Spain

Under the Dragon Tree

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Parque de San Marcos, Icod de los Vinos. 12.37.

The bells of San Marcos are ringing for midday, a mournful two-tone chime that feels out of step with the rest of the world: the buzz of the artesanal market stalls, the constant roll of tyres over cobblestones, the cooing of collared doves and the merry twitter of Canarian chiffchaffs in the trees overhead. The guitarist sitting in the pagoda that looks out across the Atlantic has stopped his playing and looks on in contemplative silence. Three very trendy French tourists walk by, one wielding an iPhone, the other dragging on a vape. ‘Ouais, t’as raison, hein, on est en Afrique.’ A man walks by with his dog. Around its neck is a metal collar not dissimilar to the kind Cortés’ war dogs used to wear. And still the bells chime.

It’s an hour’s wait until my connecting bus to Erjos, so I’ve come here to sit in the shade and write. I’ve bought some supplies from the nearby Mercadona just in case they’re hard to come by – for the first (and only) time in this trip, there are no shops near my lodgings for the night. The Canarian bananas are riper than the kind we get back home – understandably, as they were grown all of fifty metres from the store itself – and the slice of tortilla I’ve obtained should do nicely for dinner this evening.

The guitarist has started up again: it’s Guantanamera this time. A German boy in dungarees and a white baseball cap and his mother watch as he plays an upbeat Latin tune. The boy was shy at first, but he seems captivated by the rhythm and is swaying along with a big smile. Judging by his mother’s reaction, he appears to have just learned how to clap. Thanks to the guitarist, he also just learned how to strum a chord and blow a kiss to the audience.

To the east of the park is the famous dragon tree, a bizarre and ancient tree endemic to the Atlantic islands that has supposedly stood in this spot for nearly a thousand years. Its leaves stick out at the ends of its myriad branches like frozen fireworks. The palm tree at its side, usually exotic in its own right, looks almost humdrum next to the dragon tree, which is as rare as it is odd-looking: you’d have to travel all the way to the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen – the other side of Africa entirely – to find a similar kind of tree.

In the shadow of the park is Icod de los Vinos’ mariposario, a butterfly conservation centre. I’m not the biggest fan of zoos, but these sorts of places (where the butterflies are free to roam) are usually geared towards the captive breeding of endangered species, and with butterflies the world over starting to disappear, I fancied learning what I could about those native to the island.

Icod’s mariposario hosts a number of ‘celebrity’ butterflies: the electric-blue morpho, the wandering monarch, and the gigantic Atlas moth. They’re a lot better at drawing in tourists than the endangered Canarian large white, I guess, a species which this local enterprise is working to protect. They’re a long way from home, usually haunting the dense rainforests of the Amazon basin, but they seemed more at home here than they would in a similar butterfly park in the UK.

It was the prospect of seeing the morphos which drew me in, I think, but I stayed for the monarchs. These impressive creatures, with wings the colour of an Atlantic sunset, are a cultural symbol of Central America. If I’d gone to Mexico – my original plan for the Easter holidays – I’d have gone looking for them over there. Not that I’d have had any guarantees of seeing one, of course – but it would have been fun to try.

Higher up the mountainside stands another dragon tree, el Drago de San Antonio. Younger than the drago milenario (but only by a few hundred years), this one is chained in place like a wild beast. It’s also guarded: two security guards in green overalls sat in the shade nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me as I wandered over to have a look. There’s a motive for their caution: the tree had been ‘attacked’ twice in the last fifty years, first by an ambitious landowner who wanted it cut down and more recently by vandals. To ensure its safety, cameras have been installed in the neighbouring walls and a guard posted during daylight hours – not to mention the chains. I can only imagine these last have been affixed to keep the tree in place should the dormant dragon within decide to take flight someday.

Well, I’ve made it to my digs for the night in Caserio los Partidos, high up in the hills above Erjos. The restaurant is open, but the lady who sorts the lodging isn’t here. I guess she’ll be back at some point this afternoon. I hope she comes soon – I can never truly relax until I’ve got rid of my rucksack. There’s no signal this high up the mountain, but that’s exactly why I came all the way up here – to really get away. I need it after the last two days in touristic Tenerife. It’s a beautiful place, once you get away from the coast and the cities, but this will probably be my only visit. It might be a Spanish territory, and the natives might be Spanish speakers, but it’s not Spain. I’m already nostalgic for the mainland.

