Well I had condense and update several of these posts before, and I am coming back to my beloved Spain. Let me recap my series of some news from Spain August-November 2020 !!! Hope you enjoy it as I.
Some news from Spain XCIIII August 22 2020
Benito Pérez Galdós summers in Santander!!! In Cantabria, in his home San Quintín, where he went almost every summer of his life since 1871. The first 20 years he spent for rent in the city, but in 1892 he began to build his farm in San Quintín, from which he had the company and the soft bath for the view of the Santander bay. The writer secluded himself there for at least three months a year with his sisters, Carmen and Concha, and his daughter María, whom he had, as single, with Lorenza Cobián. The place served as a profitable inspiring refuge for him: he produced eight novels, 14 national episodes, and 11 plays there. He went to bed early and got up a lot early. It was installed in furniture designed by himself, as he did with the house, which he designed together with the architect Casimiro Pérez de la Riva. The large tiled fireplace from England was imprinted with a legend from Shakespeare’s grave. On the walls hung pictures with motifs of the National Episodes and there he transferred the portrait made by his friend Joaquín Sorolla. In the library he had a border inscribed with phrases from the Litany of the Virgin and passages from the Psalms were read on the curtains. All this, contemplated by a reproduction of Voltaire’s death mask and a portrait of someone as un-Christian as Richard Wagner. This contrast gave an idea of his radically contradictory spirit, taken to the maximum in his decorative expressions. San Quintín was the only house that Galdós owned. His house … To such an extent it was that he kept all his manuscripts there while he was alive. He set San Quintín as the starting point for his trips to the north and the region, which he reflected in travel books such as Four leagues through Cantabria. There he embarked on ships that transferred him to his continuous European itineraries. He often departed from the port of Santander for France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and landed again at the same point. After his death, no one wanted to keep his legacy there. His body was extinguished and also his memory in the city. No one showed interest in claiming it. Their belongings were transferred to the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria House Museum in the 1960s. The property was sold to private individuals shortly after he died. They demolished the house. The retaining wall of the entrance to the farm is preserved, as well as a sign with blue tiles and Gothic letters that reads: San Quintín. No memory on the wall indicates that there, one of the greatest writers of world literature created much of his work and was reasonably happy. That is the sad part of history forgetfulness, we should not! Long live Benito Pérez Galdós!
The Prado National Museum Reunited. Madrid 06/06/2020 – 09/13/2020. See specially :The Annunciation by Fra Angelico and The Descent by Van der Weyden, brought together for the first time, welcome visitors on a generous tour of exceptional dialogues. Goya and Rubens’ Saturns can be seen together, and Las Meninas and Las Hilanderas will share space in Room XII, along with an exceptional “altarpiece” made up of the jesters by Velázquez, Prado museum webpage: https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/reunited/1027b51a-a7dc-4199-7ce6-5ff4a2710f74
Lafayette made us learn the Camino de Las Tablas a few years ago, a new, remote and somewhat disconcerting neighborhood, but which became something like the Camino de Santiago for lovers of French cuisine in Madrid. He moved to a place next to the Glorieta de López de Hoyos roundabout, which is also much larger and has a shady terrace covered with vegetation that will become an irresistible magnet for the nights of next summer. Sébastien Leparoux is the soul of the restaurant, renamed Brasserie Lafayette .We remember the good work of the first chef from the founding era, 11 years ago, in Las Tablas: Vincent Huber. The move to the center, last summer, has marked the debut of a Spanish chef, Juan Suárez de Lezo, (not try yet) trained in Cordon Bleu and in stages in large French houses, and we think he is a good signing. Very interesting winery that Leparoux maintains and cares for, with a collection of French wines of great interest as few will see in Madrid. See it taste it at Brasserie Lafayette, Calle Recadero 2 .More info here: https://www.brasserielafayette.es/
Some news from Spain XCV September 11 2020
The Madrid City Council converts the former Conde Duque Barracks into its cultural center of reference with a commitment to contemporary creativity and a daily program that challenges the pandemic depression a new chapter in the long history of walls built more than 300 years ago and which also house the Villa Archive and the Municipal Newspaper Library. Hence the new denomination of Center for Contemporary Culture Condeduque was born. And I have more in my blog, great wonderful place. More here: https://www.condeduquemadrid.es/
The doors of the Teatro Español reopened with an exceptional musical grotesque. The play Con lo bien que nosotros (Ferretería Esteban) has inaugurated the 2020/2021 season of public theaters in Madrid, which has a total of 80 projects. with the live piano performance of Néstor Ballesteros, it revolves around a couple of hardware dealers, Esteban and Marigel, who one day decide to leave their routine to go to the theater. From there their lives takes a turn because music owns Esteban, turning his days into a grotesque musical. Shown until October 4, 2020. More here: https://www.teatroespanol.es/con-lo-bien-que-estabamos-ferreteria-esteban
