Exploring Spain

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Spain Is ...A Land of Contrasts

The land beyond the Pyrenees, exotic, strange, romantic: keen member of NATO and the European Union; land of the guitar and the carnation, passionate about soccer and long-distance bicycle racing; land of extravagant Easter processions, where hooded penitents go barefoot and beat their backs with chains; land of ancient cities and modern artists, belonging half to the Atlantic, half to the
Mediterranean.  The essential feature of Spain is that all these images and many others have more than a grain of truth in them.  This is a country of many selves.

Many visitors come to Spain solely for the sunshine and the sea, heading straight to the Mediterranean coast.  This is where the postwar package-tour boom began in the late 1950s and 1960s, with heavy overbuilding and the start of what have come to be called the "Concrete Costas."  They're much discussed and criticized -- and yes, they are horrible in many places -- but after a scare at the prospect of losing visitors, the Costas have cleaned themselves up considerably, with better facilities, clean beaches, and safe drinking water.  Visiting them can be a crowded, cheerful kind of experience, not by any means "real Spain," but something, nevertheless, that many still find unbeatable for a
holiday.  And some places on the Costas, as visitors and readers of this book will soon discover, do remain remarkably attractive.

Spain Is ...People and Institutions

What do the Spaniards look like and how do they behave? Traditional answers have been sexist. Writers, mostly male, through the ages have been unstinting in their praise of Spanish women.  What one can say for sure is that the physical presence of the Spanish people is highly arresting, less because of their generally dark complexions and hair than because of their style.  Men in cities often dress in suits, and women wear clothes that look extremely smart on them but might be considered overdressing elsewhere.

The young assert themselves through informality, picking up Europe's latest fashions and, in the big cities, even anticipating them.  Spain may seem to be characterized by a young woman in jeans strolling arm-in-arm down a village street with her black-clad grandmother.  Vigor of speech and gesture is an abiding characteristic of the Spaniards. In Aragón and Navarra people speak so forcefully that they may sound quite angry during an exchange of pleasantries.  The traditional notion that Spain is the slothful country of mañana or "tomorrow" may be true enough of the bureaucracy, but most Spaniards work hard and often quickly.

Spain Is ...Pleasures and Diversions

In Spain as elsewhere, television watching is one of the great pastimes, with blaring TV sets a fixture in cheap restaurants, and game shows plentiful.  Television also shows a lot of soccer, and it is this, these days, that is probably the number one public passion.  Real Madrid and Barça (Barcelona)
dominate a league whose smallest quivers send shock waves through the nation.  Sports papers are eagerly read, players live in a cauldron of emotion, and supporters work themselves into a frenzy of enthusiasm.

Bicycling is another major Spanish sport, and even in the hottest weather motorists may encounter posses of brightly and tightly clad persons, heads down over handlebars, whizzing through remote and hostile territory.

Mountaineering and mountain walking are also popular, especially in the north and most of all in the Basque country.  Foreigners are the main walkers in southern sierras, mainly in the Alpujarras south of Granada and the lovely if steep countryside around the "white towns" in the provinces of Málaga and Cádiz.  Horseback riding and the management of horses is another Spanish passion, particularly in Andalucía, and visitors tap into this as well, with increasing numbers of trekking holidays now being offered, often in wildly magnificent scenery.

Though assaulted from abroad on grounds of cruelty, bullfighting remains almost as important as soccer, with indications that young people are attending in greater numbers.  Spaniards will tell you that it is not a sport, but an ancient ritual, with a strong aesthetic content, and that it raises issues of life and death for man as well as bull.  In any event, like it or loathe it, it is there in Spanish society -- not reported on newspaper sports pages but reviewed on the arts pages along with literature and music.

Spain Is ...Food and Drink

International food, based mainly on French cuisine, is available à la carte in Spain's better hotels; in the cheaper, package holiday hotels an attempt is made to serve narrower national interests, be it German sausages or British-style meat and vegetables.  Fish and chips are commonplace along the Costas.
Visitors quickly find out, however, that Spanish food, accompanied by Spanish wines, is regionally based and almost always much better than the "international."

Essentially, the country has four broad culinary divisions.  There is a band along the northern coast where seafood and bean dishes dominate; Catalonia, on the eastern seaboard, is full of rich and subtle mixtures (such as meat cooked in a fruit sauce); the interior (mainly Old Castile north of Madrid and New Castile to the south) goes in for meat, part grilled, part roasted in wood-fire ovens; and Andalucía is the place for salad, fish, and fruit.  There are local drinks like sherry in the south or cider in the north.  Many areas produce good cheese, once again highly distinctive in character.

Excellent mineral waters abound, from Vichy Catalan on the Costa Brava to Lanjarón from the springs of the Alpujarra mountains south of Granada.  Madrid has a great range of regional and foreign restaurants -- and some very good dishes of its own.