Eusebio Sempere

Christmas boxed

Oh dear, this is not right. I go out for breakfast in torrential rain. El Sabio street is flooding and palms are reflected in the puddles that pigeons have been drinking from with gusto. I’m boxed in. What to do?

Well there are lots of people to WhatsApp and email with greetings, I have the most brilliant Ian McEwan book to read and I need to book somewhere close for dinner as I’d been warned that lots of places are fully booked on Christmas Day. I pop out again briefly for lunch and later catch the film Hedda being streamed. Having seen the version at the Orange Tree recently, this film was interesting in its Downton Abbey silliness but I was glad I’d seen a more faithful version as well. Then it was back to McEwan’s What we can know while listening to Radio Classica. The book is a masterly conflation of literary detective work, post-apocalyptic vision, love, infidelity, sex and academia – so far. It was still raining, and apparently from El Tiempo on TV next morning there was snow in the Pyrenees. Fortunately the Lobo Blanco was only three minutes away and well worth the visit. Friendly staff who didn’t speak to me in English – result! – an open kitchen where I could see my fabulous duck breast being prepared – I asked for it rosa and indeed it was beautifully pink and tasty with excellent skin-on fries. And as it was Christmas Day when they said would I like a brandy to finish off the meal, it was hard to resist. Santa came late to Alicante but he came!

Normal service was resumed on Boxing Day with sun slanting on the buildings opposite when I woke up. I’m spoiled for breakfast choices and chose a new one for Boxing Day which was well up to scratch. I strolled then through the Barri Vell again with its fine buildings like the Basilica de Santa Maria in the sun.

I soon found the Museo de Belenes open today. It’s a large collection of finished tableaux as well as vitrines of characters that may be used to form them. They can be in wood, plaster, clay and papier maché. There was one enormous one prepared specially for the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Association in 1959. Also there were examples from Argentina and Venezuela and the text suggests that Francis of Assisi started the trend back in 1223.

I then move a little further towards the sea to MACA the Museum Of Contemporary Art which enchanted me for several hours.

My friend Maria’s friend Eusebio Sempere had been instrumental in setting up the several foundations that were eventually incorporated into this fine institution.

Elegant display rooms featured a local painter Juana Frances who I’d never heard of but enjoyed her work especially some charcoal drawings that were mystical. Her land and seascapes were interesting too. She did a lot to ensure women were properly recognised in the arts as well so I’m glad to have met her.

There was floor devoted to Sempere which had both his excellent sculptures but also an array of silk screen prints including a sequence of 12 that showed the process of building a screen printed image. One of the things I always enjoy is when an artist who has decided to go abstract shows that they had the technique to be conventional too. Sempere did with his portrait of his partner.

There were several other rooms with works that varied in their appeal but a few really caught my eye. There were pieces by Miro, Tapies, Calder, Chillida, Giacometti and many Spanish artists I was pleased to be introduced to. There were interactive areas too where you could contribute to art in progress – altogether an impressive gallery. These are a few of my favourites – sorry I didn’t always get the artist.

After a cultured morning it was time to go for a beer and wander back through a different area of the city. Some elegant facades presented themselves and I couldn’t help noticing how many buildings were in the hands of MyFlats – clearly AirBnB equivalents are moving in here big time. There were a few ‘Tourist Go Home‘ graffiti that I’d noticed and hoped that being in a purpose-built hotel I wasn’t preventing locals from getting a home. Big dilemma – they want my money but not my presence.

I had a lovely lunch in Plaza Luceros with scallops and then cheese with anchovies and a good Rueda Verdejo wine, white for a change, and then back to the hotel to watch my next Christmas present – Watford winning 2-1 away at Leicester. Then I wrote some of this and thought about the evening ahead.

Quite close by is a music bar Entre Bambalinas which had a group of singer, piano and percussion called the Palosanto Trio. They played salsa, bossa nova and Spanish standards that lots of the audience knew. The bar had beer, food and wine and while the music was not my core taste, live music is always a good thing. They were lively, committed and gave me a couple of sets of enjoyment.

On my way back lots of people were filming themselves in front of the e-tree in Avenida de la Constitucion but I waited for a clear shot to wish everyone a Happy Boxing Day – Leicester 1-2 Watford! Yay!

