(Spain)...Finally, there is a two-day pause in the ups and downs of the World Cup. The contest is down to the last eight countries, and I am very happy England is one of them. In the English press, the England team can either be heroes or villians, with no shades of grey inbetween, and when in years past they have been branded villians, the fact that the team consistently under-achieves is wheelbarrowed out again. But also is the following fact: that however bad we are, the Spanish are worse. In the narrow view of the English press, this constitutes some type of victory. Over what I don't know? Paella, extreme temperatures, that we still administer Gibraltar?
I am a real fan of Spain. I love going there, I love its literature, I love its food. Spain was defeated yesterday by a suddenly reconstituted France, although the lead-up to the second French goal was highly dubious. I visited Spain only last August, driving from Madrid (which I still not have been to yet) across the Alcarria, a dry, seldom-visited area that was famously chronicled in the Camilo José Cela travelogue Journey to the Alcarria (Viaje a la Alcarria) published in 1948.
Some very ugly houses are being built on hillsides with no thought as to sightlines and aesthetics, but the area still remains distant and evocative, what some people would no doubt term the Real Spain or Old Spain. Cela won the Nobel Prize in 1989 (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1989/cela-bio.htm), although many Spaniards think Miguel Delibes (http://servicios.nortecastilla.es/delibes) deserved it more.
Pastrana was the town we stopped in, and its water fountain looks no different in 2005 than it did in one of Cela's photographs inside the book. It is about 40 miles east of Madrid. It was hot there. We noticed that at junctions (and the streets are narrow hereabouts), the openings to the streets were blocked off by green steel grates that a human could just about squeeze through. After seeing several, I realised that on that day there was to be an encierro de los toros, a running of the bulls.
That this took place, despite all the books on Spain I have enjoyed, anywhere other than at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona had never occurred to me. We were thrilled. An hour later, sitting on the top of a temporary wooden barricade, crammed in amongst the Pastranese, we awaited the cannon roars that firstly announced there would be ten minutes to go, then, that there would be two minutes, and, lastly, that the bulls were on their way. The young men of the town sprinted down the street with the black, glistening bulls hot on their step.
The bulls smashed through a stone portal leading to the main square and charged up main street to where 40 minutes before we had been eating pastries. I seem to remember that there were eight bulls. A little later, they reversed their route, but after the fourth or fifth sally, they appeared to be becoming tired of the chase, although no doubt still deadly. I can only imagine that the bulls they choose for the San Fermin are among the superstars of bull meanness and athleticism, while the bulls smaller towns are able to procure are of relative worth. I had a great time nonetheless.
The oldest encierro, I later discovered, was in a town called Cuéllar, 120 miles north of Madrid. My friend Jaime had to go there to help some friends run a bar during that town's medieval festival, and he asked if I wanted to go along. So, that was how we drove from his home in Valencia back up through Spain, past Madrid, and on.
Cuéllar also is fairly forgotten, the nearest people usually get to it being Segovia, but it is a fine place. I attended the fair, hacked pieces of the famous jamón ibérico de bellotas, Iberian pigs fed solely on acorns, off a specially constructed stand only used for balancing pigs' legs, listened to a travelling flamenco band (see the photo above) and drove to such isolated places as Coca, Fuenterrebolla, Peñafiel, Turégano, Sepúlveda and Burgmillodo, near to which is a large population of Griffon vultures.
In August — traditionally the month one is told to miss Europe, but a month in which I found travelling excellent — things do not start up in small towns until late, when the residents have recovered from the excesses of the night before. Wandering at around 10 or 11 in the morning makes you feel that you have the whole place to yourself. With wonderful traditions and scenery such as this, one cannot bemoan the lack of Spanish football success too much, although that argument might not be too sound if one tried to make it to me about England.