I don’t know where my fascination with Spain came from. Perhaps the doll.
My grandparents were big travellers. When I was a kid, they started me on a collection of dolls, but not the kind you play with. I wasn’t much into playing with dolls. The dolls my grandparents bought me were elegant creatures made to sit on a shelf and be admired. I think I ended up with about six of them, but I remember only my two favourites: the one from Ireland (red hair and a green cape) and the one from Spain. She had raven black hair, a crimson blossom behind her ear, and wore a huge red skirt. My grandparents also brought me a set of castanets. I used to walk around the house clacking them until my mother decided she’d had enough of that noise. After several years, the castanets fell apart in my hands one day. I don’t know what happened to the dolls.
Anyway, I’ve wanted to go to Spain for years. I’ve talked about it for years. I’ve talked about it so much that I even started to bore myself with my talk about wanting to go to Spain. A few years ago, we were close to making the trip. It had moved up to number one spot on our list of things to do for 2021, but you know what happened to that.
So now Geo and I are finally here, post pandemic (we hope) and after much marital negotiation. Initially, I wanted to find a way for us to spend a year living in Spain. Geo said he could do 2 weeks. I said 6 months. He said 3 weeks. When I was at 3 months and he was at 4 weeks, we got stuck, so I planned an elaborate itinerary showing what we would do in all that time. He moved up to 6 weeks. Then I got crafty. While we’re there, I said, we may as well also go to Lisbon. He agreed to 8 weeks. So here we are, letting loose on this trip of a lifetime. We may never be able to go anywhere again.
We flew to Madrid with carry-on luggage: what else would you do these days? (We will be wearing the same clothes in all the pictures!) At least, it was carry-on until our layover in Frankfurt’s frenetic airport when the Lufthansa person in charge of boarding our flight to Madrid decided that my bag, which had been with me in the cabin on two flights at that point, was too big. I said goodbye to it, wondering what I would do in Spain with only the clothes I’d been wearing for 20 hours already. She deemed that Geo’s slightly smaller suitcase was acceptable for carry-on, but he checked his too, in sympathy with me. In Madrid, our bags showed up immediately. Maybe lost luggage is a North American/Canadian phenomenon.
Jet lag hit hard and it took me three nights to get a reasonable sleep. Nevertheless, Madrid and I hit it off immediately. We stayed in el Centro, at a great little hotel close to Atocha train station. It’s also close to Plaza Mayor and the writerly neighbourhood of Las Letras. For six days, we walked and walked under the cool Madrid sun. We spent hours at two of the big three Museos: the Reina Sofia (Picasso’s Guernica!) and the Prado. I’d often heard people say how dark the Prado is with all its looming old Masters - Goya, El Greco, Velazquez - and I see how it could feel like that, but I loved it. The structure itself, built in the late 19th century, is wonderful. It has beautiful soaring ceilings with individual connected salas that allow visitors to meander easily from one hall to the next, with lots of space to stand back and view the huge works, but also enough room to get up close as well.
Me and Velazquez outside the Prado
Of course, it’s too big to see all in one day. The highlight for me was Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a depiction of Earth in three phases: the Edénic pastoral at the creation of Adam and Eve, the rampant lust of hedonistic humanity, and the hellish aftermath of that lust. An avid puzzler, I’d spent several days during the pandemic doing a 1000 piece jigsaw of this famous work, studying each small scene as I fit the pieces in. Now, standing in front of the real thing, I was amazed at how light it is, how vivid and lively, even the Hell panel.
Aside from the big art galleries, a highlight of Madrid was Retiro Park. I’m always drawn to urban parks that become signature gathering spots for the people of their cities: New York’s Central Park, Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Montreal’s Mount Royal, Vancouver’s Stanley Park, Glasgow’s Polson Park. The two cities I’ve spent most of my life in, Winnipeg (Assiniboine Park where I used to feed the ducks on Sundays) and Edmonton (Hawrelak Park, site of triathalons, music, festivals, bike rides, more ducks) would be very different places without their parks.
Madrid’s Retiro Park is elegant, long and walkable, with playgrounds and sports fields, a bee garden and a huge lake with paddle boats, a wonderful old exposition building with a free art exhibition, and a glass palace filled with mist that’s the best selfie forum I’ve ever encountered, with numerous angled mirrored platforms that splinter and reflect. At the bottom end of Retiro Park, we came across Booksellers’ Row - a long line of permanent kiosks, more than 30 of them, all selling used and new books. It’s off season right now, so only about a third of them were open. I touched a few, but held myself back. If I’d truly dived into those piles, I’d still be there.
Me on Booksellers Row
Too soon, it was time to leave Madrid. By train this time. Train travel is so easy compared to air. You arrive about half an hour before departure, your luggage stays with you, you settle into your seats, and the train slowly drifts out of the station. Not the startling thrust into the air, just a gentle build of speed as the neighbourhoods glide by. While we were on the train to Barcelona, I read a short story collection by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Its English title is The City of Mist: it’s a menacing fascinating group of murky tales set in the Catalan city, some featuring historical characters like Cervantes and Gaudí.
I’ve also been reading a biography of Picasso (by Patrick O’Brien) while we’re here. Geo and I visit art galleries everywhere we go. While I usually try to seek out the galleries of women artists (Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, Georgia O’Keefe in Santa Fe), the majority of works in the established old art galleries are still overwhelmingly male. I’ve seen Picassos in many of them. I’ve looked at his sculptures in Paris’s Picasso Museum and stood feeling the despair of his gaunt Old Guitarist in Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art. Picasso is everywhere, so I decided to read about him because I felt I knew the artist but not the person. I viewed him as fantastically gifted and prolific, yet someone with a reputation for not treating the women in his life very well. The O’Brien biography has shown me that Picasso’s life was much more complex than that, but I was right about his astounding production. Apparently he created more than 15,000 paintings, and that’s not counting the drawings and the sculptures. No wonder he’s everywhere. The Picasso Museum in Barcelona focusses on his early years and did not disappoint and neither does Barcelona.
Art is everywhere you look in Barcelona. This photo is of a statue in Playa Catalunya. The base says the title is simply “Barcelona.” Geo called it “Horse, Naked Woman, and Boat.” I read somewhere that 85% of nudes in art are female, while more than 90% of the artists shown in major art galleries are male.
Next stop, Valencia. And it’s time for us to slow down a little. I’ve enjoyed the big attractions, but now it’s time for smaller places, less tourist stuff, and more meandering. I’ll be back here in this space in a few weeks. Thanks for reading Me Who Writes. If you like it, share it with a friend.