(Spain)...I started Spanish conversational classes this week. After taking a 60-question test and writing a letter, I was judged to be of the intermediate level, which is perhaps a little too ambitious for me. I can chat in Spanish relatively well, but my comprehension is poor. I hope to change that. Spain remains my favourite country. My last visit there took me directly out of the new terminal at Madrid’s Barajas airport to the town of Alcalá de Henares, where Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha was born. His house was there, as if to prove this, although everything in it has been re-created. A statue of the great dreamer and knight-errant is outside. (Oh, I am studying Spanish with the very nice people at New York City’s beautiful Instituto de Cervantes (http://nuevayork.cervantes.es) centre.) My aim was to get to the Alcarria region of Spain, a seldom-visited area close to Madrid. Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela immortalised the area in his 1948 book Viaje a la Alcarria (“Journey to the Alcarria”).
I was able to recognize the small fountain at one end of this small town by using a photo in Cela’s 60-year-old book. All was activity, as young people in t-shirts of the same colour were busy securing off side streets and drinking beer. Barred metal doors blocked off routes, and we soon realised that a running of the bulls was about to happen. Obviously, the Pastrana event is not as famous as the St. Fermin one in Pamplona, but it was my first, and I was excited. Sitting on a wall, we watched the bulls tear down a narrow street as the town’s Young Turks taunted them before leaping out of the wall. This was fantastic to watch, at least for the first two or three passages of the bulls through Pastrana, but after this number of passes, the bulls tired.
By the end, they were suitably disinterested in goring anyone or anything. I had the succinct impression that a very different build of bull is reserved for Pamplona and its irk. Pointed out to us by the locals was the window where the imprisoned and one-eyed—but still considered beautiful—Princess of Éboli was allowed her only contact with others, following a love affair that turned into scandal and exile from Madrid by Philip II. That was in1573. I drove the car through some of the places—Brihuega, Cifuentes, Mondejar, Sacedón, Trillo—that Cela wrote about, and once in a while saw ugly housing developments of bleached-grey sidings that were certainly not present when he walked here.
The countryside is only on occasion dramatic. I wanted to drive along the valleyside Carretera de Roa Burgos to visit the small hilltop village of Anguix, because I liked its name, but the entrance road mysteriously was blocked off, so we made do looking down at the valley from some ruined sentry towers. By the end of the evening we had arrived in dramatic Cuenca, where houses propped up on huge wooden legs literally sit out over the gorge. These houses are known as Casa Colgadas, literally, “Houses that Hang”. Were Spanish Civil War prisoners thrown over its edge? I am sure so. I know they were in the Andalusian town of Ronda, which has its own superb gorge, along its River Huécar. Deservedly so, this is a UNESCO World Heritage site. A large central rectangle with a fountain cascading down a flat wall at one end leads to all manner of beautiful and interesting streets (on one of which I saw walking the little, dressed-up girl in the photograph above).
Most fun are the narrows streets that hug the edge of the cliff, which lead to minute alcoves where one could sit all day. Our hotel was equally perfect, the Posada de San José (I’d like the think that the choice of hotel and its name were influenced by Señor Cela, but then again, José must rank as one of the top-five names in Spain; www.posadasanjose.com). Built in the 18th century, it has an interior than in some spots are modern but in others are wonderfully old and full of more alcoves. I sometimes view Spain as a country that is held together by Valencian bomba rice and the sheer weight emanating from its millions of alcoves. Perhaps, Italy is the same, if you replace rice with pasta? Another mysterious corner, or alcove, of Spain awaited us. Rincon de Ademúz (in Valencian, Racó d'Ademúz) is a part of the province of Valencia that is completely surrounded by the province of Aragón. It is, therefore, an island, a forgotten fragment, and thus we were drawn there. Truth is, this town of 3,000 souls has not much to it, except on that day its running of the bulls.
 I was beginning to see that this was the season for such events, which rather took the gloss of what we thought was our accidental find in Pastrana. Of more interest was the small hilltop village of Castielfabib, the name of which surely is Arabic, as is the name Ademúz. (I branded Ademúz the “alcovian” capital of this area.) Castielfabib, at the end of a road that leads nowhere else, is a perfect place for a warm afternoon’s stroll. A narrow entry road leads steeper and steeper to a minute central square that has an imposing church to one side. The central square had all of two parking spaces.