Sunday 23 November 2014

Madrid and (Holy!) Toledo in perspective

Madrid:

I've been home for two weeks now, and I keep thinking that just that short time ago I was half-way around the world and exploring Madrid and Toledo - the last two stops on my travels. Madrid is the centre of Spain, not only in terms of government and commerce, but also geographically and especially for those who drive in Spain, kilometre zero. All roads are measured from Madrid.

Above: the plaque in the sidewalk in Peurto del Sol indicating kilometre 0 in Spain. 

Some folks may say that Madrid doesn't have the same kind of energy and soul as Sevilla and Barçelona, and while I tend to agree, I recognize not everyone feels this way. Madrid was my last stop as decreed by my return plane ticket, and many travellers to Spain either start or end in the Capitol city. I will admit that by the time I got to Madrid, I was pretty darn tired from all the moving about. I had just three and a half days to cover the city and do a day trip to Toledo.

I took the AVE (high speed train) to Madrid from Valencia. Taking the fast train meant that I arrived just before 4pm, and thus, still had time to explore the city. I navigated the metro system (smaller than Barçelona's) and had some help lugging my wheely suitcase up the steps to street level. My hostel (The Way) was just a couple of streets away and easy to find. I got installed and went off walking towards the Prado museum.

For those of you who don't know about the Prado Museum, it's the third largest art museum in Europe, and contains a large number of works from El Greco, Goya, Velasquez, and Titian, as well as the Flemish masters. The museum is free every day from 6-8pm, and it's worth going during free hours as the entry fee was just raised to €14 (from €10) this year. It's impossible to see all that you would want to see in those two hours, so it's best to grab the floor plan and be strategic about your visit, and to consider returning on other days to see the rest. It was my original plan to do just that, but I ended up only going the one night as I ran out of time.

Above: a statue depicting the Spanish painter Velasquez outside the Prado museum in Madrid.

It is forbidden to take photos inside the Prado, and so I had to do a google image search of Fra Angelico's Annunciation (see above picture) as I wanted to share my experience of looking at this masterpiece. It is the first time I have seen a Fra Angelico work in person, and I was really in awe of this painting. Having been to many museums on this trip (and others), I was oversaturated with all the Medaeval religious iconography present in western art. All renditions of the annunciation kind of look and feel the same. Except this one. There was something magical about looking at this alterpiece. The gold rays coming down from heaven were perfectly straight and very fine. The light from the museum highlighted it well - something that's lacking in this image from the internet. This painting was definitely worth seeing. As was Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights - which is huge and takes some time to look at to get the full effect as there is so much going on in the work.

After a few hours in the Prado, I took a stroll down Passeo del Prado to have a look at Madrid at nighttime. I was not disappointed. The moon was full, and the city was lit up beautifully. 
Above: the Palácio de Cibeles (city hall) is a mighty structure with its famous fountain in front. You can see the full moon high in the sky in the top-left of the frame.

I walked down Gran Via towards Centro, and stopped in at a tapas place that my hostel recommended to me. The food was decent and the tapas came with my drink (something that I thought only happened in Granada). I took the metro home as it was rather cold - only about 9 degrees overnight. What a difference in climate from Valencia. 

The next day I took part in my now familiar routine of a free walking tour. The guide was originally from Argentina, but had been living in Madrid for about ten years. His name was Pablo, and he was passionate about sharing tidbits of history and anecdotes from local lore. He had a rather interesting (read: strange) interpretation on the city's symbol of the bear and the madroño tree. The fruit from this tree ferments while still attached to the tree, and so it's possible to get drunk off the fruit. The bear keeps eating the fruit, and keeps getting drunk - rinse and repeat as it were. Pablo thought it symbolized Madrid in terms of its nightlife as having one of Europe's most prolific bar scenes - that the people kept coming back for more night after night. I'm not too sure about his interpretation but I like the statue nonetheless.

Below: the statue symbolizing Madrid in Peurto del Sol. Om nom nom!

