On the way up to Montearagón castle, taken by the POUM mlitia in September 1936.
Ridiculously beautiful wildflowers like a Monet, a griffon vulture sonewhere above. Always a vulture somewhere over your head in Aragón. With the Orwell Society one May.
El Greco”s mesmerising and dramatic View of Toledo. Painted around ~1600. I love the threatening clouds, the hills seem about to swallow the town or perhaps slide into the Tajo below. This is one of the earliest examples of a landscape painting though it is not a true topographical representation.
El Greco’s later painted View and Plan of Toledo (1608). This canvas offers a multiple viewpoint; a panoramic. The River Tajo is seen here asa sculpture pouring water and so prosperity, apparently part of the town’s propaganda campaign to convince Philip II and his court to return to Toledo from Madrid.
Lovely walk in the wild limestone massif of the Serra del Garraf just southwest of Barcelona. The strawberry trees (madroño in Spanish, arbocer/arboç in Catalan) were laden with fruit. They have a reputation of being a bit dull – their scientific name Arbutus unedo is Latin for “I only eat one”) but these were sweet and tasty enough so I had about 30.
Popular knowledge has it that if you eat too many madroños you get drunk. The Portuguese have a prized madroño liquor (medronho) but I haven’t tried it yet.
A bear feeding on a strawberry tree is also the symbol of the city of Madrid.
They’re also known as arbustus trees in English.
Cap de Creus, where the Pyrenees ends, falling into the sea in a riot of schist and fantastical erosion. Last year’s sky swept clean by the Tramuntana wind, crystal clear light. Salvador’s childhood landscape, Dalí’s dreamscape.
They write from Galicia in Spain that some fishermen lately took on that coast a sort of monster, or merman, five feet and half long from it’s foot to its head, which was like that of a goat. It has a long beard and moustaches, and black skin somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, and hand longer than they ought to be in proportion to the rest of the body: long fingers like those of a man, with nails like claws, very long toes, joined like the feet of a duck, and the heels furnished with fins resembling the winged feet with which painters represent Mercury.
From Scots Magazine 1739.
Wolf range across Europe. While wolves have expanded massively across the continent in the last 30 years, distribution in their Spanish stronghold despite the huge amount of suitable wild land, has remained stagnant. As soon as they leave their “traditional” areas, it’s shotguns and strychnine.
Short video of trip of L82 bus through L”Hospitalet. On Barcelona’s western border this is among the densest cities in Europe. The old centre is nice enough and there’s a very pleasant rambla untouched by tourism. Outside stand tightly packed blocks to house several phases of migration since the 1920s.
This was pretty amazing. An albino (or more likely leucistic) bat in Montjuïc, Barcelona. Quite spooky and looked much bigger than in the video. Apparently very, very rare in bats as far I can understand talking to people. A few years ago with my partner Mònica Navarro.
Impressive ice well in Fuendetodos, birthplace of Goya. One of ~1000 in Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia Built during the Little Ice Age (C16-19th) they were big business in Eastern Spain. Ice wae collected over winter in sierras, stored and shipped to the cities until the early C20th when technology rendered them obsolete.
It goes without saying that climate change has rendered them ultra-obsolete. So little snow falls in these places in the heating 21st century.
The River Ebro frozen at Tortosa, Catalonia, near its mouth. 1891, at the end of the so-called Little Ice Age. You’d have thought not much chance of this happening again for the foreseeable future, although climate sciencists say with heating world in chaos such cold snaps are also very possible.