Travels

F*ck U(sted)

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

“Con el arroz con leche… Seventeen pounds. Cash or card?”

“Bueno, con tarjeta, si se puede.”

“Uy, perdón. No sabía. Vi tu cara y…”

“Bueno si, es verdad que tengo la cara guiri, y que soy inglis, pero hay que esforzarse un poco al viajar, no?”

“Bien dicho. Pues, la tarjeta aquí… gracias.”

“A usted.”

“Otra vez, perdón. Y por favor, no me vuelvas a llamar ese usted.”

Exchange at the Air Food One, Santiago Airport

When I teach the verb forms in class, I sometimes get asked by my students about usted. Etymologically, I’ve always found it something of a doozy. While I’ve always been rather fond the Arabic origin theory via the phonetically similar “ustaadh” (meaning doctor or teacher), the general consensus (backed up by the RAE) is that it comes from an abbreviation of ‘vuestra merced’, an old honorific meaning “your mercy” or “your worship”. The old way of writing the letter U as V, paired with the increasingly shorter abbreviation to “Vd”, gradually distilled the honorific into a single world, usted, which is now used around the Spanish-speaking world as a polite term of address.

Except in Spain, in my experience, where it’s usually regarded as an affront.

Until this week, I’ve used usted just once in my life, and it was wrong. I’ll admit, I avoided it for years purely out of laziness. Like the French vous, usted requires a different person when addressing somebody: where vous takes the second person plural, usted takes the third person singular. Think of it like a waiter in a very fancy restaurant (“would sir like a bottle of the house wine?”). When you’re learning a language, it’s hard enough to get the tenses right, never mind the societal conditions dictating whether one should use formal or informal speech.

The one time I did experiment with usted, I got laughed out of court. After spending years trying to locate my Spanish family and finally tracking them down to a pueblo de La Mancha (you can read that saga here), I spent a long evening being introduced to my kin. One of my uncles, the venerable Don Augusto, worked in the local bank and seemed to command some sway as one of the family patriarchs. Here, I thought, was a textbook case for usted: a term reserved “for older people and those to whom you want to show more respect”, to quote the oft-used student resource, BBC Bitesize.

Augusto’s response? “Usted? Pero, ¿por qué usted? Somos familia.” Augusto isn’t a blood relation, but that means little in Spain where family is still everything. We had a little laugh about it and I never used usted again.

Until this week, where for whatever reason I’ve been using it daily in my interactions in shops, restaurants and pensiones. I can only assume it’s the subtle influence of my increased use of French, where the polite form is not only more common, but mandatory in certain contexts. The French even have two verbs to distinguish the point when you must use formal speech (vouvoyer) and relax into informal speech (tutoyer).

Latin Americans love their formality. They held onto the deferential vos (a close relation of the French vous) in lieu of tú long after the Spanish gave it up as a lower class symbol, and usted is used all over. Using tú outside of close-knit circles of family and friends is actually considered overly familiar to the point of being vulgar.

But in speech, as in other ways, Latin Americans and Spaniards must not be conflated. The Spaniard’s innate love of familiarity and hostility toward authority make for infertile soil for formal speech. It may have been more common in the last century under the dictatorship, but like much that was once sacred, it is sliding steadily into the void. And is that such a bad thing? Why hold someone at arm’s length when there is a potential friend to be made? Warmer climes make for warmer people, and the Spanish are no exception to that rule whatsoever.

My brief exchange with the tiller at the airport café is a classic example: Spaniards may consider the uninvited use of usted to be an affront, a way of saying “you and I are doing business only, nothing more”. A short soujourn in Morocco, Spain’s southern neighbour and the ancestral home of many of its people, will show you the paramount importance attached to friendly, familiar interactions in even the briefest of dealings: no item can be bought or sold without engaging in witty banter over family and friends over a glass of mint tea. It’s a habit the Spanish have never quite been able to shake, and one that would have been a worthy addition to my EPQ on Spain’s Islamic heritage, had I known about it at the time.

Well, I’ve had my slice of humble pie (or tortilla). It’s back to the books for now. I’ll bow out gracefully, and informally. They seem to prefer things that way here! BB x

When the Whales Came

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

As Escaselas. 12.01pm.

Rain. It started early this morning, while I was still fast asleep, but it’s coming down quite hard now. The bus has just climbed the hill north of As Escaselas and is rolling towards Sardiñeiro, its windscreen wipers working overtime. Lichen-coated hórreos, a symbol of the Galician countryside, stand shoulder to shoulder with new-build white houses with wide garages. That strange mix of ancient and modern is ubiquitous along the pilgrim road: here is a wizened fisherman in blue overalls mending his lobster creels in the shelter of an awning, above which a sign advertises (in English only) “hippie/chill-out/goa fashion”. The lady on the bus behind me talks down the phone in a Galician accent so thick it could be Portuguese, while a couple of free-spirited Germans discuss their next steps. My German is rudimentary at best, but I catch the words “Mallorca”, “Sontag” and “yogi”.

Now and then I recognise a patch of road from that summer two years ago, when Simas and I pushed on together for the Cape, in warmer days when the wind blew west and America still seemed like a land full of hope. Now, the news is full of fury as Trump’s tariffs threaten a global trade war, and the US government tells its citizens to “trust in Trump”. Americans, it should be noted, have been notably absent from the pilgrim trail over the last few days.

Three pilgrims return home on foot in coats that cover their backpacks, and one pilgrim comes back the other way, striking out for the last stage of her journey. The Camino is eternal.

Spooky by Dusty Springfield plays over my earphones as the bus pulls into the former whaling town of Cee. A crude iron sculpture on the seafront is all that remains of that heritage, besides its name, though there are honorary clues all over the place: Restaurante As Balenas, a number of whale-themed hotels, a couple of whale-shaped hobby horses in the play park and even a friendly mural on a wall near the bus station, offering a whimsical nod to that monstrous practice.

Whaling has been outlawed here since 1986. Spain was slow to adopt the ban and Galicia was one of the regions hit hardest, though by that point most of the whales had long since been driven to local extinction. Lately, however, these majestic creatures have been sighted off the coast again, after an absence of nearly forty years, including the greatest of them all, the blue whale – the largest creature ever to grace this planet.

