Almería, Spain

Almeria has a claim to be the only city in Europe that is technically in a desert. For this reason, the surrounding areas have long been in demand as film locations for films set in the Wild West or Africa. One such film was 'How I Won The War', a World War Two black comedy made in 1967, largely forgettable but for the fact that one of the supporting roles was played by a moderately successful British pop singer called John Lennon. The Almería villa in which he stayed during filming had a large garden, with wrought iron gates, reminding him of a Liverpool park he'd known as a boy. And that, readers, is how 'Strawberry Fields Forever' came to be written.

The house in question is now a cinema museum, and of course something of an unofficial Lennon shrine. As a big Beatles fan and certified music nerd, I'm frankly appalled that I hadn't known about this connection until I got here. Having said that, I've never been to any of the significant Beatles locations in Liverpool either. I've only been to Liverpool three times, each time for a football match: Liverpool FC, Everton FC and Tranmere FC. Inevitably Sunderland lost all three, with an aggregate score of 8-0.

Sadly, as in Granada, Almería's cathedral is currently closed to tourists. But I was able to visit the Alcazaba, a sort of mini-Alhambra, and also the Refugios, a network of underground tunnels in which the locals hid during Civil War air raids in the late 1930s. In the photo below you see the shelter's operating theatre. This was largely occupied with women giving birth, because the trauma and panic of air raids would often induce premature delivery; and of course, this being a Catholic country, in the 1930s most of the women were married and more likely than not to be pregnant at any given time.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas. Mine was certainly unconventional - I went down to the beach for a swim in the Mediterranean. The air was warm-ish but the water was slightly chilly...I got to thigh-deep, and I was in the process of summoning up the gumption to go the rest of the way when a biggish wave appeared out of nowhere and brought the issue to an involuntary conclusion. I did enjoy my swim, although it took me quite a while to convince myself that the big dark object on the seabed underneath me was definitely my own shadow and nothing else. I'm currently reading 'Jaws' in Spanish you see.

As for Almería? Well, it is what it is, as they say. Specifically, it's an out-of-season tourist resort. But it was a pleasant enough place to spend the weirdest of my 45 Christmases to date.

Despite this arty grim photo, Almería is mostly quite nice.

Anybody who grew up in Tyne & Wear in the 1980s may recognise this kind of thing...

The Alcazaba and the city. Bit of an uphill hike through the slums to get this photo.

John Lennon statue. Not the best likeness, but it's the thought that counts.

This is where I had my Christmas swim.

Guitar museum

Almería Cathedral.
The big white things are the Spanish equivalents of Christmas trees.

Operating theatre in the air raid shelter.

Almería digs. Making my money go that little bit further. 
My apartment is on the ground floor, and those security grilles are...reassuring.

Edd vs Food #97
Chips, kebab meat, bacon, cheese and Caesar sauce at Goleta 55.
Trust me on this - it was really nice.  

Granada, Spain

Granada is Spanish for 'pomegranate'. Fiesta means 'party', and Cortina means 'curtain'. Ford car showrooms in 1980s Britain must have been a bit weird for Spanish tourists.

I passed through Granada during my previous Spain trip. But I was travelling in a rented car at that point, and Granada is a legendarily difficult place in which to find parking, so I didn't stop. Of course, I had no objections about this. People who think they have a divine right to drive everywhere, and park everywhere, are morons.

Anyway, I'm here now, courtesy of a bus from Malaga. Obviously the Alhambra was my main interest, as per the previous blog. Sadly Granada's cathedral (including the royal crypt, in which Ferdinand and Isabella are both buried) is closed to tourists because of Covid. But the city as a whole is still a fantastic place to visit. From the surrounding hills you get a spectacular hat-trick of views: the Alhambra, the city itself, and the Sierra Nevada mountains to the south-east. Incidentally there is another set of Sierra Nevada mountains in California, in which lies Yosemite National Park, and which passed on the Sierra Nevada name to the greatest of all pale ales. But I digress. 

(Actually Sierra is another Ford from the 80s isn't it? It means 'saw', as in what you cut down trees with. But it has a secondary meaning of 'mountain range', due to the fact that mountain ranges look like saw-teeth from a distance.)

