On our recent Andalusian wanderings, I came across a poster for a local fiesta, the Fiesta del Toro Embolao.
What is a Toro Embolao, I wondered? I wish I hadn’t asked…
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Photo: Cabo de Trafalgar, Caños de Meca
Marina and I have just spent 5 days in Andalusia. Join us via the podcast, and check out the rest of the photos on Flickr.
Travel Notes:
In Carmona we stayed at the extremely clean and pleasant Hotel Alcazar de la Reina, which we got a good deal on via booking.com (always worth checking before phoning hotels directly). It’s worth checking if they have a room at the Carmona Parador though too if you can afford it!
In Cadiz we ate at Cumbres Mayores, the best tapas bar in town, and stayed at the very well placed Cortes de Cadiz (booking directly with the hotel).
Photo: El Palomar de la Breña
On the coast we stayed at the incredible Palomar de la Breña, a stunning 19th century Finca surrounded by rolling pastures, lanes lined with wildflowers, and wooded valleys. Go and see it for yourself (and if your Spanish is up to it, chat to the Spanish owner about the history of the region, he is a mine of really interesting information).
Finally, one of my oldest friends, Tom, has a family house that they rent out in Vejer de la Frontera, in the very middle of this wonderful area. I haven’t visited the house yet (soon!) but it looks fantastic and I do know the town – one of the prettiest white hilltop Andalusian villages I’ve seen, which majestic views across to the coast. I thought it deserved a good plug here too!
The main locations from the trip are marked on this map:
(To really see this photo, check out the large version on Flickr)
Barbate used to have the second biggest fishing fleet in Spain, until the local tuna supply started running out. Now the town isn’t as rich as it used to be (Franco used to holiday nearby, which also helped) and to be honest, some corners of Barbate (map) look a little ragged.
But who cares when you are 9 years old and can play football on the beach? On a beach that stretches for kilometers to the south, and on clear days has a perfect view of the continent of Africa just across the Straits (Africa! So close!)
And what happens when one of the kids boots the ball through the netless goal posts and it runs 200 yards down the beach?
The striker isn’t getting it. The beligerent goaly won’t budge. So they all sigh in exasperation, crash to the ground, and make sand castles for 5 minutes, until the most football crazy of them all can’t bare it for another minute and takes off down the beach, sprinting full pelt with the wind behind him, to fetch the ball.
Their future in Barbate might look a bit edgy, but I don’t think you can beat a childhood like this!
Hello from …. ? We are away for a few days fishing for beautiful places, sites and sounds to post here upon our return, but in the meantime, here is a very little quiz for you…
The above photo (large version) was taken yesterday afternoon on the second stop on our trip, where is it?
The Guardian has this interesting piece on the drastic water situation in Barcelona:
The tanker Sichem Defender arrived at the port of Barcelona yesterday carrying something far more precious than its usual cargo of chemicals. Nearly 23m litres of drinking water – enough for 180,000 people for a day – was the first delivery in an unprecedented emergency plan to help this parched corner of Spain ahead of the holiday season.
Used to carry chemicals, now water? Nice… With two weeks of rain behind us (hopefully), it seems hard to believe there is still a shortage. No doubt a year’s worth of downpours is what is really needed though…
For those that were not already aware, yesterday also bought new sad news from the North:
One policeman was killed and three others were wounded when a powerful bomb exploded outside a police station in northern Spain, officials said today. […] Police immediately blamed the attack on the militant Basque separatist group Eta.
Google Maps have added geotagged photos and wikipedia entries to their already invaluable service. It really is quite fun to click around Spain for a while. Click here to check it out!
(Thanks to Alan Em. for the tip!)
It’s San Isidro here in Madrid this week, Spain’s premiere bullfighting fiesta, with daily corridas seeing exorbitant wages paid to big-money matadors: “José Tomás recently negotiated a deal worth €450,000 a bullfight during San Isidro – a figure that caused outrage among aficionados as part of it was paid by Madrid city council.”
