Haunting Tales of Iberia

For some time, I have wanted to post about two intriguing novels — one takes place in Spain, and one takes place in Portugal.

Those of you who have followed my blog for some time know that my husband and I travel periodically to Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain, and also to Braga, Portugal, where I've set my cozy mystery, Deadly Vintage. In truth, we are enamored of Spain and Portugal—partly for the sense of antiquity in old stone and tile; also the echoes of political history; but mainly for the embracing warmth of the people in both countries.


So I have read these books — devoured them, really — and reflected on the worlds they open up.

     I'll start with The Time In Between by María Dueñas, first. — a very long book (reader be warned), but worth every page It starts out like a love story, perhaps even a family saga, then swiftly moves into a spy story that takes a reader to Morocco and returns one to Madrid during the early Franco years in Spain.
     The protagonist, Sira Quiroja, makes a romantic mistake early on in the book, and it changes her entire future. The way she develops throughout the novel suggests that, looking back, it was the best mistake she could have made to escape a life of boredom and acceptance of Franco's coming regime. But, at the time of her tribulations, of course, how could she know? 
     The story is compelling as it unfolds, and the writing captures moments in a way that makes you want to return to them. It's a long book — 609 pages — but worth the read. And the re-read! I have no doubt that I will re-read this book more than once, partly for the delicious story, and partly for appreciation of what makes a good novel tick. And, incidentally, I learned quite a bit of history in a painless, engrossing way. 

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier is a completely different kind of experience. It's a philosophical novel, one that gives you a mental massage and makes you think, page by page. To some readers, it could be upsetting or boring, but I loved it. 
     The protagonist, Raymond Gregorius, a lonely, divorced professor of classical languages at a Swiss lycée, encounters a woman on a bridge who seems about to leap and end her life. He learns she is Portuguese and becomes pulled into her mystery. Because of that, he becomes intrigued by the very idea of Portugal.      
     The discovery in a bookshop of an arcane book by a Portuguese writer, Amadeu de Prado, sets Gregorius off on a journey to Lisbon to learn more about Prado, as the book seems to speak to Gregorius's very soul. No doubt Gregorius is having a midlife crisis of sorts, but he takes the leap and takes a train to Lisbon, where he encounters those who knew the author and unravels Prado's personal tale. In the process, Gregorius unravels his own story.
     As I said, this is a philosophical novel. A reader journeys into both Gregorius's and Prado's self-doubts, doubts about God, probings of the layers of one's identity and value systems, and the questioning of existence and meaning. Some readers might find this tedious  but I was swept along into the questions and the earnest attempts of Gregorius (and Prado) to answer them. In that sense, this is a lovely book, and for the philosophically inclined, one that merits more than one reading.

The beauty of novels and most fiction, I think, is in the opportunity to enter someone else's reality and have your own world stretched beyond the familiar horizons. In this sense, both of these books excel. I can't wait to begin each one again — and maybe even again. The writing is lovely in both, and in both, worlds unfold.

Have you experienced special books like that? Books that enlarge your world, stretch your mind, open up history for you and make you think? Any good titles to share?  

Having Pulpo at the Feria in Monforte

A plate full of pulpo. You eat it with
toothpicks, bite by bite. Then you
break off chunks of crusty bread and
sop up the spiced olive oil. Yum!

Our wonderful neighbor,
Miguel

Today, despite the fact that it's nearly two weeks since our return from Portugal, I had every intention of writing a post about Fado, the Portuguese art form of song we both love so much, to be followed by a later post mid-week about the photography festival we attended when we were in Braga Portugal.

But then our neighbor across the lane from us treated us to pulpo at the feria in Monforte, 20 minutes away from our village, and, as usual, we were enthusiastically swept away. (This is the neighbor who keeps sheep, and sometimes in the mornings, we awaken to their soft bleating.) Off we went, my Fado post tabled for another day.

