We spent five weeks in Spain on back to back Road Scholar trips during the spring of 2017, having a wonderful time as we just missed all the excitement: the terrorist attack on the Rambla del Fleurs where we did have lunch one day, and then the demos and illegal referendum in Barcelona in favor of Catalan independence--did see however many independence flags hanging from balconies, though had only a vague idea what this was really about. Both places are represented in my photos. Travel gives substance to both current events and history, one of the reasons we find it so fascinating. Books about Spain (or set in Spain) we enjoyed during both the ramp up to this trip and its denouement include Robert Hughes' exhaustive Barcelona; Lauri Lee's charming memoir of walking through England and Spain in the 1930s, As I Walked Out one Midsummer Morning, even though it covers parts of Spain we did not visit; and Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, which takes one around the old quarter of Barcelona as well as the Eixample (the almost Parisian looking 19th century "extension" of the old quarter with it's five story apartment blocks and grid street pattern) as well as Orwell's classic Homage to Catalonia.
All this aside, we loved Spain: the laid back culture, the friendly people and humane culture, and particularly the art and architecture, which, as you will see in the photos I post, was the focus of much of our journey. Miss those 3 Euro glasses of good wine too, and the hours spent sitting outdoors watching people pass by. Parts of Spain are very touristy, so if you go seek out some of the places filled instead with locals. A notable piece of Spanish culture involves how long it stays light here. Took some time to learn why--had to do with Franco in fact, who in the 30's decided to emulate his hero--Adolph Hitler--and this meant he set all the clocks to German time, rather than to Greenwich time like the rest of Europe. So, in Spain the sun comes up late, and the evenings are very long. After Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish government wanted to reset the clocks to bring the country back into the fold, but the Spanish people said: "Wait a minute. We like this--It the summer sun doesn't wake one at 5 am, and it's still a little bit light when we go out to eat dinner around 10 pm." It also means that if you live by normal tourist hours, there's only tourists on the early buses. Anyway, we too grew fond of the pace; the same number of hours per day, of course, but it all seemed less intense somehow.
All this aside, we loved Spain: the laid back culture, the friendly people and humane culture, and particularly the art and architecture, which, as you will see in the photos I post, was the focus of much of our journey. Miss those 3 Euro glasses of good wine too, and the hours spent sitting outdoors watching people pass by. Parts of Spain are very touristy, so if you go seek out some of the places filled instead with locals. A notable piece of Spanish culture involves how long it stays light here. Took some time to learn why--had to do with Franco in fact, who in the 30's decided to emulate his hero--Adolph Hitler--and this meant he set all the clocks to German time, rather than to Greenwich time like the rest of Europe. So, in Spain the sun comes up late, and the evenings are very long. After Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish government wanted to reset the clocks to bring the country back into the fold, but the Spanish people said: "Wait a minute. We like this--It the summer sun doesn't wake one at 5 am, and it's still a little bit light when we go out to eat dinner around 10 pm." It also means that if you live by normal tourist hours, there's only tourists on the early buses. Anyway, we too grew fond of the pace; the same number of hours per day, of course, but it all seemed less intense somehow.