Still no sign of the dueña. At least it’s given me time to catch up on my writing and stay out of the worst of the midday sun. See you on the other side. BB x

Devils of Fire and Dust

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Capsule 19, Atypicap, Puerto de la Cruz. 19.02.

The last post went off on a tangent about guaguas – so much so that I didn’t even get on to talking about the purpose of my voyage: to hike in the caldera of Spain’s tallest mountain and the symbol of Tenerife itself: Teide National Park.

Ignore the ads plastered across bus stations and billboards: Teide, not the widely advertised Loro Parque, is the true ‘must’ of Tenerife. There is so much about Teide that is worthy of a story. It is an active volcano, erupting most recently in 1909. It was sacred to the Guanche people (the native peoples of the Canaries before the Spanish conquest), who saw it as both a holy mountain and the jail of the fire demon Guayota, interred within the mountain by their supreme deity, Achamán.

What did Guayota do to deserve such a fate? He kidnapped Magec, the Guanche sun god, and trapped them inside the mountain, plunging the world into darkness. Despairing for their future, the islanders prayed to Achamán, who fought a fierce battle with Guayota and imprisoned him within the mountain forever.

Teide itself is a mighty thing indeed. Even from the caldera – which, it must be said, is not the mountain’s most beautiful side – it towers above everything else, dwarfing not just the high cliffs and mountains around Tenerife’s rim but the surrounding islands as well. One can only imagine the terror the islanders must have felt when it caused the earth to roar and spewed fire and fury out of its peak.

It was said that Teide’s eruptions were a sign of Guayota’s fury at his imprisonment, and that his children, in the form of demonic dogs known as tibicenas, haunted the mountainside by night.

I didn’t see any hellhounds on my lap of the park, but I did see a dust devil as I set out from El Portillo. I used to see these quite frequently when I lived in Jordan, but outside of desert environments they are quite rare.

Scattered around the caldera floor are a number of unfinished or ruined dwellings built out of the scattered basalt rocks. These present a mystery to the casual hiker: what were they? The ancient dwellings of the Guanches? An initiative by the park authorities? Hunting refuges? In truth, they are none of these things: the caldera was far too hostile an environment for settlement by the Guanches, construction within the national park is tightly restricted, and hunting – naturally outlawed – would net a poor return, as the largest birds within the park are kestrels and the odd buzzard, and the only native mammals are bats.

No – they are actually the remains of a German attempt to build a sanatorium within the caldera in the early 20th century. A lack of funding, the eventual creation of the National park and, of course, two world wars put a bullet in the head of the project and now all that remains are the foundations of these houses, which now provide shelter for the enigmatic blue-bellied lizards that can only be found here on Tenerife.

These creatures are everywhere in the caldera, darting across the path and into the numerous crevices in the boulder-strewn ash field as you pass. There are two other species endemic reptiles within the park – the Tenerife skink and the Tenerife gecko – but the casual observer is much more likely to cross paths with the Tenerife lizard, especially around the Parador car park where they have become quite fearless.

The Canary Islands – curiously, named not for the species of finch that calls the islands home, but for the large population of monk seals (or sea dogs) that once lived here – are home to a large number of endemic reptiles, some of them textbook cases of island gigantism: that is, where a species has fewer natural predators and can thus grow to a size far greater than its mainland relatives. The largest of these, the El Hierro giant lizard, is a relic of precolonial times, when giant lizards were much more common in these islands, as well as much larger: fossils indicate that some could exceed a metre in length, right up until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1490s.

No visit to Teide would be complete without taking in the Roques de García, the roots of an ancient mountain even older than Teide itself. The most well-known of these has to be the Roque Cinchado, also known as ‘el árbol de piedra’ – the stone tree. Standing on the footpath a few paces from the car park provides you with one of the most famous views in all of Spain: the Roque Cinchado with Teide as its backdrop. The old man of the mountain and its son. I had to wait for a family testing out their drone to get a clear shot, but it was worth it.