One little morsel of culture here was a visit to the childhood home of Federico García Lorca, Spain's most prominent 20th-century poet. He was murdered by the Fascists during the Civil War, and his body was never found. The family had been fairly wealthy, hence his childhood home was big enough to be preserved as a comfortably spacious museum, with the surrounding gardens converted into a public park.

Admittedly I've yet to read a single line of Lorca, but that's because I want to spend a few more years studying the Spanish language in order to be able properly to appreciate its poetry. For the time being, although I remain a colossal literary snob where the English language is concerned, my Spanish reading practice comprises whatever trash I can pick up cheaply second-hand. I've just finished reading 'The Valley Of The Dolls' in translation.

I love Granada, and I think it's my second-favourite place of this trip so far after Madrid, although undoubtedly I would hate it if I was here during a hot and tourist-filled summer. It helps that I've got a nice apartment on a quiet side street in the old town, with views of the Alhambra. Indeed I can see the palace, eerily lit up against wintry Andalusian skies, from my pillow when I'm lying in bed. One of those memories that you immediately know you're never, ever going to forget.

In closing, I wish you all a very happy Christmas, even if it's to be celebrated mostly through the medium of Zoom, as mine will be in its entirety. This is going to be a very strange festive season for me, but you can rest assured that I'm getting enough culture and sunshine to keep me smiling through it all. I'm going to be in Spain for quite a while yet.

Granada, seen from the Alhambra

Panorama photo out in the hills. Sierra Nevada mountains in the far distance

Lorca museum

Another view of Granada from the Alhambra. Cathedral near the top, in the centre

Looking southwest from my living room window

Looking southeast at the Alhambra from my bedroom window.
That blue tarp is a bit of a view spoiler, but it helped when trying (pointlessly) to spot my apartment from the tower.

Six different kinds of San Miguel! Does that count as diversity?

Edd vs Food #96
Home-assembled burger.
Two beef patties, in a wholemeal bun, because I will have nothing to do with brioche.
Avocado, tomato, bacon bits, and a dash of spreadable black pudding (it's a thing).
Ketchup below, mayo above. Blue cheese throughout.

The Alhambra, Granada, Spain

In my blog from Cáceres I mentioned the movie "1492". Another scene from that movie was filmed here at the Alhambra. Specifically, the scene where Queen Isabella (Sigourney Weaver) gives Christopher Columbus (Gérard Depardieu) royal endorsement to toddle off and discover America. And they filmed it here because it actually happened here. 

Even setting aside that Columbus connection, the Alhambra is probably Spain's single most important historical site, as well as the most significant remnant of Moorish and Islamic culture anywhere in Europe. See here for more details if you're interested. On this occasion I'll let the pictures do the talking for me.

Málaga, Spain

The sun is shining over the Mediterranean, cooling breezes are whispering across the waves, and the Covid vaccines are here. Hurrah on all counts. Incidentally, the Pfizer vaccine was first administered in the very same Coventry hospital in which I was born.

I lived in Coventry only for the first 10 weeks of my life, after which the family home moved to Sunderland. I mention this autobiographical snippet because those 10 weeks were, until now, the longest period I'd ever gone in my life without seeing the sea. But that record has now been broken, me having just spent 12 consecutive weeks in the interior of Spain. I'm glad that it's now at an end. Standing by the ocean shore, savouring the aforementioned cooling breezes, staring into infinity...it's something we should all do, from time to time. It's good for the soul.

After Cáceres I spent a night in a one-horse town in southern Extremadura called Zafra. When you're out in the sticks, sadly, the quality control does sometimes drop a bit in the food department. In posh Madrid cafes, the croissants and tostadas contain real cheese, with an authentic whiff of sweaty feet; in the more modest establishments, you get cheese slices out of a packet, which is fair enough. But in Zafra I got served cheese that had been freshly squeezed out of a tube. Such things are not to be endured. 

Worse still, the beer options are narrowed beyond the limits of tolerance. Even the meanest dive in England will be able to rustle up a mainstream beer of drinkable quality, eg a Stella or a Guinness. But quite a few bars in Zafra had only three options: Mahou (piss), Mahou Radler (watered-down piss) or Mahou 0.0% (pointless piss). Having said that, they offered wine at €1 a glass with a tapa thrown in. Maybe it's a fair trade-off overall. 