Perhaps they’ve been driven here by the depleting of their feeding grounds further south. Or perhaps – and this is what some scientists believe – it is an ancestral memory that has brought them home, in spite of the knowledge they must have of their kind’s slaughter at the hands of man. Something stronger than fear has called them back, the same compulsion that makes the tiny swallow travel around the half world twice a year. The same compulsion, perhaps, that leads pilgrims of all stripes to seek the end of the world here, as they had done long before the legend of Santiago washed up on these shores over a thousand years ago.

There’s a small bust-up in Muros, where the bus stops for a change of drivers. The two German pilgrims get off for a smoke and return with their rucksacks. The driver tells them they’ll have to leave their bags underneath if they’re headed for Santiago, as the bus will fill up when we reach Noia. One of the two – the one who speaks Spanish – argues the toss, asking if they can keep them at their feet. This annoys the driver, who points out that other passengers will need the seats more than their bags. Keeping my rucksack on me nearly got me out of a nasty scrape when I was backpacking around Morocco, but here in Spain, there’s no need to be quite so defensive. ALSA, Spain’s largest bus company, actually gives you the option to buy up the seat next to you, which seems a bit selfish. Monbus – a smaller corporate creature by far – is a lot more democratic.

There’s an enormous queue for the bus when it reaches Santiago, almost all of them under the age of thirty. It only dawns on me then that the only young people I saw out and about in Fisterra were pilgrims, and few of them under thirty at that. Spain is much like the rest of the world in that regard: its youth abandon the towns and villages for the bright lights of the city in pursuit of opportunities in work or love, returning home only to see friends and family, or once they have a family of their own.

My digs for the night are within a stone’s throw of the cathedral – quite literally. I can hear the bells chime every half hour from my room. I made a flying visit to some of the local bookstores, but wound up returning to my old haunt in Casa del libro in search of a couple of histories on Tartessos, a current fixation of mine. So far, my specialist areas include:

  • Bandit legends and narratives
  • Spain’s founding myths (esp. Pedro del Corral’s Crónica sarracina)
  • El Cid & Frontier Epics
  • Al-Andalus & Spain’s Islamic heritage
  • Extremadura
  • 17th Century Spain (Under Felipe IV)
  • Gypsy culture and narratives
  • Spanish wildlife (esp. concerning Doñana)

Once I’ve consumed these two new acquisitions, hopefully I can add Tartessos to that list!

I did make it to Mass this evening, but that’s worth a separate blog post, I think. So keep your eyes peeled! BB x

Elemental

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Praia do Mar de Fóra, Fisterra. 12.31.

An enormous storm is moving in off the Atlantic. That’s what it says on the El País headlines on my phone. The signs were clear this morning: the wind was up and the waves were agitated, as though some supernatural force were stirring beneath the water out beyond the cape. Or maybe that’s just because I finished reading The Leviathan today and I have sea monsters on the brain.

That and the old English saying about red skies in the morning being a sailor’s warning.

I didn’t come all the way out here to hide away from the elements, so once the worst of the morning’s rain was over, I nipped into town, grabbed an empanada and made for the Praia do Mar de Fóra on the west side of the cape. There were still a few clouds stretched across the sky, but none so ominous as those that were splashed across the news from the Canaries this morning. I sat on a boulder with my feet in a small stream and ate my lunch in peace, having the entire beach to myself for the second day in a row.

It’s easy to forget that there aren’t that many places in England where you can appreciate the full force of the Atlantic. Most of the English coastline looks out across the North and Irish Seas or the British Channel, and none of those are in the same league as the Great Western Ocean. From my post at the edge of the beach, I can see the sea mist rolling in with each crashing wave. Some of the waves collapse before they hit the shore; others swell while they’re still far off, hulking and dark and full of threatening force.

The ancients believed that Poseidon, God of the sea, was the ultimate force behind the power of the ocean. As well as the deity responsible for waves and quakes both terrestrial and marine, he was also the lord of horses, perhaps stemming from an even older association between horses and the sea. Poseidon is believed to have fashioned the first horse from the waves in an attempt to win over the people of Athens, who ultimately spurned his gift in favour of the olive tree offered by Athena, a far more practical gift for a seafaring folk for the myriad properties of its wood and fruit. And then there’s the parallel between the nature of horse and ocean, both extremely volatile – at one moment calm and beautiful, at another restless and powerful, stirred into action by some powerful emotion.

It’s thought that some of these beliefs come from seeing the shapes of horses’ heads as the foaming crests of the largest waves catch the wind before they break upon the shore. Before the unfettered force of the Atlantic bearing down on this little bay like a besieging army, it’s not hard to see the likeness to an elemental cavalry charge in the surf.

I had most of my lunch and readied to scale the cliffs. A half-beaten track snakes its way up the slope – a snake with a sadistic habit for traveling in a straight line, that is. The cliff climbs 200m in less than a kilometre, so I had plenty of opportunities to stop and take in the beauty of the bay (or, alternatively, a breather).

As I began my ascent, a couple of waxbills saw me off, a bizarre African immigrant in this Celtic corner of the world. I found the half-eaten corpse of a guillemot a little way up, the only one of its kind I saw, though they do still breed here at the westernmost corner of their range. For the rest of the climb, I was followed by a pair of red-billed choughs, an incredibly acrobatic bird which seems to delight in its ability to fly like few others. Now hanging in the wind, now plummeting into the abyss before unfolding their wings and climbing back out of their death-defying dives, they appear to perform these feats of gravitational defiance for the sheer thrill of it, since they serve no practical purpose whatsoever. The peregrine falcon employs a similar tactic to strike its prey out of the sky, but while I did spot one wheeling overhead, it wasn’t hunting today.

Far out to sea, the occasional gannet soared by, its wings just above touching the crests of the waves. They were shadowed now and then by the squat-bodied shags leaving their crude nests to fish; beautiful creatures in their own right, but ugly, misshapen imitations before the slender, powerful wings of the gannet. Down below, just metres beneath their colony, the Atlantic roiled in aquamarine anger between the cliffs.

