And why not my beloved Spain, things are moving there too due to the wuhan, covid19 or coronavirus as you wish. The euphoria is propped by the government and business and ambiance suffers, the economy will be in welfare status into 2021. My opinion of course.
Let me tell you some of my news from Spain ok
In 1764, almost three centuries after the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands, Luis Román, infantry captain and alderman of Tenerife, decided to enter the Barranco de Erques. Certain locals had promised to take him to the Cave of a Thousand Mummies and they kept their word. After a narrow opening in the rock, they found dozens, perhaps hundreds, of perfectly preserved corpses. It was not a legend, El Dorado de los Xaxos existed.
These Guanche mummies (original inhabitants from where I come from by all four grandparents, and yes we had them too) were already known, but never before had irrefutable proof of the Cave been obtained, the location of which has vanished over the centuries. Roman decided to take with him the one that most caught his attention, the one that kept even the smallest detail. This today is in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. It is 850 years old, a figure very similar to that obtained in other dating of Guanche mummies made in the last decade: 850 years for the mummy recovered from the Guayanje ravine, 940 for another from La Orotava and 830 for the mummy «NEC 2 » of the Archaeological Museum of Tenerife. This is an adult male who died between the ages of 35 and 40, 1.62 meters tall, with all his teeth preserved, without any wear or decay, with negroid features and hands that do not give away that he had done physical hard work. From the state of his teeth (which speaks of his good nutrition) and his hands, and especially the fact that he was subjected to a high-quality peering process, the researchers infer that he is a male with a preeminent position in the society.
The number of immigrants rescued in the Canary Islands this past Tuesday stands at around 584 people, after the location in the early afternoon of six new boats, all of them in Gran Canaria, according to figures provided to Efe by Salvamento Marítimo.or coast guard lifesavers organism. A pity they are coming to island who depends of tourism which is very little nowdays. But the EU is far away!!!
Jawlensky, Morandi, Miró and Winogrand, great protagonists of the Mapfre Foundation in 2021! The MAPFRE Foundation has presented its cultural program for 2021. In total, at its Madrid and Barcelona headquarters, it will organize twelve exhibitions in which some of the great names in contemporary painting and photography will meet: from Alekséi von Jawlensky to Giorgio Morandi, through Joan Miró, Garry Winogrand or Claudia Andujar, among others. The Foundation will open 2021 with the exhibitions «Jawlensky. The landscape of the face ”and an exhibition by the Japanese photographer Tomoko Yoneda, which can be visited at the Sala Recoletos in Madrid from 11 February 2021 . The first one covers the career of the Russian painter Alekséi von Jawlensky (1864-1941) from his origins and the beginning of his career in Munich to the transformation that his painting undergoes in Switzerland and his last years in the German city of Wiesbaden. As of June 4, the Sala Recoletos will host the exhibitions “Bill Brandt and Miró: Poem”, which shows, through twenty paintings, illustrated books and handwritten poems, the relationship that Joan Miró had with poetry.
And Madrid is shown well again, with a book. Madrid, by Andrés Trapiello, is the great book about the capital of Spain that few would have dared to write, and even less to propose as a journey between personal memory and the memory of those streets and those people. Madrid is the Aleph of the story, yes, the ineffable center of the more than five hundred pages in which the profiles and wonders of a geography are gathered and narrated. Strolling Madrid is living Madrid. Losing yourself in Madrid is finding yourself with the hidden Paradise of the secret. The hidden, what remains and lasts. Trapiello, like Galdós, makes Madrid a guide for the curious and an encyclopedia. From the sacred Rastro to the Costanilla de los Desamparados (what other city could I name a street with such melancholic meaning). The streets of Santa Isabel and Ave María. Madrid, like London, like Paris, like Rome is infinite for those who discover it. The description of Madrid de la Movida is already a novel within the book. Living a city is telling it. But tell it through one ,the city of each one. It will not be a secret city, but it will be discreet. Intimate. There are ten centuries of a city told through an innovative literary genre, in the final part of the book, the wonderful “Madrid Retales”, a historical journey with its kings, its architecture, its gastronomy, its music and theater, its characters, writers, politicians, their misunderstood cockiness, their chroniclers until they reached the unfortunate and humiliated Madrid of the coronavirus. A great book I ordered it. «Madrid» by Andrés Trapiello. Ensayo. Destino, 2020. 554 páges.Price: 24,90 euros.
The City Council of Madrid is given the Rebobinart project ‘Wallspot’ two spaces in Moratalaz and Puente de Vallecas so that urban artists can develop their work and plans to extend it if it is successful . This is not to my liking, it is graffiti. Madrid will join that list by making two municipal spaces available to the artistic collective on the avenue García Tapia -Moratalaz- and Calle Baltasar Santos -Puente de Vallecas- so that these artists can carry out activities and projects of an artistic and social nature that are linked to the territory, its inhabitants and local entities. The wall will be covered with bright paint!
For those joggers and walkers and I am not an expert just taken from my family and friends tells me and will let you know here.
In the Lozoya valley, offers you the ascent or descent from the Puerto de Cotos, border with the province of Segovia, until you reach the Monastery of El Paular . A marked path, in very good condition and over which black and griffon vultures fly all year round. The 14 km walk is of medium difficulty, with a moderate slope. Right!