It’s not the only impressive rock formation in the caldera: there’s a mighty organ-like basalt structure down in the valley floor, and the largest of the Roques de García seems to have become – of all things – a beauty spot. Three Italian men sat at the top of the steps, sporting designer sunglasses and expensive shoes. A Ukrainian girl dressed in pink with her hair tied back in a high ponytail occupied one of the lower peaks for the best part of twenty minutes, turning her head this way and that while her friend took photographs. As a matter of fact, I was the odd one out for not wearing my best: it seems whole busloads of well-dressed teens and students come up here for the ultimate profile picture.

I wonder if they spared a thought for the ancient fire demon trapped with the mountain behind them – or whether they thought to learn about the Guanches, the true Canarians, whose fire was extinguished many hundreds of years ago. They were crushed as a mere prelude to the conquest of the Americas, and I don’t remember their story featuring much in my history classes in Spain. If there are any left, their bloodline had long since mingled with the Spanish to the point where it has all but faded away. Perhaps it is fate that they too, like the fire demon Guayota, now lie buried deep within the mountain.

Tomorrow I strike out west for the peace and quiet of Chinyero. It’s been a long time coming. BB x

Ga-ga for Guaguas

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

La Corona Forestal, Tenerife. 16.34.

If there’s a hard mode for learning to drive, at least one of the levels must be the permit to drive the 348 from Puerto de la Cruz to Teide National Park. It’s utterly ridiculous. The vertiginous indifference required behind the wheel as the bus makes the sixteen sharp turns necessary to climb the two thousand metres from the city to the rim of the caldera – while negotiating said turns with the many tour buses that ply that route – is nothing short of medal-worthy. Truly, if you can drive here, you can probably drive anywhere.

And that’s as good a lead-in as any to the nub of today’s story: the legendary guaguas, the bus network of the Canary Islands.

Where did I leave things yesterday? In Santiago airport? Well, I made it safe and sound to Tenerife, some one thousand miles to the south. I was on high alert for most of the flight, as this is the one leg of the grand tour that I don’t know inside out. The plane took off a leisurely twenty minutes late, and I was so concerned that we’d miss the last bus to Puerto de la Cruz that I completely forgot to factor in the time difference… because the Canary Islands operate on British time! 

Using every second of the additional hour, I set out to find the bus lane. It wasn’t all that easy to find, and when I did, it was to learn that Google had got the times wrong: the last guagua for Puerto de la Cruz from Tenerife North leaves at 20.30 on Saturdays. So I’d missed it.

But, where there’s a will (and a stubborn won’t concerning the 75€ taxi alternative) there’s a way, so I gathered my belongings and set out into the night for the bus stop over the road from the airport.

I struck out over the road – well, more like along it, as Tenerife North isn’t very walkable. Still, I wasn’t hassled or beeped at en route (always a good sign), and I did manage to track down the bus stop outside a rather seedy establishment called Eclipse de Sol. Google assured me there was a bus on its way, which is just as well, as none of the QR codes on any of the signs around Tenerife seem to work – helpful, when they’ve decided to save on printing the timetables. But, somebody up there was watching over me, because the bus for La Orotava eventually turned up.

Let me tell you something for free: traveling by guagua is the perfect blend of European and African/South American public transport: all the bells and whistles and all of the noise that comes with it. It was packed to the gills: students sitting in each other’s laps, others crowded into the luggage racks, passengers stood two abreast in the aisle from the back of the bus all the way to the steps leading up to the driver. I was lucky to get on at all.

The sardine tin I managed to catch wasn’t even the right one, as it terminated in La Orotava – still a good five kilometres from my destination (and 360m up). I considered taking a chance on catching the right bus, which was on its way but twenty minutes late, but the prospect of it not being real and getting stuck at the junction in the middle of nowhere did not appeal. I thought about jumping into a taxi at La Orotava instead, but even as I thought that over, another bus arrived with “Puerto de la Cruz” emblazoned across its screen. I haven’t been so relieved to see a bus in years.

A similar story unfolded today en route to Teide National Park. There are only two buses per day: one there, one back. No exceptions. Given what I’ve already told you about the logistics, that’s not entirely surprising. But you’ve got to get there early, as it’s a very popular ride and the queue is always huge. I just about made it, despite being late due to my shopping quest for Factor 50 sunscreen on a Sunday morning (they’re all locked away behind a glass cabinet so I had to get a clerk to open it first). The travel card I bought was next to useless, so I paid in cash. I still don’t quite know how they work – there isn’t a flat rate for a single journey, as the website implies, as it’s 6,30€ to get to Teide from Puerto de la Cruz, and the driver wasn’t the friendliest – though when you’re having to deal with hapless guiris on the most popular bus in town, and then drive said bus up one of the steepest bus routes in Europe, I can’t say I blame the man.

