July 27, 2015

Cartagena is quite a bit different from our previous experiences of Spanish cities on this trip. It seems lighter, somehow, a little less buried in pomp and ceremony, despite being one of the oldest cities on the Iberian Peninsula.

It was founded by the Phoenicians, passed to Carthage in North Africa, was the staging ground for Hannibal’s famous elephant-assisted, over-the-Alps, assault on Italy, was then taken and held by the Romans (after they destroyed Carthage), then ruled by Vandals and then Visigoths until the Moorish conquest of Al-Andalus in the 700s.

It’s a wonderful natural harbor – the best in the western Mediterranean – and has been fortified and re-fortified by successive waves of conquerors, drawn by its strategic position and also by the very productive silver mines in the immediate area. In the 1200s the town was taken by King Alphonse X (known, for whatever reason, as “The Wise”). Alphonse, a Christian, drove out the Moorish Spaniards, almost completely depopulating the city. It fell into hundreds of years of hard times, with the population bottoming out around 800 people.

Things picked up when trade with (or plunder of) the New World developed, and by the late 1700s it was a prosperous port city again.

But in the 1930s its history diverged from the other large cities we’ve been in – Cartagena was one of the principle strongholds of the Spanish Republicans in their struggle against the fascist coup led by General Francisco Franco. It was also the only port city held by the Republicans, and thus the only potential point of entry for aid to the elected government of Spain, aid which was late, and paltry, but not entirely non-existent.

As a result, Cartagena, like Guernica in the north, became one of the laboratories in which new methods of warfare were tested out by the German Nazi and Italian fascist air forces. The method, later also adopted by the British and Americans (think Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki…) was to terrorize and destroy civilian centers as a means of demoralizing the enemy.

Cartagena was ruthlessly bombed, and bombed again and again. We were surprised and pleased to see a museum devoted to the Civil War, consisting of a series of displays in one of the large underground bomb shelters the Republicans dug into the hills in the city. The museum is very new (obviously, post-Franco) and appears to have been something of an afterthought – but it details the destruction and privation and hunger visited upon this city, which was the very last city in Spain to surrender to the fascist forces. There are loops of video of interviews with older Cartagenians who were children during the bombings. Mostly they express touching, but very passive stories of hardship and fear. Then, one bright-eyed older guy begins to use the word “we.” “We” dug these shelters to survive the bombing, and “our” antiaircraft guns seemed so slow. He had a gleam in his eye, and a clear sense of which side he was on. It was nice to see.

Maybe I’m reading things into the atmosphere, but some of that spirit of independence, pride and defiance seems to persist here. At least there is not the heavy, triumphalist ecclesiastical monumentalism that we saw so much of in Cadiz, and especially in Cordoba.

Just as a side note, there is a wonderful “Museum of Sub-Aquatic Archeology” here by the docks, with many exhibits from historic sunken vessels, great displays on the evolution of naval architecture, and careful explanation of how the science relating to these finds is done. Perhaps more typical of Spanish historical museums, this one stops about 1900…

It’s hot here (like we’re hearing it is in other places) , and humid. We’re looking forward to getting further north. Our next major stop will most likely be Barcelona, hopefully with a couple anchorages and some swimming between here and there.

July 24, 2015

I’ve always thought it’s kind of crass when people go traveling and then natter on about the price of this and the price of that. But now I’m going to do it – maybe on the grounds that there may be a broader point here…

We’ve been getting low on some non-essentials (some might think), so I made a special run this morning to top up our supply of rum, wine, coffee and chocolate. Here’s what I got: two bottles of Rioja Crianza, a good red wine from the Rioja region of Spain – the “Crianza” meaning that it is aged in oak for one year, then bottle aged for another year, two bottles of “Reserva” red wine from the Tarragona region of Spain – the “Reserva” meaning that it has been aged one year in oak and two years in the bottle, two 500 gram bags of 100% Arabica whole bean dark-roasted coffee (keep in mind that there are only 454 grams to a pound, and that when you buy a bag of Starbucks or Peet’s you are only getting 12 ounces, or 340 grams), two bottles of perfectly acceptable Dominican rum, and two 100 gram Ritter chocolate bars with lots of whole hazelnuts.

