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 moments in the Sierra Morena.
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.
Akelarre is the Basque name for a witches’ Sabbath and ultimately for “meadow of the he-goat”. (”aker” = macho cabrío; “larre” = campo). It was believed that these meetings were presided over by the Devil inthe form of a black he-goat. In Spanish this became aquelarre and is now used to describe any meeting of witches.
The most famous supposed alkelarres were those prosecuted by the Spanish Inquisition tribunal of Logroño in 1610, during which witch-hunt was organised in Zugarramurdi, Navarra which ended in the burning at the stake of 12 supposed witches (5 of them symbolically, as tortures had killed them earlier). This may have led to the popularisation of the term akelarre in Basque or Spanish.
Goya, in his dark, final years painted a series of works known as the Black Paintings, including the The Great He-Goat or Witches’ Sabbath (El aquelarre).
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.
Esbardu. A lovely Asturian word meaning bear cub.
Some 370 brown bears now live in the Cantabrian mountains, on a steady path to recovery after a a nadir at the turn of the century.
Photo. @fundacion_oso_pardo
The Cantabrian bear population is distributed across the autonomous communities of Asturias, Cantabria, the Castillan regions of León and Palencia, as well as in recent years a small part of Lugo I. Galicia. Historically, the population declined until the late 20th century, but a recovery period began in the mid-1990s and continues to this day.
Cattle egret taking its time to swallow a yummy Iberian green frog in front of the spider monkey enclosure in Barcelona zoo. Several hundred grey herons, and cattle and common egrets live wild in the trees of the zoo. Whole thing took about 10 minutes.
Meet our new neighbour Eva. She lives in our stairwell and is a blue-eyed ensign wasp (Evania appendigaster). She parasites the oothecas (egg capules) of cockroaches – a huge problem in Barcelona in the heat, humidity and so many restaurants. We love Eva.
Official stamp of the Basque border town of Hondarribia, dated 1335, showing the hunting of a Right Whale (Ballena de los vascos in Spanish). With local whales decimated by the end of the Middle Ages, Basque whalers found new population off Newfoundland, reaching these territories by the early C16th or even before.
Image Wikipedia