THE ALLURE OF SPAIN

 

Right from my young days, I was fascinated by two countries, Italy and Spain, and had always desired to visit them. The Navy was kind to find some work for me in Italy which I visited thrice on official work. I had enough time to visit various places in the country so much so that in 2004, I took Akhila on an extensive tour to Italy with no aid from a tour operator or a guide. Spain remained.

Why was Spain so alluring to me? To start with, Spanish beauty. Ravishing Spanish women have been the subject of many songs and operas. Popular songs include the adorable ‘Lady of Spain’ and blue ’Spanish Eyes’. Bizet’s Carmen’ is a well-known opera about a captivating Spanish gypsy girl. Then there is the music of Spain which I find enormously appealing. Tune in to Ravel’s pulsating ‘Bolero’ or Rimsky-Korsakov’s lively ‘Capriccio Espagnol’ based on Spanish folk songs and you would be tempted to see the land to which the music belongs. (Curiously, all the composers of these works are not from Spain; Bizet and Ravel were French and Rimsky-Korsakov, a Russian!) There is also the exciting ‘Corrida’ music which brings the bullring to you. Ernest Hemingway’s books ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ and ‘The Sun Also Rises’ with their bullfighting stories had also evoked my interest in that sport supported by the movie ‘Blood And Sand’ with the handsome, swashbuckling Tyrone Power as the matador and the voluptuous and seductive ‘Lady Goddess’ Rita Hayworth as his love interest. Both actors were Americans but they played their Spanish roles to perfection. In fact, Rita Hayworth’s father was originally Spanish hailing from a small town near Seville and Rita’s real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino!

So in 2010, Akhila and I decided to visit Spain on our way back from New York where we had gone to spend the summer with Ruchir. We reckoned that to see the country properly, we should stay in three places. Barcelona was an automatic choice given its connectivity, popularity and modern architecture. As a beach resort, Mallorca was chosen thanks to the song ‘Majorca, Isle of Love’. We decided that the third city had to be one from the south. Two contenders came to mind: Granada backed by Mario Lanza’s song and Seville prompted by Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’ and Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ the characters of which are based in Seville. Finally, the two operas beat one song and Seville it was.

Ruchir’s knowledgeable assistant, Paul Weiner, was a great help with his advice on selection of hotels and we landed in Barcelona on 3rd August. Our hotel was overlooking the waterfront with a beautiful view of the coastline, La Costa Brava. We were also within walking distance from Barcelona’s most famous street, Las Ramblas, with its shops, street artists, cafes and the colourful Mercat de la Boqueria, a large public fresh market. Nearby was the Museo Picasso with more than 3000 of the artist’s works.

Barcelona is the home of Catalan architecture and its landmark building is La Sagrada Familia, a church designed by perhaps the most famous architect of Spain, Antoni Gaudi, the greatest exponent of the movement known as Modernisme, a combination of Gothic and Art Nouveau designs. The foundation of La Sagrada was laid in 1882 and Gaudi took over the project in 1883. Though Gaudi died in 1926, the cathedral is a work in progress in accordance with his design and after many delays, the latest being the Covid pandemic, is expected to be fully completed in 2032, a full 150 years in the making! When fully finished, it will have 18 towers more than 100 metres high. We took the elevator to the top of one of the steeples to view the vast expanse of Barcelona, the sea and the surroundings. We had to climb down the narrow 300 steps which was a tough task.

Driving through the city, we saw more of Gaudi’s designs which stand out for their uniqueness.

Another landmark of the city is Camp Nou, home of the famous football club, F.C. Barcelona. The stadium is the largest in Spain and can seat nearly 1 lakh spectators. Football is so revered in Spain that visiting Camp Nou is considered akin to visiting a temple. So that had to be done and we could feel Lionel Messi’s aura around the Stadium!

After 4 days of Barcelona, we flew down to Mallorca. I have already described our activities in the island resort in detail in a preceding post. We had an exquisite hotel set in its own cove to stay in, visited many historic sites and walked through the old town with its quaint shops and cafes. The island is breathtakingly picturesque and a feast for the senses. Inadvertently, we also landed up on a nude beach and embarrassingly hurried away from it! 