The total bill was 28.22 euros, or about 31 US dollars! “What the hell is going on here!” I thought. One of the bottles of rum would have cost very near that in Seattle. Really, conservatively speaking, the bill for this batch of stuff would have been well over $100. It makes one wonder if the salient feature of the US is that it’s “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” or if maybe that it’s the land of the swindled, destined to become the home of the broke.

Ok, that’s it on the subject of prices.

28.33 euros, honest…

Well, maybe just a bit more. It might be said, “Well, those prices are the result of the depressed economy in Spain.” But the chain where this stuff came from is not a charitable institution – it’s making a profit at those prices. Besides, the coffee and chocolate came from Germany, and the rum from the Dominican Republic . Labor costs in Spain include a superior range of social benefits, but maybe one could argue that labor costs for the big chains in the US are higher. I doubt that’s true, but even if it was, could it account for the difference between $30 and $115 or so?  Now I quit…

July 19, 2015

We just got back from a 640 km (380 mile) drive around southern Spain, spending nights in Ronda, Cordoba and Granada. We now know where most of the world’s olive oil comes from. Besides driving through wheat fields, dramatic, sun-parched and rocky mountains, white villages perched, with their defensive castles, high above the valleys, we passed through, and I kid you not, 10,000 square miles of olive orchards. The extent of the monoculture is astonishing, and it is mostly devoted to the production of olive oil.

Andalusia, formerly Al-Andalus, was ruled and largely settled by “The Moors” from about 700 AD until around the early 1500s. For most people, it would be easy to understand that “The Moors” is just another way of saying Spaniards who were Muslims, since all Spaniards got there from somewhere else. That, we found, was not the view of Spanish Catholics during the Inquisition, and it is still not the view of the dominant culture of Spain’s ruling powers – which very much include a very conservative Catholic Church.

For example, in Cordoba we visited the beautiful, gigantic Mezquita – a huge, breathtaking structure built in Cordoba, starting around 750 AD, as a mosque. Following the military defeat of “The Moors” in the early 1200s, It was revamped as a Catholic church – a church tower built around the minaret, and a small cathedral-like building constructed inside the 20 acre (or so) interior of the mosque. The brochure handed out as you enter the building describes how “Moorish invaders” destroyed a Visigoth Christian church (not noting that the Visigoths were also invaders) to build their mosque.

The Arabic stamp on southern Spain is everywhere you look, from the graceful and beautiful buildings of the Alhambra (only partly destroyed by lumpy 16^th Century Christian castles and churches) to the names of towns, the castles along the trading routes, and the language itself. Like the rococo ornamentation of Baroque and Gothic churches in Europe, the Moorish buildings that survive obviously involved mind-boggling amounts of skilled labor. But the result has an artistic unity, a subtlety, and a peaceful, well-proportioned mix of open spaces, gardens, fountains and arches lacking in the later Christian efforts.

Ronda, less well known than Cordoba or Granada, and much smaller, clings to the top of steep cliffs, connected in the center of town by an enormously tall, graceful stone bridge. As in Cordoba and Granada, the most dramatic and graceful structures are from the Moorish times, often overlaid with bombastic plaques proclaiming the victory of the Christians.

Perhaps most interesting, from a cultural point of view, is the extent to which the history of the Moors, and of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, has been completely scrubbed from museums, tourist information, and as far as one can tell, from the official version of history. Ronda is famous for being the site of the execution by Spanish Republicans of Fascist officers, thrown off the town cliffs during the Civil War in the 1930s. The incident appears, fictionalized, in “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Hemingway, and is referred to in non-Spanish historical resources. But, despite the “Hemingway Walk” above the cliffs in Ronda, you would never learn about the incident in Ronda itself.

In all our museum-touring and plaque-reading, we did not see a single reference of any kind to the bloody and epic Spanish Civil War of the 1930s – except for a plaque on the walls of the cathedral inserted into the mosque in Cordoba, with a list of names of the “Christian martyrs from the period of religious persecution from 1932-1937,” which is the way they chose to describe the Franco/fascist uprising against the elected government of Spain.