Pulpo is octupus, boiled, cut in small pieces, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pimiento - which in this area, means hot red pepper. All of our neighbors simply love pulpo, and their enthusiasm has been contagious. Though vegetarians, we do eat pescados and mariscos (fish and seafood), but octopus was a new experience for us. When done right, meaning boiled long enough, it comes out moist and tender and just delicious. It is served at long tables, in special buildings at all the fair grounds, and one of the servers comes around with a bottle of the house red wine and a loaf of fresh bread to go with it.

The woman boiling this pulpo
 is the neighbor of a woman in
Turiz, Melucha, whom we met
years ago when she was walking
  her cows down the road to graze.
The people in these neighboring
villages all know each other, so
Miguel was able to tell us this.

Rajan, adding his touch. We
actually see this woman and
another (who is distantly re-
lated to Miguel), at ferias in
the other villages, since the
market days in the villages
fall on different days. 

One of the long tables set up for this
event. For those who don't like pulpo,
 there is also barbequed beef or sausage.

Despite the note about beef, most of
these people are eating pulpo,
always the favorite.

Good to the last drop.

Definitely a satisfied customer.

Feria is "fair" or market day, and in the mornings, nearly everything is sold at a feria: shoes, blouses, scarves, belts, beaded jewelry, plants, fruit, all kinds of produce, honey, bread loaves of all types, utensils for making wine, utensils for making the home-made brandy so popular here, aguardiente. One shot of that will blow your head off, but most people around here confine it to a little shot in their coffee when they do decide to have it. There is also a special drink they make, using aguardiente, called quemada, with orange peel, apple peel, coffee beans, and sugar, blogged about, before, HERE.  (Scroll down to the very bottom of it, and you'll learn about the drink and the history behind it, as well as seeing the clay vessel they make it in and the clay cups they serve it in; the set is also called a quemada, and it is also sold at the ferias.)

While we were there, a gypsy playing an accordion came in and played some melodies that were so familiar to the crowd, some sang along. It was an absolutely charming touch (and he gained a few coins for that) but, alas, I didn't take pictures. A memorable lunch, for sure.

How about you? Have you ever eaten octopus? Have you ever found yourself eating a dish you thought you never would?

The Dolmen of Abuime, in Galicia, Spain

Five big rocks that may surprise you.

Here it stands, a collection of four immense standing stones (the fifth one fallen to the side), tucked back in the far end of a field nearly hidden by trees, easily missed, if you didn't know about it. We knew about it because good friends in Galicia, Craig and Melanie, told us about it.

Craig, Melanie, and their
loveable dog, Slawit

A brief introduction here: Craig and Melanie are our friends in Galicia who sold us our house in Trasulfe.


They are from England, but they have lived in Galicia for about ten years, and Craig has written a book about their adventures. He also has a blog, and he wrote nice a post about the dolmen HERE  . Enjoyment of wine in Spain is contagious, and he has started growing his own vines and making his own wine (which is pretty good; we get to sample it whenever we go to Galicia. ) In addition, they have restored another home, and this one they rent out. (You can learn more about it at his blog site.)

So, back to the dolmen. And what is a dolmen? you might ask. Wikipedia gives a pretty good explanation of dolmens and where they can be found, HERE .  Basically a dolmen is considered a megalithic tomb. Usually it has a flat capstone on top of the standing stones. Rajan and I wonder if the stone in the picture above that is off to the right is the original capstone for this dolmen. Originally dolmens were covered up with earth mounds, and 5,000 to 6,000 years of erosion have uncovered them.

Even with enlarged photo, it's hard to tell. After all, the
trees are pretty tall, and it's hard to tell here just how tall.

Even with Craig and Melanie's good directions and the picture on Craig's blog post, we had to look for it. Despite signs, from a distance, it's hard to appreciate the size.

This should give you a better idea:

How on earth did they prop these stones up?

Anyone who know me knows I have a thing about old buildings. I love to touch old man-made structures, whether 12th century walls or Roman era bridges, whether in England or Spain. But our British friends all find this somewhat amusing. After all, they remind me, they grew up surrounded by historic buildings and Roman bridges. It's no big deal to them. But I always have to touch these old edifices that, I feel, still bear the mystical aura of humans touching them long ago.