It was a dizzying spectacle with both my feet (and my hands) firmly planted on the ground. Goodness knows how the choughs see such a sight and feel compelled to hurl themselves at it, as though defying the gods themselves. But then, I was never much fond of rollercoasters either.

The cliff path works its way up to the watchtower of Veladoiro, where the wind howls through the bars of its iron-framed mast, before skirting the edge of a pine forest so perfectly arranged it must have been planted here as a windbreak for the villages in the valley below. The lithe shapes of lizards and at least one snake dart across the path ahead of me, and I find the snapped-off tail of a slow worm that obviously wasn’t fast enough, though by the wearing at the severance point it seems to have been there for at least a day.

At the edge of the forest I come across a hidden bay: Praia da Arnela. It’s hard to tell from Google Maps why this pristine beach isn’t more of a magnet, but the answer is obvious to the naked eye: it can only be reached by a steep descent from an offshoot of the nearby hamlet of Vilar de Duio. I haven’t brought a towel, and I don’t think I’d fancy climbing back up the cliffs even if I had, so I content myself with watching the waves roll in from the clifftop instead.

Turning my back on the sea, I start to descend into the interior. The fields of buttercups nestled between the forests on either side of the cape shine in two distinct shades of yellow: one a warm gold, the other a brighter, almost greener yellow. American and European, perhaps, though I’m not sure which way round. A single swallowtail butterfly dances into the field, its own golden wings lost in the shining petal sea.

The last time there was a great Atlantic storm, some of the mighty monarch butterflies were blown across the sea to our shores. I think that was in 2016, as I recall seeing one or two in Morocco and then, even more bizarrely, in Kent within that same summer.

Sometimes I wonder if esoteric anecdotes like these are worth recording. But perhaps it serves a greater purpose, as naturalists the world over try to understand the forces of the world around us by drawing together tiny threads such as these.

Back at Langosteira, I remove my sandals and continue along the beach barefoot. The relief as the waters rush over my tired feet is like nothing else. There are no swimmers out – it’s much too early in the year – but I’m happy to have my feet in the water again.

A single dunlin races ahead of me along the shore, a straggler from the traveling group of five that I saw from my window yesterday, perhaps. It will soon be on its way north to its breeding grounds in the Arctic circle. Much like the swallows who sing merrily from the telegraph wires in the fields here, you have to marvel at the courage and strength of these little wanderers who travel many thousands of miles each year, defying the elements to answer a call beyond their understanding: the call to come home, wherever that may be.

A less fortunate wanderer lies stranded in the sand, glistening in the sunlight: an enormous jellyfish. Not a false jelly like a man-o’-war, nor even a lion’s mane by the colour of it, though it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty, as some marine predator has already devoured its trailing tentacles, leaving the flabby and presumably inedible bell behind. A hollow has pooled about it where the waves have dug it a grave, after a fashion. On the off chance that it might still be alive, I carry it back to the tideline and lower it back into the water. The tide spits it back up again and it lands on its head, motionless. An ancient creature, practically unchanged since a time before life moved over the land, humbled by a force older than the world itself.

I’m back at the pensión now and taking a well-earned rest. There is Wi-Fi here, but it doesn’t reach quite as far as the last room in the corridor (which happens to be mine) so I’ve been using data to patch up the gaps. Quite a lot, by the looks of things, as it takes my app a long time to do the maths – longer than me, and that’s saying something. I’m feeling like it might be a good excuse to get an early night tonight, as I’ve got a few late ones coming up, so I’ll make the most of it while I can. BB x

The Shell Thief

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Pensión Doña Lubina, Fisterra. 21.20.

First Dates is on TV. I can never find the equivalent in the UK, but in Spain it seems like it’s always on. Tonight’s couples include a pensioner from Sevilla, a rocker in his fifties and a Colombian male model whose dealbreakers in a would-be partner include the term “vergón”. Spanish TV, like Spanish music, certainly doesn’t deal in subtlety.

I woke up around six this morning to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore outside – the same gentle woosh that I can hear as I write.

The sun crested the jagged bluff of Monte Pindo shortly after 8.15, so I slipped down to the beach to catch the light. A couple of dog walkers were out and about and a single pilgrim sat reading in the dunes, but otherwise the long curved bay of Playa Langosteira was empty. The tide had come in during the night, leaving a breadcrumb trail of seashells all along the tidal maximum. A beautiful sight, to be sure.

Or, at least, it should have been. Only, the only shells left on the beach were broken. It looked as though the sea had kept the best ones to itself and spat out the rest. As it turns out, the truth wasn’t far off.

A barefoot pilgrim stood a hundred metres or so ahead of me, turning something over in her hand. Satisfied with whatever it was, she moved further along the beach, stopped, and stooped to pick something up. Clearly, she was looking for seashells. She must have repeated the exercise about eight or nine times before I overtook her. I didn’t turn to see if she had more to find, but I did catch a glimpse of a large collection of seashells in the crook of her arm as I passed.

I’m not really one for calling people out. Anyone who knows me even in passing will know the last thing I ever want to do is to risk upsetting anyone, even when the matter seems ridiculously trivial. It’s a people-pleasing tendency of mine that I’ve never been particularly good at quashing. However, if there’s a line in the sand, it’s when I see someone doing something that threatens the natural world in some way. And this definitely constitutes a transgression in my book.

Before you think me a busybody, I feel I need to point out that this isn’t just high-handedness on my part. The law is on my side here. In 2017, faced with a surge in tourists in coastal areas (still a major problem today), the Spanish government passed the Ley de costas, which – to the official letter of the law – “forbids the extraction of any element of the public littoral domain, such as sand, shells or stones”. This makes it illegal to beach-comb in any part of the Spanish territory, from Galicia and the Costa Brava to the Balearics and the Canary Islands. Period.

