andrewcferguson

writer, performer, musician, wine drinker

Tag Archives: spanish travel blog

The Slow Train to Caceres and the Festival of Spanishness (Thai flavourings optional)

2 Comments Posted by on October 12, 2018

‘Caceres?’ said the taxi driver taking us to the station at Segovia. ‘Why are you going to Caceres?’

I explained patiently that we enjoyed seeing different parts of Spain each time we came.

‘Well, there is so much to see,’ he agreed, as we careened through the narrow side streets, his castellano only slightly less rapid than his driving. ‘There’s Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Cordoba…’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘But we’ve already been to Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Cordoba…’ I could have added many more, but it was clear your man – who could have been on a retainer from the Segovian tourist association, even though he’d originally come from the Basque country, apparently – clearly thought Caceres was an odd choice. Which, compared to Segovia, it maybe was.

That said, although we’d enjoyed our four nights in the Castilian city of water-carrying infrastructure, we were ready to move on. It was a good choice, and deserves to be seen, don’t get me wrong. But…

Last views of Segovia’s Plaza Mayor, and that acqueduct the Romans did for them

I think, to be honest, it’s both a winner and loser from its closeness to Madrid. It’s a great place for the Madrileños to have a day trip; it serves as a commuter suburb for the bigger city, but equally you could go out there from the Spanish capital at the weekend, maybe even stay the night, and be back for work on Monday.

It’s also (a bit the same way as St Andrews, say, as regards Edinburgh) close enough for the tour buses to include it on their regular itineraries. So the coaches can arrive from Madrid comfortably in time for coffee, the tourists can be funnelled up the spine of rock that connects the acqueduct, the Plaza Mayor and the Alcazar, and be parted from their money for lunch and souvenirs with ruthless efficiency, with time still left in the day to for the tour company to either return them to Madrid or move on somewhere else, like Salamanca, for an overnighter.

Toledo is the other place that springs to mind when thinking about Segovia: the proximity to Madrid, and its airport, means, with the high-speed train connection especially, they don’t have to try too hard to do quite nicely for themselves out of internal and external tourism, thanks very much.

Storm clouds gather over Segovia Guiomar

Anyhoo. As I say, I’m glad we visited, but it was a good day to travel, with the train station at Segovia looking pretty much as dreich as Edinburgh airport had, if offering more in the way of background scenery. The rains had descended on Spain that day, and not solely on the plains, although as we crossed Madrid and took the slow train to Caceres, a landscape emerged that had clearly been praying for rain for some time.

There are basically three paces of Spanish train journey: fast, bloody fast, and quite a lot slower than either. Most of the main lines have now been made high speed, which gives you the option of the AVE (bloody fast) but also other trains like Avant or Alvia which, to be honest, don’t exactly hang around: at one point on the way down our Avant claimed to be topping 200 km/h.

The train to Caceres, on the other hand, was more like your average rail journey in the UK: loping along, stopping everywhere, and not in any hurry at any point. To give an idea of journey time, the train we got left Madrid at 10.25, was scheduled to get into Caceres at 14:19, and eventually rolled in about twenty minutes after that.

That said, even this more basic train – leaving from the commuter part of Atocha, which mainly hosts the Cercania network of commuter trains, but also those described as being of media/larga distancia, was comfortable, with a sight more legroom for the vertically enabled than most of the boneshaker rolling stock you get in Scotland. Which, given the relative amount of Viking genes in both countries, doesn’t really add up.

The taxi driver in Caceres (hot tip: they tend not to hang around in numbers at the railway station, so you may have to call them from the numbers on the sign if it’s a busy train) seemed a lot more laid back than his Segovian counterpart. Avoiding the standard conversational gambits for taxi drivers (thank you, Peter Kay) of ‘You been busy?’ and ‘What time do you finish?’ I went for the only slightly less predictable British gambit of the weather.

