For me, the best part about flamenco is it's authenticity. Unlike the bullfights, it's not a spectacle put on to attract tourists. No, flamenco is deeply entrenched in Spain's culture. That means that most everyone, especially in Andalucía, can sing or dance flamenco, at least to a certain extent. It's not exclusive to the professionals. If you're in Spain long enough, chances are you'll come across someone singing flamenco at the top of his lungs as he walks down the street.
Flamenco dancers in Sevilla, Spain
Walking through Sevilla, you'll find dozens of dress shops. These dresses are pricey. The cheapest you'll find is 75 euro (about $100), and that's the absolute cheapest. For many girls, they get a new dress every year, which they adorn with flowers and ribbons, and will don during the week of Feria, a celebration based on flamenco, which happens to begin two weeks from now. All night the people of Sevilla gather in casetas, personal tents set up on designated fairgrounds, where they dance flamenco 'til dawn. Not to impress anyone, but just for fun. For tradition.
Feria in Sevilla. This is in two weeks.
WRITING
Many Spanish romantic writers, such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, incorporated flamenco into their writing. They referred to is as the poesía popular, or the popular poetry, and drew on its themes and rhythms to compose short stories and poems that reflected Spanish pop culture. To them, flamenco was a source of endless inspiration: it embodied passion, beauty, and pain in its potent vocals and intense movements.
It has been for a few years now, and it doesn't look like it's getting better anytime soon.
What's interesting about the crisis is that it's very visible. When I first came to Spain, the Copy Center at my university went on strike. It didn't matter that classes were about to start and students needed their books. They were making a statement, because thanks to the crisis, the workers hadn't been paid in overfour months.
Mountain of garbage in Sevilla.
A few weeks later, many cities--including Seville, where I live--had a garbage strike. That mean no garbage was collected for weeks. Imagine, mountains of garbage piled up on the streets, which are fairly narrow, so there's no escape from the stench. It was, as you'd expect, gross. But hey, the workers hadn't been given a raise in over four years.
Then there are the protests. Spain likes protests. In fact, most of Europe likes protests. If history is any indication, it seems the people get bored, so what do they do? They start a revolution for kicks and giggles. Last night I was talking to a Spaniard about the Infanta Cristina scandal, and you know what he said when I asked if he thinks the monarchy is in danger? "Yeah, the people will probably want the monarchy to, well…to leave Spain."
Ready the pitchforks, folks.
Communist rally.
But seriously, it seems every few weeks I accidentally stumble upon a protest--and I mean a protest. Hundreds of people, sometimes thousands, gathering in the main streets with banners. All ages, too, not just rabblerousing youngsters. Within a few days of coming here, I found myself walking past a communist rally. A COMMUNIST rally!
Is this real life?
It was shocking to me. Try that in the States, and you're on the CIA's watch list before you can say, "Workers of the world, unite!"
With such an economic crisis, unemployment rates are sky high at over 27%, compared the U.S.'s 7.7%. For people under 25 (so right out of college), that rate is about 60%. With rates like this, people take what they can. When I asked a Spanish student what he wants to do after he graduates with a degree in computer technology, he shrugged. "I just want a job. I don't care what it is."
For more information on Spain's economic crisis, click here.
A protest on Día de Andalucía, a day during which residents of Andalusia are supposed to celebrate, not protest. But they wanted to make a statement.
I love Dalí, but I'm not sure if I love his paintings, or if I just love him. He's one of those figures who is so ridiculous, you just can't help but like him. Also, his gravity-defying mustache makes him a winner.
After Pablo Picasso, Dalí is probably Spain's most famous artist, best known for his work The Persistence of Memory, often referred to as "that painting with the melting clocks." There was a giant mural of it in my high school, so after seeing it every day, it's one of my favorite paintings. Do I have any idea what it means? Nope. But the melting clocks are fascinating.
The Persistence of Memory, completed 1931
Dalí was a surrealist, so he was into abstract ideas and images that weren't grounded in the real world. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Dalí museum in Barcelona, Spain, where I got to see (and even touch, when it came to sculptures) some of his lesser known works.
To the left, you'll see Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone. (Sorry for the poor quality photo, but photography isn't my strong point). Not sure what it means, if it means anything at all, but I think the title is hilarious. Also, very straightforward.
