La Revista 248

LA ISSUE 248

REVI S TA THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY MAGAZINE

DEBUSSY & SPAIN

THE SPANISH MASTER OF LIGHT

BREXIT: WHO IS AFRAID OF GROUP ATTACHMENT

SPRING ISSUE 2019

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BIENVENIDOS

L A RE VISTA Executive Editor: Jimmy Burns Marañón Editor: Carolina Jara Huergo Deputy Editor: Laura Gran Design: Julia Burns Contributing Editor: Marina Perez de Arcos Advertising: Alexandra Brown Distribution: David Hurst Scholarships: Elisa Ramirez,Marina Perez de Arcos, Francisco Holgado M a r i a n J i m é n e z- R i e s c o ( Tr u s t e e) Development Secretary: María Soriano Casado E v e n t s : C a r m e n Yo u n g ( Tr u s t e e), D a v i d H u r s t, P a u l P i c k e r i n g , Silvia Montes, Jordi Mateu, Silvia Montes Membership, Finance & Website Secretar y: Juan Gomez Garcia Events & Grants Secretary: Alvaro Cepero Published by the British Spanish Society Honorary President: H.E. Carlos Bastarreche, Spanish Ambassador Honorar y Vice-President: S i m o n M a n l e y, British Ambassador to Spain Chairman: Jimmy Burns Marañón Patrons: D u k e o f W e l l i n g t o n , D a m e D e n i s e H o l t, L a d y M a r i a - B e l e n P a r k e r, C a r m e n A r a o z d e U r q u i j o , L a d y B r e n n a n , L a d y L i n d s a y, J o h n S c a n l a n , R t H o n B a r o n e s s H o o p e r, Randolph Churchill, Sir Stephen Wright Tr u s t e e s : J i m m y B u r n s M a r a ñ ó n (C h a i r m a n), J u a n R e i g M a s c a r e l l ( Tr e a s u r e r), C a r m e n Yo u n g , M a r i a A n g e l e s J i m e n e z R i e s c o , J o s é I v a r s L o p e z , S c o t t Yo u n g , Roger Golland, Cristina Alvarez Campana, M i k e S h o r t, F e r n a n d o M e n e n d e z , Justin Ellis Other members of the Executive Council: D a v i d H u r s t, P a u l P i c k e r i n g , A l e x a n d r a Brown, Francisco Holgado, Alberto Linares, Silvia Montes, Jordi Mateu, Julian Barcena, Elisa Ramirez, Maria Perez de Arcos. w w w. b r i t i s h s p a n i s h s o c i e t y. o r g The opinions expressed throughout this issue represent those of the authors and contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the BritishSpanish Society or those of their supporters.

The BritishSpanish Societ y is a registered c h a r i t y : 10 8 0 2 5 0 Contact us: For all editorial contributions or to comment on an article you have read in La Revista, please write to us at: i n f o @ b r i t i s h s p a n i s h s o c i e t y. o r g To e n q u i r e a b o u t a d v e r t i s i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s (i n c l u d i n g c l a s s i f i e d a d v e r t s) please contact: britishspanishadvertising@gmail.com

WELCOME TO OUR SPRING ISSUE!

O

ur cover story by our contributing editor Dr Marina Perez de Arcos on Sorolla celebrates a major new exhibition in London’s National Gallery-the latest Spanish artist to be justly honoured by an international audience in the great English capital.

You can find an extended version of the interview in Spanish on our website britishspanishsociety.org As his great granddaughter tells us in our exclusive interview nothing unites more than culture.

This event takes pride of place in this magazine, the flagship publication of the BritishSpanish Society, a charity with a long track record of huge voluntary effort forging bridges of cultural and educational understanding between the peoples of Spain and the UK. The BSS’s mission is that of dialogue and engagement, of seeking the best the good people of Britain and Spain can offer each other. It is these good people that have continued to support the BritishSpanish Society and we hope more will join it.

Elsewhere in this issue Arturo Ezquerro at London’s Institute of Group Analysis writes about the historic ties that have linked the UK to Europe, and the existential crisis provoked by Brexit.

He underlines the importance of group attachment in our lives.

Other articles celebrate the research and creativity of talented Spaniards

and British students, all beneficiaries of BritishSpanish Society scholarships backed by companies committed to social responsibility and the generous donations of patrons and members, across a range of disciplines from technology and science to historical research and music.

We also welcome on board some of our enduring contributors, including my former Financial Times colleague Robert Graham( former FT Madrid Bureau chief ) and Dominic Begg whose Last Word column focuses on the positive experience of a long-term British resident in Spain. This is a magazine full of quality writing and thought provoking themes and ideas.

As we go to press, the flowering season of Spring has come early in Britain and Spain, and across Europe. Hopefully this is a sign that reasonable men and women will prevail against the forces of hard-right nationalisms-for we need good news to lift our spirits.

There is much more to read and enjoy in this issue brought together by a collective effort our wonderful editorial teamJulia Burns (Design Editor), Alexandra Brown, Marina Perez de Arcos, and Laura Gran- with the support of our other hard working volunteers and admin, Carmen Young, Roger Golland, Silvia Montes, Elisa Ramirez, Jordi Mateu, David Hurst, Maria Soriano, Alvaro Cepero, and Juan Gomez. A big gracias to them and all our growing readership and support.

Jimmy Burns Marañón, OBE Chairman & Executive Editor

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CONTRIBUTORS ISSUE 248

M ARINA PEREZ DE ARCOS

Spanish studies at Oxford Coordinator, teaches at LSE and at Oxford University. Co-founder and director of Oxford Spanish Play. Former BSS Santander Scholar.

Commissioning Editor La Revista.

BSS Executive Council member.

JIMMY BURNS M AR AÑÓN, OBE Author, Journalist and Chairman of the BritishSpanishSociety, Executive Editor La Revista

DOMINIC BEGG

JULIA BURNS

Former President of TESOL-Spain and teacher at ESADE business school. Former Spanish rugby champion.

Designer La Revista

ALEX ANDRA BROWN

MAITE AGUIRRE

British Civil Servant. BSS Editorial Team.

BSS Executive Council member

Guildhall School Graduate. Former BSS Scholar. Concert Pianist. Director Academia de Musica Cañada Blanch in London

ROBERT GR AHA M

DR ARTURO EZQUERRO

Author & Journalist. Former Financial Times Madrid Bureau Chief.

Consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy.

Group analyst. Member of the BritishSpanish Society

w i t h t h a n k s t o t h e B r i t i s h S p a n i s h S o c i e t y ’s p r i n c i p a l s u p p o r t e r s :

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L AURA GRAN

Journalist specialised in Marketing and PR. Deputy Editor of La Revista

DAVID HURST

Writer and Executive Council member.

BSS Events team

PA U L P I C K E R I N G

Arts lecturer. Official Guide.

Executive Council member

DR T YLER FISHER

Queen Sofia Research Fellow and Lecturer in Spanish at Exeter College, University of Oxford

CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS

NEWS & EVENTS

36

6

SPOTLIGHT 18

HISTORY 24

EDUCATION 27

CULTURE 36

ART 42

18

TRAVEL 44

LAST WORD

40

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50

PAST EVENTS Christmas Cheer, Wine, Cava, Carols, And Villancicos Delicious tapas designed by Michelin star chef Marcos Morán, with the best Spanish wines, and cava in one of London’s leading Spanish eateries ensured that the BritishSpanish Society’ Christmas party on December 10th, organised by the BSS’s superb events team, was one of the most enjoyable of the season.

There was a full turn-out for the party held in the spacious and beautifully decorated upstairs dining room at the BSS’s corporate supporter’s Hispania HQ in the City. Guests contributed generously to the fundraising raffle, and magnificent prizes ranging from signed books to dinner vouchers were won by those having a lucky night.

The convivial nature of the event was characterised by some popular English carols and Spanish villancicos sung by the BSS choir and conducted

by Lucia Veintimilla the young Spanish virtuoso violinist, MA with Distinction at Guildhall School of Music and a BSS Scholarship Award winner.

English National Ballet Open Class and Rehearsal Our group of ballet lovers from the BritishSpanish Society gathered on a Saturday morning in January in the stalls of the magnificent London Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, buzzing with a mixture of excitement and anticipation.

This was their daily routine and it was highly impressive. Casually dressed in leotards and tights, right there in front of us, we watched them as they all sweated, strained, groaned and succeeded in making the impossibly difficult look effortless and easy.

We were there to watch the whole company of 60-plus dancers from the English National Ballet in an open class and public rehearsal.

All to accompaniment of a single pianist and the répétiteur shouting out words of encouragement and correction. It was all very different and a little bit weird.

In row after row, the dancers swarmed across the stage as they went through a series of warm-up routines, followed by ballet exercises and then rigorous sets of classical dance moves.

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This was followed by the class master leading a rehearsal of sections taken from Swan Lake which was to be performed to the public twice later that same day.

The English National Ballet company is renowned for its non-hierarchical structure, evidenced by rotating the lead roles between the very best dancers in the company.

The dancers we then watched in close up, in the famous pas de deux and solo vignettes from the most famous and popular ballet of all, were rehearsing for possibly their first performance in the lead roles later that same day.

This was very special.

This dance event was a privilege to attend and our thanks go to those special ballet dancers and the company itself.

NEWS & EVENTS

Annual General Meeting A full house of members and supporters was recorded at the BritishSpanish Society’s Annual General Meeting in Luis Vives room of the Spanish embassy on January 29th , underling a collective vote of faith in the charity’s mission of building bridges between the peoples of the UK and Spain.

The meeting heard of renewed support for the BSS’s scholarship programme from the charity’s principals supporters Santander Universities, Telefonica, BBVA, Plastic Energy, and the Fundacion Sabadell. Such backing will allow the BSS once again to award scholarships to a talent pool of British and Spanish postgraduate scholarships later this year.

Other good news included a rising and record number of signed up members in the UK and Spain and new corporate and institutional agreements, including partnerships with the Cervantes Institute in

London and Manchester , Stonyhurst College, Cuatrecasas, Solar Water, Fundación Cañada Blanch, Landerer Financial Consultants, Venta de Aires and IE Business School.

the best that some of the good people of Britain and Spain can still offer each other.... It is these good people that have continued to support the BritishSpanish Society...”

The AGM voted in the new governing structure for the charity, with Jimmy Burns as chairman, and Justin Ellis replacing Hugh Elliott who is succeeding Simon Manley later this year as the UK’s ambassador to Spain. Justin, joins the Board of Trustees consisting of Jimmy Burns, Juan Reig, Roger Golland, Carmen Young, Jose Ivars, Scott Young, Marianne Riesco, and Mike Short.

The Executive Council was re-elected with a new members Francisco Holgado, succeeding Eva Sierra.

Carmen Young, head of events celebrated another successful year of cultural engagement outlining an exciting programme of events in 2019 in the UK and Spain including a Royal English ballet masterclass on March 21st, a special viewing of the Sorolla exhibition at the National Gallery . In Spain, the BSS’s Global Risk conference will take place in Madrid on the 29th May and there will be a cocktail reception at the Venta de Aires in Toledo on the 22nd June.