We saw no plaques anywhere, official or otherwise, regretting the tortures and murders of “Moors,” “Moriscos” (“Moors” who had converted to Christianity) and Jews – or the seizure of their property and their eventual wholesale expulsion from Spain. A large “Juderia” or Jewish ghetto surrounds the Mezquita, and gives testimony to the cohabitation of Spanish Muslims and Spanish Jews. It was depopulated during the years of the Inquisition, and stands today, plaque-less, as mute evidence of the vicious fanaticism of the Christian rulers of Spain.

Needless to say, we sampled much excellent food and wine, and in Cordoba even found a local IPA! And certainly there is much cultural and intellectual life in Spain which does not reflect that oppressive and depressing narrowness of the Church and the Franco legacy, and there certainly is discontent with the economic stagnation and high unemployment. But there is not a whiff of liberalism or multi-culturalism to be found in the cultural output of official Spain.

On a different subject, the New York Times has published an excellent overview of conditions in the maritime industry. Not mentioned in the article, but certainly related, is the reported 70% decline in sea birds over the last 25 years. It’s well worth reading, and recapitulates the world that B. Traven described so well, ninety years ago, in his novel “The Death Ship.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-ship.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Tomorrow we will round Point Europa, to finally enter the Mediterranean. We’ll go on to Estepona, Spain, where we hope to refill our propane tank, which turns out not to be so simple in the Med. We’ll also do our first “Med-mooring,” which has our nerves all a-flutter!

July 14, 2015

Yesterday we finally took the plunge, so to speak, and passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. There’ve been two sides to the experience of traveling down the Atlantic coast of Spain – one has been trying to absorb the setting and its history, and the other has been dealing with the challenges of navigating in deeply unfamiliar waters. Ok, well, there’s been some eating and drinking too…

The history part is always present. Cadiz, where we spent three days wandering the old city, may be the oldest city in Europe – an area where Neanderthals lived in and decorated caves, Greeks and Phoenicians visited, trading pottery for silver, tin and gold. In fact, Phoenicians most likely founded the city, perhaps 3,000 years ago, long before the Romans established their posts along this stretch of coastline.

We spent hours in the Museum of Cadiz, situated on one of the lovely, tree covered (and parrot infested) plazas in the center of town. A great archeological record, and a lot of 18^th and 19^th century painting, and a small section of contemporary art. Despite the amazing depth of the exhibits from early human to Roman times, and then the Spanish history reflected in the paintings, there are some gaps. No mention of the long Moorish preeminence in southern Spain – Al-Andalus – and in Cadiz in particular, except for one giant, wall-sized painting of “Spaniards” butchering “Moors” in the “battle for Cadiz.” Also, you would never know that Spain had a civil war in the 1930s, or a president named Franco…

But the city is a joy to explore on foot – long, narrow, shady streets lined with two and three story buildings, opening into green plazas, all surrounded by old stone walls and the sea. Food and drink are interesting, top quality and inexpensive, and it is possible to adjust to the idea that nothing is open between about 3:30 to 8:30.

We left Cadiz on Sunday to sail to Barbate, down the coast about 40 miles, where we planned to scope out the weather in the Straits before making our move. That leg of the trip took us right past Cabo Trafalgar, where the sea rolls over the bones of thousands. Not Admiral Nelson’s, though. His body was packed in a barrel of brandy and shipped back to London for burial at Westminster Cathedral.

Barbate turned out to be kind of a loss. It used to be called “Barbete de Franco” although the “de Franco” part has been carefully scrubbed from everything over the last decade or so. It’s a newish vacation town built on the edge of a swamp, complete with annoying no-see-ums and crappy internet access. So, we took a look at the information we had and decided to go for it the next morning.

