Salamanca

After Santiago I was headed to Spain proper. I qualify in this way because Spain is not exactly a united nation. True Spain is Madrid and the center of country. Historically it is Castile, Leon and Aragon, the regions united by the marriage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the year 1469. The periphery of the country is essentially conquered lands. There exists some degree of separatism in almost all the outlying provinces and in several, such as the Basque country, Galicia and Catalonia, there are outright independence movements.

The city of Salamanca, some 200 miles northwest of Madrid, was my destination. Looking out my bus window the seaclouds of the north were soon gone and bright yellow sunshine filled the land. Haystacks cluttered the broad, dry plains like spilled corn. Like crumbs of gold. We arrived at the station and I made my way into town.

Almost every small to midsize city in Spain has at its core a lovely old town and sprawling out from that in all directions revolting blocks of painted concrete constructed in the 1960's economic boom. Many a skyline is ruined by this architectural blight. Luckily Salamanca is not counted among its victims.

In addition to being unmarred, the town looks unlike any other that I saw in Spain. Every building is made with a locally-quarried, reddish-yellow stone that at the end of the day turns gold and pink in the sunset light. There are tranquil, tucked-away gardens, a grand cathedral among other architectural wonders, and the most impressive public square in Spain. It's tough to beat the big cities, particularly Barcelona, for man-made beauty. But after those, and really equal to them only different, Salamanca was the loveliest place I saw in that country.

It's also a college town - the third-oldest in Europe. In my dorm room was a Mexican guy named Ossi, short for Osorio, who was a student and had just finished his term. We got to talking and he mentioned he was going for tapas and then salsa dancing with a girl from Valencia who he knew from school. He kindly invited me to come along.

That was the first and perhaps the only time I ate tapas with a Spaniard in a natural setting. That is, when the Spaniard was not a hostel employee or tour guide or something. Ossi kept making fun of the girl's penchant for dropping her napkin on the floor rather than throwing it away, a Spanish custom that inevitably leads to the quality of uncleanliness that marks all authentic tapas bars. She really couldn't help it.

After tapas we went to the salsa bar. Here I was left behind. I got out on the floor and did my best with the girl but I was a lost cause from the start. It's just not something a person can pick up the first try, or so I consoled myself.

My new friends showed me how it's done. The Mexican in his white pants was like a dervish and the girl, who by day was an unassuming biologist, became the sexiest thing in that bar when she started to move. They were perfectly in sync, in step and in the sway of their hips and in the way their arms trailed across the other's back when they turned in passing. I watched them dance a few songs and then Ossi came over to the table I was sitting at with a drink while the girl stayed on the floor. He was covered in sweat.

"That was some show you guys put on," I said to him.
"We have experience. If you practiced you could dance just as good."
"I doubt it."
We drank our drinks.
"Have you got any designs on her?" I asked him. "Because I don't see how you can dance like that with a girl and have there be no feelings."
"It was actually the first time we danced together. We met here, but I never danced with her before tonight."
"Well you two are just a natural pair then aren't you."

He just smiled and looked away.

There were plans to get chocolate churros from some place that didn't open until 4 AM but by the time we left the bar I was dead tired and I wanted to give them some time alone anyway. We walked back to the hotel and I said goodnight and left them in the street. The Spanish girl looked fresh as a daisy. She had wanted to keep dancing. She hardly drank a thing all night.

After Salamanca I visited a few old, small towns near Madrid. Segovia with its Roman aqueduct. Avila with its medieval walls entirely intact. I wanted to relax and be alone because soon I would have plenty of company. My sisters were coming to Europe for the first time. I would meet them in Barcelona.

Santiago de Compostela

Two days after the bullfight I left Gijón on a bus to the city of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is located in Galicia, a region of Spain in the extreme northwest of the country, north of Portugal. It is Spain's holiest city and its cathedral the final resting place of St. James the disciple. After the death of Jesus James went to Spain, then a Roman province, to preach the good news. He was eventually beheaded in Judea for the crime of subverting the state religion but his remains were supposedly repatriated back to Spain and, again supposedly, interred at the cathedral.

In medieval times there was a pilgrimage wherein devout Christians walked, usually from the south of France but really from anywhere in Europe, to Santiago. This journey was called the Camino de Santiago. It still exists today, and while some people still do it for religious reasons most just do it for fun. From the customary starting point in France you walk some six to eight hours every day for a month to get there. All over Europe but especially in northern Spain seashells - the symbol of the camino as the grooves of the shell lead to the base just as all possible routes converge on Santiago - are pasted on signs, chiseled into walls, and painted on streets, accompanied by an arrow pointing in the direction the pilgrim needs to go.

I met many people at my hostel and around town who had done the camino. You can see them too just as they arrive in the main plaza, dominated by the magnificent facade of the cathedral. Some sit by themselves quietly, reflecting on their journey. Others jump for joy and embrace their friends and fellow travelers. And then there are some who are so overcome by emotion that they break down crying. This last type is a moving one to see. (I am aware the Camino would have been a fitting activity given the title of this blog. I had a great time traveling northern Spain by bus and harbor no regrets.)

