The butterfly arrives in Spain
(La mariposa llega en España)

The Country

High plateaux and mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees and the Sierra Nevada dominate mainland Spain. Running from these heights are several major rivers such as the Ebro, the Duero, the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. The Balearic Islands lie offshore in the Mediterranean while the Canary Islands are to be found off the African coast.

Spain is a constitutional monarchy, with a hereditary monarch and a bicameral parliament, the Cortes or National Assembly. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia have special status with their own language and other rights under the constitution of 1978 which enshrines respect for linguistic and cultural diversity within a united Spain. The country is divided into 17 autonomous communities (regions) which all have their own directly elected authorities.

Spain’s main economic sectors include agriculture (especially fruit and vegetables, olive oil and wine), fish, textiles, automobiles and tourism.

Famous People

‘El Cid’ Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (1040-1099) a Castilian noble, remarkable soldier and national hero. He requested that his horse Babieca be buried with him St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) Saint and mystic

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) writer, his novel Don Quixote, is one of the earliest and most important European novels. He was badly injured fighting at the Battle of Lepanto, He had his arm amputated and he was kept as a slave in Algiers for five years. He returned to Madrid only after his family paid a ransom

Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) court painter to Philip IV. His portrait of the Spanish Royal family Las Meninas, with its reflections of the King and Queen and Velasquez himself, is one of the most intriguing portraits ever painted

Francesco Goya (1746-1828) court painter and creator of the etchings Los Caprichos and The Disasters of War and the Black Paintings. His work explores horror or as he wrote himself: the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society

Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba (1762-1802) posed for many of Goya’s paintings. She may have been the model for the la maja paintings

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) philosopher, who was concerned with knowledge, history and reality, and who influenced the existentialists

Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) poet and playwright murdered by Nationalists in the first days of the civil war

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) artist. The son of an art teacher, Pablo Picasso went on to become one of the greatest modern painters of the 20th Century. He was hugely prolific. He made countless drawings and paintings, scupltures and objet d'art. He was central to several modern art movements (such as cubism) and made sculptures out of found objects. He even drew in the butter during meals

Luis Bunuel (1900-1993): Surrealist filmmaker, who made Un Chien Andalou with Salvador Dali in 1929. This and L'Age d'Or have been highly influential on later filmmakers.

Montserrat Caballe (born 1933) Opera singer and duettist with Freddie Mercury on Barcelona

Placido Domingo (born 1941) opera singer and conductor

Penelope Cruz (born 1974) Actress

Painting

Altamira

The Altamira cave in Cantabria (30 km from Santander) is nearly 300 metres long. In it, animals including bison, horses, deer and possibly boar have been drawn with charcoal, ochre (a kind of soil) and haematite (a mineral) of animals. The artists' hands have been stencilled on the cave's ceiling. Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, an amateur archaeologist, discovered these caves in 1879. His eight-year old daughter had taken him to see them. The paintings were of such high quality and so well preserved that other archaeologists were sceptical and even accused him of forgery. Due to the discovery and dating of caves in France they changed their minds, but Santuola had died by that time.

Guernica

Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 for the Paris International Exhibition. It is a very large oil painting: 3.5 m by 7.8 metres. Painted in blacks greys and whites, it depicts a Nazi bomb raid on the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The painting was first shown in the Spanish Pavilion, and then toured widely. It brought the civil war to the attention of the world.

Music

In the 16th century Spanish music was polyphonic (with several voices). Classical Spanish music is exemplified by Tomas Luis de Victoria, who worked for many years in Rome. However from the 17th Century classical music dwindled and interest shifted to light operas and folk music.

Flamenco

Flamenco music has a dance, a singer and at least one guitar. It is Andalusian folk music and probably began in Cadiz. The origins of Flamenco are a little murky because it came from societies with oral cultures (where history and stories are spoken and not written down).

Landmarks

The Alhambra The Court of the Muslim rulers of Granada. 'Alhambra' means the red fortress.

Cordoba: the Mezquita This 'mosque' has become the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Cordoba

The Sagrada Familia, Barcelona Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect, was asked to complete a neo gothic church in 1883. He altered every aspect of it, creating one of Europe's most unconventional churches and most bizarre buildings. He ended up living on site for fourteen years. He had only finished one tower when he died in 1926. Since his death more towers have been completed according to his designs and construction continues to this day.

Museo Guggenheim Bilboa Designed by Frank Gehry, this museum roughly resembles a ship. The walls are twisting , and clad in metallic titanium to suggest fish scales.

El Escorial At one time a monastery and royal palace, the Escorial is located about 45 km from the centre of Madrid. It is now a museum and art gallery.

Food and Drink

Cooking in Spain reflects both its Roman (pork, lentils and olives) and Muslim past; the Berber conquerors brought sugar cane, rice and citrus fruit trees; oranges and lemons with them. Seafood is as important as meat and different small dishes or 'tapas', are eaten with wine, sherry or beer.

Much Spanish cooking is known in the rest of Europe i.e. paella (chicken, seafood and rice) from Valencia, tortilla (potato omelette) Serrano ham and chorizo (spicy sausage). However the different regions have particular dishes, still unfamiliar to those outside the region. For instance, Castile is famous for garlic soup and suckling pig. Zarangollo (made with courgettes) comes from Murcia. Catalonia has Catalan cream and the Basque country is known for 'txangurro relleno' (spider crab), 'marmitako' (a fish stew), hake and clams, idiazabal cheese and wine like txakoli.

Sweet dishes like churros (fried dough sticks) chocolate, flans and custards are found all over Spain.

Events and Festivals

The Fallas

Many originally Catholic festivals are celebrated with fireworks and costumed processions. In Valencia the fallas is one of the most uproarious. Carpenters used to burn their wood shavings the night before the feast of St Joseph. Nowadays huge papier-mâché figures are carried through the town and then set alight.

San Fermin

A weeklong festival in Pamplona. During this bulls run in the street chased by men, there is a procession (with the effigy of Saint Fermin) all night dancing and fireworks. This festival is portrayed in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises.

Bullfighting is a particularly passionate event. The bullfight is a spectacle, a type of sacrificial ritual, in which a matador play fights against a bull in a ring. Bullfights are dramatic, colourful and for some cruel. The matador wears a trouser-suit with tight knee-length trousers and pink socks. The suits are often embroidered with gold sequins.

Discover more about Spain at: www.spain.info