We were recently in Palamos on the Costa Brava. No matter how many times you say it the Costa Brava still conjures up images of package holidays, sangria and high rise hotels - certainly for those of us of a certain age whose first overseas foray was probably a middle of the night charter flight to Gerona and a week or two full board in a Lloret de Mar all inclusive hotel. Things have moved on substantially since then although resorts like Lloret and Tossa del Mar don’t sound as though they should have. I saw my first ever bull fight in Lloret and was shocked. I saw Celtic play the local football club on a pre season tour, not long after they had won the European Cup in Lisbon by the way. I went to an all-the-sangria-you-could-drink flamenco night on a coach because that’s what you did back then. Back home in Weymouth a night out was a prawn cocktail and a steak diane with a bottle of Mateus rose in a Berni Inn so this was about as exotic as it got.
Since those heady days of package holidays life has changed on the Costa Brava and it is far more chic than it ever used to be. So we headed to Palamos in early September for a few nights in the town and a couple of days on the beach. Whatever the towns are like the sea is still spectacularly warm and wonderful and worth the trip from anywhere in northern Europe. The last book we published in the Chic Collection was Catalunyachic so I do have a soft spot for the region even if it was a political and cultural hot potato having to get the language right - Catalan not Spanish of course. Some years earlier we had published Spainchic and the Catalan Tourism Board in Barcelona wanted the last word. It seemed to take ages to get the book completed such was the political sensitivity to town names and the political correctness brought on by the separatism movement. By the time we had published the book the internet was well and truly with us and so Catalonia brought the curtain down on this wonderful series of books and we moved (or staggered) into the digital world.
I had passed through Barcelona on my way to work as an English teacher in Madrid in 1978. My connecting Talgo train to Madrid was some 6 hours after my arrival in the city so I dropped all of my world wide belongings into the left luggage office and wandered around the city. I had no idea it was Independence Day and as General Franco (dictator for 40 years) had only recently passed away some 3 years before independence fervour was at its height after all those years of being banned from speaking Catalan. I had no idea about this of course so couldn’t figure out all the different flags and unintelligible language. Part of me thought it was just a regular Sunday in this remarkable city until I found out the reason for all the pageantry. The Talgo took about 7 hours to get to Madrid - the AVE does it in around 2 these days - so I didn’t get into Madrid until 11 at night. I had to be at the school for 9.30 the next morning so left my things in left luggage again and got a taxi into the centre of the city to find some budget accommodation. Thank heavens for my friendly taxi driver who knocked on quite a few doors until he found a 2 star pension that would take me in for the night. I slept like a baby then dashed to the school the next morning. At the end of the day when we were finished with the introductions I then realised I had no idea where my hotel was or indeed what it was called. I can still remember a senior teacher going through the phone book and dialling every hotel that began with M before we found the right one. This was life before Google, the internet and mobile phones of course.
I was lucky enough to play football for the British Embassy which involved some great long weekend tours around the country - although Benidorm was our summer tour! There was also an expat rugby team called the Sprungbacks consisting mainly of Brits, French and a Paraguayan who decided that what Spain needed was a rugby yearbook so when I wasn’t teaching I was out visiting potential sponsors and advertisers and it was this that led me to a career on the commercial side of publishing. That’s a whole other story. Our first fixture of the season was against a team from Zaragoza - a 4 hour drive from Madrid. I was billeted with the opposition captain and his wife and was dropped off in the city square around 9pm the night before with instructions to rendezvous at 2am - 2am! - in a cider bar. It happened to be a fiesta weekend like most other weekends …so I went to eat dinner on my own in an empty restaurant. They were shocked that I was eating before midnight. So I clicked my heels not wanting to drink too much the night before my debut for the Sprungbacks. The captain and his mates eventually showed up around 2.30am and insisted we have at least a couple of ciders which I thought might be a nightcap… I was wrong. We got back to his apartment around 4am to find that his wife had prepared dinner. I think we lost the match later that Sunday but memories are a bit sketchy at this point..
The English school was in a very affluent part of Madrid, Calle Nunez de Balboa, and at the end of my first week in the classroom it was the anniversary of Franco’s death. As an apolitical Brit I wasn’t quite prepared for such Nuremberg like scenes. Black shirted fascists with machine guns returning Nazi salutes to admiring supporters on their apartment balconies. Franco was still present in the nations psyche and the nascent democratic government led by Adolfo Suarez was still on very fragile ground. We were under strict instructions never to discuss politics or religion in the classroom. The right leaning students often wore a small badge of the Spanish flag on their Lacoste shirts so were easy to distinguish. The third rule was not to ask ones students out on a date and that was slightly more difficult to adhere to.
How Spain has changed since then. ETA, the Basque separatist organisation had ensured that Franco’s successor was no longer alive. Masquerading as gas engineers they had planted an enormous bomb under the road outside his apartment building - a bomb that was big enough to destroy a heavily armour plated car and to blow it up so high that it ended up back in the apartment courtyard. The building was six floors high. Despite Colonel Tejero’s attempt to take parliament on his own, firing shots in the air, and a brief military coup attempt that was defused by King Juan Carlos going on TV to warn off the army, Spain has largely continued untroubled on its democratic path, somehow holding together the different regional factions in the Basque Country and Catalonia.
So here are a few of my Spain suggestions based on a life long relationship with this wonderful country. Please contact me for further suggestions and ideas.
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