The one with two lives

Poetry consists of “making notes in the margins of that photo album that is life”.

Emilio Quintana

Above: Archidona, Málaga Province, España

Sunday 1 September 2024

Eskişehir, Türkiye

In a sense, the poet lives not one life, but two:

The life of he who holds the pen that makes the poem and the poem which has a life of its own that creates the life of the poet.

People have travelled throughout human history.

Although humans have been travelling for tens of thousands of years, the luxury of tourism is relatively new.

Tourists choose to travel, voluntarily spending their leisure time abroad for pleasure.

Above: Tourists at the Temple of Apollo, Delphi, Greece

This kind of travel is very different to that of a priest making a pilgrimage or a refugee fleeing war.

Above: Syrian Civil War refugee camp, Kilis Camp, Türkiye

Travel outside a person’s local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes, who at times travelled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings and works of art, learn new languages, experience new cultures, enjoy pristine nature and to taste different cuisine.

As early as Shulgi (r. 2094 – 2046 BC), however, kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building way stations for travellers. 

Above: Cylinder seal of Shulgi, second king of the 3rd dynasty of Ur

Travelling for pleasure can be seen in Egypt as early on as 1500 BC.

Above: The Giza Necropolis (Egypt) is the oldest of the ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

Ancient Roman tourists during the Republic (509 – 27 BC) would visit spas and coastal resorts such as Baiae.

Above: Ancient Roman itinerarium (travel guide), 1st century

They were popular among the rich.

The Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or at sea and travelled to their villa urbana or villa maritima.

Above: Thermal baths, Settore di Sosandra, Baia, Italia

Numerous villas were located in Campania, around Rome and in the northern part of the Adriatic as in Barcola near Trieste. 

Above: Positano, Campania, Italia

Above: Barcola, Trieste, Italia

Pausanias (110 – 180) wrote his Description of Greece in the 2nd century.

Above: The beginning of the Description of Greece manuscript, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Firenze (Florence), Italia

In ancient China, nobles sometimes made a point of visiting Mount Tai and, on occasion, all five Sacred Mountains.

Above: South Gate to Heaven, Mount Tai, Shandong Province, China

Leisure travel came into its own in the mid 17th century.

Above: A Japanese tourist consulting a tour guide and a guide book from Akizato Ritō’s Miyako meisho zue (“A Tour Guide to the Famous Places of the Capital“)(1787)

By the post-classical era, many religions, including Christianity, Buddhism and Islam had developed traditions of pilgrimage. 

The Canterbury Tales (1390), which uses a pilgrimage as a framing device, remains a classic of English literature. 

Journey to the West (1592), which holds a seminal place in Chinese literature, has a Buddhist pilgrimage at the center of its narrative.

Above: Earliest edition of Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, 16th century

In medieval Italy, Petrarch wrote an allegorical account of his 1336 ascent of Mont Ventoux that praised the act of travelling and criticized frigida incuriositas (a ‘cold lack of curiosity‘).

Above: Italian poet Francesco di Petracco (1304 – 1374)

This account is regarded as one of the first known instances of travel being undertaken for its own sake. 

Above: Mont Ventoux, Provence, France

The Burgundian poet Michault Taillevent (1390 – 1458) later composed his own horrified recollections of a 1430 trip through the Jura Mountains.

Above:  Early 16th century Gothic edition of Michault Taillevent’s 
Le Passe Temps

Above: Creux du Van, Canton Neuchâtel, Switzerland

In China, ‘travel record literature‘ became popular during the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279). 

Travel writers such as Fan Chengda (1126 – 1193) and Xu Xiake (1587 – 1641) incorporated a wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing, while the ‘daytrip essay‘ Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose. 

Above: Chinese writer Xu Xiake

Above: Chinese poet Su Shi

By this time, Europeans had been “discovering” the world for 150 years.

Above: The Grand Tourist, Pompeo Batoni (1778)

Montaigne, Bacon and Descartes waxed lyrical about the importance of travel.