So, you can imagine how enthralled I was to touch something that humans touched maybe 5,000 or 6,000 years ago!

Yup! Pretttty impressed. And pretty happy, too.

On another note, this week I had two pieces of pleasant news:
 1. A blog friend, Julian Hones, gave me the "Inspiring Blog" award on her great site, My Writing Life . Julia is an editor of a magazine and writes poetry and short fiction. The award carries some "pass it on and give information" duties that will have to wait for another post, but I was certainly pleased to get it. Thank you, Julia.

2. I made this announcement on Facebook, but for those of my blog friends who are not on FB, my Flash Fiction, "Persephone," is in the current issue of Fiction Attic Press and will also be in the Flash in the Attic anthology. You can read it HERE:  If you have time to read it, I'd love your feedback.

Meanwhile, how do you feel about old buildings? Do have that irresistible urge to touch them and imagine who touched them so many years ago?

The Town of Toro - Part Two

Originally we had planned to spend all three days, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in Salamanca and return Monday afternoon. But the desk clerk advised us that on Monday everything would be closed. So we decided to go to Toro that day instead.

Toro is an unbelievably beautiful municipality in the province of Zamora, part of the autonomous community of Castille-Leon. It's high above a fertile plain known for its wines (from the Tempranillo grape), and recently Rajan has gotten interested in Toro wines, so that was also part of the inspiration for the trip. You can see how the buildings beckon one from afar.

This is the kind of country we traveled through to get there. Beautiful, and lush and green. Appartently a lot of farming goes on in this region. But the Toro region is becoming more and more known for its wines. When we arrived and parked, we started walking around and one of the first areas of interest we came to was an overlook point with a plaza around an old, intact wall enclosing a rectangular area with round towers at various points. A gardener told me was from Roman times. (My Spanish is still limited, so I couldn't really learn much more from him than that.) Here it is:

One view of the structure at one corner.
There were towers at each corner and
also in the middle of each side of the
rectangle.

 From the enclosure's condition, it may actually be from a later date. I looked Toro up in Wikipedia, and Toro was once a Roman town. The article mentions remains of a wall going back to 910, but, as you can see here, this is far more than "remains."

Another view. Each corner
had a round tower.

Heavy doors were in walls on each
side of the structure.

 Since battles took place in Toro between heirs vying for the Spanish throne, this might actually have been a fortress. Plaques mentioned the crowning of King Ferdinand III in 1230, and that Isabella I of Castille defeated Juana La Beltraneja there, and that her father, Juan II of Castille, was born in Toro in 1404. But if anyone else can find out more for me about the structure itself, I'd appreciate the information. (Isabella I, by the way, was the Isabella who married Ferdinand II of Aragon, and they are the famous couple behind the Inquisition in Spain and the financing of Columbus's voyage to what became known in Europe as "the New World.")

The Rio Duero

Red tile roofs that seem so typical.

Since it really is a grand look-out point, Rajan and I took tons of pictures of the vast plains and the Rio Duero below. (The Rio Duero cuts through northern and Central Spain and flows on south to become the Rio Douro in Portugal, which ends at Porto.) Here are a couple.


Here is a video he took that I think you will enjoy:

Then we all wandered around the beautiful city, admiring the architecture and the color of the buildings. Here are some pictures of a church that is considered a "must see" in Toro, Collegiate church of Santa María la Mayor.

The buildings have such a
golden tone. 

I felt like I was in Oz, at the
end of the yellow brick road.

Here is the building in all its
splendor.

One of the wine shops was open and the man inside was very knowledgeable about wines and wineries from the region. He spoke in Spanish, and we could understand most of what he said, but luckily our friends David and Terri are quite fluent, and so they were able to tell us whatever we missed. There are a number of wineries all around, but, again, most of them were closed. Still, it's good information for the future, and we bought some wine from the shop.

Meanwhile, the town was bustling with people out and about. I saw a beautiful arch at one end of a street, and a woman told me that it had been made with wine. Seriously. I think what she meant was that wine was mixed with the clay instead of water. But what a unique feature! She also tole me there was another arch at the other end of town, so of course I had to go there.

