My Brain in Spain, Cont'd

Where is El Cid?

26 diciembre

Joanna was remarking yesterday how great these little streets are. They are like alleys and they just ask you to come in. They twist and turn, and you never know what you’re going to see. 

Like a clothing and costume jewelry boutique called Madame Bugalu y su caniche asesino. I had to look up “caniche.” The name translates, “Madam Boogaloo and her killer poodle.” 

We were on the track of El Cid today. He died here in 1099. Many of us will remember Charlton Heston getting hit by the arrow and then having his mounted corpse chase Herbert Lom back to Africa. From what I can tell, that didn’t happen, although there is a ballad that tells the story.

The Poema del Cid doesn’t say how he died. He just died, as many people did in the 11th century, possibly from tuberculosis, diphtheria, dysentery, or complications of a cold or a hangnail.

We were in the south end of the old city, sharing a beer and a sandwich for late breakfast, around 1:30 in the afternoon. We had to have some place to go or else we could wind up circling the same line of alleys all afternoon. The map shows the Jardí Botanic. OK. Botanical gardens are always great. We get to see the Quart Gate, too. That’s left from the old medieval city wall.

One of the first landmarks we passed was the city’s bull ring, where Joanna stopped to say hi to a local matador.

 We didn’t see any bull fights. You know, why bother? The bull always loses. The place had been taken over for the Christmas circus, anyway.

As it turns out, there aren’t many artifacts left from the Cid’s days. The towers of the Quart Gate date to the 15th century. They are sitting by a thoroughfare and surrounded by the city.

There was also a plaque on the wall for the heroes who defended the city during the War of Independence in 1808. I think this is when the Spanish threw out Napoleon.

The Calle de Quart runs through the gates and this is the street where the Jardí Botanic is.

 We saw banana trees, one with a cluster of green bananas and attached to it by a long tendril, a huge, moist purple blossom. There was a parliament of doves. They were cooing everywhere, and became especially outspoken when one of the many stray cats in the place started to meow.

 The cat population in the garden looks exceptionally clean and well fed for strays. Maybe they belong to people in the neighborhood and just come her to hang out all day. They were asleep in the trees, grooming themselves on the benches, hiding in the shrubbery, and one was inside the tropical greenhouse stretched out along a pipe.

The garden has specimens of plants from all over the world. Many looked familiar but were not. One hothouse had a pitcher plant. This is a very cool carnivorous creature that grows flowers, things (I don’t know what they are properly called) that look like fancy vases. The insects are drawn by the color and the aroma of the sticky liquids inside the pitchers, and they drown, to be digested and absorbed by the plant.

Some deciduous trees were bare of leaves; others were in full fall. At the same time, varieties of flowers were in bloom. A yellow hibiscus was about to open. It was strange to be in every season all at once.

Strolling slowly with frequent stops is fatiguing. The funny thing is that when we left the garden and started to go at a regular city walking pace, we weren’t tired anymore.

It also turns out that when you come back up Quart Street, you really get a great view of the gate, which is open so you can see the street behind it.

The walls had a few inscriptions on them, including one cryptic abbreviation that looked very old, but for all I know could have been advertising (Who knows? Maybe for Madame Bugalu.) If you blow up the picture, you may make them out, DBDV. If anybody has a guess what they might mean, please let me know.

So having enjoyed that gate, we went to see another. The Serranos Towers are at the north end of the old city, protecting the neighborhood of Carmen from those guys across the dry riverbed.

Here we got to climb the steps and prowl around inside. The Serranos Gate is older than the Quart, by a century or so. But still younger than El Cid. So this is as close as we could get in terms of military relics. The cathedral is older. It was dedicated in 1238 after Jaime I Conquistador chased out the Moors for the last time.

The Serranos gate is a Gothic structure with groin vaults and crenellations, gargoyles and arrow slits. The murder holes—the little holes in the floor of the overhanging battlements, through which you could drop rocks or boiling oil on attackers—were covered with transparent glass or maybe cellophane. I didn’t step on them. 

Over the entrance is a large hole, for dropping very big rocks or entire cauldrons of oil.

In the distance, I could hear people blowing horns. I hoped it was merely a traffic jam or a political protest. I was in no position to defend the city. I had left my bow home.

We strolled some more narrow, twisting streets. The political protest caught up to us outside a regional administration building. It may have been the president’s offices, but security seemed to be very light for that, only a couple a police cars. 

The protestors were saying no the “FGV.” I don’t know what that is, but suspect it has to do with part of Spain’s austerity measures. They simply call it the “crisis” here.

People had police whistles and party noisemakers. One guy had a plastic airhorn in his hand, and that’s what you could hear from a great distance.

A lady was throwing flyers into the air. This is the only act of littering that I have witnessed here. This is no place like New York. Here the streets are very clean.

We let them go by and headed in the general direction of the cathedral. I had expected a bit of a hike, but after a turn or two we had a hit of deja vu. Here was the Generalife, where we had dinner Christmas Eve. The pink wall ahead was Our Lady of the Forsaken.

Damn, I didn’t get us lost once all day.

We had dinner at Ocho y Media, very good shade-fish (don’t ask: I don’t know) and braised beef. Also very good Rioja. The menu was decorated with stills from Fellini’s movie.

We went back to Sagardi, the Euskal place where we met Bob and Meg on Christmas night, for a couple of short beers before turning in.

The wake-up call came early, 8:30 this morning. I am very proud of my flexibility. No more sleeping till 10:30 for me.

Love to all.

Harry

Dec. 27

El Cid: On the one hand, “Don’t mess with my myths,” and on the other, the dead Cid strapped to his horse, Babieca, causing the Moors to flee, is not in the opera. Curious.

The Inquisition: 1203-1908, except for the Napoleonic years. Where Napoleon’s armies went, Inquisition prisoners were freed and prisons were destroyed; ghettos were torn down and the denizens fully enfranchised.

Spain didn’t reach that level of civilization again until the Republic, in the 1930s, and Franco, alas, made short work of that.

“Threw Napoleon out” to their own detriment!

Much love,

Beatrice

Dec. 27

I liked the part about El Cid, since I loved that movie and saw it with a girl who resisted my putting my arm around her all night. Glad you're having fun.

Peter