The final step of the journey is attendance at a high mass said daily at the cathedral. I met a girl at my hostel who had walked the camino but had not yet gone to church. She was waiting for a specific mass where something would take place which she could only describe at "the swing thing." She asked me to go and wanting to check out the pilgrim mass anyway, and being curious about this "thing", I agreed. It was a five o'clock mass. We took our seats in a pew about halfway up the rows. Mass was in but a wing of the great cathedral and behind the pews snaked a line of tourists waiting to venerate the saint's remains.

This being church the mass had hardly started before I started wondering how long this was going to take. And did I mention the mass was in Spanish. I got through it and after communion a team of priests started preparing the show we'd come for. They brought forth a silver censer the size of a fire hydrant attached by rope to a pulley on the ceiling, a hundred feet high. They opened it, piled in hot coals and on top of those the incense. Then they fastened down the cover of the urn and hauled it off the ground using the counter-rope coming down from the pulley.

The swinging started. The priests pulled the rope up and down in steady heaves like men ringing a belfry. They got it going and at full extension the urn was swinging in a half-circle the length of the church and nearly touched the ceiling. It was easily moving 50 mph. The church filled with the incense smoke and its sweet burning smell. This shit was dangerous. If the receptacle had snapped off a crowd of several hundred worshippers and tourists would have been sprayed with pounds of burning coals plus the urn itself, a sight part of me would have liked to see had I not been in this hypothetical volley's direct path. Maybe if they swung a giant censer of burning incense through church at the end of every mass, I thought, people wouldn't leave after communion.

It had rained the whole time I was in Santiago but finally opened up my last day there and I got to photograph the cathedral and plaza in good sunlight. A few results below. The next day I was off to Salamanca.

The Victor Carried Flowers

The second day after I took leave of my Italian friends was a Saturday and was the day I'd picked to attend my first bullfight. I wanted to go on a weekend because I figured there'd be more people. I was worried nobody would come. Many of the Spanish I'd had the chance to ask about bullfighting said they weren't interested. That it just wasn't something the young generation was into. I didn't know how I was going to react to the violence and to undergo a potentially distressing experience for a dying tradition was a worrisome prospect.

There were the usual justifications for going. I was trying to travel deeply, to gain for myself some true knowledge of Spain, and how could I do that without bearing witness to perhaps the country's most famous symbol? It was something to see, something to say I'd done. I was curious. And yeah, Hemingway had loved bullfighting and written about it. But these weren't the real reasons I was going.

"When the beautiful carries off the victory over the monstrous, then is grand style achieved." I don't know how many times I've quoted that line as my aesthetic creed. Now I wanted to find out if I had the stomach for it. If I had the balls to willingly behold the torture and killing of an innocent animal for the beauty that might be born from it.

I got out of bed and after lunch at a cafe I walked to the corrida. The building was three stacked rings of red brick arches built into cream-colored stone. I found beside the main entrance a little window where tickets were still being sold. I was standing in line when a woman approached me. She was dressed up in a floral skirt and heels and a frilled silk blouse. She looked about thirty years old. She asked me in Spanish if I was alone and when I replied that I was she explained that she was in possession of an extra ticket. She was with her parents and her father had been offered a better seat by a friend which he had taken but now they had the extra ticket. I would have to sit with them.

This was too good. We agreed on a price and walked through the tall gates of the corrida and up the concrete steps from the concourse to the plain stone bleachers and took our seats.

Perhaps the eulogies were premature; the place was full. All segments of society seemed to be represented. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor as far as was discernible by their dress and seating section.

There was a traditional band hidden behind the far wall of the arena and at exactly five o'clock it struck up some plaintive air handed down from long ago and the party of combatants entered. The two matadors walked in the center dressed in embroidered suits and neckties and black bowed hats. Together with the picadors on horseback wearing armor and the banderilleros afoot beside them bearing swords and other instruments of death they looked like medieval knights at tournament.

After a short commencement ceremony the first team of assistants took their stations behind wooden stands located just inside the wall of the arena where the bull cannot get to and the bull was released into the ring.

At first sight it is a thing of terror. The size is impressive but more so is its quickness. You can see it knows it is in an unfamiliar place, at the least. Whether it knows it is being hunted I couldn't tell but I could tell it was scared and that this fear only made it desperate and more ferocious. After the bull was goaded by the assistants' taunting to tire itself by running about the ring the mounted picador came away from the wall. The bull attempted to gore the horse (which is protected by matting it wears) while the picador stabbed it in the back with his lance. After the picador had done his job other assistants, the banderilleros, emerged on foot with sticks fitted at one end with steel barbs. They got the bull to charge and just as it was about to gore them in one motion they leapt out of the way and stabbed the sticks into the bull.

The matador now entered the ring and engaged the bull. He dandled the cape before its eyes which gave him control of the animal and with this power willed the bull to trot back and forth across his leaning form like a showdog. But he must have made some mistake because during one close pass the cape became tangled in the bull's hooves and the matador lost hold of it. The spell was broken. The fighter immediately retreated to the wall and the bull trampled the cape and tossed it with its horns and then stared at the fighter with spiteful anger. Like he was rubbing it in. Which he was.