Burns told the AGM: “In uncertain times ... the BritishSpanish Society has never seemed so necessary...”

Trustee & Treasurer Juan Reign reported a positive financial thanks to careful management of costs, but said the charity depended on continuing support and fund raising to help deliver on its mission .

He continued: “Our mission was, is and will continue to be that of extending bridges of engagement, of mutual understanding, of seeking

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NEWS & EVENTS

Night of Literature & Wine by Carmen Pinilla El 13 de febrero celebramos un año más una “Night of literature and wine” en la capilla, hoy utilizada como salón de actos, del antiguo convento de dominicas que ocupa el instituto Español «Vicente Cañada Blanch» en Portobello Road.

El Instituto Español «Vicente Cañada Blanch» pertenece a la red de centros docentes que el Reino de España mantiene en el extranjero para atender la demanda educativa de alumnado tanto de nacionalidad española como extranjera, así como para la promoción y difusión de la lengua y la cultura españolas.

El Instituto recibe su nombre del empresario español Vicente Cañada Blanch quien, a principios de los años setenta, realizó una importante donación económica para la fundación de un colegio español en Londres que atendiera a la educación de los hijos de los emigrantes españoles. Desde entonces ofrece enseñanzas del sistema educativo español a casi 500 alumnos de entre 4 y 18 años a quienes prepara para el acceso tanto a la Universidad española como británica.

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El entorno y la participación activa de los asistentes convirtieron en mágica esa noche, igual que la del año pasado. Nos reunimos para realizar una lectura compartida y comentada de fragmentos de obras literarias seleccionadas sobre el tema del amor.

Leímos en español y en inglés, escuchamos música en directo de Diego Misiti Brea y escuchamos música de amor en español mientras compartimos bocados dulces acompañados de vinos españoles.

Esa noche nos unieron en español y en inglés Quevedo, Mistral, Lope de Vega, Cernuda, Shakespeare, Teresa de Ávila, Lorca, Rosario Castellanos, Pedro Salinas, Gloria Fuertes, Neruda, Rosalía de Castro, Benedetti, Alejandra Pizarnik, Gerardo Diego, Ángeles Mora, Garcilaso, Ana Rossetti, Becquer, Cristina Peri Rossi, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, E.E: Cummings, Christina Rossetti, Luis García Montero y Julian Barnes.

La literatura como expresión de la cultura trasciende fronteras. Leer

nos provoca sensaciones y produce sentimientos, amplía nuestro horizonte y nos conecta con los demás. Poder leer en varias lenguas nos permite acercarnos a la escritura primigenia de los textos y conectar íntimamente con el pensamiento del autor. Compartir la lectura y su goce con otros lectores nos ayuda a crecer, crea lazos entre las personas y genera nueva sensaciones y comprensión.

De entre las posibles vías de colaboración entre el Instituto Vicente Cañada Blanch y la British Spanish Society, ninguna mejor que una noche de literatura y música compartidas y comentadas para promover la amistad y la comprensión y estrechar los lazos entre los pueblos español y británico. Les esperamos en la próxima.

Note on author: Dra. Carmen Pinilla es la Directora, Instituto Español Vicente Cañada Blanch en Londres.

Churchill’s Spanish links: Cigars, siestas, Aristocrats, and War Winston Churchill developed a fascination for Spanish military tactics and a lifelong love for cigars, rum, and siestas in Spanish colonial Cuba, a leading historian told a conference organised by the Cervantes Institute and the BritishSpanish Society at London’s King’s College in February.

Dr Peter Martland, from Cambridge University described Churchill as an “aristocratic, romantic imperialist”, as well as “champion of democracy and defender of both his country and western civilisation.”

He went on to describe perhaps as the less widely known in Churchill’s lifetime interests, “the affection and admiration for Spain and its people.”

Martland traced Churchill’s ancestral roots with the Spanish House of Alba and his friendship with King Alfonso X111, noting that it was the early 19th century struggle to expel Napoleon from the Iberian Peninsula by the Spanish people, allied with Wellington’s army, that Churchill most identified with: “its deep-felt sense of honour, bravery and quixotic spirit.”

In a reprise of his acclaimed ‘Bulldog & Bull’ given last year at the BSS conference in Churchill College in Cambridge (see La Revista Issue 247), Martland focused on the Second World War and the decisive links between the Britain and neutral Spain made during Churchill’s years as wartime prime minister, when Sir Samuel Hoare was the British ambassador in Madrid.

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NEWS & EVENTS

The Grand Tour at the V&A

First used in a French translation of a ‘Voyage or a Complete Journey through Italy’ by the Catholic Richard Lascelles in the 17th century, the term ‘Grand Tour’ came to refer to the custom of a trip around Europe undertaken by young upper-class men as a way of finishing their education. A sojourn in Italy was a sine qua non of an enterprise which exposed the travellers to a variety of political systems, customs, the vestiges of antiquity and the art of the likes of Raphael and Michelangelo.

On a day in late January and in the spirit of the more cultivated grand tourists, a congenial group of members and guests of the BritishSpanish Society visited the British Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Their bear leader cum cicerone was the writer of this article, the BSS’s very own art lecturer and official tour guide, Paul Pickering. Their aim was an exploration of the fruits of the British love affair with Italy and antiquity as manifested, for example, in architectural and decorative items designed by the likes of Inigo Jones and Robert Adam.

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A memorable moment of our visit was an encounter with a piece of sculpture with a Spanish connection, for it was a copy of one of the most striking and important classical works in the Prado, the Ildefonso Group, so called because it once graced the palace of San Ildefonso de la Granja.

Having being sold to Felipe V in 1724, it remained at La Granja until 1839.

The version we saw was probably copied from the plaster cast of the original kept in the French Academy in Rome.

‘Castor and Pollux’, as it is known was made for the grand tourist Lord Anson of Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire.

Joseph Nollekens, one of the most prolific British sculptors of the eighteenth century, was its creator. Contemplating this work as well as so much else on that morning, from a pietra dura console table to a statue of Handel, one called to mind a saying of Dr Johnson’s: ‘All our religion, all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come from the shores of the Mediterranean’.

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NEWS & EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS BSS members offer: Free tickets to Sorolla to be won

‘Corpus Cristi’ Cocktail Reception in Toledo, Spain Venta de Aires, Toledo

The charity the BritishSpanishSociety and Venta de Aires in Toledo, Spain are delighted to announce its fabulous Corpus Cristi Cockail Party in Toledo, Spain, on Saturday 22nd June from 9pm till late.

The iconic Venta de Aires has had, and still has, over the years an extraordinary clientele- from Kings and Queen to Presidents, from eminent scientists to poets,actors and film makers such as King Alfonso XIII, King Juan Carlos I, King Felipe VI, Queen María José of Italy, President Richard Nixon, Dr Gregorio Marañón, Galdós, Salvador Dalí, Alberti, Buñuel, García Lorca, Cary Grant, Ava Gardner etc. www.ventadeaires.com

Are you a BritishSpanish Society Member? If so why not try your luck and enter a draw for some free tickets we are giving away for the magnificent Sorolla exhibition at the National Gallery. To enter the draw email info@britishspanishsociety.org mentioning your membership name and saying you would like to be considered for a free pair of tickets.

Corpus Cristi is the most important religious festivity for Toledo. The streets are covered with ancient awnings, the roads are dotted with odorous plants (lavender, rosemary, thyme). The balconies are adorn with confectioners, flags and other appropriate ornaments. The stunning Cathedral Primada is also adorned with the forty-eight flamenco tapestries of the seventeenth century that are placed on its walls during these special days.

Book and pay for your tickets now, limited availability.

Join us for a special night with live music, decoration of the terrace with Thyme on the floor as the streets of the historic center and a great atmosphere a great atmosphere, fabulous drinks and delicious tapas for the occasion!

For details & reservations info@britishspanishsociety.org

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The BritishSpanish Society Churchill & Spain Exhibition: and IE Business School Manchester May –June 2019 chance to see the Bulldog & The Bull exhibition, kindly invites you to attend Another following its successful showing in London & Cambridge, about the incontestably declared “the greatest Briton”, this Panel Discussion: namely Sir Winston Churchill, and his special relationship with Spain.

A fascinating opportunity to get a perspective on Churchill’s compelling life story from his young soldiering days in colonial Cuba to the Spanish Civil War and World War Two, and his later years as a VIP tourist to Spain. A colourful exhibition of rare archive material: photographs, posters, and key documents from Spain and the UK curated by journalist and author Jimmy Burns OBE.

Present Dangers, Future Risks: Present Dangers, Future Risks: Our security and survival from global warming to cyber and nuclear terrorism, via political and economic meltdown -or are we heading for a better world?”

A top panel discussion in English on the key challenges facing the survival of our civilization.

Panelists: Martin Territ (Solar Water Plc), Simon Kuper (the Financial Times), David Reavley (Solar Water), Carlota García Encina (Elcano Royal Institue), Odile Rodríguez de La Fuente (ecologist) and Manuel Muñiz, Dean of the School of International Relations at IE University.

Panel discussion presented by Jimmy Burns Marañón, chairman of the British Spanish Society followed by reception.

Date: May 29th Time: 19:00 hours, please be prompt as no access will be permitted once room is full.

Venue: Aula Magna at IE Business School, Calle de María de Molina, 11, 28006 Madrid Tickets: Entrance Free, RSVP by March 5th by emailing development@britishspanishsociety.org

Instituto Cervantes Manchester manchester.cervantes.es

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NEWS & EVENTS

OFFICE FOR CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC AFFAIRS

IS THIS TOMORROW? UNTIL 12 MAY Whitechapel Gallery | London In an era when humanity is facing new challenges posed by big data, bioengineering and climate change, Whitechapel Gallery has invited ten groups of artists, architects and other cultural practitioners to explore the potential of collaboration and offer their visions of the future.

ALTERNATIVES TO ACADEMIA 26 MAR – 25 MAY Manchester, London and Oxford The society of Spanish Researchers in UK (SRUK) brings you a knowledge sharing platform to support and enhance the employability of graduates and postgraduates in the private and public sector.

SOROLLA: SPANISH MASTER OF LIGHT 18 MAR - 7 JUL The National Gallery | London The first major exhibition in the UK for over a century of the artist known as Spain’s Impressionist, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923), opens at the National Gallery in spring 2019.

DANIEL STEEGMANN MANGRANÉ AT NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY 2019 UNTIL 6 MAY Nottingham Contemporary | Nottingham Through a new immersive installation, architectural interventions, a 16mm film and a virtual reality work, the Catalan artist looks at how diverse mediums and technologies can represent aspects of the Mata Atlântica.

MADRID IS A FEMALE NAME 2 – 23 MAR Cervantes Theatre | London March has been chosen as the ideal month to showcase the excellence of female creators from Madrid, bringing four plays written, directed and performed by female collectives.