Tomorrow, I’m braving the guaguas once again to get to Icod de los Vinos, partly to see the famous dragon tree, and partly to stock up on supplies for another hike around the ash flow of Chinyero, where I have booked a casa rural so that I can see the other thing that has brought me to Tenerife, besides the need to tick this last autonomous community off the list: the stars. Tenerife has some of the best stargazing in the world, once you get away from its coastline. I plan to make the most of that. BB x

Smoke Signals

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Aeropuerto De Santiago – Rosalía De Castro. 14.40.

I’m back at Santiago’s very small, very civilised airport. It’s another five hours until my flight, but Galician weather is highly unpredictable and I didn’t fancy making the three-hour hike to the airport under a belt of rain clouds, so I forked out a euro and caught the bus instead. On the plus side, it gives me plenty of time to read and rest – tomorrow will involve no small amount of walking, so it’s best I don’t wear out my feet just yet.

There’s a WHSmith in the departures lounge. I wonder how much longer that outpost is for this world, and others scattered in airports across the world, now that the dependable newsagents is going under, just like Woolworths before it.

I only just made it to the 19.30 pilgrim Mass in the cathedral of Santiago last night – it took me a little longer than I anticipated to track down the books I was looking for. There was a queue outside the door, and when I was a few metres from the great doors, an attendant in a high-vis orange jacket announced that visits were now over for the day – unless, of course, we were queuing for the Mass. That thinned some of the line, but even so, it was standing room only this time… not the front row seats I enjoyed at the end of the Camino in 2023.

The reason for the crush became apparent in the last few minutes of the Mass, when a group of eight priests in burgundy cassocks approached the enormous knotted rope securing the botafumeiro, Santiago’s famously huge incense burner and, with one collective tug, began to hoist the thing into the air.

Weighing in at 80kg and measuring an impressive 1.93m in height, the botafumeiro of Santiago is one of the largest in the world, outsized only by the Christendom College censer in Virginia (because of course the Americans, not satisfied with an imitation, had to have a bigger one). Unlike its American cousin, however, the botafumeiro is more than just a showpiece. The reason for its size was to purify the air within the cathedral and thus cover up the smell of the pilgrims, who must have stunk to high heaven in the centuries before Jacotrans, Booking.com and Compede blister plasters.

The botafumeiro you see today has been in use since 1851. The original, a 15th century thurible of solid silver, was stolen by French troops in the Spanish War of Independence and supposedly melted down for coinage. This and other acts of vandalism marked the French occupation, which saw many monasteries and Roman bridges destroyed in the name of military strategy. A local legend holds that the Alhambra was nearly blown to pieces on Napoleon’s orders as the French lost their grip on Spain, spared only by the efforts of a single French soldier who had a change of heart and stayed behind to defuse the charges, saving the last remaining medieval Islamic palace in the world from being lost forever.

The botafumeiro swings alarmingly low over the heads of the faithful, reaching a top speed of 68km per hour, though never low enough to catch the heads of even the tallest German pilgrims. It’s quite a special sight, because its presence isn’t guaranteed: it’s usually only brought out on holy days, such as Easter Sunday or the Feast of Santiago on the 25th July. I missed it last time as I set out for the coast on the 25th, hoping to beat the crowds that would follow.

There is a small chance, however, that your visit may coincide with the whim of this or that religious order (or wealthy pilgrim), who can pay a certain amount of money to have the censer brought out especially for their arrival. This time I got lucky: a confraternity had traveled all the way from Goa to celebrate Mass in Santiago, so the botafumeiro was brought out. Lucky me!

After three visits to the cathedral without paying my respects to the true purpose of the Camino, I decided to make one last trip to see the tomb of Santiago himself. The first of Christ’s apostles to be martyred for his faith, Santiago el Mayor (or Saint James the Greater, if you prefer) was beheaded on the orders of Herod Agrippa. His head was buried near the spot where he was killed (now beneath the Armenian Cathedral of Saint James in Jerusalem) but his body is believed to have been transported to the Galician coast, where his remains were discovered – as they so often are – by a hermit in the woods, who saw a great light shining upon a forgotten Roman tomb.