Above: A plate of the ruins of the Acropolis from Mark Twain’s Grand Tour, a five-month 20,000 mile excursion of Europe, the Middle East, and the Holy Land satirized in his Innocents Abroad (1867)

Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (1533 – 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance.

He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre.

His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight.

Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers.

His massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.

During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author.

The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that “I am myself the matter of my book.” was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent.

In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt that began to emerge at that time.

He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, ”Que sais-je?” (“What do I know?“).

Above: French philosopher Michel de Montaigne

In 1578 Montaigne, whose health had always been excellent, started suffering from painful kidney stones, a tendency he inherited from his father’s family.

Throughout this illness he would have nothing to do with doctors or drugs. 

From 1580 to 1581 Montaigne travelled in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, partly in search of a cure, establishing himself at Bagni di Lucca, where he took the waters.

Above: Bagni di Lucca, Toscana, Italia

His journey was also a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto, to which he presented a silver relief (depicting him, his wife, and their daughter, kneeling before the Madonna) considering himself fortunate that it should be hung on a wall within the shrine. 

Above: Basilica Pontificia della Santa Casa di Loreto, Ancona, Italia

He kept a Journal, recording regional differences and customs – and a variety of personal episodes, including the dimensions of the stones he succeeded in expelling.

This was published much later, in 1774, after its discovery in a trunk, that is displayed in his tower.

During a visit to the Vatican that Montaigne described in his travel journal, the Essais were examined by Sisto Fabri, who served as Master of the Sacred Palace under Pope Gregory XIII.

Above: Pope Gregorio XIII (né Ugo Boncompagni) (1502 – 1585)

After Fabri examined Montaigne’s Essais, the text was returned to him on 20 March 1581.

Above: Flag of Vatican City

Montaigne had apologized for references to the pagan notion of “fortuna“, as well as for writing favorably of Julian the Apostate and of heretical poets.

He was released to follow his own conscience in making changes to the text.

Above: Antioch coin image of Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (331 – 363)

Montaigne spent years roaming Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

His 1580 Essays are riddled with reflections on travel.

He argues travel shows us the diversity and variety of the world, forcing the soul to continually observe “new and unknown things“.

Travel is beneficial.

It teaches us and improves our minds.

Considering new and unfamiliar things forces us to expand and rethink what we know.

“The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own.“

There are other lives beyond our own.

Within ourselves there are other lives yet to be discovered.

A statesman, scientist, philosopher and author, Francis Bacon is generally regarded as the first major English essayist.

Above: English politician-philosopher Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)

The first edition of his “Essayes” appeared in 1597, not long after the publication of Montaigne’s influential “Essais” – masterpieces of rhetoric never surpassed.

By 1625, when this version of “Of Travel” appeared in the third edition of “Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall,” European travel was already part of the education of many young aristocrats.

Consider the value of Bacon’s advice to the present-day traveller: 

• Keep a diary.

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education.

In the elder a part of experience.

He that travels into a country, before he has some entrance into the language, goes to school, and not to travel.

That young men travel under some tutor or grave servant, I allow well, so that he be such a one that has the language, and has been in the country before, whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the country where they go, what acquaintances they are to seek, what exercises or discipline the place yields, for else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little.

It is a strange thing, that in sea-voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries.

But in land travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it, as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation:

Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use.

The things to be seen and observed are:

• the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors
• the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes
• church councils
• the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant
• the walls and fortifications of cities and towns
• the havens and harbours
• antiquities and ruins
• libraries
• colleges
• disputations and lectures, where any are
• shipping and navies
• houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities
• armories, arsenals and magazines
• exchanges, bourses and warehouses
• exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like:
• comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort
• treasuries of jewels and robes
• cabinets and rarities
• and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go, after all which the tutors or servants ought to make diligent inquiry.
• As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them: Yet are they not to be neglected.“

Bacon advises people to keep a journal of what they see and experience, which is good advice as well.

