Formally the leading guide to the wildlife and landscape of Spain in English. Now rebuilding
Some years ago in January, I watched this beautiful animal in the Sierra de Andújar, Andalucia with the mobile stuck on a friend’s telescope. She was sitting, watching us, unimpressed, about 250 metres away. The next day another Iberian lynx, a male, crossed 100 metres from where we stood before vanishing into the scrub. Enchanted … Read More “Iberian lynx in Andújar” »
Lunes al Sol starring Javier Barden. This powerful 2002 drama shows how unemployment affects men left jobless by the closure of Vigo’s shipyards in Galicia. Bardem’s later film El Buen Patrón is told from the opposite perspective of a boss, who only concern is himself.. It’s even more damning on effects of capitalism on human … Read More “Monday in the Sun” »
Lobster pots, Bueu harbour near Vigo. I miss Galicia and the smell of the Atlantic, stronger and fresher from that here in the Mediterranean.
Some time ago I sneaked inside the abandoned whaling station at Cangas de Morrazo run by the Massó family tinning company. There are remains of another small whaling factory in the Cíes’ southernmost island. This was more or less where in 1980 Galicia’s and Spain’s whaling industry ended. The factory is in a right mess. … Read More “Whaling station in Galicia” »
1482 map of Hispania, the kingdoms of Granada and Navarre still hanging on. Castile and Aragón including the Principality of Catalonia still separate entities for another 125 years, latter including Roussillon. The geography was based on the work of the 2nd Century CE work by Ptolemy.
Peregrine falcon behind Gaudí’s trencadís mosiac and chicks May 2026 in the Sagrada Familia. Kindly sent to me by Eduard Durany of Galanthus Natura. A total of 318 chicks have hatched in the Barcelona metropolitan area since Eduard started the reintroduction programme with the council in 2003.
El Greco”s mesmerising and dramatic View of Toledo. ~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 not a true topographical representation.
Wildflowers ablaze one spring on the slopes near where George Orwell fought with the POUM militia in the Sierra de Alcubierre.
This lovely tree frog (Ranita meridional in Spanish) I spotted on Montjuïc, Barcelona. Orwell perhaps saw them on the Aragon front in 1937: “Round the drinking-pool that served for the village mules I found exquisite green frogs the size of a penny, so brilliant that the young grass looked dull beside them”
We watched this grey heron (Spanish “garza real”; Catalan “bernat pescaire”) having a good old preen in the trees above Barcelona zoo. More than 100 wild pairs breed in the zoo every year, the largest urban heronry in Europe. They share their tree roosts with dozens of egrets.
