Northwards - Rueda and Palencia

It's definitely early spring on the plains of Castille y Leon. Not so much north of the Cantabrian massif. So we shelved our plan to find a place to stay with good transport links into Bilbao and opted to make our way northwards more slowly and enjoy the sunshine.

We often use the "search for sites'  app to find new places to stay. The reviews can be idiosyncratic but they do alert you to spots that are problematic. We wondered if it might be interesting to stay in the area autocaravanas at Rueda. The name is familiar to us, we've consumed many bottles of the crisp white wine produced in the place. It's fun to be able to contour up an image of its terroir when you have glass of wine. Given how much we've travelled in southern Europe over the last twelve years then our inner wine gazetteer has become quite comprehensive.

For somewhere with a wine that graces the shelves of more or less every supermarket in Spain it seemed a bit odd that there were only a handful of reviews about Rueda's area autocaravanas, especially as village is situated a couple of kilometres east of the A-6, one of the main routes south from Santander. The reviews were lukewarm, noting that the parking bays were narrow, the service point primitive and the place was awkwardly close to a children's play park.

This proved to be the case. However, the motorhome parking was not the only peculiar thing about Rueda. The viniculture that surrounds the place is massive, a prairie of vines stretching far across the flat plain. Boxy distribution warehouses dot the landscape, they look recently constructed. They're not like a French cave cooperative with a cute shop, only forty ton trucks are welcome here.

We took a short stroll down towards the centre of Rueda. Is it a small town or a big village, we wondered. Either way it was deserted, not quiet, more post apocalyptically unpeopled.

The wide main street was wide with a sunken stream running down one side. The buildings were ancient, but well restored, they had a kind of toytown perfection about them. We found a couple of wine merchants warehouses, one had a shop with opening hours saying it was open but the door was locked. Another across the road was similarly shuttered. From its website it seemed the place specialised in pre-booked tours at €50 euros per person. Not our thing, we just wanted to buy a couple of bottles of local wine.

A bus arrived, stopped at the shelter briefly, no one alighted, so it drove off, adding to a general sense of abandonment. The only person we came across was a municipal worker with a wide brush. She meticulously tidied a patch of gravel even though it was litter free to begin with

As well as old wine warehouses the main street had two interesting looking churches. The first was baroque with two round towers, Each had a conical roof like a witches hat. It looked more like something you might find next to the Loire rather than in Castille y Leon.

The other was more ancient and had an octagonal layout, again quite unusual in Spain.

We decided to head back to the van. One of the closed wineries displayed half a dozen old barrels painted in a naive, folksy style. They must welcome customers sometimes, but definitely not today.

We were still Billy no mates when we got back to the  van and remained that way until we left next morning. The only people we encountered turned up in the early evening when a few parents arrived at the play park with their toddlers.

I whiled away the time updating the blog and chatting about where next. Our decision - head for the area autocaravanas operated by a petrol station on the outskirts of Palencia. We have visited the outskirts of the city regularly, but never stayed overnight or visited the  centre. Palencia is our usual lunchtime stopping place after arriving in Santander on the early morning ferry. A car park near the university has dedicated motorhome bays and is five minutes from  Mercadona - perfect for stocking-up the fridge after 30 hours on the ferry.

The area autocaravanas run by the garage turned out to be much quirkier than that. The petrol station itself was somewhat eccentric. The owner expressed his interest in vintage cars, by displaying disfunctional ones  decorated garishly and featuring life-size figurines. I refuelled the moho next to  Betty Boop themed stretched limo. Nearby Elvis posed at a jaunty angle next to a pink Cadillac which seemed to have noze-dived into the ground.  A wingless banana yellow Cessna was parked in the corner.

The area autocaravanas is across the road, and free so long as you spend at least €5.00 euros at the garage. It's a good deal. It has lots of space next to a car and truck wash. There's even a dedicated bay for motorhomes with a gantry so you can wash the roof.

I love the random places you end up in when you travel by motorhome. Just to add to the peculiar mix, right next to the garage is a very old looking church. I wondered if it might even be Visigothic. After a bit of AI fuelled research assisted by Google translate I ascertained my hunch was half right. Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Allende el Río is the oldest church in Palencia. Though most of the building dates from the twelfth century the lower section of the tower is thought to be Visigothic.

The northern part of Spain was under the control of Moorish forces for a relatively short period and never fully pacified. In the late eighth century it formed a liminal, depopulated 'badland' between the Christian Kingdom of Asturias to the north and Caliphate to the south and east. After Burgos was retaken by Christian forces in 884 and a new archbishopric established, a subsidiary bishopric developed in Palencia. A small church dedicated to 'Our Lady' behind the garage venerating Elvis witnessed all this history and remained, so it seems, a place of worship throughout. It's a wonderful thing the way the sacred and the profane, the significant and the trite, the past and present are all woven into a single place; so often the joy of travel is coincidental rather than purposeful.

