by Rich Gilbert
[My friend Rich Gilbert has
sent an e-mail from Pamplona, where he and Sallie went after leaving Madrid. (Yes, he ran with the bulls.) They’ll be traveling, first in Spain and then
farther afield, for six months before returning to the States. Check back
for Dispatches 1-8 (30 November, 10 December, and 20 December 2014, and 14
January, 8 March, and 20 April 2015) to catch up with the story. They’ll be going to Italy next and, in the
meantime, he reports on some interesting and potentially significant
developments in Spanish politics and some perhaps less portentous ones in
football/soccer, too. As usual, Rich’s account
of his and Sallie’s travels make us feel as if we’re sharing the adventure in Spanish
culture and lifestyle. I recommend that
you all also follow Sallie’s blog, Rambling Solo, at http://ramblingsolo.blogspot.com.es. Rich promises
that his next dispatch, from Rome, will arrive soon.]
Leaving Spain
Pamplona – July 14, 2015
Dear Friends and Family
Pamplona / San Sebastian
I know I am jumping ahead, but for those of you who have
known me long, yes, we are in Pamplona. This
is the last day and the closing ceremony, “Pobre de mi” [“Poor me”] is both fun
and touching. I ran with the bulls safely on the 7th of July, my birthday,
and again on the 13th, but not on the other days. Other than my actual
birthday, I often decide each morning, depending on the night before and my gut
feeling. Our friend Charlie has been seeing we get fed occasionally in some
good restaurants, so Sallie is better with the Fiesta. Nonetheless,
this time, Sallie and [I] got away to San Sebastian for a few days in the
middle of the Fiesta, as well as a day trip up through the Roncevailles pass (The Song of Roland) to France for
lunch. San Sebatian is a really lovely city with some
really great tapas, and I am not talking about olives! So much different than
when I almost got trapped there during the riots in 1978. Much
better this way.
One story you may enjoy concerns the location of our hotel
in San Sebastian. It was in the city, but really a bus ride, albeit
short, cheap and frequent, away from the places we wanted to see. There
was really only one restaurant within blocks. We walked up and saw
the their tasting menu was 200 Euros [about $220]! No way! As we
walked back, I said “who do they think they are – a Michelin three star
restaurant?” I looked them up on-line and – you guessed it – they
really were a Michelin three star restaurant! Turns out the owner is a legend
in the Basque Country. Would like to try it someday but on a fixed trip when I
know how much the trip will cost and how much we have to splurge. This
is not that trip.
Delays In Writing
I suppose many of you are wondering what has happened to
Sallie and me. It has been well over a month since we left our
apartment in Madrid. I meant to write an email about leaving, but
the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had
other ideas. Ten days before we were to leave Madrid, I received an
order to file a supplemental brief in one of the cases which I argued when I
flew home in January. It is a rare request, and often means that the Court is
really struggling with an issue. However, they wanted it filed by
the day we were to fly to Italy. I have a colleague, Kristen Hughes,
who is second chair, so I spent a lot of the time before leaving Madrid
drafting the brief and she was able to put [it] into final [shape] and get it
filed on time.
Since then we have been traveling. Between
traveling to different places, sightseeing, and sometimes problems with internet,
it has been hard to find the time to write what is becoming a longer and longer
story.
Leaving Madrid
Leaving Madrid was difficult for us on several levels.
Logistically, we had to decide what to send home, what to store at the apartment
for later trips, and what we were going to take with us. We had other errands
to accomplish as well as planning our trip. (Not to mention writing my brief
for the Court of Appeals.) But it was also difficult on an emotional level. We
had developed some budding friendships and also good relationships with some of
the local merchants, bartenders and restaurant owners. Before leaving I tried
to take photos of most of them. All were gracious about it and most
said they would miss us, and probably meant it. There were many parts of Madrid
and its surroundings that we never got to visit. I think Sallie and I both felt
we could have stayed longer. We would be off traveling without a home to come
back to, although our landlady / friend agreed to let us store some things with
her. So on the morning of Saturday, June 23, we left Madrid, by train for
Malaga.
Malaga
We spent about 10 days visiting parts of Andalucia, the
southern province in Spain, we [had] not visited before. We had
been to Sevilla, Cordoba and Grenada on several occasions, so we headed for
Malaga, a relatively large city on the coast. We rented a car there,
which was good because the “airbnb” apartment we stayed in was pretty far
outside of town and difficult to get to without a car. It was in a
lovely house on a hillside in an exclusive neighborhood and we had a lovely
view of the Mediterranean. Good place to relax, but driving downtown was
sometimes a challenge. We got to see Roman ruins, the Alcazaba, an old Moorish
palace not as well maintained as the Alhambra in Grenada, and the home where
Picasso was born and lived in his youth. We ate seafood on the beach but did
not go swimming.
