Herbstferien Trip 2018: Northern Spain from Barcelona to Bilbao.
Barcelona.
We met Pam and Hank in Barcelona for a few days before embarking on our roadtrip across the northern part of the country. Started in Barcelona since the flights were cheap. The kids get a two week fall break "Herbstferien" so we usually take a big trip somewhere.
The apartment they rented for everyone in Barcelona will rank as one of the best-positioned balconies of anyplace we'd been in Europe: It is six stories up and opens up directly on the Sagrada Familia, affording us the above view. It is the only building with this direct view of the famous Basilica, since a park sits in front and the the buildings surrounding it are much lower or further away. From this balcony we were right on top of the Sagrada. So we took endless pictures of it.
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| We'd visited the Basilica in 2015, but had not done the Passion Towers section: you take an elevator up and then walk down some 400 steps in a tight stairwell. But nice views from up top of the super bizarre Gaudí designs. |
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| Cody takes it all in...The nave was designed to mimic a forest, so all the supports tend to resemble tree trunks. |
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| And the roof has a "treetop-leaves" feel to it. They plan to have it finished in 2026, so we'll come back for it. |
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| What you do in Barcelona, although I'd go with wine since the local beer was not outstanding. |
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| Ridiculous view from the dining room in the apartment. |
Couple nights in Barcelona hitting requisite Tapas restaurants, shopping for breakfast food, exploring the playgrounds in the old town sections. Love checking out the public transit options in other countries and comparing to Berlin's U-Bahn system.
From here we headed north to the tiny town of Besalu, stopping to check out the unexpectedly cool Girona along the way.
Besalu.
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| What the proceeds from the sale of a Cafe in Seattle will buy you in Spain: 13th Century Guesthouse with farm animals. |
One of my first landscape photography shows was at the little Cafe Besalu in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood in 2007. The Cafe opened in 2000 and quickly became renowned in Seattle for the delicious pastries that baker/chef James prepared. James had spent time in Barcelona working as an English teacher after college in the late 80's and he would frequently come up to tiny Besalu on the train to escape the city crowds. This is how he came to name the Cafe years later.
But the experience of Spain never left his blood, and in 2017 James and his Estonian wife Kedra sold the Cafe in Seattle and used the proceeds to buy an old guesthouse outside of Besalu, Spain. The ongoing project is to renovate it into a B&B that one day will host destination travel for people looking to have a culinary workshop type of holiday.
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| Kedra and James outside their "project." |
"Mas Costa's" original stones were laid in the 13th century. It was reputedly on a pilgrimage route to a shrine on top of one of the local peaks and people would stop in for food on their way up the mountain. As was typical of these types of structures, additions and renovations occurred over the years creating endless passages, nooks and surprises. Occasionally there are strange staircases that lead nowhere. The place now has ten individual apartments, several common rooms, kitchens and balconies. James and family live in a recent addition that was built connected to the main building. It sits over the stables where chickens and donkeys roam in the yard.
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| Heavy oaken front doors, full of ancient nails and bracing. |
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| Another view of the front entrance! And Maya, the farm dog. |
The ground floor of the main structure features a number of unused rooms with uneven cobbled stone floors: these were the original stables for the animals. Typically farmhouses had the animals on the ground floor which kept both them and the house occupants warm in the winter (since heat rises), even if it got smelly at times. Built into the wall, the original stone feeding troughs can still be seen. The plan is to use this space as a museum of sorts where they will display lots of the original equipment from the long life of the place. One item is a 400 year old wine press, a massive oak barrel on a solid pedestal where people used to jump into to squash the grapes.
Outside, the round stone tower of a hundreds-year old well reaches up to the first floor, accessed from a small balcony where they set a small cafe table and two chairs. Views stretch east across the valley to the southern foothills of the eastern Pyrenees range. I really love these types of places that simply seep history out of every space you explore.
Our first night James cooked a wild boar that one of his hunter friends had killed in the mountains nearby. Delicious. During the week, the kids played with his 6 year old daughter, running around the farm animals and learning how to pick up the hens. Cody was quite excited to be on "egg duty" and carefully picked up the eggs from the chicken coop for the family every day. This activity made us think that we need to consider more "farm holidays" on our future travels.
We chatted with James about the risk of taking on such an investment and he admitted that it all seems fairly crazy. But then he said something his father told him: "When you are an old guy do you want to have nothing but stories of things you were not brave enough to do?" His father was at Pearl Harbor and later flew in the Pacific War against the Japanese and had seen a lot. James took his advice and rolled the dice on this.
