Madam No No's

[Barbasiewiczfan]

Madam No No's.

by Bruce Stark

Jan 2021

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It was 1974 and I was stationed at Torrejon Air Base just outside of Madrid, Spain.

A few of us were sitting around the barracks one night when a conversation started about a legal whorehouse that was in the city of Alcala. Alcala was just a short ride North-East of where we were. A road trip was proposed and four of us drove to Alcala around midnight.

Once we arrived in Alcala we walked the streets asking anybody if they knew where madam No No's bar was. The locals laughed and pointed us in the correct direction. We learned that Madam No No's was officially known as, "La Cantina De Madam Carmen Fernandez."

When we found the bar and went in, we were all eyes and there was plenty to see.

A long bar ran the length of the room. There must have been ten girls standing on the customer side of the bar. They were all dressed in fish-net stockings with striped shirts and lots of make-up. They all looked like the classic prostitutes you would see in depictions of the girls our soldiers would encounter during world war II.

One of the girls spoke good English and she told us the history of the bar.

It seems that Madam Carmen Fernandez was a friend of Francisco Franco. During the Spanish Civil War, she had hidden Franco from the rebels. She was tortured to reveal where Franco was. She did not give in even after they cut-off her nose. The proper name of the bar was madam No Nose.

After the war, Francisco Franco was asked by the church to eliminate all the legal prostitution in Spain. Franco allowed Madam Carmen Fernandez to continue her business as a reward for her service during the war.

Here is the rub. The only condition was that she couldn't hire any new girls. Yes, all the whores at the bar were older that our mothers. Madam No Nose was in the bar and the English speaking girl pointed he out to us. She was in a glass booth overlooking the bar. She was dressed in all black with a cloth covering her face where her nose should have been.

We eventually left to drive back to the base, but Mike Hanlon decided that one of the girls was real friendly and he thought he would spend the night with her.

Mike was at work the next morning with a smile on his face.