A Chronicle of Spain

By: A crazy Shark

Includes excerpts from the Book of the Shark

I love Analogies, and well, you know that a synonym of Spain is Don Quixote. With Cervantes’ creation also comes some windmills. In La Mancha, a classic site is the windmills in the horizon and the ferocious giants they evoke. Today, other windmills are seen on the hills, giants? Yes, but anything but ferocious. These windmills represent how Spain has come so far from its dystopic beginnings. Spain is now progress that doesn’t forget. I’m sure I’m not the first to use this analogy.

AL-ANDALUS

Appointed to: Yes

Excerpt from the Book of the Shark, june 28

“I saw it not coming, hidden inside smells of old land mass, too different in a place that’s neither young nor ancient.

Old souls, graffitis of young ghosts, flies as pestering as anywhere else. With cameras not showing anything but an on going fetish.

The worst toilet in Al-Andalus”

Córdoba

Nosebleeds, spoiled buildings and cups of Europe

I could say that Al-Andalus are endless fields of olive trees. But that would be too forced, not to mention unwise, yet smart. Indeed, I remembered Al-Andalus with the freshest of memories Spain kept me, but I just don’t know how much can a land change in 6 years, or how much I can change in 6 years. I remembered Andalusia as an arid landscape that emanated a tired heat, and that seemed too big to be so small. What really disappointed me was that you never knew when you left La Mancha and entered Al-Andalus. Nothing slightly dramatic or a pretty green and white flag besides a sign of curved writing, saying you just arrived at the Spain the whole world knows. More than happiness, fascination struck me.

After 10 hours of plane, 6 hours of bus, and a toilet too Trainspotting to forget, we arrived at Córdoba a third time (I confused the city with two towns). The bus, which I will name in this chronicle simply as Bus, was workfully comfortable and full of dreamy heads, some funnier that others, some still in Colombia, others already in Madrid. I was in the mosque. An epic search of around an hour, with the evil heat staring at us through the window and people outside looking tormented or meteorologically insane (wearing jeans the freaks). If my memory doesn’t fail me, it was about 5. As a first impression, we found Córdoba amazingly appealing, at least in its modern part, but then again, we had just arrived in Spain. Córdoba is the fading memory of a handsome city to me know (the cons of writing this so late), and seeing the sights I had foreseen in previous months and years. An ever present mosque, traces of its spoiling, and the ever winding streets of white wall and compact balcony, all presided by a river full of harmony, not affected by its imperial scar (Ladies and Gentleman, the Guadalquivir).

Excerpt from the Book of the Shark, june 28

“Impression of a River

Big river is noble, healthy and slightly decadent, but has had well treatment and constant attention that has kept it important.”

Making sure not to fall in the attitude of a hotel inspector, I can say that the hotel filled most expectations. Clean, comfortable, well located (Just by the mosque). But when it’s about breakfast, Córdoba would be the first of many deceptions. How can Spaniards live a full morning on bread and coffee, I do not know. Córdoba started off with getting accustomed to Spain, and to at least try to realize you’re in a different place (Mentally with a Wizard of Oz fashion). The Roman Bridge had been one of the things that came to my attention the most back home (Certain assignments), and I couldn’t find it more charming. There started the long sequence of casual photography and quirks between people, certain memorable objects and attitudes began on that bridge and ended in a hall of a creaky hotel in Madrid. Now, somehow speaking of my classmates will be hard for me in this extensive chronicle, because somehow my retentive is not fond of them (Stoopid brain!) in anycase I will try to speak of them and I wish them all the best and thank them for making of this trip an unforgettable experience.

The day followed, and we arrived, in the emerging heat of the day, at the Reales Alcázares where Iz and Fred had their residence in Córdoba. Iz and Fred where always really humble, to my liking, they never asked for much, never showed much, and liked to travel, my kind of people. Before Iz and Fred arrived, this was a moor palace, head of the Emirate of Córdoba. That history you couldn’t find there, erased and left in unrecognizable stone. I’ll highlight the gardens, best of Spain in my opinion (Note: Go to Bookface for pictures). Following that, we had some time off and I took a walk with some guys and girls by the Jew neighborhood (Thankfully, there are no Jews left). Oh amazing first wandering walk, many would be quite memorable. I recall Dancing Führer, Floating Sculpture, Rocking Sketch and two charming girls being company, and well we had happenings and things too good to remember. Near the end, we fell in the first of many souvenir and crap stores we were to find in Spain. A magnet by my part, and narguila by ours is what our Euros went dancing to (Euros in this memory, will always dance out of our pockets).