It's a twenty minute walk from the motorhome parking lot to Palencia's Playa Mayor. The Rio Carrión lies in-between, the footpath wanders through some woods then across an ancient stone bridge.

Judging from the crumbling stone monuments dotted about the area it seems the woods originated as the park of some noble pile. That must have been a while ago as the later municipal additions have had time to fall into disrepair, and the whole place looks somewhat run down. 

Though dishevelled and graffiti daubed it's not unloved. Even on a weekday morning there were plenty of people about, a couple of young men fishing from the bridge, retirees taking a constitutional, joggers and dog walkers, a student sitting on a bench lost in a book, a Chinese woman who looked much younger than she probably was doing yoga in a shadowy spot by the river. It felt remote and peaceful despite being only a few hundred metres from the city centre.

The city itself is a mixture of old and new, a typical small industrial city. Gill reckoned that the British equivalent would be in the Midlands, "Loughborough," she suggested. "Maybe Stafford," I added.

The oldest part was around the Gothic cathedral and Playa Major.

In-between, the ancient rectilinear plan remains, but sometime between the fifties and seventies many streets had been redeveloped, it all looked somewhat bland and corporate. Each pedestrianised street looked identical, it was very easy to get lost, which we promptly did.

We had spotted a well reviewed traditional tapas bar near the central market. It turned out to be more 'local' than we anticipated and the welcome somewhat frosty, so we headed down a nearby street and found a more modern cafe, it looked to be part of a chain, a Spanish version of Costa Coffee, we decided.

Palencia is probably more typical of the Spain of today than some touristy hotspot like Avila. It doesn't feel impoverished, but it's not exactly thriving. An article I found talked about how young people were moving away from Palencia to find work in nearby Valladolid which is a large scale manufacturing hub. It's an issue affecting the UK's smaller cities too, as educational attainment improves higher achieving  school leavers head to university and find better paid jobs in thriving cities

Their hometowns  get 'left behind'. It's what we both did, followed by all three of our children, two now live in London, our youngest in Tokyo.

Theoretically the growth of remote working should have been good news for towns and small cities. However, it's not only about work, small towns aren't seen as cool, they lack fashionable places to meet and lack the urban vibe that young people crave. The one thing they do offer is more affordable housing, which is part of the reason why we ended up living in a town rather than a city. Perhaps governments need to take positive action to achieve a more balanced demographic. They could incentivise inward migration by offering discounted council tax to under thirties in towns with an ageing demographic and provide low cost co-working spaces. Something needs to be done to revitalise Europe's grey-haired hinterlands.

In Palencia preparations for Semana Santa were one step ahead of Avila and Salamanca. The main square was at a similar stage of municipal construction, but on the streets a small pre-Easter procession wounds its way through the old town.

It consisted of a slightly disorganised parade of tweenies and younger teenagers wearing conical cardboard penitent hats chivvied along by attendant adults, their teachers I presumed.

I found it uncomfortable to watch. Spain's major Easter events usually involve garish religious floats shouldered by the beefier members of the local confraternities. They're a trial of strength as much as an expression of faith. The point is the adult participants are willing; I wondered just how much choice these kids had about participating in a public expression of faith.

I wondered about how much influence the Catholic church had these days in Spain's state education system. A Chatgpt question!  My new AI buddy came up with a surprising conclusion, similar to the UK. Like in England religious education is mandatory in schools directly funded by the state, however in Spain pupils can opt to attend classes in ethics and philosophy instead, which is something which would be good to adopt in the UK too. Just as England has CofE and RC sponsored schools, Spain's 'concertados' schools are state funded, but privately run, most administered by the Catholic church.

Theoretically this gives people choice Though I can't speak for Spain, but in the UK practically speaking parents often have little choice but to use the nearest infant or primary school and if it happens to be CofE sponsored it will espouses Christian values rather than secular.

This was certainly the case so far as our kids were concerned. When we moved to Buxton we bought a Victorian cottage on the western edge of town. The nearest primary school served the mainly middle class area of Burbage. Unsurprisingly it had a good reputation, performed well academically and prided itself on  traditional values to do with positive  behaviour and discipline. In other words a typical CofE infant and junior school. The extent the local parish priest was involved in the school and the place's overtly Christian ethos was irritating, and as   teachers ourselves committed to child-centred values the place seemed annoyingly blind to individual needs. The school worked well for our middle child who was naturally outgoing and competitive. Our eldest, a more introverted child, but bright and reading books for pleasure far in advance of his peers quickly became bored and miserable. Our youngest too was unhappy there, her reticence misinterpreted as disinterest. Admittedly I'm talking about 25 years ago, things may different now.

So far as the Christian ethos was concerned, we put up with it, but I don't know how the school would have managed if Buxton had been a more multicultural community.

