Happy Easter!

I hope you have, or had, a wonderful Easter! Here are some of the beautiful Easter birds, with their chocolate eggs, who temporarily inhabited the windows of the chocolate shop in Fuengirola, where we have been during Holy Week. 

 Fuengirola is a small town on the Costa del Sol, Spain, and we were there with one of our daughters, her family and her in-laws.   T and I flew into Malaga and so took the chance to spend three days there. I like the city very much.    

Holy Week, (Santa Semana,)  is very important in Andalucia, and we are all still a bit dazed by the huge and amazing processions of Jesus and Mary on their ornate silver and gold floats, lit by dozens of huge candles and carried mostly by men, some of them blindfolded, others in long robes, preceded by robed penitents in long pointed hats and always accompanied by a band.  

The masks and robes of the penitents can seem quite frightening, partly because the evil founders of the Ku Klux Klan have perverted them by adopting very similar robes.   The confraternities which run the processions are of course devoted to helping the sick, living holy lives, etc.  

 It's hard to convey just how extraordinary it is to have these processions going for hours through the workaday streets of the town.  Every afternoon evening and night in Holy Week is given up to it - it's very much a living religious tradition with all ages and both sexes participating. 

 The atmosphere of the processions is exciting, positive and family centred. 

 

All traffic is stopped and a large proportion of the local population takes to the streets, often till the early hours - and the shops and cafes stay open too, so the town feels fully alive.    

Many children and young people collect the wax from the penitents' long candles, and at the end of the day the penitents' robes are often bespattered with wax. 

The vast majority of people at the processions that we saw were local, and it was very much a social as well as a religious occasion.  I suspect it is a custom that has its roots in very long tradition. 

However narrow and maze-like the streets, the floats will get there, and the carrying of it is a highly skilled affair. This float arrived outside the tapas bar where we were having a snack at about 11 PM. 

Nothing is mechanised, the floats are carried by human effort for hours and hours, often until the early hours of the morning

.  It is clearly very tiring, and some of the bearers also do the work blindfold.  Here are some of the bearers taking a rest in Malaga.  

They were carrying a most spectacular float of the Virgin, and some of the candles were being renewed and relit by a very strong fellow carrying a long taper.  Can you see him on the left?

I haven't downloaded all the photos yet, and there is so much more to say, I suppose -  but I will post this now, as I wanted to wish you  a Happy Easter before the holiday ends. 

Badly Planned in Spain

I hope you had a good Easter.  Our idea was to take a few days in Spain, accompanying family members, just for fun.  We hoped to see the Holy Week (Semana Santa) processions too with their strange looking crowds of penitents in pointed hats.  (In case you don't know, there are several processions in mostly Andalusian towns and cities, each organised by different fraternities, each of which has penitents, a Crucifixion float and a Virgin float in the run up to Easter.  Go here for more information).

Since it wasn't  a working trip I didn't plan and assumed it would all be fine.  And it was fun, but still, I'm never going to skimp on the planning again! Haven't had so many disasters since a terrible trip to South Africa with a group of journalists and PR people who were literally knocking seven bells out of each other, the airline lost many suitcases and the hotel staff were stealing everything that wasn't nailed down - among several other problems. (But that's another story....)

It was the no-planning that caused most of the problems, not Spain itself.  And so despite many tears (not only mine) I'm really glad I went.     Semana Santa alone made it completely worth it, but there were many other wonderful things too. We were a couple of days in Seville, which was terrifyingly crowded (I'd broken the Planner's cardinal rule: never visit in high season. ) The crowds meant long queues, high prices, some spectacularly bad food and service and T's phone was lost or stolen in spooky circumstances. I also picked up a nasty bug,  which is still with me, and had to invoke my insurance because I was too ill to fly home.

Despite this, Seville did not disappoint.  I'm definitely going to return (off season).  Its Semena Santa processions are famous, although crowded, and I found this candle lit procession followed by an almost black Christ on the Cross rather thrilling. Although we were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the huge Plaza del Salvador, the vast crowd became quiet and attentive when the floats appeared..



A day or two later we stumbled, shellshocked, onto the Malaga train. Oh yes, RENFE, the Spanish rail network, seems to plan strikes at top holiday periods. Don't ask.  But we managed to get to Malaga, which is up there with Madrid as my favourite Spanish city.

 Malaga has a hinterland of high rise flats and hotels, but also a noble and fascinating history, some famous residents alive and dead (like Picasso and Antonio Banderas) wonderful architecture and a friendly atmosphere - not to mention good weather.