Trips last only so long.

Memories of the finer details can fade.

If you write them down, though, you’ll be able to re-experience the trip later, through your first-impression eyes.

And don’t just write down a few things on the way over there and then drop it.

Keep it up throughout your trip where you’ll be seeing new things all the time.

See historical buildings where “courts of princes” or “courts of justice” took place.

See churches, monasteries, monuments, town walls and fortifications, harbours and shipyards, ruins, and colleges and libraries.

You might be able to see fencing demonstrations or horse shows, though nowadays you’re likely not to run into many “capital executions“.

You can take in plays and attend talks, see artifacts, and do whatever other activities of interest your guide or friend recommended are “musts” for the place.  

I live two lives:

The life experienced in the moment and the life expressed from the memory of that moment.

• Rely on a guide.

Overseas travel during Francis Bacon’s time wasn’t something just anyone could do, and without air travel, it wasn’t something one did on a lark for a quick vacation, either.

It took a lot longer to get somewhere, so once there, you were going to stay a while.

He advises travellers to have a tutor in the language or a servant who has been to the place before as a guide.

Today this advice still can apply, though you don’t have to hire someone to go with you.

Maybe you know someone who has been to the country or city before and can give you dos and don’ts.

You can have a travel agent put together an itinerary for you.

When you get there, you can hire a local guide or find tours at the local tourism office.

Bacon’s point is to:

Draw on others’ knowledge of the place before you go, so you don’t end up walking around blindfolded (“hooded“) and not able to fully understand the place while you experience it.

In addition to hiring a tutor and keeping a journal, Bacon suggests using a guidebook to navigate new places.

He recommends moving around as much as possible and cautions against staying too long in one area.

“If you will have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, this you must do:

First, as was said, he must have some entrance into the language before he goes.

Then he must have such a servant, or tutor, as knows the country, as was likewise said:

Let him carry with him also some card or book, describing the country where he travels, which will be a good key to his inquiry.

Let him keep also a diary.

Let him not stay long in one city or town, more or less as the place deserves, but not long:

Nay, when he stays in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town to another, which is a great adamant of acquaintance.

Let him sequester himself from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places where there is good company of the nation where he travels:

Let him, upon his moves from one place to another, procure recommendation to some person of quality residing in the place, that he may use his favour in those things he desires to see or know, thus he may abridge his travel with much profit.“

I cannot claim the honour of being your guide, gentle reader.

At best, I can only pique your curiosity.

• Learn the language.

Learning any of the local language that you can before you depart only helps you in the daily details of getting from point A to point B and finding the absolute essentials: food and drink, a place to sleep, and lavatory facilities, though Bacon was too genteel to point these items out specifically. 

Above: Frontage of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in Johannesburg showing all 11 official languages

As a language teacher, I, of course, cannot help myself from recommending that we should become as much as the polyglot as we can.

The more languages we can read, speak and write, the more rich the tapestry of our lives.

Above: A multilingual sign outside the mayor’s office in Novi Sad, Serbia, written in the four official languages of the city: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak and Pannonian Rusyn

As much as I praise the efficiency of linguistic crutches such as Google Translate, the melody and magic of another language that is not your own becomes lost in electronic transmission and translation.

Above: Google Translate logo

Words have rhythm and resonance, sound and soul and spirit, that no electronic aid can ever fully appreciate or reciprocate.

Words have lives of their own.

They are more than just tools of convenience to facilitate the procurement of a life’s basic bodily needs.

They are the expression of all that makes us human.

They are the expression of what makes a life worth living.

Above: Cuneiform tablet of merchant’s goods, Ur, (2100 – 2000 BC) Harvard Semitic Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA – Cuneiform is the first known form of written language, but spoken language predates writing by at least many tens of thousands of years.

The man you meet on the street is a mere shadow of the man you read on the screen.

And vice versa.

The mind of the moment is a mess.