If my experience of this country and its people is anything to go by, I’d be surprised if the Spanish police actually enforce this law, but the consequences of falling foul of it can be severe: the fines for collecting seashells range from 500 to 3,000 euros. The Mediterranean island of Sardinia is even stricter: taking large quantities of sand from its famous beaches can lead to a prison sentence.

There’s a very good reason for all of this. It’s easy to say that if we all took five or six shells from the beach on our holidays, soon there’d be nothing left to take. But there’s more to it than that.

Seashells are a fundamental part of the littoral ecosystem. The continual pounding of the waves eventually grinds them into fragments – the same fragments that make up the sand beneath your feet. In a way, your average beach is actually an enormous marine graveyard. Without the shells, there’d be less sand to go around, seriously threatening the thousands of creatures that make their home in the littoral zone and the birds that rely on them as a food source.

Discarded shells serve a second purpose. Nothing goes to waste in the ocean. Besides the obvious hermit crabs, who literally depend upon seashells to survive, an abandoned shell provides a much-needed shelter for smaller creatures like shrimps and fish fry, who use these temporary refuges until they are large enough to avoid some of their former predators, as well as a holdfast for barnacles, limpets and chitons. Larger shells may even harbour an octopus, a creature perfectly adapted to squeezing into the most awkward of spots to escape from predators.

Which they definitely need to do on the regular in these waters, given the Galician obsession with octopus as a delicacy.

Sorry… I got up on my pulpit there. In truth, I was mulling all of this over in my head as I read a signboard by the beach exit which detailed some of the above, while the beachcombing pilgrim stood washing every single shell she’d collected under the outdoor shower. I didn’t want to challenge her, but I couldn’t just let her take all those shells away. She laid them out in three rows along the wall as she washed them. She must have amassed around thirty in all, from scallops to periwinkles and everything in between.

When it looked like she had finished with the ablutions, I got her attention and told her politely to take one if she had to, but to leave the rest behind. She looked confused. I repeated myself in Spanish, but that didn’t seem to work either. She looked like she might have been Thai or Malay, so Spanish wouldn’t have been much use. I tried French. I pointed at the sign and tried to indicate that taking the shells was wrong – not that it would have done much good, as the sign was in Galician and Spanish and faded in places due to the ravages of sun, sand and surf, and thus presumably illegible to the average tourist. Nothing.

I even tried mimicking handcuffs and paying a fine. She just stared at me and held out one of her shells for me to take, presumably thinking I wanted one. I shook my head and said “illegal” a couple of times. She said “OK” and wandered off. I didn’t see where she went, or if she left the shells behind. She didn’t return to the beach, at any rate.

When I was a kid I got walloped for trying to stop a couple of older boys from stealing a frog. They had caught one in a bucket and were taking it away to put in their garden. In a fit of fury I still can’t explain, I snatched the bucket and legged it to the river to release the creature. I was pushed into the water for my insolence and given a couple of kicks for good measure, but I had achieved what I set out to do: the frog got away.

Was it my place to give that girl a ticking off? Probably not. But we have to stand up for the things we believe in. Without principles, we are merely waiting out our time on this earth. Our core beliefs give us grounding, a rock to stand on, which no wind or waves or wickedness can wear away.

I’ve got back onto the pulpit again. I’d better get off before I end up considering a career in the clergy. BB x

At the End of the World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Cape Finisterre, 20.11.

Galicia provides. Happiness writes white but the white light is brilliant, like the sands that run along the length of the bay beneath my window. Like the feathers of the gannets and terns that dance above the face of the water. Like the sparkling reflection of the sun as it sinks below the horizon along the 42nd parallel north, disappearing beyond the Atlantic, beyond Chicago, beyond the end of the world.

Madrid feels a world away. I caught the early AVLO train from Chamartín and joined a modest number of passengers on the three hour journey to Spain’s north-westernmost region. The railway line tunnels under the snowy peaks of the Guadarrama before racing across the featureless plains of Zamora and then, slowly, climbing into the wooded hills and craggy moors west of Astorga before rolling through the deep valleys of Galicia proper. Spain is one of those countries that alters radically as you travel through it, and the Madrid-A Coruña train is a very good way to prove that point.

I arrived in Santiago de Compostela with a couple of hours to kill before the bus to Fisterra, so I wandered into town and sat in the main square in front of the cathedral for a while. A few school groups posed noisily in front of the cathedral, while exhausted pilgrims sat at the feet of the pillars, soaking up the sunlight to recharge their batteries. There aren’t as many now as there were during the summer. I guess that’s to be expected. The year I made the trek, 2023, was also a delayed holy year, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic shut the Camino down, so the numbers were especially high.

I wonder how far these bold pilgrims had come this year. What friends did they make on their journey? What memories will they take away with them forever? Did somebody watching from the sidelines wonder that about me, years ago?

The bus from Santiago to Fisterra is almost as long as the train from Madrid, but it does travel along one of the most scenic routes in the whole country. To reach the famous cape, it first has to pass through all the towns and villages along the coast, fording the great rías that weave through the cliffs on their way to the sea. The sun came out from behind the clouds just as the cape came into sight, and the whole coast seemed to come to life: the yellow flowers of the gorse shone like gold, the sand beneath the shallows glittered like jade. My heart did a similar leap once when I saw the silhouette of Olvera, my old hometown, for the first time in seven years. It made me smile to think that this place had joined that pantheon.

I arrived early, so I went down to the beach to soak up the sea air for a while. Fisterra is so special to me because it combines the two sides of my heart: the sounds and smells of the sea from my childhood in England, and the language, cliffs and mountains of my adult love for Spain. Mountains take my breath away (especially the craggy limestone kind) and marshes hold a special kind of rapture for me, but I think I will always come back to the sea when I need to feel whole again.

As I watched, a sandwich tern flapped into the little bay and started diving for fish. It was a beautiful sight to see, for the waters are so clear here that I could see the bird’s brilliant white form beneath the water after it had dived, moving like a living arrow. After five attempts it speared a shining silver fish and took off to the south with its catch in its beak. I realised the path on Google Maps didn’t actually exist and beat a quick retreat to the hotel for check-in.