However, your man wasn’t concerned by the black clouds carpeting the country. ‘Ach, there’ll be a bit of rain, and then the sun’ll come back,’ he said confidently, and so it turned out to be. In the meantime, we were met at our apartment by the charming lady from BeHoliday, and initial impressions were (and remain) that we’d made a good choice: very comfortable and well located, the place had been a renovation of an 18th/19th century town house, retaining some original features but with all mod cons.

The apartment

Caceres may not be Segovia, but I’m not sure it’s any the worse for it. That distance from Madrid maybe means it has to try a bit harder: although, to be frank with you, on the basis of a couple of very brief walks around town so far, its Old Town beats that of the more famous city into a cocked hat. Comparisons are invidious, of course, but the casco antiguo is really quite a fantastic, steepling thing, of churches, towers, and tiny side streets and alleys. Like Segovia, it’s a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Some views. Better photos once Mrs F gets going with her camera

Calle del Mono, or Monkey Street. I’m sure there’s an explanation

The tourist office was a bit weird, mind. We arrived the day before October 12, which is the Fiesta de la Hispanidad throughout Spain. Crudely translated, that means ‘Festival of Spanishness,’ or maybe ‘Festival of the State of Mind of Being Spanish.’ The Segovian taxi driver had warned us that everything would be very busy: his Caceres counterpart had, typically, been more relaxed about it: the lady in the tourist office, on the other hand, was certain that everything in Caceres – shops, restaurants, everything – would be closed.

This certainty might have been related to her keenness that we take a free bus to the Feria Europea del Queso or European Cheese Fair, which was to take place in Casar de Caceres on the 12, 13th and 14th. Casar de Caceres iis a village some distance from the town of Caceres. This, apparently, was the place to be on the morrow if you were a cheese fan.

As the day of the Festival of Spanishness dawned, however, or more accurately when we emerged from the apartment as the morning reached its late middle age, it became clear that rumours of the town of Caceres closing up for the day had been, er, wildly exaggerated. Indeed, the locals appeared to be quite determined to settle in for a day of celebrating their Spanishness, loudly, right here in the Plaza Mayor, and with some relish: we were just starting breakfast when a sizeable amount of the locals were getting stuck into their first beer of the day.

Caceres, at least on the evidence so far, seems a jolly sort of place. There have been a few miscommunications – it’s fair to say the accent is stronger here than in the Castilian heartland of Segovia – but they do appear to be trying to market themselves as something worth a visit. Apart from the stunning Old Town architecture, they’re also pushing gastronomy, and given that the region of Extremadura is famed for the jamón that comes from the pata negra, or black pig, as well as Pimentón de la Vera, the smoked paprika that informs so much of Spanish cooking, they have the raw ingredients to do that.

Their wines, too, on the limited research I’ve been able to manage so far, are rich, full, and satisfyingly different from either Ribera del Duero or Rioja, the staples of most bars in most parts of Spain. More research will be undertaken.

One thing we hadn’t expected was the willingness on the part of local chefs to try something beyond the usual Spanish flavours. A leaflet we picked up at the tourist office from the Cheese Fair-promoting lady had claimed this, but I was dubious until, returning from our midday walk, we were to find a whole new café that hadn’t been there yesterday had sprung up, on the day everything was meant to be closed.

Spanish chicken kebabs with satay sauce. With patatas bravas: a killer combination

I lay before you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit A: brochetas de pollo con salsa thai de satay. Chicken kebabs, or brochetas, are a staple of Spanish cookery, especially in the South, where the Moorish influence encourages use of Middle Eastern spices like cumin. But Thai flavours and a satay sauce? On the day of celebrating the state of mind of being Spanish, this was a whole new twist!