State schools should be secular in my view. The English equivalent of the pointy penitents hats on the kids on the streets of Palencia has to be wrapping the heads of seven year olds in checky tea towels and making them await the arrival of an 'angel of the Lord' in the school nativity play. Who benefits from these traditions? Not the kids for sure.

Northwards - Avila and Salamanca

With a week to go before our ferry from Bilbao it was time to think about heading northwards. From Aranjuez there are two options, skirt around the eastern suburbs of Madrid then head north to Soria and Logroño. Alternatively, take the motorways west of Madrid through the Sierra de Gredos that would enable us to visit Avila and Salamanca. We chose the latter route, deciding that Avila's famous medieval walls were something we might like to see, and on a more mundane note Camping Regio on the outskirts of Salamanca has a laundry. This raises an interesting question - what has shaped our 12 year sojourn by motorhome around Europe - the continent's cultural gems or the availability of laundry facilities?

North of Madrid the AP6 climbs quickly towards the southern flank of the Sierra Guadarrama. It's a spectacular looking landscape, today especially so with banks of thundery looking cumulus half obscuring the jagged peaks.  We turned west towards Avila, crossing a dun coloured plain. 

The area autocaravanas at Avila seems to be operated by the local motorhome owners association. It's the first time we have come across this in Spain. This is not uncommon in Italy,  a good arrangement as the places tend to be better looked after than municipal run ones, and better laid out too as they have been designed by people who know what motorhome owners need. We pre-booked on-line, it was a relief that the office was open when we arrived as the instructions for using the barrier code are somewhat gnomic. The guy behind the desk ticked us off the pending list, and was able to sell us a baguette for lunch too. 

The area is a couple of hundred metres from the old town's walls, adjacent to the tour bus parking and a newly constructed police station - convenient and secure! We wandered up to the walls to take a few photos, a steep climb! 

The ramparts are impressive, built in part on Roman foundations, then with Moorish additions topped by post reconquista crenellations - that amounts to two thousand years of uninterrupted human habitation. The walls are floodlit after dark - I took a photo, it doesn't really capture just how spectacular they are.

The next day we explored the old town itself. We wondered about having lunch out, there were lots of cafés marked on Google maps, however most had distinctly lacklustre reviews. Beyond the old city gates the reason became clear. We should have realised by the size of the coach park that Avila is a big day trip destination. Experience has taught us that mass tourism equals mediocre catering. However, it's not just the walls and ancient streets of the old city that attracts people here. 

Avila is an important place of pilgrimage, the hostels with shell insignia attest to that, however the trashy religious gift shops and big coach park suggest that these days most religious tourists arrive in air conditioned buses not on foot. Aside from its ancient walls Avila's main claim to fame is that Saint Teresa was born here in in 1511. She entered a Carmelite nunnery at the age of 20, and over the next half century became venerated for her writings which promulgated a mystical, ecstatic approach to religious devotion. She also campaigned for more austere practices in the Carmelite order. 

During her lifetime she was a divisive figure, her writings much loved by the laity, however the probity of her ecstatic outpourings were questioned by the more conservative elements within the Catholic hierarchy.

Nevertheless Teresa was canonised in 1622, around the time the Bernini produced a somewhat more eroticised depiction of her spiritual ecstasy.

She remains to this day one of Catholicism's most venerated saints, particularly in Spain. To the skeptically minded all this seems very odd and the trashy religious tourist tat on sale simply ludicrous.

Avila itself has significant old churches and a network of ancient streets, but like many upland towns it feels a little bleak and austere. The Google reviews were right about the place's cafes, we headed to one of the better regarded ones and it just about managed to be mediocre. The welcome was somewhat half-hearted too, which is unusual in Spain.

We gave up on the touristy old bit and headed towards Avila's main shopping area. We needed to find some small gifts for Nico's first birthday. Alehop to the rescue! We are much happier with retail therapy than religious devotion.

On the way back to the van we walked back through the old city's main square. Big posters advertised upcoming events for Semana Santa - there are spectacular Easter shenanigans in most Spanish cities, but I guess the one in Avila must be deemed particularly sacred due to the place's association with Saint Teresa.

It's a little over a hundred kilometres from Avila to Salamanca. Initially the motorway snakes through hill country but it soon flattens out into the wide upland plain that covers much of the Castille-Leon region. 

At this time of year it's usually barren looking, leading us to dub it 'beige Spain'. Not this time, the unusually wet winter had turned it bright green, reminiscent more of Spalding than Uzbekistan.

Before heading for Camping Regio we found a place on the outskirts of Salamanca offering low priced diesel and GPL, we topped up both, enough to get us back to the UK. Trump's Iran adventure has sent fuel prices skywards and if the war becomes prolonged stocks are going to dwindle. How are flights to Japan in May and our plans to visit the Czech Republic in the summer might be affected remains to be seen.