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Footloose and fably frazzled

I don’t have a Fitbit or other step counter but I think I would have broken it today. I set off at 9.30 in quest of breakfast which I found quite close to the hotel and the central market which I’d shot last evening. As many will recall, I love a market and while the building couldn’t compete architecturally with many I’ve visited, the contents were well up to scratch. Fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, all local produce, were brilliantly displayed. Some counters were obviously more popular than others with lengthy queues waiting patiently after taking a ticket from the ‘Su Torno’ machine.

I then decided to walk to the Auditorio where I’m going to a concert this evening just to gauge what time to leave – 20 minutes is the answer. It also involved passing the Alicante bullring which has gigs now not fights which will be a relief to the bulls being driven towards it in the sculpture in the square outside.

One of the major attractions of Alicante is the medieval Castillo de Santa Barbara and as cloud is threatened for Christmas Eve I thought I’d better do it today. On my way back down through the town I passed the Ayuntiamento which has a special Belen – the astonishing displays of the Christmas scene that are prevalent all over Spain. Outside was a giant version with a very strange looking newborn.

The castle sits quite a long way above the beach but fortunately there’s a lift, which by flashing my old farts’ pass I was able to use for free.

There’s still quite a long way to go when you alight from the elevator after a lengthy wait – be warned if you attempt it in high season; I had to wait about twenty minutes each way. There are lots of warnings about uneven surfaces and danger of falling so I mounted the steep slopes with great caution and frequent pauses. There’s not much left of the castle itself but the ultimate chamber has a great display of finds from the site over its history as a castle since the ninth century and from settlements on the site back to the Bronze Age. One of the main reasons for making the trek is for the views and they are spectacular.

I made my way very slowly back down rewarding myself with a beer at one of the several bars the castle provides.

After a further wait for the lift – I’d done enough slithery downward slopes for my age – I went to the city’s central beach, El Postiguet, and wandered along the northern promenade in search of lunch. There were lots of beachfront places that looked both full and expensive. In the streets just behind I found a super little bar that had and excellent aubergine with mince and melted cheese – perfect. As further proof of Christmas madness my cutlery came in a snowman!

Right along the street was MUBAG the Museo de Belles Artes Gravina which had been on my list of places to visit. It had an exhibition of Spanish Romantic art and at my first entrance with a red corridor made me think I was in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It had some interesting portraits and some more modern pieces, among them a couple by Eusebio Sempere of whom my neighbour Maria owns some originals. I like his abstracts with emotion.

I decided to smarten up for the concert – trousers not jeans, a shirt not T and a jacket – so I called back at the hotel to change. Then more steps up to the Auditorio a rather splendid 2011 addition to Alicante’s cultural spaces. It’s a pleasant hall with a cedar wood ceiling that spoke triangles and coffins to me.

Then the concert began with Haydn’s Berenice cantata which featured the main reason I’d booked for this; Roberta Mameli an Italian soprano who I first came to love through a fusion album Round M – Monteverdi meets jazz which I heartily recommend. Claudio’s notes sung as written with a jazz accompaniment – brilliant! But she also has a superb voice with range and power which were further displayed in Mozart’s Exultate, Jubilate, the seventeen year old prodigy’s challenge to his favourite castrato. Roberta managed it with flourish and style and the orchestra under the baton of Ruben Jais supported her well and also did a symphony each from Haydn (49) and Mozart (25) with some panache.

I left the concert very happy but concerned about finding somewhere to eat – we’re not in Madrid after all. The illuminated castle through the pines reminded me of a rather wild day. I needn’t have worried as the restaurant De Oliver about three doors from my hotel provided a rare and tasty steak, a good Rioja and a farewell whisky on the house. I may well be back!

Spain September 2018

A day of high culture – and Gatwick

It’s funny how random acts of kindness often beget others. I took in a package for Maria our neighbour opposite. It was quite heavy so I carried it over the road into her hall. As we were talking I mentioned I was going to Spain and ending up in Madrid and she said she would contact her friend Jose who worked at the Reina Sofia certainly on my visit list. So this morning I walked through the El Retiro Gardens and eventually made it – sorry Jose a few minutes late – to the fabulous Nouvel Building which didn’t exist when we last visited, I think there was scaffolding and cranes.

