Gifts of Learning in Spain

I want to dedicate this final column on Spain to the functionally illiterate in T&T which, if the ALTA/UWI study is correct, number over 400,000 people who will never read more than a sign, who can’t fill out a birth certificate or an application for a loan. Four hundred thousand people whose potential for art, architecture, language and science will remain forever trapped in their untapped minds, in inchoate sentences. Lost generations whose varying levels of illiteracy make them easy pawns in the drug trade, and crime and who deserve the gift of learning and support, nutrition and child care this Christmas.

In Barcelona I tell our guide Eva, with dark dancing eyes and a fetching Audrey Hepburn fringe that a day in her city—founded on the Mediterranean coast between two rivers, more than two thousand years ago, on the Iberian Peninsula—is like being allowed in to see a film and leaving having only seeing the trailer. Eva tells us everything starts with La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous boulevard, leading to the homes of the wealthy 19th century families, Casa Milà, La Pedrera, Casa Batlló designed by the now celebrated, then controversial architect Antoni Guadis influenced by nature, curved construction stones, twisted iron sculptures and organic forms which I tell Eva remind me of castles from Grimms Fairy tales.

Speaking of fairy stories, Eva tells us to make sure to drink water from the Canaleta fountain which according to legend will keep you coming back to Barcelona, which I do. She tells me that when I come back it should be on San Jordis day on April 23 (St George, patron saint of Barcelona) when the Ramblas becomes a huge flower market and book stall. Men give women a rose and women give men a book in tribute to the great Spanish writer Cervantes whose magnum opus, Don Quixote is regarded as the best works of fiction ever written (curiously he shares Shakespeare death anniversary in 1616). The gravitas of this city emanates from its celebration of learning and love in equal measure.

Just last year, in Madrid I was at the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute, an imposing marble and gold pillared edifice which promotes the study and teaching of Spanish and Hispanic American culture in 20 countries with 54 centres worldwide. Spanish Ambassador to T&T Joaquín de Arístegui has been making moves to bring one to Trinidad for the use of all of Caricom. I hope it happens for our sake. At the Cervantes Institute (formerly a bank) I was taken to heavy vaults where you wouldn’t want to be trapped, shown safes that contain not jewels or bonds, but ideas of artists, scientists, philosophers which would be opened on a day of their choosing, some a century from now. The symbolism is unmistakable; ideas are as valuable as gold and diamonds to Spaniards and indeed often lead to riches.

In what feels like a fantastical dream sequence through the ages, we follow Eva to the Gothic Quarter built on Roman ruins, past monuments to Christian, Jewish, Moorish rule, past edifices of Carolingian kings and counts, past manifestations of the unification of Spanish kingdoms, and monarchy, back to its early century Art Noveau Eixample district and out to the Barcelona Harbour spruced since the 1992 Summer Olympics. It is easy amidst splendour, meandering through Barri Gotic, the medieval nucleus of the city around 500 square metres of narrow streets, mansions, museums, and the mighty Gothic Cathedral, La Sou, to forget that Barcelona (capital of Catalonia) was relentlessly bombarded during the Spanish Civil War in 1938 on the orders of General Franco (as retribution for the regions bid for independence) killing over a thousand people, including children.

With Franco’s death in 1975 and the restoration of Spanish democracy, Barcelona, battered by nearly 40 years of Franquism, pushed for autonomy (with mass demonstrations) which was granted for Catalonia and 17 other regions now possibly the most decentralised in Europe. Still, there is discontent. Inez, my interpreter and I wander in looking like dishevelled gypsies to the glorious offices of the Palau de la Generalitat of Salvador Sedó. We meet the general director for foreign affairs of the Catalonia Autonomous Region, who can’t contain his pride or hurt for the separate and distinct 2,000-year history of his region (his office is a palace, he could see Roman ruins from his window). He complains that Catalonia is paying too many taxes. He is outraged that the Catalan language, suppressed during Franco’s dictatorship (since reinstated), wasn’t considered an official and separate language in the EU.

There are two more day trips: Toledo (a living museum city declared a Spanish national monument and UNESCO Patrimony of Mankind) and Cordoba, after which I run out of expressions of wonder resorting to such banal expressions such as “wow”. Our first view of Toledo is that of an historic Visigothic, Moorish, Jewish, Christian city sitting on a rocky mound upon which churches, synagogues, mosques jostle for space. The highlight is the catedral, a Gothic construction that took over 250 years (1227-1493) stuffed with masterpieces of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods, with eight doorways, 20 chapels, 15th and 16th century stained glass windows, frescoes, portraits, a wildly extravagant relic of Spain’s golden age.

Nothing prepares me for Cordoba, a medieval city of Roman Spain, which for three centuries formed the heart of the Western Islamic empire, ‘the great medieval caliphate of the Moors,’ and especially not for La Mezquita, the Grand Mosque of Cordoba which comes a close second to the Taj Mahal in its spread. Approached through an area that reminds me of Quranic parables, through the Patio de los Naranjos, a classic Islamic ablutions court that preserves orange trees, I feel transported back in time to the splendour of ninth and tenth century Cordoba under the control of Abdar Rehaman 1, the sole survivor of the Umayyad dynasty.

Its seemingly endless row of columns, semi circular arches in brick and stone, marble floors, byzantine mosaics of gold, rust-red, turquoise and green in the maksura (where the caliph and retinue would pray) doesn’t seem like the work of human beings. On the narrow cobbled lanes of Cordoba, its sudden sun sprinkled tiled courtyards of olive and orange trees, jasmine flowers, and add to a surreal day broken by some tapas, the Patas Bravas, and the Calamares a la Romana (Fried Squid Rings) and a very sweet and creamy cafe con lattes. Throughout the Spanish trip I feel it is a sin to deny myself tapas in its multifarious forms, and become especially fond of the Boquerones en Vinagre (fresh anchovies) to the Pulpo Gallego (cooked octopus with boiled potatoes, olive oil and sweet Spanish paprika), now responsible for the extra five pounds on my hips.

On our final night in Madrid at a performance of Flamenco at the Corral de la Morería, (the oldest flamenco show restaurant in Madrid) entire continents converge in the cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), dance and palmas (handclaps), and fancy footwork. In the red gold candlelight the faces of some of the patrons looks familiar. New world faces in medieval cities. Over some heady Sangira which hits me like a bolt, I remember Ricardo Anino (Director of Tribuna Americana de Casa America) saying that three-and-a-half of Spain’s five million immigrants in the last decade are from Central and South America. Columbus achieved what he set out to do. He set out to conquer but instead created an extended Spanish family of over 20 countries and close to 500 million Spanish speakers.

In their fierce grace accentuated by bold red and jewelled coloured costumes, the lightening movement of the feet, accompanied by clapping hands, the guitar that feels sacred and profane at once, clapping hands, the guttural raw voices of the singers, the purest and most honest lament of the soul of the cante one associates with a deep private grief, I hear traces of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis of India and Pakistan, the Ayan, to which Turkeys whirling dervishes dance, the West African gnawa, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Morocco, strains of Egypt, Greece and the near and far East. There are fusions of Arab and Jewish, Muslim and Pagan elements.

The Flamencos unabashed raw sensuality, its protest against social and economic marginality, pathos, nostalgia and hope was captured by one of Spain’s elegiac poets, Federico García Lorca in his poem a ‘las cinco de la tarde’ capturing the essence of a resilient and refined nation.

“Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born 
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. 
I sing of his elegance with words that groan, 
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.”