We arrived at Camping Regio in Salamanca's suburbs in the early afternoon. It was sunny so we did our laundry straightaway. We had it washed and dried by sixish - enough clean clothes to see us home. Sometimes achieving mundane stuff can seem peculiarly pleasing.

We know Camping Regio well, I reckon we've stayed here about a dozen times. However, despite the site having a bus stop by the entrance and a regular service into the city we've only visited the centre three times.

 Checking back in the blog I was surprised to learn that our last visit to the city centre was eight years ago in 2018. There is a good reason for this. When we head south from Santander in the winter Salamanca is just about manageable in a day's drive. Camping Regio is convenient, and more importantly open all year, a rare thing in central Spain during the winter months. It's location is ideal, the climate less so. The high plains of Castille are bitterly cold in January and February, struggling to reach double digits during the day and sub zero after dark. It's not conducive to sightseeing.

In a country endowed with beautiful old cities Salamanca still stands out. I can't think of anywhere better to appreciate Spain's unique plateresque architecture. Whereas in the rest of Europe it's easy to spot the development of architecture from the late fifteenth to the mid seventeenth centuries, a largely orderly procession from the late Gothic, through the classicising Renaissance to the exuberant Baroque, Spain followed a different path. 

The decoration on monumental buildings during this period mixed gothic ornament, patterns adopted from Iberia's Islamic heritage with classical motifs, covering buildings in intricate patterns reminiscent of silversmithing - hence 'plateresque'.

However, before we arrived at the clutch buildings around the university and cathedral that typify the style we had a less elevated but more delicious treat planned. In the street behind the produce market lies  Chocolatería Valor. 

Their churros and chocolate are legendary, it's been eight years since we were last here, we've been anticipating our return visit for days.

We were not disappointed.

Salamanca's Central Square lies just beyond the market area. It's one of Spain's most spectacular. 

At lunchtime it fills up with teenagers from local schools and university students. They gather here to have a chat and have a picnic. It's all very convivial, no messing about and no litter. Impressive!

From here what was once the old city's main thoroughfare leads to Salamanca's ancient heart.

We had spotted a potential lunch spot on Google maps called Tapas 3. It was closed, however another place just around the corner somewhat unimaginatively called 'Tapas 2' was open. I guess the establishments must be linked in some way. 

It was very cosy, more of a snug than a restaurant. I wondered how such a small place could ever make a profit, then I realised the stairs in the corner led down to a bigger dining area in the cellar. We were happy enough to perch on the bar stools. The menu was interesting, the whole place had a cool hipterish vibe. Was this style over substance?

The answer, not at all, the wine list was interesting and the menu promised an elevated take on tapas classics. We were handed a menu in English, we opted for, 'very spicy potatoes' (patatas bravas), Tempura with asparagus and prawns, and 'Grandma Manuela's Croquettes.' The first two dishes were good, however Manuela's Grandma must have been an inspired cook, the Croquettes were sensational.

Tapas 2 didn't serve coffee, they recommended a place nearby, 'Dale Café'. 

The espressos were good, but the most memorable thing about the place was when we were handed a map pin with our coffee. Visitors from abroad are invited to pinpoint their home town on a big world map on the wall. We squeezed ours on the southern edge of the gaggle of Mancunian visitors. Europe and North America were all well represented, as was China and 'down under'. Most remarkable was  a single pin in the emptiness of central Asia. My geography of the steppes is not good enough to identify exactly which 'Stan' the visitor haled from, maybe they were Tajiki or Uzbeki, somewhere on the Silk road anyway.

The area around the University and the Cathedral is very beautiful. It is no coincidence that Salamanca is often likened to Oxford. Similarly the university buildings span the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, both built in a cream coloured sandstone that seems to absorb sunlight as much as reflect it.

Tulips were in bloom beneath slender cypresses by Cathedral's portal. 'Maybe our daffodils may be out when we get home', we pondered.

Beyond the beds of spring flowers temporary barriers were being unloaded from a municipal truck and a plywood ramp constructed in front of the main door of the cathedral. As in Avila preparations for Semana Santa were well under way. In Salamanca the parade involves shouldering enormous floats depicting scenes from Easter story. It's a tight fit to get them out of the Cathedral and ramps are needed to carry them safely down the steps.

 I wondered how these traditional parades might fare in the future. Spain is secularising more quickly than any other Catholic country in Europe, non-belief is rising even faster than in Ireland. In a recent census 40% of adults identified as 'non-believers' and regular church attendance has dropped to well under 20%, amongs under thirties this has diminished to single figures. Yet the country's Semana Santa events remain popular. In time they may simply become cherished 'folk traditions' like Shetland's 'Up helly aa' or the Padstow 'Obby Oss', events that have long lost their ritual significance but nevertheless assert a sense of community and shared history.

Beyond the cathedral old streets wind down the hill to the banks of the river Tormes. The bridge can be traced back to the Roman era.