More from the culinary – and oenological – front line soon…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What the Romans did for Segovia: and how to get the best table in Spain

2 Comments Posted by on October 9, 2018

Ok. For those of you benighted enough not to get the cultural reference, I’m talking Python here, and not the computer language neither. In Life of Brian, the leader of a revolutionary group determined to overthrow the Roman occupation of the Holy Land asks them, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’

There’s an awkward silence, before one of the group offers, ‘the acqueduct?’ There’s then a list from the others of a whole lot of other improvements, such as improved sanitation, roads, lower crime rates…

Well, I don’t know about the other stuff, but the Romans certainly did a good acqueduct for the natives of Segovia. It’s humungous! And, being one of the biggest tourist draws (interesting cultural note: this is the first time I’ve seen signs in Spanish, English and Chinese – sign of the times, or indeed the new world order) it’s encircled by restaurants and cafes.

Which brings me to a bit of advice on Spanish restaurants and bars in general, and how to get the good stuff, eats and drinks wise.

Ok, so basic build philosophy for your average Spanish city – perhaps not so much Madrid and Barcelona, although the overall principles are the same. They were, originally, built in defensive positions, close to a river. They will generally be on a hill (castles built in a valley tended not to last very long, as the invaders were able to stand on the hills and lob stuff in). This initial settlement will be known as the Old Town, or casco viejo.

In most Spanish cities, there will be two or three major buildings or places of interest. Almost always a cathedral, which will be Romanesque, or Gothic, or sometimes a mixture of both, if that’s your bag. Something else, like an acqueduct (Segovia) a mosque (Cordoba) or a castle (various). The central square, or plaza mayor, will be often quite grand (Salamanca). And clustered around, or in, these major draws will be bars, restaurants, and dozens of shops selling the local speciality souvenirs.

Now, these places won’t always be massively overpriced tourist traps which don’t offer good value food and drink, right? Right. You might decide, for example, it’s worth shelling a couple of extra euros for a beer, sitting in the sunshine in the plaza mayor, watching the world go by. But for eats? General rule – the closer to these major draws, and the more multilingual the menus, the less good value you get.

So where to go? Stretching out from these major draws, and often stretching between them, the streets will have been widened. They might even resemble avenues, and here you’ll find the commercial sector of the city – the fancy clothes shops, scary-looking high end chemists, lawyers’ offices, and banks. There may well be restaurants and bakeries, too, along these avenues, which will almost always be pricy, too. So where to go for the good stuff?

In my experience, you’ve generally got two options. Head out of the Old Town, outwith the original city walls, across a bridge, perhaps, to where the locals can actually afford to live – and eat. Or, in the Old Town itself, lose yourself in the back streets.

Segovia’s Old Town

Often the latter option will take you into the Jewish Quarter, where the people of that faith lived centuries ago before the Christians kicked them out as part of one or other ethnic cleansing (don’t worry, this was a long time ago – the Spanish are, in general, pretty tolerant these days, although the current refugee crisis is causing some strain). In these narrow, corkscrewing alleys, there might well be the best restaurant or tapas bar in town – far enough off the beaten track to be able to have lower overheads, but not so far off that the locals don’t know about it.

And it was a combination of those options that led us to Calle Hermanos Barral, and two restaurants well worth recommending. Down the hill from the Acqueduct, not far from the bus station, we reached it via a couple of flights of stone steps and some unpromising side streets that held little in the way of anything. It was in the lee of the city walls, but not so far out of town as to be completely unreachable.

Praying for wine

The first day we went to the restaurant attached to the Hotel Ayala Berganza, and had an excellently priced menu del dia in a patio courtyard that was just about warm enough to sit out in at this time of year. This showed up all the strengths and weaknesses of the menu del dia concept, which most Spanish eateries worth their salt will have: it had local dishes (the Segovians go big on their local white beans, for example) but a limited selection, and the price included a drink which, in the case of my wine, wasn’t the best wine ever, but wasn’t at all bad. The service was great, although the menu was delivered verbally at some pace, so had to be slowed down while I translated.

Really? You’re leaving the entire bottle? You know he’s Scottish, right?

