the first year of the Spanish Civil War. The members were scattered during the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and their aftermath—some fled; some fought; some were exiled; still others were shot. Buñuel notes in his memoirs that at the beginning of the Civil War, an anarchist brigade in Madrid found a box marked “Order of Toledo” during a registration. The keeper of the box tried to explain that the name was not a real noble title, but in the end, it cost him his life. Memory of the Order The adventure was sporadic, and although it did not serve to revitalize the dormant Toledan culture, it did strike something deep within its protagonists, like a great flash in that rebel and vanguard formation that led to the main creations in the advancement of Spanish cinema, literature, and art.During the Spanish Civil War, Buñuel was exiled from Spain. Not until the early 1960s was he permitted to return—only temporarily—to make films. The first film he made in Spain after his exile, Viridiana, was shot in Toledo. Buñuel would continue relying on Toledo in many of his later films not just as a backdrop, but as a persistent presence, a character in its own right. Tristana (1970) is an interesting study in Buñuel's simultaneous memorialization of the city of Toledo and the Order of Toledo. The plot follows the progression of Tristana from a young orphan subjected to sexual abuse by her guardian, Don Lope, to a hardened woman capable of incredible emotional cruelty. Central to Tristana's development is the setting of Toledo. In an elliptical circuit that begins and ends in a walk around the city (itself evocative of Buñuel's own return to the city), Tristana endures psychological twists and turns perfectly reflected in the palpable constriction of the narrow, winding streets. In the tomb of Cardinal Tavera, Tristana hovers—as if poised to kiss the marble lips—in the last moment of her innocence. Perhaps the most significant Toledan presence in the film is the Cathedral—or, rather, the bell of the Cathedral—featured repeatedly in the sights and sounds of the movie. The bell is most prominent as a nightmare (and later a fantasy), as Tristana dreams that the clapper has metamorphosed into the severed head of her guardian. The first occurrence of the nightmare signals the impending consummation of the sexual relationship between Tristana and Don Lope, and the