Southern Europe didn't really experience a 'dark age' like in the north. Cities continued to grow and trade prospered even after the fall of the Roman Empire, and in Spain in the Moorish kingdom's Islamic scholars reintroduced Greek mathematics to Western Europe combining them with ideas from the near east and Persia. In the thirteenth century learning spread from monasteries into the secular world as the first universities were established, like here in Salamanca.

The buildings around the university are very beautiful, but one of them serves as a reminder that Spain's history has had darker moments too. The main archives relating to the Civil War is located here.

 

Though Franco died in 1975, a fully functional democratic system was not established until 1982. People here who are our age grew up in an authoritarian state. Spain's progess had been truly remarkable, a credit to the Spanish themselves, but also shining example of the success of the European Union. We must cherish this at a time when right wing bigotry is on the rise across the west and the 'American Dream' seems more like a nightmare.  Spain gives me hope, we've had a good day in troubled times.

Madrid, the Prado, Las Meninas, Goya, then finally...lunch.

Motorhomes and urban areas don't mix. If we visit a major city we try to find a nearby town with good public transport links to the urban centre. Madrid is well served in this respect because of Spain's excellent high speed train network, both Toledo and Segovia are possible places to stay even though both are some distance from the capital. In the end we used the campsite at Aranjuez. The town is connected to the Madrid metro, though it's closer to the city than the other two it took longer. Though the metro is inexpensive, regular and comfortable it's definitely not 'high speed'.

I'm the one who wanted to visit Madrid. It's not because I have a strong desire to experience the city, what I want to see are two paintings - 'Las Meninas' by Velasquez and Picasso's 'Guernica'. Sadly they are in different galleries. It's not really possible to 'do' two major galleries in one day. I decided to visit the Prado and see 'Las Meninas'. Maybe we'll return another year to see 'Guernica' in the modern art museum. I appreciate Gill's forbearance in this, she finds the stultifying air and peculiar reverential atmosphere you get in major galleries hard to bear. I do too, but if you want to see a particular picture in situ then you have no option but to put up with it.

Despite the campsite receptionist's dire warnings walking to the station was no problem whatsoever. Most of the way we followed the river on a pleasant footpath The only hazard were gaggles of geese who seemed reluctant to budge from our path.

We reached the centre of Aranjuez, it's about a 20 minute walk. The road to the station passed the town's famous palace. It was redesigned in the early Eighteenth century to emulate Versailles. I'm not a fan of grandiose Baroque piles, we've seen a few over the years, not just Versailles, but Caserta near Naples and Mafra north of Lisbon. 

They're all variations on the same theme, designed to assert autocratic power, grandiose expressions of Enlightenment despotism. Like Gothic cathedrals they may be magnificent architecturally but viewed politically they should be regarded as instruments of oppression.

It took a  little over half an hour to get to Madrid. We alighted at Atocha station. At its heart the building is a magnificent Modernista masterpiece.

The original interior is somewhat hidden these days by modern additions and re-modelling. It's very easy to get lost, which we promptly did. 

We emerged next to what looked like a big palace topped by enormous equestrian statuary above the portico. It turned out to be the Ministry of Agriculture. The minister's job may be mundane, endless meetings about net zero and plasticulture, but the job does come with an office worthy of the Sun King. We consulted Google maps, fortuitously the Ministry of Agriculture happened to be at the south end of Paseo de Prado, exactly where we needed to be, the museum was about a ten minute walk up the boulevard past the Botanical Gardens.

Gill had pre-booked the tickets on-line. This didn't make finding the way-in any easier. The facade of the Prado is about 300m long, there are entrances on each side of the building. Of course we went to the wrong one - for school parties and tour groups only. When we eventually found the correct one at the opposite end we were faced with a cordoned off maze, like you get at a Springsteen concert where tens of thousands of over-excited fans need careful management to avoid a crush. However we were the only punters in sight outnumbered by the neatly uniformed jobs-worths on hand to control the invisible hoard. We still failed to find the way in without help. Even though we had e-tickets we had to go to the ticket desk to swap them for paper ones and present our passports (which fortuitously Gill had in her bag) to prove we actually were aged over 65 and eligible for a €3 reduction. The entry procedure still was not quite complete, off we went again outside, navigated another empty maze then re-entered through the main door. After emptying our pockets and putting both ourselves and our bags  through an airport style scanner we were finally OKed to look at the paintings.

It's not just the Prado, every major art gallery I've ever visited - the Uffizi, Louvre, Rijksmuseum, Moma, - they've all been a trial, too much to take in, exhausting. The secret is not to try to see everything, to go with a plan and ours, on paper at least, seemed modest. Look at one picture by Velasquez - 'Las Meninas' then concentrate on the Prado's incomparable collection of Goya's.

It wasn't easy, the Prado is a former palace consisting of two floors of airy rooms connected by long corridors and a smaller basement area. Each room is identified by Roman numerals above the tall doorway but Arabic ones were used on the plan that I photographed. I guess it's good for you to have to wrack your brains to remember Latin lessons from 1968 to navigate the gallery - XCIV (Goya in the basement)  X11 (Velasquez's Las Meninas).