The veracity of the legend is irrelevant: word got around and soon the final resting place of Santiago had become the most important pilgrimage site in all of Christendom. That it just so happened to coincide with a time when the Christian kingdoms in the north were desperately seeking a rallying flag to counter the Muslim forces who had taken the Iberian peninsula by storm (and the angels believe to aid them in battle) is curious, to say the least.

Santiago’s tomb is a small silver coffin, located in a crypt beneath the central altar. The eighty-strong Portuguese school trip group that I had fallen behind weren’t all that interested in the bones of Jesus’ most faithful apostle, busying themselves repeating lines from Portuguese trap songs and stealing kisses from their girlfriends in the shadows, so I had plenty of time to stop and admire the coffin undisturbed.

I was lucky to get in when I did: by the time I left via the north door, the queue to get in stretched for nearly two hundred metres around the side of the cathedral. Pro tip: get in early, or just after Mass, when the queues are at their thinnest!

I had a quick bocadillo lunch in the old town and packed my things, thinking to spend a few sunny hours in the Parque de Alameda, but I was distracted en route by the sound of shouts and firecrackers. Doubling back, I found an advance guard of local police cordoning off the Avenida de Xoán Carlos I, and behind them, an enormous crowd of youths dressed mostly in black, carrying flags, placards and loudhalers.

I could have guessed what they were going to be protesting about, and my guess would have been on the money – after all, it’s a sore tooth Spain has been nursing for several years now: the housing crisis.

The short explanation? Spain’s housing market is a shambles. By some estimates, the cost of renting a property has gone up by 78% in the last decade, driven by rampant speculation and unrestricted vulture funds. Put simply, the average Spaniard now finds it very difficult (if not impossible) to find an affordable place to live, especially in the areas most popular with tourists. This is a country where flat-sharing websites like Idealista and Easypiso hold sway: AirBnB and its kin have made Spain a tough place to buy.

This has been most keenly felt in Barcelona and the Balearics, where many properties are vacant for large parts of the year, occupied only during the summer months by foreign investors. It’s one of a number of factors forcing Spaniards to live at home with their parents well into their twenties (or even thirties), and driving others to seek their fortune elsewhere. It’s also why I’m making a point of staying in pensiones wherever I go – a far older and more sustainable method of supporting the local economy as I travel.

There’s an even more sinister side-effect of the housing crisis in cities like Barcelona. I’m referring to the okupas, or the occupation of properties by gangs and other drug-related agencies who turn vacant holiday homes into drug dens, known here as narcopisos. The shady legal status of squatters in Spain, which makes it very hard to evict without the proper authority, doesn’t help matters at all.

Yes, A Place in the Sun and your kind – this is partly your fault. By encouraging the buying and selling (and re-selling) of property along the coast, you are driving the locals out of town faster than the local wildlife was displaced before them.

Naturally, it’s Spain’s youth who are taking the brunt of this crisis – and so, quite naturally, they’re the ones taking to the streets in large numbers to complain about it. Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Prime Minister, has attempted to address the problem by proposing a ban or even a supertax on foreign buyers, but in the regions that depend the most on tourist dollars like Andalucía and the Costa Brava, that will be a very bitter pill to swallow. So, for now, Spain will have to muddle through these murky waters until a more universal solution can be found.

The protesters marched on up the avenue, followed closely by the police and their van, carrying their riot helmets at their hips. Some of the protesters threw petards into the road as they passed. Others lit flares. I watched them go and returned to the park.

Similar protests are taking place all across Spain today. I wonder if it will come to a head? It’s hard to say, but it is fascinating to be here on the ground while it’s all going down. It isn’t often that you get to live through history in the making, especially when it’s something you teach (manifestaciones is one of the tried-and-true A Level Spanish topics).

This. This is why I travel.

The smoking incense of Santiago’s botafumeiro was meant to cover up the stink of something rotten. Seeing the smoking flares of the protesters as the police escort them through the city, I can’t help but note the connection.

I’ll keep you posted if I hear or see anything else. I trust this isn’t the last we’ll hear of it. BB x

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

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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