For those of us familiar with Northwest waters, the Straits of Gibraltar are navigationally a lot like the Straits of Juan de Fuca, except shorter. There are strong currents, frequent strong, even violent winds, and plenty of fog in the summer. The differences are that the Straits over here have truly massive amounts of traffic, and that they used to be the edge of the known world, then the pinch point that controlled access to and from the Mediterranean. Tarifa, at the narrowest point, is one of the windiest spots in the world. We sailed past its old stone fortifications (and it’s frighteningly fast, huge high-speed ferries to North Africa) in a very moderate, for Tarifa, 15 to 20 knots of wind on the nose, but with 2 knots of current behind us.

We had left Barbate on radar, in pea soup fog, but it cleared up a half hour after we felt our way out of the harbor. We felt done with that, despite very clear warnings to the contrary. They were right, as it turned out. Three or four miles from Tarifa we were back in the soup, with maybe 25 yards visibility. Here was another occasion we regretted not having an AIS transmission. But it was fine, just a little nervous-making to sail into Gibraltar Bay, a very busy harbor with many AIS-identified tankers and cargo ships making blips on the radar, along with buoys, rocks and non-AIS identified boats.

Luckily, as we got further into the bay, and as one of the big high-speed ferries was rocketing towards us through the fog (we could see them on the radar), the fog lifted, and there was the rock! It’s a truly impressive sight, a little like the pictures you may have seen, although most of the photos I knew omitted the tall minaret of the mosque that is the dominant feature of Point Europa. The Barbary apes have not yet been visible through the binoculars, a bitter disappointment.

We’re moored on the Spanish side of the border between Spain and Gibraltar, which is undefended these days, although you have to show a passport to cross it, unlike most borders in Europe. We’ll spend some time here, clean up the boat, and we hope to rent a car to visit Granada and Cordoba, maybe the very old city of Ronda too. We continue to be shocked by how inexpensive the marinas are.

We’ll keep you posted.

July 9, 2015

One of the reasons for traveling to is broaden one’s cultural horizons, right? I agree with this idea 100%, but I’m really only saying that to justify a rant.

Last night we were moored in Chipiona, Spain – an ancient and very small scale town near the entrance to the river that leads up to Sevilla, Spain. It’s a fishing town, with an overlay of local tourism, and a great place to walk around – beaches, an old and very impressive tall stone lighthouse, ancient fish farms formed by hauling rocks out into the sea at low tide, and lots of narrow streets, buildings of two or three stories max, except, of course, for the churches, and an almost endless supply of bars and tapas restaurants.

The surprise for us was that none of the many, many bars or restaurants even begin to open until 8:00pm. People eat after it cools off, and apparently no one, other than maybe the fishermen (or, more correctly, fishers) has to get up all that early. Unemployment in Spain is still, after all, 25%.

Hot and thirsty, we were happy to find a bar open, and nearly full, at the ungodly hour of 6:30pm. The reason was the crowd of oldsters, mostly men, watching bullfighting on a big-screen TV. Like most everyone, I’ve read my Hemingway, and seen stories and photos of Manolo, but, honestly, I thought people had quit doing this.

Maybe it was the televising that did it. Bullfights, if they must be watched, should probably be watched from a distance by people with inadequately corrected myopia. I can’t begin to say how ugly it was in close-up. It was a horrible, cowardly spectacle of foolishly, garishly dressed young men tormenting and then clumsily killing confused, bleeding and exhausted herbivores. I grew up with cattle, by the way, so I’m not one to idealize them, but this was just inexcusable.

The bulls were shown into the ring in prime condition, angry, frightened and alone. They charged, as they naturally would, when they saw something moving. But, they are easily fooled by capes. The picadors, who jab barbed sticks into the backs of the bulls, demonstrated that even without a cape it is easy enough for an agile and experienced man to avoid a hurt and bleeding bull.

The whole “contest” between the toreador (and then the matador, or killer) and the bull is totally uneven. The people are experienced, and, presumably, smarter. This is the bull’s first exposure to this sort of thing. The bull is stabbed by the picadors, and then jabbed with a lance in the back and shoulders by a guy on a horse. And most of the horse guys looked like bankers having a holiday while wearing funny hats.