After Zafra I spent one night in Seville. The borders of Andalusia are nominally sealed right now, but my train journey was 'essential travel' because I had an email from Ryanair to show that I was booked on a flight from Malaga to Newcastle. In fact I had no intention of getting on the plane, because I had no intention of going home to Tier 3, and Ryanair had cancelled the flight anyway. In the event, nobody asked me any questions. But as a precautionary measure in case of me being sent back to Zafra, I'd refrained from booking any accommodation. And so, getting off the train at Seville's gloriously spacious Santa Justa railway station, I found myself in that agreeably liberating state of having no commitments at all in my life. Not only having no home and no job, but not even having anywhere to spend the night. Just me and the backpack. 

It's a liberating feeling for about forty-five seconds, and then you realise night is falling and it's a bit nippy and you need to get indoors. So I sat down on a wall and went online, and by a happy coincidence the best hotel option was literally right in front of me. Bish bosh boosh. I got a bus to Malaga the next day.

I've dwelt at length on the journey because many of you will have been to Malaga and you don't need me to tell you about it. But see the pictures if you're interested. In the meantime I need to book another flight home, but not until Sunderland comes out of Tier 3. Or until a no-deal Brexit compels me to flee Spain as a refugee. I'm living on the edge.

 Panorama photo, looking west from the Gibralfaro castle 

South from below Gibralfaro. The circular building is the bullfighting ring.

Jardines de Pedro Luis Alonso

The cathedral

Christmas lights on Calle Marqués de Larios

Nearly as good as Seaburn

Getting my vitamin D and avoiding the winter blues

Malaga digs. Old building, high ceilings, pretty drafty.
My kind of place.

Edd vs Food #95
Tapas in the proper Spanish sense - ie you order a drink and it comes with a random bite.
Always a lottery. Or, as in this case, a game of Russian roulette.
Fish and olives. They really saw me coming. Bastards.

Cáceres, Spain

So far on this trip I've visited four out of Spain's 17 autonomous communities: Aragon, the Basque country, Castille & Leon, and Madrid. Now I'm in my fifth, Extremadura, which despite what the name suggests has nothing to do with cheddar cheese. Many of the other communities still have their borders closed, but not Extremadura - it's done relatively well in Covid terms and so its restrictions are quite light compared to the rest of Spain. That's why I'm here.

The best thing about my apartment in Cáceres is the shower. It produces hotter and higher-pressure water than any other shower I've ever encountered in all my life to date. Honestly, you could clean tractors with it. The Augean Stables would be the work of a moment. All that steaming hot water is especially welcome at this time of year because it's starting to get a bit nippy outside, and the design of these apartments - stone walls, tiled floors, no sun-facing windows - favours keeping people cool in summer rather than keeping them warm in winter.

You may remember a film about Christopher Columbus, starring Gérard Depardieu, called "1492". Some of the initial scenes were filmed here. (Most notably the bit where two heretics get burned at the stake.) The reason is obvious: much of the old town is entirely free of tourist tat, and when walking alone it's easy to imagine yourself transported back a century or 5. I'm reluctant to use hackneyed words like 'unspoilt' and 'authentic', but they do apply here. It would of course be even more authentic to see a real live stake-burning...I guess you can't have everything.

Meanwhile Sunderland AFC have appointed a new manager that I've literally never heard of. Well, that's what Arsenal did with Arsene Wenger, isn't it? One must at least try to be optimistic. Meanwhile I continue to enjoy watching Spanish football on GOL TV, with its legendary commentator Hector Ruiz. He announces every single goal in the same OTT way. Every. Single. Goal. Specifically, this way. The goal in the clip is worth the watch, incidentally.

Coming here meant a final fond farewell to Madrid. Of all the places I could have been stuck in for a month, Madrid is far from the worst. But it's nice to be back out in the open air, away from the noise and the fumes of the big city. I hope everyone back home is coping well with the Tiers and the socially-distanced Christmas shopping. I can't say I'm jealous.

Santuario de la Virgen de la Montaña, a short walk/climb away from the city centre

Looking uphill to the old town

The old town. No gift shops in sight.

Plaza Mayor

Plaza San Juan

On the street where I live (Calle Damas)

Slightly problematic sculpture

My digs

Edd vs Food #94
The official worst EVF ever. Obviously I should have known better.
A vending machine with its own microwave....
I tried the €2.50 chicken burger, but I had to throw it away after one bite.