The mind of the memory is a masterpiece, if that piece of the mind is masterfully manifested.

• Avoid the company of fellow countrymen. 

Don’t isolate yourself with your travelling group or people from your home country.

Granted that communication and understanding is far easier with one’s countrymen than with complete strangers whose babble baffles us.

But one cannot know another’s heart nor can another know yours if a common language is not used between the speakers.

I am fortunate that the present lingua franca of the planet is English but I could better help my students if I understood the thought processes of their language so as to comprehend the difficulties that my language presents them.

Plus if I spoke more Turkish the basic procurement of what I need would be far less problematic.

Above: Map of the main subgroups of Turkish dialects across Southeast Europe and the Middle East

• Interact with the locals.

Get recommendations from residents of the place you are visiting for what to see, do and eat.

Your travel will be richer when you follow advice from locals because you’ll find places that you might not have otherwise found.

“As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the secretaries and employed men of ambassadors, for so in travelling in one country he shall suck the experience of many:

Let him also see and visit eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great name abroad, that he may be able to tell how the life agrees with the fame.

For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided:

They are commonly for mistresses, health, place and words.

And let a man beware how he keeps company with choleric and quarrelsome persons, for they will engage him into their own quarrels.

When a traveller returns home, let him not leave the countries where he has travelled altogether behind him.

But maintain a correspondence by letters with those of his acquaintance which are of most worth.

And let his travel appear rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture.

And in his discourse, let him be rather advised in his answers, than forward to tell stories:

And let it appear that he does not change his country manners for those of foreign parts, but only prick in some flowers of that he has learned abroad into the customs of his own country.“

For a 17th century aristocrat, it was probably easier to make acquaintance with embassy employees, but an aristocrat didn’t have travel agents or the Internet, either, to find out about destinations.

It is definitely good advice to be on good behavior while travelling, though.  

I wish I had a thousand lifetimes so I could live in a thousand places.

In a way I am living the dream that others do not.

The idea of going off into the unknown to seek adventure holds more than a touch of romance.

From the early heroic navigators such as Ferdinand Magellan to the fictional traveller Phileas Fogg, circumnavigators of our planet have always captured the imagination of adventurous souls.

Above: Blue marble view of Earth taken on 7 December 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,400 kilometres (18,300 mi).

It shows Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Nothing can compare with the joy of the open road.

The sense of possibility and adventure brings feelings of exhiliration, long submerged in the workaday routines of home.

Cheap air travel has opened up parts of the globe once reserved for the seriously affluent.

When travelling in far-flung corners of the world, you can escape the demands of modern life in the Western world:

The chores, the clutter, the technology.

Travelling spontaneously means you have the freedom to choose from an infinite spectrum of possibilities.

Those who have experienced independent travel normally catch the bug and long to visit more places, see more places, see more wonders and spend a longer time abroad.

Today, trekking in the hinterland of Rio de Janeiro or diving in the Philippines can be within the grasp of ordinary folk.

Above: Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado with Sugarloaf Mountain and Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Above: Flag of the Philippines

The longing might stem from a fascination left over from childhood with an exotic destination such as Madagascar or Patagonia.

Above: Flag of Madagascar

The motivation might come from a friend’s reminiscences or a TV travelogue or a personal passion for a certain culture or natural habitat.

At some point a vague idea begins to crystallize into an actual possibility.

That is the point at which the purple prose of brochures must be interrupted by hard-headed planning.

The first question is always:

How can I afford such a trip?

Magellan had the backing of the King and Queen of Spain.

Above: Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães (aka Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521)

Phileas Fogg was a gentleman of independent means.

Michael Palin could call on the resources of the BBC.

How can ordinary people possibly make their dreams a reality?

The conventional means to an exciting end is to work and save hard.

A grim spell of working overtime and denying yourself a social life is one route to being able to join a safari in Tanzania, a watersport instructor’s course on the Mediterranean or a bungee jump in New Zealand.

