Parcels of Spanish Memories – The Taucker Travel Blog
6 min read
I appreciate maps. I can pore more than them endlessly. No issue how nicely I consider I know a put, when I glimpse at a map I see a lot I was not conscious of. At the exact time, as the Polish-American philosopher Alfred Korzybski pointed out, the map is not the territory. When you are in fact in a area you practical experience a excellent deal that is not on any map.
I locate that no area is ever fairly what I imagined it to be. It’s often a fantastic offer a lot more. When I went to Spain, I was struck by many things that had never ever occurred to me. For instance, I experienced always assumed of Spain as section of Europe, which it obviously is. But when I was touring throughout the countryside and traveling to the towns, I saved noticing what felt like an affinity with Africa.
At the time that experienced happened to me, I recognized it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Spain and Africa are right upcoming to every single other. At the Strait of Gibraltar, they are only divided by 8 miles of quickly navigable h2o. There you can see Morocco from Spain and vice versa. Just before railroads and autos were invented, the sea was by considerably the most effective implies of extended-distance travel. So historically, Spain is in some strategies closer to Africa than Europe.
In distinction, Spain is divided from France and the rest of Europe by the mighty Pyrenees mountain assortment, which types a formidable barrier. That reinforced Spain’s individual character progress, and its independence from the rest of Europe. Spain has produced its very own unique character, and by its colonial empire, it spread that tradition about the world. Like all colonial empires, Spain had its oppressive side. But all round, its cultural legacy is irresistibly charming.
I also learned a geological foundation for the affinity involving Spain and Africa. In terms of continental drift, the movement of landmasses around the crust of the earth above hundreds of thousands of a long time, Spain was formerly section of the African landmass. It collided with the Eurasian landmass millions of yrs in the past, and the tension developed the Pyrenees Mountains. So Spain has a deep affinity with Africa in the land itself.
But probably most of the affinity I felt between Spain and Africa was centered on the presence of the Moors, out of Northern Africa, who occupied Spain for just about 800 many years, 711 to 1492.
The Berber-Hispanic Muslims inhabited two-thirds of the Iberian Peninsula for 375 decades, occupied about fifty percent for an additional 160 many years, and stayed in Granada for a different 244 years. These types of cultural influences run deep and do not vanish promptly. The Moorish lifestyle continues to be a palpable aspect of the experience of fashionable Spain.
In the 20th century, the Spain-Africa affinity was reflected in the art of Pablo Picasso, most likely Spain’s most celebrated artist. He commenced his vocation ably mastering the kinds of his predecessors, from Rembrandt by means of Gauguin and Van Gogh. Then he found out African artwork, which led to a revolution in the way he observed factors. He deconstructed the planet and set it again jointly in a shocking new way. That was the birth of Cubism. It was not just a design and style that arrived and went, it eternally modified the way we see points and signify items in art.
As I toured Spain and knowledgeable the special character of every single of the towns, I realized that each and every experienced formulated independently throughout the hundreds of years right before the institution of a nationwide entity named Spain.
It was in the watershed yr of 1492 that the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon conquered the Emirate of Granada, ended Muslim rule in the south, and launched Spain as a united condition.
The presence of Rome is also unfold across the nation, as in almost all of Europe and North Africa. You run into enduring Roman artifacts nearly just about everywhere, these as in Córdoba where there even now stands a terrific Roman bridge and a huge waterwheel.
Traveling cross nation was thrilling due to the fact the landscape alone, with its awe-inspiring Sierra Nevada mountains and fantastic expanses of rolling plains, has heart-stirring magnificence. It appears to be to talk quietly and grandly of its personal historic background. But it’s the cities the place people today acquire and culture is concentrated in so quite a few artifacts, exactly where you can seriously get a really feel for the human history of the position.
Each of the towns I visited left its personal parcel of individual memories: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Córdoba, Granada and Malaga. Every single felt special and personal when I was there, and still left potent impressions that characterize my reminiscences of them.
Barcelona is the glorious Mediterranean seaport in the northeastern element of Spain, as breezy and beautiful as its name is musical, dancing off the tongue. Barcelona was the cash of Catalonia, and was one of the to start with Roman settlements in Spain, established by Emperor Augustus all over 15 BC. You can however see Roman partitions and ruins there.
A person of my most vivid memories of Barcelona is the astounding Gaudí Cathedral. It was motivated by medieval Gothic cathedrals developed from the 12th to the 15th century. But it was constructed in the late 19th century. It is viewed as Catalan Modernisme, or Art Nouveau. It is weird and riveting to appear at, colossal and ornate in a weird way. It embodies the aptitude and flamboyance of Barcelona. I cherished the city’s Art Nouveau architecture, and the ornate iron railings and stone do the job.
Barcelona also captured my coronary heart because it was the cash of Catalonia, where by the initially resistance to fascism rose up in the late 1930s in what turned the Spanish Civil War.
Madrid is the excellent cosmopolitan middle of Spain, correct in the middle. With a inhabitants of practically 3 million, it’s by significantly Spain’s major metropolis. It’s the house of the good Museo Nacional del Prado, 1 of the world’s biggest museums, as perfectly as the Reina Sofia museum, which properties Picasso’s “Guernica,” one more assertion on the Spanish Civil War. The streets of Madrid are fascinating, with art items displayed outside, sidewalk cafes, and energetic avenue lifetime. And there’s the enormous Palacio del Oriente, the Royal Palace now made use of for gatherings and as a vacationer attraction.
Seville had what is mentioned to be the first tobacco factory, from the 18th century, which was the setting of the opera “Carmen” by the French composer Bizet. Seville is the funds of the location of Andalucía, with stunning rolling hills and villages, and residences on hillsides. It’s the household of Flamenco songs and dance, and a excellent location to expertise the serious factor. It is the final resting position of Columbus and also the place of the remarkable Alamillo Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava applying a harp-like composition. And it is exactly where tapas originated.
Córdoba was a Moorish city, and center of the Arabic entire world. The Cathedral of Cordoba demonstrates a interesting conglomeration of Muslim and Christian cultures. It was the moment a Mosque, and still shows indications of its before incarnation, now overlaid by Christian symbols. Cordoba was also the birthplace of the wonderful bullfighter El Cordobés.
Granada, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, was the headquarters of the Moors in Spain. It is recognized generally for the Alhambra, their palace. The Alhambra, or “Red Castle” in Arabic, is a head-numbingly amazing palace and grounds, comprehensive of ornate, Moorish artwork and structure, revealing a pretty wealthy and made nation that existed there from the late 9th century right up until the Moors had been chased out in 1492 by the soaring new Spanish country.
Málaga is an Andalusian town on Costa del Sol. It was the birthplace of Picasso in 1881, and is the dwelling of the Museo Picasso Málaga, a museum devoted to Picasso. Málaga was also the web-site of a intimate legend of Lovers Mountain, or Fans Rock, mentioned to be the place wherever two lovers, a Christian and a Moor, jumped to their deaths somewhat than to be divided. Spain is nothing at all if not romantic.
Spain is a spot of wonderful soul, good spiritual and sensual vibrance. It is an unlimited supply of ponder and warm satisfaction, by no means to be fatigued.
Viva Espana!
Your humble reporter,
Colin Treadwell
