Category: Spain

Postcard From Madrid, Spain: Bewitched and bedeviled

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Vintage Spanish stamp depicting a witch flying with children, inscribed with 'Quinta Sevilla Goya' and 'Correos Aéreos España'.

Above: Detail of “Allegoric Capricio,” Eugenio Lucas Velazquez (1817-1870), 1852, Lazaro Galdiano Museum.

Vispera de Todos los Santos. The hallowed eve preceding two holy days in the Catholic Church: All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Or, for the superstitious, La Noche de Brujas, when the witches fly.

Today, it appears Spain has succumbed to the highly contagious American-style celebration of Halloween. With all its horror-film-like bloody mess.

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Old and New World artistry merge in Hispanic Baroque

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A 1893 one-cent postage stamp depicting Christopher Columbus and indigenous figures, surrounded by an ornate border. The inscription reads 'Columbus in Sight of Land.'

Above: “Annunciation and Saints,” Jose de Paez, Mexican (1727-1790), oil on copper, 1750-1760.

“Spirit & Splendor: El Greco, Velázquez, and the Hispanic Baroque” surveys 150 years of Spanish art leading to the Baroque period with works culled from the collection of the Hispanic Society of America in New York City. Some of Spain’s most renowned and respected artists are represented in this ongoing exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art, but don’t expect much more than a dozen of these works.

What I love are the pieces demonstrating the Baroque style translated by transplants and native-born artisans in the Americas. Artists took advantage of materials available in this so-called “New” World – copper, shells and, of course, more precious metals. They added a magical sheen to art designed to convert “pagans” to the foreign beliefs held by the Catholic conquerors.

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Postcard from Bilbao, Spain: Urban vitality conquers industrial detritus

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Above: Dancers swirl around Plaza de Santiago in Casco Viejo on a fall night.

There is no nightlife in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not nightlife. That is delaying the day.”

Ernest Hemingway

Better leave it to Ernest Hemingway to explain Spain’s nocturnal habits, for I rarely witness late nights outside our home in South Austin or apartments when we travel. That’s why it was particularly pleasurable for the Basques of Bilbao to bring the party to a plaza directly under our balcony. If they did indeed stay up late, they were polite enough to pack up the accordions and finish the celebration elsewhere.

Below represents a random unpacking of snapshots from our stay in Bilbao – a city resuscitated by the reclamation of its riverfront from its industrial past and a bold, massive investment in art.

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