But what if it were possible to skip this stage and head off towards the horizon sooner than that?

Instead of trying to finance the expensive trips advertised in glossy travel brochures, what about trying to find alternative ways of experiencing those same places at a fraction of the cost?

Working abroad is an excellent way to experience a foreign culture from the inside.

It comes down to the fact that we are only on this planet for a finger snap of time.

You can work 9 to 5 in an office or a factory all day, come home, switch on the boob tube and sit there watching Michael Palin travelling the world or….

Above: English entertainer Michael Palin

You can be bold, seize the day and do something amazing.

When we are lying on our deathbed many years from now (hopefully), we will not be saying to ourselves:

“Oh, I wish I had spent more time at that dead-end job and had a little less adventure in my life.“

• Learn from your experiences.

Upon your return, as Bacon points out, your friends aren’t going to want to hear you go on and on ad nauseum about your trip.

Neither should you discard your previous way of life and completely adopt the customs of the place you’ve just returned from.

But definitely do learn from your experience and incorporate knowledge and practices that you’ve picked up to make your life better — at home.)

Some thinkers saw educational travel as a way of turning boys into gentlemen.

This idea was championed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who travelled a great deal himself.

Above: French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)

Travel is a central theme in Rousseau’s Emile (or a treatise on education).

This philosophical novel follows the growth of a boy from birth into adulthood.

Emile’s tutor aims to provide the boy wit morality, self-worth and proper manners.

The tutor describes taking Emile travelling on horseback:

“We do not travel like couriers but like explorers.

We do not merely consider the beginning and the end, but the space between.

The journey itself is a delight.

We do not travel sitting, dismally imprisoned, so to speak, in a tightly closed cage.

We do not travel with the ease and comfort of ladies.

We do not deprive ourselves of the fresh air nor the sight of the things about us nor the opportunity of examining them at our pleasure.

Emile will never enter a post-chaise.“

The automobile, this rented car, is a modern post-chaise.

The beginning is a parking garage.

The end is a parking garage.

The journey between is a fast-paced freeway with arid fields and distant hills.

We travel sitting, dismally imprisoned in a tightly closed mobile cage.

We travel like lazy ladies, deprived of fresh air.

We see nothing around us nor do we give ourselves the opportunity of examining anything at our pleasure.

Drive to the destination or die trying.

Above: Scene from Office Space (1999)

(René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.

Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, and later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. 

He fought as a soldier and later became a vagabond.

Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes was Roman Catholic.

Descartes grew up in France but early on resolved to travel.

Above: French philosopher René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

“Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.”

Descartes believes that it is useful to experience the unfamiliar.

It is good to know something of the customs of various peoples, so we do not think everything contrary to our own ways is “ridiculous and irrational“.

Customs are conventional ways of behaving.

Strange though some habits are, they are not ridiculous nor irrational.

Travel shows us that our own customs may not be the best.

Travel forces us to question what we take to be obvious.

Looking back over his career, Descartes describes his dissatisfaction with his early education:

“That is why, as soon as I was old enough to emerge from the control of my teachers, I entirely abandoned the study of letters.

Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth travelling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way so as to derive some profit from it.“)

Rousseau explains why travel is so important to education:

“Travelling accelerates the progress of nature and completes the man for good or evil.

When a man returns from travelling about the world, he is what he will be all his life.

There are more who return bad than good, because there are more who start with an inclination towards evil.

In the course of their travels, young people ill-educated and ill-behaved, pick up all the vices of the nations among whom they have sojourned and none of the virtues with which those vices are associated.

But those who, happily for themselves, are well-born, those whose good disposition has been well cultivated, those who travel with a real desire to learn, all such return better and wiser than they went.“

In 1618 Descartes moved to the city of Breda (Netherlands) where he studied math and mechanics.

This began a decade of travelling through Germany, France, Italy, Denmark and Hungary.

Descartes claimed his travels were purposeful.

His biographer Desmond Clarke suggests he was just drifting.

