After Settling Into Our Parador Communication In Carmona Cathedral in Seville  Gypsies to the Minarete de San Sebastian At the Bottom of the Gorge Pre-Dawn Haiku The Priest Who Closed His Breviary The Flamenco Dancer The Photographers A Local Guide on the Alhambra  Lost in Toledo The Taxi Driver Wants to Chat Notes

Vista from Carmona Hotel (Click on any image to enlarge)

After Settling Into Our Parador In Carmona comes heavy rain:  for vacations, nature does not care.        *     *     * The tiny girl, blindfolded, swings with a stick, misses the piñata . . . Who cannot but smile?        *     *    * In Évora, Bob, soft-hearted-- with us on the tour--had freed a dog, tied by its leash to a pole, near a pool:  it had gotten tangled and trapped in the water.  In Carmona, he tries to pet another, gets snarled and snapped at . . . If only canines had internet communication!

Festival at Carmona

  Communication In Carmona                 Audio

Evening drizzle in the square.
A small crowd of young, congregating. 
Waiting for what?  Will the night be as dead
as that Roman Necropolis nearby?
The hotel clerk had said it's one of the fiesta days,
"for the Virgen de Gracia" which sounds
like celebration . . . We need to find out more, 
call on Bob who's a step above us--
why hadn't he bragged about listening
to language tapes on the bus?  He starts in
with a sympathetic looking teen, only a gaggle
of others nearby, with tattoos and earrings, swoop
down on him, talk so fast,
he has an uneasy, how can I get out of here
look . . . Finally, a girl laboring
in broken English:  "no live concert
now, because . . . the rain."  And she offers,
pausing . . . not able to find the word, "tomorrow,"
"mañana"  . . .  it will be mañana."
Olé.  Communication! 
Bob offers a gift, coins.  She pushes them
back, offended.

              Cathedral in Seville                Audio

In Seville, the rain  drives us for sanctuary  to the Cathedral  where the last remains   of Christopher Columbus  lie.  A discovery!         *   *   *  Climb to the top of the Cathedral, up the ever- winding ramp,  to see -- even on this drizzly day --  from that giddy height  such a splash of color,  buildings, here in Seville,  each sprawling atop  and behind the other.  And the bullring! Then imagine that inner climb you have to really reach for . . .  spirit, not body . . .  upward:  the view  from there.  Olé!

The Cathedral in Seville

Paraodor on the Cliff

At the Bottom of the Gorge It's spectacular at the bottom  of the gorge seeing atop  the cliff, like an eagle in its aerie, our parador. I've been doing a circuit of Ronda  on a small green and yellow Tajotur bus,  no doubt from the word tajo,  which in Spanish means cliff.  High above us now is the new town, mostly commercial, called El Mercadillo, and the bridge that goes over the ravine, connecting it with La Cuidad, the old Muslim quarter.  Next to me, an elderly woman  from Montpelier, France, is bursting  with excitement. I practice, love her language -- my Spanish is near zilch -- and discovering  her name's Marie Antoinette, I cannot resist saying:  whatever the view,         you need to keep "votre tête sur vos épaules," your head on your shoulders; and for moments, even as we step outside  for a photo, we're laughing --  have both lost ours . . . No one knows how many  have plunged to their death into the gorge,  perhaps near where we stand.  The architect of the bridge slipped, tumbled in  while inspecting his work  at the end of the Eighteenth Century; and during the Spanish civil war,  hundreds were unceremoniously tossed from it.

Pre-Dawn Haiku Awake in Ronda.  As in the United States,  birds chirp before dawn. § I sit on a bench  and wait for the sun to rise.  The rest will follow. § From the gorge the sound  of water:  was it always  there?  I didn't hear. § A brightening sky.             No sun:  maybe my camera  makes it a bit shy. § The rumble of cars  and cycles.  People have no  patience for the dawn.

