SPAIN 2026 (2)

 

At the end of our European trip, we returned to Madrid for two days.

On the first we took a train due south to visit Aranjuez with its famous royal palace. This was started in the 16^th century by Philip II, when less than half the proposed building was completed. 

 His study, with its fine painted ceiling, has been restored. Work started again in the 18^th century under Philip V (ruled 1700-1746), the first Bourbon king of Spain, and continued under his son Fernando VI and grandson Charles III, more or less completing the original plan but with serious revisions after a devastating fire in 1648. Charles III brought in the brilliant Italian architect Francesco Sabatini from Naples.

 A highlight of this period is the beautiful porcelain cabinet finished in 1765. 

The existing dining room was created for Charles IV, who lost his throne in Napoleon’s invasion. In the 19^th century, the ill-starred Queen Isabel II added some new structures and massively reassigned and redecorated the interior spaces, leaving basically what can be seen today. The highlights include her ballroom (relatively small and homely), throne room, bedroom, and study, and the stunning Arab cabinet inspired by El Alhambra. 

Gardens had already been laid out in the C18th gardens or even earlier,

 but Isabel embarked on their extensive development, making a large private park alongside the palace, garnished with  statues

 and box hedges

 and filled – now – with a mass of mature trees.

 A lovely shady place to walk on a hot afternoon after our lunch in a homely local taverna…

We also peeped into the Aranjuez campus of the King Juan Carlos University, once the barracks of the royal Guard.

 

The next day we visited Alcalá de Henares, northeast of Madrid. Here the university is the most imposing and historically important structure. It was founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499 and is the world’s oldest purpose-built university.

To the general public, however, Alcalá is best known as the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes in 1547. In fact, he only lived there for four years and the original house no longer exists! But the municipality has garnered maximum tourist value from these scanty resources. A house has been built on the site to a design more or less typical of the epoch, which now houses a museum of Spanish fashion in the C16-17^th. Most of the clothes on display have been obtained from television, stage and film productions (well-researched it must be said). There is also a mock-up of a contemporary cobbler’s shop with tools and furniture as a reminder of the poet’s fairly humble origins – although a master-craftsman in any trade at that time could be an important figure. Outside in the street is a stone bench with brass figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, where enthusiasts can have their photographs taken.

 A brand-new statue of Cervantes has been put up in the main square, recently re-opened after major refurbishment.

The church where baby Miguel was baptised was blown up by a bomb in the Spanish Civil War, but the remains are open to the public. Some of the stones were used to construct an air-raid shelter in the main square after the bombing; this was discovered during the refurbishment works and is now being excavated. There is also a magnificent cathedral where Cardinal Cisneros is buried, and which also suffered severe damage.

Apologies for the lack of photos in these two entries, but research in the internet will produce masses!!

SPAIN 2026 (1)

 

Our first night in Madrid we walked up Calle Hortaleza and found a church of St Anthony, patron saint of animals. The church frontis has a statue of Anthony with his trademark pig. 

The next day we arrived in Manresa to stay with our friend Gabriela.

 Manresa has a long history as a mediaeval town and boasts one of the three great 14th century gothic cathedrals of Catalonia, the others being in Barcelona and La Palma, Majorca.

Manresa’s greatest claim to fame is as the city where a Basque ex-soldier named Iñigo spent 11 months in 1522, several of them living in a limestone cave with a view of Monserrat.

 He had set off from his home on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and got as far as Monserrat, where he spent some time at the monastery. He then diverted to Manresa to be treated in a private hospital for a leg wound suffered at the battle of Pamplona in 1521.

 Now known as St Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), he experienced several religious trances in Manresa and was inspired to found the Jesuit order (some years later in Paris). The cave is now incorporated into a huge baroque building. Several other sites are associated with him, including a Roman (?) bridge.

 In the mediaeval centre is a well which was the site of his first miracle: in the early 1600s, an unfortunate girl allowed her step-mother’s chicken to fall into the well. She prayed to Ignatius and the chook was restored to life! 

Manresa is on the Cardener river, which in the 19^th and 20^th centuries powered a large number of cotton mills, now abandoned. As early as the 14^th century, however, it was found during a severe drought that it was inadequate as the water supply for a city of 2,000 “hearths”, not least because the water had to be pumped (or carried) uphill. The town councillors therefore devised a project to build a canal 26 km long from the Llobregat river to the north. They obtained royal permission from Pedro III and started work, but before long the Bishop of Vic, whose land was crossed by the proposed line of the canal, objected, as it threatened the income from his watermills. A stalemate lasted for some months, but on 21^st February 1345 a miraculous ray of light from nearby Monserrat rested on the altar of the Manresa church of Carmen.