I had a beef stew which, I have to say, was the best beef stew ever, and that includes the ones I’ve slow cooked myself. The meat was tender, the sauce was rich, and it was accompanied by nothing more complicated than little circles of potatoes, deep fried. In terms of value, the meal was at least 50% cheaper than the menus del dia on the main drags in town, only 5 or 10 minutes’ walk away, and I guarantee you as good, if not better, quality.

 

 

 

The next day, after seeing the Alcazar (the castle that apparently inspired Disney’s one) and having a general poke around town, we found nowhere better than the other restaurant in Calle Hermanos Barral, La Codorniz. This time, we took a different tack with the menu options, and choice of drink for that matter. Suitably fortified by a bottle of Estrella Galicia (great beer, unfortunately very rarely on draft) I asked a local whom I’d heard discussing the wines with another table what he’d recommend, and he then took upon himself to order for us. A man of exquisite taste, as it turned out!

For eats, as the restaurant advertised itself as an asador, we tried two of the roasts on offer: the local speciality, cochinillo, or suckling pig, and lamb, another favourite in this area.  So far as the former’s concerned, don’t be put off by the pictures in the restaurants that show an entire baby piggie being served up: for individual portions, at least, you only get a bit of the rib cage, so you don’t have to look the poor beast in the eye when you’re eating it.

For afters, we tried the local delicacy Ponche Segoviano, a sort of orangey, creamy, custardy thing which probably had some booze in it. By then, suitably fortified by the Estrella and your man’s Ribera del Duero recommendation, I’d got into a lengthy conversation with a lovely Argentinian couple at the next table, so I wasn’t paying much attention to it. To be honest, it was hard put to follow the roast meats, both of which were absolutely delicious.

So that’s it, really. Segovia, like most, if not all Spanish cities, is full of hidden gems of restaurants, but often they’re not the first ones you come to. Head for the narrow side streets, or the newer part of town where the non-tourists eat. The menu del dia can be a good option, but not always: and eating off the main menu might be more expensive, but can bring its own rewards.

And if in doubt, have a beer and chat up a local.

P.S. Other places of note in Segovia –

Hotel Spa La Casa Mudejar turned out to be an excellent choice. Located just off the Plaza Mayor, we had asked for a room that looked out to the internal courtyard, and it was extremely quiet, and comfortable. Not the biggest room ever, but nicely done out and clean. Very, very, good value. Don’t know about the spa bit, as we ran out of time to try it – make sure you check its opening times. It’s definitely a spa rather than a swimming pool though.

Cafe Colonial, Plaza del Corpus – just down the street from the hotel – great traditional style cafe for breakfasts and more.

Diablo Cojuelo, Calle Juan Bravo – a bit further down the street that connects the Plaza Mayor with the Acqueduct, this is a deli with tables which has a whole lot going for it: lots of local produce, and not just the big white beans which, frankly, can lead to high winds later on; they produce their own off-denominacion Ribera del Duero, and the Diablo Cojuelo Rojo (there’s a younger black label, which we didn’t try) was the best wine we had in town. And the rest of them weren’t too shoddy.

The only thing that let this place down was the crammed cafe bit and substandard tapas. But still worth a visit for a copa of that wine.

 

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A Word On… Spanish Stuff

2 Comments Posted by on April 29, 2018

Here’s a couple of what I’d plan to be sidebars in my book on Spain. As ever, be delighted to have any feedback!

A Brief History of Spanish Time

If you ever need a reminder that the Mediterranean peoples, including the Spanish, are the cradle of Western civilisation as we know it, come with me of a summer’s evening to any one of Spain’s regional cities and sit at a table in a café watching the world go by.

It might be 9 or 10 at night; it might be a Monday. If it is, the only difference might be the cafes are slightly less jam packed. Everyone’s eating and drinking like it’s going out of fashion. There’s still a significant amount of them smoking. They all look fantastic on it.

