“The [220mph] Ave S103 is the kind of train that British commuters can only dream of, and forms the centrepiece of plans to make Spain a model for the rest of Europe, and the world leader in high-speed trains by 2010.”
“The aim is to have 10,000km (6,200 miles) of high-speed track in Spain by 2020, meaning that 90% of the population will be no more than 30 miles from a station through which the train passes.” Whether the train actually stops in said stations may be another matter…
Photo: Lost and Found in Soria
There was a time when Spain was remarkably different to anywhere else. Crossing the Pyrenees was like crossing to another continent. Spain was in every sense more arid, uncommercial, pure… less affected. Even some of the Spanish joked that Spain was closer to Africa than to Europe, and not just geographically.
Yet these days Madrid, that just 10 years ago felt like a mishmash of small, friendly towns with one or two big roads in the middle, roars like London. And the Mediterranean coast is one long, crooked urban sprawl. And it seems like Seville and Barcelona only care about screwing money out of tourists.
But now I’m starting to sound like those insanely annoying people that say: “if only you’d seen Spain ten twenty thirty years ago…” Don’t you just hate it when people tell you that?
What if you want to see places where Spain still really looks like Spain today? Then you are in luck!
You only have to wonder around the barrio of Malasaña in Madrid to find an area that is still timelessly Madrileño, and you just have to stray 2 minutes from the tourist-hell of Barcelona’s Rambla to see the deliciously seedy Raval and feel like you’re on another, much more interesting planet. And you simply have to drive far enough inland from any coastal building site to find those same beautiful hillsides that always looked so raw and ‘Un-European’.
Here are the first few places I’d tell someone to look for “untouched Spain” if they asked for directions, maybe you can help me out:
1. Soria, town and province – largely undiscovered, even by me!
2. Ourense, town and province – if you are passing through Galicia… a town and province by the same name, both rough-hewn from ganite and rain.
3. Teruel, town and province – so far off the beaten track that even the locals aren’t sure if it exists anymore…
4. Extremadura – wild, vast, full of lushous landscapes and fine ham!
5. ??? – Yes, over to you again: tell us where to find “untouched Spain”, and I’ll add your suggestions to the map below!
For locations and details, click on the blue markers on the map below:
And finally, also by popular request, my last list of the week. Please feel free to add to it.
The BEST things about Spain:
1. The food – the variation in all the different provinces, from Salmorejo in Cordoba, to Fabada in Asturias, Pinxtos in San Sebastian, Arroz in Valencia, tapas in Leon, and everything else in between!
2. The outdoor lifestyle – who doesn’t love eating, drinking, and living outside?
3. The strong sense of family – Spaniards work hard to keep the family important, it’s a shame other cultures focus less on this as time goes on.
4. The climate. Of course!
5. Spanish wine!
6. The Spanish are generally happy people who take pride in showing others the best of Spain (in many other countries people are often too quick to criticise their own culture, and there us nothing wrong with a bit of national pride).
7. If I don’t say the pretty girls then someone else will! 😉
8. Small traders still giving ‘trato personal’ – the supermarkets haven’t put everyone out of business yet.
9. The landscapes – From the lush green north, to the mighty Pyrenees, the deserts of Almeria, the Alpujarras, the Rias in Galicia, the wilds of Extremadura… the variety is unimaginable until you start to see it all for yourself.
10. What would YOU put for number 10?
Today we talk to Patricia Dawn Severenuk from SpanishCyclePaths.com – who in March 2008 is leading the Trans-Iberian Express, a 1,500 kilometer, 6 week cycle ride from one corner of Spain to the other.
If you would like to ride from the Basque country all the way down to the depths of Andalusia, then guess what, you’re invited! Contact Dawn via her site if you want to join her for some or all of the trip, and if you can’t make it, then you can always follow her progress on the trip via her blog, www.trans-iberian.blogspot.com.
OK, so the photos in the post below were not exactly illustrative of anything much other than how blue the sky is in Spain in November, and how great that is. So here are some November autumnal colours taken this week in the sunny Retiro park. An hour in there washes all one’s troubles away…
Now, the astute may have noticed some hanky-panky in the photo above. In case you missed it, here’s a sordid enlargement…
… you can’t miss this sort of thing in the park these days, and the above example is pretty mild! Most of these park-fondlers get pretty naughty under the trees, even if they do manage to stay fully clothed! Don’t youngsters have bedrooms to go and meter mano in these days?
Ben and Marina take a trip to the wonderful Alpujarra mountains south of Granada. We talk to Arpi and Fred Shively – check out Arpi’s blog Andalucid, and Fred’s photos on Flickr.
The image above (large version) is of the view from the track up to the O Sel Ling Buddhist retreat. For more photos that accompany this podcast, click here.
One of the most useful phrases I learned in my first year in Spain was:
¿Donde esta la marcha? – Where is the nightlife?
As my friend Alistair and I traveled from city to city in search of fun and photographic subjects for possible exhibitions (full story here, plug plug!), we never bothered looking in a guidebook to work out how to find the best of the city’s entertainment at night. We just asked the locals…
¿Donde esta la marcha? would elicit a string of information from passers-by about which bar-filled lane to head to from, say, 9.30 pm until midnight, where everyone went for copas after that, and which disco was best from 2 a.m. onwards. Plus we got chatting to the people we asked, which lead to other adventures along the way…
What’s the most useful phrase you use in Spain?
Why are you interested in Spain? What made you come here, or makes you want to come here? How did it all start? Why do you read this Spain blog? What makes the country special? Answer below or in the special forum post! I look forward to reading your answers!
Ryan from catavino.net (best Spanish wine info on the net!) thought we might like to spend a day wandering around a vinyard and tasting wine… he was right!
Check out the podcast, and if you would like to visit the abbey and vinyard, full details are available at the Abadia Retuerta website (they also have a wine blog!) Check out more of our photos from the trip here, and view the map below to find out where to locate Sardon del Duero (the vinyard is just to the east of Sardon on the main road – click on the blue marker and use the controls to enlarge). Cheers!
Google has just released a new mapping feature that I’ve been waiting for for ages, and is going to work really well on this blog. You can now embed their maps in the same way as you can add youtube videos to blogs, with a simple snippet of code. Here is my map of some great bars in the La Latina area of Madrid. Click on the blue flags for more details, use the controls to zoom in, out etc, click and hold to drag the map around… great stuff:
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 