We took the flight to Seville, or Sevilla as the Spanish call it, on the 9th where we were booked in a nice hotel near the river, Rio Guadalquivir, guarded by a watchtower at our end of the bridge, Puente de San Telmo. We were also close to the former Jewish quarter called Barrio de Santa Cruz with its maze of narrow streets and cafes. We visited the lavishly decorated Cathedral of Seville and the adjoining tower, La Giralda, of 12th century vintage which was once a minaret of the main mosque of Seville and in its time, the tallest building in the world! It’s a hard climb to the top but once one gets there, the view of the whole of Seville is spectacular.

Other landmarks visited were Alcazar built in the 10th century as a Muslim fortress. It is home to beautiful gardens as is another dedicated garden site, Jardines de Murillo. We loved Plaza de Espana with its fountains among buildings in ceramic tiles set in a semicircular design.

The highlight was a visit to Seville’s famous bullring, Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza. There were no bullfights scheduled when we were in Seville, so we were saved from the Hobson’s choice of seeing or not seeing the gory spectacle of the blood sport. A visit to where it all takes place was adequate for our experience. The bullring has a museum displaying an array of splendid costumes of matadors embroidered with gold and silver threads, capes, lances, banderillas, picadillos and swords. There were many paintings including those of Joaquim Costillares, the 18th century matador from Seville, who founded the modern style of bullfighting with cape movements and maneuvres. Just being in the bullring was an experience of a lifetime.

No trip to Spain can be complete without witnessing the Flamenco and we attended an unforgettable performance feasting our eyes and ears on the Spanish guitar, the singing and the dancing with the dancer in her shining white, flowing dress starting with slow movements and accelerating gently till the frenzy of movements, palmas (handclaps) and loud tapping of feet led to the finale.

We frequented many cafes and were delighted that there was a good variety of vegetarian tapas available. We gorged on them frequently and I indulged in an occasional Spanish Omelet. Besides, the coffee was super.

After covering Seville quite extensively, we found we had a day to spare and decided to go to Cordoba, former capital of Islamic Spain and located up river on the banks of the same Rio Guadalquivir. A fast train got us there in half an hour and we headed for the main attraction, La Mezquita, which was built as a mosque in the 8th century. In 1236, its central part was converted into a church and now both the mosque and the church exist under one roof, a remarkable feature perhaps without a parallel. The architecture is exquisite consisting of a number of two-tier arches painted with red and white stripes and resting on columns resembling palm trees.

We also visited a fortress, Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos, and Juderia, a Jewish quarter similar to but much smaller than the one in Seville, with its own set of narrow lanes many with blind alleys. The lanes were lined with cute houses with pretty and colourful flowers on the patios.

We could do all this by lunch so we decided to go to Madrid which so far had not been on our itinerary. Another fast train and we were there in an hour and 45 minutes. We reckoned that the best way to see Madrid in the time available would be by taking a Ho-Ho (Hop on-Hop off bus) which took us all around Madrid and allowed us to drop off and see what we fancied. So we covered this city of vast plazas and lush green parks and saw Patacio Real, the official residence of the then King Juan Carlos, Catedral de la Almudena built in the 19th century, Monumento a Miguel de Cervantez with a stone statue of the famous author and bronze statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and the busy Plaza Mayor with a statue of Felipe III on horseback and cafes all-round. We also found time to visit Museo Nacional del Prado to view paintings of Goya and Velazquez.

A two and a half hour late evening fast train ride brought us back to Seville. The next day we bade adios to Spain flying back to Delhi with a day’s break in London where we visited Greenwich and stood astride the 0* Meridian with one foot in the East and one in the West!

Only regret, we missed ‘Lisbon Antigua’ perhaps because it was not ‘April in Portugal’!

Looking back, my defining moment in Spain was standing in the bullring in Seville, closing my eyes, imagining the bugles announcing the beginning of a bullfight, trumpets blaring, drums beating, castanets clicking, the band striking the fiery ‘Espana Cani’, the matador in his splendid costume waiting in the centre of the ring, the bull entering and charging for the matador who waves the blood red cape and deftly sidesteps and pirouettes so that the bull passes harmlessly by and the crowd led by the matador’s senorita roars a huge ‘Ole’.