Waiting for Sunrise

The Priest Who Closed His Breviary      Audio

Statue Outside the Bullring Bullring in Ronda

The priest, who wouldn't end the Church meeting with a prayer  because it had been opened with a poem  about a bullfighter, Garcia Lorca's       "Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias" -- he had tremblingly murmurred:  "too much blood there"-- would lie, eyes glazed, a month later, on that deserted street corner, his life seeping away; and the words of Lorca  from his having gazed upon,  not just the torero's, but his own bloody end would echo:  "No, I refuse to see it!  There's no chalice to contain it,  no swallow to drink it up . . ."    And if precognition suggests  spirit sep-arate from body,  whereupon the leap to . . .  God, nothing stops the holy man's dying for the paltry  few dollars he'd have gladly given  away.  *   *   * Consider how a man or woman can be possessed for days,  months, years, training agonizingly  toward what God-like perfection,  and in those precious moments  of arrival,  to be destroyed  prematurely, it would seem,  bewilderingly . . . And so, "lead us in prayer," they asked, in that sandstone   church on that hill, over- looking desert; and while he thought  of St. Francis' "Where there is doubt,  let me sow faith . . .  where there is despair, let me sow  hope . . . "  it was as if the priest felt,  though with no torero's cape in hand,  nor banderillas,   nor crowd cheering, like Ignacio,   before that awful charge of the bull- or Lorca himself, who would write of this, "teach me to weep like a river," at the height of his powers,  knowing . . .  *   *   * Later, they sit in a circle and speak of what  they can't understand, while downstairs  in an austere room, (a chanteuse on the phono  over scratches from hand-me- down vinyl), a man embraces a woman passionately, almost brutally. And why such violence?  the mourners wonder.  And the sacrilege,  why a priest?                *   *   *                       A blur to the images- the murdered priest, a book  with that Lorca poem, the lovers downstairs.  The creak  and rhythm  of their bed beginning . . .  The mattress goes forward  and back . . . even as what will be,  is  and was and was, shudders forward and back.

In that restaurant  in Ronda, the pizza can barely  be cut, the bread -- unasked for -- might serve as paperweights;  they bill us for it, two Euros, leave me cash-short;  but oh, the Spanish flamenco dancer,  rat-tat-tatting with her heels  in that black dress with red  flounces and a fan,  like a matador's cape.  I charge ahead  blindly, cry out,  "bravo," confusing languages.

Flamenco Dancer with Red Fan

       The Photographers                          Audio

Two couples with heavy cameras
and lenses they're constantly adjusting, 
stand out alone. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, 
particularly one man, stocky, with gray hair, 
who looks in his late 60s, 
his breathing labored as he struggles 
with his equipment, drags it along.  Everywhere! 
Once in Cordoba, I saw him 
frozen, not a tremor of motion save for the sweat 
on his brow, for five minutes, it seemed, 
like a hunter crouched with a rifle, in a shooter's pose.
He was waiting for the street 
to clear, though the lunchtime crowd kept coming . . . 
They drive the tour guide Fernando crazy, 
because he has to keep track of where
they drift off to, 
and they importune -- even when there's no place 
to park the bus -- to stop. 
I mention they'd been to Kenya recently --
they're not young -- and it's rugged terrain, 
and how they're talking about a future trip to Antarctica, 
think Fernando might be impressed, 
to which his triumphant, 
"ha, they'll take ten thousand pictures of the snow."

      A Local Guide on the Alhambra                 Audio

In the harem there, he said  the musicians were made eunuchs,  and then blinded  so as not to see the women.  Art is not an easy path.           *   *   * When one man dared  sleep with the queen,  we're told how thirty-six heads  were cut off, for fear of missing  the culprit's.  Look curiously,  even question whether they cut                     what they should have  cut. Let no one, though, doubt  they took  what they took for justice,  seriously.