The walk to our lodgings from the station, normally about ten minutes, took us well over an hour as processions were in full swing.  We got much nearer to the floats than we had in Seville, and it seemed like a very different experience.  

Some of the men shroud or blindfold themselves when carrying the suffering Jesus (you can see one joining the back of the float in the video below). The float sways characteristically from side to side as the men march in a peculiar shuffling step. They have to lay it down every couple of hundred yards or less, for modern technology is not used- for Semana Santa, it's all human muscle power and candle light.

The suffering Jesus is a sad float, and of course the Virgin Mary is sad too. She's always a beautiful and innocent young woman weeping helplessly. But her float is an excuse to go right over the top, with dozens of huge flickering candles, (when dusk falls) hundreds of flowers and a long, long train beneath which she shelters her devotees.  As I noticed when I lived in Malta, the Virgin is a pin up of wondrous holiness.

She also tends to get brighter music, like this very Spanish sounding music below. Of all the floats I saw in Malaga, this particular Virgin probably had the most specular cloak . You can see that even getting round the corner is quite a business.  (It's filmed from the balcony where we stayed.    I got as close up as I could, but try and view full screen if you can.)  You can see the men lifting the float as the bell sounds.



 And no, we didn't get much sleep that night. I woke at 4.30 and I could still hear distant music. But it was worth it.

As for the penitents, they are very, very disconcerting for someone like me who is not brought up in the tradition. They just look so weird, striding around the city streets, like groups of wizards.

Many children marched in the parades, which must have been very demanding for them as they went on a long time and required perfect behaviour - and we never saw anything less.

From Malaga we took the local train to Fuengirola, where the in-laws have a holiday home. This time, we stayed by the church door, where the floats arrive, position themselves so that the holy ones can look down the entire length of the open church and pay their respects.  

After viewing the processions, it seemed the natural thing to do to go and have a coffee and a cake. 

If you haven't had enough of processions, this clip is perhaps my favourite. I love those Spanish looking faces. Some of them could be straight out of those 17th and 18th century paintings in the Prado.  It also gives me a feeling of how heavy and difficult it must be to carry those huge floats for hours and hours.



If I haven't yet got round to commenting and visiting your blog, I will do it very soon.

Fuengirola

I appreciated all your comments on Palmyra.  Have you noticed that this amazing city has actually been written about quite a lot,  so it seems the eyes of the world are turned anxiously towards it, and its significance for all of us.  I'm just hoping, and also stopping myself from checking the news too much.

Over the last week I've been in Southern Spain, mostly away from the news,  thank goodness. It wasn't a travel writing assignment, because we were attending a big wedding.  That involved visiting an old, small but beautiful church in the mountains about Fuengirola, in Andalucia. Here's the view from the terrace outside the church, down to the sea.



Inside, the church had the kind of ornate golden altar that you often see in Spanish churches. Unusually  (I thought) the Virgin Mary was at the centre of the altar, not Jesus on the Cross - which is much more usual in Northern churches.



I wish I could post loads of photos about the wedding and people, and indeed the whole experience, but with so many people attending, there wasn't a hope of getting everyone's permission. So I am afraid I can't tell you about any of that - but I'll write about where we stayed because it was a very pleasant surprise. In fact, I liked it so much that we're dead set on returning later this year or next.

We were in the the town called Fuengirola, which is about 20 miles down the coast from Malaga by train, just past Torremolinos.  As many English people will know, this area, also known as the Costa Del Sol,  was for some years the centre of the package holiday business, and it became associated with the idea of tower block hotels and noisy bars.  I liked Malaga, but I'd never considered going down the coast.  So what a surprise it was to finally get there! And even more of one to find good restaurants, interesting shops,flowers, and a general air of brightness and cleanliness.

True, Fuengirola has a big beach, lots of bars and hotels, and quite a large expat community, too, so it is not the fishing village it was 50 years ago when our relatives' family bought their house there. But the apartment complex where we stayed was so pleasant and central, that I realised it would be a terrific place to go with a family and still be able to stay sane.  Kids would appreciate the little funfair on the beach and the various attractions, but it doesn't take long to drive out into the mountains beyond, the town itself is a good place to hang out and our apartment complex was just plain amazing.

It's probably nicer at this time of year than in high summer, not only because it's less busy but because so many of the streets are lined with jacaranda trees in full bloom. Their lilac-blue blossoms seem almost ethereal because the leaves of the trees mostly come out a bit after the blossoms, and you get this lavender colour as a sort of haze against the sky.