Gibraltar
After three days we headed to Gibraltar. We had lunch on the
beach in Marbella, a picturesque beach town down the coast. We stayed the night
in a hotel in Linea de la Concepcion, the small Spanish city on the other side
of the border with Gibraltar. Sallie had booked a bird watching tour of the
“Rock.” We did not see many birds other than gulls, despite our guide’s
efforts, but it was fascinating anyway. About half the trip was spent hiking on
top of the rock, with spectacular views, and plenty of military gun
emplacements, most abandoned. (Parts of the top were still being used by the
British military, so we could not go there anyway.) Of course, we saw the
famous monkeys that are allowed to range freely on the Rock, although they are
fed regularly to keep them from coming down into the town. The rest of the time
was basically spent driving around the peninsula. Gibraltar’s population is
that of a small city and most of them are crammed into a relatively small stretch
of land, much of it reclaimed from the sea. It was odd to hear English spoken
and to have to pay in pounds.
Make no mistake, Gibraltar is still a significant
source of political controversy. Spain still wants it back – badly. Our guide,
who was born and raised in Gibraltar, told us that the locals have no desire to
return to Spanish rule. (The Spanish position is undermined somewhat
by the fact that Spain has two such enclaves on the coast of Africa in what
would be Morocco, which they plan to hang onto.) Caught in the middle are the
literally thousands of Spaniards who cross over from Linea de la Concepcion
every day to work in Gibraltar. (We had parked our car at the border and walked
over, so we knew what a stream it was.) My guess is, and it is only a guess, that
those Spaniards would prefer Gibraltar become Spanish – as long as the same
level of economic activity and opportunity existed.
Cadiz
Upon leaving Gibraltar, we drove to Cadiz. We stopped
outside Tarifa, the southernmost Spanish city on the mainland, at a stunning
viewing point where we could see directly to Africa and see the huge boats
sailing through the straits of Gibraltar. I would like to described
the cultural and historical highlights of Cadiz, the port city from which
Columbus set out on his first voyage to the Americas. The truth is, however,
that we had a hotel on the beach and so we decided to goof off for a day and a
half.
Ronda
After leaving Cadiz, we set out to travel to Ronda, the most
famous of the “white hill towns” in Andalucia. We drove through
several other towns on the way. These are all towns located on tops
and sides of hills in the mountains, probably for protection originally. Whether
by regulation or by custom, the buildings are almost always painted white. They
present striking images when viewed from afar or from the other side of the
valley. Driving in them can be hair-raising because, being towns
from a different century, the streets are narrow, go up and down at quite a
slope and are often one way with no clear directions. We simply gave up in
Arcos de Frontera, perhaps the second largest of [the] hill towns, tried to get
out of town and stick to the main highway, which is like a two lane highway in
the United States. Things were a bit easier in another little town we stopped
at for lunch, but getting in and out was still a challenge. We got to Ronda in
the evening. Throughout this drive we crossed several mountain ridges, with
spectacular views. I may have mentioned this, but Spain is the second most
mountainous country in Europe after Switzerland, so the images you may have
seen of the dry, flat plains of La Mancha, while accurate, are not representative.
Ronda might qualify as a small city. It straddles
a deep gorge which separates the truly old, and partly Muslim, part of town
from the newer town. Our hotel, along with others, straddles the
gorge and the views were striking. Ronda also has the first formal
bullring in Spain and we took a tour, which was more interesting than I thought
it might be. They let us walk into the center of the bullring and standing
there in the sun looking up at the rows of seats, you got some sense of the
excitement / tension a matador might feel waiting for the bull to enter the
ring.
We also went for a hike outside of town, which led us down a
rural country road for far longer than we thought it would be. When
we got back to the edge of town, we were tired, hungry and thirsty, so we stopped
at the first place we could find. It was a small restaurant, clearly
frequented by locals, as [we] were still on the outer edge of the town, away
from the tourist sites. It was actually quite good food, with a new
treat, deep, but lightly, fried olives. They were delicious, and we have not
seen them before or since.
Tour Groups
Since, up until Ronda we had avoided the more famous tourist
spots in Andalucia, Ronda was our first, but not to be our last, encounter on
the trip with throngs of tourists, especially tour groups. Interesting at
first, they became somewhat of a nuisance during the remainder of our trip,
because they involved large groups all trying to see the same thing at one time
or trying to get to one place at the same time.
A large number of these tour groups were Asian, which
surprised us, but probably should not have. After all, there is a lot of money
in China, Japan and Korea, even if not distributed equally, and the desire to
see and experience new things is, I am sure, common across all
cultures. I suppose in the overall scheme of things this influx of Asian
tourists into Europe is a good thing bringing an exposure to different
cultures; however, the Asian tour groups were more of a nuisance because,
probably due to more complete unfamiliarity with the language, they tended to
stick very close to the tour leader and each other. If they were coming, just
get out of the way.
