In my new life as retiree my blog is my biggest entertainement and before anything else, I like to thank everyone of my readers and followers to stay with me over the years since November 26 2010 !!! Thank you !!! Especially my first likes from former travel forum friend Jeannette I decided to trim some of my older posts in my series Some news from Spain and condense them as not to lose the most important parts, me think, of them, Therefore, this is my new work, the condense news of my belle Spain, Hope you enjoy it as I.
Some news from Spain LXXIII January 8, 2019
The Altamira museum suspended this past Friday in exceptional way the visits to the World Heritage Cave by the increase of the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) inside the cavity, an increase that is natural and seasonal and that is determined by the climatic situation. It had decided to maintain the regime of controlled access and limited to the cave of Altamira consists of a visit per week for five people of 37 minutes of duration, which is carried out under a strict protocol of clothing and lighting, and with a tour and times of permanence defined for each area of the cave. The visit to the cave of Altamira takes place every Friday at 10h40 and can participate in the selection procedure of the five participants all persons over 16 years who are visiting the museum between 9h30 and 10h30 of that same day.
Some news from Spain LXXIIII February 14, 2019
And fantasy in Spain can be real, as said everything under the sun. Well there is more! see Astroland, the newly created Spanish interplanetary agency, has chosen a cave in Cantabria to develop the technology needed to inhabit the red planet. It is a cave of Arredondo with similarities to the Martian environment: low temperatures, strong winds and high stellar radiation that make it very hostile. If the forecasts are fulfilled, this innovative project will begin with a mission of ten expedition members on June, 15th 2019. And all of this, of course, with a view to making the arrival of manned missions to Mars a reality, a feat that, at least, is expected for the year 2030. Of course, each of the ten crew members will have to demonstrate a number of skills to know the role assigned to them: leadership, expeditionary, biologist, psychologist… And they will receive a previous training program of about 90 days, which includes knowledge of coaching and leadership, climbing and caving, skill in emergency plans or hydroponic crops. These are the methodologies that space agencies follow to train their astronauts. At the moment, emulating this experience in Cantabria is a possible proposal at a reasonable price of about 10,000 euros. For those who want to sign up, the registration process is already open through the Astrolan
Paris, at the end of World War II, became the largest artists ‘ refuge town in the world. Painters, sculptors and writers of half the world (also Spaniards) settled there willing to soak up the bohemian atmosphere, the artistic independence and the freedom that many denied them in their countries. In Paris, Kandinsky became master of abstraction, Picasso turned to the conventions of painting, Chillida met his friend Pablo Palazuelo… All are protagonists of the show Paris despite everything. Foreign artists, 1944-1968, with whom the Reina Sofía Museum reveals the importance of foreign creators in that city during the postwar period. It is a sample that gathers works of more than 100 artists, among which are, in addition to those mentioned, Herrera, Kelly, Tinguely, Tamayo, Asger Jorn, Arroyo or Alfred Manessier.
Some news from Spain LXXVI March 28, 2019
A free marathon with the best works of Garcia Lorca. On Wednesday March 27th is celebrated the World Theatre Day, a day that since 1961 remembers the importance that this art has to create a free and committed citizenship. The Royal Post Office (Real Casa de Correos),home of the Community of Madrid, hosts this Saturday a marathon of Lorquianas works to commemorate the centenary of the arrival of the Andalusian poet to the Residence of Students. The Act will commence at 18h.
Some curiosities of my beloved Madrid: If today’s Retiro park seems like a fascinating place, at the time it was a much more impressive place. The Royal Site of the Gran Retiro (Great Retreat) came to count, centuries ago, with 20 buildings, five squares, six ponds and eight hermitages. Anyone who has gone through the Puerta del Sol knows that everyone, of any creed or condition, has a hole in it. Something that is also true in a physical way, because it has an area of about 11,000 square meters. In the Plaza de Colon area are the Gardens of Discovery, a space full of symbology. For example, the three large blocks that we can observe next to the pond represent the three caravels of the famous Columbus expedition of 1492.Located in the Alameda de Osuna, the park of Capricho is almost with total security the most beautiful in Madrid. One of the great surprises that it has prepared to the visitors is a bunker of the Civil War of 1500 square meters that can be visited by means of previous reservation, the so-called Jaca Position. Did you know that Madrid has a castle? This is a fact that very few people know and with whom we encourage the reader to investigate a little more, visit included. We refer to the Castle of the Alameda, erected in the 15C, and located in the district of Barajas.