Our walking tour went west until we came to the Teatro Real, which was commissioned by Isabel II when she asked the city's architects why all the other European capitals had royal theatres but not Spain. Isabel II was an interesting character - she was counciled to make a politically strategic marriage to a foreign dignitary but refused and said she would only marry for love. She did, and married her cousin Francisco. Unfortunately, the cousin turned out to be not interested in her (as he was gay) and was hoping that through their union, he could have power behind the throne. Isabel threw him out, forbade him to enter Madrid, and put him on a strict allowance whereby any time he needed something, he had to request money in writing. There are a whole pile of these letters requesting funds on display in a local museum (I can't recall which). Isabel had 12 children (of which only 5 survived) by her various lovers, probably including the lover who sculpted this statue of her outside the theatre.

We walked to the Palácio Real and had a fast-forward lesson of 15 centuries of Spanish history. Most I was already familiar with - the Moors invading, the reconquest, inquisition, etc. What is interesting about the Palácio Real is that it is a fairly "new" palace compared to other palaces elsewhere in Spain. This royal residence was built in 1734 on the ruins of the old Moorish fortress that had been a landmark in the city. The King at the time was Felipe V and he had only been in power a short time when he decided to build a new palace. But the people of Madrid were dead set against it and began to grow annoyed with their new sovereign. Felipe V was desperate for public approval, and asked his advisors what he should do. They suggested that he throw a party and invite all the inhabitants to come for free and drink their fill. The party was apparently still the best one Madrid has ever seen (according to the Pablo). While the party was happening, the fortress was set ablaze. Felipe said it was an accident, but somehow all the treasures had survived, as they had been removed earlier that day (what a coincidence). The people in their hungover state didn't know what to make of the wreckage, and so the palace was built in its place. It is one of the largest palaces that you can visit in Europe. Given my limited time schedule, I'll have to come back at some future date to take it in.

No visit to Madrid would be complete without going to Plaza Mayor, or the main square in the city. All plaza mayor's in Spain are modelled on the one in Salamanca. These main squares are where food markets, fairs, and yes inquisition trials and executions where held. Given that there was no mass form of entertainment before the invention of television, people would come to these main squares in the evenings after work with their families to watch (often gruesome) public executions. I'm sure it also acted as a deterrent against crime. Something kind of funny about the Plaza Mayor in Madrid is that it had been rebuilt theee times because the builders kept building the seven stories of the buildings out of wood which kept getting burnt down (there is a bakery in the square). Fed up with having to keep paying money for this project, King Phillip III of Spain decided that the fourth (and last) incarnation of the square would be only three stories high and made of stone. This is what we see today.

My last day in Madrid, I spent three full hours in one of the other famous museums in the city - the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. This museum is devoted solely to modern art, and it's major attraction is Picasso's Guernica which I learned about in my history class in high school when my class learned about the prelude to WWII. The painting depicts the devastation of the 1937 air strikes on the civilian population in the Basque town of Geurnica. It was the first time an air strike was launched against people rather than military targets. It was a way for Hitler to test out his Luftewaffe while at the same time transporting Franco's loyal troops from North Africa back to Spain. That it happened at all suggests the sociopathic nature of both dictators. It was a thrill to see this painting in real life, and while it's impossible to find a contextual picture on google image search, this painting is huge! I looked at it for more than 10 minutes from different angles. Guernica was housed in the Met in New York for more than 40 years, and only moved to the Prado in 1992 as Picasso himself stipulated that the painting could only be returned to his native country upon the restoration of democracy.

Holy Toledo!

70 kilometres away from Madrid lies Toledo, the former capital of Spain for almost 500 years. An interesting fact to note is that Madrid was originally just a Moorish military outpost to protect the capital from the Visigoths in the north. Toledo is a pretty municipality with lots of history and charm. It rises up from the banks of the Rio Tagus. As with other municipal centres on the Iberian peninsula, it was originally founded by the Romans (around 192 BCE), and ruins can be seen nearby. 

Toledo is well known for its "holiness" and all three monotheistic religions have buildings here: Christian churches, Islamic mosques, and Jewish synagogues. While the Moors were in power, all three religious peoples worked in harmony and with tolerance for each other. They shared important scientific and medical information amongst each other, it was one of the greatest exchanges of knowledge in Europe. This was known as Spain's Golden Age. It all came to an end once the Christian Kings Isabel and Ferdinand reconquered Spain from the Moors and made their religious decree of 1492 to try and create religious homogeneity in Spain by converting or expelling all non-Chrisitians. Cue the Spanish Inquisition.