This miracle convinced the bishop, who withdrew his objection and the canal was completed. (So much for the legend; historically, the bishop never withdrew, and the canal was completed only after his death.) To achieve such a long canal with a fall of only 10 m, the master builder, Guillem Catà, probably had recourse to Arab engineering knowledge and instruments. The canal ends in a small reservoir in what is now a park above Manresa.

On Easter Sunday we travelled the 20 km to Monserrat by train, going up the rack-and-pinion line from the village to the monastery.

It was heaving and we didn’t even try to get into the monastery church. The place has a well-developed tourism industry, including a hotel built in the 19^th century to accommodate well-heeled pilgrims. We went for a walk up the hill and ticked Monserrat off with relief.

On the Monday we set off with Gabriela’s friend Kim (Joaquim) to find the local traditional dancing associated with the season. We were unsuccessful, but visited a couple of interesting villages and churches and ended up having lunch in the park at the end of the canal!

BULGARIA MAY 2026

 

We – John and Ali, Anthony and Magda and I – arrived in Sofia after a very early start from Stansted and were met by our guide Kamen with Ian and Allan Kerr.

We set off immediately on a 2-hr drive to the old town of Koprovshtitsa. On the way, the many statues of Vasil Levski allowed Kamen to start educating us on the universally revered passage of Bulgarian history: the failed revolution of 1876 and the successful expulsion of the Ottoman empire by the Bulgarians and the Russians in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8. Levski (“the Lion”) was captured and hanged in 1874, but his inspiration, and the revolutionary cells that he set up, gave a serious footing to this last revolution (of many!), which in turn triggered the war.

Koprovshtitsa contains a number of houses associated with heroes of the revolution, such as Todor Kableshkov and the writer Lyuben Karavelov. The houses are interesting in themselves as part of the Nationalist Revival – inspired by the Romantic movement – which started to create a Bulgarian national imaginary from the 1820s and 30s. (There is an interesting parallel with the nationalist movements in the Baltic States at about the same time.) Although the Turks had kept Bulgarians in poverty and underdevelopment since they conquered the Second Bulgarian Kingdon in the late 1300s, in the early 19^th century some successful Bulgarian merchants and traders could acquire significant wealth.

 Many built beautiful modern houses of a basically Turkish design but with Bulgarian stylistic elements. Koprovshtitsa has several which are now museums, and we saw more later in Plovdiv.

We also entered the church of the Dormition (Assumption of the Virgin) of 1816, where a wedding was going on! The Turks allowed Orthodox Christianity to continue under their rule (although conversion to Islam was encouraged, not least by the fact that Muslims paid lower taxes!) Churches had to be small – smaller than mosques and no higher than a man on horseback. The Bulgarians got round the law by digging down to build their church floors below ground level, and one frequently descends steps to enter old churches. 

The next day we went on to Plovdiv.

 The second-biggest and the oldest city in Bulgaria, it claims 8,000 years of continuous habitation. The original agricultural settlers would have spoken what is termed “pre-Greek substrate” and (according to Wikipedia) produced some of the earliest gold and pottery artifacts in the world. The earliest named people were the Indo-European Thracians, after whom Bulgaria’s central valley, the Vale of Thrace, is named. Arriving in around 1,500 BC, they were neighbours of – and perhaps related to – the Macedonians. A Thracian wall survives on the top of the hill where the city first existed. Plovdiv’s first recorded name is Philippopolis, for Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. This historical period is highly complex, with Celtic and other incursions and a period of Persian domination (ended by Alexander in 335); the country was then conquered by the emperor Claudius in 46 BC. Trimontium was an important Roman city, with a large stadium

 (partly excavated - here seen against the background of the Ottoman mosque built with stones from the Roman city wall), baths, a beautiful theatre discovered quite recently, and a large, well-preserved forum, on which the communist government built a hideous “brutalist” post office in the 1970s! Despite its Roman name, Plovdiv claims to be built on 7 hills, one of which is topped by a contentious monument of a WWII Russian soldier.

Our next stop was the C11^th Bachkovo monastery, with magnificent frescoes in the main church (19^th century – the original C11^th church was closed for repairs). Bulgaria was converted to Christianity in 869 AD at the establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. Tasked by Constantinople with evangelisation in the area of Bohemia and Moravia, two monks from Thessaloniki, Kiril and Methodius, developed an alphabet in order to present the scriptures in written form to their converts. This is known as the Glagolitic alphabet (and is used for example for some Russian “Old Church Slavonic” writings). A disciple of St Kiril, one Kliment, refined the alphabet for use in Bulgaria to produce what is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet, used – with some variations – throughout most of the Slav-speaking world today.