Alhambra Reflections

Lost in Toledo     Audio Wandering Toledo's labyrinthine streets with its everywhere churches, artisan shops, selling  ceramic and gold, Christian and Arabic designs,  Stars of David, and Menorahs, too.  I'd come up the elevator near Bisagra Gate, had stayed too long, can't find the way back.  Everyone gives directions, contradicting the last, and a problem is the streets:  they run in crazy slants.  I'd heard there's an hour, the elevator stops, the city closes its gates, and you're locked in.  I feel a chill.  Better to mingle now with the ghosts I'd felt since I'd come.  Discover, past marzipan's sweetness that they sell on every street corner, the Sinagoga de Santa Maria Blanca with its Moorish arches inside, a cross in the nave, and Biblical images, including one of Jesus, arms wide in a posture of suffering that takes me back to the 150,000 Jews in Spain at the time of the forced expulsion. They'd had a home for centuries, were told in what was madness to convert to Catholicism in mere days -- the tour leader said fifteen -- or leave.  Many did!  Doctors, rabbis, philosophers -- heirs to Maimonides -- merchants, artisans, dragging their paucity of pots, pans, Stars of David, prayer books, shawls, because how much can one take?  It's like suffering, there's a limit.  Wagons load, a chicken screeches, children bawl, the sick, the lame, moving. There are stars on the tiled floor.  Jewish?  I try to see this house of worship as it had been, want, with a dreamer's love, to undo what the guidebook calls an "eclectic gem," restore it to what was, even as I walk off, mingle with ghosts, flitting through the streets, leave behind where they'd been born, married,  had children, burial plots for parents, and theirs before.

Synagogue as Monument

       The Taxi Driver Wants to Chat

"A Chapel of Bones":  The Triumph Of Death is a 16th century Flemish painting by Pieter Brueghel, "the Elder." 

"Sculpture of a Coffin With a Body":  Rick Steves' Spain & Portugal 2002 presents a commentary on the Tribunal of the Inquisition which operated out of what is now a school building. 

"Legend of The Cock":  Bartomolea Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. Vasco da Gama sailed to India and back, returning in 1499, his voyage opening up Asia and its riches, including the spice trade, to Portugal. Pedro Alvares Cabral, sailing for India, ended up discovering Brazil in 1500, after being deflected off course by wind and currents. 

"Barco Negro":  This poem is a poetic re-telling of the song, "Barco Negro" (in Portuguese, meaning "dark boat)" which appears in the album by the international singing star, Mariza, entitled "Fado em mim." Fado is a type of Portuguese music, analogous to our Blues. The music is usually accompanied by the guitarra (12 stringed guitar), that gives dramatic expression to songs of longing and sorrow. 

"Ercelia Relates":  Vila Viçosa is the last residence of the Bragança dynasty.  In the 17th century, Portugal was annexed by the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, a period known as the Sixty Years' Captivity. The eighth Duke of Bragança, João, seized the throne for Portugal in 1640 to end this period. His descendants ruled Portugal until the foundation of the Republic in 1910. 

"Changing Countries": The line, "[m]y land of water in sorrow and sadness," is from a fado song, entitled, "Land of Water," written by Jorge Fernando, and sung by Mariza on the CD, "Fado Em Mim" (Times Square Records, 2002). 

"Cathedral In Seville":  This cathedral is the third largest church in Europe after St. Peter's in the Vatican, and St. Paul's in London.

"The Priest Who Closed His Breviary":  Garcia Lorca was executed at thirty-eight years of age during the Spanish Civil War. His premonitions about an early death came to fruition. 

"A Local Guide on the Alhambra":  The Alhambra is the palace and fortress of the Moorish monarchs of Granada, Spain, built during the last Islamic sultanate on the Iberian peninsula, the Nasrid Dynasty (1238 1492). 

"Lost In Toledo":  On the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, see Max I. Dimont's Jews, God And History (New American Library, 1962). According to Dimont, there were 150,000 Jews in Spain at the time of the edict by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, compelling them to convert to Catholicism or leave. He notes that 100,000 left, of which 10,000 perished. Some 45,000 of the Jews eventually settled in Turkey. See Rick Steve's Spain & Portugal 2002 for the "eclectic . . . gem" reference to the Sinagoga de Santa Maria Blanca.

- return to beginning of Iberian Travels
 -return to top of page
 -return to homepage