Not Hemingway's Spain

The Great Granada Hunt: "Granada" = Pomegranate

2012-05-09T17:59:00.000+02:00

The pomegranate plaque next to the entrance to our
lovely hotel, Hotel Zaguán del Darro.

So I still don't have time to write a very involved entry, but I've been sitting on a bunch of great photos for Granada for a really loooong time. Rather than write a more thorough entry on this famous ~~overly-American-tourist-infested~~ southern Spanish city, I thought I'd share with you a great photography game you can play when you visit there. I call it, the Great Granada Hunt!

Now, for those of you who didn't know, "granada" is Spanish for pomegranate. And it took me less than 2-3 hours upon arriving to the city of Granada to realize that they have pomegranate iconography ~~run amok~~ all over the place. (At one point I told my wife: "Man! Maybe they got a little carried away with this pomegranate stuff." To which she wisely responded: "I dunno. Can you imagine what it would be like if 'Valencia' actually meant something in Spanish? That something would be plastered on every official and unofficial wall of our city." Indeed, bats and oranges have already overrun Valencia, and I wouldn't be surprised if a motion was proposed to change the city name to Taronja or Rat Penat.)

Spot-a-pomegranate, the game: So here's how the game works. All you need is a camera and walking legs. Start looking for every instance of a pomegranate that you see and snap a photo. Pretty soon you'll have a wild collection of pomegranate footprints running all across the town.

Some ubiquitous instances of pomegranates in Granada are understandable. The "granada" appears in the lower right corner of the City's official seal. This naturally causes it to appear around town in various official capacities...

On street signs...

But also on the tourist guide signs...

To mark the fancy street name signs on the ground at street crossings on Gran Vía...

Even on utility covers...

But the City, in its zest for granadas, has also embedded them into the styled designs found in the ground all over the city and its landmarks...

And let us not forget what was easily the classiest touch: granadas used to form the tops of the ~~cute~~ posts that lined the streets to keep cars off the sidewalks...

And then there were the decorative fountains, which also naturally featured the city's favorite fruit...

"Fuente de las Granadas" next to the Río Genil

Even the fountain at Plaza Nueva is topped by a pomegranate

Look carefully and you'll see the granada adorning elegant facades of important city buildings...

At some point the denizens of Granada got into the game, because it's not just official buildings and emblems that are decorated with the distinctive fruit...

It's on metal flowerbed holders ...

... on the shop sign of one of many "Arab" shops on Calle de la Calderería ...

... on the entrance door to a residential building ...

... above the entrance door to a small church ...

Hah! I counted no less than 5 granadas on the journey up to and through La Alhambra, and that was without me even trying! Try finding some of these pomegranates while you wander through Spain's most famous monument...

Oh, my poor wife! At first my photo obsession irritated her. We'd be walking along, exhausted and eager to get to the next destination, and I'd be stopping every few steps, exclaiming, "There's another one! Just give me a sec while I snap a pic." (Confession: I have many, many more photos of granadas/pomegranates that I did not post.) But eventually even she got into it, spotting some of the harder to find ones, even showing a bit of sporting pride on her part about it. Spot the pomegranate is a great game, and a way to jazz up your more typical Spanish urban tourism visit. Granada is not just about the Alhambra. Apparently it is also about pomegranates. Go figure!

And as a prize for all your fun photo-documenting Granada's obsession with granadas, you can even buy yourself a ceramic decorative plate with, yes, you guessed it, a pomegranate on it...

________________ADDENDUM: THE VIEWER'S CHOICE________________

Thank you to one of my readers (José, whose comment is below) for pointing out that the pomegranate is also in the Spanish national seal ("escudo") at the center bottom, representing the Granada kingdom. It's quite an elegant design for a pomegranate, if I may say so!

Molly, a Granada expat blogger at Piccavey.com, tweeted me this photo of a 15th century fabric which, in its pattern, features granadas. She then wrote this blog entry on "Pomegranates..." with her own photo take on granadas in Granada.

Please keep them coming! Have you spotted a pomegranate in Granada recently? Couldn't resist snapping a photo? If you share it with me on twitter or through my email, I'll post it here with full credits to you.

PPSOE fusion, Spain finds lost 5,000 billion euro note in couch cushion

2012-04-01T15:50:00.003+02:00

Sorry that I've been too busy to write blog posts. It's probably a good sign for me professionally and personally. So I if you don't hear from me, that means that I've been getting a lot of good work done in my other, non-blog life. But I'll come back to it, I promise!

The proposed new PPSOE logo
in cerulean blue.

While you were away... there have been a few big news stories here in Spain. First, following the ~~successful~~ complete ~~failure~~ malaise of the "huelga general" (general strike) this past Thursday, Spain's two major political parties, Partido Popular (PP) and Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), have announced that they are going to fuse into one super party, PPSOE. The announcement came as a surprise to many, particularly to those who had believed them to represent two opposing political ideologies.

Many of Spain's more ~~jaded~~ sophisticated politicos, however, saw the fusion as a natural extension of the two parties' long shared history in ignoring popular concerns and practical solutions in favor of childish Parliamentary bickering. Jesús Mata Mata, renowned politically obsessed blogger and insider to the party merger said: "It was really only a matter of time before both parties realized that they enjoyed arguing with each other more than with others, and certainly more than actually running the country. So why not simply make their habit of speaking past all other political parties a formal thing?" Many also speculate the merger will be received well by the public as a huge cost-saving gesture on the part of the political establishment. "Now they can coordinate their arguments in-house, thus improving the efficiencies of disagreement, saving time for all," Mata Mata added.

Former PSOE leader Rubalcaba's
preferred color: Spanish red.

One potential impediment to the successful fusion is resolving which color the new party will ultimately adopt for its new logo. The PP favors its cerulean blue color, while PSOE insists that red, its former logo's color, is, "Clearly way more Spanish."

In an unrelated story, Spain's Ministry of Financial Muck-ups shocked financial markets yesterday with the surprising announcement that it had discovered a misplaced 5,000 billion euro note under a Parliamentary couch cushion. Some are likening the find to the discovery of the sunken ship and Spanish treasure of La Señora de las Mercedes, the last time Spain had lost this sizable a quantity of ~~heritage~~ money. The Ministry acknowledged that it had forgotten about the money, and was now recalculating the budget deficit with the discovery in mind. While many financial analysts say this windfall might offset the dire predictions about Spain's sovereign debt, that have been making investors skittish about the country in recent months, others argue that it is further proof that certain European Union member states cannot be relied upon to manage their national budgets.

London financial analyst John Snottypants offered his unsolicited armchair opinions about it, "Look, we've all done it. Lost that 20£ note only to find it later. It's like money from nowhere. What a great feeling. But I'm starting to wonder whether these PIGS countries know what they're doing. I mean, sure, misplace 55€ billion here or there, like Germany did, that can happen. But to misplace 5,000 billion. Unacceptable." Both Standard & Poor's and Moody's announced that, in light of this discovery, they were going to consider downgrading the country's credit rating to "Couch cash" status, a rating which sits just above "junk bond" but below "Can you help a brother out?" status.

The couch was a personal gift to the national Parliamentary building from former Valencian President Francisco Camps, symbolizing the Autonomous regional capital's rich tradition in ~~anti-IKEA~~ small-business furniture sales. Some unnamed sources close to Spanish President Mariano Rajoy, however, have alleged that the couch might have been specifically designed to embezzle public funds by emptying the pockets of Ministry members who carried the public budget around with them when they took their afternoon siesta on the couch. While there has been no official response from Rajoy on this allegation, a memo went out this morning to all Ministry staff to not carry public funds with them while out on breaks and revoking Camps's access (though not his membership) to the Parliamentary lounge.

Obama, having heard the news about Spain's windfall, seen here checking
the Oval Office couch cushions for any lost change ~~you can believe in~~.

Happy (American) April Fool's Day!!!

Valencia's Fallas 2012, the hangover post

2012-03-20T17:06:00.011+01:00

La cremà of Falla Na Jordana

Here's a visual recap of the last few days here in Valencia, the madness and glory that is was Fallas 2012. Before I start with the photos, let me just say, this is my third Fallas and I'm still amazed how much I had to learn, how much I still have to learn about them. There is so much going on, one either needs to join a casal, be a fallero all year long, or live through dozens of them to truly grasp the level of detail and variety of activities that happen at this festival. (Note to self: Can Fallas be to "Not Hemingway's Spain" what San Fermín was to Hemingway?)

[Heads up: Starting this week I'm reducing my frequency of posts to once a week... They're each so long, I'm sure you'll still have plenty to read.]

The Dirty Dozen:

I list them in no particular order, but these are the usual suspects, the must-see fallas that everyone was talking about this year.

(1) Ayuntamiento

As usual, politically safe but well done. I'm convinced they chose this
scaffolding design as a way to send the signal that, "We promise we didn't
overspend public money on Fallas this year. Honest!"

(2) Sueca

The real buzz for Sueca was its light display, but the falla was also good.

(3) Exposición

This was one of my personal favorites this year. From what I read, it was the artista faller's
first time building a top category Falla. Well done!

(4) Nou Campanar

With a budget of 400,000€, this was this year's (and every year's)
most expensive and largest falla.

(5) L'Antiga Campanar

While "only" half the budget of its nearby mammoth neighbor, L'Antiga's
"Resurrection" theme was quite entertaining.

(6) Almirante Cadarso

In 2010 this was my favorite falla and discovery. While I didn't like their theme this year,
I still loved their style and execution of it. They are definitely on my radar for future Fallas!

(7) Cuba-Literato Azorín

This was a big year for this falla, for them to score the 2nd place in the Special Section.
And they also had an excellent lights display (see below).

(8) Na Jordana

This was probably the most creative and elegant of the top twelve fallas...
Leonardo DaVinci and his creations. The beard was made of threaded wood,
a technique which is apparently a specialty of the artista faller.
It won the "Ingenio y gracia" (ingenuity and grace) Award, and was well deserved.

(9) El Pilar

Their theme this year was fun: "Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda."
More than the overall effect, what I liked about this falla was it's many playful ninots (see below).

(10) La Merced

I'm still trying to figure out why locals always list this falla among the
"must sees". It was alright, but I think they could have changed the
orientation of it to better effect.

(11) Convento-Jerusalén

Something tells me I would have liked this falla a whole lot more if it hadn't been
for the cramped viewing space and hoards of people. As is usual for it, the
theme was ~~bland~~ safe, but it was masterfully executed.

(12) [Insert your local falla here]… For me, Trinitat!

My humble barrio had a good year this Fallas. The Falla Trinitat won 1st place in the "ingenio y gracia"
area within its Sección 2A, and its falla infantil won 1st place in Sección 5. Go Trinitat!

The Categories – Who won, and who should have won:

So naturally every year it's about who won the big prizes, but also about who we thought should have won them. So here you go...

• Falla sección especial:

Winner: Nou campanar

Located far from most of the others and with a massive budget, this falla
pretty much becomes its own satellite festival during Fallas.

Should have won: Na Jordana

But in my opinion, fallas shouldn't just be about scale. They should be about ingenuity, creativity,
and beauty. This homage to Leonardo DaVinci was really something different,
and is therefore my personal tops for 2012.

Special mentions: Exposición & Maestro Gonzalbo

While understandably not in the same category of incredibleness as Nou Campanar
and Na Jordana, Falla Exposición was one of two more modest fallas
that really caught my eye this year, and which I think deserve an honorable mention.

But Falla Maestro Gonzalbo really surprised me. What an incredibly charming and beautiful
depiction of a fantasy, fairytale world! Congrats to them for getting 1st in their Sección 1A!

• Falla Infantil

Winner: Nou campanar

Okay, this was easily the biggest letdown for me this Fallas. This won 1st place!?!
It is way too busy. No one can deny the craftsmanship and detail, but part of art
is having an intuition about what is too much, and I think they crossed the line.

Should have won: Na Jordana or Exposición

Whereas the infantil of Na Jordana was extraordinary! For me, normally the
fallas infantiles sort of all blend together. But Na Jordana's reminded me that
they can be beautiful and high art. Its theme was clearly inspired by the classic
Valencian Tale, Tirant Lo Blanc, which only added to its charm.

The infantil of Falla Exposición was just adorable, and quite playfully creative
given that it was an actual functioning Carrousel. I deliberately avoided
the cremà for this falla infantil, since it would have been like watching
my childhood burn away.

• The lights display

Winner: Sueca-Literato Azorín

Actually, I think this light display deserved 1st prize just for the novelty of creating
an Eiffel Tower out of lights. It was the talk of the town throughout Fallas.
Indeed, I hope this will encourage other Fallas to experiment with this area in the future.

Should have won?: Cuba-Literato Azorín

But call me old-fashioned but I just love the light display tunnels, so I'm glad Cuba
got some recognition (2nd place) for its lovely lights.

• The 2012 "ninot indultat"... by popular demand...

La mona chita in the Falla Almirant Cadarso was this year's "ninot indultat",
the ninot chosen by popular vote from all the fallas to be "rescued" from the flames
and saved for all time in the Fallas Museum. A reader (Victoria) reminded me of this tradition.
Thank you!

Other Important Fallas Festival Elements:

• Political commentary...

I personally think this is the coolest part of the fallas, how they go about stickin' it to the man by turning their falla into a political message about the mess these big whigs have gotten us in. No real surprises in who appeared, but let's all relish the cheap shots none the less...

Falla Maestro Gonzalbo: Spain's late for a very important date with Merkel!

You may have heard that Canal Nou, Valencia's local channel, has upset locals
with its clear political bias and management incompetence... thus making it
a recurring object of political taunts this year in Fallas.

• It's the little things that count...
Chic Soufflé wrote this nice post on the cats that appear in different fallas. This should be a game! What animal, vegetable, or mineral did you find recurring in a bunch of the fallas this year? (Good candidates: oranges, bats, political figures, celebrities.) Anyway, the real joy in falla-trekking is zooming in and looking at the curious, elegant, odd, frightening, bizarre ninots scattered all over each falla. Here are some of my favorite pics...

• Falleros/falleras...

These are the real protagonists of Fallas. They are its lifeblood and this is their moment. So let's post some more photos of falleros and falleras...

A casal from San Vicente Martir was using this handy fallerito-mobile
to get these falleritos back from the ofrenda.

An aside: This year one thing the falleros couldn't avoid... Political protests over recortes at the Ayuntamiento mascletà.

• Street food...
This year I got invited to a friend of a friend's falla's paella street party. (The perks of being more settled in Valencia!) What can I say, our host, Jesus, Sr., cooked some delicious paella valenciana.

This wasn't at our paella party, but when I saw people having fideuà instead of paella
I couldn't resist snapping a photo. Classy!

• La Ofrenda

No, no, no! They do _not_ burn her. (Once again I was asked this by my American first-timer friends.) While I stand by my statement that "la ofrenda" kind of sticks out in the Fallas ceremonies as a bit off kilter with the otherwise non-religious anarchical mood, it is unquestionably a beautiful ceremony. So here are some pics on that...

Before...

And after...

• Mascletà and Despertà... daily rhythms...

Pim, pam, pum. Awesome. No disappointments with the mascletàs. These sound fireworks shows were great! Here's my recording of the final mascletà, as well as an early morning despertà in my neighborhood (it was like this everyday at 8:30AM!!!).

Caballer did not let us down with this final March 19th mascletà. I'm certain my hearing will be impaired for weeks!

These jokers! Can you believe that each falla's casal has a group whose job is
to pass through their neighborhood tossing loud firecrackers accompanied by
a marching band... at 8AM!?! The result is that 8AM is one of the loudest times
of the day during Fallas... even though everyone is hungover from the previous
night's festivities. These jokers!

• Castillos...
Hmm. I'll be frank. If I noticed budget cuts anywhere in this year's Fallas it was probably here. Nights 1-3 of Castillos were all amazing, bolstering my wife's argument that American's Fourth of July Shows just don't hold a candle to Valencia's fireworks shows. But La Nit del Foc was a bit lackluster. Granted, from my spot I literally only saw half the show (see below on lessons learned). But it was a mere 17 minutes long, not the half hour of legend that my Valencian friends normally go on about. Still, all of this was another level of fireworks splendor. To the extent that my lame video camera permits (blog button idea: "donation" link to get support to upgrade my equipment), fixate on the lower fireworks. This is a signature trait of castillos here which we don't do enough of in the States...

Castillo for Nights 2&3 were, by all accounts, the best this year.
Here's my video for Night 3, pardon the auto-focus trouble.

And this is my partial-view video of La Nit del Foc

• La cremà, or what money looks like when you burn it...
How many years will have to pass for me to wrap my mind around it? They burn them!?! This year I went with Exposición, since it was a wider, more open space...

I first watched the Falla Exposición burning. First you see them dousing the falla with flammable liquid. Around minute 2:25 things pick up. And at minute 5:30 the fire really starts to burn.

And this is the Ayuntamiento's cremà. Things really get going
around minute 1:46.

A friend's recording of the Na Jordana burning, which as you can see was incredible, with the flame going up and inside Leonardo's head. Brilliant!

And then, with almost uncanny timing, it started to rain. Only 15-20 minutes after the Ayuntamiento Falla had mostly burned down it began to gently pour, washing away the ashes... How perfect is that?

Like clockwork: This was the weather forecast just hours before La Cremà.
Note how it predicted rain at 2AM, and God obliged.

Lessons Learned:

As I said, each year I learn something new, so why not share them. Here are some "deep thoughts" I had while living Fallas day-to-day...

1) Beware the Valencian liquor, anís de cazalla!!! Let me splain. No, let me sum up: I tried this stuff and let's just say I had a night to be remembered, or really to be forgot. (Santi, a.k.a. Obelix: Why did I let you talk me into trying it on an empty stomach?) This is strong stuff. Be advised.

2) Arrive to your Nit del Foc viewing ~~party~~ spot early, definitely not just 15 minutes before it starts. Hoards of people watch this —I heard a figure like more than half a million— and there is only so much hoards-of-people viewing space along the river. So if you are intent on watching it without being crushed by said hoard of people, you probably should go 30 minutes to an hour ahead of time and find a good, safe spot.