We chat over a coffee – Jose doing that thing I’ve seen lots of Spanish people do – get a regular coffee and a glass with some ice cubes and then pour the coffee into the glass of ice – cafe con hielo. I guess it’s a DIY iced coffee. We got on very well – he works in the exhibitions department arranging the changing calendar of temporary exhibitions. I think I’d quite enjoy the challenge of deciding who to feature and then finding willing sources to lend works for the exhibition – forensics and persuasion in equal measure. Jose has kindly arranged a free ticket for me and provided me with a guide to one of the two exhibitions in the building Eusebio Sempere where we went first and then Jose went off to do his day’s work. He was most generous with his time and I hope to repay it in London on his next visit. On our way I couldn’t help but admire the magnificent library created as part of the extension.

I had noted in Cuenca on Sunday that one of Sempere’s works was missing from the museum on loan to the Reina Sofia so I did get to see it after all. Sempere is an interesting artist with a love of precise lines, geometrical forms but also innovated with illuminated cutouts and computer generated images. Then he made massive mobiles in chromed steel where the juxtaposition of two or three planes mean that the image ‘moves’ as the viewer walks past the object. Happy bunny – small scale intricate drawing, experimentation and massive sculptures with powerful effects. Equally happy bunny downstairs at the Russian Dada exhibition – who knew? I’ve just read A Gentleman in Moscow on this trip so there were lots of resonances in the works of anti-art produced by the Dadaists of Moscow and St Petersburg. There was a hilarious first film from Eisenstein and lots of other highly graphical works attempting to change the nature of art at the same time that Russia tried to change the nature of government. Eye-opening stuff that exposed another huge level of my ignorance.

While in the Reina Sofia I couldn’t not go to see Picasso’s Guernica again and I also enjoyed a lot of other works from the time of the Spanish Civil War. In another room was a Richard Serra installation called Equal Parallel – Guernica Bengazi inspired by the US bombing of Libya. It’s a room filled with cleverly spaced blocks of rust coloured Corten steel and as you weave your way between them you have time to think above motive, action and consequences – poignant after visiting Hiroshima earlier this year. Art and politics are hard to separate aren’t they?

With imminent eye glaze it was time for a museum break and a trip to the Atocha station which when Dee and I were last in Madrid together had just had its equivalent of the Kew Gardens temperate house installed and I was interested to see how it had gone. This is a sub-tropical forest inside a railway station approach. Some of the trees we saw just planted – already quite sizeable – are now trying to escape through the roof. It’s a green oasis to walk through on your commute into the city but inevitably time, millions of passengers, fag ends and gum have taken their toll. Can we ban chewing in public as well as smoking? Or at least better disposal?

I fancied a quick beer but there was a football team occupying most of the nearby traditional café and I’m afraid I don’t do Burger King or Macdonald’s, I did find a suitable bar a short distance away and sat and looked at a booklet about Open Madrid I’d been handed by a tourist office lady. This is about places not normally visitable like the Open Gardens and Open Offices in London and I now presume other cities. Might have to come back – it sounds fun. However the booklet also informed me that at the Teatro Pavan this evening was a performance of Yerma to mark 80 years since Lorca’s death. I know the play from reading it, the Juliet Stevenson performance in the Cottesloe in the 1980s and of course the recent Billie Piper vehicle although I’m not sure many of Lorca’s actual words were in that version exciting though it was. So I got the phone out, booked one of the last four tickets – is there a bot that tells you that whatever you’re after there’s only so much or so many left? I find it annoying on hotel sites, slightly less so here – it might even be true.

My trusty sandals have become a bit squelchy and are emitting rude sounds as I walk so I take a cab back to the hotel for a change of feet – I wish! Birkenstocks applied, I pop round to a local bar for a bite, They have, they tell me, an excellent ceviche with cod, sea bass and prawns so I am persuaded and have a beer and then a crisp young Rueda when the food arrives. Then it’s back through the Retiro Gardens to the Prado which is such a fabulous museum that I can’t be here and not enter. I decide against the special exhibition of Lorenzo Lotto and head for the main galleries.

There are brilliant Bosch and Bruegel rooms but I decide to restrict myself to El Greco – they have lots more here than in Toledo and some of even better quality, Velazquez and Goya. What I like about El Greco’s big set pieces is that each portrait in the crowd is of someone you’ve just seen or might meet in a bar. Christ carrying the cross with tears welling up is amazing. Moving on seeing Las Meninas again made me think of Laura Cumming’s excellent book The Vanishing Man which features a whodunnit art world adventure tracing a missing Velazquez – must read it again. He again pushed painting forward in many ways with some of the brushwork almost akin to Van Gogh. The Prado has lots of Velazquez but I recall being told on an Art Fund visit to Apsley House that they have even more as they were given as tribute to Wellington for ridding Spain of the French. I save Goya till last and end up with the two majas and then the awful, awesome 3rd of May which does actually make me cry.

