Spanish flying – finale

(I am off again, this time for a week. See you on the 12th of March! Adios!)



While there is so much more to remember and say about our trip to Spain, you must be as fed up reading it as I am of writing it. It was a wonderful time, with gorgeous weather, wonderful food and the warmth (and fire, sometimes) of being with family and friends in a country that was welcoming and encouraging. It invited me in to find out more, to explore, to learn all its secrets and discover new ones in every small town and ruined castle, each olive grove and secluded monastery. And in the adventure I found out more about not just a land I had never been to before, but also about myself and what I had evolved into.

In the journey I saw so much that was exciting, yet so familiar. Each aspect had a fresh perspective, be it a gloomy hotel or a sun-baked wall in a ghost town. And it was all like a spread at a tapas bar – small tastes of everything, but more than you could ever be served at a gourmet restaurant with brocade tablecloths and far more than you could ever digest. Each colour, each vista, each flavour, each sound, each face…they all added up to a fabulous picture that, for some reason, has always been described in tourist brochures as ‘a taste of sunny Spain’ a cliché that is, surprisingly, so true.

Perhaps for me Spain is best thought of as brilliant – the light, the colour, the simplicity of it all, the essence of warmth and sunshine and brightness. As we drove along the highways and smaller roads to wherever we wanted to stop for the evening, we wound through endless fields of sunflowers, each bloom tilted to the sun in a vivid expanse of yellow, orange and brown. And, seemingly real until you got the right view, were the giant black bulls, standing upright and menacing in the midst of the scene. They looked ready and very willing to charge, steam and froth spewing from their enormous nostrils, their horns lethally pointed. Then you drove past them and found that they were actually flat, black-painted metal cutouts, advertisements for anything from a local beer to the tourism department, we heard.

And set against that golden light would be small farmhouses, some converted into tiny hostals and restaurants, calling in the hungry with wafting aromas and the pink-cheeked, sunburned lady of the house, straight out of Grimm’s fairy tale, smiling and nodding at the door. I ate fabulous frittata and even better gazpacho, the intense flavours of garlic, olive oil and fresh herbs lingering past the super-mint toothpaste. Almost as good was a deep bowl of fagioli zuppa in a Madrid bistro – it was thick, rich, warming and unforgettable.

One night we all drove up into the hills above Granada to watch a flamenco performance. Though it was carefully staged for tourists like us, we did get carried away by the passion, the fire, the rhythm and the brilliance of the dance, the music, the setting and the mood. Heels clacked on the wooden boards of the small stage, sometimes softly, almost silently, then louder, louder, drumming into our heads with a frenzy that was almost violent. Then, suddenly, the music wailed, keening from low to high, speaking of sadness, love, need and death. My stomach curled into itself as I huddled with my mother in the chill, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck bristling as I absorbed the fervour of the dance and its dancers.

This, for me, was Spain. This, for me, was an unforgettable summer.