Some news from Spain LXXVII April 15, 2019
The reopening of the Teatro Salon Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares is 30 years old. The building housed a theater since the late 19C, but it was in private hands. After many works and years of inactivity, the City/Town Hall bought the parcel and rehabilitated the theater, which opened its doors again on April 14th, 1989. The belief that Cervantes was born in the garden of the Convent of the Capuchin Fathers was spread like gunpowder by Alcalá in the 19C. After the confiscation of Mendizábal in 1836 the land was acquired by individuals, who built a theater on the plot in 1888 in just 29 days. They placed two commemorative plaques on the façade and got the City Council to give the street the name of the author of El Quijote, a denomination it maintains. There was nothing to guarantee that Cervantes was born there but a document was found in 1943 and showed that he did was born in the Calle de la Imagen (parallel to the one that bears his name Calle Cervantes). The Birth House of Cervantes opened in 1956. The Local was conditioned in 1979 as a bingo room, but years later they abandoned it. In 1985 the City Council acquired the property. The Teatro Salon Cervantes, currently integrated in the Network of Theaters of the Community of Madrid, has a rectangular layout and its facade tryptic is of modernist style. It has a seating capacity of 458 persons distributed in a rectangular patio, a tiered amphitheater and two boxes on the sides
One up my alley while living there in Madrid is the Teatro Daoíz y Velarde that finally will see the light next year. After years of struggle and vindication, the neighbors of the Pacifico and Adelfas neighborhoods, in the Retiro District, see the theater promised them, a scenic space located on one of the nave of the former military barracks Daoíz y Velarde of Italian style, which will have two rooms and a capacity of more than 400 persons. The Theater will have an independent access to the rest of the cultural center and a central space for different uses and that contains a mural with images on the history of the Retiro District. At the Teatro Real (Royal Theater of Madrid). Seven titles of the 12 planned for 2019 and 2020 will be completely new to the spectators. This is The case of Il Pirata, of Bellini, or Iris, of Pietro Mascagni. Titles to which one must add Into The Little Hill (George Benjamin), Three Tales (Steve Reich) and three clear bets highlighted by Matabosch as very risky: The passenger (Mieczyslaw Weinberg), Lear, of Aribert Reimann, and Achille in Sciro, of Coselli.
The conversion of the Palace of Eugenia de Montijo in the only five-star hotel in the Old Town of Toledo serves as a pretext to rediscover the imperial city and fall back in love with it. It is not known exactly when Eugenia Palafox Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick were for the first time in this city so attached to history and literature, but had to be before becoming Empress of France after her marriage to Napoleon III. It Is known that there were many trips between Granada, Madrid and Paris, and Toledo was the perfect place to take a few days off before entering the capital. Also still family castle at Belmonte in Castilla La Mancha as well One of the favorite places of Eugenia de Montijo in Toledo was the Palacio de Fuensalida, now the seat of the Presidency of the Board Eugenia liked to recommend the route that begins with the Puerta de Bisagra (Hinge gate), to go later to the Plaza de San Vicente before reaching the Cathedral. Next to the Puerta de Bisagra stands the Church Santiago del Arrabal, the largest and most beautiful Mudejar church in Toledo. From here you can go up the Calle Real del Arrabal towards the city center. Before reaching the Cuesta de las Armas (Slope of the arms). It is worth observing the Puerta del Sol, on the right, and the Chapel of San José, a Renaissance work usually closed as it houses inside Greco’s paintings. Not far from the Archiepiscopal Palace stands the Church of San Marcos (St. Mark), the only existing remnant of the convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians back in the 13C. Nowadays it is the exhibition center of the Caja Castilla-La Mancha Foundation. At the end of the Cuesta de las Armas is the Plaza de Zocodover, the neuralgic center of Toledo, place of appointment and meeting of its neighbors since the Moslem period (the origin of its name, Suk-al-Dawad, the market of the meat animals). Nearby are the Hospital and Museum of Santa Cruz and the Alcázar.Lost in the sunset that is contemplated from the Alcazar, a magical panorama on the Tajo river. Although , I would also propose to look in the morning to the viewpoint of the plaza del Conde from where another extraordinary vision of the river is contemplated with dozens of cicadas sounds as backdrop.
Vestidos Simultanios or Simultaneous Dresses ,three women, shapes, colors, of 1925, is one of the works that stand out in the exhibition Pioneers: Women Artists of the Russian avant-garde, in room 43 of the National Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza. It is a sample that reveals the importance of these artists, who not only participated in complete equality in this crucial movement of the avant-garde of the early 20C, but in many cases were names that led some of their currents to follow. They are key figures of the essential Russian avant-garde. The exhibition brings together 12 works, selected from the permanent collection of the Thyssen, by the artists Natalia Goncharova, Alexandra Exter, Olga Rózanova, Nadeshda Udaltsova, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova and Sonia Delaunay
Some news from Spain LXXVIII April 23, 2019
The DGT’s (Direccion General de Tràfico) environmental label, which will be compulsory since April 24th, must be visible in your vehicle to enter the Madrid (more on the fashion in Europe to charge you more to come to the city without adequate public transports or park and relay garages), something that will be a minor infringement of the ordinance and that will be associated with fines of up to 100 euros. All labels can be purchased at the post offices, and also in several workshops, thanks to the agreement of the DGT with the Spanish Confederation of Workshops. To purchase it in person, it is essential to present the registration of the vehicle for which the sticker is requested, and the DNI (personal identification Documento Nacional de Identidad) of the owner of the vehicle or the person authorized for it. In addition, you can buy online ; the sticker has a price of five euros at any site. The label would reach the selected home address within three days, but due to the high volume of orders, it may take up to 10 working days. There are four types of stickers, depending on the emissions of the vehicle: Zero Emissions, ECO, C ,and B.