¡VIVA! FESTIVAL 2019 22 MAR - 13 APR HOME | Manchester For their 25th birthday edition, ¡Viva! returns with a specially selected programme of the most exciting film and theatre from across the Spanish-speaking world.

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NEWS & EVENTS

EXCLUSIVE TRIP TO MÁLAGA AND GRANADA

Friday 8th November – Sunday 10th November Following the successes of our previous exclusive trips, the charity the British Spanish Society with AroundArt is delighted to announce their new special trip to Malaga and Granada from Friday 8th November to Sunday 10th November, for a minimum of 12 guests to go ahead, and a maximum of 20 guests.

Staying at the 4 star Molina Lario hotel in Málaga (breakfast included, this trip does not include flights).

All visits are with a private guide.

Málaga: to the Picasso Museum, Museum Carmen Thyssen, the Contemporary Art: CAC, dinner at an exclusive restaurant, a private bus day trip to Granada: a tour the Palace of Charles V, full visit to the magnificent Alhambra, lunch at the Parador, visit the Royal Chapel, drinks at a VIP home and then dinner at an exclusive restaurant, visit to the Cathedral and Alcazaba in Malaga and the Pompidou Centre.

Please note this trip includes a moderate amount of walking.

This exclusive trip needs a minimum of 12 paying guests to go ahead. The administration and payments for the trip is managed by Around Art. Kindly register your interest with: development@britishspanishsociety.org Bookings and payments are open now and 1st deposit has to be paid before June 8th 2019 and final payment before September 30th 2019.

The weather in November in Malaga and Granada is very pleasant, we very much look forward to seeing you there!

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Events March-July !

Exclusive ballet master-class rehearsal Broken Wings with Internationally renowned choreographer Annabelle López Ochoa at the English National Ballet

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Thur%21%Mar%at%7.00%pm%sharp% BSS!member!£47!/!non!member!£57!

Reception!&!Rehearsal!&!

Q&A!with!Anabelle!López!Ochoa!

Celebrating la Feria de Abril Sun%7%Apr%at%4.00%pm% in Pimlico £12!+!booking!fee!/!£15!at!the!door!

Children:!£5!/!free!under!5!years!old!

Reservations:!ilusionflamenca.co.uk!

BSS networking event Thur%11%Apr%at%6.30%pm% at trendy new venue BSS!member!£10!/!non!member!£15!

Opium London Including!a!cocktail!and!canapes!

BSS members only exclusive private view of Sorolla, Spanish Master of Light with curator Akemi Herraez at the National Gallery

Thur%16%May%at%9.00%am%sharp!

20!complimentary!tickets!for!

BSS!members!only.!Reservations:! info@britishspanishsociety.org! !

Panel discussion Wed%29%May%at%7.00%pm% Present Dangers, Future risks BSS!members!priority.!Complimentary.! at IE Business School, Madrid Reservations:!

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development@britishspanishsociety.org!

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‘Corpus Cristi’ Cocktail Reception Wed%22%June%at%9.00%pm% at historic Venta de Aries, Toledo BSS!member!£25!/!non!member!£30!

Children!under!10!y.o.!£12.50! !

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BSS Annual Summer Reception Tue%2%Jul%at%6.30%pm% at the residence of HE the Spanish Ambassador in UK BSS!member!£45!/!non!member!£60!

Live!music,!Spanish!tapas,!jamón!ibérico,!best!wines,!beers!&!Cava!in!an!iconic!venue!

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Become%a%BSS%member%to%support%our%charity%work%while%you%enjoy%great%discounts.% All%events%have%limited%capacity,%book%early%to%avoid%disappointment.% % Full%details%and%reservations%at% www.britishspanishsociety.org% info@britishspanishsociety.org%

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SPOTLIGHT

BREXIT: WHO IS AFRAID OF GROUP ATTACHMENT?

by Arturo Ezquerro

Brexit means what? More than two years on we still do not know.

So last January I organised a workshop in London to explore Brexit, or otherwise, from an attachment and group-analytic perspective.

A

ttachment is a primary instinctual force for meaningful human connectedness, as essential for our physical and emotional survival as food and sex. John Bowlby (my mentor and ‘father’ of the theory) and a quintessentially English gentleman, conceived the human mind as a social phenomenon. He proposed that healthy attachment evolves from cradle to grave, from the family group to progressively larger and more sophisticated group configurations.

From an attachment perspective, the European Union (EU) can be described as “a serious, determined and imperfect supranational project in the making – in which increasingly larger, more sophisticated and ever-evolving forms of group collaboration, and of group attachment, are being tried and developed”. EU’s decision-making is based on treaties that have been approved voluntarily and democratically by all its member states. Over the years, treaties have been amended to make the EU more efficient and transparent, to prepare for new members and to introduce new areas of cooperation.

Building on the limited economic and political goals of the 6 original countries which formed the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, the current 28 EU members have achieved an unprecedented level of economic and legal integration, as well as supranational political authority, surpassing that of any other international organization. The EU has not replaced the

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nation-state; however, its institutions have progressively resembled a supranational parliamentary democratic political system – at an increasingly complex and more sophisticated group level. Who is afraid of supranational democracy?

In his manifesto for the general election in 2010, David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’, paving the way for the hostile environment towards immigrants created by Theresa May, during her time as Home Secretary. In making the promise, he basically endorsed UKIP’s claims that immigration was too high – and EU’s free movement became a target.

With a view to stay in office for a second term, in 2015 Cameron promised a Brexit referendum – hoping to win back UKIP voters and shut up noisy euro-sceptics within his Tory Party. However, his strategy to secure a remainvote was ineffective. In fact, he demanded concessions on immigration from Brussels, which were refused and

inflated anti- EU sentiments. He also failed to grasp the likelihood that many Labour voters would see the referendum as an opportunity to take revenge on the man who inflicted austerity on them. The question was poorly framed; the timing utterly wrong. And, so far, it has not been possible to tidy up the mess.

In the circumstances, I decided to organise a Brexit workshop; which was held at the London Institute of Group Analysis, on 26 January 2019. The workshop was open and inclusive, with the aim of creating an atmosphere where dialogue and mutual understanding were cultivated. Delegates were encouraged to take an active part in the reflective space provided by professionally conducted, small and large, discussion groups. The Anglo-Spanish author and journalist and journalists Jimmy Burns, chairman of the British-Spanish Society, was one of the facilitators of such a dialogue.

In order to be fair to all, I invited speakers representing pro-Brexit and pro-EU positions, as well as middle-ofthe-road approaches, as follows: British photographer Chris Ridley talked about his strong Brexit feelings. Born in 1940 during a heavy air raid in central London, he was brought up in ‘fear of the Germans’. In 1975, he voted to leave the EU and his opinion remains.

Frances Griffiths, Chair of the Institute, explored the possible role that the loss of the British Empire and the unresolved shame associated to it might have played.

Peter Keller, a British scientist, offered an insiders view on the importance of the international dimension in scientific research.

Maria Cañete and I, both consultant psychiatrists and group analysts, delivered a conjoint presentation: first, a historical analysis of the partly ‘detached’ relationship the UK has had with the EU; second, a dissection of the democratic limitations of the referendum.

generational divergence of values and aspirations; rise of English nationalism… The list is longer.

Considering that all these interrelated factors were visible, why no-one persuaded Cameron that taking the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo could be a provocation? In contrast to Cameron, Harold Wilson had negotiated a deal with the EEC before putting it to a people’s vote, in 1975. Remain won by a substantial 67.2%.

In many ways, Brexit is less about Britain’s relationship with the EU than about Britain’s relationship with itself.

It is partly the projection outwards of an inner turmoil for which the EU has become an ideal scapegoat. The repetitive slogan Brexit means Brexit indicates that the meaning is in the leaving (British-exit), not in what is being left or how.

From a group-analytic and attachment perspective, this drama of departure could be seen as a crisis of belonging; a difficulty in connecting with others; an imaginary conflict between them and us; ultimately, a crisis of group attachment.

Note on the author: Arturo Ezquerro, a consultant psychiatrist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and group analyst, is former Head of NHS Psychotherapy Services in Brent, London, and has authored Encounters with John Bowlby: Tales of Attachment (Routledge). He is a member of the BritishSpanish Society.

Over 6 million adult UK-residents were ‘not eligible’ to vote, of whom nearly 3 million are EU migrants. In fact, the 52% who voted to leave only represent 26% of the population.

The Brexit vote can be seen as the result of a constellation of contributing factors: migratory crisis; nostalgia of sovereign Empire; anti-EU propaganda; unacceptable levels of inequality and social detachment; disdain for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity and the undermining of the welfare state; upsurge of a sensationally self-indulgent political ruling class;

LA REVISTA | THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY | 19

SPOTLIGHT

THE BEST OF BRITISH IN THE HEART OF SPAIN

by Tom Burns Marañón

Last December the British ambassador Simon Manley dedicated the new Founder’s Building at Runnymede School in Madrid. Here a British-Spanish parent of former pupils reflects on the great men of ideas from which the school draws inspiration.

R

unnymede is a liberal, reasonable and humane community and there a number of heroes who form its backbone. The school takes its motto from the last of the great Elizabethans Francis Bacon who taught that Studies serves for Delight, Ornament and Ability. The school is divided up into three Houses that are named after three great intellects, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and John Maynard Keynes.

So let me dwell briefly on each to establish some ideas about what a tolerant, humane, reasonable and liberal community is all about.

Bacon was a nephew of Willian Cecil and his father Keep of the great Seal, an office that Bacon himself attained as well as that of Lord Chancellor. Born with several silver spoons in his mouth, Bacon could have been a smug, essentially boring administrator but he was anything but that. He was a man of great inquisitiveness and he had a very wide range of interests. He died after he caught chill when he was experimenting with refrigeration by stuffing a chicken full of snow.

Bacon knew well the ups and downs of life and the necessity of adaptation to changing circumstances. His earliest patron, Lord Essex, was disgraced, and he himself had to adapt from Elizabeth 1 to James I, serving both these very different monarchs, faithfully and loyally.

Towards the end of his life he fell from office because he was accused of taking bribes and I do not think one should be too harsh or moralistic about that. It war that sort of experience that prompted Bacon to say later that “the ways to enrich are many and most of them are foul.”

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Retiring from public life to study, reflect and to write essays, Bacon concluded that “Of great riches there is no real use except in their distribution; the rest is but conceit.” I think that this emphasis on distribution puts worldly wealth in a very intelligent, not to say ethical, perspective.

John Locke was born four years after Bacon died. His childhood was framed by the English Civil War and his maturity, as an intellectual, coincided with the Glorious Revolution when parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy properly struck roots. Locke is mostly remembered for his defence of property and for his championship of what has been known as checks and balances. The central idea behind his political thought was that every question should be settled by a free discussion of ideas.

The idea of reasonableness is the thread that runs through all Locke’s writings. Locke’s conception of the State if Nature was astonishingly modern. Tolerant and humane.

