The usual disclaimer: our locked-down minds (still not ready to emerge) are taking us into the virtual world of the trip we planned to be on. Places are real, as are the things we planned to be doing, us being there is not.
Lorca cherished his homeland and paid homage to it in prose and poetry. His words depicted the suffering of the poor, the dignity of the old, and the beauty of the historical. He told us of the sounds, sights, smells, tastes and touch of his heritage. Lorca remained a traveller throughout his sadly short life, primarily throughout Spain, but also to New York, Cuba and Argentina.
Federico García Lorca, born in 1898 near Granada, Spain, was a musician, poet, dramatist, artistic director and writer. Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was murdered by Franco's fascist militia in 1936 for his support of the Spanish Republic, his sexuality and his life as an artist. Whilst a 19 year old university student on field trips with his Granada University literature professor, he published a selection of his writings from these trips Impresiones y paisajes. Peter Bush's translation, Sketches of Spain gave me access to Lorca's breathtaking images of and responses to his country, its art, history and landscapes.
'The travelling spirit who passes through your walls, but never contemplates you, is ignorant of the infinitive philosophical grandeur you enshrine.......and your incomparably silent nights soothe the spirit that goes in search of you and rages in order to rest and meditate...'
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| Lorca aged 36 |
In writing about Ávila, known as the town of stones and saints and for the largest number of churches per capita in Spain, a place we have stayed in on a previous trip, Lorca wrote that a visitor should:
'live the atmosphere you breathe. Crowned by storks' nests, these solitary towers seem straight out of a children's fairy story. At any moment you expect to hear a magic horn and see a golden Pegasus ride through the storm clouds over the city and a captive princess make her escape mounted on its back, or to gaze at a band of knights with cloaks and plumes prowling the battlements, brandishing their lances.'
Encouraged by Lorca's evocations, I'll explore some of my sensory responses to my favourite experiences in travelling in Spain and Portugal.
In spring, Trujillo in Extremadura, Spain resonates with the 'tap tap' sound of baby storks waiting to be fed. I describe this 'tap tap' sound as 'clacking' and call the baby storks 'clackers' and this ubiquitous sound echoes across the old quarter in Trijullo. The nests sit high above the calles, the streets and laneways, on the top of churches, roofs, telegraph poles, light poles, chimneys and the like. Apart from the clacking, you wouldn't know that these majestic birds have nested above.
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| Majestic ballet dancers |
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| Responding to the clacking |
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| Clackers being rewarded |
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| Precarious nesting |
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| High above us |
If clacking is a sound that speaks to me of Spain, especially Trujillo, so too does the sound of children playing in plazas, playgrounds, parks and streets. Public spaces are shared by the community, for older folks to sit in, for cafés, for people to walk through, for children to play in, and for that greatest of all pleasures, for the
paseo, the leisurely evening stroll and social gathering.
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| Ubiquitous football sounds |
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| Sounds of feet and wheels |
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| Activity in Plaza Mayor, Trujillo |
Strongest amongst these memories are of us on an early evening sitting at an outside bar in the Plaza de España in the Extremadura city of Mérida. The outside lights are just taking effect, the voices are echoing across the square, and it was magic to be sitting there and sharing these moments. Roger reminds me that the other captivating moment was some years earlier, our first time in Spain perhaps, when we were staying in Ronda, Andalucía, having what seemed a quiet moment in the Plaza del Socorro. Where else would one be but Andalucía to suddenly have a group of young people walk towards you practising palmas, the rhythmic hand clapping that accompanies flamenco performances?
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| Plaza de España, Mérida |
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| Plaza del Socorro, Ronda |
If these are my sketches of some of the sounds of our Iberian travels, then taste must surely belong to the rich and sweet flavours of the Portuguese dessert. French patisseries offers exquisite choices, Czech Republic crepes, strudel, dumplings and honey cake are legendary, Italian gelato is famous. But let me say, the Portuguese dessert is on a whole other level. To start with, the convents of Portugal are to be thanked. Chickens were plentiful in the poorest of communities and convents were paid with chickens by these communities. What to do with so many eggs? Firstly, egg whites were used in wine making to filter, clarify and stabilise wines and absorb bitter tannins. This left convents with a lot of egg yolks. Thankfully a ready solution was the making of
doces conventuais, and convents excelled in making the most scrumptious of egg yolk-based desserts, puddings, cakes, pastries.
There is camel's drool (a delicious creamy texture), nun's breasts (a round-shaped sponge-based custard cake) and the magnificent molotov, (not the cocktail/explosive but similar to a bombe alaska). And much more as shown below:
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| Camel's Drool |
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| Nuns Breasts |
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| Pudim Molotov |
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| Pasteis de Nata |
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| The best pasteis |
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| Ovos Moles d'Aveiro |
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| Cornucópias |
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| Pudim Flan |
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| Arroz Doce |
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| Sonhos |
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| Portuguese Chocolate Mousse |
Then there are sights that stay with me. Street art at its best in the Alfama district in Lisboa, the Portuguese tiles adorning buildings of all sorts, the architecture and streetscapes of beautiful Portuguese cities.
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| Street art in Lisboa |
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| A riot of tiles |
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| Tiles buildings in Lisboa |
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| Streetscapes in Lisboa |
Lorca writes in his
Sketches of Spain:
'When we travel we see an endless series of frescoes by nature, people, colours and sounds our minds would like to grasp and etch on our souls, but we are petty and forget quite consciously.'
I'll admit to pettiness and sometimes conscious forgetfulness, but there are some things that I will not so readily forget on our travels: the sounds, tastes and sights of Spain and Portugal that are special.
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