This according to a must-read article in the Guardian, that also outlines the following interesting facts: “…only half of the country’s 1,268 bull breeders made a profit last year. […] Of the 351 members of the Union of Bullfighting Breeders, the second biggest industry body in Spain, only 50 escaped going into the red last year […] A Gallup poll carried out in 2006 found that 72% of Spaniards had no interest at all in watching bullfights. In 1987, a similar poll found that only 46% were not interested in la corrida.”
So, the Spanish are getting less interested in bullfighting, council’s are subsidising fights, and bull breeders are in debt. Perhaps none of this should be surprising in an age where Playstations and the quasi-Hollywood appeal of ‘La Liga’ (the professional football league) are far more glamorous to younger generations, who probably see bullfighting as an activity better suited to their cigar-toting grandpas.
But, as the Guardian also points out, “… As a whole, the industry records an average annual turnover of about €2.5bn. It employs 200,000 people, from matadors to farm hands.” Those are big numbers, and clearly the industry isn’t going to give up without… a fight.
I’ve been to two bullfights, one in my first month in Spain, nearly ten years ago, and again a few years later in Valencia during Las Fallas. I found the spectacle both fascinating (this is just a historical hair’s breadth away from Roman gladiatorial events), and abhorrent: a magnificent animal enters the ring and, with the odds stacked overwhelmingly against it, is horrible tortured and mutilated to death.
As an outside observer, the horror left a far stronger impression than the culture, and whether Spain likes it or not, in today’s global opinion network, the outside observer has increasing influence. What I’m trying to say is: on the world stage, Bullfighting makes Spain look bad.
And in this animal-loving and rights-respecting day and age, it is harder to swallow the age-old aficionados‘ excuses like, “this is art”, or the ethically suspect “these bulls wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the corrida” – lots of other animals have been ignored into extinction by humans, and I’m not convinced we are doing fighting bulls a favour by breeding them up for a torturous demise.
So how long can it last? 200,000 people’s jobs are on the line, so it’s not going to disappear overnight. I suspect the spectacle will slowly fade away, becoming increasingly shunned by the Spanish intellectual classes who will continue to distance themselves from the gore, remaining instead a marginalised hobby for those with enough cash to breed fighting bulls without need for profits, and councils rich enough to subsidise the event for important bull-related fiestas.
How long do you give bullfighting?
The above photo is of our patio interior, a glorified light-shaft present in the middle of just about every flat block in Spain, where light and air enter the back end of the neighbours’ apartments, and all sorts of interesting things float out again: sounds, smells, arguments…
We’ve heard wild creaking bedsprings at midnight, seen marijuana plants where now you see the geraniums, get woken by the breakfast sounds of the kids on the third floor at 7 am, and have to shut all the windows against the strong smell of cocido that rises for a five hour stretch every thursday morning.
We hear the screech of clothes lines as the chords are dragged across the gaping space over the horizontal pulley system, and the clatter of fumbled clothes pegs as they tumble from washing baskets to the ground floor.
It’s all part of the aural-aromatic landscape of life in Spain, and far from being annoying (except perhaps for the smell of a 5 hour cocido and the 7 am alarm call), it’s comforting, especially today, when all I can hear through my window over the patio interior is the clatter of refreshing May rain.
Many thanks to everyone who submitted a photo to the Notes from Spain Flickr Group in April (keep them coming in May!) April’s winner is Jan, with Kids at the Sherry, above. Jan explains:
“It was taken at the Feria del Vino Fino last weekend [in El Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz province, part of the feria season starting in Sevilla] … I made it sepia and blurred the surroundings as I felt it had a kind of timeless quality and if it weren’t for the boy’s trainers, could have been taken way back in the past.”
I agree totally. This is classic, timeless Andalusia, trainers or no trainers!
Do check out all of Jan’s wonderful photos from this event and beyond, on the ‘Jan’s World’ Flickr Stream.
Why does no one wear shorts in the street? Will Carme Chacón, the new Defense minister, change the lot of Spanish women forever? Is there a housing crisis in Spain? And is Marina going to have to get the police onto the neighbours? Listen and find out!
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Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 