The Mosque’s minaret mocked us, it was always there, but more than once we were unsure of what direction to take to get to the actual mosque. Once out of the Jew’s labyrinth, a Roma was there. I suppose that in Spain tourists always have the threat of the Roma people present. It’s like the boogeyman or something of the sorts. Dancing Führer was lucky I suppose, to escape the clutches of one. We arrived at the mosque, with a deep desire of freshness and chairs. Once I took a look at that Courtyard full of Orange trees, I knew that this building was one of the things I had looked forward the most in this trip. When you read plenty of a subject, in this case a building, but you never knew by first-hand, once you do, the experience is breathtaking, and in my case, artery-breaking. Why yes, after fascinating meself with the astonishing detail of the mihrab and the disappeared minbar, a dome of quranic proportions and a roof of astonishing detail, a massive nosebleed hit me. Fuck, big time. In a rush, missing almost half of the delightful building, I arrived at the hotel and had trouble not leaving the bathroom like a horror scene. Further that day bleeding came and went without warning. Such details, I’m sure, are of no more interest to you.

That evening, all Spain was waving, shooting and sweating nationalism. Not every day does your national football team reach the final of the UEFA Euro Cup. So yes, red and yellow all over the place, not to mention the usual gust of cigarette smoke and stench of beer. We settled in a small intersection of streets where a bus station converged, that would’ve looked pretty normal if not for the crazy crowd of Spaniards gazing at the big TV on the window sill of a dark bar. You got to recognize the presence of a lonely German in one of the corners, and after a shout that I’m sure was heard beyond the peninsula, he was still there, even after a goal and a victory that I’m happy that Spain received. Euphoria probably is too few to describe what was found in the plaza near there, water projectiles, exploding fireworks, Spain inside you, it was indeed, hard to contain.

Excerpt from the Book of the Shark, june 29

“Absent morning

Your senses are in coma, and morning never was, day will never leave, night rarely comes. Everything is picturable.”

Córdoba over the Sky with Diamonds I’d rather not get sued, so I’ll guess that those light bubbles were caused by some fortunate light. Ah yes, this is the classic Córdoba sight, and I plead guilty. I like landscapes and well, its always a shame that you can’t take pictures with your eyes and show them just the way you saw it. But anyways, I guess I’m talking rubbish.

Excerpt from the Book of the Shark, june 30

“Córdoba

Here history has gone old, the river and the stone, the buildings and the art, can’t entirely define themselves.

The people have forgotten to give it importance and love. It may be a first, but Europa has revealed itself.

A city in ellipse of a Spoiled Building, a passion seen everywhere else. ”

Seville

Boiling Insides, birds and Cathedral Nights

Córdoba seemed like a dream after we arrived at Seville. Once leaving the mosque’s city, I saw fields of olives yet again and dozed off into an inconsistent sleep. I woke up to the sight of a city; different from what Spain had showed us so far. Seville looked incredibly like a mix of a tropical city, a European hotland and old buildings that insisted on either standing out (Palaces, the cathedral and such) or not wanting to be seen at all. History is seen hardly on the common streets of Seville, it is localized, but then again, I fail to make my memories make sense. I suppose the excerpts say better.

In darkest night, All “pretty” buildings in Spain will always have a very generous share of lighting, and this Cathedral will always take a away a good portion of Seville’s light. Above the cathedral, like in all Castille and Al-Andalus, there were a thousand birds eating off the shadows and the giralda stabbing it.

Excerpt from the book of the Shark, june 30

“Seville, impressions

It tries to look at its best, and it does, really. It seems to be working harder to achieve goals and other wondrous self made characteristics.

Seville has Bedouin resistance, French enchantment and the closest to home we’ll ever be here.”