In reality no matter how much pre-planning you do big gallery behemoths always spring some wearisome surprise. The Prado sprung one one me straightaway. I decided to find the loo, not easy, the institution is much too highbrow to signpost its toilets plainly. I asked. They were in the basement, off a gloomy but spacious arcaded central space. The central area was cordoned off, occupied by a Steinway concert grand. A young woman, a music student I presume, was crouched over the keyboard playing a slow, melancholy melody, a handful of people had gathered to listen, they had adopted their best rapt appreciation demeanour. By the time I returned from my more basic mission the piece was reaching its finale, spectacular runs, cacophonous arpeggios crashing around the confines of the enclosed basement. Concert grands are designed for  somewhere the size of the Albert Hall, the basement was about forty feet across I would guess, the piano was deafening, the space weirdly echoey, the effect nerve-wracking. It had a disorienting effect on me, I couldn't remember which of the arches encircling the room led to the stairs. Finally I emerged and was glad to find Gill. "What on earth was that noise?" she enquired. "I think it might have been Chopin" I replied weakly.

It was good to have a plan, more difficult to stick to it. With the gallery map open on our phones we orienteered our way towards Las Meninas in room XII.  It was tricky, I was distracted by a roomful of swooning El Greco saints, assailed by Rubens' fleshy nymphs, noted a row of Tintoretto, walked purposely through a corridor of Murillo, Zuraban and de Ribera until finally I arrived at room XII

Las Meninas was unmissable, partly because it's a large canvas with a striking composition, but mainly because a small scrum of admirers blocked out the lower third of the picture. Rather than observing the painting itself they all concentrated on their tour guide. He had his back to the painting explaining to the gaggle in front of him why the picture was important. I have no idea if what he was said was sensible because both the voluble guide and his attentive audience were Chinese.

When you go on-line to buy tickets for the Prado you are faced with a deluge of third party sites all attempting to 'elevate' the experience with 'add-ons'. For €36 you can join a 'curated' group tour and have what you are seeing explained to you. It's not difficult to work out which nationality this is pitched at, as the site explains, 'We are waiting for our customers at the door of the Starbucks in Plaza de Cánovas del Castillo.' The tour takes 90 minutes. It's got to be a 'Prado greatest hits compilation experience'. The gallery dispays approximately 1300 art works, to see  them all in an hour and half would mean you have 4.23 seconds to appreciate each one.

For €10 euros less you can hire an MP3 audio guide. I can see that it would be useful if you didn't know much about art. Alternatively, you can book an individual local expert, they rent their services for four hours, which is probably about the time you would need if you were going to fully appreciate the Prado's impressive collection. Again this seems to be pitched at American tourists with more money than sense - the price, a mere $505.

I first came across Las Meninas over half a century ago when I read an essay about the painting while making notes for my A level Art course. Unusually 30% of the marks came from a written History of Art paper. This proved fortuitous as my drawing and painting skills proved somewhat rudimentary but I discovered I was pretty good at teaching myself Art History. Mr Fawcett, my teacher, had little interest in the theory side of things and basically gave us a list of artists and movements from the Renaissance and Baroque era to research in the school library. I discovered I loved looking at paintings, which was tricky given I lived in a small market town, miles from anywhere, in north Northumberland. The Duke of Northumberland's stately pile in the town had a couple of Turners and a Claude Lorraine, then I learned that the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh had a more extensive collection. My Dad was from Scotland and didn't need much encouragement to visit Edinburgh which was about 90 miles away, so doable as a day trip. In Scotland's National Gallery I was able to see many different paintings from different eras and a mixture of all sorts of styles.

The painting which stood out in my mind afterwards was Velasquez's 'Old Woman frying eggs'. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras there was a strict hierarchy so far as painting was concerned. The most  admired works were large scale religious cycles, altarpieces or 'history paintings' depicting significant political events - battles, peace treaties or coronations for example. Next came portraiture - usually of the great and the good, then landscape, still life and so called 'genre' painting. The latter might be characterised as 'scenes from ordinary life'. This had its roots in scenes depicting seasonal rural life in medieval Cathedral sculpture and manuscripts. It emerged into mainstream painting in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century. The works of Pieter Breughel are a good example. However peasant life was often depicted in a humourous way, mocked as much as celebrated, or a moral point made about the importance of hard work or the dangers of drunkenness or lechery.

Velasquez's 'Old woman frying eggs'. affords the two figures - an old woman and a teenage boy - equal dignity as if the artist were depicting an aristocrat, a cardinal or a saint. At the time this was revolutionary. Technically too, I cannot think of another artist from the early 16th Century who matches Velasquez's facility to render a scene with near photographic acuity. Vermeer perhaps, but Velasquez painted this a decade before the Dutch master was born, moreover, aged 20 he was barely out of his apprenticeship.