We stayed in a holiday complex very near the centre just to the right of the road above.  It's called Puebla Lucia, and is a mixture of apartments and houses, set around gardens which are obviously maintained by a perfectionist.

They were just immaculate. More meticulously cared for than even Kew Gardens, I'd say. They were divided into several different areas, with fountains and swimming pools.

I think the Pueblo Lucia complex has grown when the owners took over and converted existing apartment blocks, so there is a variety of flats, houses and studios, and we kept discovering new corners. There is also a bar and restaurant on site, although we didn't try them.
.

It's a few minutes walk from the train station and about another 10 minutes to the huge beach. That frankly is not my scene as it was already boiling hot and it's only May, and I just don't see the point of sitting in full sun for hours, even if the sea is nearby.  I wasn't that crazy on the children's funfair, family restaurants and all the other things English holidaymakers expect, either, although it was all clean and friendly enough.. 

Eating out is very cheap - in fact, everything seems ridiculously cheap from a British perspective (but then, we are not in the Euro).  We ate quite a bit in restaurants where there was very good fish of all kinds, as well as some unexpected dishes.  At first, we didn't quite know what to make of this, below, with the tomato in the middle. It's actually a fish pancake in a herb sauce. I was a bit dubious, but it turned out to be so delicious that everyone wanted one.  

We had breakfast each morning in the public market's cafe, where the twins (now almost toddling) were a star turn with the owners.   Then we'd buy fruit and veg for the day. I wish we could get great big  tomatoes like this in England.  Not that we can't get beefsteak tomatoes here, but after weeks of sitting in a chiller somewhere, they have usually lost all their taste by the time they get onto the supermarket shelves. 

Although of course part of the attraction for us was in having other people around, we were really sorry to leave our apartment, and intend to return.  This was the last sight of Spain, baking in the sunshine. 

Next time I visit, I'll  buy some Spanish tiles, bring them home and tile the inside of our back balcony with them.  Because, even allowing for the weather, I am already yearning for a bit more Spanish brightness and colour around the place.

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Windows

Bah! No sooner do I start crowing about having got 400 followers when one drops off. Oh well, I've got 399 followers, then.  :)

It's been quite a social week, doing more than usual with family and friends. It's lovely but some of them don't like being featured on blogs so I can't write much about it.   I've also been doing a bit of work and lots of boring stuff - you know, renewing insurance, trying to sort out the computer, trying to get the filthy marks the decorators left off the BRAND NEW WHITE curtains, juggling finances,  removing thick layers of dust from the builders, nope, you don't need to hear more....

Just as well then, that my photo editing program decided to reshuffle all my photos into alphabetical rather than date order, so it's thrown up several interesting ones of windows, which I enjoyed looking at and thought you might like to see too.

Some of the pictures, I must confess, well, I've forgotten where I took them now.  I think the one below was in Herefordshire, in a cottage belonging to an artist, I assume it was one of his sculptures.  If you recognise it, let me know!

The reflections in this window seemed wonderfully muddled and multi layered to me.  Two brass deer, and a street scene intermingled.



A windscreen counts as a window, right?

When I passed this Suffolk caravan park last year I felt that this window display must be telling SOME kind of a story - a funny one, I think.

 Here's another window scene in Suffolk. (What's with Suffolk and weird windows?) A little more emotion in this one, perhaps the black rat is the Mama trying to persuade her son not to go off to fire that cannon in the war?

Here are graffiti and classical reflections from my recent trip to Hamburg.  We stayed in an area full of marvellously varied old houses, covered in graffiti and/or painted up in odd ways. The area seemed to be populated by a mixture of hippies and yuppies.  Anyway this house was covered in classical statues, and painted black. Hence the window reflection. And the graffiti? Well, what do you think?

Fascinating naive-art pargeting in Northern France. This is a forgotten little corner not far from the Northern coast. Once again I've forgotten exactly where - but I think it's near Honfleur.  Pargeting is the art of decorating plasterwork.  I've seen a lot of it in East Anglia, but only rarely noticed coloured examples like these. Someone is keeping it very well painted up.

Disorientated in Southern Spain... yes, this is a real street, below, and it did look like that.  The crooked windows are a version of what will eventually be built (or which was there before). The design is printed on a huge netting hoarding, designed to conceal building work going on, but someone has had the bright idea of making it interesting and eye catching.  It certainly is that, as you walk along the street, specially since the pavement is paved in eye dazzling grey and white zigzags. 

Some feathery lampshades and velvet curtains glimpsed through a window in Oscar Wilde's old house in Tite Street, Chelsea.  I am sure Oscar would have liked pheasant feather lampshades.