Some news from Spain LXXVIIII May 13, 2019
The Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities awarded to the Prado Museum crowned a year of celebrations for the Pinacoteca which, for its bicentennial, has organized a hundred acts, has traveled through the Spanish geography and has opened to other arts Like film or dance. The strong plate, with which the celebrations began, was the exhibition “Museo del Prado 1819-2019. A place of memory ” . A chronological journey through the history of the museum with works by Renoir, Manet, Picasso or Pollock, who inaugurated the King Felipe VI last November. The 2019 temporary exhibitions program includes names like Velázquez and Rembrandt, Goya, Fra Angelico, and Sofonisba Anguisola and Lavinia Fontana, two of the most notable women in Western art history. Since the Royal Museum opened its doors on November 19, 1819, the institution has become one of the main custodians of the Western pictorial memory and the fundamental reference point of the Spanish culture.
The lamp that crowned the main hall of the noble floor of Casa Batlló, the building created by Antoni Gaudí between 1904 and 1906 on Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona, appeared after having lost track of it for decades. Located in the center of the space where the family of the textile industrialist Josep Batlló I Casanovas received their visits and celebrated the most important events of the House, the whole world gave it for lost until a few months ago. In the end, the brass structure and the hand-carved glass pieces, one by one, only had to be cleaned and assembled, based on silver wires. This way the parable of this monumental ceiling of 99 centimeters in diameter, about 65 kilos of weight and 68 centimeter of height, plus 12 cm of the central apron was recovered.
Some news from Spain LXXX June 13, 2019
The Nights in the Gardens of the Real Alcázar, which this year celebrates its XIX edition with 75 performances between June 14 and September 8 2019. Between the splendid gazebo of Carlos V and the Gallery of Grutescos you can enjoy flamenco, jazz, swing, blues and all kinds of ethnic as well as classical music. A real luxury that must be booked in advance. The festival celebrates its 19th edition betting on the mixture between avant-garde and tradition From the Greek tragedies to the verses of Shakespeare or Cervantes, Clasicos de Alcalà (classics in Alcalá de Henares) fills the city of theater with flavor to tradition
William Klein. Manifiesto. First great retrospective in Spain of one of the fundamental figures of 20C photography. The New Yorker accurately portrayed the postwar society, helping to build our own vision of the world. The exhibition brings together 245 works and documents that make up the kaleidoscopic work of the creator, who also approached painting, cinema and graphic arts. The exhibition can be visited until September 22 2019. Where: Fundación Telefónica
Museo del Romanticismo (Museum of Romanticism) at Calle San Mateo, 13). The Garden of the Magnolio that hides this 18C palace, inside which recreates the daily life of the upper middle class during Romanticism, is one of its corners with more personality Your Garden Café seems like a more than valid excuse to enjoy a snack spiced with one of the homemade cakes that appear in your menu. Although the cafeteria schedule coincides with that of the Museum, it is not necessary (although it is advisable) to visit it to access it. Sorolla Museum at Paseo del General Martínez Campos, 3. Casa Museo Lope de Vega(house museum) at Calle Cervantes, 11. Like Sorolla, Lope de Vega also spent many hours of his life taking care of the garden that adorned his home with taste and care, and which today hosts performances and concerts. Palacio de Linares at Plaza Cibeles, s / n , corner with Paseo de Recoletos. Famous for being the current headquarters of the Casa de América, Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum at Calle Santa Isabel, 52. Splattered by sculptures by Alexander Calder, Joan Miró and Eduardo Chillida, the Sabatini Garden shares its name with the building that gives it shelter. The Italian architect was in charge of designing the General Hospital of San Carlos, the first destination of this site. Today your parterre proposes a complementary way to enjoy the Museum.
Puerta de Hierro Sports Park in Madrid (No 1!). With its three hundred thousand square meters this sports park is by far the largest in the capital, including a gigantic adult pool of 6,500 square meters in addition to another for children. It is the direct heiress of the Playa de Madrid, also known as the Lido Chulapo, designed between 1932 and 1934. It was the first artificial beach in Spain, located in the Manzanares river on its way through El Pardo. It had spaces for rowing, swimming and other water sports. After the Spanish Civil War, at the end of the fifties, the area was reconverted into the trade union park, building the immense pools that have survived to this day.
There you go folks, a big task but a work of love to keep the best, me think of these wonderful older posts over the years, These are what I think worth keeping of my older Some news from Spain series, and I thank you, Again, hope you enjoy this post as I
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
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