3) A real aficionado of a Falla goes to see that falla both during the day and at night, because it looks different. Sure, you wanna see them all. But try and see at least one of the good ones twice. It's interesting watching it transform from daytime-mode to nighttime-mode.

4) Go to the lights show in Russafa early (i.e. the night of the 15th), before the hoards of people make it a nightmare to visit. Really, Valencia's population doubled this year with all the visitors, and the streets around the Russafa fallas (and Convento-Jerusalén falla while we're talking about it) become impossible to navigate, and thus enjoy the sights. Be advised.

5) Bikes open up new horizons… like finally getting to see the Falla Nou Campanar! This and L'Antiga are really out there in the middle of nowhere. (Sorry Campanar neighborhood, just saying.) So it was doubly sweet to be able to ride my bike through the River Park and up some bike lanes to see them. It was worth the trip. But then again, any excuse to take the bike out for a ride is a good one.

And that's it. "It's over. Go home." Come back next year. That's right, it's March 20th, so everyone is back to work here (well, excepts those "en paro"), so there's no point in lingering. But don't worry! We'll be back next year, I promise, and the following, and the follow. So the good times will roll again!

Nighty, night!

Expat Profiles – "Mr. Earnestly Not Hemingway", A Tale of Two Cities

2012-03-16T00:01:00.311+01:00

A Tale of Two Cities' Bat Symbol, Austin and Valencia

I was recently interviewed for Blog Expat's series on expat bloggers. Go ahead, check it out. I know you're curious (¡Cotilla!) to know more about me, and I said more there than I have here. They frame their interviews around the theme of "from place x to place y", which in my case is from Austin, Texas to Valencia, Spain. It got me thinking, once again, of all the serendipitous parallels there are between my hometown and my adopted town... bat symbols, March madness lots of sun, approximate populations of 1 million people, and both dramatically transformed over the last 30 years.

I'm also taking this quasi-autobiographical detour, because pretty soon I hope to start a series profiling expats who've lived in Spain for a long time... Hey! All you other Spain bloggers out there! Know anyone interesting? How about you post an interview with them. (That's right, enough about you... And, no, I'm not talking about a guest post from one of your fellow bloggers. I'm talking about the interesting people you know or have met, who don't spend all their time online writing about themselves or their personal predilections.) Anyway, in the spirit of fairness, I'll first say a little about myself, a.k.a. "An Expat in Spain" —though a big fan recently re-dubbed me "Mr. Earnestly Not Hemingway"— by saying a little about my two hometowns.

It's always disconcerting, and admittedly a bit of a let down to realize that my story
is not nearly as exciting as that of hundreds of other expats out there... For example,
"From Minnesota to Hanoi: Fishsauce, Motorbikes and the golden Tortoise"...
now that's packaging!

Pretty soon the bluebonnets
will be in bloom in Texas!

Unlike Hemingway and many other expats residing here, I wasn't especially drawn to Spain, initially. (Closet confessions: when I was in college, what I really wanted to do was go to France, to live in Paris. Cliché! Sound familiar, Hemingway? The only reason Spain ended up being one of my first European destinations was because of language. Growing up in Texas, I learned Spanish, so I figured [Texanism!] it was appropriate to visit the one European country which speaks my one foreign language.) So my path to Spain is quite different from many of the other expats who blog here. I wasn't so quickly smitten by the country or the culture. I didn't drop everything to come live here for its sun, or food, or "way of life". It was accidental. Unlike Hemingway, I fell in love with and married a Spaniard (who, by the way, I didn't meet in Spain, but in a heretofore unmentioned third-party country). For me, falling in love with Spain, and especially falling in love with Valencia has been part and parcel with my having a wife and her family here who is Spanish, and who, without even trying to convince me of Spain or Valencia's elegance and beauty (they are, after all, not particularly patriotic, certainly less than me), continuously amaze me through their offhand cultural remarks or simple day trips, with the cultural richness of their city and region. A colleague of mine once said: "If you know 20 things, you think you know everything. But when you know 200 things, you know how little you know." After over a decade of coming to know this city, everyday better and better, it is only now that I know how little of its wonders I really know. I'm completely smitten.

But in Valencia, I have the "Azahar" or
orange blossom in late March, early April

Digression: My history dissertation advisor once advised me, in so many words, that... "We are all always telling stories about ourselves. All kinds of stories. The trick to succeeding at something [at that time getting a research grant] is telling a story that makes it natural to explain how you got from where you are, or where you came from, to where you want to be going." These are very wise words. We historians are professional story-tellers, but everyone tells stories. The hard part is learning how to draw upon this natural tendency for ~~blogging~~ story-telling, to consciously craft stories (but not fib!) about yourself and others, so as to open up new and fruitful futures. This is why historians are apt to repeat the saying, "What's past is prologue."

The funny thing is that my hometown Austin is kind of like Valencia when it comes to being passed up for other more flashy or convenient tourist destinations. (Aside: I've been egging on some travel blogger friends of mine to make Austin one of their next destinations.) Austin definitely was, for a long time, an underrated city. Though I think flashy events like South By Southwest have finally put it on the map. I've had a lot of conversations with costal Americans (i.e. Eastcoast, Westcoast) which have gone as follows:

Austin is both different from the rest
of Texas, and at the same time
_very_ Texan.

Costal person: "Where are you from?
Me: Texas. [hesitation, noting CP's anxiety] Austin, Texas. [relief on CP's face]
CP: "Austin! Oh, I've heard Austin is pretty cool! I've always wanted to visit it."
Me: "Oh, yeah? You should!"
CP: "Yeah [pause], [slowly] I would, but it's in Texas [disparaging, lamenting tone]. I don't know when I would _ever_ pass through there."
Me: [Hiding disappointment at yet another Costal person's phobia of America's center and lack of awareness of all its friendly, quirky fun.]

Maybe this is where I got that chip on my shoulder about Valencia... ah, transference. Except it's worse here because there's no excuse about Valencia being in the middle of nowhere, like one could ~~hypothetically~~ argue with Austin. Valencia is now only an hour and a half from Madrid by train, 3 hours from Barcelona, and less than 2-3 hours by plane from a bunch of European capitals.

Sure, George W. Bush was governor of Texas, but before him there was
biker governor Anne Richards, and since him we had the likes of Kinky Friedman
(unsuccessfully) run. Austin just recently mourned the loss of Albert "Leslie" Cochran,
a very politically active homeless transvestite, who though unsuccessfully ran
for mayor three times, was very successful in putting a spotlight on the issues
that the city's homeless faced. He She will be missed! Despite their leftist agendas,
none of these people would makes sense anywhere but Texas, and fit right in in Austin.

Anyway, the other day, as I was thinking about all this, it struck me for perhaps the umpteenth time how odd and crazy it is that both cities have for their symbol the same creature: the bat (in Spanish "murciélago"). For me, it's almost like destiny. I mean it's not like they chose a lion (England) or a bear (Madrid) or some other typical symbolic animal of power like that. Nope they both chose a ~~flying rat~~ the peculiar nocturnal animal, the humble bat. As it turns out, while the stories for how they elected this mammalia volans are pretty different, the principal inspiration is basically the same, there are a lot of bats flying around both cities.

Valencia's bat ("rat penat" in ~~Valencian~~ Catalan) iconography is steeped in tradition and colorful tales about the city's reconquest by Jaume I. Story goes that the night before he was to invade Valencia, Jaume I and his soldiers were awoken by a mysterious noise outside their tents. As it happened, just at that moment the Moorish armies were sneaking up to attack his troops while they slept. The king and his army, thus awakened by this noise, had no trouble defending against the surprise attack. Later, they determined that the noise had been made by a bat. According to this story, out of gratitude to this fortuitous nighttime visit by the animal, King Jaume I incorporated the bat into his symbol, placing it above the crown to become the city's "escudo" or seal. A less colorful explanation points to the fact that Jaume I's original seal had a dragon above it. Locals in Valencia continuously confused the dragon for a much more familiar creature, the bats that frequented the city and were beneficial to farmers in fighting off insects that would otherwise plague the crops of L'horta de València. By the 18th century, officials simply dispensed with the dragon and put a bat in its place. Whichever story you believe, the result is a lot of bat iconography around town, principally in the city's seal, but also appearing incorporated into other local institutions.

Yep, if you look up above the Ayuntamiento entrance (no, above the falleras!)
you'll see the bat over the city seal, one of many such official bats all over town.

Probably the most famous use of the bat in Valencia is in the Valencia CF soccer team's logo

You'll even see the bat on the utility covers on the streets of Valencia.

The bat regularly appears in Fallas. I saw it this year in this falla's light display,
the famous Convento-Jerusalén.

On the prowl for bats in the city, I found one in this street mural.
I encourage you to make a game of it. How many bat can you find in Valencia?

The story behind Austin's adoption of a bat symbol is a mixture of charming ecotourism and savvy (if also a bit commercial) marketing strategy. At some point in the late 1980s, the city powers that be realized Austin was home to the largest urban bat colony in the world – 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats, most of whom sleep under Congress bridge downtown. And as anyone who knows Texans will know, being the largest or biggest at something is something a Texan won't let pass without being celebrated, boasted about, and transformed into a coffee mug. By the 1990s, local tourism institutions had figured out how to turn this into a tourism boon, encouraging people to visit mid March to November, especially in September when the migratory colony is largest because of a bunch of newborn baby bats. Out of this emerged a bunch of bat symbols, linked with Austin's other famous exports... Slacker (1991)-style "Keep Austin Weird" weirdness, live music, and quirky politicians of all political stripes.

This bat statue marks the area next to Congress Bridge where people line up
to watch the bats fly out at evening from under the bridge.

Why take my, or any Texans' word for it? When you can trust this banner placed
on the bridge years ago, which states definitively that this is the _largest_ (urban)
bat colony. What I don't understand is why this statement hasn't already been
etched in bronze (or pink granite) there.

People can cruise on Town Lake to watch the bats from the river... on
boats which feature, yep, a bat.

Perhaps the most unlikely of uses of Austin's bat image is for the mascot of
the city's professional hockey team. (Hockey? In Texas? Get a rope.) Yes,
Austin's team is called the "Ice Bats", and this is their logo. Scary, or cute?

As if that coincidence weren't enough, both cities also completely transform in March. Valencia has its Fallas festival, fireworks, falla statues, and festival food, Austin its South by Southwest festival, film, music, and. Both festivals peak around the same time, March 9th through 19th, just when both cities' natural beauties, Valencia's River Turia and Austin's Greenbelt, are on the verge of blooming with full spring fever.

March Madness: Valencia has Fallas. Austin has SXSW.

Ah, yes. Austin and Valencia. My past and my future. I love you both, equally!

Speaking of Fallas... here's another mascletà video:

Wednesday's Day 14 (March 14, 2012) mascletà was pretty amazing. The pyrotechnician company is
Hermanos Caballer, one of several offshoot companies from the Caballer family,
that has a long and glorious history of great fireworks shows.
(You'll see the name Caballer a lot this week on the Fallas program.) They don't disappoint!

Valencia and Fallas in a Nutshell

2012-03-09T00:01:00.317+01:00

"Yo que soy valenciano nativo pero criado fuera [...] y reenganchado en mi ciudad hace 27 años, siempre se la presento a los demás comparándola con Barcelona. Para mi Barcelona es como una Top-Model: espectacular, deslumbrante. Valencia sin embargo es como tu pareja: no llama tanto la atención pero está llena de belleza doméstica, de rincones entrañables, de sitios para sentirte a gusto."—Perroflauteando in comments made here

Amazing light displays like this
are going up tonight in Russafa

So it is now less than a week before the full force of Fallas hits Valencia. As of a couple of days ago, falleros all across town have started marking off their falla territory, lighting up the plaza or street corner where the falla will be on display. The churrerías street stands have been popping up here and there, ready to sell buñuelos to all the wandering visitors. And tonight is the official lighting up of all the fallas' light displays. In short, we are practically in la plantà, and by March 16th it will be Fallas, Fallas.

Hopefully many of you are packing your bags and drafting your itineraries for your visit to Valencia for the festivities. In that spirit, today I offer you a recap of all my entries on Valencia and Fallas, to orient you a bit on what to do while you're here. First, Fallas...

-----------------FALLAS, A RECAP OF POSTS-----------------

On Wednesday I saw the Day 7 mascletà for Fallas 2012, as video recorded from Calle de las Barcas.
The show was a little uneven and unorthodox, but still very entertaining.

Before I start on Valencia, let me fill you in on the remaining two The Spain Scoop entries on Fallas that I mentioned last week. You will recall that the first entry offered a glossary of terms, and the second a schedule of important dates and events. (In the interim, I discovered this wonderful webpage on the language and local vocab of Fallas.) In the third entry for The Scoop, I list some must see fallas:

Must see fallas:

1) Nou-Campanar – Out of the way, north of the River Turia, but it usually has the biggest budget of all the fallas in the city

2) Sueca – In the Russafa neighborhood

3) Convento-Jerusalén – In the neighborhood just to the west of the North Train Station

4) Ayuntamiento – At the Plaza del Ayuntamiento

5) Na Jordana – At the edges of El Carmen next to the River Turia park

6) La Mercé – A few blocks away from Valencia's Mercat Central

7) El Pilar – In the neighborhood to the northwest of the North Train Station, not far from the Mercat Central

Must see light displays*:

1) Sueca

2) Cuba Literato-Azorín

*These are all right next to each other in the Russafa neighborhood, which is why you should go there at night!

Was walking home from watching the Day 7 mascletà
and saw this Fallas-themed advert for Amstel beer...
spoofing Chanel No. 5 ads, it says (transl.):
"There is an aroma that deserves to be elevated to the category
of perfume - No. 5 Masclet, Valencia." Hilarious!

These are by no means exclusive. A couple of years ago, one of my favorite Fallas, the Falla Almirante Cadarso, wasn't among these listed above. So every year you have to be sure to see as many as you can, since you never know which falla will shine the brightest. (For a more narrative account of Fallas, check out entry one and entry two of my recollections of Fallas 2010.) I also suggest some "fallas fuel", typical local foods for you to eat while you're in town and wondering the streets. (You might review my post on Valencian rice dishes, and the good and bad paellas, so that you can be a discerning paella gourmand. You'll also be catching the tail end of orange season, so eat as many as you can get, or enjoy agua de Valencia!)

In the fourth entry for The Scoop, I provided a suggested daily itinerary, along with a special schedule for the final day, March 19th, when all the fallas do their cremà:

A typical Fallas day itinerary (March 15-18):

• Early morning: Sleep in, if you can. On some days you might hear “la despertà” early in the morning, which is when the casals, in full prank mode, parade around their neighborhood at 8AM or so playing music and throwing “masclets,” hand-fireworks which sound like massive bombs when they go off.

• Around noon: Pick a central neighborhood and go for a stroll to see their fallas in the daytime. (This might be a good time to see the out-of-the-way good fallas, like Campanar or Na Jordana.) You also might get a snack (buñuelos?) so that you can make it to a late lunch.

• 2PM: Be at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento to listen to the daily mascletà

• 2:15-4PM: Lunch

• 4-6PM: Take a siesta, because... why not? You’ll want to be rested to stay out late at night when things really pick up

• 6-8PM (March 17th & 18th): Check out the “ofrenda” processions in or on their way to the Plaza de la Virgen. Listen to the music the bands play, since it’s a classic fallas soundtrack.

• 9PM: Get a sandwich (a “blanc i negre”?) for dinner so that you can be back out on the streets to take in the fallas lit up at night.

• 10-12PM (except “La nit de la cremà): Head over to Russafa to see the most impressive light displays

• 12:30-2AM (depending on the night): Line up somewhere along the River Turia to watch the "castillo" fireworks show

• 2AM onward: Continue strolling through the downtown streets? Things will be pretty active well until 4AM.

For the night of March 19th, la nit de la cremà, review the fourth post at The Scoop or my earlier Fallas teaser post where I discuss the sequence for burning fallas across town. Pick one of your favorite fallas and go there in the evening (10-12:30PM) to watch them burn. To get into the spirit of it all ahead of time, I recommend you listen to "Paquito el Xocolatero", a classic song played during Valencian festivities.

La ofrendà at the Plaza de la Virgen on March 17th and 18th

Falleros and their friends and families will be practically living at the falla,
cooking meals together such as the Valencian staple, paella valenciana

A lot of effort goes into the fallero/fallera outfits, kids too.
So the desfile (parade) to the Virgin is fun to watch

And there are all the exhibits and museums on Fallas, too:
• Museo Fallero [Official museum of the history of this festival]
• Museo del Gremio de Artistas fallero [A museum slash workshop dedicated to the artists who create the fallas]
• La Fundación Cajamurcia: "Falles de València en blanc i negre" (Temporary exhibit: until May 4, 2012) [Photo history of past Fallas]
• El Museo de la Ciudad de Valencia: "El traje de valenciana: Evolución" (Temporary exhibit: until April 30, 2012) [Exposición of past fallera outfits]

Postscript: Check out my blog entry here where I recount Fallas 2012!

-----------------VALENCIA, WHAT TO DO AND WHERE TO DO IT-----------------

The Valencia regional flag flowing from atop La Lonja

I encourage you to review my four-part series on Valencia, to look for non-Fallas things to do here while you visit:

1) & 2) In the first two entries I provide you a walking tour of the City Center and the usual (and a few less usual) sights to see there. (When you walk by the Mercat Central, look up and you'll see the Market's Parrot, subject of many fanciful local tales.) I wrap it up with a pass through Valencia's most famous neighborhood, El Carmen, and leave you "a la luna de Valencia" just outside one of Valencia's two city gates.

A la luna de Valencia, outside the Torres de Quart gate

3) I suspect a lot of visitors to Valencia miss seeing its many hidden gems and off-the-beaten path beauty, because their guidebooks only "take a glance"at the city or focus on the usual suspects and leave out its many distinctive and colorful neighborhoods. (I wouldn't want to name names, Damian.) So if you like to see something more local, you might review my entry on Valencia's neighborhoods, port, and playas. To make your walk through El Carmen even more of a hunt, I recommend you read up on Valencia's vibrant street-art scene on my post here. (And if you spot and photograph any additions, please feel encouraged to email me them for my "Viewer's Choice" graffiti discoveries.)

