Andalucia is the southernmost part of Spain. Parts of it get 320 days of sun a year. And having survived a couple of month’s worth of English winter—which isn’t harsh, just very, very, grey—we decided we needed some sun. Europe is full of these wonderful discount airlines that will whisk you anywhere for just a couple of pounds; the one we flew, called Ryan Air, is typical in that there’s no assigned seating—everybody just piles on board and sorts it out. When you’re flying with a family of four, and you want to sit together or at least within shouting distance, it can be a bit stressful—but we managed to secure seats near each other, and last Monday we flew to Jerez (pronounced “Hereth”) a moderately-sized city near the coast known for sherry (“sherry” is actually an Anglicization of “Jerez,” and the English have historically imported tons of the stuff), flamenco dancing, and horses. We didn’t get much experience of the first two—in fact, I don’t really like sherry, and flamenco dancing usually happens after midnight—but we got the third, in the form of the Andalucian School of Equestrian Arts. This doesn’t mean pictures of horses, but rather the art of getting horses to do things they don’t naturally want to do, like arch their necks in a particular way and dance on their hind legs. We watched them training some of the horses. We knew Olivia would love it, and she did. It’s all very beautiful, and stylized, and, well, Spanish.
This the part of the Spain that was under the control of various Islamic dynasties from about 750 to 1350, so there’s an amazing blend of architectural styles and cultural traditions still visible. In fact, Andalucia is probably one of the few places on earth were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim peoples lived together in relative peace. Jerez has a modest—though still impressive—complex called the Alcazar (a much smaller version of the famous Alhambra in Granada), which contains a Moorish castle and baths, a mosque, and a beautiful garden that’s been restored to what they think it looked like a thousand or so years ago. On our last day we spent a peaceful afternoon there, basking in the sun and absorbing the feel of the place. It’s striking to be reminded that while the Islamic dynasties in southern Spain were installing running water and heated floors in Cordoba, creating extraordinary works of art, and reading Aristotle, the rest of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, basically grunting at each other and eating with their hands. Certainly Eliot was impressed when I told him all this.