The cape was retrieved and returned to the torero and with it he restored his power over the bull. But the fanciness with the cape was over. The time to kill had come. Mesmerizing the bull with the cape in his left hand he leveled the sword in his right. He struck at the bull's back but the sword did not go all the way in. The crowd moaned at this failure and the protagonist again receded to the wall while the bull stamped and wheeled and tossed its head defiantly. The fighter was given a new sword and with this he stabbed the bull about the neck five or six times but still could not bring it down and the crowd murmured worriedly with each false blow and the fighter looked troubled and ashamed.

At last the bull was wounded fatally and it lay down to die. The crowd applauded politely but even to a novice such as myself it was obvious this fight had not been a success. There was a break in the action while the ring was cleared for the next fight and people got up from their seats to buy beer or use the toilet or smoke.

About ten minutes later the second fight began. The bull was prepared for killing in the same way as in the first fight. When the matador entered the ring blood was bubbling from the shoulderwounds and flowing with bits of gore down the flank of the animal in a glossy red streak. He made the bull his toy just as the first fighter had done only there were no mistakes this time and the resultant applause fed the fighter's confidence. At one point after a successful suerte (which is the word for any intentional maneuver in the ring) the fighter looked up to the crowd as if to call for witness to his dominance and in doing so turned his back to the animal entirely with those horns not five feet away.

The day had been cloudy to this point but around this time the sun broke through and with the late afternoon light arced over the sand the full visual poetry of the scene was made manifest. The matador was in the sun whose reflection slid up and down the chrome of his sword and his scarlet cape was bright as blood. The bull meanwhile stood in the shade cast by the roof and the bluish dark enshrouding him was like a cloak of doom. The time to kill was again at hand. The torero bent back his body like a dancer and taunted the bull to come and kill him if it dared and then he drove the point of the sword between the shoulderblades and pushed it in to the handle. He did not give an inch but rather stepped closer to the bull which staggered and knelt and finally fell to the ground not to rise again.



The handsome face. The blood on the gold brocade. The matador was given a bouquet and he walked a lap around the edge of the ring waving to the cheering spectators, many of whom rained down hats or scarves or other articles each of which he picked up and threw back to its owner with a broad smile.

When the matador had thus moved away from the dying animal to take the adulation of the crowd an assistant came forth and plunged a spike into the bull's brain and it stretched out dead. The crowd was going crazy with everyone waving white kerchiefs in the air and all eyes turned to the best seat in the house, the center balcony adorned with festoons and bunting and a red banner marked with the insignia of the Principality of Asturias where sat the president of the fiesta.

He was a large man probably sixty years old with a big mustache. The crowd cheered and waved their kerchiefs until finally the president stoic in his perch rose to his feet and bowed to the torero with one arm folded before him as a sign he would accept the ear. A roar went up from the crowd and someone bent down over the dead bull to cut the ear off and then wiped the blade each side in turn just above the gaping eye. The ear was then wrapped in a cloth and given to a courier for immediate transport to the balcony.

"So he gets the ear, the president?" I asked the girl.
"Sí"
"And he gets all of them?"
"Sí. If the crowd gives its approval."
"He's going to have a lot of ears."
"Sí. But he gives them to the people."

After the matter of the ear had been resolved the matador looked up to the president's booth once more and twirled his index finger in the air like an umpire calling a disputed home run fair. The president nodded his assent to what request I did not know and in the strangest part of this so foreign and bizarre spectacle the dead bull was chained by the horns to a team of horses and dragged around the arena while the crowd applauded wildly.

I found this act of applauding the dead animal particularly sad and morbid. It was at this point I realized that bullfights might not be for me. The problem was that I saw no danger to the man. To my eyes it had all the authenticity of professional wrestling except for the death which made it maudlin. Hemingway would say that either I could not perceive the danger to the man because of my lack of knowledge of bullfighting or perhaps it really did not exist because the bull was inferior. More likely though, he would say, is that the matador simply made a dangerous and difficult thing look easy by virtue of his skill. Despite this understanding I found myself rooting for the fighter to be gored. That the animal is tortured and killed in a bullfight does not bother me. If this stance makes me cruel or otherwise morally contemptible then fine. What did bother me was that the bull never seemed to have a chance. What I saw seemed an execution, not a fight.

If the unfairness of the contest and the bloodthirstiness of the crowd turned me off I will say that I found certain aspects of the spectacle to be unexpectedly beautiful. The costumes and the ceremony yes but especially the music. It was at times profoundly sorrowful, at other times triumphant, but it was always moving. A bullfight is a glimpse into the past. A nobler, more barbarous past when violent death had not yet been robbed of its realness and immediacy and the man who had the courage to get in the ring with a wild beast and the ability to kill it was a hero.

The expression in Spanish to ask if something is worth doing is, "¿Vale la pena?" or literally, "Is it worth the sorrow?" It's a fitting way to ask about what I had witnessed. I would say it was.