The man who represents Duarte Province in the senate is also a Spanish aristocrat. So says Senator Julio Gonzalez Burel, who claims to be the Count of Torremata. Senator Gonzalez, known to friends as "Machacho," said that his uncle, a Spaniard, who flew an airplane during the Spanish civil war, brought the title with him and bequeathed it to him upon his death. "I have the document locked in a safe deposit box in the Banco Intercontinental in San Francisco de Macoris," he said, but I attach no importance to it because I’m a simple guy." In the DR, he said, his title is only good for "ostentation," although in Europe people give much weight to it. Burel stated that he recently received a phone call from a professor at the University of Salamanca offering "to renew his title" for him, but he declined the offer. "A count with no possessions and no dough ain’t worth anything," he said.