That night we slept in the tiny mountain village of Kosovo, with a resident population of 10, and some houses maintained as summer or weekend houses.

 Our hostess and her two sons turned out to be fluent Spanish speakers, having lived for many years in Venezuela!

The next day we went deeper into the Rhodope mountains

 to the typical little village of Shiroka Luka (Broad Curve) with the National Folklore School. Passing through Devin, where mineral water is bottled, we set off on a 3 km walk up a gorge

 to a waterfall in the national park. Very pretty, with oak, Ostrya carpinifolia, and lots of wild flowers which tested our botanical expert, although he was generally quite convincing! We arrived in the evening at Lyaskovo – the village was rather run down but Ruman’s guest-house was impeccable and the home-made rakias unforgettable.

Lyaskovo contained a number of soviet-era vehicles,

 including one truck (made in Gorky, in Russia) which we thought was probably WWII (no photo, sadly).

An early start brought us to the Devil's Throat cave in the magnificent Trigrad Gorge at 9 a.m.

 One enters a huge cavern, possibly traversed by Orpheus on his way to the Underworld. There is a charming little carving of the legend halfway through the tour – the electric light-bulb enables moss to grow in the otherwise pitch-dark of the cave!

The underground river which formed the cave now flows by a different route.
 

We then drove on to our hotel in Trigrad. Leaving our kit, we set out on a 17 km walk through the beech and pine forest down to the Greek border (the cairn in the photo).

 This was a frontier between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, and the rusting barbed wire and tall gates were a sinister reminder of that time.

 There were also ruined bases for patrolling Bulgarian units.

The next day’s walk was similar, but with more open landscape and longer views. We saw a red-backed shrike (no photo!) at our picnic lunch stop, which thrilled everyone. 

Leaving Trigrad for the last time,

 we walked 9 km to the Yagodska cave – nearly losing Ian and Allan on the way! A long limestone passage, once the course of an underground river, it presents no less than 7 types of cave formations: stalactites, stalacmites, stalactones, leopard-skin, curtains, dendrites and cave pearls. We ate our picnic in a bar by the river, then drove down to our last hotel at Govedartsi in the Rila mountains, stopping to buy fresh strawberries on the way!

Our last day was beastly! We went to climb to see the seven Rila lakes, but we started in rain and climbed up into the cloud.

 Thank goodness the top station of the ski lift was open (although the lift wasn’t!) for hot chocolate.

 Some crocuses were the wildlife highlight of the day!

 We gave up soon after and returned to Govedartsi soaked to the skin! Ali’s birthday made our last night a special event. 

The next day the party split up in Sofia, with Allan and Ian leaving early, and John, Ali and Anthony after lunch. Photographs thanks to various members of the group. 

Magda and I remained to explore Sofia for the afternoon and following day. We did a walking tour and of course saw the Alexander Nevski cathedral (started 1882).

 Here for contrast is a modern church interior.

 We also visited the Red Flat – a flat recreating middle-class life in the 1980s, not very different from life in the UK a decade earlier. 

Outside the National Theatre

 we saw a bit of folk-dancing but couldn’t do any… Sunday was the celebration of the Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian literature and culture. The whole city was on the streets.

PRAGUE,

We were last in Prague in 2007. Our immediate impression was that there were many more people (tourists)! However, as we stayed with our friend Jarka outside the city centre and only ventured in for specific purposes it did not affect us too much. We went to a Black Theatre production, which we enjoyed. And the next day to the palace of the Lobkowicz family, just next to the royal palace. It contains a great collection of portraits, mainly with a family connection. The one which really struck a chord with me was Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza! A cousin of his married a Lobkowicz in the C16th. We stayed in the palace for a chamber concert (piano, flute and viola). Probably the same concert that we heard in the same place in 2007!!

