INTRODUCTION: 1971 and 2007
1971
"So do you think you will ever come back to Spain?"
One of my friends asked each of us this as we four college students stood on a bridge in Seville at 4:00 p.m., the sunlight shimmering in that white city where light always seemed to be streaming and the water flowing under the bridge winked with that light.
"Oh yes," I answered quickly. Always such a homesick person until that year, I still missed my family, and yet somehow I had overcome the ache of homesickness, feeling as at home in Spain as I ever had anywhere else other than Canton, Ohio, despite the fact that Spain was so different. It was a dictatorship, whose censorship troubled me, as did the street presence of the Guardia Civil. Mountainous Segovia, where we lived, was freezing by November and as few homes had central heat or any heat, I was painfully cold. (Quite a new experience for this daughter of a welder and furnace installer.) On the other hand, for the first time in my life I had traveled alone and with friends, finding tickets, hostels and holidays. I had met up with American soldiers in clubs and the Guardia in the streets and a few thugs on country roads and quiet alleys where I had held my own, threatening to break one guy's windshield with my lunchbox if he didn't back off, after I had already bonked him on the head with it. All in all, an exciting time. So when my friend asked us all that day if we would ever come back, I thought I would be back often and soon.
2007
But life intervened. I often said that I wanted to get to Spain again, but in fact, I put it off since I would not just be visiting Spain but revisiting my younger self. Every time I made magdalenas, a simple Spanish muffin, I thought of Proust's madelines and wondered if on my return, the memories would swell or my eyes would well up in disappointment. Then in 2007, Paul got a year's sabbatical, and it seemed a good time to make the Spain trip.
I pondered where to go in the two weeks we had to devote to this trip. I had to get back to Segovia, of course, which meant flying to and from Madrid might make the most sense. Where else? I had never been to Basque country, and wanted to go, and to Pamplona, had loved Andalusia and would have liked to return (but not so close to summer), wanted to see Salamanca and Avila again, and finally get to Galicia, where the family of my dear high school Spanish teacher, Omar Perez, came from. I had never seen Toledo or Valencia. Or Santiago de Compostela. I thought I could do without the beaches. I don't think you usually meet the most authentic people on beaches, and besides, I live near a beach now. I could do without Barcelona, which didn't seem so Spanish to me when I visited in 1971, and what was all that weird Gaudi stuff--ya call that architecture?
However, Paul most wanted to go to Barcelona. One of his all-time favorite movies is Antonioni's The Passenger, and Paul wanted to ride the cable cars to Montjuic, just like the Jack Nicholson character did. So Paul researched Gaudi architecture that I might like more than Sagrada Familia (easy because I like any building in the world more than Sagrada Familia), and he promoted Gaudi's La Pedrera by showing me an awful but wonderful movie, Gaudi Afternoon, where dingy characters run around on the rooftop and through La Pedrera's lobby.
So okay, Barcelona would be the third city. Madrid, Segovia, Barcelona. We thought we could do one more and choose it spontaneously once we were in Spain. It ended up being Valencia, which was a terrific choice. These pages are a most informal account, say a journal, of our journey.