Look familiar? Dalí had quite a few obsessions, or so I gathered from my visit to the museum: horses, rhinoceroses, and melting clocks. The melting clocks are definitely what interest me most. Time melting away…Very cool. Also, interesting tidbit: the 20s (during which Dalí worked) marked the beginning of the world's obsession with time and prolonged youth (think works like Twilight Sleep or Tender is the Night). It's when time phrases became an essential part of our vocabulary: kill time, keep time, out of time, etc. So I have to wonder if Dalí, who finished ThePersistence of Memory in 1931, was commenting on this phenomenon.
He was also fascinated by horses, apparently. An entire room of the museum was dedicated to his paintings and sculptures about horses, many of them from famous stories. This painting features Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
There was also a little hall dedicated rhinoceroses. When I saw Midnight in Paris, I didn't realize that he was, actually, a little obsessed with rhinoceroses. But alas, I was mistaken. Enjoy this awesome scene from an awesome movie, featuring Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí:
WRITING
Picture prompts?
One of Dalí's paintings would be awesome inspiration for a picture prompt. I would love to read a story, or even a full length novel, based on The Persistence of Memory. Even just a world based on it. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll try my hand at writing it.
So I love history, and especially Latin American history, so instead of talking about Catalonia or comida or las Carlistas or a million other topics that begin with C, I'm going to share a little bit about one of Spain's most famous historical figures, Hernán Cortés.
Assuming you've taken some sort of history class, you probably know Cortés as the conquistador behind the fall of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. You might also know him as that guy from The Road to El Dorado (which is a great movie, by the way):
Right. So a Spanish version of Johnny Bravo. (Can you tell I'm a 90s kid?)
Anyway, history at its most basic will say that Cortés marched through Mexico to Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec Empire, and with only a few hundred men and some horses, took down thousands upon thousands of natives, largely due to the smallpox they brought with them.
But that's not what makes him interesting. Conquests had been going on for centuries, and though it's interesting that the Aztecs might have believed him to be a god (though there's a lot of speculation about that), it's not what intrigues me.
Hernán Cortés
Nope, I'm fascinated by this little anecdote:
In 1518 the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, sent Cortés on an expedition to conquer Mexico, but soon changed his mind, and revoked his permission. Cortés ignored that, and when Velázquez arrived on the mainland in person to tell Cortés off, he replied with, "Sorry, gotta go," and quickly fled. He then founded a town and made himself leader, which hypothetically excused him from being under the Governor of Cuba's authority. Hypothetically.
Of course, some of his men had doubts. Cortés didn't exactly have experience leading an army, and who was he to defy the governor of Cuba? Cortés, sensing that many of his men wanted to desert, scuttled every ship except one, which he sent back to Spain, literally trapping everyone on mainland Mexico, with no choice but to proceed.
To me, this little anecdote is what makes him most interesting. Are these admirable actions? No, definitely not, especially considering that it led to the deaths of thousands of natives. But it was ridiculously courageous--and certainly insane--to scuttle his own ships, stranding himself and some 600 men in a place that very few Europeans had ever visited.
Don't get me wrong: by no means do I condone his actions. In fact, he's ranked pretty darn high on my list of historical jerkwads. But there's no denying that he was, well…a badass, at least in some respects.
Here in Spain, you'll find quite a few paintings and statues dedicated to him. The General Archive of the Indies in Seville is filled with them. It's definitely interesting, since in the U.S., his history is always tinted with negativity: "Hernán Cortés, a bad guy." Since being here, my opinions about that haven't changed--Cortés and the conquistadores brought a lot of misery--but it's strange to see memorials to them. But it goes both ways: Why is Andrew Jackson, the man behind the Trail of Tears, commemorated every time we pull out a twenty?
WRITING
There are two sides to every story.
America doesn't like Cortés. To most, he's a mass murderer. But to Spain he's technically a hero, even if nowadays a lot of Spaniards don't exactly approve of his actions. His conquest of Mexico was the beginning of Spaniards taking over the rest of mainland Latin America, save Brazil. Keep in mind that Spain only became one unified country in 1492, so how awesome must it have been for this brand new country to 1) "discover" the New World, and 2) exploit its resources until it was one of the richest nations around, which enabled it to have an armada to rival the British Navy. In less than a century, it went from being a cluster of very divided kingdoms, largely controlled by North African Arabs, to the most powerful empire in the world. An evil empire, according to the French and British, who felt both jealous and threatened. C is for Competition, right?