He described a state of nature as “Men living together,

according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them”. There is a magnificent absence of fanaticism about Locke and the accent is always on reason and on reasonableness.

essentially the sea shore on that great undiscovered ocean of truth. And that we all, students, teachers and parents, are really doing, is helping each other find a smoother pebble and that prettier shell for the good of us all.

Locke taught is that the law of Nature that governed the state of nature was nothing more and nothing less than reason. And Reason is what lead Locke to write that “Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possession”.

Locke’s liberalism and his belief in inalianable rights and in self-evident truths comes to fruition a century later in that greatest of all political documents, the American Declaration of Independence.

And so we reach John Maynard Keynes-a personal hero of mine. You can tick off what you admire most about him.

His intellect, his loyalty to his friends, his love of collegiate life which is essentially a life of sharing, his enthusiasm for so many, widely different, subjects his sense of what is practical, his moral indignation over stupidity, cupidity and injustice.

This brings me to Locke’s contemporary Sir Isaac Newton who really did put muscle, nerve, bone and sinew into the seventeenth century. Thomas Jefferson, the following century, was to tell George Washington that his personal household gods and heroes, the greatest intellects of all, and the men whom he, Jefferson, owed most to, were Francis Bacon, John Locke and Isaac Newton. I have no doubt that Jefferson would have admired Keynes every bit as much and would have placed him to in his personal hall of fame.

Turning to Newton I would like to stress above all his humility which is the mark of then true intellectual. In his memoirs Newton says “I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.

A school like Runnymede that is devoted to learning, is

Keynes was involved as a member of the British delegation in the peace negotiations of Versailles that followed Germany’s surrender in the First World ~war.

He resigned from the delegation because he was outraged by the vengeful short-sightedness of those who insisted on colossal reparations with the slogan of “Make the Germans pay” and then he wrote a famous book that was called the Economic Consequences of the Peace.

Had Keynes been listened to, had people understood his essential and very simple point which was that if Germany was to pay war reparation then it had first to be given the means to earn the necessary money, then it is quite possible that Nazism, that scourge of the 20th century, and World War 11 could have been avoided. The mistakes of Versailles, that Keynes saw so clearly, were fortunately not repeated after the fall of the Third Reich.

I would like to recall one illuminating incident of Keynes’ long and varied career in public life. He was for many years editor of the scholarly review called the Economic Journal and when he retired from the post there was a large banquet in his honour. Surrounded by friends and

LA REVISTA | THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY | 21

SPOTLIGHT

colleagues, Keyes delivered a speech in which he dwelt on the role of the Journal and of thoughtful economists, He impressed upon his audience with ringing words that “You are the guardians…” and every one imagined that he was going to say the “the guardians of civilisation”. But he didn’t quite say that. He said “You are the guardians of the possibility of civilisation”. What he meant by that was that economists had the responsibility of ensuring the fair and even distribution in the world of wealth and labour and that if they succeeded in guiding politicians towards that equitable distribution then there was the possibility of civilisation.

I would to say that the community of Runnymede, with the perpetual tribute that it pays to the values of liberalisms, is also the guardian pf the possibilities of civilisation.

If civilisation is going to have a chance it will be because liberalism, tolerance, self and mutual respect, awareness of others and internationalism, reason and intellect, dignity and decency become part of one’s everyday life and personal code of values.

Note on the author: Tom Burns Marañón is an author and journalist and a director of Eurocofin.

COMMITMENT AND COMPROMISE FOR THE FUTURE The main purposes of the Cañada Blanch Foundation are the promotion of culture; the support of the development of young students; and the management of cultural activities, with a special focus on the advances of research, thought, social debate and the Arts, both in the field of the Valencian Community and in the United Kingdom. www.fundacioncañadablanch.es

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Chiswick Auctions is delighted to support the British-Spanish Society.

“A 7.80 carat diamond ring and a diamond flower brooch by Cartier” To be offered in the 20th November Jewellery sale

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LA REVISTA | THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY | 23

HISTORY

ST GEORGE IN SANLUCAR DE BARRAMEDA

By Robert Graham

Sanlucar de Barrameda at the mouth of the River Guadalquivir this year celebrates the five hundredth anniversary of the first circumnavigation of the globe, a good opportunity to examine the historic links of this Spanish town with England.

F

erdinand Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, set sail from here in 1519. Three years later only one of the five vessels he commanded returned to this port, Magellan himself being killed en route by hostile natives of the Molucca Islands.

This historic feat of seamanship consolidated Sanlucar as a jumping off point both for discovering the New World and trading with northern Europe. Large vessels unloaded cargoes for shipment upriver to the burgeoning city of Seville, or those outward-bound took aboard final supplies. This role was underwritten by the powerful Dukes of Medina Sidonia based in Sanlucar. They had long extended their fiat over much of today’s western Andalucia, building an imposing castle with an unusual octagonal tower, overlooking the port, from Queen Isabella is said to have first seen the sea. The castle still dominates today’s town.

The Duchy established Sanlucar as an exempt seigneurial port levying its own custom duties, attracting business by undercutting those exacted by the Crown. By the onset of the 16th century the port had attracted a cosmopolitan population of foreign sailors and merchants. The largest foreign presence consisted of English merchants hailing from Bristol, London and Southampton selling mainly cloth and taking home olive oil, salt and the region’s wine. The measure of those trading here was exemplified

by Robert Thorne, who died in 1519, a onetime mayor of Bristol and a founder of Bristol Grammar School. The stamp of their presence over the centuries in Sanlucar remains a little known element of Anglo-Spanish relations.

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It was thanks to Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, that the English merchants gained their strong foothold. By forming a ‘brotherhood (cofradia) of St George’on the lines of the well established Flemish cofradia in Seville, they obtained in 1517 corporate privileges and land on which to build a chapel and hospice, while conferring on their leader the role of ‘consul and judge’.

This grant came to be known as ‘the privilege of St George’. A complex of buildings formed round this chapel, including a house for the ‘consul’ and an exclusive quay with a vineyard outside of town. The creation of this consular figure is seen by some historians as the infancy for the idea of England’s consular service, designed to protect and oversee the well-being of subjects on foreign soil.

HenryVIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon added further significance to this connection, and Sanlucar was on occasions used as a safe transit for messages from the ambassador in Madrid to London. However, the English’s monarch’s confrontation with Rome over divorce from his Spanish wife caused merchants to fear collateral damage in this politico-religious spat. They petitioned for formal protection from the English Crown and in September 1530, Henry VIII created, in albeit ambiguous language, the consulate of Andalucia while incorporating the traders under the umbrella of the Andalucia Company. The latter was essentially a loose association of those trading with Cadiz, Puerto de Santa Maria, Sanlucar and Seville. The chief official was the consul resident in Sanlucar and the main purpose was to confirm the cofradia of St George’s existing privileges.

Seville. Loyal Catholic merchants travelling to and from England were reportedly used to carry messages to the persecuted faithful in England.

Sanlucar was a major beneficiary of Seville’s trade with the New World, and the Brotherhood of St George prospered to the point where in 1721 a new enlarged chapel with finely crafted baroque interior was inaugurated. But when customs control switched from Seville to Cadiz, the English community began a steady decline.

The chapel still stands, bearing the royal coat of arms on the ceiling above the entry, a rare phenomenon in continental Europe. In 1989 the chapel and its premises were ceded to the Hermandad de Rocio, whose annual pilgrimage goes to El Rocio across the river dates back to the 15th century. The adjacent building, once the hospice, is partially occupied by Banco Santander.

An unpardonably large red sign announces the bank’s presence on this historic site.

Note on the author: Robert Graham, is the Financial Times’s former Bureau chief in Madrid. He lives in Sanlucar de Barremeda. He is a member of the British-Spanish Society.

Charles V endorsed this arrangement, a key safeguard for their interests in the future. The Brotherhood miraculously survived the turbulent and violent AngloSpanish conflicts that followed the English Reformation, the reign of Catholic Queen Mary, then the expansion and ‘piracy’ of the Elizabethan era. Many a merchant claimed to be Catholic in Sanlucar and Protestant in England, while several Catholics came south from England to avoid persecution for their faith.

By the end of the 16th century the chapel and control of its assets passed to the Catholic Church. The move was orchestrated by William Allen, an ardent Jesuit who refused to swear loyalty to Queen Elizabeth and who became the first English Cardinal after the Reformation.

A small seminary set up in Sanlucar linked with the Jesuit-run English college in Valladolid and a seminary in

LA REVISTA | THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY | 25

BSS SCHOLARSHIPS

10 YEARS & GOING STRONG

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EDUCATION

Roc Fargas I Castells Name: Roc Fargas i Castells Principal Supporter: Fundación Banco Sabadell Year: 2018 Title of Research Project: Spanish Talent and British Knowledge University: Royal Academy of Music Degree: Master of Arts in Historical Performance Place of birth: Barcelona, Spain

E

ven though I have always wanted to become a conductor, it was not until I came to England to study the sixth form as a viola player and music specialist at Wells Cathedral School that I discovered my passion for music and decided to devote my life to it.

Then I went to Cambridge University to study music in a much more academic and theoretical way. I developed new perspectives and tools to think about music and I had the opportunity to undertake my first projects as a conductor. I am currently in my final year of a master’s degree in Historical Performance as a viola player at the Royal Academy of Music in London. I feel immensely privileged for the inspiration and support I have received from this musically enriched country. My project, ambition and goal is to become a renowned conductor, and later to come back home to have a positive impact on the musical culture of Spain.

Spain has never given enough importance and support to music and to the profession of being a musician. I hope to change this cultural problem by finding new ways to reach a broader audience and by recognising, inspiring and motivating the dedication of Spanish musicians that at the moment work in tough conditions. I have always felt attached to the music of my homeland, and there are still lots of great pieces by Spanish composers that deserve to be in a much higher place in the history of music. I hope to change this through recordings and through new interpretations. Last year I conducted Manuel de Falla’s The Three Cornered Hat in Cambridge. The performance

started with an introduction by Flamenco and Falla specialists Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth and Dr Inés Sevilla Llisterri from the University of Cambridge.

This involved a contextualisation of the piece and the composer through a combination of words, images and aural means, as the orchestra played several excerpts of the piece to enhance the comprehension of the audience in a more tangible way. This year, I will go a step further, performing the earlier pantomime version of The Three Cornered Hat, called ‘el Corregidor y la Molinera’, with bailaores (dancers) and a cantaora (singer) from Granada, where the story is set. It will be the first time that this work is staged in the UK, so it is a very important event in the history of Spanish music.

Studying at the Royal Academy of Music is perhaps the richest experience of my life so far. I believe that Historical Performance is a crucial field of study for any musician.

It has opened up to me a completely new way to study scores regarding notation and analysis, but also history, sociology, politics and culture. I am growing constantly as a musician from the tuition I receive, the diversity of colleagues, and the opportunities that London has to offer. I regularly attend masterclasses, lectures, rehearsals and concerts by the greatest musicians in the world. I am very grateful to the British Spanish Society and the Fundación Banco Sabadell for the scholarship that they have granted me, which has allowed me to make the best out of my studies in London and to come closer to my dream.