This goes on until the bulls shoulders are covered with sheets of fresh blood. The bulls, exhausted, dehydrated, tongues hanging out, glazed eyes, keep foolishly, predictably, charging the cape, rather than the guy who is carrying it. The guy in the stupid outfit makes all kinds of bizarre faces at the bull, and then, if he wants a lot of credit, takes foolish risks in the immediate vicinity of the large, desperate animal. Once in a while they get stepped on, or even, once every eight or ten years, gored. One is tempted to say, not nearly often enough.

In every area except politics, I’m as conservative as I could reasonably be expected to be at my age. Deer hunting, roast wild duck, fishing for food, all fine with me. But this bullfighting stuff is just torturing animals for some kind of rush. It’s not a fight, it’s not dangerous to the humans, unless they do really dumb stuff, and it’s deeply ugly to watch. Dog-fighting, cock fights, throwing virgins into volcanoes, many “traditional” things should be eschewed, including, bull “fights.” I don’t even like catch and release fishing, which someone once aptly described as “hurting fish for fun.”

Ok, why make a fuss about this. There are far worse human activities, like starving children to support the market price of wheat. Granted.

After the bullfight, the evening got way better. The restaurants eventually opened, we had a good meal, and then found a sherry bodega. The bodega was a small noisy place, full of barrels of sherry and muscatel, oloroso, pasa, fino, golden and others – all locally produced. We sampled and sampled, talked to a local guy, retired from a boatyard (at 50-something) and ended up buying a liter of good, fresh manzanilla sherry, dry, complex and tasting of the sea. The total bill was 7 euros, for the samples and the liter.

On to Cadiz!

July 4, 2015

Happy Fourth! For those who celebrate the occasion, anyway. The Declaration of Independence remains one of those milestones of human progress, like the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation and many others, that are worth a moment’s reflection. Basic democratic rights – threatened as they may be – make life better. They belong right up there with antibiotics and relatively painless dentistry!

So, we made it to Ayamonte, Spain, after a fairly uneventful trip – except for the presence of nets and fish traps in unexpected places. We didn’t end up with anything wrapped around the propeller, which was totally a matter of luck. But, there’s a lot of water and only a few hazards in it. The odds are good, even travelling in the dark. Cato had his first nighttime trip at sea, and weathered it well.

Ayamonte is a relaxed little town, and since it is a couple miles inland from the beach, it is not overwhelmed with tourism. It has been a relief to settle into an area where the very large boats that we sailed with in the ARC Rally across the Atlantic are replaced by very modest cruising boats, owned by people of modest means from Europe. We currently appear to be the biggest boat in the marina…

We talked to some of the more local boaters and decided to chance the 20 mile trip up the river on the border of Spain and Portugal. It’s a dry, undeveloped, rugged area, dotted with the ruins of old stone buildings, stork nests along the shore, a few small houses living off the grid with solar panels, and a very few small towns, mostly on the Portuguese side. Ever since reading Huck Finn, I’ve been fascinated with river travel, and this was just the best. The river is not wide, but there are very few dangerous shoals, and our only trouble was getting stuck in the mud of the marina when we first tried to leave. But the tide was coming in, and after a couple hours of waiting we were under way, a little sheepish, but with no damage.

The dry hills and oak trees are reminiscent of central California. But when we got up to our destination, the scenery was very different – two small, old towns directly across the river, each boasting a large stone castle with many gun emplacements. “The Castle dates from the 15^th Century, during the difficulties with Portugal…” explains a sign on the Spanish shore (my translation). Difficulties indeed! Now the conflict seems reduced to the level of competing church bells, which ring different times from the opposite sides of the river – Portugal being an hour earlier than Spain.

It was amazing to see that the tidal currents run so far up the river. We were anchored more than 20 miles from sea, yet the river ran at 2 knots to the north during the flood, and two knots to the south during the ebb. It made for an energetic row into the town.

Tomorrow we will continue working our way down towards the Straits of Gibraltar, one day-sail at a time, watching the weather in the Straits carefully. Right now it doesn’t look good, but we’ll take our time until the prospects for favorable winds are better.

Sanlucar de Guadiana – on the Spanish side of the river..,.