Unexpectedly It was  Velasquez's earliest work that I found myself thinking about when I came face to face with 'Las Meninas', completed almost four decades later. I recalled reading that it had been called 'the first modern painting', but couldn't remember by whom. Chatgpt to the rescue!

In his 1966 book The Order of Things (Les mots et les choses), Foucault opens with a long, detailed analysis of Las Meninas. He argues that the painting radically rethinks representation—blurring the boundaries between artist, subject, and viewer—and in doing so anticipates key concerns of modern art.

Why Foucault saw it as “modern”

Self-awareness of painting: The work reflects on its own act of creation (Velázquez paints himself painting).

Viewer involvement: The spectator is implicated—standing where the king and queen would be.

Ambiguity of reality vs representation: The mirror, canvas, and gazes create uncertainty about what is “real.”

All of this is true, but what enabled Velasquez to play games with reality was his mastery of realism, something that was evident even in his early work, so there is a direct link between 'The old woman cooking eggs' and the unusually informal scene of courtly life found in 'Las Meninas'.

It's a little strange looking at a painting for real that you have known from photographs for decades. In this size matters. Reproduced in a book all paintings can be taken-in at a glance, whether it's one of  Correggio's monumental trompe-l'œil domes or a postcard sized Turner watercolour. Las Meninas is a large canvas - 3.2m x 2.8m, the foreground figures are almost lifesize. So it's only possible to take in the entire composition if you stand in the middle of the big room it occupies. This proved tricky. The Prado was busy, most of the time a crowd obscured the lower part of the painting.,

When you join the gaggle your eye has to range across the painting taking in details here and there. Velasquez's scintillating realism is evident, but only in parts - the Infanta, her ladies in waiting (las meninas), the court fool, the family dog and the artist's face are all rendered with characteristic verisimilitude.

However the parts of the big canvas are painted more sketchily. The smudged image of the King and Queen in the square mirror on the back wall which forms the painting's focal point is not in itself unusual in terms of technique; it simply applies the principles of aerial perspective found in landscape to an interior scene. However iconographically as a royal portrait it's revolutionary. 

In 1659 King Phillip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria ruled the first truly global empire, their dominions stretching from the tip of Argentina to Mexico in the West and the Philippines and Borneo in the East. Yet in Las Meninas the royal couple are reduced to faint reflections in the background. So who is the  subject of the painting? It's a question that has been long debated - the Infanta, the ladies in waiting, Velasquez - the artist as master of ceremonies? Are we, the onlookers actually the main subject, standing in the space occupied by the royal couple glimpsed in the mirror?

All of this I knew beforehand, but seeing Las Meninas for real still sprung some surprises. I noticed some  details in the scene that are rendered more sketchily than others. For example whereas the artist's face is painted carefully his hand holding the brush is suggested rather than depicted clearly. 

Similarly, the pageboy is sketched in the bottom right of the painting caught in the act of cheekily poking the family dog with his foot. Does Velasquez's loose handling here signify movement? The effect is reminiscent of a late Victorian family photograph where the limitations of early box cameras demanded subjects stay stock still, but they never quite managed it and so odd detail here and there is blurred.

I was delighted to see Las Meninas for real, even if it had taken me over half a century to manage it. I do think it is one of European civilisation's more 'radical' works of art, like 'The Tempest', 'Pride and Prejudice', Beethoven's late Quartets, Picasso's 'Les Demoiselles de Avignon', or Eliot's 'The Wasteland', works that seem ahead of their time, genre-changers that redefine what is possible or acceptable. I think Foucault correctly asserted that 'Las Meninas' should be regarded as the first 'modern' painting. What makes it remarkable is that the work is centuries ahead of its time. When critics in the late Nineteenth century attacked Manet's work, such as 'Dejeuner sur l' herbe', 'Olympia', or 'Bar at Folies Bergere' as looking partly unfinished, or taking liberties with compositional decorum, these innovations can be traced  back to La Meninas painted two hundred years earlier.

We headed to see Goya's work next. They're spread over three rooms, two adjacent to one another and a third in the basement. We found them all eventually, the Prado is a bit of a maze.

In Goya's early portraits Velasquez's influence is evident. Both painters are capable of impeccable realism, however their aesthetics are quite different. Velasquez's eye is cool and analytical, Goya's more emotionally engaging, an odd mix of empathy and edginess that at times can be unsettling.

In the portrait of the Duke of Osuna and his family the handling is so precise the result looks hyperreal. The children exude saccerine innocence, a posed  perfection that feels almost spooky.