If the Atlantic archipelago of the Canary Islands were a country (not at all farfetched) , it would be the fifth with the most tourists in the European Union. Its climate, the best in the world according to several studies, is joined by its level of safety, its nature and its beaches as reasons to extend the summer season for the rest of the year. As an example, its 40.5% of protected territory stands out (it measures a total of 7,493 km2), its four National Parks, seven Biosphere Reserves, 1,583 kms of coastline, 500 beaches and 60 natural saltwater pools. The largest island in the archipelago ,Tenerife, is home to the Teno Rural Park and Teide, the highest mountain in Spain (3,718 meters) and the third highest volcano in the world. There are other islands such as Gran Canaria; Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro, and La Graciosa, the smallest of the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands touirist office: https://www.hellocanaryislands.com/ And the Tenerife tourist office: https://www.webtenerife.co.uk/
Siam Park, in Tenerife, considered by many ,as the best water park on the world, the complex located in Costa Adeje, in the south of Tenerife and inaugurated in 2008. Siam Park occupies a 85,000 square meter extension that accommodates all kinds of attractions that have water as the protagonist between slides, pools of all sizes and shapes, giant donuts in which to slide, meandering rivers, exotic forests, shops and different restaurants. And all inspired by the ancient Thai kingdom of Siam, from which it takes its name. More info here: https://www.siampark.net/en/
The new season will start off at Caixaforum Madrid on October 9 with “The American Dream”, a colorful journey through the collection of prints and drawings of the British Museum by Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Johns, Bourgeois, Warhol and De Kooning. More on Caixaforum Madrid and The American Dream: https://caixaforum.es/es/madrid/p/el-sueno-americano-del-pop-a-la-actualidad_a12643579
Some news from Spain XCVI October 22 2020
The Museo Picasso Málaga exhibits one of the lesser-known facets of Pablo Picasso: that of a ceramist. Until December 31,2020 room XII of the Palacio de Buenavista hosts Dialogues with Picasso. Collection 2020-2023, a sample composed of 19 ceramics that the brilliant painter made between 1931 and 1962. Installed in the south of France, it was between 1946 and the end of the 60s when Picasso delved into the art of ceramics, which later It was a great artistic discovery. Among the exhibits are colorful clay plates illustrated with the heads of goats, human and faun faces, jugs in the shape of owls or insects, plates, tiles or bricks. The exhibition includes three paintings that he carried out during the same period ,and the La Californie Drawing Notebook, a publication with twenty-two drawings in Chinese ink, pencil, graphite, charcoal and gouache on vellum paper, made by Picasso at Cannes in 1956. This is exhibited in digital format and is mostly portraits taken in the La Californie studio or notes from nature. Museo Picasso Málaga; Palacio de Buenavista. Calle San Agustín, 8. Webpage: : https://www.museopicassomalaga.org/
Dance arrives this season at the Teatro Real by the hand of one of the greatest Spanish creators: Antonio Gades. The coronavirus has prevented the hosts of the Munich Ballet from traveling to Spain to offer their version of “Giselle”, as planned (as told in previus so , and the Spanish company, which has been grounded for the same reason had to cancel a performance in Baden -Baden, will take its place with the lesser-known work of that fertile pairing that Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura made: «Fuego». It is a ballet created in 1989 from the film “El amor brujo”, signed by both four years earlier. “Fuego” was commissioned by the Châtelet theater in Paris, where the play premiered on January 26, 1989. Spanish audiences had to wait twenty-five years to see “Fuego.” The premiere took place in July 2014 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. More on the Teatro Real and Fuego : https://www.teatroreal.es/es/espectaculo/compania-antonio-gades
The ninth Caixaforum of Spain is progressing as planned within the huge Agora designed by Santiago Calatrava in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. With its 10,000 square meters, it will be one of the largest, together with Madrid, when it opens to the public in the first quarter of 2022, if the deadlines are met. And, probably, it will also be one of the most spectacular due to the size of the building, which reaches a height of 70 meters in height, and because of its whale skeleton shape. Official webpage waiting for Valencia to be added: https://caixaforum.es/es/home
Some news from Spain XCVII November 17 2020
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. Romàn 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 » are on the Archaeological Museum of Tenerife.Webpage : https://www.museosdetenerife.org/
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. Webpage: https://www.fundacionmapfre.org/en/art-and-culture/exhibitions/historical/year-2021/alexei-von-jawlensky/
There you go folks, short and hot just for your thinking mind. This is Spain, everything under the Sun, Again,hope you enjoy this post as I. And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 