Property for sale Spain * map of Spain * cheap car hire * discount flights * 10 day weather forecast * property for sale in Spain * villas * apartments * Costa del Sol * Costa Blanca * Javea * Moraira * Calpe




Find property for sale in Moraira, Javea and Calpe on the Costa Blanca in Spain. Cheap car hire, low cost flights, 10 day weather forecast, maps and holiday accommodation on the Costa Calida and Costa del Sol.

SEVILLA - AND SOMETHING OF MADRID - IN THE MID SIXTIES

I returned to Spain in the 1960s by which time my aunt and uncle, still with Armstrong Cork, had moved to Sevilla. I think I visited three or even four times: on at least one occasion I went south with them all the way by car, across France then through the Basque country and La Mancha. On other occasions I flew; sometimes I did the whole journey by train. I remember the sophistication of the Talgo expresses, belying totally those persisting and parochial British images of Spain as something approaching a third world country made up of sunshine, bullfights and sangría (the popularity of Y Viva España was, I think, still several years away). An unforgettable memory is of waking one morning in the cool of a Talgo compartment while the train traced its way smoothly and almost noiselessly between the fields of Andalucía, the carriage filling with a liquid golden light as the early sunshine bounced off the maize alongside the tracks.

Start of article

It was on one of these journeys too that I arrived in Madrid on a Good Friday morning. The plan was that I would be met by the Chaguaceda family at Atocha station and spend a few hours with them in the capital before catching the afternoon Talgo to Sevilla. I had not yet met the Chaguacedas and it looked at first sight as if that situation was to remain unchanged: the train pulled in early and the platform was empty. I hung around after the other passengers had scurried away from the terminus and waited for the correct arrival time to come round. The station remained empty. I went out into the town: Atocha was abandoned and no shops were open. Bells were ringing everywhere, so clearly the churches were in business - nothing else was.

Car Hire in Spain    Holiday homes in Spain    Advertising property for sale in Spain
Advertising holiday homes in Spain    Cheap flights to Spain    Cheap Removals to Spain

I wandered back into the station to find, at long last, a family looking for a young francophone male with my name, and I happily went off with them to their home, somewhere in the city. This was of course the wrong family and I was the wrong young male, of the right age and francophone but not actually French. Did they perhaps know the Chaguacedas? Of course they did: Ricardo was their family doctor, and the Chaguacedas lived just round the corner.

Perhaps everybody knows or meets everybody else in capital cities: on a visit to London, I once had chance meetings with the same schoolmate twice in twenty-four hours in totally different parts of town...


View Larger Map

One year I was in Sevilla for Semana Santa: I feel distinctly ambiguous about the event now and may have done so then. The spectacle of the huge pasos paraded through the streets throughout the week by hooded nazarenos and penitentes was stunning. I stood by Triana bridge and watched as the Virgin of the Macarena was carried across, an orgy of wealth, whiteness and light. But light in weight she cannot be: I was told she weighs all of two tons. As she was carried out of Triana, however, on the backs of gypsies, she was made to dance as her bearers threw her up and down on her shoulders. It wasn't easy to believe that this expression of joy could be born of the same fervour as the lashes with which the penitents scourged themselves. At the end of Holy Week the floor of the massive cathedral was deep in a congealed - and dangerously slippery - layer of human blood and candle wax.

If it was not so, that is nonetheless how I remember it!