BERLIN

In Berlin we stayed with friends Sophie and Leo. The city is huge and varied, and impossible to do justice to in the three days at our disposal. However we had an enjoyable time as well as taking in some of the historical and cultural highlights. Magda had been in 1990, just after the wall came down, and found things very changed. This was my first visit.
We saw the inevitable sights - Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, Checkpoint Charlie, a preserved stretch of the Wall. While all important, they are so commonplace as to lose some of their impact. The same cannot be said of the Jewish memorial, two and a half hectares of big concrete slabs in sight of the Reichstag (parliament building) as a conscious reminder to legislators that ”never again....”
We climbed the cathedral dome (completed 1905) for a view over the city centre. Downstairs was a photo of von Ribbentrop coming out of the cathedral after his marriage in I think 1935 to a younger actress whose name escapes me. Opposite the cathedral is the site of the old imperial city palace. It was destroyed in WWII and replaced in the 70s by a new GDR government building. This has now been pulled down and the huge new Humboldt Forum is being built behind reconstructed palace facades. The decision has been criticised as resuscitating Prussian imperialism... Having said that, much of the city centre had to be reconstructed after the war when it suffered very severe damage. In the Soviet zone, which included most of the mediaeval city, not much money was available for the purpose, so less was done.
We saw the Concert House and Frederic the Great’s great matching catholic and protestant churches, all of which have been restored (east zone).  We also spent a day walking round the huge estate at Potsdam with its collection of mainly C18th palaces. The Bode Museum offered an exhibition in which European works of art were shown together with superficially similar African works, and a comparative analysis suggested. We also went to a concert of C20th composers from the old Soviet bloc, all of whom had suffered official disapproval of their art. The venue was an old warehouse full of old pianos and parts of instruments.

VILNLUS, LITHUANIA

Unlike the other two BS, Lithuania has a previous history of statehood. Indeed, it is claimed that in the late C14th the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest state in Europe, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea!
Actually, things were bit more complex, as Lithuania was closely linked to Poland for several centuries, and together they fought off both the Golden Horde and the Teutonic knights (with the help of Henry Bolingbroke). The King of Poland was usually also Grand Duke of Lithuania - both elective appointments; or sometimes brothers, and when one died the other ‘inherited’ the title. As from 1569 they formed a ‘commonwealth’ while remaining nominally independent. Lithuanian power waned and it was incorporated into the Russian empire in the C18th, when Vilnius was the 3rd largest city in the empire! It was also Polish between WWI and WWII when both states finally recovered their indepndenc (till 1939), and the Lithuanians had a hard time getting their capital back.

Vilnius was known as the “Jerusalem of the north” (among others by Napoleon, who stopped here twice) for its huge Jewish population (64,000 in the C19th). The whole of Lithuania contained 260,000 Jews in 1939, 95% of whom were ‘liquidated’ by the Nazis. We walked through the Small Ghetto  — it is now a tourist area, but I found it a bit creepy and we did not stop for dinner there.

Another difference from its neighbours is that Lithuania is catholic, although their baroque churches are fairly sober - especialy that of St Casimir, a mediaeval member of the ducal family who embraced the most ascetic version of cathlicism. I thought this was merely the aftermath of communism until we entered the Polish St Dominic, which was far more extravagant.

RIGA , LATVIA

A 5-hour bus journey over a rolling, sandy plain brought us to Riga and another new world, at different times the biggest city in the Swedish empire and the greatest port in the Russian. It is indeed a big city, making Tallinn look quite provincial. The old centre on the east bank of the Daugava river contains a much modernised fortress and several mediaeval churches. We visited St Peter, but it was closed for a service on Sunday morning; however we went to St John were we heard an organ and flute recital. Going west one enters an area of broad boulevards, parks, a canal with little boats, the opera house and other signs of C19th bourgeois life. We went to a Strauss extravaganza by the national ballet (“An der schoenen blauen Donau”) in the evening. Full house.

On arrival we discovered that we had hit off the national holiday commemorating 150 years since the foundation of the Latvian Society (to promote national sentiment) and 100years since the declaration of independence!Furthermore it was the 817th anniversary of the city's foundation. So the whole city was in party mood - and buses and trams were free! We found folk music and even folk dancing, lots of handicrafts, local foods etc. Tourists were in a minority, in contrast with Tallinn... Due to this festival we did little conventional sight-seeing. We visited two venues where different regions displayed their wares -  Selonia in the south and Latgale in the east. Wool items (and knitting!) were very frequently offered, as well as wood-working, honey, linen and cheese.

Latvians seem very patriotic and independent - more markedly so than in the other two BS; but that impression may be the result of our visit coinciding with the Riga Festival. Russians make up nearly 30% of the population and seem to coexist without too much friction, although the Latvians have plenty of reminders of the Soviet occupation, including a museum devoted specifically to the subject. Our hotel catered almost exclusively to Russian men, and English was of little use. After 1991, ethnic Russians had to pass an exam in Latvian language and history to obtain Latvian citizenship. Some 250,000 have never done so and are non-citizens; however they will die off over time as anyone born in Latvia gets citizenship automatically.

An attractive characteristic of the Latvians is their love of flowers - there were many stalls selling, and plenty of people buying... our (not very smart) hotel was conveniently sited on the edge of the old centre next to the bus station and the market. It was full of Russians, but when you went out of the front door you were in a paradise of flowers with the overpowering scent of lilies.