The last time I was here, I only saw the town’s fishery out of hours. I got lucky this afternoon: on my way to the cape I dropped in and caught the daily auction (or lonxa) in full flight. Crates of hake, mackerel, red gurnard and more than a dozen other species I learned to identify as a kid went to the highest bidder in one of the mildest mannered auctions I’ve ever seen (though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that many auctions). Some of the larger fish had QR codes slapped on the sides linking them to the fishermen who caught them, I suppose – my camera didn’t reach far enough to tell.

On one side of the room, crates of sea urchins were stacked fifteen high. I didn’t see any percebes (the region’s famous goose barnacles), but then, the manner by which they are collected is very different indeed, so that’s hardly surprising.

I left before the giant anglerfish went under the hammer. I’d have been curious to know how much that went for.

I called home from the cape and said I’d be back before sunset. It’s now fifteen minutes to sunset and I’m still here, but I’m glad I stayed. The weather here is so changeable and this might be my only chance to watch the sunset from the cape, as it was rained off the last time I was here. A small cohort of like-minded pilgrims and locals have come out here with the same idea. A couple of noisy Spaniards made a pig’s ear of taking a highly choreographed selfie nearby, much to everyone’s frustration, but they’ve gone now, and it’s been nothing but the sound of the waves for the last twenty minutes.

I’m going to stop writing now. The sun will be sinking below the horizon soon and I want to appreciate every second as it does. See you on the other side. BB x

Lost Souls

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Calle de San Millán, Madrid. 21.03.

The gates of Hell are open night and day / smooth the descent, and easy the way.

Virgil, The Aeneid

At the foot of the mighty bridge that spans the gorge over the Río Tajo in Ronda, the yellowing ruin of an old pumphouse steadily crumbles into oblivion. Trees grow out of its windows and human and animal detritus clusters against its walls, as though they shrink from the searching light of the world beyond. Abandoned spots like this would be covered in graffiti in England; profane scribbles and indecipherable tags whose meanings will fade from the world long before their makers. A single graffito marks the eastern wall. Of all things, it is a quote from Virgil.

The memory came into my head as I stood before Goya’s Pinturas negras in the depths of the Prado, bewitched – and not for the first time – by the unfettered darkness on the canvas.

In the opinion of this jaded wanderer, there are few artists who can hold a candle to Goya, an artist whose style was shaped – or, perhaps, perfected – by the ravages of one of the darkest periods in Spain’s history.

The Prado does a fantastic job at telling his story. On the top floor, illuminated by the brilliant natural glow of several skylights, his early works shine with an innocent halo. Paintings such as El quitasol and La vendimia tell of a happier time, when Goya was young and using his gifts to make a name for himself in the circles of the rich and powerful, as many an artist had done before him for generations.

Descend to the ground floor, and some of his younger naïveté is stripped away like a layer of paint to reveal a cunning eye for detail and social commentary. Unlike the illustrious royal portraits by Titian and Velázquez which grace the walls further down, Goya’s subjects are painted as they are, without any false veneers of lustre or glory. Maja vestida has a cute smile, but she is a pale imitation of Maja vestida, whose knowing expression betrays a far greater honesty.

And then you descend to the basement. The lights dim. War comes to Spain, Goya’s former patrons flee for their lives, and the country descends into chaos. Goya sees it all and sketches furiously. The illness that robbed him of his hearing pushes him into a deeper, darker school of thought, and his subjects trade their rosy cheeks and playful smiles for pallid masks and devilish grins. At the same time, the faces become much more recognisably Iberian, replacing the stateless Western mannequins who previously adorned his tapestries. Still a master of light, Goya now perfects its dexter side, drawing on the darkness of the maddening world around him, culminating in the macabre frescos of the Quinta del sordo. The sunken, bulging eyes of Saturn and his gaping maw stare out of the canvas with a malice that is at once pitiful and horrifying.

An American girl is toured swiftly around the room by her imperious mother, the latter commenting loudly on the broader collection ‘back home in Washington’. A Latin-looking schoolboy fills out a couple of questions on a worksheet on one of the paintings and moves on. Two young parents push their infant child by in a pushchair. They cast Saturn a brief glance and move on, a little faster. A gallery official in black and red watches from a corner, but nobody needs reminding that photos are not allowed in here. Goya’s demons still have the power to strike terror, two hundred years later.

Out in the daylight, Madrid goes about its business. My footsteps take me back into the heart of the city. There are a lot of indios about: current estimates hold that they make up one in seven of the capital’s population. In the city centre, I’d wager the ratio is even higher. Pizarro’s pigeons have come home to roost.

In a side-street, two officers of the municipal police search a couple of North African men, who have their hands on their heads – “Qué hacéis por aquí?”. A carton of box wine lies discarded in the road, ignored by a street sweeper who is watching the scene unfold over his shoulder, sweeping the same dust in circles.

In Plaza Santa Ana, a small group of Africans have laid out their wares on white blankets and try to flog what they can to passers by in reluctant, almost disinterested tones. Clutched in their hands at all times are the ropes fastened to each corner of the blanket, ready to be drawn up in a moment’s notice. These unfortunate hawkers are known in Spain as top manta, and are usually more in evidence in the larger cities along the coast: Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga… wherever careless tourist money can be found.

It crosses my mind, as it has before, to strike up a conversation with one of them. To get their side of things. To hear their story. Something checks me: a sense that unfriendly eyes are watching. I scan the square.

Sure enough, standing in the shade of a plane tree at the edge of the square is their overseer: a surly man in a Cameroonian football shirt. He appears motionless, but his eyes are fixed on the street vendors, who occasionally return his gaze, like nervous shorebirds before a sleeping crocodile.

My speculation becomes flesh when one of the hawkers approaches him with what seems to be a question. The conversation is obviously not an amicable one, and the overseer is on his feet and shouting, followed swiftly by his companion, a big chap with dark shades and a military-style beret. The overseer barks at the hawker and sends him packing. “No eres más que un puto negro.” It’s a loaded insult, but since it’s contained, hurled from one immigrant at another, nobody seems to notice. Madrid’s shoppers continue about their business. Tourists sink half pints of Mahou and Amstel mere yards away. A lost soul staggers to keep his balance, either too drunk or too drugged up to pay the scene any heed. The two Latino vagrants sleeping rough in the shade of a nearby bush hardly bat an eyelid. One stirs slightly, the other draws on his cigarette, casting a gentle orange glow in the shadows.