Next to the car park by the city limits, the path begins, marked with white and red markings, which in a short distance reaches the Silla de Felipe II, from where the King contemplated the works of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. If you return at this point, the walk in total is 3 km and a drop of about 90 meters. Those who want more walking, from the Silla de Felipe II you can continue the trace of the marks and reach Las Machotas for about 3.8 km in addition, from whose top you get one of the most recommended views of this part of the region.Go for it!!
And one of my favorite spots in Madrid ,has sublime views. The Temple of Debod, on the Paseo de Rosales , very close to the Plaza de España, is one of the most magical and romantic places to walk, especially at sunset. If you stand in front of it, the red, yellow and blue tones of the Madrid sky at sunset melt with the stones of this Egyptian temple that is more than two thousand years old. If you approach the Mirador ( lookout behind the temple), you will be able to see how the star sets behind the mountains of the Madrid sierra while its last rays illuminate the Royal Palace (to the left of the balcony), the jardines de Sabatini gardens and the magnificent Casa de Campo.
The global vacation rental search engine Holidu has developed a ranking with the most voted Spanish sweets and photographed by Instagram users. I could not agree more with the first place, one of my favorites. From granma to mom to wife we love it .Torrijas, had 84,698 mentions on the social network, the typical dessert of Spanish Holy Week has become the favorite of the Spanish thanks to its simplicity and low price when preparing it. You get a loaf of dry bread, milk, eggs and sugar. Whether it’s the classic recipe, soaked in wine, syrup, honey or syrup, the result is always delicious. Indeed, try it!
The announcement,this past September, of the fortuitous discovery of a 1634 edition of the play The Two Noble Gentlemen, by Shakespeare, at the University of Salamanca, which until now was considered the oldest edition preserved in Spain by the great English playwright , raised the hare in a school in Seville. And its director, Luis Rey Goñi, went through the two security doors of the San Francisco de Paula library to check the date of the offprint of The famous story of the life of King Henry VIII, also by Shakespeare but published two years earlier: in 1632. Until then, the work had remained unnoticed among the numerous collections of the Seville college library. The work had been hidden from the public eye since its acquisition. The library of the Colegio Internacional San Francisco de Paula houses this piece, which is the second edition of The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII, a play in English published in 1632. It was carefully kept in the center, which has an old special archive, with documents from the 13C to 18C. The San Francisco de Paula collection has about 60,000 copies, distributed between the library area and another deposit located outside the center. The oldest print that is kept there is from 1472. But there are also earlier manuscripts, such as one of Alfonso X’s Rolled Privileges dated 1256. Most of the volumes are in Spanish, English, French and Latin; although there are oddities in other languages like a manuscript from Burma (present-day Myanmar). The San Francisco de Paula International School of Seville is a private center, located in the historic center of the city, and was founded in 1886.The library of the center, called Francisco Márquez Villanueva in honor of one of the former students, has 12 classrooms where the “Silence” sign can be dodged if the motive is to debate.
A sun of justice received the guests who attended the celebration of the awarding of the Cervantes Prize to Francisco Brines at the poet’s farmhouse in Oliva, where he was born 88 years ago. He assured that he continues to write and read and is working on a new book entitled Where Death Dies, on whose subject he said he did not want to talk. The work brings together lyrical prose and poetry and has been in the making for years. The author of The Autumn of the Roses (National Prize for Literature) and academic of the RAE responded that he does not know if he will go to Alcalá de Henares to collect the award for health reasons. He also explained that with his foundation, based in the Elca farmhouse, which holds a library of about 30,000 volumes, he wants to pay a “tribute to poetry, because poetry apart from the aesthetic is a very illustrative path.” And he stressed that the Cervantes Prize shows that its current readers are the same in Galicia, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Oliva, Valencia or Andalusia. And wherever a reader reads it and gets excited, his poetic voice will have arrived, and while that happens he will have a poetic voice in our world. Great poet indeed and well deserve.
I like to put his latest poetic work here in Spanish. “Donde muere la muerte, / porque en la vida tiene tan solo su existencia./ En ese punto oscuro de la nada/ que nace en el cerebro,/ cuando se acaba el aire que acariciaba el labio,/ ahora que la ceniza, como un cielo llagado,/ penetra en las costillas con silencio y dolor,/ y hay un adiós sin nadie, que se dirige a nadie,/ y un pañuelo mojado por las lágrimas se agita / hacia lo negro./ Beso tu carne aún tibia./ Fuera del hospital, como si fuera yo, recogido/ en tus brazos, / un niño de pañales mira caer la luz,/ sonríe, grita, y ya le hechiza el mundo/ que habrá de abandonarle./ Madre, devuélveme mi beso. »
And I will dare translate as best possible a poetry. Where death dies, / because in life it has only its existence / In that dark point of nothing / that is born in the mind, / when the caressing air that ends on the lip, / now that the ash, like a wounded sky, / penetrates the ribs with silence and pain, / and there is a goodbye with no one, which addresses no one, / and a handkerchief wet with tears is shaken / towards blackness / I kiss your still warm flesh / Outside the hospital, as if it were me, gathered / in your arms, / a child in diapers watches the light fall, / smiles, shouts, and the world is already enchanted / that will abandon him / Mother, give me my kiss back. Great me think.
And there you go folks, there is still Spain everything under the Sun. Ready to be back alive.
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all!!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 