Toledo is also known for its ceramics, steel forging for the creation of swords, and gold filigree work on vulcanized surfaces called damascene (a craft brought over by the Moors from Morocco) which looks like this:

The AVE train from Madrid's Atocha station takes only 33 minutes, and cost me about €6.85 for my return reservations with my Eurail Pass. Once you get off the train, all sorts of businesses are waiting to take your money as Toledo is primarily a tourist town now. You can buy visitor's bracelets which cost varying amounts to see various sites. I chose not to buy a bracelet as I was tired and wanted to just wander around. I took the city bus #5 into town, which cost €1.40 one-way and got off in the main square called Plaza de Zocodover. I was starving when I arrived, so I asked a local where was a good place to eat, and was directed to a tapas place called El Trébol, where I had a delicious "El Greco" tapa which was comprised of marinated quails' legs with red peppers and egg. With a glass of rosé wine, it was one of the culinary highlights of my trip. Simple but very tasty!

After lunch I headed down Calle Comercío towards the numerous churches and the Jewish Quarter. I was "cathedralled-out" from my journey to various cities around Spain/Portugal, so I decided to focus on seeing El Greco's art and the synagogues. I only had about five hours to wander around until my train was due back to Madrid. I stopped in first to the Church of Santo Tomé (Saint Thomas) where one can take in the richly saturated painting by El Greco of El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz. This painting takes up almost an entire wall inside the church's vestibule. Entry is €2.50 for anyone who wants to go inside, and audioguides were an added €1. It is forbidden to take photos of the painting, so I bought a postcard instead. The effect of the piece is minimized by seeing it squished down onto a card, but it gives you an idea of El Greco's style:

After taking in the church, I wandered around the Jewish Quarter. There are two synagogues in Toledo (there used to be more), and both had been converted into churches once the Jews had been expelled from Spain (1492). Synangogue of Santa Maria la Blanca was originally built in the 12th century CE but was converted into a small church. The white horseshoe arches are modelled after the Arabic style, and my first though upon entering the synagogue was that it looked more like a mosque than what I thought a synagogue should look like. But a Jewish friend of mine recently told me that the two can be very similar, and that the cultures borrowed styles freely between each other. This synagogue isn't necessarily worth the €2.50 to see the space, as it's really just one room with the arches and prayer aisles, and that's it.

Given that I was tired from the previous night's activities, I went to a small park overlooking the Rio Tagus to relax on a bench. I was also waiting for the hour to strike 2pm as both the Sephardic Museum/Synagogue of El Tránsito and the El Greco Museum are both free on Saturdays from 2pm and all day on Sundays. The Sephardic Museum holds a collection of artifacts from the Sephardic peoples (Spanish Jews) that includes prayer/religious items, clothing, and homewares. The museum tries to paint a picture of the life of the Jews in Spain during the Moorish period. Unfortunately, the placards describing the objects are not in English, but English summary sheets are available in each salon. The main room inside the synagogue was really dark, so it was hard to get a decent picture as flash was not permitted. There is a small garden of remembrance outside the museum that is a good place to take a break from the crowds.

Below: a prayer scroll written in Hebrew, housed in the Sephardic Museum.

The El Greco Museum is housed in a 16th century house with a courtyard and garden. The original curator, the Marquis of Vega Inclán, wanted to recreate what El Greco's home might have been like and to house his works (mostly from his later years) here. There is one complete set of Apostles by El Greco, his Plan of Toledo and also portraits of local wealthy noblemen. It's the only museum in Spain dedicated solely to this artist and it's worth the visit.

Feeling rather "full" from my day's activity, I went to one of the numerous cafés to relax and had some chocolate and churros and read my book. I walked back to the main square and took the bus back to the train station where I snapped this photo of one of the station's many stained glass windows. The style is definitely Arabic looking and gave of a sense of the majesty that this town must have had when it was the capital of Spain about 500 years ago. 


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