Our first afternoon in Seville was quite relaxed, and once we begun realizing that we were indeed in a big city, we noticed everything Spain could offer. The streets packed of blonde tourists, tight street performers and little secrets made of Seville the first slap in our face of how different our own homeland is from Spain. Let me be precise, the streets surrounding the Corte Inglés and maybe the entire city was packed with stores and shops of whatever you could want, yet not imagine. A predictable market, of clothes of apparent economic price (many of us hadn’t entirely entered the Euro mentally, I’m usually stuck in dollars), various and diverse pieces of generic Spain and the one and only true bargain in Europa: books. We Colombians, Latin-Americans as a whole perhaps, have the terrible habit of not reading, at all. I love reading a good book, but my continental partners do not [As for the group, only me, my roommate (Dude, I’ll name ya eventually promise) and Hearing Blonde could be seen at the bookshops. Why yes, the bookshops are quite the little Euro-paradise I didn’t expect, and I felt as happy as a kid in candy shop once I saw how delightfully and economically adequate were the books. Spain, indeed, reads a lot, but the poor Spaniards have gotten used to books, and therefore you could never find a happy bookshop clerk. Of course I bought quite some books (Hearing Blonde bought plenty), my favorite bookshop? In Seville a bookshop was adapted to a theater, and on the stage, the Art section.

Night crawled over Seville, and the group left for the insides of the city of Al-Andalus. The warmness of the Seville night allowed us to rest our resistance, and generated a photo-shooting spree that led us to the massive Cathedral. At night, the building looks more like a whole piece of stone carved from a mountain, or a dormant monster that everybody likes to look at. We parted after that, and some took off to find Spain some other way, we went to its Plaza. Plaza España can be an awesome sight if thought of as a gate to Spain, not a gate in it. If people entered Spain by this square (half-moon really), their experience would be more majestic. (For that matter you have Theed). Seville sleeps the best of the Spanish cities, as for that at night, the city itself makes you feel calm and relaxed, just ask the lonely sidewalks.

Next morning and the hotel leaves us wishing for some more of everything. We return, yet again to the Cathedral, this time under scorching daylight, and the unrest of many from much earlier that morning (Quick! Get inside, it has shadows). Inside, before entering the building itself, there was a nice courtyard with orange trees and some pieces of the mosque that was, above us, a cracking alligator… a cracking alligator? Well yeah, none of us got it, we forgot to ask. Still thinking in the alligator, we entered a building I like for its columns. Ah so vast, so solemn, so unbearably not fresh enough. With sweat that takes weeks to produce in Bogota, we took the Giralda challenge and went for the top.  The top messed with us once or twice, by banging a bell, making everybody jump and making the flying nuns fall to the ground. After the large, oh so large, cathedral, we crossed a plaza and reached the Alcazar, my dream palace if it weren’t in Seville. A lovely place, my Seville favorite for compensating what blood took from me at Cordoba, soothiest gardens and a random painting of Louis-Phillippe. We were beginning to get affected by the heat, I noticed, when we stepped without thinking inside a bee filled square of the garden, and when I thought the trees were getting taller. “Alright” I thought “I is better get some lunch”.

Enjoy the Gardens; I had no trouble picturing Al-Mutamid walking through his gardens smelling the spray and feeding the ducks that are today the main attraction.

The heat made borstch with my memories and so I go directly to the next day, when the heat hit us yet again and I thought it felt weird to get on the bus and leave the city. To say it in an exaggerated and cheesy way, we were about to get a blast from the past. Oh yeah, we went to Italica, ruined ruins of a little piece of Rome in Hispania Baetica, where we thought to see the presence of gods, but only saw cool yet unsurprising mosaics. What to highlight? The amphitheater of course. There is always a desire to emulate someone cool, and in this case, gladiators. Fuck Russell Crowe now I understand the fandom of the sport, my history senses made that crummy (yet lovely) arena the Coliseum itself, and I saw Octavius Augustus presiding over the combat. Salve Imperator, put your thumb up, and give us luck.

Excerpt from the Book of the Shark, july 2

“Seville, more impressions

A heat hard to believe, weather easy to hate, machines that have fun with you, an invisible epidemic that we try to trace to an acient curse.