Time now to leave and get those feet moving across the city to the theatre which is not marked on my map but is in Calle Embajadores which leads off from the Plaza Mayor. Appropriately I pass a statue of Lorca on the way – a good omen?

It’s quite a schlepp and my dreams of a pre-performance drink have to be passed up. They scan my ticket on my phone and send me past a main auditorium to a tiny space that was exactly like the old Bush theatre in the early 70s. Four rows of folding chairs in rows of 20 and mind the props as you cross the stage to your seat. No numbered seating meant I should have got there earlier but with a bit of craning and sliding I managed to see most of it. Oh and there was only one empty seat. It was a mixed version with modern dress, a refusing-to-turn-blue pregnancy test taken on the centre stage WC to emphasise Yerma’s longing for a child and some updating of the language. It was well acted with a good ensemble cast and a brilliant Yerma who is of course virtually on stage throughout. This actress is Alba José who looked vaguely familiar and when I got home I realised that she had been in the excellent Spanish TV series shown on BBC 4 last year I know who you are. A very happy couple of hours to round off a day of culture. So I take a post-performance glass of wine and haltingly discuss my impressions with a couple whose English is on a par with my Spanish but we have another round and all enjoyed the play and a chance to chat about it.

On my way back through Sol, there was a demonstration – well it’s Madrid, there will be won’t there? This one was calling for no indemnity for the perpetrators of Franco’s crimes and compensation for the victims. The dictator may have been gone for 40 years but what with plans to move his remains from his dreadful mausoleum and retribution for those who suffered he’s certainly not forgotten. Art and politics, people and politics and still several people I spoke to don’t (or can’t) believe Brexit will happen. I stop for some tapas – prawns in garlic and albondigas meatballs in a tomato sauce on this occasion in a great bar-restaurant called the Cathedral.

Another pit stop for a café y copa well it is my last night in Spain and back to the hotel – so different from my others but fun with its black and white décor and strange wood grain woven carpet in the corridors, Why? Actual wood strips in the rooms.

I spend Friday morning getting a few last minute items around the Salamanca area which was as I said in an earlier piece was new to me and very impressive. Plenty of places to eat and drink well but also little food shops, fruit and veg stalls and lots of antique shops – if I was driving home I might be in trouble. Check out is at noon and flight check in at four so I decide to drive straight on down Calle Alcala in the car. It goes on for ever and ends up in the town of Alcala de Henares of which I made a circuit but failed to find a parking spot. It’s an important musical and university town and has some impressive buildings housing those pursuits. Looked definitely worthy of another visit – maybe by train next time I’m in Madrid (if).

I took a circuitous country route back and found myself in Paracuellos de Jarama I’d read about this place in books on the Spanish Civil War as it was the location for many of the early mass shootings of the war with estimates of between 2000 and 10,000 massacred by Fascist forces. It does have a staggering view across the airport and away to the city of Madrid. Like so many of the places I passed through there are huge swathes of new build dormitory towns to serve the capital. But it still had a pleasant little square with a tall tower and a few bars. Down a zigzag route and into Barajas town where I had a couple of false starts including going into the taxis’ stacking compound before finding the tiny entrance to the rental car return zone. All sorted in good time, checked in by machine again – although a person did print the baggage tag – and then to the lounge to enjoy light refreshments and watch the aircraft manoeuvre. I stayed in the comfort of the lounge too long and had my hand luggage removed at the aircraft steps. Had put iPad in camera bag so able to blog during the flight. As we went for take off I snapped the village where I’d been two hours earlier – you can just make out the tower I think – the brick one not the airport Control Tower. Machines away now as on descent.

Swift flight, straight to an empty passport reader and only ten minutes to wait for my two bags followed by a struggle to meet with my Data Cars driver but eventually home after a very fine two weeks in the sun and it’s shining here although less warmly as I set off for the West Herts Sports Club for a beer with friends before Watford v Manchester United at 17:30.