As I turn down a street toward the city centre, I see a police car slowly crawling toward the square. I turn around, but the top manta touts have already got wind of the impending threat: their bags are slung across their shoulders and they are retreating into the shadows. They will be gone long before the police arrive.

Goya’s Madrid is a dichotomy: a place full of light and consequently of shadows also, of rosy-cheeked beauty and ugly avarice. This is no less true now than it was two hundred years ago: it just wears Adidas trainers now.

Tomorrow I leave the capital behind and make for the windswept coast of Galicia. I have never been much enamoured of cities, being inclined to agree with the author M.M. Kaye, who described them as “the breeding places of the very worst aspects of humanity”. My destination is the Costa da Morte – the Coast of Death – the wrecking place of many a luckless merchant sailor. But its name is deceptive: for me, it is a place of unfiltered light and hope.

The gates of hell are open night and day / Smooth the descent, and easy is the way / But to return, and view the cheerful skies / In this the task and mighty labor lies.

Virgil, The Aeneid

The mighty labour has begun. There are still fragments of my heart in need of healing after last year’s American adventure. Hard work and endless endeavour have been a good palliative, but they are not the solution. Finisterre healed my heart before. It will do so again. I am sure of it. BB x

The Hall of the Dead

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 13.45

A shadow lies upon his tomb, in Moria, in Khazad-dûm. The Company stood silent beside the tombs of the kings of old. There were many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them were large iron-bound sarcophagi of black marble. Frodo and the Company stood in awe, but Pippin felt a compulsive urge to reach for his iPhone so that he might share the spectacle on Instagram. He held it aloft, and for a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then it issued forth a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow.

“No photos!” barked the security guard, gesturing wildly in Pippin’s directions, before muttering a loaded “turistas” under her breath.

In the year 1563, Felipe II ordered the construction of an enormous palace in the foothills of Monte Abantos, partly to commemorate his victory over the French at the Battle of San Quintín, partly as a country retreat where he could hunt big game, but perhaps most importantly as a necropolis for the Hapsburg line. Here, entombed within the bowels of the largest Renaissance building on Earth, lie the remains of almost every king and queen of Spain of the Hapsburg and Bourbon lines.

To get here from Madrid, you have to catch a bus from Moncloa. Spain is steadily catching up to the rest of the world as a cashless country, but most of the local bus companies are still coin-operated. I was delayed by an hour because my first attempt to board was a flop: the driver thought I said “puedo cobrar” instead of “comprar” and wagged a finger at me, saying “yo cobro, tú pagas”. Granted, I had a cold, but I’m pretty sure I made myself clear. I was honestly so ruffled by his wagging humour that I forgot I did actually have a ten euro note on me, so I got off the bus and went in search of breakfast and a cash machine – and a few plasters for my wounded ego.

The next bus driver wasn’t a wisecrack, so I had a very enjoyable ride across the dehesa. To the north of the road to El Escorial, the snowbound peaks of the Guadarrama rise up out of the plain, its mantle pure and unspoilt by the ski-lifts and stations that criss-cross similar ranges in Central Europe. At one point, the road crosses the Valdemayor reservoir, and on a cloudless day such as this, the mountains rise again into the mirrored surface of the blue waters.

The centrepiece of El Escorial – as is so often the way with Spain’s grandest architectural treasures – is an enormous basilica, featuring a collection of saintly portraits, painted ceilings and a gilded reredos of jasper and red granite that stands an eye-watering 92 ft tall. As if that weren’t enough, the high altar is watched by the sentinel eyes of life-size bronze sculptures of Felipe II and his father, Carlos V, and their respective families, eternally offering their prayers to God above the crypt where their bodies are interred. It’s no great leap of the imagination to compare El Escorial to the Valley of the Kings: should it fade into memory someday, the discovery of the altarpiece alone would be an archaeologist’s field day.

The comparisons don’t end there. Much like the triumphal engravings of Ramses’ victory at Kadesh in Abu Simbel and Trajan’s Column in Rome, El Escorial’s “Sala de Batallas” (Hall of Battles) testifies to the martial prowess of the Habsburg line, depicting the greatest victories over the French, Moors and other enemies of the dynasty across over a hundred metres of fresco. That’s ten times the length of my mega drawing and eight times the height. I clearly missed my calling by four and a half centuries.

As well as a hoarding place for countless royal artefacts (including one of the largest collections of holy relics in the world, numbering around 7,500), El Escorial is most widely known as the final resting place of Spain’s monarchy from the early modern period on. These most haunting treasures of the royal palace can be found in the innermost depths of the palace complex, entombed within vaulted marble sarcophagi that contain the remains of princes, consorts, bastard sons and daughters and other high-ranking members of the Hapsburg line, right the way up to the present. The blank headstones above the sarcophagi in the last rooms sit waiting for Juan Carlos’ relatives and their progeny.

If that weren’t chilling enough, one of the rooms features an enormous marble monument to those of royal blood who perished before puberty, marked with A or B to differentiate between the Austria and Bourbon clans. With their famous predilection for morganatic marriages, it’s perhaps no surprise that so many infantes never made it to adulthood.

In the deepest reaches of all, far below the palace itself, is a golden chamber called the Panteón de los Reyes. This is the Habsburg Holy of Holies, where the bodies of the kings and queens were laid to rest: from Carlos V, who oversaw the conquest of the America’s and the birth of the Spanish Empire, all the way up to Alfonso XIII, exiled in 1931 by the short-lived Spanish Second Republic. In a single 360° turn you can see them all. There can be few places in the world quite like this, where you are quite literally encircled by the tombs of the kings of the past.

In such a sacred space, photos are, quite naturally, forbidden – but that didn’t stop a couple of Korean and American tourists from trying. I just carried out a quick sketch in my journal and was done with it. Nobody ever seems to mind the sketching. I wonder why that is?