I thought the fronds of these palms somehow echoed the closely spaced glazing bars of the window

And here is a distinctly child-sized window which I spotted at this little greengrocer in Shere, Surrey, recently (no fruit and veg in the window because it was Sunday).  Look at Daddy towering up there!   But then, undernourished poor people a few hundred years ago could be very small indeed, so doors and windows were often low. And it was cheaper to build small.

The scene below was taken by moonlight from one of our windows, in the snow.  It reminds me a bit of one of those very old French photos of the 1840s.  I lightened it, otherwise didn't process the image at all.

Another night scene, chugging down the Nile towards sunset, just us and the boatman.
!

These abstract reflections are the windows of a Disney hotel reflected in the water. The hotel looked ugly in the day, but came into its own at night.

And this is not a window, but a reflection, somewhere in the Middle East, where a huge mirror reflects the enormous inner courtyard of an old mansion.  Reminds me of an old fifties art movie. What is that woman thinking?



My next job is to get round to visiting some blogs - and peep through the windows into other peoples' worlds.

Electric Sheep and Telefonica

I am sorry to say we are still having worrying times with my mum so it's good to retreat into pleasant memories of Madrid.   And one of my best memories of Madrid is Telefonica, the telecoms company.  Yes, that's right, the company that provides broadband and telephone services.   But Telefonica isn't just about trying to flog you a cheap payment plan and pestering you with sales calls. Nor is it just an out of date computer virus. 

Its original headquarters stands in a prominent position on Gran Via, a big street in Madrid which reminds me of old pictures of New York of the 1920s (click here to see what I mean),  Hardly surprising, since some of Europe's first skyscrapers were built in Gran Via, and they're mostly still there.

Telefonica's 1930 headquarters is arguably the finest of these old skyscrapers. Its topped with a forest of aerials (just visible in the photo) and combines the simplicity of art deco, and the elaborate baroque style so characteristic of Spain.

"
When I passed, its downstairs windows shone with a strange, bright blue light, so I peeped in at the main door.    Inside it was a mix of blue, white and gold, old and new.  There were ever-changing LED display stairs. ....

and sleek, modern, white surfaces.......

and loads of the latest phones and computers, of course, as well as this giant screen with a virtual pebbly stream you could splash in without getting your fingers wet. . 

Yet original bits of the flagship 1930 building were cleverly integrated, like this magnificent golden ceiling

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and a touching memorial showing a vintage telephonist with a rose bush and a dove.

Exploring further, I found that Telefonica is a patron of the arts.  On the top floor is the company's large collection of Cubist paintings and a specially made movie about Cubism in Madrid.   On the middle floor is a well displayed and fascinating museum (in Spanish and English) of telephony and telegraphy going right up to the future!  Here's an older exhibits: a telegraph using a piano keyboard..

My favourite floor has a lecture theatre and displays temporary art exhibitions.  When I was there, they had the finalists in the company's annual competition on the theme of art  and artiificial intelligence.  Of all the strange and fascinating artworks,  the two that caught my imagination were "Electric Sheep" by Scott Draves, and "Hylozoic Soil" by Philip Beesley and Rob Gorbett.

"Electric Sheep" is electronic "artwork" automatically created by the output of  thousands of computers which are not currently being used (that is, "sleeping" - the computers are counting sheep, in a way.)  Several screens produce endless kaleidoscopic patterns seguing into one another, suggesting all kinds of things. - heaven, hell,, flowers, planets, robots, strange psychedelic creatures.... I could have watched them for hours.

"Hylozoic Soil" was extremely beautiful - a towering crystalline forest full of what seemed to be unearthly flowering trees.  The work is made of acrylic tiles fitted with sensors to pick up human presence, and glass bulbs containing artificial cells called Traube cells -  self-assembling chemical systems which do not contain DNA.

When you walk in, the forest reacts to you, bending and swaying according to what you do.  Wow! It is quite an experience and I can see why it won first prize.   If you want to see more images of this work, click here

Part of the building has been renovated in bold and almost abstract style, with a fabulous modern staircase that is like a piece of art in itself, all steel and glass and iron.



in strange contrast with the more traditional architecture visible through the windows.



I don't know what telecoms prices in Spain are, but personally  I'd pay a bit extra myself to support something like the imaginative Telefonica building and its galleries.  I spent over half a day there.  It's all free and I think it should be one of the top attractions in Madrid.   Believe it or not, though, I didn't even find it in my guidebook.