While not in your tour guidebook, this picturesque fruit shop
in the Benimaclet neighborhood is famous enough
to appear in an Almodóvar movie.

4) The jewel of Valencia is its Turia Riverbed Park and all the many (dare I say "iconic"?) spectacles. This feature of Valencia, and this blog entry, are far and away my all-time favorites. So please read this (and share it with others)!

The view into the Turia Riverbed Park from the Pont del Mar pedestrian bridge.

For some dining recommendations, you can read this guest post I wrote for The Spain Scoop on 5 great restaurants here. Valencia is also a nice place to fill your shopping bags and empty your wallets. So if you like to shop, review these past posts on good places to boutique shop or typical Valencian things to buy.

• Window shopping in Valencia as described by local taste-expert Chic Soufflé
• Ceramics and Socarrats – this is _the_ Valencian (esp. Manisses and Paterna) specialty gift to buy

Hopefully you will be able to enjoy Valencia for its local foods and culture, but if you happen to be missing home, you can check out this two part entry on "hechar de menos" spots in the city for Anglo-expats: part 1 and part 2.

-----------------DAY TRIPS AND FIESTAS AROUND VALENCIA-----------------

If you come here in a car, then there are a lot of towns within a 2-hour drive from Valencia that are worth a visit. While there are many, many more, I can specifically recommend the following day trip for which I've written entries:

• El Saler & L'Albufera
• Linares de Mora
• La Vila Joiosa (guest post for The Spain Scoop)
• Peñíscola (soon to come to The Spain Scoop)
... and many others some of which I will be sure to write about soon, such as... Xátiva, Sagunt, Morella, Chulilla, Albarracín...

Regional festivals:
• Moros y cristianos, Alcoy in April (soon to come)
• La Tomatina, Buñol in August
• Festival de Langostina, Vinarós in August

Linares de Mora

This page is a work in progress. I'll return here from time to time to update it, add more linkbacks to entries on Valencia's many charms, hidden gems, and regional , with the idea that it will serve as a reference linked to from a button on the left column of the blog. So this page is my homage to the city, to its most famous festival, and to its regional splendor. My hope is that, with time, it will help convert its readers to my belief that this is an incredible place, well worth visiting for all tourists who come to Spain!

The most obvious draw for Valencia regional tourism are its many beautiful beaches,
but here below you'll also find that many of its towns are also worth a visit.

Epilogue to the Impertinente Curioso Entry or, why my goal should be to learn to write more concisely

2012-03-06T13:50:00.014+01:00

"Be kind to the other readers, particularly if the blog uses inline comments - write a short comment, linked to your blog. Don't write a book, attached to somebody else's blog."—The Real Blogger Status

This picture is not particularly relevant to the post...
I just put it here because of Damian's fixation on the CAC
debate over iconic. And also because I want this to show
in feeds rather than some less iconic, non-Valencian image.

So apparently Blogger puts a limit on how much you can post in the Comments section. I learned this today because I was trying to reply to ~~heartthrob~~ Damian Corrigan's comments on my previous post about the Impertinente Curioso in Spain, and kept running up against a limit of 4,096 characters. It is one more sign that I need to make it my priority to learn to use brevity in this blogging world. The funny thing is that even when I try to post multiple shorter comments, blogger demurs. ~~It's almost as if Damian's comments broke that entry's comment capacity.~~ Apparently, Blogger puts this limit on because spammers were exploiting a weakness of the comments section where, if you put a long enough comment, it was impossible to remove the comment.

In the interest of continuing the dialogue, I encourage you all (yes, even you Damian) to post your thoughts on life, the universe, and About.com Spain Travel here. I've also decided my reply comment will have to fill my quota for the overdue post for this past Monday, since I'm busy prepping for a trip and Fallas.

...

So Damian, given that these were quite long replies from you, I'll start by thanking you for your time. (I think we are still keeping up the pretense of courtesy, right?)

I have had arguments with others online, but somehow with you I feel like holding up a mirror is the most useful way to reply… For example, why do you continually resort to dismissive personal attacks in your argument? E.g. "Should I care what you think? No." And I have never had the epithet "ignorant" lobbied at me with such frequency and incautiousness as in these exchanges. Yes, I acknowledge that I have insinuated many things about you, but thought better of saying them outright, conceding I don't know enough about you personally. With a close reading you'll notice that only twice do I really say anything directly negative about you (as opposed to your site, your statements, or "impertinente curiosos" in general). First, I more or less call you ignorant about paella. I didn't use the word "ignorant" (a poor choice of adjective if the intent is to persuade), but instead say "limited understanding". But since you insist on throwing around what is generally taken to be quite an offensive adjective, I'll stand by a statement that you are ignorant about paella. It shows in everything you write about it, and in your limited experience with it here in Valencia (one beany-paella a paella expert doth not make). It's okay. I'm ignorant about many of the things you write about. So don't take it as a personal failing. (BTW, it is "arroz a banda", with no article "la". "A banda" is Catalan for "a parte" in Spanish.) Second, I call you prideful. If other readers want to add "ignorant" to that, that is for them to say. But I think you yourself have made a pretty solid case in all these tweets and these two replies that you are proud to a fault. My only regret in pointing it out, is that to call a proud person proud is usually to throw fuel on the fire. I sincerely would like to see you change your mind and concede your mistake about Valencia. So this second affront was poor argumentation on my part.

(Though while we're on the subject of personal shortcomings, another peculiar thing about this dialogue with you is that at times I feel like I'm talking to an imperious child. You have this recurring habit of stating outright that this will be your or really "the" final word… "Against my better judgement,I have responded […] I will not do so again." "The fact that you wouldn't invite me to a VLC meeting […] invalidates your argument." Or the tweet that particularly amazed me: "No, I have a responsibility to be honest […] End." End! Full stop! Period! Who says this in an argument? And yet you keep talking and arguing. If you were so certain you had already won or made your case, why do you do continue?)

[Personal digression: This reminds me of something I learned in grad school about the often notable difference between a person's personality in person, and someone's written persona. Early on I read this academic's book, the prose were warm and inviting, the analysis thoughtful, and left you with this glowing feeling about the subject that person wrote about. But then, upon entering the program where said person taught, I was surprised to discover a cantankerous, quite rude and mean professor who was quick to tire of the students and was locally infamous for being someone best to avoid. When I mentioned this to my undergraduate advisor later, he simply laughed and said (I'm paraphrasing from memory): "Yes, it is funny how some writers/academics can have a rich and warm voice in their works, but in person are as personable as a rock." From this I learned, it is best not to judge a person's character strictly from what they write, to deduce the personal from what is generally an impersonal and affected textual medium. But perhaps blogging is a more personalized (honest?) writing form...]

Now let me say, I try not to be so flustered by an opponent's insults and attacks~~, even those as grandiose and unmerited as some of yours,~~ to be incapable of appreciating his or her finer moments. So as an interlude, let me add that there are a couple of places in your replies that are real poetry and brilliance. For starters, you had me LOLing with "Mr. Earnestly Not Hemingway." Please don't be angry if I plagiarize that for future use. And the paragraph which starts with "In my travels through Spain and my time living here" was like a breath of fresh air, a pleasant relief from the general rancor and stench of your reply:

"In my travels through Spain and my time living there, I have seen the beautiful green countryside of Northern Spain, walked from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Finisterre, seen the waves lap at the Rias from the top of the Hercules tower in A Coruna, had my aversion to Pulpo turned to a love in Santiago, seen the amazing cathedrals of Santiago, Burgos, Leon, Palencia, Salamanca, Zaragoza, Seville, Cadiz and many others, drank cider in all its forms of escanciar in Oviedo after hiking up to its Romanesque churches. I've seen the obvious and less-obvious sights in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona, had tapas and pintxos in Granada, Seville, Leon, Bilbao, San Sebastian and Logroño, seen the three faiths of Toledo, the turrets of Avila, the fairytale castle and viaduct of Segovia, the ghastly but historically important Valle de los Caidos, the Alhambra, the Roman ruins of Merida and Tarragona, etc, etc, etc."

I only wish all your travel writing on Spain was of this poetic, inspired stuff. While reading this passage, I almost heard Frank Sinatra's "My Way" playing in the background… "I've walked, from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Finisterre, and I did it myyy way." (Though I did notice the admission that you no longer live in Spain. How long did you live here? And how long have you been away? Because Valencia has changed _a lot_ in the last 5-10 years.)

But then you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like… "I don't say that to gloat." (I'm sorry. Now I've got Frank Sinatra songs playing in my head.) "Gloat", what an ugly word. You put it out there claiming that you are not doing it. But me thinks he doth protest too much. Indeed, in many of your remarks it is hard not to read between the lines, and speculate as to whether your denials are in fact admissions of guilt. There are certain defenses you've drawn upon, with words like "honesty" and "responsibility", which have that —what is the word I'm looking for?— "truthiness" aspect to them, but which you repeat and repeat and repeat in a way that leads me to wonder if you're overcompensating. I think you've made clear how you "honestly" feel about these places, among them Valencia. But is that an argument beyond personal appeal? To me "honesty" here looks like pathos dressed as logos.

One issue Damian raises is what exactly About.com looks for in its Guides...
"They interact with our users daily" ... they are "a combination of passion and expertise"

Which maybe gets us to the heart of the matter. There's a moment in your avalanche of words when you use a very interesting, colorful turn of phrase: "subjective opinion". Somehow you think I'm dissatisfied because your opinion is, in my opinion, subjective. Alas, I would seek no other kind of opinion, as I eschew objective opinions, subjective facts, or all other similar sorts of deceiving paradoxes. So here it is, to be crystal clear, I am not bothered by your subjective opinion, but rather by your _bad_ opinion. Not just your bad opinion of Valencia, which started all this. But your bad opinion of people. To put it another way, your incredible negativity. And in your second reply we find a space for agreement. It has been unfair of me to take up my problem with your site on Spain with you. What can you do about your bad taste and "mala leche" (literal translation, "bad milk", but means more figuratively negativity or nastiness)? I suppose what I really want is somebody else to be writing the About.com Spain pages, and that is really something I ought to take up with whoever pays you, not with you. In that respect it has been unfair of me to bother you about it. (Mental note to self: on next spare day, look into where at About.com I can lodge a complaint about bitter, aggressive staff.)

As I've said before, if there's one thing Spain has had to deal with too much of
it's negativity from outsiders.

To know, that with all the amazing travel writers out there in Spain (I direct you to my blog rolls in the left column) who would have done both a better job on the site, and shown more grace and quality in taking critical feedback, and further, that many of them are currently seeking gainful employment… to know all this, and yet know that it is _you_ who is paid to write about Spain. Well, you are right. That is precisely what upsets me. Thank you. Now I know it is not you who has broken my heart, but rather the horrible irony of it all. I'm already on the road to recovery.

...

So reader, if you've made it this far, I really could summarize all the above with the following: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. How true!

Query: Dear (other?) readers, do any of you know how to submit a complaint about an About.com website or writer? I've run a couple of searches on About.com ("complain about staff", "customer service", "complaints about About.com"), and the one "about" I can't figure out how to find is how to log a proper complaint with About.com. Now isn't that irony? The best I could come up with was this "Contact Us" page, which seems to be directed towards advertisers. Any suggestions? (Maybe I'll write an email to questions@about.com?)

I did find this fun read on "Rude Hotel Staff"... "Too busy to be nice"
seemed relevant to my search, as did "One word: Nice" and maybe "Just no help"

Addendum: Oh my God! I just realized why Damian has been able to get away with writing such sour things about Valencia (and the rest of Spain). Everyone here (my fellow Valencians) are all outside too busy enjoying this beautiful city and its beautiful weather! Why get locked up inside long enough to reply to him? This morning I woke up, and was feeling all this negativity from his comments. I sat down to write this reply, and still felt all that negativity. But then I went for my run in the Turia Riverbed Park, and it was like rebirth. I feel much more relaxed. Now I have a new perspective on all this. For those of you who find yourselves feeling sullied by these encounters-of-the-Damian-kind, come visit Valencia! Its fair weather and beautiful parks are like a balm for troubled spirits.

The Hemingway Paradigm Is… the opinionated "Impertinente Curioso", so quick to judge

2012-03-02T13:07:00.005+01:00

"Nothing gives more pain to Spaniards than seeing volume after volume written on themselves and their country by foreigners, who have only rapidly glanced at one-half of the subject, and that half the one of which they are the most ashamed, and consider the least worth notice."— Richard Ford, Gatherings from Spain (1846)

So every 25 entries or so (who's keeping track?) I try to reflect on the mission statement of this blog, to write about the "Hemingway paradigm" stereotypes and tendencies out there that gets tourism in Spain stuck in a rut. Today's entry is my 75th. I _was_ going to write about Washington Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra" (1832), which I became aware of thanks to Spain blogger Sangria, Sol y Siesta, and which I had planned to read since my wife and I are visiting Granada soon. But then I had a flaming Valentine's Day, providing me juicy content for an entry. No, it's not what you think. By flaming I'm referring to the social network experience of "flaming" on public forums. A couple of weeks ago, on Valentine's Day, I decided I would lobby the About.com "Spain Travel" guy Damian Corrigan on Twitter about the line on this page where he says: "First the bad news. Valencia, Spain's third biggest city, doesn't have that iconic, must-see reason to visit." And, depending on his response (which some longtime blogger-tweeple friends of mine hinted would be off-key and negative), I would commence operation shame-and-blame. In short, I thought I would try out a twitter war as an online social experiment and see what happens.

The page in question. I put it to you, do you think this is an insulting way
to characterize a city, or am I overreacting... or both?

I know what you're thinking, "This guy is a total troll" (another word I only recently learned). Even in my early blogging days I picked fights with Spanish Sabores over how "un-Spanish" a mojito is. I'm always ranting about how underappreciated Valencia is, like here on my first entry about the city, or here, in the comments where I reply to Kaley... y Mucho Más. Heck! My post on the "Paella Hall of Shame" even prompted one Spanish blogger (from Madrid, I believe) to say I was "becoming a real 'taliban' of the paella valenciana"! Why, only a few days ago I was joining the ranks with Mr. Grumpy himself, laying into Mo and others on her blog SpainStruck who celebrate Spanglish as "code-switching", when a lot of what I hear expats speaking here is more like "pidgin". So fair enough. I guess I can be a bit of a troll about "getting it right" when it comes to Spanish culture. But these were all spats with people who's opinion I respect and whose blogs I like. So all of this is silly pittance and prologue to my concerted effort to shame Damian into removing what I saw as a singularly insulting depiction of my beloved Valencia.

Did I mention that Fallas season has started? I recorded this video
of the first March mascletà yesterday. Awesome!

Damian Corrigan,
my Valentine
this year

"First the bad news..."?!? I felt this was too flippant a way to open about one of Spain's most important cities. But the reaction I got from him when I ~~tweeted~~ said this was so outrageous that I had to share. So today I dedicate this entry to those "Impertinente Curiosos", those outsiders/foreigners/expats out there who float through Spain, get a first ~~bad~~ impression, and then replicate it all over the place like a bad rumor. I won't say they are "wrong". Let's just say they do a lot of damage to local pride, and more often than not they don't _really_ know what they are talking about. Let's walk through my flaming-shaming campaign... to make this a teachable moment, as Obama once so eloquently put it. Like all social forums, there is apparently something known as "Twitter etiquette", and I definitely learned a few things from this scrape with About.com Spain...

My opening appeal

1) Lesson 1, don't start a flame war on Valentine's Day if you hope to reach anyone:

You're probably (understandably) wondering, "Does this guy have a life?" I'll plead the fifth on that. But I can say that my wife and I don't celebrate Valentine's for a couple of unarticulated reasons, but mostly because we find it cheasy (why encourage people!). (Instead we celebrate romance every other day of the year... "A very merry unbirthday to you. Yes, you!") But at first I did feel kind of bad... was I ruining Damian's Valentine's Day? Was he too busy wooing his love to put out fires started by grumpy online secret admirers? But no, alas, he also didn't have a date on Valentine's, or if he did, he must be that ~~killjoy~~ guy with the smart phone at the restaurant, texting away madly instead of "being there in the moment". But if he and I didn't have any special plans, everyone else did. Nobody in the twitterverse wanted to engage in sour grapes on a day for mushy hushpuppies. So even if I did have any sympathies from my followers (probably a big if), they were too busy selling love that day to sully themselves with my ~~scurrilous~~ cat fight.

2) Lesson 2, weapons of the weak or, in Twitter you've won if you get them to respond:
The "argument" between Go Spain and I was clearly uneven. He had something like 5000 followers on twitter, and I had around 100. His website's location in About.com also meant that he had institutional legitimacy, whereas I'm just some silly blogger with an ax to grind. I'm not going to go overboard and pitch myself as some kind of David versus Goliath, but... well, I'm just say, it wasn't a square fight. But in grad school I read a little about social movements, and had one book, James Scott's Weapons of the Weak (1985), particularly in mind. Social movements have certain tactics like "shaming" available to them, and they can use humor and their weaker position to appeal to the wider community. Moreover, I really had little to lose. Even when I started I assumed I would lose followers (amazingly I didn't), but I wasn't worried about that. Whereas I suspect Damian didn't want to alienate his readers. Indeed, one of the key characteristics of this online flaming trend is that one is anonymous... in this respect I had Damian at a disadvantage. The "right" move on his part would probably be to ignore me. This is the "social death" by way of silence. In effect I had to bait him into replying, but make sure not to alienate disinterested third parties and wayward audiences.

And he made a mistake… he did respond… [I think its a debatable point whether this was a "mistake" or not on his part. It certainly made him seem less aloof and corporate, but it also made him more human. He clearly cares about what people tweet to him, even if he does not _care_, as you will see below, about what they think or feel.]