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EDUCATION

Paula Fraga Lamas Name: Paula Fraga Lamas Principal Supporter: BBVA Year: 2018 Title of Research Project: Blockchain As An Enabling Technology For Social Innovation University: Lugo Degree: MBA Research Project in Information and Communication Technologies Place of birth: La Coru単a, Spain

I

consider myself a Researcher. Curious and observant about everything, the necessity of investigate arose to demonstrate that knowledge could be used to do great things and develop new ideas or technologies. I received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Science in 2009 from University of La Coru単a and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree in the joint program Mobile Network Information and Communication Technologies from five Spanish universities: University of the Basque Country, University of Cantabria, University of Zaragoza, University of Oviedo and University of A Coru単a, in 2011 and 2017, respectively. Since 2009, I have been working with the Group of Electronic Technology and Communications (GTEC) in the Department of Computer Engineering (University of A Coru単a, Spain).

During these years, I have been participating in more than twenty research projects funded by the regional and national government as well as R+D contracts with a range of leading companies.

I have worked as an expert evaluator for the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), the European Commission and EQA. In addition, I have been part of the ISTET-068 exploratory team of NATO STO (Science and Technology Organization). My expertise includes business development and strategic planning. I have postgraduate studies in innovation management (Jean Monnet Chair of European Industrial Economy) and in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and social innovation (INDITEXUDC Chair of sustainability).

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My current research interests include enabling technologies for Industry 4.0 like Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), fog computing, blockchain, Cyber-Physical systems (CPS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or cybersecurity. Specifically, when these technologies are deployed in mission-critical scenarios (public safety, disaster relief, defense and critical infrastructures such as railways, ports or shipyards).

Nowadays, I am also involved in projects that leverage disruptive technologies to develop costeffective smart agriculture and smart health systems. Today, paradigms like Industry 4.0 or IoT are transforming the way organizations manage everyday business procedures. The number of interconnected devices will increase in the next years: IoT is estimated to reach up to 50 billion of connected devices by 2020. Overall, in the medium-term it would allow for the interconnection and automated transaction of everything around us.

In this ecosystem, blockchain has also emerged as a revolutionary technology in distributed computing.

Originally designed and popularized by Bitcoin, it is making it possible for businesses to address inefficiencies and unsustainable and unethical practices along their supply chains. Blockchain allows for the creation of a new economy that shares and stores transactions and value, in a transparent, reliable, digital and decentralized way. It opens a wide area of short- and medium-term potential applications that could disrupt the economy as we know it, and tackle global challenges.

Inclusive applications like helping people who lack adequate proof- of-identity (like refugees), ensuring fair trade conditions and the traceability of production processes over the whole supply chain, enabling greater transparency in public administration, improving democratic citizens’ participation, fostering collaborative mhealth (public health supported by mobile devices), reducing information asymmetry, creating insurance and financial inclusion tools, and regaining full control over the citizens’ own personal data, can be a reality anytime soon.

The BritishSpanish Society Scholarship has allowed me to finish my Master of Business Administration (MBA)

studies and open a new research line focused in the blockchain field and its impact in the new economy.

Specifically, to realize my vision of blockchain as an enabling technology for social innovation.

I am truly pleased to see that the BritishSpanish Society has reached agreements with prestigious corporate institutions to support a programme which breaks walls down between our societies in important fields of research, and that is committed to support innovative projects. It is my belief that long-term investment in science and technology will not only benefit the British and Spanish societies, but also all humankind. Therefore, my gratitude to BBVA and their representatives for their generosity.

Helen Flatley Name: Helen Louise Flatley Winner of the BritishSpanish Patrons & Members Sholarship Award Year: 2018 Title of Research Project: Ways of Belonging: The Mozarabs of Toledo and Christian, Muslim, Jewish Relations in Medieval Iberia University: University of Oxford, UK Degree: DPhil in History Place of Birth: Manchester, UK

I

n an increasingly polarised world, stories of inter-faith collaboration and coexistence are often few and far between. Interreligious strife is at the heart of many of today’s most entrenched and deep-rooted conflicts around the world, and indeed, it seems that the three great Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are more often characterised by what separates them than by what they have in common.

Yet, a look back into the medieval past challenges the idea that interreligious conflict between Christians, Muslims and Jews is inevitable. For centuries, Medieval Spain was a space in which peoples of different faiths lived alongside one another, regardless of their religious differences.

Moreover, this period of coexistence produced a rich and vibrant culture, characterised by distinctive music, art, architecture and literature, which continues to resonate in contemporary Spanish culture.

As a DPhil student in History at the University of Oxford, I am examining this important period in Spanish history, with a particular focus on the complex interactions between Iberian Christians, Muslims and Jews. My doctoral project focuses on the Mozarabs of Toledo, an ‘arabicised’ Christian minority that adopted Arabic language and customs whilst living under Muslim rule, perceived to be emblematic of the unique hybrid culture and convivencia of medieval Spain. The Mozarabs of Toledo represent an exceptional Christian minority in medieval Spain, drawing their cultural identity from Islamic al-Andalus, and engaging in religious practices that looked back to Visigothic pre-Islamic Iberia. This important Christian community operated as a bridge between the various religious minorities of Toledo in the 12th and 13th centuries.

LA REVISTA | THE BRITISH SPANISH SOCIETY | 29

EDUCATION

The Mozarabs left behind a rich documentary record, detailing the lives of the ordinary men, women and children of Toledo in the medieval period. These sources allow us to build the story of Toledo from the ‘bottom up’, focusing on everyday interactions between ordinary people, rather than courtly politics or high religious culture. This shows us that Toledo’s Christians, Muslims and Jews lived closely intertwined lives, inhabiting the same districts, doing business together, and even sometimes marrying into the same families. Boundaries between religious communities were far more blurred than we might imagine, and the case of Toledo challenges our assumptions about the religious and cultural fissures in medieval society at large.

I hope that my research will make a wider contribution to our understanding of the historic relations between the three Abrahamic faiths. This is a subject that had attracted considerable attention in recent years, particularly in view of rising levels of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Western Europe. In these circumstances, it is arguably more important than ever to engage in thoughtful and considered analysis of medieval Spain’s rich cultural legacy, and to understand the complex ways in which

Christian, Muslim and Jewish interactions have shaped Spanish history and national identity. I hope that my research may contribute to breaking down barriers between contemporary faith communities by exploring this shared cultural legacy.

I am incredibly grateful to the British Spanish Society for their generous support, and feel particularly honoured to be the recipient of the British Spanish Society Patrons and Members Award, marking the 10th anniversary of the scholarship programme. This grant has made an immense difference to my research, providing me with much-needed support for my living costs and funding an upcoming research trip to the archives in Madrid and Toledo. At a time when funding for the arts and humanities is increasingly under threat, the work of the British Spanish Society is more important than ever.

The BSS Grants Sub-committee receives hundreds of applications every year. To support the best projects with additional scholarship awards you can make big or small donations to The BritishSpanishSociety, a registered UK charity More information: britishspanishsociety.org

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EDUCATION

BSS ALUMNI NEWS James Edward Stout The Olympics Research Centre has awarded James Stout (BSS-Santander Scholar 2012) with one of the six research grants in 2019 funded by the International Olympic Committee.

James’ further research looks at the 1936 Popular Olympics in Barcelona. He will be traveling to Lausanne and Barcelona to compare the official bid for the 1936 games and the eventual outcome. He is particularly interested in the participants who came to the Popular Games and their reasons for doing so and hopes to trace their biography.

Nicole Crespo O’Donoghue Nicole Crespo O’Donoghue (BSS-BBVA Scholar 2013) has recently released her new violin album Serenity.

The CD is available in the online store and MP3 downloads on iTunes, Apple Music, and Amazon. The tracks are some of Nicole’s personal favourites with mixed styles, including the Dancing Doll and Meditation from Thais, as well as Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs), a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate. Nicole is currently doing a PhD on Sarasete at the Royal College of Music, London.

The scholarship allowed Nicole to study her Master of Music in Performance at the Royal Academy of Music, University of London, under Professor Mateja Marinkovic.

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Marina Pérez de Arcos Spanish Studies at Oxford Coordinator and BritishSpanish Society Alumni Officer, Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos, was recently nominated for the Best Paper Award at International Studies Association (ISA) 2018. ISA is the most prestigious International Relations association in the world; this year’s conference was held in San Francisco. Her paper ‘We are shock-troops in the war of ideas’: Education, intelligence, and cultural diplomacy at the British Institute in Madrid, 1940–1941’, which looks at the origins of the British Council in Spain during the Second World War, was made possible through the generous support of the BritishSpanish Society and Santander Scholarship (2016). Marina teaches International Relations at Oxford and International History at the London School of Economics.

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EDUCATION

MORE ENGLISH ENTERS THE SPANISH DICTIONARY

By Dr Tyler Fisher

The latest official update to the Real Academia Española’s Diccionario de la lengua española (now in its twenty-third edition) includes 62 additional words. Among the additions are more than a dozen words of English origin — by far the most numerous among the various extranjerismos.

A

dding anglicismos to the preeminent dictionary of the Spanish language is, naturally, a precarious undertaking. The decision to include or exclude a particular English derivation must balance the Diccionario’s functions as an authoritative regulator of Spanish usage, on the one hand, and, on the other, as a responsive reflection of how people really use the language.

The dictionary straddles the roles of lexical bailiff and lexical barometer. To achieve this balance, the RAE relies on the deliberations of a select group of influential Spanish authors and linguistic scholars — the academy of its title. Together, they negotiate the RAE’s policy and practice within the remit of its founding motto: ‘Limpia, fija y da esplendor’. When dealing with words coming in from a foreign language, carrying out this three-part mission of purifying, establishing, and rendering Spanish all the more splendid can be ticklish task indeed. ‘[Aunque] la Academia no está cerrada a la incorporación de extranjerismos’, Darío Villanueva, Director of the RAE, commented on the official launch of the Diccionario’s revision, ‘sí nos preocupa la reiteración excesiva del uso de palabras en inglés sin que sea necesario’.

Among the members of the Real Academia Española, José María Merino, for one, urges caution when determining which English terms the official Diccionario should admit or exclude. I spoke with him recently about his perspectives on how to distinguish between ‘la reiteración excesiva’ and the ‘uso necesario’ of anglicismos in Spanish.

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Merino is only in favour, in principle, of including English derivations that do not already have an existing Spanish counterpart. The advent of inventions that first gain widespread identification in English or anglicized terms offers clear candidates for inclusion. In this regard, Merino points to the long established use of English terminology like raíl, tren, or radio in Spanish.

Beyond technological innovations, particular customs can give rise to calques on foreign vocabulary. English words like sandwich, gol (goal), and ticket entered the Real Academia’s dictionaries a hundred years ago.

Anglicismos are clearly not a new phenomenon. ‘Pero cuando el objeto o la actividad ya tienen una definición en español ¿por qué introducir la acepción inglesa?’ Merino reflects. Vocabulary related to bullying, for instance, has proliferated in news reports, debates, and awareness campaigns in recent years, and Spanish-speakers have tended to adopt and adapt the English words, creating the verb bullear or bulear and embracing the verbal substantive bullying.