Kedra was fully supportive of taking such risks: as a child growing up on a farm in Estonia during the communist years, her parents took advantage of the relatively cheap travel you could have within the various republics of the USSR. They criss-crossed the continent, digging up potatoes to eat when hungry and camping under the stars. In Turkmenistan they climbed desert peaks using homemade farm ropes. She made all her own clothes using table cloths and draperies from grandma's house and did not walk into a store to buy a dress until she was 14 years old.
I feel like sometimes we are also rolling the dice living as expats, but nothing like what these two have taken on. This is one of those intoxicating things about travel is that you meet such wonderful people.
Our time here passed quickly as expected, filled with bike rides, family hikes, town-exploring. When back at Mas Costa, the kids were busy chasing chickens in the yard while parents sat upstairs and drank wine.
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Wine and Queso on the back balcony.
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| The old town in Girona, a classic Catalan town. |
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| On a rise in Girona an old barracks complex has been turned into a park, affording many opportunities to explore and climb around. |
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| Nestled in the former assembly areas are small stages and benches where people retreat to during hot afternoon hours. |
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| Local artist built a series of structures in a small valley outside Besalu which also merited some exploration. |
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| Biking 37 km on an old railroad grade, starting from the town of Olot. Much of the trail ran between rock walls and under old bridges. |
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| Besalu's reconstructed Medieval Bridge: the original was blown up by retreating French troops after Napolean's invasion of Spain ran out of steam in 1813. You can still see parts of the old bridge lying in the riverbed. |
As we travelled around Catalonia, we saw abundant evidence of the recent Referendum on Catalan independence. It is painted on bridges, walls and trees everywhere. Banners hang in the village squares. They, like the Basques, have always resisted central authority from Madrid. This feeling intensified during the Fascist Franco years when Catalan was outlawed and the region was punished for its Communist/Republican sympathies during the 1936-39 Civil War.
The recent election was nullified by Madrid, who came after the Catalan government. Half of them ended up in Belgium and the others are now political prisoners. |
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| Warhol-like political artwork advocating a split from Spain. |
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| The flag of Catalunya. |
Zaragoza
We then drove down out of the foothills, electing to check out Zaragoza instead of Andorra, where Pam and Hank went. Dinner at a croqueta place near the old town, sitting on sidewalk stools across from a cathedral and watching the people. Someday it will be strange to not do this kind of thing on a regular basis, I get that now. Until then, we keep doing this crap because you know what? Life is short.
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| Zaragoza's painfully-beautiful cathedral and nearby reflecting pools. |
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| Equally beautiful in its own right: lamplit backstreets. I did a midnight walk around the old town. |
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| Croqueta! |
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| Basilica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, from Calle Alfonso. |
I wanted to have a look around the city since we'd only be here one night, so after we got the kids down I took off to get lost in the plazas and winding alleyways of nighttime Zaragoza. Certain streets were quite dead, then you turn a corner and the block is suddenly full of chattering people drinking, smoking, playing guitar, leaning non-chalantly against centuries-old stones under the amber glow of wrought-iron streetlamps...And then the next street has nothing.
Belchite
One of the reasons we went to Zaragoza was to take a 40 minute trip outside of town to the small pueblo of Belchite, site of a Spanish Civil War battle. We happened across it on the "Atlas Obscura" website and it sounded like a sufficiently bizarre place to see.
The drive down from Zaragoza was across an open flat plain that reminded me of eastern Utah: tons of sky and straight arrow roads to the horizon. How armies could have crossed all this and found each other in sufficient numbers to actually fight major battles was a mystery.
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| Main street of Belchite, left as is after the battle. |
History Background: Spanish Civil War.
A left-leaning Monarchy ruled Spain in the 1930's (the 2nd Spanish Republic). It suddenly found itself in the middle of a rebellion when a group of right-wing army officers attempted a coup. The country then slogged through three years of internecine combat that saw ridiculous atrocities on both sides and 100s of thousands of people killed. The right wing army officers (Nationalists) coalesced under Francisco Franco, while the Monarchy (Republican) was supported by a loose federation of Communists, Anarchists and volunteers from abroad who joined the International Brigades.
Franco and his Fascists were supported by Germany and Italy, while the Republicans were helped by Soviet Russia. Britain and the US had a non-intervention policy and stood by and watched.