3) Lesson 3, be prepared for a long war:
The reality is that a lot of nonsense gets published out there. And most people don't bother to say anything about it because it's just easier to ignore it. I assumed that this would be Damian's robe of power - sit through and weather whatever appeal I made, and assume I'd lose interest and give up. So you see, I had this whole plan thought out, with multiple stages to the flaming experiment: Stage 1) Appeal to Reason, Stage 2) refer to his peers and competitors, Stage 3) Reason by analogy, Stage 4) appeal to better nature. And so on. This was going to be my first flame war, and I wanted to see it through properly.

Stages 1, reason by pointing to his own words which show sightseeing worth reasons to visit Valencia,
and Stage 2, refer to his peers. I pointed him to Lonely Planet's more favorable review of Valencia,
and Travel & Leisure's estimation of the city rising.

I had fun with Stage 3: lifting the offensive quote from Go Spain's website,
and inserting other "third biggest cities". Some of them surprised me.
(Learn something new everyday.)

4) Lesson 4, look to your natural allies:

I then sent a tweet into the void that is Twitter, directed first at my followers, and then specifically at Valencia people's twitter accounts, asking them to weigh in. And got nothing. (Review lesson number 1: don't flame on Valentine's Day.) But maybe it also says something about the "weak ties", as sociologists call them, on social networks (another name for them might be "fair-weather friends"). I suppose I could have made more of a campaign about it, by tweeting all the posts out there which celebrate Valencia as an amazing, dare I say "iconic" city to visit... like the fact, which Culture Spain posted, that the City of Arts and Sciences beat out the Prado in Madrid and La Alhambra in Granada for most visitors last year, or Mr. Grumpy listing Valencia's Fallas as one of the Seven Wonders of Spain. Even the Chicago Tribune out analogized me recently, by starting its description of Valencia off by comparing it to Paris!

I think at this point he would have just ignored me, until one blogger friend and twitter follower spoke up. Thanks Chic Soufflé for getting my back! And also indirectly The Spain Scoop for a retweet on Fallas being iconic! (I also got some belated indirect support from a couple of others, who I won't name to protect them, but thank you!)

5) Lesson 5, Try to avoid needless digressions

At some point the conversation took a turn, and we started to talk about what is meant by "iconic". (I can almost hear Alanis Morisette's song in my head, but with iconic instead of ironic: "Isn't it iconic. Like rain, falling on Spain's plains.")

Damian: "No, I have a responsibility to be honest to my readers about
where I believe tourists should and shouldn't go in Spain. End." Ouch!

"I try to believe in as many as six [iconic Valencian] things before breakfast."

Maybe I'm a little obsessed with the implications of the self-fulfilling prophecy,
but I feel like it's Spain's worst enemy at the moment.

How did he get the idea that I'm a citizen of Valencia? If only!

6) Lesson 6, let the other side dig his own grave:

As I said, I think other people weighing in got GoSpain's attention. Note his reply to Chic Soufflé: "If you think that is negative, you should see... [Worst Cities in Spain] My job is to differentiate and highlight what I like." I suppose this is his way of trying to show magnanimity and deference. I can't speak for Chic Soufflé, but it strikes me as absurd. Have you looked at the cities on his site he recommends people _not_ visit?: 1) Gibraltar, 2) Málaga, 3) Valladolid, 4) Marbella, 5) Algeciras, 6) Ciudad Real, 7) Huelva, 8) Albacete. Now I haven't been to any of these, so I'm not in a position to judge. But it strikes me as a bad business model for travel advice to categorically dismiss towns like these. I just had friends visit Valladolid, and liked it, and I've been meaning to go there for a while to see its film festival, one of the oldest in Spain. (I invite you, the reader, to make an argument for any of the others.)

"Get over yourself and your city, please!" Suggestion to all: don't use unnecessary
personal attacks when arguing with people online. If you don't know them,
it's better to give them the benefit of the doubt. Here he also writes to Chic Soufflé:
"If you think that is negative, you should see... My job is to differentiate and highlight what I like."

His concession that he at least did not put Valencia on this list is, well, weak. Here he falls into a common trap for travel writers: vanity, that he has the ultimate authority, judgment, and say in what is "worth it" and what is not. If he told his audience to flat out avoid Valencia, that it was not "worth it", his readers would know that he has no impartiality or taste whatsoever. This is because the subjects one chooses for travel writing make the writer as much as the writer makes the subject. This was something that Hemingway understood well. He helped to make Pamplona iconic, because of his amazing vivid prose. But he knew that it was Pamplona speaking through him, not just him alone...

I should add that at some point in all this he went private... sending me private messages on Twitter rather than public ones. In both public and private, he wasn't above ad hominem (personal) attacks. (Class, it is now time to review the twitter rule: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.) At one point he flattered me by mistaking me for a Valencian citizen. Funny how personal attacks can say as much or more about those who lobby them than those they're lobbied at. He clearly didn't take the time to look at my blog and read up about me, before rushing to judgment about what I was saying.

"High minded Valencians". This is a new one for me. Usually Valencians
are accused of provincialism. I think he really thought I was from Valencia. Suggestion #2:
Read up a bit on the person you are smearing. My "About" states very clearly that I'm American.

7) Lesson 7, Twitter and Blogging work best when everyone keeps it positive:

Now at some point in Day 2 (February 15th) I lost my drive. And I can tell you exactly when it happened. I was checking the link he sent Chic Soufflé on cities _not_ to visit... And then he went there… The featured entry on his site for Wednesday was "Paella". Yes, paella, my weak spot. Needless to say I couldn't resist checking what he put up, and offering corrections.

This had to be baiting me, or some kind of indirect concession to my argument
that Paella is one thing that is Valencian and iconic.

As it turned out it, his entry had a lot of good information, though mixed in with some real fallacious bombs. I was pleased to see him get right the fact that "paella valenciana" doesn't have seafood in it. And the extra line about how to pronounce it correctly. Kudoos! His picture had the red peppers in it, the hallmark of a Castellon paella rather than the traditional Valencia one, but that's nitpicking. But the page also had some serious misinformation. The big one that stood out for me was "paella negra". What the f...? I pointed this out to him, that no local I've ever known has called "arroz negro" "paella", even though it is a paella. To which he responded that there were sites online that did say this. (I also pointed out that "fideuà" is _not_ called paella, ever. This he accepted easily, and changed immediately.)

The "jihad" against paella misinformation: paella (de) marisco,
~~paella negra~~ arroz negro, ~~paella fideus~~ fideuà... Argg!

In good faith, I ran a google search on paella negra, and sure enough Wikipedia itself appeared among the links that show for "paella negra". But wait, Wikipedia English! So I did what I always do when I have doubts about what I see written on Spain in Wikipedia, I clicked the tab on the left for Español and Català... and sure enough, no mention whatsoever of paella negra. (Hint, hint: because locals don't call it that.) I pointed this discrepancy out to GoSpain on twitter, and he relented.

Open to reasoning, when the evidence is overwhelming.

And here I started to have that change of heart. I realized, he's doing his best with the limited knowledge and indirect exposure that he has. (Okay, so I also lost interest. I'm sure many of you are already thinking: there have got to be better ways to spend one's time than yelling at internet walls.) Perhaps the humble lesson I had realized was that I, too, can be an online impertinente curioso, quick to judge without taking time to understand. Once I sat down and looked through his site, I realized a lot of work had gone into. Don't confuse this for a recommendation. "I have a responsibility to my readers to direct them to good sources of information on Spain..." Forgive my vanity, but you'll still learn more from my Valencian rice entry, than his paella page... he fails to discuss arroz al horno, arroz meloso... In short, his site offers pretty standard and often cursory info, and can be misleading and biased by its authors limited understanding of the subjects he tackles.

His site suffers that common weakness of all writing about Spain by an outsider who only partially understands what he is seeing. He makes many mistakes, like the paella/rice mistake, which a local would _never_ make. Again, I don't see this as a personality flaw. I also make mistakes on my entries, which my wife or in-laws catch, or which my local friends or readers point out to me. There is a vast difference in knowing a city because you've read up on it online versus knowing a city because you've lived and breathed it your entire life. (Indeed, one of the wisest things my older sister once told me was that you don't really know a person until you've been with them through all four seasons of the year.) Locals can also miss things in their own city, but many of the mistakes we expats and outsiders make would leap off the page to them.

"He can be taught!" The About.com Go Spain page on Paella after Damian incorporated my suggestions.

8) Lesson 8, Stop using Wikipedia as a source but then writing like you know what you're talking about

Of course, maybe the real question is what has been the fallout from all this. For one, I'm pleased to say he updated his Paella entry removing the errors I pointed out to him. I also took the opportunity to create a Wikipedia account, and I edited the English entry so that Anglophone Hispanophiles wouldn't continue replicated that mistaken notion of calling "arroz negro" "paella negra". [Let this be a lesson to all of you Spain bloggers out there: when doing your online research for entries, take the extra step of seeing if the Wikipedia entry is different in Spanish (or Catalan) than in English. This is a _big_ clue about the pages' sources of (mis)information.]

That's the good news. The bad news is he has not (as of the posting of this entry) changed the page on "Things to Do in Valencia". I suspect Damian is a proud man, perhaps inflexibly so, and my campaign might have further ossified his opinion of the city and that page's depiction of it. -Sigh-. What's a Valencia lover to do? I'd tell you and other readers to boycott the page, but I doubt I have the kind of internet influence to have much of an impact on his online traffic. -Sigh-.

Even Wikipedia makes mistakes! Here the "arròs negre" entry in English
before I went in and edited it.

My first wikipedia edit... Brave New World!

And, of course, in a way "All news is good news" in the Twitterverse (or at least that's what this web article says about flaming). By tweeting left and right to him, I was giving him free advertising. And likewise, by responding to me he put my name on his readers' radar. So I suppose I should thank him for that. A major fallout was that I picked up some new followers, a couple of which sent me sympathetic tweets. (I'm not Damian's first broken heart.) All of this inspired me to add a new gadget on the left side of this blog: a Twitter window where you can see my lastest tweets. Clearly I'm spending too much time on Twitter, so I may as well share that with you here, too.

And, please, if you ever read anything here that rubs you wrong, don't be afraid to tweet me (or email)... heck, I'd even enjoy a good flaming, if it's for a just cause. ;-)

Fallas 2012 Has Officially Commenced!: Videos and Important Terms and Dates

2012-02-27T00:01:00.005+01:00

As of yesterday, Fallas season has officially started! Sunday ~~very early in the~~ morning falleros from all over the city congregated at Carrer de la Pau to toss their hand fireworks for the first "despertà". At 2PM the Valencian Ayuntamiento hosted the first official "mascletà". (Starting Thursday, March 1st there will be a mascletà every day all week long at 2PM in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento up to and including March 19th!) And then Sunday late afternoon there was "la cridà" ceremony, including sky acrobats and fireworks, formally inaugurating Fallas.

The 2010 Na Jordana falla, which you can see burned below.

I've already given you a rundown with photos of many of the different elements of Fallas (part 1 and part 2). If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? Here I include three videos I recorded back in 2010 of major Fallas features.

• Mascletà, Day 2 of Fallas 2010, Valencia:

We enjoy going to the mascletàs (an aural fireworks show). This video was of Day 2 (March 2, 2010). If you are wondering why the video starts to shake towards the end, that is a combination of the vibrations from the gunpowder explosions, and my hand shaking as I tried to determine which was more important, the video or my hearing!

• Pre-cremà fireworks show, Torres de Serranos Falla:

Every falla does a pre-burning fireworks show. Imagine, within the fifteen minutes after midnight there are 700 near simultaneous miniature fireworks shows! (Well, actually, many casals coordinate their schedules, staggering the cremà of nearby fallas so that you can tour around and see more than one burning on the final night.)

Rather than show you the 5-minute Na Jordana fireworks show, which was admittedly pretty impressive, I've uploaded this shorter video of the fireworks show that the falla next to the Torres de Serranos gave shortly after the Na Jordana cremà. The show itself was not as elaborate, but it is pretty cool to see it next to Valencia's iconic Towers.

• La cremà de Falla Na Jordana, midnight March 19, 2010:

This is the video I took of the burning of the Na Jordana fallas, one of the top ten biggest fallas in Valencia that year. According to Valencians' high standards, it was not a "successful" cremà, since it took almost two minutes for the flames to really envelope the falla. Still it was quite impressive.

Author's thoughts: One problem with watching the burning of these large fallas (as opposed to smaller more local fallas), which you may notice, is that there are more foreigners than locals in the audience. On the van are a bunch of rowdy Americans. And note the moment around minute 3, right when the firemen aim their water hoses, when the crowd almost bolted because the inexperienced people thought that the bonfire had gotten out of control.

I highly recommend you check out my posts on Fallas at The Spain Scoop.

I've been guest posting at The Spain Scoop a four-part series on Fallas. Two posts are already up, and I include here for you some useful information from them. The first entry has a dictionary of Fallas terms:

Fallas dictionary of terms:

• Falla: The festival Fallas is named for the large papier-mâché art statues called a “falla”, a Valencian word whose latin roots link back to fire. These art displays originated as piles of old furniture that were set out on the streets and burned as part of spring cleaning. They have evolved a lot since those modest 19th-century roots.

• Ninot: This is the Valencian word for each paper-mâché puppet or figurine. A large falla might contain hundreds of ninots. They will all be burned on March 19th except for one ninot from the 1st-place falla, which is saved and placed in the Fallas museum.

• Fallero/fallera (mayor, infantil): These are the people who make it all happen. You will see them in tents nearby the fallas during Fallas, celebrating with their families and neighborhood friends, and parading through the streets in traditional attire on their way to the Virgin with their flower ofrenda. There are two females, falleras, chosen each year to be the main representatives for each casal faller, a young one about 8 years old who is the fallera infantil, and another around 20-30 years old who is the fallera mayor.

• Casal faller: This the local neighborhood committee of "falleros" who spend the entire year preparing their street’s falla. There are hundreds of these casals, each with their own independent falla and neighborhood festivities.

• Mascletà: This is what I've taken to explaining as a "sound fireworks show", since it is more about the noise it makes than lighting up the sky. (Indeed, they are usually done during the day.) The city will do an official mascletà once a day during the festivities, but each casal faller will also have a neighborhood one at least once during the week of Fallas.

• Petardo: This is the Spanish word for hand-fireworks, and you will be hearing a ton of them throughout the week of Fallas. It is not uncommon to see groups of kids in plazas setting them off. Masclets are the very, very loud ones, which resemble (in sound) a bomb going off and can set off car alarms and wake the whole neighborhood.

• Traca: This is the word for those strings of fireworks where you set off one and it triggers a series of small snapping fireworks. On la nit de la cremà, the burning of most fallas will be initiated by a traca string of fireworks.

• Castillo: Though it literally means “castle” in Spanish, this is also the word for a fireworks show in the sky. There is at least one official castillo each night the week of Fallas, normally around or just after midnight over the riverbed. Again, each casal will have its own castillo in the neighborhood, usually the last night.

The second entry provides a schedule of events:

Calendar of important events:

February 26th (last Sunday of Feb.): La despertà (“the awakening,” a collective hand-fireworks event with all the city’s falleros) at 7:30AM on Calle de la Paz, and La Cridà (which means “the call”, the opening ceremonies with all the falleras mayores, followed by a fireworks show) at Torres de Serranos early evening… These two events formally open the Fallas season.
March 1–19th: Each day at 2PM, in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento, a public mascletà is held.March 15th: La plantà, when each neighborhood mounts its falla, officially inaugurating the public viewing and street festivities.
March 16th & 17th: La ofrenda, falleros from different neighborhoods, at different times and places throughout the afternoon, parade to the Plaza de la Virgen to place their “offering” to the Virgin Mary.
March 16th, 17th, 18th: Castillos, a.k.a. fireworks shows, at midnight to 1AM, or so. The show on the 18th is the big one, called La nit del foc, the night of fire.
March 19th: La nit de la cremà, the night of the burning, when all the falleros across town burn their falla. (In a later entry I’ll explain the traditional procedure and schedule.)

The third and fourth posts at The Spain Scoop, not yet up, will direct you to the best fallas to see and give a day itinerary. I'll post that information for you once they come out.

Things are heating up, people are feeling festive, and fireworks are going off all the time and all over the place. It's exciting. It's Valencia. Hail Fallas 2012!

Music: "D'un temps, d'un pais" by Raimon... La Nova Cançó, music for a cultural revolution

2012-02-24T00:01:00.187+01:00

"Los libros son nuestras armas" (Books are our weapons).
Brilliant counter march on Tuesday, February 21st,
following Lluís Vives incident on Monday

Here I've been posting about how wonderful Valencia is, and meanwhile things have gotten ugly here in local politics. There has been an escalation in confrontations between a group of student protestors, mostly from Lluís Vives, a secondary school located in Valencia's center, and ~~horribly incompetent~~ riot police. The high school students have joined their teachers in protesting the "recortes" (budget cuts) in public education. Here in Valencia this has been a particularly bitter affair, given that the PP regional government has repeatedly implicated itself in a number of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of public funds or the extravagant use of public money on frivolous and elite spectacle events instead of public infrastructure and services. This past Monday things turned violent. The police manhandled and then beat some of the students during a protest, and apparently also in the process beat teachers, parents, and onlookers nearby. Shedding light on how out of touch the police are, video of the police chief shows him talking about the students as "el enemigo" (the enemy). Everyone is quite naturally worked up about it, and some have taken to ~~sensationally~~ likening this "Valencian Spring" to the Arab Spring. (To follow these "Primavera Valenciana" events more closely, go to this story-feed page.)

I remind you that, "La corrupcion, como la paella en ningun sitio, se hace como en Valencia."
("Corruption, like paella, in no place do they make it like in Valencia.")