Close by we came across Goya's celebrated group portrait of Charles IV and his family. The painting acknowledges it's illustrious predecessor - Las Meninas' - by placing the artist and canvas on the left of the scene. Here, however, the King and his family are placed centre stage. The work hardly exudes royal pomp and circumstance. They look like a motley crew, diminished by their sumptuous attire rather than elevated by it. Not everyone is looking in the same direction, one princess glances behind her, others stare distractedly to the left. It looks like a big family group photos taken at a wedding when people who haven't met for years and never got on anyway are corralled into a gaggle, the result emanating awkwardness rather than togetherness.

Goya makes no effort to idealise the royal personages, he depicts them 'warts and all'. The portraits are so shockingly true to life that it has led commentators to ask if the intention was satirical rather than celebratory.

By now it was early afternoon and the Prado was packed. To protect paintings, I presume, the temperature and humidity in the gallery is strictly controlled. When crowded the place becomes unpleasantly stuffy. We figured that most people would be traipsing through the place room by room chronologically, so the galleries in the basement with Goya's works dating from the early nineteenth century might be less crowded. The ruse proved partly right, the rooms were busy but felt airier.

The works were split between two medium sized galleries. One contained commissioned paintings from the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the other Goya's so called ' black paintings' produced as murals in the house he bought in the 1820s. These intensively personal works were never intended for exhibition but were removed and mounted on canvas after the artist's death.

Two big canvases dominated the first room. They commemorate the popular uprising in Madrid in May 1808 against the Bourbon dynasty installed by Napoleon during the Peninsula War. The unrest on May 2nd of May is depicted on one painting and the other shows the bloody aftermath on the following day when score of citizens were shot by firing squad by French soldiers.

It's a haunting image. Kenneth Clarke commented  that it was revolutionary both in style and content. Compared to the restrained  aristocratic portraits that typified Goya's early work, the raw energy, political engagement and popularist sentiment of 'May 3rd.' reveals how his career spanned the cusp of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries and the transition from effervescent Rococo to a dark, brooding Romanticism.

Goya's last works, dubbed his 'black paintings' occupy the adjacent room. Painted in the early 1820s they originally were murals painted in his house, personal works rather than public. That art might be about personal expression rather than public statement is a Central tenet of Romanticism. They are traumatic works, the product of a troubled mind haunted by the violence and upheaval of the Napoleonic period and reflecting the ill health and deafness that Goya suffered as he aged. It's interesting to reflect on the parallel with Beethoven's late Quartets which are equally 'difficult'.

Some of the paintings reflect a preoccupation with witchcraft...

Others depict old age in a wild, sketchy style, its monochromatic palette presaging Expressionism...

The horror of 'Saturn devouring his son' is deeply disturbing. The painter, who in his youth exuded a sunny humane disposition, seems to have been overwhelmed by dark thoughts and haunted by visions inhumanity in his old age. 

Though these paintings are intensely personal they also mirror broader cultural trends. Grimm's fairy tales and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were published in the decade previously. A few years later Edgar Allen Poe's spooky short stories appeared in American magazines.  It seems an appetite for the uncanny and 'Gothic' prevailed across much of Western culture in the first few decades of the Nineteenth century.

We decided that we had seen enough. We set out to see Las Meninas and the Goya collection and that's exactly what we did. Time for lunch! There was an interesting looking café marked on Google maps about half a kilometre from the Prado. 

Cafe Matilda is a small hipterish styled place that prides itself on providing 'homey' Spanish food freshly cooked in it's minuscule kitchen. The owner was very welcoming and accommodating. Given the place is situated between the Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, both visitors hotspots, then the Menú del día for €16 seemed remarkably good value.

Tortillas were on offer as a starter,...

for mains Gill chose beef stew, I went for jamon.

Dessert of the day was either a Basque cheesecake or creme caramel, Gill had the cheesecake and I chose the creme caramel - so we could share.

 A glass of wine and a coffee afterwards was included in the price. Considering everything was made to order - unpretentious but delicious home style cookery - and given we were in the heart of a capital city, then Cafe Matilda offers an authentic contemporary style Spanish food at an affordable price. My desire to see Guernica for real in the Reina Sofía Museum means we will need return to Madrid again sometime. Cafe Matilda joins our list of must return to eateries' dotted around Italy and Iberia.

The cafe was in a grid of smaller streets west of the Paseo del Prado in the Barrio de las Letras. The district looks as if it developed in the nineteenth century, but the old buildings are interspersed with modern ones. The area's former power station 'Central Del Mediodía' was converted into an arts centre about twenty years ago. The old and the new are combined spectacularly. The entire structure is suspended on girders to give the impression that the older building floats above the ground.

The gable end of the adjacent building has been converted into a vertical garden.

Spain has to be one of the EU's more spectacular success stories, there is something dynamic and forward looking about the place, it feels optimistic, which is not something you sense in Europe's heartlands to the north. Despite our avowed preference for smaller 'walkable' cities, I think we must return to Madrid, not just to see Guernica but to explore more widely. We've had a memorable day, good for the brain, sustaining for the soul and a delicious lunch too. What more do you need?

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