Franco's forces gradually squeezed the country, first defeating the Basques in the north then seeking to cut the Republic cause in half by separating Madrid from Barcelona. This they were able to accomplish by 1939 with the military aid from Hitler and Mussolini. Also, serious infighting between the Communists and Anarchists hamstrung the Republican war effort. The Republicans surrendered in 1939 and Spain went under Franco's boot for the next 35 years.
The war was known as a "dry run" for what could happen if you let Fascism take over. It featured, infamously, the first instance of carpet bombing of civilian targets in an attempt to break a population's will to fight. This happened to the Basques in Durango and Gernika, where the German's Condor Legion air force obliterated a town without any military objectives. Spanish painter Picasso later created his sobering masterpiece "Guernica" to reconstruct the suffering of the town on that dark day. For an epic read about the bombing, Picasso's development of the painting, and the Basque people, check out Dave Boling's
Guernica.
Authors were also involved in the war: George Orwell fought in the International Brigades and later wrote his "Homage to Catalonia" based on his experiences there. Outside of Zaragoza there is an "Orwell Route" where his fans can follow in his footsteps and learn about the battles he was in. Hemingway covered the conflict as a journalist, and later on wrote two of his best novels as a result of his time in Spain: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Sun Also Rises."
Which brings us to Belchite. The story goes like this: In spring of 1937 the Republic needed a victory to stem the Nationalist progress in the north. They chose a 100km section of the front between the tiny town of Belchite in the south and Zuera in the north and planned to attack at seven different points. The idea was to break through, capture Zaragoza since it lay just behind that front, and force Franco to delay his attacks in the north of the country.
Belchite was the only place along that front that Republicans saw much progress, as they surrounded the town and wiped out many of the defenders. Many civilians were also killed in the battle since there was no warning and nowhere for them to go. Most of the town was destroyed in the ensuring artillery barrages and close-in fighting. Around 6000 lost their lives in the action.
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| Ruins with shelled church in background. |
None of the other six places they attacked resulted in much progress. They never took Zaragoza and the effort did not even delay Franco from continuing his roll across the north of Spain. After the triumph of his Fascists in 1939, Franco decreed that Belchite would remain a ruin and memorial to the Nationalist (and locals) who died in the action. Shortly after the war they used Republican POWs to rebuild Belchite, 2 km to the north of the original location. The ruins were left as is.
80 years later, you can go and have a cheerful woman walk you through the ruins and tell you stories, in high-speed Spanish. We went and wandered about the ruins, which still have twisted iron railings, bullet holes and roofless shells of houses, ochre against the cobalt blue of Aragon's sky. One of the cathedrals in town even has an unexploded artillery shell lodged in the tower, plainly visible from the ground.
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| What's left of the houses on the central street. |
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| A guy on the walk who was a kid during the battle. He hid in the church as the shells came in and blew big holes in the roof. |
The battle was a tactical victory for the Republicans, since they drove the Nationalists from the town. But half the civilian population was killed. The guide related stories about how afterwards they had to stack the dead bodies in the central square since there was no where to put them. The pile was nearly two stories high. In the August heat of Aragon, the smell was horrendous so they burned them all in a gigantic funeral pyre.
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| Move to Europe, take your kids to abandoned war sites...Ok we are weird parents. |
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| "Interior" of the cathedral. |
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| The Cathedral's shot-up cherubs and animals still stare down at visitors. |
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| Hole in the brick at upper right is the unexploded artillery shell, lodged in the roof of the Convent. |
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| Well, wasn't that all just so pleasant!! Onward! |
Aragon's Pyrenees.
From Belchite we drove north, passing by Huesca and Jaca on our way into the Pyrenees. We stopped at the end of the road hidden deep in the folds of the steepening-foothills at a place called Rifugio Lizara. A classic mountain hut, it had a kitchen, main room, bar and rack rooms for about 70 people. With the nasty weather reports no one had made the trek up the valley so we had the place to ourselves.
Spent the next two days getting our mountain on with some much-needed hiking up to some passes. The wind was bitter and the third day it snowed, but since we were leaving it did not hugely matter. In fact, it was pleasant to be back in a mountain snowstorm again. Clearly we are missing being around mountains if that sort of thing is noteworthy.