A whole series of suspicious and disturbing things have surrounded all these events. For example, on Monday evening, if one were to tune in to one's Catalan-language news, one would have seen two _very_ different stories on Canal Nou, the Valencian-run TV station, versus on TV3, the Catalonia-run channel, about the events at Lluís Vives. TV3 showed the images of the police beating teenagers in clear disproportion to the protesters' actions. Canal Nou, in what was clear ideological bias in favor of the local government, showed no video of the violence, just the protest, and then mostly showed video of various government officials talking about the incident with their predictable spin of "protesters shouldn't recur to violence". This form of media distortion on Canal Nou is no real surprise. The channel has been manipulated by the PP government for years. But it is sad that it would carry to the extent of attacking an idealistic and active youth in the self-interest of protecting a ~~jaded and decaying~~ political class.

You can see a slideshow of powerful images of the police attacks on protesters at Public.es

Yet, let's not disparage the actual workers at Canal Nou, who Tuesday held their own protest about the station's media manipulation of Monday events, complaining that the Canal Nou's directors changed the story: "Se ha criminalizado a los jóvenes presentando a los policías como víctimas" (It has [falsely] criminalized the youth [while] presenting the police as victims). All of this stinks of the usual Valencian PP paranoia and persecution complex reaction to any legitimate criticism and popular complaint. (While I love most everything about Valencia, I find the politics here —PP and PSOE alike— to be one of the city's few shortcomings.) One wonders what economic miracles the PP government here could produce were they to invest this energy they waste on pageantry and the _show_ of success on the actual foundations of success in a modern society: education. (If only the PP would apply some of its neoliberal reforms to the political class, and make it easier to fire incompetent political leaders.) Kudos to the Canal Nou employees, as it now (as of Wednesday) appears that that Channel is taking the protests seriously. Score one for 'speaking truth to power'.

Canal Nou's webpage on Wednesday, February 22nd, the day after the station's workers
protested the directors' manipulation of the news coverage of the Lluís Vives students

It wasn't just students. Parents and teachers, enraged at the
police's treatment of students, also got involved

As it turns out, I first learned of the Monday protest because one of my co-workers had a teenage daughter who was involved in the protest and whose leg was badly scraped Monday as she was dragged on the street by some of the police. Needless to say, she was worried about her daughter, but also furious at the police and eager to see all of this bring about some kind of change in the local Valencian government's handling of public protest and complains about the "recortes". In our brief conversation about it, she and I were talking about the need for student protestors to keep positive, despite this infuriating turn of events. Keep positive as both a tactic, to shame the government, and also as a legitimate source of their youthful strength and social authority, since they are the future of the country and any government would be foolish to ignore them or dismiss them (as the current government seems to currently be doing).

For a wonderfully playful, if also a bit depressing video montage and critique of this Valencia problem,

I highly recommend you watch this music video, which uses a song written a while ago by Jaume Sisa,

"Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol" (transl. from Catalan: Any night the sun might come out), and foregrounds

images of the many ways that Valencia's government squandered its wealth on special events

rather than on basic public institutions. (It certainly provides a contrasting perspective on many of the
spectacular tourist highlights I've been showing of Valencia's capital.)

Forgive me for what may seem like a total change of subject, but as it happens I've been listening a lot recently to a Catalan-language song which I think really nicely encapsulates these issues of reform, hope, but also social critique. "D'un temps" by Raimon was, in its day, music for a cultural revolution, and I think it's worth taking a look at it here both for its importance to Catalan-language culture, as an example of La Nova Cançó, and as a timeless message for advocating change and reform without falling into bitterness about the seemingly intractable nature of political corruption and the indifference of power to real justice. (Without, in other words, ceding the debate to the powers that be, who would want us to get frustrated and give up our complaints.)

Here I've embedded a copy of the song for you to listen to, and below you will find the lyrics:

I had been listening to some songs by Raimon, Ramon Pelegro Sanchis, and others of La Nova Cançó movement, as part of my usual language-acquisition trick: listen to music in a language, in this case Catalan, as a way to get a twofer, new language phrases _and_ cultural insight. This song in particular really got me. Raimon wrote "D'un temps, d'un pais" way back in 1964, and I like if for how it is at one and the same time incredibly critical but also incredibly empowering and forward-looking. It jibes with a line I read from Reinhold Niebuhr many years ago, that we must have "hope without optimism." In other words, we should not be surprised if the future doesn't meet our high expectations, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold those expectations; because in being fervent in our hope that the future _could_ be better, we ourselves will take actions to make it so.

Raimon is a great starting place for learning about Catalan-language music and culture. (I can't help but note that he is Valencian, since he's from Xátiva. Yes, (many) Valencians speak Catalan, too.) I think of him as a kind of Valencian equivalent of Bob Dylan, though admittedly not quite so prolific. Like Dylan, Raimon was part of a cultural movement in the 1960s which used folk music to address political concerns. Many of his songs therefore have a transcendent style and message. Maybe the parallels end there. While Dylan was "the original vagabond," "like a rolling stone," and a rebel's rebel, it wasn't like his singing in English was illegal or anything. Raimon's very act of singing his music in Catalan was. Speaking Catalan in public was illegal during the Franco dictatorship, and it took some real class and "collons" for him to do it. He faced legal sanctions and was blocked from certain events by the Regime, again, just for singing in the Catalan language.

The sixties in Spain. Catalan language as a cultural heritage worth fighting (peacefully) for.

Raimon's experience was characteristic of the movement la Nova Cançó, the name for the resurgence in Catalan-language in music during this period. He rocketed to fame and is probably most famous for his ballad, "Al vent" (1962), popular in the early 1960s and marking him as a serious song writer. He got a boost career-wise by collaborating with Els Setze Jutges, an important group for the movement whose members read like a who's who of important Catalan singers. Some prominent members are still famous today, especially Lluís Llach, whose song "L'estaca" (1968) is another of these iconic classics of the period, and Joan Manuel Serrat. (The name Els Setze Jutges comes from a Catalan tongue-twister ("trebalengua"): "Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen fetge d'un penjat." Much of their music was playful, and used symbolism and humor to skirt around the Franco censors.) In the 1970s, during "la transición," Raimon and other Catalan musicians' music resurged in popularity, becoming a kind of soundtrack for the new Spain and its hopes for an open and diverse society. (When my wife first heard me play this music, she said: "That's what my parents used to listen to!") For a longer, more detailed discussion of the movement, its critics and legacy, read this web entry in Spanish. Among a future generation of Nova Cançó figures, you can find none other than Jaume Sisa, author of the song featured in the video at the beginning, and like Raimon a "cantautor" (a musician who writes his own songs, usually with some protest or critique content).

All of this is just some historical context for understanding the import of Raimon's lyrics in "D'un temps". He was writing at a time Spain when was growing, economically flourishing really, and yet paradoxically was still a political dictatorship. In other words, the seeds for social and cultural reform were taking root in the streets even while political institutions sought to constrain and repress many ideas, groups, "threats". Take a look at the lyrics, and you'll see how he rises above the frustration to put forward the argument that we already own the moment and have control over the future.

------------------------------------------------------

D'un temps, d'un pais (1964)

D'un temps Of a time

que serà el nostre, that will be ours,

d'un país que mai no hem fet, of a country that has never been made,

cante les esperances I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe. and I cry for the little faith.

No creguem en les pistoles: We don't believe in guns:

per a la vida s'ha fet l'home it is life which defines man

i no per a la mort s'ha fet. and not death that has made him.

No creguem en la misèria, We don't believe in the misery,

la misèria necessària, diuen, the necessary misery, they say,

de tanta gent… of so many people...

D'un temps Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre, that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent, of a country that is already being made,

cante les esperances I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe. and I cry for the little faith.

Lluny som de records inútils Let's leave behind useless memories

i de velles passions, and old passions,

no anirem al darrere we will not march behind

d'antics tambors… the ancient (war) drums…

D'un temps Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre, that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent, of a country that is already being made

cante les esperances I sing about the hopes

i plore la poca fe. and I cry for the little faith.

D'un temps Of a time

que ja és un poc nostre, that is already a bit our own,

d'un país que ja anem fent. of a country that is already being made.

------------------------------------------------------

Having thought about these lyrics a lot, what I'm most struck by is the hopeful progression they offer. While in the first stanza he talks of "un país que mai no hem fet", very quickly he is already talking about "un país que ja anem fent" – from a country that has never been made, to one that is already being made. Or a shift from "un temps que serà el nostre" to "un temps que ja és un poc nostre" – from time that _will_ be ours, to one that already is a bit ours. And there's the subtle but poignant rejection of what "they say" about "necessary misery". Again, this in 1964, a decade before the end of the Franco Regime, and in a banned language!

Another topic which didn't make the cut this week: the "Golpe de estado de
1981" or "23-F". Thursday marked the 31st anniversary of a famous failed military coup,
when Spain's young democracy was tested and many feared, even if only for a few hours,
that the country would fall back into a dictatorship. I think expats, in their armchair
commentary over the Garzón case don't appreciate how recent democracy is in Spain. The
still oh-so-controversial Amnesty Law of 1977 was only four years old when all of Spain
watched this coup unfold onscreen and wondered whether that was the end of the
experiment. In retrospect, with a firmer, healthier democracy, some are now
wondering whether the Franco regime abusers got off too easy in "la transición".

I've noticed a lot of "rencor" (bitter resentment or rancor) recently about the turn to the right and "no holds bar" politics in Spain... Camps ~~miraculously~~ acquitted. Garzón sentenced. (This post was originally inspired by all the buzz here and abroad on the recent verdict in the Garzón case. I won't dissimulate. I'm incredibly disappointed in the outcome. In systems of justice, sentences send messages. And it is the _wrong_ message to send that Baltasar Garzón, a judge, is the first and, I believe, so far _only_ person to be convicted for the Caso Gürtel.) And now the so-called "Valencia Spring" in my hometown. It's enough to break a Left-leaning politico's heart. Surrounding all of these happenings is a lot of, "See, I told you the Spanish are intractably corrupt" in the expat blogosphere, or "Of course the political class doesn't care about the public" among the locals. Now I can understand this sentiment as a knee-jerk reaction from the angry and disenfranchised. But I actually think this sentiment, though human and understandable, is not the right way to direct anger and disappointment over injustice. Somehow we reelected this corrupt Valencia government, and it is hard not feel frustrated with how a political class so clearly corrupt and out of touch with the economic needs of its electorate is not fired for its incompetence. But I try not to let it get to me, and to instead think of the long road (not just the next election cycle). What these kids at Lluís Vives are showing people is that it is not about how we feel now, it is about what we do now for our futures.

Back in 1981, the King Juan Carlos interceded on behalf of the public, and helped diffuse the
coup d'etat by going on television and asking that the military return control to the Congress.
This irony, that it was the king who helped save Spain's democracy, is why many, including
even me, are so loyal to the royal family even though it's criticized as an anachronistic institution

I take this as the deeper wisdom of Raimon's song. It is about not ceding _any_ ground, not even the terms of the debate by succumbing to bitterness, cynicism, or defeatism. I'm hopeful that as people take to the streets to protest the injustices of this economic crisis —the pigheaded, untested and probably foolish ideology of "austerity"— we are all able to hold on to that positive spirit. (Consider this an extension of my earlier ~~soapbox rant~~ manifesto to willfully ignore the economic crisis negativity.) To not let the negativity of the powers that be —who keep telling us about "la misèria necessària", necessary cuts and economic misery— convince us that our future is not defined by us. Spain continues to be a country that is being made, and I'm hopeful that its future will be brighter than its past.

Valencia, Spain's Third Largest City: Part 4... El Río Turia

2012-02-20T00:01:00.129+01:00

This locally famous fountain in Valencia is not a
Greek god, but rather an embodiment of the Turia River.
The 8 female statues surrounding him represent the main 8
"acequias" (irrigation ditches) in the historical medieval
Turia River (thus the water flowing from their jars).

So there are many ways to slice and dice Valencia so as to best present it to the newcomer... by its historic center (part 1 and part 2), or by its diverse neighborhoods. But in this four-part series on my beloved city, I've decide to feature one aspect of Valencia, its natural beauty, which often gets overlooked in other guides. Valencia has some incredible greenery. Sure, Valencia has those oh-so-classy natural touches like orange tree groves in city squares and along the streets all throughout the city, evidence of its great climate ("el clima") and regional pride and joy, L'Horta de València, the surrounding fields of delicious and fresh produce. Like many other elegant European cities, you will find little plazas throughout town with nicely manicured gardens and beautiful trees. And yes, as I discussed in the previous entry Valencia has its Port and Beaches, which are clearly also prominent natural features of the city and popular tourist spots (discussed in the next entry).

Probably the most widely planted tree in the city of Valencia is the orange tree.
If you visit around January you can take plenty of photos of the trees bearing fruit
with classic local landmarks in the background. (But don't eat the fruit, it's inedible!)

Even more than the orange trees, I love all the huge and old Ficus trees, a kind of
fig tree, that you can find all over town. This one, which must be one of the largest
and where there are always kids playing on it, is in Parque Parterre near Colón.

This pretty plazita in the median of the Gran Vía del Marques de Turia has four Ficuses,
one in each corner, with a statue to Poet Teodoro Llorente in the middle.

But what I'm talking about when I say that Valencia is one of the nicest cities in terms of parklands is El Cauce del Río Turia, the vast emptied riverbed ("cauce") where the Turia River once flowed, which cuts through the middle of the city and which has been converted into a multi-use park of incredible splendor and tranquility. It is a gem, and I dedicate today's entry to it. The River Park, itself an incredible city treasure, is also home to or adjacent to four major tourist attractions, all must-sees when you come here: el Bioparc, el Jardín Botánico, los Viveros (a.k.a. los Jardines de Real), and the famous Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. (It is for this reason that I always encourage my visitors to rent a bike for a day, so that they can tour the River Park in style, stopping at each of these locations.)

This Google Earth shot of Valencia shows you the new actual Turia riverbed to the south,
but also the old riverbed which is now a large park with numerous impressive attractions along it.

Photo of the Oct. 14, 1957 flood of the Río Turia in VLC

Amazingly, according to my in-laws, the park almost never was. The riverbed was first cleared in the late 1950s, after a 1957 flood devastated the surrounding center of town. The river was rerouted to the south of Valencia where it still flows today. (Or at least in theory flows, since drought and overuse by farmers often leaves the river dry at its end at the sea.) In the 1960s, the City explored possible uses for the empty riverbed, and initially favored introducing a major highway (urban planning of the midset of a Washington DC Beltway or Boston Big Dig). Valencians (including my in-laws) protested in typical Spanish style, holding large "manifestaciones" (political street marches and protests), arguing it was public space and should be put to better public use. The result was to transform it into a park... and in the last twenty years, to repurpose relatively wild parts of that park into spectacular (though admittedly also very costly) tourist attractions.

Another kind of tree that you will find throughout Valencia, curious because of its
"chubby" base. You can find this grove of them in the Riverbed Park, in an area
where there are always plenty of picnickers and friendly stray cats.

The Riverbed Park has lots of quiet trails and is green most of the year.
(For example, I took this photo in January!)

And the river has most certainly been put to good public use... Over six kilometers in length from the CAC to the Bioparc, the Riverbed Park has exercise stations and muscle machines sprinkled throughout, many soccer fields, a track and field arena, even a baseball field and separate rugby field. These along with 15+ kilometers of running paths and bike paths (a.k.a. bike lanes: "carril-bici") make it an incredible spot to get fit while enjoying Valencia's almost-always great outdoor weather. Of course, you can also just take a stroll through it to enjoy the beautiful manicured garden areas and fountains. There's a rose garden ("rosaleda") on the east end of the river, in an area with numerous impressive metal statues. And the bridges you will walk under are all impressive —some historic, others new— but most adding an incredible aesthetic touch.

One of several soccer fields in the River Turia as seen from the Pont de Fusta.
Saturday mornings you can watch the future of Spain's incredible soccer culture play.

The Alameda Metro stop is located in the Turia Riverbed near an open space
set aside for special fairs, such as visiting Circuses or the annual Food and Wine Festival

The Pont del Mar pedestrian bridge is very picturesque, connecting
the City Center with the University of Valencia campus area

You can see the beginning of the City of Arts and Sciences in the distance, from the Pont del Mar

You can always find people strolling around the Palau de la Música.
They often play classical music on speakers outside, and in the summer
there is a film screening series outside just next to it.

The "Puente de las Flores" is a particularly striking example, always lined with seasonal flowers, something which has recently invited criticism because of the expense of it (half a million euros per year by one account!), but which is beautiful and adds an undeniable element of romance and charm to the city.

For the Christmas season they planted Poinsettias along the bridge,
which was especially bright and beautiful.

About a week or two ago they planted Geraniums,
which should be spectacular once they're in full bloom.

Is this too expensive a frill for a Community in crisis?
Hard to say. It is a beautiful frill.

And above all, there is the amazing Gulliver Playground, very, very popular with the kids, but I suspect equally popular with parents who are looking for an excuse to climb the fallen giant's arms and slide down his waist. It is based on the Jonathan Swift novel, Gulliver's Travels (1726), and in particular the scene when Gulliver is capture by the tiny residents of Lilliput. On this playground, Valencia's kids become the miniature Lilliputians.

The Gulliver Playground as seen from the ground...

But a Google Earth view of Gulliver reveals its incredible craftsmanship and realism.

In case you didn't have an idea of the scale, I include this slightly zoomed out Google Earth image.

As if this was not enough, there are those four spectacular sites you can visit on or adjacent to the river, all of which feature nature in its many forms and values. Here I'm going to follow the path of the river from West to East, and offer you mostly photos rather than textual explanation (that I'll save for another day). I think the images will convince you more than I can that El Río Turia is a gem, "un lujo"... further evidence that Valencia is a magnificent place to visit, if not to stay, settled down, and live the rest of your life here.

• Bioparc:

Last summer I bought a "Entrada Berde! Básica" pass, which for 34€ let's me go in to Valencia's Zoo, Bioparc, all year long at no (additional) charge Monday through Friday. (The regular "Berde!" card, which includes weekends, is 51€ for the year.) This is an incredible deal. I like to visit zoos. You could almost say I'm a zoo connoisseur. I've visited San Diego's, Washington's, Chicago's, Barcelona's, among many others. Valencia's is incredible, easily on par with the best of the above. Since it is located at the opposite (west) side of the Río Turia as the City of Arts and Science, we start or tour here.

