Questions of belonging

Homecoming doesn't just involve drawing up outside our house and transferring at on of gear into the garage then filling the washing machine with multiple loads of laundry, I don't feel a trip is fully complete without a blog post that acknowledges our return. For some reason or other so far as our trip to Spain and Portugal earlier in the year goes, I left it dangling awkwardly north of Palencia on March 27th. It seems improper to set off for the Czech Republic today without writing us back home from Spain.

So, a short resumé of the bit in-between. We've done a lot, but most of it didn't involve the motorhome.

1. Bilbao, Biscay, Hackney Wick and Dulwich 

We've sailed from Bilbao a number of times and promised ourselves that next time we'd arrive a day early and visit the city. This is still the case, as we neared the city our enthusiasm vanished and we we headed straight to the parking by the ferry terminal.

 Sometimes your head arrives home before the rest of you, 'endishness" as Gill calls it, sets in. Biscay was lumpy but we felt ok. The latest generation of Brittany Ferries are well stabilised, which is a good thing given the propensity for squally Atlantic lows to barrel across the big bay.

We headed back to London rather than straight back home. We had missed Nico's first birthday party by a day due to the vagaries of the Brittany Ferries timetable in late March. They swap from the winter to the summer schedule and for one week there are fewer sailings. Luckily our kids seem to regard birthdays as a festive season, like Christmas, rather than an event, so I don't think our late arrival mattered too much.

 First we visited Matthew and Cristyna in the apartment they've just bought in Dulwich

Jesse is seven months now, much more alert and active than when we last saw him at Christmas.

Next day we managed a belated birthday lunch with Sarah and Nico at the Breakfast Club in Hackney Wick. Again, so different in a matter of months.

Derbyshire!!!

It was good to get home. This winter's trip did have delightful moments, but it was unusually chilly and wet in Iberia so it can't count as one of our most memorable. 

The only surprise when we got back was the state of the woodlands behind our garden. Ash die-back has affected a lot of the Peak District's woodlands, including the Wyehead Woods which we overlook. Work to remove the affected trees had commenced before we left, but we were unprepared for just how radical the intervention would be.

Perhaps it won't look so bad when the trees come into leaf, we wondered. It seemed a vain hope at the time...  but two months later -

The power of nature to bounce back is breathtaking. We may be the the cleverest species on the planet, but we are not the most powerful, as we plunge headlong into the future; if we are the hare, trees are intractable tortoises.

When we booked our flights to Japan a few months ago 25 days between arriving back in the UK from Spain before heading for the Far East seemed like plenty of time. It flashed by, especially as we spent a week of it Ralfi minding while Sarah, Rob and Nico were in Lisbon. 

.They flew from Manchester so were able to spend a few days with us before and after their trip.

 It's good for us, we get to go out and about with them in Buxton, to be reminded why it is such a popular place with day-trippers from Manchester - a lovely park with great play equipment, family friendly cafés, lots of events in Pavillion gardens and a nationally renowned summer opera and arts festival. 

When we bump into Brits on our travels the question 'where are you from' often arises'. When we tell them 'we live in Buxton' most people know it and are positive about the place. The local tourist office's claim that Buxton is England's primary spa town is somewhat overblown, the residents of Cheltenham, Harrogate or Leamington Spa might beg to differ. It's true though, aside from the Pennine climate, Buxton does have its charms as a place to visit.

However, is it a great place to live? Maybe the answer to that question is a little more ambivalent. Most tourists don't experience the endless grey winter days, months of damp and gloom. To be fair, we don't either because we run away! Moreover, there's more to the place than the breezy assertions of the tourist board website -

Home of Buxton Water, this special thermal spa town is nestled in the centre of the beautiful Peak District and surrounded by the UK’s oldest National Park. Stunning ornamental gardens and world-famous Georgian and Victorian architecture provide an impressive backdrop to a rich and vibrant range of music, theatre and festivals.

None of this is untrue, but the town's marketing department skirts around the reason why the town may be in the centre of the Peak District but merely 'surrounded' by the national park.

The reason for this anomaly?

As well as spring water, iconic Victorian gardens and an opera house, the enormous quarries that surround Buxton supply most of the UK's cement. The town is a rare example in the UK of a place where heavy industry is thrives. 