Aside from the potential confusion with the Spanish verb bullir and the problem of knowing how to pronounce the double ll, this lexical borrowing is simply unnecessary, because Spanish already offers an array of adequate alternatives. Acorralar, acosar, asediar, cercar, intimidar, and sitiar, Merino proposes, are all verbs that could apply to forms of bullying, which is, of course, neither a new nor an exclusively English phenomenon.

however, relate to a more recent phenomenon: the current status of English as a prevailing, global lingua franca, especially on-line. ‘¿Por qué smart TV y no televisión inteligente?’, Merino ponders.

A living language is, after all, the most democratic of human institutions, but democracies need not slip into anarchy. A language can flourish when its users acknowledge certain standards governing usage and look to leading wordsmiths for guidance, as parameters and precedents to follow or flout. This allows linguistic creativity to occur in a manner that is at once natural and knowledgeable, and the use of anglicismos is no exception in this regard.

The prevalence of anglicismos in today’s Spanish is a sign of the times. The challenge for the Real Academia Española is to maintain a dictionary that simultaneously regulates, referees, registers, and responds to changes in the Spanish.

Merino also notes the example of the English verb spoil and the related noun spoiler in the sense of revealing the ending of a story, the punchline of a joke, or the solution to a mystery in such a way as to ruin their impact. This usage has been creeping into Spanish as a direct borrowing and as a modified verb, espoilear.

Again, relevant forms and acceptations of destripar, despachurrar, and desvelar have already, for centuries, provided a means to put into words the disclosure that robs a story of its effect.

Lexical equivalence, of course, can be a highly subjective matter of personal taste and opinion. A foreign word can carry shades of meaning that its native counterpart lacks. For this reason, between English and Spanish, the borrowing has never been solely one-way. Even Shakespeare reached into his repertoire of Spanish lexical resources to keep his language fresh and varied. Thus alligator (el lagarto), casa, and diablo, among others, find their way into his plays. And what would the English language do without words like breeze, cafeteria, canyon, cockroach, lasso, macho, patio, and plaza? All of these familiar words in the English vocabulary, and hundreds more, derive from Spanish.

Note on the author: Dr Tyler Fisher is Queen Sofia Research Fellow and Lecturer in Spanish at Exeter College, University of Oxford.

The borrowing in both directions reflects the interrelationship that has always existed between modern Spanish and modern English. The RAE’s concerns regarding an excessive importation of anglicismos,

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THE NOBLEMAN OF EMOTIONS By Laura Gran Andrés Pascual, writer and speaker, talks to Laura Gran about pursuing dreams, his life in London and his latest inspirational book.

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n 2015, the Spanish writer Andrés Pascual (La Rioja, 1970) and his wife decided to move to London for a period of time. They didn’t know how long they would stay in the British capital, they just wanted to treat themselves and come and live in a “very inspiring city” that they love. “… we ended up living there for four years!”, he laughs.

They chose to live in Notting Hill, and there he wrote his inspirational book, “El Oso, el Tigre y el Dragón” (The Bear, The Tiger and The Dragon), which he co-authored with his friend Ecequiel Barricart. The fable won the Urano Award of Personal Growth in 2017.

In this book, Pascual takes its protagonist, Gabriel, through a journey to explain that we all have three animals living within us. The bear, which deals with our emotions and helps us to love ourselves; the tiger, in charge of leading our actions and giving us strength; and the dragon, which is linked to our core purpose. If we feed them correctly, we live in harmony. Otherwise, chaos appears in our lives and we get stuck in emotional darkness. When you meet Andrés Pascual, you can tell that he’s a genuine person who has learnt how to feed his inner animals well.

“It is not about being the best. It is about giving it everything you have and searching for your unique identity”, he explains. Regarding this, he has gone through his own journey. Before he was a writer, Pascual was a lawyer for twenty years; seven of them he juggled his lawyer’s office with writing.

“I needed that time to mature as a writer and to start dissociating myself from the place that I had worked for two decades”, he states.

During this period he wrote three manuscripts for his first novel, “El Guardián de la Flor de Loto” (“The Lotus Flower Guard”). When he and his literary agent agreed that they

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had the final version, the editorial Plaza & Janés (Penguin Random House) published the book. This allowed him to play in the literary “premier league”, which was his dream and a very difficult goal to achieve.

In Spain 65 thousand books are published annually; 10 thousand of those are novels and only one thousand are in the commercial market. From the latter category, only 100 titles are actually sold. His was one of them. His novel was a great success. Since then, he has written six more novels. All of them have been translated to other languages and have sold many copies.

“It is not that I did not want to be a lawyer or I did not like it. It is just one morning I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a different person. I realised I could not be a lawyer anymore. It was not a decision, it was my calling in life”, he remembers. “It involved a radical change, but it was a conscious decision which was the result of a detailed plan. In the end, this is what we should all do”, the writer states.

Paraphrasing Gabriel, Pascual had the emotion of the bear and the purpose of the dragon. His inner tiger led him to rationally manage the space in between both, without judging or being emotional about the plan he just implemented it, which was actually the difficult bit.

“It all depends on your personal goals and your ambition.

One of the most important factors to succeed is not the talent or the numbers of contacts you have, but being able to maintain maximum effort when you know the goal is far away. It was difficult for me to keep writing until 1am and then keep going until 2am when I had to get up at 8am to go to the office. Knowing that after completing those 400 pages of manuscript that another 400 pages will follow. That is what is meritorious”. That, and pursuing your dreams, which is quite rare in the modern world. “I have always liked dreaming big, I do

Créditos fotos: Cristina Benito

not like stopping half way. I did not care how far away my goal was. I knew I was doing the right thing and I carried on with my approach of one more page, one more paragraph, one more sentence”. This approach, his effort and good advice converted him into a writer. From doing this, it was possible for him to close his law firm and the very next day he was on a plane to London.

What he likes the most about the British capital is its diversity. From Spain, he highlights that “we are many countries in one. We complete ourselves with those we have around us. I love La Rioja’s people hospitality, they can buy you a drink in a bar just because you are a foreigner”. But you can tell he is a traveller, a seeker, someone passionate and committed to living a full life and sharing his experiences and thoughts with others: “in the end people really want to be excited. In order to achieve this, you need to be honest and write from your heart”.

As a reader and someone who has seen him lecturing a few times, this is what I stand out the most about him.

Pascual is so passionate and confident about what he says and writes, he talks so profoundly about emotions that he manages to inspire you to take action to develop yourself.

What a talent.

Hispania is the largest, most successful and ambitious project dedicated to Spanish gastronomy in Europe. …

Hispania offers a complete Spanish experience working with Marcos Morán, our executive chef and Michelin star and Lorenzo Castillo, one of the best Spanish interior designers.

andrespascual.com

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THE SPANISH MASTER OF LIGHT by Marina Perez de Arcos Ahead of a major Spring exhibition of the works of the great Spanish painter Sorolla at the National Gallery his great grand-daughter and leading specialist Blanca Pons-Sorolla talks to the BritishSpanish Society about his art and legacy. Spanish sunshine is coming to London.

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his will be the first blockbuster exhibition in the UK of the late Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla (1863 – 1923) for more than a hundred years. Blanca is co-curator in collaboration with Chris Riopelle, Curator of post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery.

She welcomes me at the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, housed in the home he built for his beloved wife, muse and model, Clotilde García del Castillo, who bequeathed the family house and her personal collection to the State after his death. The house is now a delightful National Museum dedicated to his memory. Blanca is the grand-daughter of Joaquín and Clotilde’s eldest daughter, María, and guardian of his memory. Standing in front of María’s paintings is filled with emotion.

The Sorolla Museum feels less like a traditional museum than a lived-in home and painter’s studio.

There are no barriers fencing off the paintings. Family photographs, books, ceramics and curiosities are displayed throughout the house, many of which are gifts from friends and fellow artists. The main living room has a beautiful wooden

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staircase, which leads up to the former bedrooms, now a space for temporary exhibitions. A large glass rotunda, opens on to the garden, designed by the artist himself.

The garden was central to Sorolla’s life, a place of inspiration and rest, providing a setting where nature, water and light combined with the painter’s genius.

Our conversation explores Sorolla’s work, his relevance throughout the world and the detailed preparations involved in arranging the longawaited exhibition in London.

Q. Blanca, as well as his greatgranddaughter, you are the leading specialist in the work of the painter Joaquín Sorolla. So give us a brief profile of Sorolla.

A. Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) is one of the greatest painters of all time.

From the beginning of his career he dreamed of becoming a great international artist. After training at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos de Valencia and studying Velázquez especially at the Prado Museum, at the age of 23 he continued his training in Italy and visited Paris for the first time, where he was dazzled by the artistic environment, declaring

himself an absolute follower of the pictorial naturalism that was happening there. After years of work and preparation, he began to present his works at the Paris Salon, and at the major international competitions in Munich, Berlin and Vienna, as well as at the Venice Biennale, and at the National Exhibitions held in Madrid. Many prizes followed, culminating with a Grand Prix at the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900 and the medal of honor at the National Exhibition of Madrid in 1901.

London. Tell us, how was that exhibition put together?

A. Already in 1905, perhaps due to the great success that Sorolla obtained in the Salon of Paris that year, the British critic and historian Dr. George Charles Williamson, commented that John S. Sargent took a particular interest in the exhibition. A few months later, in February 1906, it was the Knoedler & Co Gallery in London that was also requesting an exhibition.

His advances from that moment on were surprising. His successes at the Salon de Paris in 1905 would encourage him to face new pictorial challenges that summer in Jávea on the light and color of the sea, especially in the reflections of water, with prodigious results.

In 1906 he opened with great success his first major solo exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris. The following year a new solo exhibition toured the galleries of Edward Schulte in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne. And, already a great painter, he appeared again at the Grafton Galleries in London in 1908. These exhibitions would be followed by New York, Buffalo and Boston in 1909, sponsored by The Hispanic Society of America, which would achieve unprecedented success; the number of visitors, the sales and

the commissions of portraits greatly surpassed the painter’s expectations.

In 1911 he repeated his experience in San Luis and Chicago, with the same sponsorship and similar successes.

A large commission, Vision of Spain, for the library of the Hispanic Society in New York, would occupy much of his last years. Throughout 1912 Sorolla traveled throughout the peninsula documenting the types, landscapes and customs of each region. Between 1913 and 1919 he painted again in each region the thirteen large panels of 3.50 meters high by a perimeter of almost 70 meters that make up this decoration.

In those years, in addition to continuing to develop his role as a portraitist, he painted innumerable Andalusian gardens and, above all, those of his home. Also from those years come some of his beach works of higher quality, made during the summers of 1915 and 1916.

A stroke would remove Sorolla from painting in 1920.