Of course, there were many other Asian tourists in small
groups, often families, who behaved just like any other tourists, so I am not
attributing this to any cultural distinction, with one possible caveat. While
hardly unique, we noticed the Asian tourists almost universally tended to want
to take “selfie” photographs of the sights, perhaps just to show that they had
been to the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Palace of the Popes in Avignon. Not a
problem of course (unless you were in their shot), just amusing.
We thought the tourists in Ronda were bad, but little did we
know. First of all there were no cruise ships for hundreds of miles. And Ronda
is nowhere near as well known as Rome, Venice or Florence. (See next email
covering Italy.)
Cave Paintings
About an hour outside of Ronda, there is a cave with cave
paintings which date back, according to our guide, some 30,000 years. He
said they could be dated because the pigments contained animal fat and could be
carbon dated. Apparently the cave was used as a site for prehistoric art for
thousands of years; interestingly, the most realistic paintings were the oldest
ones. It was remarkable, even though caves are not my favorite places, and this
cave was not illuminated in order to keep down changes in temperature and
humidity which can destroy the paintings. They also make you go in small groups
to minimize those -changes. To avoid the crowds, and waits, we
choose to drive out on Monday morning, on our way out of Ronda. There were just
three couples, one from Germany and one from England and us. Fortunately
the guide could speak passable English.
After a beautiful drive out of the mountains, we drove back
to Malaga. We spent a night in a hotel near the airport. On
Tuesday, June 2, we flew to Rome. I do not want to make this too
long, so I will break up our travels. Italy will be the next email,
I promise.
Spanish Politics
I have not been always able to buy El Pais every day, so I
have to pick up the latest in Spanish politics piecemeal. The short
answer is that it is a bit of mess right now. They had elections at
the end of May in many cities and some provinces. Nowhere
did any party win an absolute majority, so governments were built by cooperation,
which was a messy process. The national general elections will be this Fall, so
the parties are still leery of being too closely identified with other
parties. (I think there is no chance that one party will [win] an
absolute majority in those elections either; then things will get really
interesting!)
The big losers were the Popular Party, the ruling
conservative party. They lost control over a lot of provinces and
major cities including Madrid and Barcelona. By and large, the left gained
ground by agreeing to cooperate more with each other. Both Madrid
and Barcelona have new mayors from the populist parties (to be distinguished
from the Popular Party, which is conservative) and both cities will be
introducing new left-leaning measures. In Madrid it will be to stop
evictions, and in Barcelona to freeze the number of tourist accommodations in
the city for several years. Still, there is much unrest in the
parties. The PP has shaken up its leadership, although not at the top
where Mariano Rajoy, the current president, will lead their ticket. Pablo
Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, the strongest of the populist parties, and
perhaps the most left-wing, is quarreling with about everybody else on the
center and the left, so it may be hard for him to form a government either.
The separatist movement in Cataluña is somewhat
disorganized. They want to run a single ticket of independence
supporters in the provincial elections scheduled for September, but they claim
that they do not want “politicians,” so we will see how that ends up. Recent
polls show that if there were a clear choice as to independence, it would
narrowly fail. As I understand it (and predicted earlier), the other
members of the European Union have indicated that they would not automatically
grant an independent Cataluña membership or allow them to continue to use the
Euro. This would make independence a costly affair (see Greece!),
and I think it will narrowly fail.
Given the heating up of our presidential race in the United
States, it is easy to think that Spanish politics is merely an amusing
sideshow. It is, I suppose, but it does have consequences
for the United States. Of all of the political parties in Spain, I
think that the Popular Party, which is the most conservative, has been, and
would be the more reliable partner with the United States in international
matters of mutual interest. I cannot bring myself to cheer for them
however, because there is just so much corruption in the party. They
are not the only ones, but have been much more tarnished by it. I
simply think that they have squandered the right to govern. Whether a Socialist
government would still work with the United States is certainly possible, but I
think a Pablo Iglesias-led government will be very prickly to deal with on
international matters.
Spanish Football
Well, my favorite team, Barcelona, pulled off a rare triple
crown by winning the Spanish premier league, (which is decided by league
standings; there are no playoffs as such,) the Kings Cup, which is a tournament
open to all Spanish clubs, and finally the European Champions League
Tournament. There is no active football in Europe for the summer, so more time
on my hands.
Of course, being soccer, the other news was off the
field. The most important was the indictment by the United States
government of many top officials in FIFA, the world governing body for soccer,
for taking bribes to award tournaments, such as the World Cup, and marketing
contracts. Probably will be plenty of plea agreements, further indictments, and
embarrassment all around. No one thinks this will be the end of it. It
caused the resignation of Sepp Blatter, the Swiss who has be head of FIFA for
decades, which many believe was long overdue. (In all fairness, Blatter was not
named in the indictment, but there is no telling if he might have been later.)
Meanwhile, consistent with my “rich get richer” complaint,
both Real Madrid and Barcelona are busy trying to buy the best players from
other clubs in the league. Do not expect their dominance to fade any
time soon.
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