Outside, the air is a lot less oppressive. A number of articles describe the location as “austere”, and I can imagine that in the grip of winter it may well be, but under the warm spring sunshine it is anything but. A cool wind blows down from the snowy mountains, but it is accompanied by a warmth in the air, sweeter with the scent of cherry blossom. Crag martins and wagtails twitter merrily over the pool, and in the dehesa beyond, I saw (and heard) a family of one of Spain’s most beautiful birds of all, the Iberian magpie, a relic of the Ice Age whose nearest living relatives can be found in eastern China. As I watched them hopping around in the branches of the nearest tree, a little owl flew into sight, calling to its partner in the valley below.

Finally, the greatest sight of all. As I made my way back to the bus station, a lonely black shadow came down from the mountains, casting an unmistakeable silhouette against the intense blue of the Spanish sky: a griffon vulture, the true king of these mountains. They were here long before the Hapsburgs and will be haunting these hills long after they have been forgotten.

I have been fascinated with vultures since the first time I saw one. That boyish glee I get when I see that shape in the ether hasn’t gone away after twenty years. I don’t think it ever will.

Austere? The building, perhaps, in true counter-reformation style, but the location? Hardly. I don’t think Felipe needed much convincing. If I had all that Habsburg money floating around, I’d have wanted to end my days here, too. BB x

Wishes and Migas

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Calle de San Millán, Madrid. 20.09.

The sun is just starting to set beyond the skyline. Down in the street below, Madrid’s colourful denizens are out for an evening paseo, dressed to the nines to the last man (and woman). The rumble of motorbikes is a constant accompaniment to the general hubbub and the occasional police siren soars above it all every now and then. The lodgings I’ve managed to snag come with a balcony that looks out over the crossroads below, so I’m treating myself to the noise of Madrid for a few days before retreating to the quieter shores of Finisterre, at the end of the world.

The capital is much as I remember it from my last visit, several years ago, though it makes a change to see the place under the warm spring sunshine rather than wrapped up in the chestnut smoke of winter. It’s inching toward 20°C outside, but the madrileños are still going about in puffer jackets and (fashionable) greatcoats as though it were 5°C. I haven’t brought any heavy-duty winter wear as I have to carry everything with me from Madrid to Galicia to the Canary Islands and beyond on this latest adventure, but I might pick up a few Spanish clothing supplies while I’m here in the city. I haven’t overpacked, for once.

During the course of my wanderings I stumbled (quite by accident) upon the Tienda de Deseos again. I found this strange corner of Madrid last Christmas, its walls covered with the scribbled desires of a hundred passers-by fluttering in the winter wind. Last year there were quite a few lonely hearts on here. This year there seem to be a lot more general “wishing for all the best in life” requests. I made a wish last year to find her – “wherever she may be”. This year I was a bit more specific. Beautiful though it was, I don’t think I’m quite ready for another trans-Atlantic situationship.

Even in the heart of the capital, there are clear signs that spring is here. The cherry trees lining the Calle del Arenal are dressed all in white. The swifts are here early, too – they must have come hurtling in on the wings of the rainclouds, because I’ve never seen the Río Manzanares so full.

There were a few posters on some of the bollards advertising an anti-hate march in defense of the Trans community, which I really ought to have stuck around to watch, as it’s one of the A Level topics for Spanish at the moment. A smaller group of protesters were picketing the Corte Inglés just off Sol, sporting the usual V for Vendetta masks and carrying telescreens displaying the slaughter of fish off the Spanish coast. Nobody seemed to be paying them much attention.

I treated myself at dinner with a rather upmarket restaurant modelled on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Capitán Alatriste books – dishes, decor and all. It didn’t disappoint one bit. I had my first migas in seven years and tried cochinillo for the first time. It was incredible, even though my taste buds hadn’t quite recovered from the usual end of term knockout cold.

On my first grand adventure across Spain many years ago, food was a luxury I rather recklessly decided to do without. Now that I have the means, I intend to make good on that dreadful error by exploring the best dishes the country has to offer as I go. I haven’t found any callos yet, but they’re on my list!

Please excuse the rather humdrum post today. I haven’t had any grand escapades yet! The real adventures start tomorrow… BB x

Amber and Ashes

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Warsaw is a strange town. For a European, at least. It’s like looking at a replica – which is not so far from the truth at all, as the city was razed to the ground with unparalleled savagery on Hitler’s orders. It seems absurd that I stayed in buildings in the US this summer that were older. But, there we are. It’s a testament to the Poles’ love for their capital city that they rebuilt the place brick by brick, presumably at no small expense.

I’ve come to the centre of the Old Town in search of amber for my mother, to replace a pair of cherished earrings lost long ago. I wanted to visit the Polish Jewish Museum and the Warsaw Uprising Museum, but as luck would have it, those two museums – and only those two – are closed on Tuesdays. So I do one of my usual make-it-up-as-you-go walking tours instead.

The usual global parasites that infest the heart of Europe’s ancient cities have been mercifully kept outside the old town walls: the lurid glare of the Hard Rock Café, Costa coffee and the Golden Arches can be seen from its outermost streets, but no further. Along with the usual array of anachronistic American college jackets with Warsaw splashed across them, quite a few souvenir shops appear to be selling tee-shirts with the city’s name in Star Wars font. One even has a chibi Darth Vader next to the slogan “I love Warsaw”. It seems a little tasteless to have a man infamous for his hatred, wanton destruction, ruthless repression and stormtroopers (and who isn’t even the obvious real life counterpart) associated with a city like Warsaw, but perhaps the irony was lost on the designers.

Not far from the city centre stands a miniature statue atop a plinth, just outside the city walls. It depicts a child soldier, an anonymous victim of the Warsaw Uprising. It is a stark reminder of just how young the rebels were: the average age of the insurgents was only seventeen. One has to hand it to the incredible courage of the Poles for standing up to the might of the Third Reich, when they were all but trapped under the heel of the Führer’s jackboot.