After you enter the Bioparc Entrance, you cross a bridge over the old Turia riverbed.
On the other side is the zoo. Here you can see the view of this new Parque de Cabecera
public park area as seen from the Bioparc entrance bridge

I'll keep my introduction here very lite, since I can alway give you a more detailed description later. Highlights of the zoo include it's incredible (breathtaking) landscaping, that it is focused around two regions of Africa (split into Equatorial Africa and the Savanna) [sorry, no Asian animals in this zoo], the usual lions and tigers and... well, no bears [again, Africa-focused], an excellent avian show (a.k.a. "exhibición de aves y mamíferos"), and a walk-in lemur exhibit... a walk-in lemur exhibit! I repeat this last feature because it is the coolest zoo thing on earth. (Forgive my hyperbole, but trust me, you gotta try it!) Here you can find the zoo's floor plan, including the animal exhibits they have.

Lemurs! While you're not allowed to touch them, you can watch them run
back and forth right around you (or above you on the branches). It is incredible!

As amazing as the animals are, sometimes I think the protagonist of Valencia's
Zoo are the designed habitats. Some of the views are magnificent.

There are tunnels and cave-like spaces, such as this one where you'll find the hippos

In the tunnels, you never know what animal might peer back at you from around a hidden corner

One day I caught the elephants taking their late-afternoon bath. (Maybe some
day I'll upload the video I recorded of it.) Check out those faux Baobab trees!!!

Always a fan of cats, it was a special day when I saw the black panther resting on a tree

The Savanna section with rhinos, zebras, and ostriches.

I take it as a sign of the zookeepers' hard work making the animals comfortable that last summer (2011) they had an incredible number of newborn animals (hyena, lion cub, baby giraffe, baby chimp, baby monkeys, baby lemurs, to name only a few).

Last summer this guy was the star of the year, the newborn giraffe.

Here was another newborn baby. The summer of 2011 was the year of the zoo baby in Valencia.

• Jardín Botánico:

There is too much to say about this Botanic Garden (for now I'll just direct you to this person's post on it), so I'll summarize. It serves several functions: It's didactic (to educate children who regularly visit on school trips). It's research (run in association with the University of Valencia as an agricultural station for university students to train with). It's home to a colony of cats who, in a wonderful example of social conscientiousness, are looked after by volunteers and thus probably live like kings (and queens). (A while back fellow Valencian blogger Chic Soufflé wrote a great post in Spanish about it, and Travelocafe just posted about it here.) And it's incredibly peaceful, a wonderful spot to come when you want to be surrounded by quiet and nature.

An herb garden marked with signs for you to see what common (and uncommon) herbs look like.

"La huerta" – a garden area where they grow typical produce of the season and from the region

They have a series of posts like this in Catalan for kids. (Hint: "Pista" means "clue".)

And they have a series of great greenhouses with more exotic plants,
including this one with "carnivorous plants"!

Here on the left you can see the main "Hivernacle" (greenhouse)
and on the right the "Umbracle" (threshold or covered area)

Plenty of shade and places to sit and contemplate life's beauty

Cool trees!

Hundreds of kinds of trees, some familiar, some not, all amazing.

And an impressive cactus garden. Made more impressive by all the friendly cats roaming around.

Perhaps the best thing about the Jardín Botánico is that its exhibits are alive, so with each season it is an entirely different place to visit. Trees and cats, what a wonderful combination!

• Viveros (a.k.a. "Jardines de Real"):

While it is called "Jardines de Real" on the map, because it was once just that, royal gardens for a palace there, locals call the rectangular park that juts out north of the riverbed, "Viveros". This manicured garden park is at one and the same time a city park, in the sense that it hosts special events (e.g. the City's annual book fair, a summer concert series), and yet also an over-sized humble neighborhood park, in that it is where neighbors will go for their late afternoon or Sunday stroll, and where dog owners walk their dog (particularly on the northside of the park, where pet owners congregate and dogs, often running off the leash, meet and greet other fellow dogs). One fun, albeit unplanned for feature of the park is the large flock of wild parrots that live here, whom you can regularly hear chatting it up in the trees above.

Among its more notable features are the following: a pond with ducks and swans on it, a miniature traffic zone for kids on bikes (designed for them to practice learning the traffic signs and roadways), an incredible rose garden ("rosaleda"), a large bird cage where dozens of exotic birds are kept, various verandas where you'll regularly see wedding couples and falleras being photographed, and several cafes which, when the weather's nice, are excellent places to chat with a friend and relax.

You'll see plenty of people walking their dogs, or walking their kids at this park.

The Rose Garden is spectacular in late April, early May, though it is amazing
how many months in the year there is some kind of rose in bloom here.

Lots of manicured hedges

This tree, next to one of 2-3 park cafes in Viveros, turns an
incredible purple color in the fall around November.

Here you can see wide-open space in the south center of Viveros,
where the City holds fairs and summer music concerts.

One of the wide "avenues" of the park on the southeastern corner.
On the right you'll find the ruins of the 19th-century palace,
a popular hangout spot for the many stray cats who live here.

• La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciéncias (City of Arts and Sciences):

If anything, I probably need to say the least about this place, since after paella it is probably now Valencia's most iconic tourist feature. (One of my Facebook followers —and fellow expat Spain blogger— shared this excellent architectural and historical profile of the complex she wrote last fall, which I recommend you read.) But, again, very schematically... the City of Arts and Sciences is by Valencia's most famous architect, Santiago Calatrava. It is composed of 6 principle elements, each a cultural center:

1) El Ágora: a public space so far mostly used for sporting events, most notably the Valencia Tennis Open ATP 500 in November, but also this week it hosts Valencia Fashion Week,
2) El Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe: a Science Museum (more kid-focused),
3) L'Hemifèric: an IMAX theatre,
4) Oceanogràfic: Europe's largest Aquarium,
5) L'Umbracle: which translates to "threshold," it's an open air exhibit space with sculpture garden, and
6) El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía: an ~~underutilized~~ art museum and exhibition space.

Different angles on the CAC: Here you can see the Google Earth of the complex,
though Google's clearly out-of-date, since the Ágora doesn't appear on it.

Different angles on the CAC: Here you can see a fisheye lens picture of the complex,
because let's face it, it's way too big to snap a regular photo of.

Different angles on the CAC: Here's a 2D angle... the City of Arts and Sciences'
schematic map explaining the layout of all the buildings.

While I could spend several days writing numerous entries on these different buildings and spaces, let me just get to the point, they are amazing to see even if just from the outside. The buildings have Calatrava's signature style, looking oddly natural, like enormous fossilized animals. (The science building is said to resemble an ankylosaurus, while the Ágora clearly looks like a venus flytrap. The Hemisfèric is an eye.). The entire area around the buildings utilizes the broken tile style, "trencadís" (made famous by Gaudí).

You can find all the pretty, standard images of the City of Arts and Sciences
that you could possibly ever want here at the CAC gallery of photos

One of my favorite things to do, self-therapy when I'm trying to shrug off the dire mood
caused by the economic crisis, is to ride my bike through the river right around
late afternoon or dusk. That is right when you have "magic light", which any
photography geek will tell you is when there is the most even depth focus.
This is also when you'll see the most people out for a stroll. The City of Arts and
Sciences, seen from the seat of a bike, is breathtaking at this time of the day.

Christmastime at the City of Arts and Sciences

L'Hemisfèric lit up at night, when the hemisphere casts a reflection on the pool
outside to form this eye.

As for actually going into any of the museums, all I can say is that they are expensive, so you should choose wisely factoring in your own budget. Indeed, even Calatrava has been quoted as saying:

"I am proud of the fact that people can walk through and around the main buildings without paying. It is a city to be discovered by promenading."

However, you _must_ see the Oceanogràfic. It is currently the largest Aquarium in Europe and features a lot of the Mediterranean sea animals. So it makes for a great compliment to a beach visit to the city. What's more, as with all the Calatrava-styled facilities, the Aquarium space is quite impressive to walk around and through on the inside, so the aquarium space itself adds to the visitor's experience.

The Ágora as seen from inside the Oceanogràfic's Seabird Aviary

Half the fun of the Oceanogràfic are the maze-like facilities, including underground
tunnels like this shark tunnel.

And there you are. These are all probably, more than anything (except food), the reasons why I love living in Valencia. It's natural beauty, it's lush, serene public spaces. All of this make Valencia a jewel of the Mediterranean and a place I'm proud to call home.

Valencia, Spain's Third Largest City: Part 3... Neighborhoods, Port, and Playa

2012-02-17T13:13:00.019+01:00

Of course, tourist sights and churches doth not a city make. Despite all of my efforts to sell Valencia as a wonderful place to visit, Valencia is a place to live in. Its true richness is its distinctive and vibrant neighborhoods ("barrios"). Here I'll briefly characterize the most well known and visible neighborhoods of Valencia.

This official district map offered by Valencia-cityguide.com is pretty good,
though I've added in the names (all in Catalan) of a few subdistrict neighborhoods

• El Carmen:

I already introduced you to Valencia's most famous neighborhood, El Carmen, in the previous entry. Named for the part of the old town that used to be orchards and gardens, El Carmen in Valencia is distinguished by its windy medieval-style narrow streets, comparatively shorter buildings and lots of local color. El Carmen here is also one of several hotspots for nighttime activity, so it's always crowded with club-hoppers Friday and Saturday nights. (Other good clubbing spots: Cánovas in L'Eixample and in the summer the beach clubs at Malvarrosa, among many other areas. I know there are good places in El Pla del Real, near the University, and I suspect there are spots in Extramurs. But these are the three areas I know from back in my days of clubbing here.)

• L'Eixample:

This neighborhood, really an entire city district, has the same namesake as its sister neighborhood in Barcelona, which is Catalan for "the widening" or "urban expansion"... both of which are true of it. Just like with Barcelona, this is the "new" as in mid 19th-century extension to the old part of town (a.k.a. "Ciutat Vella"). While it doesn't have buildings designed by Gaudí, it does has the impressive broad avenues and that high modern form of urban planning, grid layout, and it has some pretty beautiful Modernist buildings, facades and balconies.

I highly recommend a stroll down the median of Gran Vía Marques del Turia, to take in the elegant buildings' skyline while laughing at the contrasting inelegant marks of globalization on the shops at ground level (i.e. Starbuck's, KFC, and such). (It's a schism much like the one I described for Madrid's Gran Vía here.)

Edificio Chapa, one of several beautiful buildings to be found by walking
along Gran Vía Marques del Turia

Club hoppers might be more familiar with the other side of Edificio Chapa, at
Plaza de Cánovas, a common meeting point for going out clubbing in the area nearby

Not quite Gaudí, but pretty wild. This building is also on Gran Vía
Marques del Turia right where it meets Antic Regne.

Russafa:

One place worth stopping at is El Contraste, which I learned
about recently because my wife referred me to it as one of the
few quality places that will make you these bunyols de calabassa
all year long. When I mentioned it to her dad, he got very excited.
Apparently El Contraste "es de toda la vida," in that he went there
when he was a kid. A good sign.

In recent years this neighborhood (technically a subsection of L'Eixample) has really come alive. For a while it has been the ethnic neighborhood, where you could find the best, or at least most authentic Chinese, Middle-eastern... and in the last few years, American food (it doesn't get more ethnic than that!). You might also recall "Russafa" from my earlier blog entry on Fallas. In mid March, this is ground zero for awesome neighborhood falles, and especially for seeing the most impressive light shows around Calle Cuba and Sueca.

Russafa also has many cool hangout spots. One such locale is Ubik Café (Calle Literato Azorín 13, 46006 Valencia; phone: 963 741 255), which is my dream of dream businesses, a bookstore / dining spot. Indeed, there is also a "carnicería librería" (bookstore meatshop) not far away with the excellent name Slaughterhouse (Calle Denia, 22 Valencia; phone: 963 287 755), that is a popular hangout. Perhaps for these reasons and others, Russafa has had a lot of recent activity organizing neighborhood events and festivals, most of which are targeted towards kids. Right now it is gearing up for its Carnaval festival. (Last December neighborhood shops started a "Ruzafa loves kid" fair.) There are a variety of websites and blogs which follow these events in the neighborhood. I direct you to Living Russafa as one such example, and Russafa CulturaViva as another, though there are others (on food; on neighborhood politics; etc.). All of this is evidence of how Russafa has really become a happening spot and definitely worth a pass through on your visit.

Café Ubik, one of many cool hangouts in the Russafa area.

I found this really nice collage of Ruzafa photos at Rincones de Valencia,
a pretty nice blog (in Spanish) about Valencia's different hidden corners and history.

An example of the "exotic" food you can find in Russafa. This Spanish chain, Taste of America,
just opened a store in Valencia last fall. It seems to be a hit as much or more with locals than
American expats. I saw a Spaniard outside it once pointing at a box of Americana food
and speaking an essay about how typical and amazing it was. When I looked
at the box it was Pop-Tarts. I almost laughed out loud.

Russafa also has a pretty large marketplace, Mercado de Ruzafa. Not so large and beautiful as the
Mercat Central, but it easily competes with the grand markets of other cities.

Gerry Blackwell snapped a picture of this Art Deco building facade in Russafa,
next to the train station. Like the rest of L'Eixample, it is worth checking out
the architecture and buildings of this neighborhood.

Benimaclet:

More than anything, Benimaclet is an interesting example of how much Valencia has changed and grown over the last half century. Not long ago it was just a "pueblo" (town) on the outskirts of the city. Now it is a fully integrated neighborhood. Benimaclet is in no way a tourist area. It is a neighborhood to be lived in. (This is my tip off to those future fellows and English teachers who ask me: Benimaclet, along with Russafa are the two neighborhoods I usually direct exchange students to on where to live and find a rental.) But like Russafa, Benimaclet is a vibrant, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural neighborhood. This is a popular area for Erasmus students (I've noticed the Mercadona here carries more products from other EU countries than other locations); it also has a street with many Arabic Halal meat shops. And yet at the same time it is a "de toda la vida" neighborhood, too. It is an interesting fusion, and while I couldn't say it's a "must-see" for tourists, it's a nice area to get to know if you want to get off the beaten path.

It also, as you can see from the pictured fruit shop below, has some surprising finds nestled into an otherwise humble area. One such pleasant surprise is En Bàbia Café, which I've mentioned earlier as one of a handful of place I've discovered in my adopted city that reminds me (pleasantly so) of my oh-so-missed coffee shops from back home in Austin, a chill, hip place to hang out and just chat. And like Russafa, it seems that the local business and neighbors are starting to organize a bit here, and create cool events and synergies. You can find out about them on "Yo Soy de Benimaclet," one of several Benimaclet blogs that have sprouted up recently which follow these neighborhood happenings with that kind of local, local pride that is typical of continental Europeans.

Deep in the neighborhood of Benimaclet, there is an amazingly beautiful fruit shop,
with purple tile exterior. You can find it at the following intersection:
Calle de la Murta and Calle de Mistral. Apparently it was in a scene in
Almodóvar's movie La Mala Educación (2004).

Plaza de Benimaclet in 1955
"Fotografía No. 22" digitalized by Víctor Serna, from an interesting blog
"Benimaclet com a poble" (Benimaclet as a town)

Plaza de Benimaclet today
"Fotografía No. 21" by Víctor Serna, from an interesting blog
"Benimaclet com a poble" (Benimaclet as a town)

Cabanyal:

Rita Barberá, who's been Valencia's city mayor forever,
will take some blows in Fallas this year for her rough
handling of the disadvantaged Cabanyal neighborhood

This is easily the most humble of Valencia's famous neighborhoods, Cabanyal has been at the center of a political storm the last three years over the very question of its continued existence. The debate can be summed up as follows (for a fuller and more colorful account of the debate, check out this website): Cabanyal is right next to the sea on prime beachfront real estate. Yet Cabanyal is a poor neighborhood with many social problems. (I am always having to warn incoming exchange students to _not_ look for apartments here, despite its proximity to the beach... Let's just say it's not a pleasant neighborhood at nighttime.) Enter the powers that be and urban planners. Cabanyal, the humble neighborhood, sits right in the path of an ambitious plan to extend the large and upscale Avenida Blasco Ibáñez (some of you may recognize it as the avenue where the University of Valencia's main campus is located). The idea is that Blasco Ibañez would become Valencia's Rambla, an open avenue that would reach the sea, thus further enriching Valencia's visual appeal as a tourism city.

Cabanyal has that characteristic fishermen's village look to it.
Because of recent economic decline, it can be patchy so far as
some areas looking picturesque but others looking run down.

Needless to say, many of Cabanyal's residents don't want to simply pick up and leave (particularly during an economic crisis) just to satisfy the grand architect plans of the city. Instead, they propose the city invest in renovating the neighborhood and lifting it up as a kind of Barceloneta, Cabanyal being the historical fishermen's village for Valencia much as Barceloneta is for Barcelona. I confess, part of me would love to see the urban reform and extension of the avenue to the sea. As it is, the neighborhood can be a bit of a disappointment to pass through on your way to the beach. Still, I can't help but also agree that the local government's handling of the whole thing has been inconsiderate and awful. Certainly, if you have time while visiting the beach, it is worth a stroll through this neighborhood to see a few of the restored historical buildings, which give you a glimpse of what the area could look like were the city to expend its resources on building it up rather than tearing it down.

Cabanyal stands in between the Avenida Blasco Ibáñez and the sea

El Teatro de Marionetas is one of the quaint historical buildings in Cabanyal
which makes the stroll through it worth it. It has also become
a site for those protesting the City's efforts to bulldoze the neighborhood,
their common chant: "Rehabilitació, ja! Sense destrucció"
(Rehabilitation, now! Without destruction).

You can find such pretty buildings all over Cabanyal. (Photos source: ARCA, see below.)

ARCA, or the Associació per a la Revitalizació dels Centres Antics, has photographed
some of these buildings in its effort to promote its campaign to restore Cabanyal rather
than bulldoze it for the extension project. I must agree that these buildings are its
most compelling argument. Why not create an L.A.-style Venice Beach instead of
a Barcelona-style Rambla?