Q. The last monographic exhibition of Sorolla in the UK was in 1908 at the Grafton Galleries in Mayfair,

After the success in Paris in 1906 there was further interest, this time in an exhibition in London, but it would not be until after presenting the new exhibitions in Germany, that Sorolla exhibited at the Grafton Galleries, in 1908. The Galleries in London were splendid, much better than those of Paris, according to Sorolla. It was inaugurated with great success and with many visitors.

Q. That exhibition, was it an overnight wonder or did it have consequences in the medium and long term?

A. In that exhibition there was an exceptional event, in which Sorolla found “the God-Man”, the Hispanic American millionaire, Archer Milton Huntington, who was enthusiastic about his work, bought two paintings and proposed to take his paintings to the United States to the recently inaugurated Hispanic Society of America.

Thus, at the beginning of January 1909, Sorolla turned up with the 350 paintings that would be hung on the walls of the institution. The unprecedented success in New York of that exhibition gave fame not only to Sorolla, but also to the institution. Sales exceeded 200 works and he painted numerous portraits (including US President Taft,

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art designer Tiffany and Mrs J.P. Morgan) . And as a consequence of all this, Huntington commissioned Sorolla to paint the murals that would decorate the Hispanic Library with his Vision of Spain. That was the absolute consolidation of his international career.

Q. Chris Riopelle and you are the curators of the London exhibition, what will the public find in this exhibition?

A. They will find the “great Sorolla”.

It is a magnificent exhibition, for the first time all the great works recognized as such internationally will be brought together in one great hall covering the years 18931900. There you will see Sorolla the portraitist, with the sensitivity and special delicacy he showed in the works dedicated to his family.

The exhibition also shows you the great painter of scenes of sea and beach illuminated by the ardent Mediterranean sun, the different landscapes and Spanish types, the painter of gardens full of privacy, and the exceptional portraitist in the open air. It is really a dream of an exhibition.

Q. What paintings never seen before by the public in the United Kingdom have you incorporated into this exhibition?

A. The vast majority. And here I want to thank institutions such as the Prado Museum as it is the first time that they have lent their three star works by Sorolla, and the same goes for the Sorolla Museum, in this case with 25 works, an exceptional contribution.

Q. Recently you have organized highly successful Sorolla exhibitions in the United States, France, Germany, Portugal ... What do you expect from the 2019 exhibition at

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the National Gallery in London?

A. I’m sure it will be another great success like the others! The National Gallery has worked hard to ensure it will. The Spanish Ministry of Culture, on which the Sorolla Museum depends, has also understood this from the beginning and its support and collaboration have been fundamental. As has also been the case of the Sorolla Museum Foundation and of all the institutions, museums, private collections and sponsors, Iberia and CEEH, which have also supported this project.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their generosity.

I also thank Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, and Consuelo Luca de Tena, director of the Sorolla Museum, for their work and that of their teams in successfully carrying out this exhibition.

And I also know, without the slightest doubt, that my great-grandparents, Joaquín and Clotilde, and their children have guided us in this new project.

Q. What are your plans for the future?

A. The next dream is to take Sorolla to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and / or to the National Gallery in Washington. That and the catalogue raisonné are my future plans in which I know that I will always have the support of the Sorolla Museum.I doubt that with my age I can finish the catalogue. However, I feel a duty to continue offering my knowledge and strengthening a team to carry this out. I think Sorolla deserves it.

Q. In your opinion, how can the exhibition of the National Gallery serve to strengthen the ties between Spain and the United Kingdom?

A. Nothing unites more than culture.

I am sure the exhibition in London will contribute to making these ties even stronger.

The BritishSpanish Society has an exclusive offer available to its members: 20 free tickets to visit the Sorolla exhibition: Spanish Master of Light on May 16.

For more information contact info@britishspanishsociety.org

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ART

DEBUSSY AND SPAIN

By Maite Aguirre

The fascinating links of the the 20th century ‘impressionist’ French composer with the music of Spain are explored by a young Spanish concert pianist and musical director living in London.

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laude Debussy is without doubt one of the most transcendental and idiosyncratic composers in music history. He transformed the musical language, creating new and unique sonorities which revolutionized and opened the horizons of other composers and performers, particularly pianists. His influence and legacy are still felt deeply today.

In my second CD, Une soirée dans Grenade, I wanted to pay a small tribute to this exceptional composer highlighting his relationship with Spanish music and musicians, thus narrating a different and less explored side of the French Master.

The sounds and colours of Spain constituted undoubtedly a huge source of inspiration for Debussy, culminating in his orchestral master piece Iberia (1912), but also found earlier in his piano music, such as in La soirée dans Grenade, the second piece in his set Estampes (1903). With his haunting habanera rhythm, lyric phrases framed by guitar-like strumming moments and unique colours, this piece instantly captivates and transports the listener. This work sounds incredibly Spanish but as Manuel de Falla remarked, it doesn’t contain a single folkloric element in it. Debussy’s genius is patent in this instant assimilation with the Spanish musical idiom, being able to create something genuine and authentic, without borrowings or clichés.

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Manuel de Falla in Paris.

Debussy composed two further Spanish inspired piano pieces, one for each of his two sets of Préludes (19091913). The first one, La sérénade interrompue has a strong connection with El Albaicín from Isaac Albéniz, a composer that Debussy greatly admired. In this piece, we can hear the punteado of the guitar preluding, and later accompanying the outburts of expressive cante jondo lines. La Puerta del Vino, composed later, draws from Debussy’s early habanera writing of La soirée dans Grenade. This seems to be a deliberate choice, as this work also represents Granada. Indeed, he composed this prelude after receiving a postcard representing La Alhambra’s “Puerta del vino” by his friend, the Catalan pianist Ricardo Viñes.

Another of Debussy’s strong Spanish connections, was Manuel de Falla. Their acquaintance began in 1902, as the young Falla corresponded with the French composer.

Their friendship was established some years later, when the Spaniard moved to Paris between 1907-1914. In fact, Debussy was instrumental in helping Falla establish himself as a composer in Paris, as he facilitated the publication of his Cuatro piezas españolas by his own publisher, Durand. Moreover, as Mathew Brown suggests

in Debussy’s Iberia, it is most likely that Falla also heard fragments of Iberia as it was being written, though it is impossible to ascertain any direct links. However, Falla’s Hommage pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy composed after his friend’s death, is a heartfelt tribute to Debussy.

This is Falla’s only work for guitar, though a piano transcription by the composer also exists. His homage employs also the habanera rhythm that Debussy himself had used and in fact he quotes a small fragment from La soirée dans Grenade as the piece is about to conclude.

Debussy was also very close personally and professionally to the aforementioned pianist Ricardo Viñes, an icon of the era, described by the musicologist and writer Louis Laloy as a “magician, who seems to touch the sounds themselves, rather than the ivory keys”. In fact, Viñes premiered many of Debussy’s pieces such as Estampes, but also other key works in the repertoire like Images or L’isle joyeuse. In turn, Debussy dedicated his Poissons d’or, one of his most difficult pieces, to his virtuoso friend. This seems hardly a coincidence and some scholars wonder whether Debussy already had Viñes in mind when he began writing it.

Viñes, who also composed some piano pieces himself, was an active promoter of modern music, championing the compositions of his friends. In fact, Falla’s Cuatro piezas españolas mentioned above were also first played by him to great success.

I personally find very moving and inspiring to note how close these composers were to each other, how their paths intertwined and, though impossible to ascertain or quantify, how much they must have inspired one another.

They undoubtedly also shared a common love for Spain and its music. As Debussy wrote to Falla in 1910: Vous savez combine j’aime, sans le connaître hélas! votre pays.

Note on the author: Maite Aguirre is a BritishSpanish Society Scholar, graduate of the Guildhall School, and concert pianist. She is Director of the Academia de Musica Cañada Blanch in London. maiteaguirre.com

Debussy addressed to Falla

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TRAVEL HEALTH

EXPLORING THE MAESTRAZGO & BEYOND

By Jimmy Burns

Following in the steps of El Cid and the young Picasso I discovered a magnificent landscape, and picturesque towns and villages ,full of history and culture, delicious food and wine, one of the less known tourist trails.

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nder blue skies and bright sun, we set off last January early one morning from the Castell de la Suda, the one-time Moorish fortress converted into a comfortable Parador lodgings with a commanding view of Tortosa , the only town of any size in Catalunya’s deep south. A leisurely uncrowded drive takes us through lush green orange groves, and silvery olive trees bordering the River Ebro, and then we head for higher ground.

It is not quite a journey without maps, following the gentle winding road through the pass of Querol, but one that never ceases to throw up the unexpected. Our first sighting of Morella quite simply takes our breath away, and I stop the car so we can fully absorb its magnificence from a distance.

The walled town of ancient stone, whitewashed houses, and rustic wood balconies and terracotta colored roofs, is located in glorious isolation on its hill-top perch. It must count as one of the most impressively preserved and compact , as well as prettiest historic towns in Spain.

Hardly bustling with human activity during the winter months, Morella nonetheless is the capital of the Maestrazgo region in the province of Castellon, a crossroads that links Valencia, Aragon and Catalonia, the Mediterranean and the Ebro Valley, where much of the destiny of Spain has played out. What remain of its

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extraordinary 13th century fortress straddles the town like an ever watchful , and proud Giant that has seen it all.

Amidst the castle ruins and sensitively conceived restoration work and exhibits one discovers an enduring testimony to a region that epitomizes Spain’s tortured conflict and capacity for survival, assimilation, and creativity.

Romans, Muslims, Christians, Frenchmen, Carlists, Republicans and Francoists have all fought in and around the castle although the region has thankfully long ago disposed of much of its military ordinance and recovered its sense of its richly diverse cultural heritage and natural and mystical magic .

Having left the car outside the castle walls, our walk though streets selling local cheeses, textiles, honey, and wicker baskets, took us first to the Iglesia de Santa Maria. Built in various stages between the 13th and 16th centuries, is considered one of the most beautiful Gothic churches in the region, with two wonderful entrances, one with statues of Virgins, the other of apostles.

The Church has an impressive baroque and a unique pipe organ with a beautiful flower-decked stair case designed and built in 1719 by the gifted Aragonese artisan Francisco Turull.

the no less inspired Civil War museum dedicated to the memory of the defining Battle of the Ebro of 1938, the two buildings facing each other across the main street in a mutual statement of collective identity.

One of Morella’s most popular icons is a statue of the Virgin Mary to whom the town claims to owe its recovery from the plague in the seventeenth century ,a historic landmark celebrated every six years, although the village has its main colorful fiesta with local folklore dancing and parades of puppet giants every August.

The museum has an impressive display of exhibits, digitalized maps, and recorded testimonies. It vividly depicts the cruelty and tragic loss of life that characterized Franco’s final push, supported by Italian and German air force, towards nationalist Spain’s conquest of Catalonia and the ill-conceived and vain-glorious attempt by Republican forces to thwart it, and the suffering of the vanquished once the Battle of the Ebro was over, with the loss of many thousands of lives.