It gives the place a peculiar split personality, Leamington Spa, with a dash of mid-century Ebbw Vale thrown in for good measure. The divide is both sociological and geographical. West and south of the town centre is more 'well-to-do' than the areas to the north and east. Taken together the mix reflects British society more generally. The High Peak constituency is a bellweather, in every general election in the last half century the local result reflected the national outcome.

In other respects, Buxton is somewhat idiosyncratic and I think the town's topography has a lot to do with that. The only other town in the UK located over 1000' is Alston in Cumbria; technically it may qualify as a market town, in reality it is more like a big village; Buxton is over 20 times the size of its Cumbrian competitor. However they do share the dubious accolade as the place with the most miserable winter weather in the country. 

Glance at a map and you see immediately that Alston is remote. The same cannot be said of Buxton, the conurbations of Manchester, Sheffield and the Potteries all lie within 20 miles. Nevertheless, it feels remote because most of the roads leading to the town are narrow, winding and hazardous. Two of them, the A537 'Cat and Fiddle' to Macclesfield and the A53 to Leek and the Potteries both managed over recent years to be named as the UK's most deadly trunk road. 

Despite being surrounded by large conurbations it's an hour's drive at least to get to the M6 or M1 and the connecting roads are narrow and busy with big trucks heading for Buxton's quarries. So despite being close to three big cities the place hasn't developed as you might expect into a commuter town' It remains in common with its fictional neighbour, 'Royston Vasey', a local town for local people'.

This is probably why if people enquire where we are from, we say we live in Buxton. It would be presumptuous for us to assert that we are from Buxton because we have only lived here for 38 years. To be a proper Buxtonian requires multi-generational occupancy. Even better if your surname is Mycock, Lomas, Blood, Salt or Garlick, if not, then with luck you might have a cousin or an uncle who is a member of one of the clans. 

Without such local connections you are doomed to be regarded forever as an incomer and remain so no matter how long you live here. As an outsider the peculiarities of the place can be mystifying. There's no way without being fluent in proper Derbyshire that we could convincingly hail an acquaintance with a terse 'Yallreet' or use the term "duck' phatically. Mid-week on a winter's afternoon in Morrisons the chat feels scripted by Victoria Wood, morphing seamlessly between 'Acorn Antiques' and 'Dinner Ladies' depending on the social mix at the checkout Gill is convinced that the person who cuts her hair is the sister of Victoria Wood's imaginary friend 'Keemberlay'. Ok, the local accent's different, but the schtick is the same.

So if I don'l have a sense of belonging to where I live, where do I feel connected to? To Gill, our kids, their partners and now their offspring - certainly. I love our house and garden too and the patch of ancient woodland at the back of it, Beyond that I don't have a strong sense of belonging, perhaps the opposite is true, I enjoy not belonging, being the outsider looking in, a stranger in the crowd, it probably explains why I am at my happiest when we travel.

However, I don't feel completely disconnected. Having just spent three weeks travelling in Japan, immersed in a culture that is highly sophisticated but profoundly different, the experience gift you an insight into the parameters of your identity. I feel more European than British. If people enquire where we are from then we both tend to say English rather than British. Pressed further we tend to say the town we live in is 'just south of Manchester' which is correct geographically but would horrify a full blooded Buxtonian. What our assertion reveals is  we identify as Northerners and have the flattened vowels to prove it! So what does that make me? A northern English European, I suppose. 

Later this morning we are going to hop into the van and head for the Czech Republic. It's our first forey into Eastern Europe. Matthew's partner was born in Prague and her mum wants to meet us. We live in a shrinking world. Jesse, our youngest grandchild, will grow up with British and Czech citizenship. Gill's sister too has dual nationality and splits her time now she has retired between Scotland and France. Our youngest, Laura, is married to a Canadian with a Chinese/Vietnamese heritage. They live in Tokyo. Social media makes them all accessible as if they lived down the road. Famously Teresa May asserted  "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere." I profoundly disagree, a common humanity binds us together and whatever the myriad of challenges the future brings as a species we must face them together, our similarities outweigh individual differences, the more we mix the better the future will be.

 

 

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.