A satisfied customer at a Madrid cafe

What’s more, nobody’s drunk. Nobody. You might see drunks in Madrid or Barcelona, but they’re probably foreigners. Instead, in this regional city – let’s say Léon, for the sake of giving a recent example – there are all ages out and about, from immaculately-dressed elderly couples, to middle aged folks with their teenage kids, to younger mums with babies; the teenagers out on their own, by the way, are sitting at the next table, drinking coke politely, checking out the opposite sex discreetly as they walk past, and not being any bother to anyone. If they are being a bother, they’re probably French.

And, although it’s ten at night, nobody looks like they’re in a hurry to go home. Indeed, some of them are still going in to eat their main meal of the day, inside the restaurant, in the air-conditioned salon comedor. For the rest of us, the atmosphere is relaxed, congenial, and unhurried. It is as if everyone has all the time in the world.

Now, if this seems to give an idealised portrait of the Spanish way of life, let me just say, ok. The health stats aside, the Spanish are as worried about their health and happiness as the rest of us: the telly adverts are as full of stuff about slimming, gym memberships and how to stop smoking as anywhere else; I saw an advert in Spain recently that claimed that the Spanish have the greatest amount of cosmetic surgery in Europe. But let me take you on that evening out (you’re buying, obviously) and you’d be forced to agree.

So what are they doing right? Can it really all be down to having a wee sleep in the middle of the day?

Well, the concept of siesta isn’t without its Spanish critics. My friend Rufino, for example, has a much more northern European approach to work, and wishes he could do without the midday break and be home at a reasonable time. As an abogado – a lawyer – he’s expected to be available for clients till around 8 at night, in the same way shops and other businesses stay open till that time. The Catalans, too, tend to dismiss siestas as a soft southern invention they don’t need to adhere to.

But, for the majority of Spanish people, time is still a much more fluid idea than for us northerners. They might rise early, particularly if they commute. However, going to breakfast in a café between 9 and 10, you’re quite likely still to see office workers and construction guys dawdling over a café con leche even then.

That may explain why, when British and American tummies are starting to rumble at one o’clock, the Spanish restaurants aren’t really filling up and you’ll have your choice of table. Almuerzo, the big middle of the day meal, often happens well past midday – at 2 or 3; it can be a family meal, or one with colleagues; but either way, many shops and businesses then close up for a couple of hours at least. Whether people have time to go home and get some kip may, again, depend on the size of the city, and its property prices. However, in general, most people seem to.

Things only really start to get going again around 6 or 7. By then, shops will open up again, the inevitable drilling of roads and buildings will recommence: and people will drift towards cafes and bars for a drink, unless they’re working. And stay there, meeting friends and family (most socialising happens outside the home in Spanish culture) until whenever it suits. And that could be the wee hours.

The good news is that the restaurant/café culture is a lot less rigid than it used to be. In most places, they’ll serve you a range of things from tapas, ranging up through racion-sized portions to the full bib-and-tucker three courses more or less at any time.

 

Tapas, Raciones, and all that sort of stuff

So most of you will know the story by now about tapas, right? That it originated in the deep south of Spain, where the waiter brought you your drink with a tapa (cover) on top, consisting of a bit of bread or something similar, to keep the flies off your drink.

Well, maybe. That story always seemed a bit hokey to me, particularly given the likelihood that, as soon as you took the bread off, the flies would dive right in if they were interested. Although, in my experience, insects are much more likely to settle on something solid like bread than they are to ever dive-bomb your glass of tinto de verano.

 

Madrileño tapas bar. Great street for tapas; for sleeping, not so much.

So, in the interests of research, I had a look at an article from the southern Spanish newspaper ABCdeSevilla, which offered a number of theories, alongside the insect repellent one:

  1. King Alfonso X ‘The Wise’ needed one or two glasses of wine a day for health reasons (nice one, royal doc!) and, to avoid the effects of alcohol, asked for a wee something food wise on the side;

 

  1. During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, taverns noticed that, at putting out time, the patrons were, well, a bit drunk, and possibly somewhat hard to handle, so hit on the idea of giving them something to eat alongside their wine;

 

  1. It was a 19th century invention to keep the farm workers refreshed, by giving them a bit of nutrition as well as a drink while they worked (and with no need for them to stop working – take note, modern day office workers who moan about lunch at your desk);

 

  1. It was an early 20th century invention in Almería to keep the flavour of the sherry in, by covering the glass in a slice of ham.