In austere contrast stands the Franciscan convent at the food of the Castle dating back to the 14th century. I find myself lingering for a while in a room called the Sala de Profundis where monks were laid to rest before burial and prayed over. Murals depict the Dance of Death- a big red shining sun surrounded by the rope of St Francis Assisi, the Wounding Death figure shooting arrows against the Tree of Life-then the Crucifix as the Tree of Life itself, the Lignum Vitae, the symbol of never ending fecundity and cyclic regeneration.

As we emerge into the bright winter sunlight a subzero wind blows down from the Pyrenees , as we walk to the top of the Castle and from there take in a spectacularly mosaic-like expanse of terraced fields and wood.

Our three day journey, south from Barcelona, had begun twenty four hours earlier, on the coastal road to Valencia, before turning inland just south of Tarragona and heading towards the Terra Alta, to the town of Gandesa, at the foot of the region’s highest mountain range the Puig Cavaller.

For any wine lover with the remotest interest in Spanish history this is a must pit-stop, with its Gaudiesque cooperative cellars designed at the beginning of the 20th century by the architect Cèsar Martinell y Brull, and

It is hard not to reflect on the huge loss of human life and the destruction of nature by shells and shrapnel that once overshadowed the beautiful region we drive through while at the same celebrating the care with which its landscape has since been cultivated and old villages restored and the friendly reception we get from its local inhabitants wherever we go.

We drive on to the Matarraña region, Spain’s answer to Tuscany – only a thankfully less discovered tourist trail in one the more remote parts of Aragon . We visit other gems in the Terra Alta- the beautifully preserved medieval hill towns of Calaceite, Cretas, and Valderrobles, before stopping near an olive grove where a flock of sheep are pasturing . There we take in the striking shapes of the three large hills known as Benet’s Rocks –one of which is called the Dog’s Head because of its resemblance to that form.

Nearby, in a similarly spectacular position facing another mountain, and perfectly contained on its own high ground, is another picturesque village with a special claim to fame, Horta de Sant Joan .

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The village draws its olive oil, almonds, and grapes from local fields, but also a reputation as the place the Malaga born Pablo Picasso lived and drew his inspiration from during different periods in his youth.

The first time was in 1898 when Picasso was a teenager, and visited with his friend Manuel Pallarès, a fellow student at Barcelona’s Llotja art school who was born and spent his childhood in Horta.

Picasso stayed for the second time in the village in 1909 . Although already a full-time painter immersed in the artistic life of Paris, Picasso took great interest in Horta’s local customs and traditions and drew his artistic inspiration from the medieval architecture of the village square to the light and geology of the surrounding landscape not least the imposing mountain of Santa Bàrbara with the convent of Sant Salvador at its foot.

The village was silent and almost devoid of human life when we visited, almost like a ghost town, as if people were hibernating from the cold weather. We did find an old man stepping out of his house who pointed us to the building near the town square the site of the Hostal del Trumpet where Picasso stayed with his lover and model the French artist Fernande Olivier during his Cubist period.

The building stood at the beginning of a street named after Picasso rather belatedly in 1967, at the height of

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Spain’s first tourist boom during the Franco regime in recognition of his international fame , and a few hundred yards away from a Picasso Centre displaying facsimile reproductions of all the works the artist created in Horta during his time there.

Even more off the beaten-track and not recommended if the elements are against you is a visit to a local cave where, in the summer of 1898, Picasso and his student friend Pallarès lived for several weeks, in order to ‘live’ nature, a rites of passage experience from which Picasso emerged determined to break with formal artistic training and instead both experiment and innovate as an avantgarde painter.

I have to admit that the subzero temperature drew us away from mountain walks which would have been hugely attractive in the warmer months of Spring and autumn, and instead towards inner sanctuaries such as various warm eateries to sample the delicious local mutton , and goat, and restorative local red wine.

But I am told that when the weather is warmer , it’s well worth doing the three kilometer hike from the Parc de la Fraqueta to Picasso’s Cave , which is actually a rock projecting out from the mountain and where one can easily imagine Picasso and his friend-two young students, dreaming the artistic dream of a return to nature.

THE ENDURING LONDON OF

MARY POPPINS

By Alexandra Brown

She is back on screen, and soon in one of the English Capital’s most popular theatres. The London imagined through the world’s most magical nanny has an enduring enchantment.

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hen it came to taking the collective vote as to what should be our Christmas cinema outing, there was no contest`: ‘Mary Poppins!’ was the unanimous cry.

No surprise there. Along with millions of other loyal followers, we have for years cherished the memory of the first film version of Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews in the main part..It was now time to see a reprise with all the magic rekindled on Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel to Disney’s original Mary Poppins movie.

This is not a review of an updated version, nor a trip down memory lane, but rather an attempt to sum up, why the latest Mary Poppins touches hearts and minds with a new sense of relevance for the times and one of the world’s best loved capital cities that I and many others have the privilege to live in.

What better exemplary reminder of the challenges of post-capitalism than that of the heroic Dad , struggling to save his family and home from the money grabbing and corrupt bank executive, and ultimately prevailing thanks to Mary Poppins’s heavenly intervention.

In the latest film version of Mary Poppins, played by Emily Blunt we have a more clipped, less emotionally engaging central character, but nonetheless imbued, like the Dad and his campaigning women’s rights sister, with an instinctive sense of fair play and the common good, those quintessentially British values.

The film, which will be followed this October with the revival of the stage musical at the Prince Edward theatre, provides us with a broad canvass with which to immerse our fantasies in ,that of a romanticised, culturally selfassured London defined by cut-glass pukka or cockney accents , but where the the stiff English upper lip is up against the smoldering yet contained moral outrage.

The film is set in early 1930’s during a recession between two world world wars. It has not a hint of the modernity and consumerism that rose from the ashes of the Blitz, let alone the technology that has invaded every child’s dream space in more recent times.

Perhaps the most escapist travesty in Mary Poppins is the way it portrays London as a monoculture when this has never been the case in real life because people of London have grown with the migrations that have shaped their

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TRAVEL

city, their stories part of the ebb and flow of history.

And yet I emerged from watching it, convinced that the cause of Mary Poppins remains essentially a noble one.

It has its heart in the right place , preserving buildings and settings, and celebrating hopes and good dreams. The London it evokes is of a resilient city , as it reinvents itself thanks to literary imagination.

As London’s great biographer Peter Ackroyd writes in his seminal history : “The fabric of the city, despite a variety of assaults, has always been preserved.” Its enemies have never yet defeated it.

And Mary Poppins evokes feelings and values and urban settings as worth preserving in our collective sentiment as a kite or a balloon and a clear clean London sky to fly in. The film opens with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Jack (heir to Dick Van Dyke’s Bert, with much the same dodgy Cockney accent) on a tour of the capital on his bike. He bikes past the cosy Two Chairmen pub in Westminster at the end of Queen Anne’s Gate, a street full of lovely Queen Anne Houses, leading to late 18th-century Old Queen St. St Paul’s and the Bank of England , the totemic architectural images of the film, have endured, their solid stone presence still majestic amidst the ephemeral competing urbanscapes of glass sky scrapers.

So have other parts of London as enchanting as the Banks’ fictitious Cherry Tree lane neighborhood , especially with

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the spring blossom or the late summer flowering. The spirit of Mary Poppins and the Banks family is alive and well and present in quietly civilized streets and squares of Kensington and Chelsea and Hampstead village, the beautifully maintained gardens of Regent’s, St James’s, Hyde, and Battersea Parks, and the Dickensian backstreets of Borough and Convent market.

Nor is London short of evocative panoramic views over London rooftops seen from the dozens of roof top terrace and bars that have reenergized the city, from the South Bank’s Rumpus Room on the South Bank to the ME Melia in the Strand and many other boutique chill-outs in between.

The film will no doubt help to draw more tourists to the capital, and London businesses are already capitalising on the popularity of the film, with for example Mary Poppins themed walking tours and afternoon teas on offer.

The film also reminds us of how heritage is preserved across the city, with for examplethe English Heritage blue plaque on 50 Smith Street, off the King’s Road, in Chelsea where the author P.L.Travers, lived there and imagined his creation, the most loved and magical of all English nannies.

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LAST WORD

CHASING THE GAME

By Dominic Begg

In recent years, British sports fans living in Spain have been able to follow major sporting events without raising a sweat: go to a pub for the ‘ambiente’ or pay monthly to watch from your sofa. But it wasn’t always such an easy ride…

I remember a frustrating experience in early 70s Madrid.

TVE-2 was scheduled to show a 5-Nations rugby match from Twickenham, so most of C.D. Arquitectura’s first team gathered in our trainer’s flat with plenty of provisions, only to hear the ‘Heidi’ theme-tune playing, instead of the national anthems. Apparently the young daughter of a Cabinet Minister had thrown a tantrum when she found out that her favourite cartoon series wouldn’t be shown, prompting a few phone-calls that led to the Swiss Miss being re-instated!

Towards the end of that decade, having moved to Barcelona’s Sarrià district, I prowled its quiet weekend streets, contorting my neck outside bars to get a glimpse of TV screens, none of which featured an oval ball, lush grass and tall white posts.

Nothing doing, so I had to settle for the result later, on the BBC’s World Service. Nevertheless, Sarrià provided a better moment in November 1991, when a shower of rain propelled me into an unfamiliar bar full of glum Barça fans watching their team facing elimination from Europe, courtesy of Kaiserslauten. My caña arrived, and with it a Bakero header at the far post in the dying seconds, prompting a communal surge of relief and celebration.

All was forgiven, even Barça’s lurid orange kit. And of course they went on to win the Cup at Wembley.

I recall two other sporting moments, both seen from our Sarrià sofa. Ballesteros in the lead at Augusta’s 17th hole, poised heroically to attack the flag, only for some blockhead to cut to a horse-race from San Sebastian. And Spain in late ’83, qualifying miraculously for the Euro finals by beating Malta 12 – 1, the exact margin required!

Spain’s 12th goal was the only occasion on which the unflappable TVE commentator, José-Angel de la Casa, lost his composure.

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Up near the French border my luck varied. In the early summer of ’74 a gargantuan lunch in a remote caserío near Elizondo led me to wager a green 1000-peseta note against our rugby coach, ‘Margarito’, that Holland would win that afternoon’s World Cup Final. Despite their early goal, the Dutch lost to Germany, and one-fifth of my savings to last me till late October had ‘volado’. But a decade later in Figueras, seeking out a bar with a French channel showing 5-Nations rugby, two friends and I struck lucky in a glitzy modern hotel, whose French manager took pity on us, escorting us in a lift to his penthouse suite and encouraging us to sample his luxury cognacs and armagnacs, while watching the match. Can’t recall who won that one…

Finally, the boot was on the other foot when I was in London a few years ago, keen to catch the Copa del Rey Final, which no UK sports channel was covering. Jimmy Burns came to the rescue, sending me to Bar & Co, a Spanish party-boat moored on the Embankment, where I savoured a vintage Messi display against Athletic Bilbao, several Estrella Damms and myriad regional Spanish accents. All this after a warm day watching cricket at Lord’s!

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