My first experience of Spain, like most English people, came in the late seventies and my memories of this time create a cliché ridden cocktail of ‘San Miguel’, bullfighting, crème caramel, paella and souvenir donkeys. It was only when I returned in my twenties to visit places like Ronda, San Sebastian, Bilbao and Barcelona, that I realized the show put on for the English tourists in the major resorts barely scratches the surface of Spain’s complex and dynamic culture. It was at this point I decided that a good way to investigate this culture would be to fill a sketchbook in every town of every team in La Liga. In the years that followed I did not get anywhere near achieving this aim, but in a series of trips to places like Valencia, Malaga, Santiago, La Coruna and Vigo I started to understand what is so special about a country that still closes down in the middle of the afternoon to go home and have lunch with it’s family.
No comments:
Post a Comment