Spains rise to power, which has a lot to do with Cortés, reminds us that there are two sides to every story. A villain isn't a villain to everybody, and the same goes for heroes. The best characters are those whose good/evil alignment isn't clear, and it all depends on your point of view. The one that immediately comes to mind is Ben Linus from ABC's Lost. Three years after the end of the show, I still have no idea whether to consider him a good guy or a bad guy. ABC is doing it again with Once Upon a Time: Where on the scale does Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold lie? (Interestingly, these characters also tend to be the best actors).
Ben Linus, played by Michael Emerson, from ABC's LOST
How about Javert from Les Miserables? He is the "bad guy" of the novel/musical/movie, but if you look at the story from his perspective, he's doing what society normally approves of: attempting to stop a wanted thief. If Les Miz were not fiction, but was a true story playing out in our own modern society, we would probably applaud Javert for seeking a potentially dangerous criminal.
"Of course not," you might say. "Jean Valjean is a really good man."
"Yeah," I'd reply. "But how often to you stop to chat with the criminal about his emotions, morals, dreams, family life, etc? You don't."
But because Les Miz gives us Jean Valjean's PoV, we view him as the hero, while Javert is stuck being the villain.
So keep that in mind when writing! To some, your bad guys might not actually be bad guys--and those kinds of characters tend to be the most interesting.
When you think Spain, chances are you think bullfighting, though it's also practiced in other parts of Europe and Latin America. At its most basic, the "art" consists of baiting a bull, then killing it in the arena, known as a bullring.
Bull statue in Ronda.
Believe it or not, bullfighting is considered an art, not a sport. The matadors, locally referred to as toreros, train from an early age, developing their own rhythm and style, for which they're known around the country, and sometimes the world. As Hemingway wrote, "Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honour."
Bullring in Ronda.
It's a practice that dates back thousands of years (pre-Rome), but it's often compared to the more well-known gladiatorial competitions. However, modern bullfighting, which involves fighting on foot (rather than mounted on a horse), staying within inches of the bull, and using the red cape, came about in the 18th century.
Nowadays there's a lot of controversy about bullfighting. My host mother, Isabel, is very against it, for example. When I asked her about it, she threw up her hands and said, "¡Qué barbaridad!" The autonomous community of Catalonia (where Barcelona is located) actually banned bullfighting, and animal rights activists are trying to get the rest of Spain to follow suit.
Honestly, it seems that nowadays bullfighting is more for tourists than for Spaniards. People come from all over the world and pay darn good dinero to see it. Don't get me wrong: there are indeed Spaniards who are bullfighting fanatics (the kind who get season tickets), but not nearly as many as there used to be. But Spain is all about cultural tradition, so I highly doubt it's going to get the boot.
WRITING
Confession: Hemingway is a historical crush of mine. For his writing, for his adventurous spirit, for his love of Spain. (All right, his looks, too).
You know who liked bullfights? Ernest Hemingway, whose novel The Sun Also Rises is all about bullfights in Pamplona, complete with a twisted love triangle (rectangle? pentagon?) involving a matador. He goes into great detail describing the bulls, the bullfights, and the style of Pedro Romero, the matador remembered for his ridiculously tight pants. (Though really all matadors have tight pants, but his are notable since they help to contrast him with protagonist Jake Barnes. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read all about it here--or better yet, read the book because it's great).
In both Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Esteban Echeverrías The Slaughterhouse (El Matadero, in Spanish), bulls are stand-ins for the human characters. Symbols, if you will, usually of immense honor and courage.
Symbols are always fun to write. They're like secret codes: you know them, and your readers have to figure them out. Though since I don't generally write literary fiction, most of the time I don't realize I included a symbol until I go back and revise. Then I'm like, "Hey. That works. Good job, subconscious."
What's your opinion on bullfighting? Approve or disapprove? Have you seen a bullfight? Read The Sun Also Rises? Thoughts on symbols?
And because I can, how about a Spanish song? B is for "Bulería," by David Bisbal, who happens to have very bouncy hair :) There may or may not be a bullring in this video.
Like most countries, Spain is far from uniform. Rather, it is divided into seventeen different autonomous communities(and two independent cities located in North Africa), which work kind of like states. (Though it's a little more complicated than that; these communities don't have as much independence as U.S. states). Many of these autonomies used to be kingdoms before Spain became a unified nation in 1492.
I'm staying in the community of Andalusia (spelled Andalucía in Spanish), in southern Spain, the capital of which is beautiful Seville (where I live).
So what makes Andalusia unique? Well, a lot. I'm just going to cover the basics because otherwise, we'd get into novel territory, as far as length goes.
