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One unheralded day in 1992, among the young pines on the southern banks of Spain’s Buendía reservoir, Madrileños Eulogio Reguillo and Jorge Maldonado hoisted chisels to sandstone to commence the sculpture shown above. La Monja, they called it; they started a second sculpture, and a third. Twenty sculptures and bas-reliefs now grace the woodsy, 1.5…
Three days, 9/29 – 10/1, from Madrid to Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Marbella, Almería, Cartagena, Alicante, Valencia, then back to Madrid. All behind the wheel of a rental car. “But why didn’t you take the AVE train for part of the trip?” Spaniards may wonder. “It goes to Sevilla and Valencia. 300 km/h!” Good…
Covid-19 has now killed more than thirty-one thousand in Spain and nearly a million worldwide. Borders have closed; I can still travel freely to some countries, but would have to navigate various hurdles to get into others, and see no guarantee that the number and nature of these hurdles couldn’t change before trip day. It’s…
Remote, poor, sparsely-populated Extremadura is the unrespected Rodney Dangerfield of Spain tourist destinations. It didn’t make Planetware’s top fifteen list for the country, or, for that matter, U.S. News’ top twenty. Rick Steves’ Spain ‘at a glance’ map represents the autonomous community’s 41,000+ square kilometers as a big blank area between Portugal and Toledo. Transit…
What follows is an incomplete list of Spanish words and sayings that might rate utterance by English speakers. The German weltschmerz, zeitgeist and schadenfreude get occasional play in the U.S. media because no English words so ably cover the same turf. Why not pagafantas and hombretón? I have discussed all candidates below with Spain born-and-raiseds,…
Once a week I shop. This is the only time I leave the building during the coronavirus quarantine in Madrid, practically the only time I leave my apartment. If I have to tote trash and recycling to the bins by the stairs I hold my breath until I’m back in the apartment with the door…
I first wore a mask on the Madrid metro on March 3, on the way home from our Tuesday Spanish/English language exchange. This was about four months after the coronavirus emerged in China, and one week after the first cases were diagnosed on mainland Spain. Before the statistics skyrocketed, before the fear set in. I…
Galicia is a Hawaii-sized state autonomous community on Spain’s northwest corner. I asked Spaniards if I should visit. “¡Por supuesto!,” said they, while suggesting that Galicia would be: (♦) Beautiful! Woodsy green hamlets fronting windswept Atlantic coastlines. Like that. (♦) Rainy! Maybe not as wet as San Sebastian, but up there. (♦) Relatively isolated. Spain’s high-speed…
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” a native Spaniard might tell me, “to book a tourist trip to inland Andalucia in August.” True. I’ve lived in Spain three years, know better. Andalucia cities regularly rack up summer scorchers north of 40° Celsius. (104° Fahrenheit. Ow! Ow!) I’ve listened wide-eyed as natives swapped anecdotes on surviving…
Or, more specifically, how a Spain driving license can be acquired by an American, non-EU expat like me. I have the temporary license now and anticipate receipt of the permanent Permiso de conducción Reino de España by summer’s end. I’m here to offer juicy details. WHY BOTHER, IF MADRID HAS GREAT TRANSIT? (♦) To explore…