Nothing remains of the Jewish ghetto, which was considerable. Similar ghettos in Spanish cities are minute by comparison, despite Spain once housing a not insignificant percentage of the world’s Jews. There are nods to what once was: a metal plaque cuts across the road in places, marking where the perimeter walls once stood.

In a park nearby, a woman in a fur coat walks her dog. I arrive one minute too late to catch the start of the changing of the guard, but I do see the new sentries move into position beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A fire burns steadily in an iron grate between them. The chosen shelter for the tomb is the last remaining piece of a former palace complex, of which only three arches survived the destruction of war. A short wall on either side of the square bars access to what looks like an excavation site. Beyond that, the yellow squares of ceiling lights gleam from behind the glass of the office buildings. I have always been curious as to what it might be like to work in one of those places, though it’s the same kind of curiosity I harbour for how it might feel to tumble over a cliff or to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps I’m happier not knowing.

Night falls. Warsaw puts her Christmas clothes on. I consider going without supper, but one of the restaurants in the old town does flaki and I can never say no to offal. This time I can savour it in peace, without the tutting and sermonising of the vegetarian globetrotter who was so judgemental of my taste before. The pierogi are probably a bit much and I can’t finish them all, but I do an honest job of it. I suspect that flaki appeals to me because tripe stew isn’t too far from the Spanish dish of callos or any number of dishes I have eaten in Uganda and Morocco.

Back at the hotel, I have a lot of time to think. I pack my bags. I watch Polanski’s The Pianist and try to picture those things happening right beneath my hotel window, some eighty years ago. I tell myself I mustn’t sell myself so cheaply anymore, apologise to a few matches on Hinge and unmatch. I take a shower and read back through the blog to happier times, to the Camino, and wonder whether that ought to be my next grand adventure. After all, the end of the Camino isn’t the end of the road. It’s just the start of the next one. BB x

A Parting Gift

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

A loud knocking at my door woke me this morning. It was only Łukasz checking I was up and about, but it caught me off guard all the same. I must have passed out the night before. I guess I was more worn out than I thought. My phone was on about 18% battery and the bathroom light was on. I sheepishly turned it off, threw on some clothes and all but inhaled a cup of green tea so as not to hold the others up any longer. Talk about a bad start.

I needn’t have been so flustered. It was absolutely miserable outside, the earth damp from a night of rain and melted snow and the sky dark with the threat of more. The temperature had risen by about six degrees, which was something, but it was hardly what you’d call perfect wildlife watching conditions.

Nature, however, is and always has been fickle, and we were in for more than one surprise before we bade farewell to Białowieża.

We agreed to try for the bison once again, after our lucky encounter with the wolves the day before. We found the herd even faster than on the first morning, grazing in a field just outside Narewka. They seemed unapproachable at first, but Łukasz had a better idea.

A hidden track ran through the forest on the other side, allowing us to get a lot closer than we’d managed on the previous occasion. Of course, the conditions were awful for photography. The focus assist light on my camera kept blinking in its struggle to focus on the dark shapes which Łukasz admonished me for, fearing it might spook the herd. I gave up pretty quickly and contented myself with watching the bison through my binoculars. I did manage a grab shot through them with my phone again, though.

A squall came in and we backed down. Łukasz concluded it was not the herd we’d seen before, which had numbered some thirty-nine individuals and hadn’t featured the bull with the twisted horn. Hoping to show us more in the time we had left, he took us back to the last place we’d seen the larger herd. He offered to go out and run to the spot where we’d left them. I volunteered to go with him. We had barely gone more than a few yards when he suddenly stopped in his tracks, held up his hand and said ‘Wolf!’.

I dropped to my knees and followed his line of sight. And there it was, standing on a rise at the edge of the forest: a white wolf, its winter coat lightly flecked with grey and brown. Like an echo from yesterday, it soon got wind of our attention and slinked back into the trees and out of sight. Łukasz tried calling after it, but there was no response.

After waiting for several minutes, we counted our stars for a second encounter with wolves in as many days and started heading back to the car. I must have been on high alert since being all but shaken out of bed this morning, because I saw it first: a second wolf, barely fifty metres away, watching us from the field adjacent to the track. This time it was me that gave the signal. I’d made the choice to leave my camera behind on this quick sortie, but I didn’t care. With only my binoculars to rely on, I was spared the frustration of staring through a viewfinder and getting poor results, and instead had the joy of watching the beautiful creature bounding away across the field as though it were only feet away.

I can’t show you what I saw. So let me describe it to you.

A tall and powerfully built creature, with the faintest of black lines down its legs. A warm buff colour lines its flanks, the colour of undercooked gingerbread, but its eyes – a lot more visible at such close range – are an amber so intense that not even the best of Warsaw’s jewellers could hope to replicate it. It runs as gracefully as though it were sailing across the field, and its body moves like a wave, arching and falling with every step. When it stops to look back – and it does this only once, and for just a moment – the black lips on its white muzzle are drawn into a grin. And then it turns away with a swish of its tail and lopes off into the forest.

This is Białowieża’s farewell: a final encounter with one of its most handsome creatures of all.

It is magnificent. I am lost for words.

The car is now flying through the vast flats of Eastern Poland. Scenery I remember seeing only in picture books of the East plays beyond the window like a zoetrope: stands of towering, limbless spruce trees, bending under the weight of the wind; lonely cabins and hunting hides in the fields; water towers and the bulbous spires of Orthodox churches rising out of the low-lying villages we pass.

It’s unlike any place I’ve ever been before – but then, I guess I haven’t ever traveled this far east. Go any further than Białowieża and you’ll run headlong into the Belarus border wall – a reminder that Iron Curtain of the previous century was, true to its name, only drawn back, and not ripped down for good.

One day, if the fates allow, I would love to see Siberia. I suspect that kind of adventure is absolutely off the cards for now, but until then, I can only hope things do not spiral out of control the way they did before.

There is too much that is beautiful in this part of the world, too much that has been done to save these treasures from the brink of oblivion. Too much to sacrifice on the altar of ambition. Well – that’s my ten cents on the matter, anyway. BB x