 

Well, it doesn’t really matter. However, it is interesting that two at least of the theories centre around the idea that, by eating at the same time as drinking, you become less likely to end up falling down drunk after a few glasses of wine.

So what’s a tapa, and what’s a racion? In general, the second of these is a bigger portion, and you have to ask for it: tapas will, sometimes, come with your drink whether you ask for it or not, and if you haven’t asked for it, is included in the price of the drink.

Of course, generosity and complexity of free tapas in particular varies hugely. In Madrid or Barcelona, you’ll be lucky to get a bowl of crisps most times: in the smaller regional cities, however, you can sometimes just about eat for free.

The most generous tapas-you-didn’t-ask-for culture we’ve come across so far was in Léon, where a morning coffee produced a free slice of almond cake; and later drinks might be accompanied, unbidden, by a plateful of calamari, deep fried peppers, and other such delicacies, for no extra charge. And it’s not even as if the drinks cost as much as in Madrid!

Traditionally, many bars would specialise only in one or two tapas dishes, so that you would have a drink and their speciality, and then move on. Similarly, the glass size of the alcohol you were having was small, to reflect that you might be having a few drinks in different bar, and you weren’t actually setting out to get hammered.

Inevitably, commercialism has taken over a bit, so that each bar will serve you something for free, but also have a menu or carta de tapas so that you can stay in the same bar all night. If you’re not planning to get hammered and you’re drinking beer, ask for a caña, which is generally a small glassful of the house lager.

Plaza Mayor, Madrid. Traditionally the place for the first beer of the trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hitting the return key pushes the adverts down here. Petty, isn’t it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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An Encounter in Mérida: Fellow Travellers

2 Comments Posted by on April 5, 2018

Another extract from what may turn into a book on Spain…

The fact the quiet American had reached such a relatively obscure place as Mérida gave him, using my admittedly somewhat arbitrary points system, a double bonus for effort. That, and the way he kept claiming to be Brazilian.

We’ve actually met very few English-speaking folk on our travels. Of course, in the bigger cities – Madrid, Seville increasingly, and especially Barcelona; but not so much in the more out of the way places. Which is part of the point, of course.

The Roman Bridge at Mérida

The Americans, though. The Americans abroad are  – in general – more extroverted than us, shattering that icy Scots reserve as they include you into their evening, asking you to translate for them, joshing with the slightly stunned looking bar staff in high volume Spanglish, and generally being, oh, what’s that word there’s no positive equivalent for in Scots? Oh yes: confident.

Anyway, Don didn’t quite fit that stereotype. He was keeping himself to himself, and the only reason we got talking was because I offered a translation of something on the menu for him. However, he did then get to talking, he joined us at our table, and the next night we both happened to be in the same bar again.

That second night, the conversation – and the good local wine – was flowing. Don was extremely entertaining company, and Daughter and Heiress was of an age that I wasn’t too discomfited when he extolled to her the benefits of lysergic acid. I mean, it wasn’t like he offered us all a tab right there and then.

It was just – in the morning, thinking back – none of us could tell very much about what your man actually did in Brazil, for example, or why he went there in the first place. We got that he was divorced, that he knew his Iberian food and wine – especially the Portuguese variety – and was a fan of mind-expanding substances of the less than legal variety. But beyond that? Nada.

But then, being a stranger in a strange land can do that for you. If you want to give the impression that you’re a CIA agent operating under deep cover in Extramadura, then you can.

Our regular fellow travellers in this book, however, are a slightly less mysterious bunch than Don – all except one, perhaps.