This video offers a nice historical summary of Cabanyal

and the current political debates about it.

Dear Valencian readers, don't be upset if I didn't mention your neighborhood. Don't worry, I didn't mention my neighborhood here either. This is not an entry about the best neighborhoods to live in (a contest I wouldn't want to enter in, since it would be incredibly difficult to judge). Just an entry about those more prominent neighborhoods that we all know about. I think you're neighborhood is great, too. I promise.

• Port and Playa:

And of course then there is the Port ("puerto") and city beaches ("playas") of Valencia. These two features, perhaps more than any others, have been what put Valencia on the map. (Though in the next entry I'm going to write about what I think _ought_ to put Valencia on the map.) In part this makes sense. Valencia's Port is the third largest (in terms of cargo movement) on the Mediterranean, and Spain's most important economically after (I believe) Bilbao. In other words, the Port of Valencia is a major economic engine for the region.

Its port is the reason Valencia is so economically important to Spain.
Contrary to what people often think, Valencia's is the largest cargo port
on Spain's eastern seaboard, substantially larger and economically
more important than Barcelona's

More recently, the Port has experienced an aesthetic renovation as a result of its hosting world famous boating race, The America's Cup for two years: the 32nd Cup in 2007 and the 33rd in 2010. Another change in the last few years: it is now common for at least one large cruise ship to dock at the port on a given day, and there are plans to increase its capacity to handle two. (In 2011, Valencia got around 200 cruise ship visits.) Indeed, when the AVE between Madrid and Valencia was officially opened last year, Rita Barberá famously said, in typical Valencian exaggeration and regional posturing, that the high-speed train transformed the port "en el puerto de Madrid" (the port of Madrid). (The AVE has radically transformed the economic possibilities for Valencia to capture some of the Madrid tourism traffic, since it is now only an hour and 20 minutes away by train!) All of this has powered much of the city's growth as a tourist destination in the last ten years.

Work in progress: Valencia has had a more mixed experience trying to build up the
touristy side of its port. The America's Cup helped to give it a major facelift. But there
is still a ways to go before it can compete with the Mediterranean's many
jetsetter-and-yacht themed ports.

The beaches, obviously, are its other major tourist draw, particularly in the summer. There is not much to say about them that is self-evident. They are nice for city beaches (real beach lovers will obviously avoid them for more secluded cleaner beaches). And there are several large beach clubs that ensure the beach is alive and awake late on a Saturday night. Perhaps it is only worth adding that _the_ city beach is recognized by locals as three beaches, listed here from south to north: Las Arenas, La Malvarrosa, and La Patacona. La Patacona is actually the beach belonging to Alboraia, a town to the north (renowned as the home of the famous Valencian drink, orxata, but that I'll save for a later entry). So even in high season there is plenty of beach to go around for everyone.

Valencia's beaches have both the wide paved esplanade for strolling and a _lot_
of beachfront. I sometimes wonder at the width of the sand, but it means that there
is always room for people, and also plenty of space for beach sports like beach
volleyball or soccer with friends.

The beach has become Paella Row

If you just _have_ to eat paella on the beach (in the Las Arenas zone), I recommend you skip La Pepica, which is designed to be informal and family-style, or Marcelina next door. They get all the tourist reviews, but this just reflects the snowball effect such reviews can have. Hemingway eats there, and suddenly everyone goes there thinking it must be the best. Instead I recommend you go for the more elegant, and by my friends and family's standards, better quality L'Estimat (Avda. Neptuno, 16 Playa de las Arenas, Valencia; phone: 96 371 1018), which is just a few more buildings down from the other two. I ate there recently and it was exquisite!

La Pepica and Marcelina Restaurants are oversold to foreign tourists,
appearing in almost every guidebook.

Let's face it, the number one reason to visit Valencia is the fresh quality food,
and especially the paella. Not only is it excellent at L'Estimat, but the chefs
were really cool about letting me photograph them cooking. The head
chef even invited me in to take a picture of me, and we started talking about
recipe books. So I could not recommend this place more highly!

The paella and fideuà is better quality at L'Estimat, and the view is just as good

• Coda: Day-trip to Albufera & El Saler

If you have a full week in Valencia, then I highly recommend you make the trip down to El Saler beach and nearby Albufera Park. El Saler is where Valencians go when they want a nearby beach and are able to get our of the city. And as I've already said in my entry on Valencian rice, the Albufera and nearby towns of Sueca and El Palmar is the heartland for paella, and the place to try it. You'd only need about half a day to take a ride on a boat on the lake there, followed by a delicious lunch at one of the many quality restaurants in the area. And then you can take a siesta on the beach at El Saler. The only catch is that you will probably need a car, though you can technically catch a bus there, or even ride a bike.

Why wait for a summer day to visit the beach? I snapped a photo of
tumbleweed on the El Saler beach on a wind, wintery day a couple of years ago.

Further resources:

I have one more entry to offer you on Valencia, and it is on my favorite feature of the city. (So stay tuned!) But here I'm going to add as an addendum some other sites about this city, for your reference, that I have discovered over the years and which I think offer a nice orientation to Valencia:

• Hola Valencia Blog – Dormant, but still excellent blog on Valencia
• DolceCity Valencia [Spanish language] – A great blog on restaurants and shops around the city
• InVLC Magazine – Bimonthly magazine targeted to expat community in Valencia
• Valencia Connect – Bimonthly magazine targeted to expat community in Valencia
• Agenda Urbana [Spanish Language] – Great source for all events and happenings in Valencia
• La Valencia desaparecida [Spanish Language] – A really fun blog project, posting then and now photos of places around town
• Valencia City Guide – Website in the format of a standard city tourism guide (has nice walking itineraries)
• Valencia Travel Guide – Website in the format of a standard city tourism guide (the "Valencia recipes" section impressed me despite a few possible minor discrepancies)
• Vivir Valencia [Spanish Language] – A mix between a city visitor's guide and a source for events and happenings in Valencia
• Love Valencia [Spanish Language] – A mix between a city visitor's guide and a source for events and happenings in Valencia

--- Please email me or comment below if you recommend any others ---

Valencia, Spain's Third Largest City: The City Center and El Carmen, part 2

2012-02-13T00:01:00.062+01:00

... As I was saying in the last entry, at this point our tour of the city center becomes a bit religious in nature, with art museums sprinkled in for good measure.

Continuing north we arrive to La Plaza de la Reina, whose principal landmarks are the main Catedral de Valencia with its "Miguelete" bell tower (on the north side) and the bell tower of the Santa Catalina church (on the southwest corner). If you are ever hungry or thirsty and in need of a break, I highly recommend you try Valencia's most famous drink, "orxata", at the Horchatería de Santa Catalina, just opposite the tower of same name. It is reputedly the oldest horchatería in the center of Valencia, and the horchata there is pretty good. The Catedral de Valencia is another must visit, and I highly recommend you take the audio tour which helps guide you around inside, where you will see two works by Goya, the bones of Valencia's Patron Saint, San Vicente Mártir (Saint's Day: January 22nd), and... the Holy Grail! Yes, that's right, Valencia is home to "El Santo Cáliz", one of only a couple artifacts in the world to have a claim to being the cup Christ used at the last supper. Whether or not you do the Cathedral tour, you _have_ to pay the small charge to go to the top of El Micalet (a.k.a. "Miguelete"), the Cathedral's bell tower which offers spectacular views of the central city (if you go around noon you can hear a bell show).

The view of Plaza de la Reina looking south from the Miguelete.
On the right side you can see the bell tower of Santa Catalina.

The main entrance to the Cathedral, facing the Plaza de la Reina.

The "Santo Cáliz" a.k.a. Holy Grail is sitting in Valencia's main Cathedral,
in case you were looking for it.

Once again, the guys at the Hola Valencia blog do a better job than I
could at visually documenting this city. This video gives you a
nice sense of the Plaza de la Virgin and Micalet views of the city.

(Recommended additional detour: If you head east on Calle de la Paz, you will see a lot of beautiful building facades and fun shops, and arrive to the cute Parque Parterre next to an El Corte Inglés. (Right next to the little park is the Fundación Bancaja, which has excellent free rotating exhibits, such as a recent photo exhibit of turn-of-the-century Spain, by the Hispanic Society of America. It's always worth double-checking what its exhibiting when you come to town.) You can return by Calle del Mar and see the cute little Plaza San Vicente Ferrer where you can find the amazing Museum and heavily frescoed church of El Patriarca.)

Though the collection is small, the Museum of El Patriarca is quite impressive,
including works by El Greco, and the entrance is cheap and
there are few visitors. So it's a nice place to visit.

I was stunned to have only recently learned about the Chapel of Patriarca,
which the guide explained is the second most frescoed chapel in the world
(I believe #1 is the Sistine Chapel).

The beautiful facade of the Palacio del Arzobispo next to
L'Almoina, photo by Gerry Blackwell

If you follow along the Cathedral to the west, you'll come to the Plaza de la Virgen. This square is marked by the Turia fountain in the middle (more on that in a later entry), the Basílica (a.k.a. Real Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados), and the Cathedral's Door of the Apostles. This last is of interest because on Thursday mornings it is the site of the "Tribunal de las aguas", a water tribunal run by regional farmers which has been dubbed a UNESCO cultural heritage institution for being the longest continuous, still valid legal institution in Europe. Not far from Plaza de la Reina is L'Almoina, an archaeological museum where you can see over 2000 years of Valencian history, layers upon layers of civilizations starting with the Romans who founded "Valentia" in 138 B.C. (You can peer into the archaeological dig site, enclosed below ground-level by a glass ceiling covered with water, at the little square "Plaza del Arzobispo".)

The view of Plaza de la Virgen looking to the north from the Miguelete tower.

Plaza de la Virgen on a regular day, the fountain is a classic meeting point for locals

This plaza transforms during Fallas into the site of "la ofrenda", the offering, to the Virgin

Peering into the old Roman ruins of L'Almoina,
on Plaza del Arzobispo, photo by Gerry Blackwell

• El Carmen:

To transition away from touristy Valencia to a more utilized and lived Valencia we'll now head over to El Carmen, a neighborhood known for its lively nightlife and vibrant bars and hip restaurants. In this neighborhood you'll find many works of "art" by street artists tagged on the walls of abandoned buildings.

But before you head there, continue north from Plaza de la Reina up the pedestrian street Calle de Navellos. You'll walk by the Corts Valencians (once known as the Palacio de los Borgia), the seat of the regional government, until you come to the old riverbed. (If you look across the river park and slightly to the right, you will see the Museo de Bellas Artes, a.k.a. San Pío Quinto, an amazing and highly underrated, free art museum which recently added a Sala Sorolla to celebrate this local favorite of Valencian artists.) If you turn left, you'll see the Torres de Serranos, one of only two remaining large gates from the old city walls.

The Torres de Serranos, a fixture of the Valencian river skyline.

Across the river, but not that far, and worth the visit: the Museo de Bellas Artes

You can walk south down Calle de Serranos back into El Carmen neighborhood, and turn right onto Calle de Caballeros, a small street but one of the main arteries of El Carmen. I recommend sitting in Plaza del Negrito, not far from there, and sipping some "agua de Valencia". Or wandering up and down "Carrer de DAlt" and "Carrer de Baix" which connect several important squares in the area and give you a feel for the neighborhood. Locals claim some of the best "mejillones" (a.k.a. "clótxinas" in Catalan, or mussels) can be found at nearby "La Pilareta" (C/ Moro Zeit, 13; 963 910 497). A hidden gem in this neighborhood: the Parroquia de San Nicolás, whose interior is incredible but the entrance is hard to find as the church exterior is disguised by regular street walls. If you wander to the Calle del Museo, you might spot the "Casa de los Gatos", one of many examples of the playful, local color of this area. Take nearby Calle de Na Jordana towards the river and you arrive at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, or el IVAM, Valencia's prized Modern Art museum.

Plaza del Negrito, a nice place to chill and have a drink with friends.

Plaça del Tossal, another hip square in El Carmen, where Carrer de Dalt and Baix meet

Leave time to stroll around and get lost in El Carmen. You will discover
interesting alleys like this one, with a building built over an arch.

A reader of my entry on Escif, Gerry Blackwell, emailed me some of his street art finds
in El Carmen, including this lovely mural on (or near) Calle de Moro Zeit.
Further proof of the wonderful art you can find in this neighborhood. Thanks Gerry!

La casa de los gatos, a miniature house for cats in El Carmen.

And if you continue on Calle de Caballeros past Plaça de Tossal the street becomes Carrer de Quart, which ends at the other remaining old city wall gate, Torres de Quart. (Not far away is a nice tapas bar I recently discovered, El Peix Daurat, with creative and delicious twists on tapas classics.) Such is the historical importance of these city gates, that there is an expression still in use today, "estar a la luna de Valencia," which means a bit out of it (a.k.a. "despiste"). It makes reference to the fact that back in the day people would be locked out of the Valencia city gates if still out after nightfall. These people, who were literally "out of it", would have to spend the night sleeping under the moon. So I'll leave you there for now, "a la luna de Valencia", until the next entry which takes us outside the old city and into a new and vivid one...

"A la luna de Valencia" outside the Torres de Quart.

Valencia, Spain's Third Largest City: Getting Oriented and the City Center, part 1

2012-02-10T00:01:00.582+01:00

Today I'm going to talk about Valencia. This entry, or really these entries since this is the first of a four-part series, is _long_ overdue. First, it is worth saying that Valencia is Spain's third largest city. I'm going to say it again. Valencia is Spain's third largest city. No, not Sevilla. No, not Bilbao (not even close!). Yes, Valencia. It is not just some pitstop for beach paella, as Hemingway and many others would have you believe. I wouldn't be representing Valencia accurately if I didn't open with this common rant by other Valencia travel writers, and by sharing with you what is a deeply felt sentiment of Valencians: that their city is under-appreciated, always overlooked by others, and short-changed all around.

There. I said it. There is something about being number three in a country Spain's size: "always a bridesmaid, never a bride". Call me a whiner if you want (but it's sooo true!). Well, if I have won any of you over with my other blog posts, and if you don't suspect me of complete and utter bias (guilty!), I'm going to go on the record here and say it: Valencia is a _must visit_ for anyone coming to Spain. Though maybe (hopefully) this no longer needs to be said. As early as 2005, Travel and Leisure was describing "Valencia's Renaissance", and Lonely Planet listed Valencia fifth on its top ten cities in the world to visit in 2011. There is way more going on here than paella (which arguably deserves a visit in its own right). So you need way more than 3 days to see even the basics (especially if you come during Fallas, which provides full-time distractions from Valencia's routine beauty).

Top ten cities in Spain by population (though Bilbao as a metropolitan area jumps to #5).
I'm tired of having to explain where #3 Valencia is... It is halfway up on the eastern coast,
just above the little horn sticking out (it is opposite Palma de Mallorca from the Peninsula).
(Note what two cities don't make the cut: Pamplona and Granada.)

• The City Center:

Okay, got that out of my system. Now onto the content. Today I'm going to focus in on what is literally the core of Valencia, the city center. I always layout Valencia's center as a diamond formed by the River Turia riverbed park on the north (more to follow on that next entry!) and several important large avenues to the south. On the southside of the diamond, touching the southern point of what was once the old city wall, is the main train station (though it is no longer where long-distance trains arrive), the Estación del Norte next to the Plaza de Toros. The station is a marvel of modern architecture and regional iconography decoration, so I recommend you visit it whether or not you are catching a train there.

Aerial view of Valencia's historic center with general landmarks. Inside the
diamond you can see a circle formed by roads where the medieval wall once was.

The picturesque Estación del Norte and Plaza de Toros in the center of Valencia

The Station has just added a "Sala de Exposiciones" walled with "azulejos" and
classic regional and agrarian iconography

Heading north from the train station, the tourist center of Valencia flows out of three main plazas: Plaza del Ayuntamiento, Plaza de la Reina, and Plaza de la Virgin. Today I can only provide you a whirlwind tour, only briefly touching upon the main highlights of each. The Plaza del Ayuntamiento, as the name suggests, is home to the Town-hall. Opposite it is the Edificio de Correos (Central Post Office), whose metal and glass dome ceiling was recently renovated and is worth a look inside. Just to the west, on one of many pedestrian streets, you will find a great place to try typical Valencian dishes prepared by a quality and knowledgeable chef: Restaurante Navarro (C/Arzobispo Mayoral, 5, Valencia 46002; phone: 96 352 96 23). To the east of this plaza, walking along Calle de las Barcas (called such because allegedly in olden days the sea once reached here), you will see a lot of impressive building facades, not the least of which is the Edificio del Banco de Valencia. To the north of the Banco de Valencia shoots out Calle del Poeta Querol, Valencia's equivalent of the "Golden Mile". (It is there that you will find the Baroque Palacio del Marqués de dos Aguas, which includes the Museo de la Cerámica.) And starting at the foot of the Bank is a pedestrian shopping area leading east into the Colón shopping area (including the beautiful Mercado de Colón). For more on Valencia's shopping geography, see this guest post by Chic Soufflé.

The largest of the three, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento is often dressed up for
numerous events and public exhibits but also by the regular flower stands.

Valencia's Central Post Office in the historic Mail and Telegraph Building

The roof of the Post Office is worth a peak inside, which is free since this is an
ordinary functioning post office. This is also a peaceful place to sit and take a break.

The Banco de Valencia is one of many impressively decorated building facades in this area.

Located just to the northeast of the Plaza del Ayuntamiento is the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas,
which is a must visit if you are interested in Baroque interior design and the history of Valencian ceramics.

Before continuing on north to the Plaza de la Reina, turn west on Calle de María Cristina to head towards the Mercat Central de València. This beautiful, main market is located in a modern building built between 1914 and 1928, which is easily one of the largest and most impressive still-functioning marketplace buildings in Spain. I'll save a more in depth discussion of it for later, but must say a couple of things about it here. First, it is a must visit, but you have to go in the morning (only open in the morning, until 3PM; closed on Sundays) and I'd avoid Mondays when the fish market is closed. Opposite the Market is La Lonja de la Seda, the 15th century Silk Market. Impressive if for no other reason than that it is an old, historic building in Spain that is _not_ religious in nature, the interior of this building is breath-taking, and I highly recommend the tour, since the history and iconography inside is really interesting. Rounding out this whirlwind detour is La Plaça Redona, a.k.a. the Round Square. There is little more to this square than its peculiar shape, but it is also home to market stands which sell traditional handmade products.

