Spanish Castle Magic

"Where have you been, Old Ken?" Well, this question is one with which yours truly has been bombarded of late. Sadly, no easy answer lies ready at my disposal. Here and there I have been, learning about recent research on the growth of scientific knowledge in early modern Spain; mixing it up with social scientists in the home of the Liberty Bell; penning curious apercues about early modern iconoclasm; or reading strange scripts in a library designed by Sir Christopher Wren. So, the question where have I been is perhaps best answered in the negative, with an assertion of where I have not been: seated, as I am now, and ready to blog.

Well, perhaps at this point my travels might appear to have produced more of a drought than the fecund informational harvest for which you might pine. But, rest assured that I have managed to squirrel away quite a store of observations and insights, as is only right for a man from a place. So, without further ado, let me take the bull by the horns (an apt enough phrase for an Iberian adventure) and share some Spanish musing with you.



Having flown into Madrid, which we see in the first photograph above, I quickly made my way south east, accompanied by Senor Byron de la Panouse, a famous anthropologist who you will have met from an earlier excursion to Oxford. Our destination? Valencia, home of "the world's most delicious oranges," which are (if I recall correctly) not native to the region but an 18th-19th century import, first grown as decoration. In any case, Valencia (whose cathedral we see photographed above by night) has a well-preserved medieval quarter, complete with a cloth market in the Gothic style.



However, along the city's south-eastern flank - - indeed, in the dry bed of a now-diverted river which once ran between the ancient city and the sea - - is a brand new "City of Science and the Arts" designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.



Although the site is still under construction, Calatrava's buildings are, in the humble opinion of this tourist, something spectacular. For one, they fuse a number of formal elements that refer as much to Valencia's situation along the Mediterranean as to delights of science.

Consider, for example, this massive leviathan of a building, which rise from the brine in the photograph above, its gaping mouth open as if straining a gulp of water with the balleen-like windows. While whales of such size might be slightly out of sorts in the water of the nearby Mediterranean, the building's form certainly evokes the massive skeletons of watery mammals one sees in natural-history galleries such as the Jardin des Plantes of Paris. Vauchement chouette!



References to marine life continues on throughout the complex, as buildings seem to sprout gills, flippers, and herring-bone patterns in their construction.


In case you didn't get enough of that magic, here's a little close up.



Perhaps the most delightful pescatorial reference, though, is the very skin of the complex which is coated - - buildings, water-features, and benches alike - - with broken ceramic tile. As a result, the refracted sunlight produces amazing shimmering effects as its plays across these fish scale-like surfaces.



Always a fan of animals as you know Old Ken to be, you can just imagine my delight as we stumbled across the spectacular fauna of a street festival in the small town of Castello, which lies up the coast from Valencia.



I cannot report exactly what the plot of this little skit was, but a troupe of actors with really amazing costumes had commandeered a town square and treated us to a performance with a bee keeper (who seems to feature in neither of these photographs) attempting to reign in some wily bees. The gigantic, inflatable spider was a welcome, if slightly mysterious, addition. Spanish? Yes. Castle? Well, it was held in the town of Castello. Magic? And how!