Seville's bullfighting stadium. Yes, it's still in action.
When you think stereotypical Spain, you think Andalusia, whether you realize it or not. Here is where you'll come across flamenco, bullfighting, and typical Spanish architecture. It's also a place of immense historical importance, where you'll find:
Archivo de Indias - the home of the paperwork regarding the conquest of the Americas. It's lined with images and sculptures of conquistador Hernán Cortés.
Cádiz- where revolutionaries wrote the Constitution of 1812, the first Spanish constitution.
Ronda- Hemingway set part of his Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in this city.
Granada - The last city to expel the Moors from Spain in 1492 during the Reconquista. For this reason, a symbol of Ferdinand and Isabella is the granada, or the pomegranate.
The Andalusian countryside viewed from Ronda.
Writing
For those of you who don't know, my blog is mostly about finding inspiration in real life, then applying that inspiration to my fantasy world. That is, my writing. In a way, living in Andalusia has been one big research project. Mostly, in terms of setting.
I'm a sucker for cool settings. Though, I admit, I've set many a story in places like New York, Washington, D.C., and London, I much prefer more exotic places (usually within the real world). I'd love to see more books set in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and especially Latin America.
Spain is a cool setting (at least in my opinion). It's warm, it's colorful, and it has a very distinct culture that screams "¡VIVA ESPAÑA!" But as far as books in English go, it generally takes a backseat to the U.S., U.K., France, Australia, and many other countries. Which is actually kind of sad, considering it's the birthplace of the novel as we know it today. Unfortunately, we English-speakers tend to forget that.
A courtyard in the Alcazar, a palace in Seville.
So for your next project, consider setting it in Spain. If you're not sure about setting, ask yourself how important the setting is: Does it make a difference if it's set in L.A. or Barcelona? If your character is American or Spanish? Obviously, it does, but that difference could be what makes your story stand out in the slushpile. Personally, if I were an agent looking at two similar urban fantasies, both with strong characters and plots, and one was set in New York and the other in Seville, I'd choose the one in Seville, just because it's unique. (Though I'm not an agent, so what do I know?)
Andalusia would also be a great place from which to draw inspiration for high fantasy. Unfortunately, high fantasy is usually pretty predictable when it comes to setting. Most of the time it's based on medieval Northern Europe, so the kingdoms that made up what is now France, Germany, and the U.K. Stone castles, fairytale-esque villages, dense evergreen forests.
Andalusia also has castles. Andalusia also has villages. Andalusia also has forests--and mountains, and deserts, and beaches, and cliffs.
Only it's castles are often inspired by Islamic architecture, like the Alcazar in Seville. Those villages, like Ronda, are sometimes situated hundreds of meters high. And while you'll find "regular" forests, you'll also come across a ton of palm trees and oranges. So why not pick the former kingdom of Al-Andalus as the basis for a fantasy world? Star Wars did it. The Plaza de España in Seville was used for scenes shot on the planet Naboo.
The list goes on. Long story short, Andalusia is important to Spanish history and culture, despite being primarily an agricultural autonomy. It's significantly less industrial than the rest of Spain. Rather than huge metropolises, you'll find a sprawling countryside adorned with sunflowers, oats, barley, wheat, olives, and especially oranges. In fact, orange trees line the streets of many Andalusian cities, including Seville
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The Plaza de España, which was featured in Star Wars: Episode I.
Amigos, I made the decision. I'm going to try to do the Blogging from A - Z Challenge, which lasts through April. So it's a new post every day, each about something starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Pretty simple.
So why am I doing it? Don't I have enough to do? Yup, I do. I'm quite busy, and honestly, I don't think I'll be able to complete the challenge, but whatever. I'm doing for a personal reason, and that's to learn more about Spain.
Because that's my theme: Spain.
I'm a college student studying abroad in Seville, Spain. I'm here until June, but there's still a lot I don't know about the country, so I figure if I blog about it from A - Z, I'll have the perfect excuse to do a little research.
Of course, I'll continue with my writing-related posts, since my blog is mainly about finding inspiration in real life and applying it to my passion: writing. So as I learn about Spain, I'll also try to find ways to link my newfound knowledge to writing (many of those ways will probably be far-fetched, but that's OK. All part of getting creative).
Can I do this? Probably not. What with taking classes, traveling constantly, and just enjoying the city, I'm a very busy bee, but I'm going to try!