Inside the Mercat Central de València, both an architectural and cornucopian splendor.

See my entry on the Pardal i cotorra for some fun lore on the Market and
the nearby Iglesia de los Santos Juanes

The gargoyles of the Lonja, which stare across at the Mercat Central

A round square? Yep, the Plaza Redonda located a block off Calle de San Vicente Mártir
in between the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and the Plaza de la Reina.

The recently restored baroque Iglesia de San Martín is also worth a visit, and is located on
Calle de San Vicente Mártir between Plaza del Ayuntamiento and Plaza de la Reina.

Evidence for the descent in popularity of los Borgia:
In the 17th century these 15th century frescos,
commissioned by a Borgia, were covered up,
only to be uncovered again in 2004.

Historian's digression: The key to understanding what I will call "la Valencia profunda" is to think back to 1492 and its many cultural and economic ramifications for Spain. 1492? "What?!?" you might say. Well back in the 15th century Valencia was a cultural center not only for Spain, but for all of Europe. I have had many a medieval historian friend pass through Valencia and "go gaga" over all of its fascinating historical landmarks and namesakes for this period. For historians of science, for example, Valencia was one of two major ports of entry for important scientific ideas imported from the East and Mideast (the other port city being in Italy). Thanks to the silk trade among other things (whose importance is marked by the building of La Lonja), the city was also an economic powerhouse. (Another case in point, Valencia's most famous family, the House of Borgia, was at the height of its power during this period, giving the world two popes and investing in the city's local buildings and arts.) So when ~~tanto monta, monta tanto~~ Isabel and Fernando (through Christopher Columbus) opened the way to the West, the New World and all its riches, they were essentially undercutting Valencia's importance as a port to the East.

... In the next post I will continue through the city's center, where the we turn to those two oh-so-important genres of Spanish tourism: religious sites and art museums. And then we'll shift to one of the city's oldest and most vibrant neighborhoods, El Carmen...

Street Art in Valencia: Escif

2012-02-06T00:00:00.205+01:00

Just in case you think the only art in Valencia are fallas, I'll mention another very different kind of art you can find on the streets of Valencia during Fallas: street art. Thanks in large part to one incredibly talented, very witty, and oh-so-cool Valencian street artist, Escif (no, not the European Spinal Cord Injury Federation), Valencia is experiencing something of a Renaissance in street art.

Before I begin my love-fest over Escif's art, I should first say that there is a lot of good street art around central Valencia which I imagine, suppose, or suspect is actual by other equally talented artists. Not being an expert myself in differentiating the subtleties of their different styles and works, I hope you (and they) will forgive me for putting here some other works that I've run across around town but couldn't say who their maker is…

You can find this amazing little building just off the Plaça de Tossal in El Carmen.

Saw this mural on Carrer de Quart.

Not far from one of my favorite Escif murals (paella, shown below), this
funny mural shows the meat repentance of Lisa Simpson.

Though to my untrained eye it kinda looks like Escif,
I don't think this is by him. This mural appeared in the same spot
as this next one shown below used to be.

I took this a while ago and I think it's no longer there. Apparently
it's by Valencian street artist Hyuro. I'm mostly certain this was opposite
the Santa Catalina church in a plaza not far from Plaza de la Reina.

Dear street artists, please forgive me my ignorance. I love your work, but don't have time to follow it closely enough to do it full justice in a blog entry. Please feel free to post comments and clarifications to the further enrichment of me and all my readers. (Thank yous so far: Escrito en la Pared)

Fairey with copies of his most famous work, "Hope".

In case you ~~have been living under a rock~~ were unaware, in the last twenty years there has been a revolution in street art. It is no longer just teenage delinquents graffiti tagging their code names on empty shop or metro stop walls. There is a new class of artists who have sought to elevate graffiti to the level of an art and, for some, a social message about modern living. My personal favorite street artist (that is, before I discovered Escif) was Shepard Fairey and his Obey Giant project, made famous by his Obama "Hope" poster. Recently, the most (in)famous of street artists is probably Banksy, the subject of various highly publicized stunts, an alleged street artist war, and an interesting documentary (Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)) that itself generated some controversy. This kind of grandstanding and flamboyant egotism seems to be a trade weakness, but you can kind of forgive them… not only because their art works are often incredible and brilliantly provocative. But also because graffiti art can be so transient, add it to that class of "art ephemera", given the nature of their canvases ("private property") and less-than-pleased officials or building owners who often quickly cover them up with wall paint. Public recognition is pretty much these artists' only coin, and while not all deserve recognition, those who do _really_ deserve it.

I snapped this photo of a Shepard Fairey Obey "product" on a billboard a few years
ago in the North End of Boston. Look carefully throughout the US, they're all over the place.

Which brings us to Escif. I can't say I know a lot about him (or is it her?) beyond what I've gleaned from all the other gushing fans slash bloggers who've discovered his work. ("Escif… so hot right now… Escif.") He got started back in 1997, though probably didn't really get going until the early 2000s. He currently seems to be on some kind of international tour, since his works are popping up in cities around the world, including Brazil. I first learned about Escif from Hola Valencia back in 2009 right around when I returned to Valencia. Other bloggers and art-savvy writers periodically mention him, always impressed by his keen sense of visual irony. The very cool Spanish blog Escrito en la pared ("written on the wall") first took notice of some of his work in 2009, and then did a follow-up post on him in 2010. The online magazine Complex has covered his recent street murals in Spain as well as some excellent entries he did spoofing the collapse of the euro for the 2011 Fame Festival in Italy. The Nuart Street Art Festival's blog has posted visual updates on his work. In an interview for the Unurth Street Art website, Escif mentions some other Valencian street artists to keep an eye out for: "On_ly (as well with other members of XLF), [...] DOCS (Graffilia), and recently [...] Hyuro."

A video of Escif working a large sidewall of an abandoned building.
You can find more of his work video documented here.

So far as I know, Escif is not implicated in any of the grandstanding behavior or public scrutiny surrounding Banksy and Fairy. Indeed, by Escif's own admission his graffiti work (in contrast with more public exhibits by "graphics artists" like Shepard Fairey) could never become high art in the conventional gallery sense of the term:

"What gets put in museums, galleries, magazines and press releases is not graffiti. Graffiti as a concept implies transgression of “public” space, and because of this its institutional adaptation ceases to have value. What makes graffiti graffiti is not its aesthetic qualities, nor the distress under which it was executed. What transforms graffiti into graffiti is precisely the conditions under which its engagement is made. A graffiti writer can exhibit his work in museums and galleries, but this does not transform his work into graffiti. Graffiti is on the street, in its natural condition, where it will die."

Still (or maybe because of this) his work is quite amazing and particularly brilliant in its thought-provoking provocation. When we are in an art gallery, we are in one frame of mind about what we expect to see. When you are walking through the windy alleys of a city, especially a rundown neighborhood, you are in another mindset. His art inhabits that second mindset, not seeking to be admired out-of-context or "on its own merits", but rather in a context where it is arguing with other street symbols and visual cues, maybe even annoying you.

You might recognize this from my recent Paella entry, this mural
can be found on Carrer de Baix in El Carmen. NOT ESCIF!
Escrito en la pared has informed me that this "Rabbit and Cock"
is by Erica il cane, who is now tied with Escif as one of my favorites!!!

For those of you who still might think such art is best lumped together with the other graffiti tag that gives urban spaces that run down negligent look, please think again. Escif provides a strong argument for such street art in a profile he provided for Textura, Valencia: Street Art (2009), a book that I'm still hoping I'll get as a present one of these days:

"I see graffiti as a necessary symptom of life in contemporary cities. A painted wall represents a way of using the city that is not thought about socially (though it becomes more so every day). It seems very interesting to me that people that live in a city do not settle for using it according to imposed rules; they invent new ways of utilizing it."

In some respects we are still recovering from a Modern movement, of quite simple and austere building facades. We look at dead Roman ruins and forget that those dull stone columns were often painted bright, vibrant colors. Escif and his peers are calling us (back) to a new, more vibrant urban future. A world where building walls are loaded with visual content that is constantly changing and constantly calling into question the fixedness of our surroundings and the authority of those surroundings' owners.

That Escif is home-grown in Valencia I consider a real "lujo" (luxury) of living in my adopted city, since his works add one more element of pleasant surprise as you wander the streets here. Scouting for Escif works in El Carmen, which is the highest density zone for his and others' graffiti artworks, has become a game for me that I highly recommend to all of you who live here, or who plan to visit. You never know when you're going to turn the corner of some alley you haven't been down before, and suddenly find one of his murals. (How many times have I beat myself up for not carrying the camera!)

Here is a selection of the photos I've taken over the last couple of years:

Two impressive murals located on Plaça de Tossal in the heart of El Carmen,
the one on the left clearly Escif, the one on the right showing Moses with "€"
and "$" Commandments in hand is by Italian street artist Blu.

This Escif piece, the people with ladder in the middle, was on Carrer de Baix in between
the Paella and Lisa Simpson ones shown above. According to Escrito en la Pared, the street artist "Blast"
is the author of the upside down headless man on the right.

Another Escif whose location right opposite of Valencia's main
Cathedral means it's likely you will see it if you are alert.

I saw this Escif on Calle de Roteros as I was walking east from
the Torres de Serranos into the heart of El Carmen.

I discovered this image by "Rosh" on Calle del Conde de Montornés (not far from the Fundación Bancaja)...

... followed closely by this mural...

... and this one, too ...

... and then I turned around and looked up, and discovered the massive mural
by Escif which you'll recognize from his video embedded above.

Please feel free to email me any photos that you've taken of Valencian street art, and if possible the location where you found it. I'll add them to this entry with periodic updates. Thanks!

________________ADDENDUM: THE VIEWER'S CHOICE________________

Escif murals harvested from Escrito en la Pared:

You might have seen this Escif painting opposite the San Martín church
on a small street in between Plaza de la Reina and Plaza del Ayuntamiento

This Escif is deep in the heart of Escif territory,
on Carrer de Quart in El Carmen

Thank yous to Gerry Blackwell for emailing me these beautiful additions for this post on Valencian street art:

Valencian mural found near the IVAM, photo by Gerry Blackwell

Valencian mural found in El Carmen, photo by Gerry Blackwell

Series of Valencian murals located on or near Calle de Moro Zeit, photo by Gerry Blackwell

Side-angle shot on two incredible murals found in El Carmen
not far from Torres de Quart, photo by Gerry Blackwell

One of those murals shown just above, found in El Carmen
not far from Torres de Quart, photo by Gerry Blackwell

Chic Soufflé took this instagram in a small plaza not far from the Mercat Central,
and tweeted it on her account here.

Fallas, a photo teaser, part 2: ... And then they burn it all!

2012-02-03T00:01:00.015+01:00

In part one of this teaser series of entries on Fallas I went on about the centerpiece of the festival: the hundreds of art works or "fallas" you will see all throughout the city. But it's not all about the fallas. Fallas is also about falleros and their families, who this weekend will be presenting the "fallera mayor" and "infantil" for each "casal" to the public, thus officially commencing the Fallas season here.

So Fallas is also about them and their many parades, ceremonies, seasonal snacks, fireworks, and fire, fire, fire! So let me continue on from where I left off... This was a family of falleros that I stopped on the Pont de Fusta to take a photo... I post it for you so that you can see the kind of detail on their traditional fallero outfits.

It is especially fun seeing so many kids throughout the city dressed up in fallero attire! Note the spiral hair braid, which is the traditional Valencian hair arrangement (and which must have been the inspiration for Princess Leia's Star Wars do). They wear a crescent comb in the back of their heads, from which they drape the veils as you can see here.

Here is a group of falleros, i.e. one of the many casals (the neighborhood group which hosts each falla), parading to the Virgin with their ofrenda.

"La ofrenda" – The offering of flowers to the Virgin in the Plaza de la Virgen. It happens on the afternoons of March 17th and 18th. All the falleros throughout Valencia parade to the center of town, the falleras carrying flowers for the Virgin Mary.

Here you can see how they take the flowers and place them around the Virgin Mary wooden structure so as to form her dress.

And below here you can see a "before" shot of the Virgin's scaffolding. In all honesty, this religious ceremony is a fairly late addition to the Fallas festival, according to one source added during the Franco dictatorship in an effort to ~~cover~~ clean up the frequently caustic politic commentary traditions of the older festival. Maybe this is why the Ofrenda ceremony still seems largely out of sync with the non-religious activities that characterize the rest of the festivities.

Here is one example of the hundreds, if not thousands of "churrería" stands that have popped up all over central Valencia this week... all selling buñuelos and churros for the fallas spectators. [Guiri alert!: In 2010, when I had first gotten back to Valencia after having been away for 8 years, I was shocked during Fallas by the sudden appearance of mojito and caipirinha stands. These are _not_ traditional drinks, neither for Valencia nor for Spain. These have appeared in recent years to ~~take advantage of~~ accommodate all the drunk foreigners visiting from out of town. The falleros are surely getting plenty drunk, too, but probably not on these drinks.]

Here is a guy making "bunyols de carabassa" ("buñuelos de calabaza" in Spanish), a fried pumpkin dough dessert, which is a typical street vendor snack during Fallas. It's delicious! I highly recommend you try it, and make sure you get them fresh, just pulled from the fryer and not sitting cold.

Here I am trying the other typical staple during Fallas - "un bocata blanc i negre". It is a sandwich that all the fallero tents cook for their members, which has "morcilla" (black pudding, a.k.a. blood sausage), "longaniza" (a white sausage), and haba beans. (This blanc i negre was eaten at Baldo, an excellent sandwich restaurant located just off the Plaza de Ayuntamiento near all the action.) I'm also dressed up in typical Fallas attire with the blue and white "mocador" ("pañuelo" in Spanish, or scarf) and "blusó" ("blusón"), a traditional overshirt spectators would wear.

And of course what Valencian event can happen without people making paella valenciana? Here you can see the falleros preparing paella the classic way, over an open fire on the street, for their community dinner together next to the falla. I cannot overemphasize how much the falleros basically live, eat, and don't sleep together for the four main days of Fallas festivities.

The final major element of Fallas are the "Castillos", translated literally "castles," but which refer to the nightly fireworks contest. Every night, on March 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, there is a show over the river… each show successively longer and more grandiose, culminating in the March 18th, "la nit del foc", "the night of fire."

The best fireworks companies from around the world compete to put on the best show… and the result is a show which rivals (or maybe surpasses) the best 4th of July fireworks shows in the U.S. This was for a long time an irritating reality for me, being married to a Valencian when we lived in the States. Every time she and I went to a 4th of July Fireworks show, my wife would say afterwards, "That was alright, but it was really short. I though it would be more impressive." For our last 4th of July in the States, before moving back, I took her to the Washington, DC show, which that year was the third largest in the U.S. Finally, she said she thought it would live up to Valencia's standards. (Note, however, that she didn't say it was better.) The 2010 nit del foc fireworks show was put on by Caballer, who everyone says is one of the best in the world.

One of the things I've been struck by with all of the fireworks shows, both the city's large nightly ones, and the fallas' individual smaller displays, is how much lower to the ground they are. While parts of the shows involve the high in the sky fireworks more familiar to 4th of July shows, those are alternated with segments that are low to the ground... fireworks going off at what seems like only 100 feet above!

And then, on the last night, March 19th... they burn it all!

Yep, that's right. The last stage of the festivities is "la nit de la cremà", the night of the burning. This is when they burn all the fallas across the town, even the prize-winning, hundreds of thousands of euros fallas. (Pictured burning here is a ninot in the Ayuntamiento falla.)

There is a sequence to the burning tradition. At 10PM each falla burns its falla infantil, "early" so that the kids can watch. At 10:30PM the falla infantil which won this year is burned, and then at 11PM they burn the Ayuntamiento's falla infantil. And then they repeat that order later with the falla mayor: 12AM all the fallas burn except two, 12:30AM the winning falla mayor burns, and then 1AM the Ayuntamiento puts on a show and burns its falla. With each cremà, the falla first gives a brief fireworks show, and then lights a string of "traca" fireworks which explode in a series leading up to light the falla, starting the ~~bon~~fire. Wild!

The most impressive part of la cremà is the extraordinary preparation and fire control that is exercised... here you can see firefighters ("bomberos") with their water hose keeping the burning fallas under control. With every falla burning there is a stationed firefighter squad. Which is why there are firefighters from all over the world invited to Valencia to help out... including from the United States! (This careful control of the falla bonfires is in stark contrast to the kids who have been throwing petardos, hand fireworks, all around the streets for several weeks, without cease. There is no place in Spain more (in)famous for its fireworks culture and insanity than Valencia.)

... But believe it or not this is all just a small sampling of the full fallas experience. I've only shown you a fraction of the fallas for that year. A smaller fraction of all the falleros and their outfits. And you can't experience a mascletà properly over the internet. Your bones have to shake and your ears rattle from the vibrations to know what one is really like. For that matter, I haven't even taken you into the next level of explanation, the minutia of detail in attire and its significance, the neuroses of obsession in ritual and superstition with which falleros manage to infuse the whole event.

¡Ay, caramba!: Last year there was a debate over whether falleras by tradition _had_
to wear the "banda" sash (shown on the right), or were _allowed_ to wear a newer fashion,
the so-called "caramba" (on the left). You can get a taste of this level of Fallas gossip
and intrigue at the Fallas Valencia page of Las Provincias.

Still hankering for more? Maay-be I'll post some videos I took of Fallas 2010 a little later down the road... so stay tuned! But what you really ought to do is come here and experience it yourself!

And we are already starting to get a sneak-peak at this year's 2012 Fallas at the
Exposición del Ninot, which you can see images of at this El País photo album.