Ernest Hemingway, to start with the most famous, is really too famous to need much of an introduction. Novelist, bullfighting enthusiast, big game drinker and thinker, Papa H drove an ambulance for the Republicans in the Civil War. Much of his best work is set in Spain, and the way he renders the language in For Whom The Bell Tolls is a particular favourite for me.

He may pop up at various points, by way of Hemingway and Spain, by Edward F Stainton (University of Washington Press, 1989).

Giles Tremlett is the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent. Although his book, Ghosts of Spain, (Faber and Faber, 2006) bears the imprint of a series of articles woven into a theme they didn’t necessarily start out with, it’s still a brilliant introduction for anyone who, like me, wonders what it’s really like to live in Spain with the Spanish.

It’s particularly strong on the pacto del olvido, the collective act of forgetting that the Spanish entered into after Franco’s death, allowing the wounds of the Civil War forty years before to crust over without healing; and the political and other circumstances around the Atocha bombings in 2005.

Gertrude Bone is the change-up pitcher, though. A couple of years ago, my sister gave me a copy of a second hand book: Days in Old Spain. (MacMillan and Co, 1939). I’d never heard of Gertrude Bone, or her husband, Muirhead (later Sir Muirhead, don’tcha know) who provided the illustrations. But the introduction hooked me in, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, by the time the book was published, it was already a historical artefact. The result of travels throughout Spain in the late 1920s, it described a country on the cusp of change, if not yet in the shadow of war: ‘Disaffection to the Monarchy was everywhere audible, and an impatience of backwardness and old fashions manifest in all parts of the country.’

Second, unlike Laurie Lee, who covered Spain on foot in his classic As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, on the very eve of the Civil War, the Bones got about by train – much as we do.

One of the other reasons I came to like Gertrude so much was her modesty. The introduction stresses that the text was really only to supplement the hubby’s drawings – something rather belied by how good the writing is, as I’ll demonstrate presently. More than that, just how misleading it is to think of Gertrude as the wee wife jotting down some footnotes to the artist husband’s great work only becomes clear with a bit more research.

Gertrude Bone (1876 – 1962) was the daughter of a Wesleyan minister (who had previously been a blacksmith). Brought up in Glasgow (which may explain the modesty), she was the author of at least three other published books: Women of the Country, The Furrowed Earth, and Mr Paul.

And…

And then, at least so far as internet research goes, it all becomes a bit second-hand, as she gets a mention, not in her own right, but as wife of Sir Muirhead, and mother of Stephen Bone, who followed his Dad into the war artist business. The picture you’d get from the Internet, with father and son both meriting a Wikipedia entry but not her, would be that implied by Gertrude herself: the supportive wife and mother, playing second fiddle to the men of the house.

This is not the place for a feminist discourse on the innate bias towards DWEMs in cyberspace. But when you look at Gertrude’s published works, the reality is that she was the writer, and father and son illustrated her books.

More: in one of my internet searches, I turned up a page about a letter signed in 1913 by the ‘Manchester Suffragettes,’ amongst them that faithful wife and mother Gertrude, or ‘Mrs Muirhead Bone,’ as she’s quaintly termed.

To return to the subject of Spain, her book on it is very far from being a bit of hack work to accompany the illustrations. Mrs Bone has the eye of a true poet. Take, for example, this turn of phrase when writing about Andalucía: ‘Shadow is hoarded in the streets and in the churches, and where old men follow the shade for their rest as in England they follow the sunshine.’

Or this description of the Spanish character, allowing for it being the language of an Edwardian (are you even allowed to call Spanish people Spaniards now?): ‘The reserve of the Spaniard is never surly. He requires his own personal dignity, but he will invariably allow you yours. If he knows what will please you, and you are a well-behaved person, he will of his own accord open an entrance to the interests you seek in his country.’

That, to me, is a perfect way to describe the Spanish, and their kindness to strangers. English, Scottish or American: treat the locals with respect, give them their space, and they’ll go the extra mile for you every time.

Even if you want to claim you’re from Brazil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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