People out and about.

The arch made with wine,
which may account for
its color.

The other arch. Presumbably
not made with wine. 

After that, it seemed time to go, as there was a long drive home to Galicia and our part of Galicia. But it was a day well spent, and we were so glad that we had decided to take this little side trip on such a beautiful day. 

I  hope you enjoyed this little peek into this area of Spain. The next posts will still be about the earlier weeks in Galicia, before our trip to Braga, Portugal; and then I will follow up with pictures and posts about Braga, a most remarkable and wonderful city.

Till then, please leave a comment, and if you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. Also, if you have any additional information for us about Toro, please leave it. The turism office was closed that day, and there isn't an awful lot on line about this beautiful town.

The Week-end in Salamanca, and a Town Named Toro - Part One

Already it has been two weeks since our return from Salamanca, and even then, we returned via a different town in the Toro wine region, called, aptly, Toro. But first, the beautiful city of Salamanca in the province of Salamanca, which is in Castilla y León, one of the seventeen autonomous coummunities in Spain.

Here you see the old part of town, across the Puente Romano (Roman Bridge), the buildings eternally glowing a soft apricot/rose/peach from the soil and clay from the area.

The old part of Salamanca, across the bridge, late afternoon.

The trip was to celebrate with our friends, Terri and David, our mutual 40th anniversary. Ours was on December 22nd, and theirs was on February 15th. We had agreed a few years ago that when the 40th came, we'd go to some special place during the spring trip to Galicia. Salamanca was a good choice.

We left on Saturday and spent two days in this beautiful city. What you see in the foreground, across the Puente Romana,  are the domes of the New Cathedral (new meaning it was built between the 16th and 18th centuries—in two different styles, Gothic and Baroque.) In the background are the La Clerecía Towers, domes of a church and ecclesiastic college begun in the 17th century. (More about the latter later, including a neat video of storks that make their home atop the Cathedral.)

A closer view of the Cathedral

But first, of course, we had to get there. It's about a four and a half drive to Salamanca from our area, and you go through some gorgeous scenery, leaving the stone walls and red tile roofs and the terraced vineyards of this area and encountering rose and ochre brick and stone walls of the villages nearer Salamanca and vineyards in rocky flat soil—soil that the vines seem to like: We've been told the harsher the soil, the better the wine.

Unlike neighbors and vintners in our
area, the growers here seem to cut
fhe vines very close to the ground.

We passed hills striped with purple heather and golden gorse and some bright yellow fields of rape blossoms grown for rape seed oil. At times it was like a painting by Cezanne. Red tile roofs changed to black slate in one area, and we saw milky white cows that, at first, we thought were sheep (we are so used to the golden brown cows herded by our Galician neighbors.)

The first day in Salamanca we wandered around, enjoying shops, the cathedral and university and seminary buildings. And walking along the beautiful Puente Romano.

Our hotel, also named Puente Romano,
was on the side of the bridge facing this
picture. Everything was at a walkable
distance.

We spent a lot of time at a wonderful museum called, Art Nouveau and Art Deco Museum, housed in the Casa Lis. Originally a small "palace" (from the brochure), built in the early 20th century for Don Miguel de Lis, an aficionado of Art Nouveau, it later became the current museum that now houses statues, statuettes, furniture, stained glass artwork, dolls, paintings, all by leading artists and artisans of the genre. It's a remarkable building with one whole wall of stained glass windows on two floors, a hallway with a stained glass ceiling, and beautiful architecture and gardens and gatework outside.

Add caption

Another view of the
ceiling, as well as one
of the windows from the
inside.

A beautiful painting gallery below and
interesting rooms of statues, dolls,
etcetera, in other rooms. 

If you go to this site it will show you some of the remarkable features of the building outside that I mentioned.  And this site will show you more of the interior.

There were weddings going on in the city, so one of the restaurants Terri and David wanted to take us to was all booked up. We did have a wonderful lunch of raciónes at a convivial cafe called Erasmus , enjoying bacaloa (cod) croquettes,  gambas gabardines (deep-fried battered shrimp), and pimientos de padrón, small green pimientos sautéed in olive oil and sea salt, and one of my favorite ever dishes when we come to Galicia.