Hunger never left with you, you’re starving, but anything instantly fills you up.

Euros dance, things disappear, unneeded frustration.”

The memory of Seville, although a great one, fades away with this writing and the heat that so annoyingly scarred me. Good ideas can come up at Seville, I’ll tell ya that. Not for nothing Velazquez and Bécquer were born there. To get Seville at its best, avoid the heat, by not going in summer, it will just leave you dumb. Yet I wish to return to Seville, one day, one more time, but there is no prospect for it. Still, why did I look back at Seville so sadly the day we left?

Granada

Breakfast, dreamless sleep and the eternal search for relief

Granada started with a delightful cereal box and me freezing. Granada was the first city truly beautiful in a European and not Spanish sense, and during a fresh day it would’ve been a dream town perfect for escaping your world by choosing a city. Unluckily, Granada had other plans for me. As I said, I was freezing; I took the idiotic position under the full blow of the air conditioning. Therefore after taking an incredibly random tour of the Albaicín, which including Bus becoming stagnant, I started shivering like it was snowing. I craved so bad that goddamn heat I had barely gotten used to, that just when Bus opened, I jumped into the non-figurate warmness of Al-Andalus, only to keep on freezing. After a pretty intense sunbath, and the exasperating search for lunch, I fell sick, entering a feeling of impending illness. I had fever, flu-ish fever that seemed to be heat’s own evil possessing my body. You had me at “Sp”.

It’s going to be OK, I thought once the artificial spray of the watering fell over the sunlight. I suppose the bastard was trying to say sorry, and well, what the heck, apologies accepted. Hey it WAS my fault in the first place.

The blurriest of my Spain memories are Granada’s. Once I fell ill, to make it worse we had to go dinner shopping. I thrashed up and about the supermarket, trying to lean on soda and sit on soap. How I managed to help in the dinner making, I don’t know. I also did laundry that afternoon desperate about the lack of hanging places and the apparent infinity of a couple of t-shirts. I was boiling, craving an icy shower. Terribly enough, I had never used the shower before, and didn’t know which side for hot, which for cold. I’m pretty sure the scars had healed by Barcelona, although I still have them in my head as the exact moment when the hissing water hit my burning back. I could sleep that night by the grace of tranquility and the numbing Spanish equivalent for Dristan.

I got up the next day, feeling better yet not entirely healed. I kept going because I knew it was Alhambra day. Indeed, thankfully we had breakfast in a buffet, where I could recharge my battered body. Entering the morning I began to feel normal. But enough about my metabolism, let’s talk about the site.

The Alhambra and the Generalife were the dazzling finale of the Islamic sights. The nature air and modesty of the overcharged decor were incredibly soothing, but as I was tired my fascination failed in exciting me. With all due respect, Spaniards always insisted in spoiling everything. They spoiled masterpieces of Islamic arquitecture, including the Mosque in Cordoba and that castle in the Alhambra. And let’s not mention American civilizations. Spain should have one big spoiler tag. Indeed, once you immersed yourself inside the palaces of the Nasrid and the Generalife, you floated through the self-senseless cufic and curved calligraphy to end crashing against a renaissance roof, with the dying Islamic scars around it. But in the end, to my eventual chagrin, the Alhambra didn’t wonder me as much as the Alcazar of Seville, but thankfully more than the Cordoba mosque.

The rest of the day in Granada was sleep walking through cathedrals and continuous snoring, wide eyes and warm zodiacal signs.

Beyond the detail there was always some more. My head raced to be conscious of the Islamic glory, but saying it in a rather stoopid way, I think I would work better if life had its own score.

Excerpt from the book of the shark, july 5

“Granada impression

The city degraded itself within my perception, which at the same time has gotten the best from me.

I hope to show off one last heat, but nothing is sure, meanwhile I can’t find the things in good and to say goodbye to Al-Andalus has hit me so hard my head was already in the next city.”

Damn circumstances, damn fever, damn Granada so seducing in dreams so raw and hot in real-life. Closing Al-Andalus closes everybody’s Spain, and by rather having Cordoba and Granada shoved up, I keep Seville as my Andalusian life line. Heat got lost, but not to disappear, eventually to return in exceptionally boiling vengeance.