checkers. I have witnessed the achievements of the great Baba Sy and I have been in the early stage of the great players like Harm Wiersma and Ton Sijbrands, on which I predicted in 1964 that they would be a future world champions. So I know the mentality that one must have to succeed in this mind sport. My 40 year stay in Spain and my research on the Moors permits me to know more about the Islamic custom. And so I am now in a much better position than 40 years ago to comment properly on the life of Baba Sy.

This book should be considered a historical book, as it is the draughts'' career of Baba Sy, a prominent Senegalese player. He was able to be the best in the world without reading any books. He had a natural talent and was a self-made man thanks to the game of checkers. I have witnessed the achievements of the great Baba Sy and I have been in the early stage of the great players like Harm Wiersma and Ton Sijbrands, on which I predicted in 1964 that they would be a future world champions. So I know the mentality that one must have to succeed in this mind sport. My 40 year stay in Spain and my research on the Moors permits me to know more about the Islamic custom. And so I am now in a much better position than 40 years ago to comment properly on the life of Baba Sy.

Since 1987 we have defended in articles that the Spanish queen Isabella I of Castile (Isabel la Católica) was the new chess queen (dama) on the chessboard. Other publications were in 1990, 1994, 1997, and 2004. And of course, Marilyn Yalom studied our book during her visit to the National Library in The Hague (Holland) before she wrote Birth of the Chess Queen in 2004. In her book one cannot see that in 1987, 1990, and 1994 we already published material about Isabel la Catolica (Isabel I of Castile) being the new powerful dama or chess queen on the chessboard. In other words we can state here that we have been studying Spanish history and its chess literature for over 30 years. Since 2003 we have also known the development of the new bishop in chess.

Sobre el futuro de la agricultura como opción de negocio, un empresario de chufas no tiene duda: "La huerta tiene mucho futuro". Un profesor de Formación Profesional advierte de que "en la agricultura sobran técnicos y faltan agricultores del siglo XXI, con calidad emprendedora. Se terminó la visión de nuestros abuelos, que tenían magníficas cosechas cuyos beneficios se perdían en intermediarios. La clave para el éxito de la huerta es especialización y profesionalización". Los idiomas son parte fundamental en la formación de profesionales pues brindan herramientas clave para el desempeño laboral y la innovación. Los conocimientos antiguos de nuestros abuelos son hoy fuente de estudio de la medicina moderna en busca de "nuevos" conocimientos y medicamentos más efectivos con menos efectos secundarios. Con estas nuevas tendencias el mundo agrícola está cambiando poco a poco y podemos preguntarnos: ¿Cuál ha de ser el nivel medio profesional del agricultor en los momentos actuales?

Today most chess historians agree that the weak chess queen, named "dame" in France as from the XIV century, changed to a powerful chess queen in Spain in 1475. Around this year we also see a change of the weak bishop to a strong bishop, according to the chess poem Scachs d'amor. In order to strengthen our hypothesis of Isabella I of Castile (Isabel la Católica) we have written a book about the new bishop and a book about Scachs d'amor in English. Concentrating now on Virgin Mary in relationship with Isabella I of Castile we observe that the Augustinian monastic Martin de Córdoba wrote in 1468 the work El Jardin de las donzellas. It was directed to Princess Isabel I of Castile with the intention to contribute to her education as future Queen. Cordoba was the first writer who draws equivalencies between Isabella I of Castile and Virgin Mary, which became one of her standard portrayals. Shorty thereafter we see the appearance of a new powerful chess queen.

This is the first bibliography in English of the protonotary Juan Ramírez de Lucena (1430-1504) who was one of the ambassadors of the Catholic monarchs. He was the father of Lucena, the writer of a chess book that was published in Salamanca in 1997. Knowing the biography of the protonotary and his activities in Italy and France in the highest sphere of society it is clear that his son Lucena could take advantage of this, because his father had opened the door in many places. No doubt that during the life of the protonotary Juan Ramírez de Lucena his son visited these places in Italy and France, as Lucena himself confirmed in the chess treaty of 1497.

Met dit werk heeft de lezer in zijn handen het allerdiepste documentaire onderzoek dat ooit gedaan is aangaande de geschiedenis van het dam- en schaakspel. In dit monumentale werk zijn liefst 1000 Europese boeken van vele landen onderzocht. De Spaanse konining Isabella van Castilië (1451-1504) was de oorzaak van een diepgaande verandering in het schaak- en alquerque-12 spel. Plotseling had de Koningin in 1475 meer macht als de Koning en dat kwam op doeltreffende manier meteen tot uiting in de nieuwe schaakdame van het schaakspel en de nieuwe dames (dammen) middels de gepromoveerde pionnen van het oude alquerque-12 spel dat overgezet werd op het schaakbord. De vele Engelse, Duits, Franse, Spaanse, Italiaanse en Nederlandse teksten worden afgewisseld met vele illustraties. Dit boek richt zich, in eerste instantie, tot onderzoekers op de universiteit, maar het boek is eveneens nuttig voor de damliefhebbers die zich met de geschiedenis van het damspel bezighouden.

This book is the outcome of a close study of the Ricote Valley and its famous Sufi Ibn Sab'in. Its purpose is to disclose more of the historical and comparative data. Arab Spaniards have created a glorious human story that lasted for centuries within the scope of the Mediterranean culture. However, a lot of the history of the Ricote Valley is only written in Spanish and still not in English. Andalusian scientists moved from the region of Murcia to the heart of the Islamic world. Their move had quite a deep effect. Among these scientists was the great Sufi philosopher, Muhammad Ibn-'Abdul-Haq known as Ibn- Sab'in (d. 669 H. = 1270 AD), who came from the Ricote Valley. He is the originator of the deep philosophical approach in dealing with highly humanistic Sufi thought, and the author of the magnificent treatise Al-Kalam 'ala Al-Masa'il Al-Siqqilliyya, in which he answered the philosophical questions that Frederick II, the Emperor of Sicily, sent to Muslim scientists in the Mashreq and the Maghreb.