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| Ah yes, wind and spitting sleet. Fresh mountain air!! |
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| Cody hides from the wind in some bushes. |
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| The storms kept brewing to the north, just over the border. |
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| At the pass just west of Lizara. We left the kids with Nonna and continued on up ourselves. |
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| Wonderful trail markers in the Pyrenees. We'll come back here to do a hut-to-hut when the kids get a bit older. |
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| Leaving day snow-dusting. Refugio in background. |
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| On the drive back down we passed all manner of picturesque ex-farmhouses, barns, and rambling stone walls. |
Medieval Spain and Santiago de Compostela expert John Seasholtz (also a former co-worker in Seattle) recommended some things to do on the way between the mountains and our final destination of Bilbao. One of these was the Leyre Monastery, known for its services with Gregorian chants. We jumped off the highway and wound up a small hill to the Monastery where we found the next service would begin in just ten minutes! We found our seats and stared at the low-lit, hundreds-year old chapel architecture while the kids were looking around wondering what had just happened. They had to trade an iPad "Minions" movie for this?
We will force culture on them in whatever means we have at hand!
Presently, the service and the chants and singing started. The place is known for this and there were a lot of people there to experience it. The monastery also has a museum and a bar but we didn't have time for all of it. After about 20 minutes the kids became fidgety since they don't understand Spanish and wanted to go find sticks in order to beat each other with them, so we made our exit. The pew was quickly filled up by others who had been standing in the back of the church.
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| Cody, in the grips of spiritual rapture. |
I'm fascinated (bizarrely) by destroyed and abandoned things. Especially if they are large-scale projects because no one starts something big like that with the idea that it will ever go out of use. And then for various reasons (war, mother nature, Soviet-supplied concrete) certain things just get sidelined and the flood of life just continues bustling on past them.
At a bend in the road I caught sight of one such object - a bridge that failed during a flood in the 1970's. It used to carry all the traffic up the valley and the road was rerouted afterwards around the ruins. A nearby sign talked about the use of water in the valley (evidently there are dams) and probably predates the bridge. The interpretive sign made reference to the relationship of humans and water and described the infrastructure of the valley employing phrases such as "..our shared hydraulic patrimony.." which I found quite hilarious.
The main entrance to the bridge deck is now overgrown with trees and scrub. I would have explored further out to the stone ruin itself but Cass soon grew weary of reflecting upon shared hydraulic patrimonies and so we continued on our way.
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| An old bridge. |
Another tip from Seasholtz was the Church of Santa Maria in the little town of Sangüesa. Built in the 13th century it has a wonderful facade to compete with the best in Medieval Spain. And 13th century! How is it still standing? Unbelievable. We left the kids in the car as they did not want to get Shang-haied into another unexpected Spanish church service.
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| Church from the Pilgrim's Route. This modern bridge replaced the original one from the early days. When crossing you can look down into the water and still clearly see the bases of the stanchions from the original Medieval bridge. |
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| Imagine being a 14th century peasant whose life is mostly dealing with animals and living in unimproved structures, then you walk into a building like this. It must have blown your mind. |
Pamplona.
Initially we were looking for a place to spend a quick night before continuing onto to Bilbao and checking out the Basque country. Pamplona was ideally suited for that geographically. Then events unfolded that lead us to stay here a couple nights and, as will happen in Spain, we ended up taking off on another tangent. Pamplona is fascinating for all kinds of reasons.
This place is mostly famous for the Corrida del Toros, or Running of the Bulls. Every July they release a small herd of bulls from one end of the city and they race up a 1,5 km course to end up in the town bullring. The route itself goes directly through the town and in the week leading up to it they fix wooden barricades along the entire stretch. The rest of the week they do bullfights and events to celebrate. The practice started in the 1800s. Quite randomly, our AirBnB was on Calle de Estafeta, directly on the route.
In one such Corrida during the early 1920's an American author living in Paris showed up to watch. It was to launch a life-long fascination for the young Ernst Hemingway, and his experiences in Pamplona informed one of his best known books,
The Sun Also Rises. He returned often to Pamplona to watch the running, sometimes staying for months at a time. He wrote while sitting at tables at the Cafe Irúna, one of the old establishments that fronts the town square. It's still there and we had a visit to get a drink during our town explorations, which also included the Bull Ring, the Pilgrims Route (Santiago de Compostela) cathedral and requisite Tapas stops.
