She was born on the road, at the foot of a cart loaded with cauldrons and stills, about 70 years ago. Maria Stanescu grew up a nomad, helping in the family business of distilling. She slept under the open sky, next to the fire that served as both hearth and stove. She was free, even though she lacked basic necessities like shoes. Thirty years ago, “the winters were so harsh” that she and her family decided to abandon their nomadic life and build a house in the Romanian village of Fetesti, 145 kilometers east of Bucharest. After becoming a widow, she became the matriarch of a three-generation Roma family who now gather at the entrance of the house.

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A team of forensic geneticists who examined the graves of newborns allegedly stolen in Spain during the Franco regime has published its findings for the first time in a scientific journal. The five researchers, from the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences (INTCF), underscored that their data challenges “the widespread narrative of systematic theft” in hospitals and rejects “the conjecture, by now a hoax, about 300,000 cases of stolen babies in Spain.”

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In today’s landscape of warfare, where drones and missiles play such a decisive role, and as we await the arrival of robot soldiers on the battlefield, studying cavalry seems like an exercise in military archaeology tinged with romantic nostalgia for a vanished world of lancers, hussars, uhlans, and dragoons. Apart from the fact that the countless horsemen slaughtered on horseback throughout history would hardly have seen the romance in it — let alone their poor mounts — cavalry not only remained in effective military use for much longer than is commonly thought, but could once again play a role in warfare in a world that has run out of the fuel or electricity that power modern military machinery. This is the view of the young military historian Ismael López (Valdeobispo, Cáceres, 31 years old), author of the monumental 800-page Sables al viento (Sabers in the Wind), an exhaustive history of modern cavalry between 1860 and 1945, from Custer’s horsemen to those of the Waffen-SS, and full of incredible episodes (published in Spain by Ático de los Libros, 2026).

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