We went past the cathedral several times trying to get good photos of it. (There was a lot of shade.) The doors and sculptures on all sides are spectacular, though. Here are a few examples.

It's hard to convey how
magnificent it felt to
stand under these arches.

You can see the size of
the doors by the size of
the passerby.

These people give you
even a better idea.

After all the walking around in the fresh air, we were tired and hungry. We went back to the hotel to rest for awhile, and then we went out for a late dinner. (Dinner is always late in Spain.)




The place that we discovered was a charming bistro named Zazu that specialized in a Mediterranean menu. We don't have a picture of the restaurant per se, but this site will give you an idea of their atmosphere and menu.  Our server found us a table in a small upstairs room that was softly lit and full of artwork on the walls. He was from Germany, but he spoke excellent English and was so attentive you could tell he really liked his job. If you go to Salamanca, we all recommend this place. For starters, I had grilled vegetables and Rajan had crabcakes, and then for the entrée we split an order of squash-stuffed raviolis. The wine was Gewurtztraminer for Terri and myself, and the gents had a red from the Toro region, followed by excellent café. Then our friendly waiter kindly took a picture of us before we left.

Here we are, enjoying coffee, trying to look natural for a picture at about 1:00
a.m. I have never figured out why, but coffee in Spain doesn't interfere with
 our sleep. By the time we were back at the hotel and retired it was 2:15. And
we slept quite soundly.

Day Two was another day of sightseeing and some surprises. We wandered around the old streets, taking pictures of the buildings and shopping. Street musicians were situated in main walk areas, and the one below was especially interesting, tuning, and later playing what I think was a zither.

The instrument made a delicate sounding music.  Here he's
just tuning it and getting ready to play. 

It was a sunny day, and especially good for taking pictures of the Cathedral.

Looking up, up, up.

Stone carving like lace.

Statues everywhere.

This is just one example of the kinds of carvings over doorways.

Then a real suprise lay ahead when we went up one of the towers of La Clerecía, the church and ecclesiastic college shown at the beginning of this post in the background. The stairs were old-fashioned, wooden, and narrow, about twelve or fifteen to a landing, and they went up, up, up. I don't know how many we climbed, but it was well worth the view of the city once we got to the floor where most of these pictures are taken. There are little balconies at all the windows of the tower we were in, as well as a balcony that took us to the opposite tower, so we could see th city below from many angles.

A view from one part of the tower.

More of this beautiful city.

From another side of the tower. 

This looks down on a small courtyard
enclosed by the walls of La Clerecía.  

This is one of the domes of the Cathedral,
and at least three storks had nests around
the domes.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come when Rajan went up to the top level. He was able to take a video of one of the storks with its young. Enjoy this short movie of a stork family:

The other enjoyable event of the day was lunch at the Plaza Mayor, a huge square enclosed by restaurants mostly on the ground floor, apartments on the other floors of three of the walls, and a concello with administrative offices forming the fourth wall (the wall with all the flags.) We sat at one of the outdoor tables and split raciones again, this time pimientos, potatas bravas (cubed and fried potatoes) and battered shrimp, with our wine. And then we just people watched for the longest time. The Plaza Mayor is a main socializing place for the city for people of all ages.

You would be surprised how long one can "people watch" in a place like that. And so many people were so stylish!

But then it was time to go back to the hotel, rest up, and get ready for going out for the "big dinner." In addition to being the anniversary celebration over the week-end, Sunday was David's birthday. We all dressed up, and, wouldn't you know it, didn't take a single picture. But we did eat at a remarkable restaurant called El Alquamista. Lot's of atmosphere, wonderful service, delicious food. 

This ends Part One of the trip, but come back for Part Two, because the trip to Toro the following day was quite an interesting day.

Thanks for stopping by. I can't think of a question to leave with you, but please feel free to leave a question of your own, and I'll try to answer it or find the answer.