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| Papa watches from behind the barrier on Estafeta. |
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| A scultpure downtown features a bunch of dudes running from/getting trampled by bulls. The videos we watched of the Corrida make it clear that the whole affair is a big chaotic, drunken mess. But fun if you are watching the carnage from a roof or somewhere safe. |
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| Bulls: 5 US: 0. The rolled-up newspapers are carried by the runners to swat the bulls during the action. Why this is necessary was unclear. All of the bulls seen actually ran in the Corrida. One of them famously gored some guy, and on that Bull's horn you can still see dirty red discoloration. |
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| The town eagerly gloms onto the Hemingway connection. His books, and books about him, are everywhere. |
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| Nighttime cobbles in the rain. Enduring memory of Europe. |
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| There he is again, now outside the Bull Ring. |
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| Plaza de Toros. Tour takes you through the stables and animal quarters before letting you run around the ring itself. Jasper grabbed a handful of sand to save for later, the first time he's really exhibited a strong desire for memory keeping from our trips. |
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| Yep! |
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| Making the dream a reality. |
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| Proud Spanish woman faces down big Bull! |
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| Papa and his roll-neck sweater. Cody and the fur-fringed parka. |
Gernika.
Driving up from Pamplona to Bilbao we opted to swing by Gernika. It just seemed to be one of those places that you should go check out if in the area.
Unlike many other places we explore, this one has no well-known urban landmarks, geographic features or famous residents. It's only claim to history is its existence as the historic center of Basque culture, which made it a target for 20th century Facism when civil war came to Spain.
In 1937 German pilots flying with the "Condor Legion" markings on their Luftwaffe bombers carpet bombed the city in an effort to break the Basque resistance in the north of Spain. The town was swollen with refugees fleeing Nationalist victories just to the south and the raid came on a market day, inadvertantly upping the death toll. It was the first usage of aerial bombardment on a strictly civilian population for the objective of terrorism and will-breaking.
A few weeks later the Basque's capitulated in Bilbao to Franco's Fascists. The town was rebuilt by Republican POWs later on. Miraculously, the Gernika Oak escaped damage during the raid. This oak is a storied tree under which Basque civic business and state meetings would occur, leading back several hundred years. The tree succumbed in the 1980's and a new one has been annointed to take on this symbolic role, but they put up a stone gazebo about the trunk of the original one.
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| Gernikako Arbole |
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| Picasso's painting continues to see new life around the town. |
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| Basque soldier memorial on the main square for the Gernika Battalion. Exiled Basques in southern France helped Allied efforts to fight the Germans in 1944. |
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| One of the few obvious signs of damage downtown, this pillar is marked with bomb fragments. Town is completely rebuilt and surprisingly vibrant, not what we were expecting. |
Bilbao.
Last stop on the journey was the Basque capital, about an hour west of Gernika. One of the big reasons to visit Bilbao is the Guggenheim Art Museum, centerpiece of a 1990's downtown redevelopment initiative. So far it seems to be working and the city has returned from the brink of being a polluted, industrial mess to offer riverside walkways and interesting neighborhoods.
The old town "Casco Viejo" dates from the 1800's, so not as ancient as some in the region, but still makes for a great ramble about. Which we overdosed on of course. But first, we hit the Guggenheim:
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| Fog pumps out of an outdoor art exhibit once an hour. |
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| Highly-disorienting steel structures. |
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| Cass brings some color to the steel. |
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| Jasper and Warhol's Marilyn Monroe. Someone yelled at me as soon as I took this. |
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| Guggenheim lobby. |
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| We'd missed Halloween in Berlin, so we found a mall on the outskirts of Bilbao and trekked out there on a rainy night. Apparently there was a halloween party, but it was a dud. So we went into the games arcade and gave the kids a bunch of Euros to spend on Skee-Ball and other things. |
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| Exploring the Basque coast: here is a medieval causeway that leads out to a church on the cliffs that is sacred to sailors. Before the fleets go out, they come to this bay and pay homage. |
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| View from the top back at the mainland. |
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| Bilbao's Casco Viejo street artwork. |
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| The hilly and dramatic Casco Viejo. |
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| You're never far from Basque Nationalism up here. |
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| Jay's favorite street sign. |
We flew back to Berlin from Bilbao, heads filled with jockeying images of the crazy and amazing tidbits of Spain that we were lucky enough to see.
When I get some time I will go re-read The Sun Also Rises.
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| Looking into the Bay of Biscay from the top of the climb to the church. |
