Sabina Suey, who had the foresight to protect the Holy Grail, was a postwoman and professional pianist.

The Queen of Cups

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, everyone from Spanish revolutionaries to M.I.6 agents wanted to steal the Holy Grail. Little did they know that a Valencian postwoman had hidden it in her sofa

By Adam Hay-Nicholls

Illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

It is a story that’s equal parts Indiana Jones, John le Carré, and outlandish sitcom: a woman was pursued by the British secret service and the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War because she’d hidden the Holy Grail—the cup from which Christ is said to have drunk during the Last Supper—in a sofa.

There is debate as to where the relic is today, or if it even existed in the first place. A source of myth and mystery, more than 200 goblets across Europe alone have been posited as the holy chalice. Some academics have dismissed the Grail legend as a literary invention of the Middle Ages. Others theorize it was spirited away by the Knights Templar and is currently locked away in Fort Knox. Yet if it really does exist, several of the more credible routes from Jerusalem point toward Spain.