One of Descartes’ friends observed he suffered from Wanderlust.

Above: Breda, Netherlands

Eventually tiring, Descartes picked a country to settle in, he chose the Netherlands – the country apparently best suited to his temperament.

Although Descartes had picked a country, he could not pick a city.

Descartes continued travelling throughout the Netherlands, never staying in one place for more than a few months.

Descartes lived in over a dozen Dutch cities.

Above: Flag of the Netherlands

Descartes stayed in the Netherlands until 1649, when he accepted an invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden.

The trip did not go well.

He died in Stockholm.

Above: Descartes in discussion with Queen Kristina (1626 – 1689)

Descartes’ travels helped him to become open-minded:

“In my college days I discovered that nothing can be imagined which is too strange or incredible to have been said by some philosophies.

And since then I have recognized through my travels that those with a view quite contrary to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages, but that many of them make use of reason as much or more than we do.“

Descartes became a philosopher who questioned everything.

His Meditations (1641) asked the following questions of its readers:

• Is it possible you are insane?

• Are you sure you are not dreaming right now?

• Might you be hallucinating the world around you?

Descartes’ technique of doubting things we take to be true (Cartesian scepticism) is a lethal technique, because once you have started it is difficult to stop.

Every piece of knowledge humans take themselves to have can be doubted.

Every piece of knowledge, except one.

We cannot doubt that we exist.

As long as we are thinking, we exist.

The problem is if you think your existence is the only piece of knowledge you can be certain of, you don’t know much at all.

Maybe I am merely dreaming of this blogpost?)

Above: Jacob’s dream of a ladder of angels, Michael Willmann (1690)

I am reminded of Margaret Cavendish’s collection of “Speeches by Dying Persons“.

This collection includes a speech from a foreign traveller given whilst dying.

The traveller proclaims:

“Travellers have most reason to adore and worship God best, for they see most of his wonderful works.”

Cavendish believes that travel can help us understand God’s creation.

Cavendish believes everything around us is ‘material‘.

Everything is made of matter, the same stuff that makes up humans and trees and moons.

All matter is alive.

All matter has a life of its own.

Humans are nothing special, merely parts of a grand system.

For Cavendish, there is a deep similarity between the world and our minds:

“As twinkling stars show in dark clouds, that’s clear

So fancies quick do in the brain appear…

Just as the Earth, the heads round ball,

Is crowned with orbs celestial.

So head and world as one agree

Nature did make the head a world to be.“

Above: English poet – philosopher Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 – 1673)

In our imaginations, we can create worlds inside our heads.

Thomas More created Utopia.

Above: English philosopher Thomas More (1478 – 1535)

J. K. Rowling created Hogwarts.

Above: Studio model of Hogwarts at Leavesden Studios, London, England

Our minds and ideas are material.

The only difference between the real world and the worlds we imagine is in their size.

The real world is enormous.

Fictional worlds inside our heads are small.

Our imaginary worlds are just miniature versions of the real world.

“Columbus then for navigation famed

Found a new world, America it’s named

Now this one world was found, it was not made

But your creating fancy, thought it fit

To make your world of nothing, but pure wit.”

(William Newcastle, “To the Duchess of Newcastle on her Blazing World“)

Above: English patron of the arts William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1593 – 1676)

Newcastle argues that Cavendish’s achievements outshine those of Europe’s best-known explorers.

Columbus only “discovered” a new world, whereas Cavendish created one.

Above: Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (aka Christopher Columbus)(1451 – 1506)

Go deep into Wonderland.

Delve into Oz.

These are not merely works of fiction.

They are travel books.

Books about exploration, travel and natural philosophy began percolating through the European consciousness.

The books contained lots of practical information on the countries travelled through, including their history, food and exchange rates.

Writing about one’s travels was not invented by bloggers.

Wednesday 12 June 2024

In transit, Málaga – Granada, España

The drive from El Torcal to Granada is uneventful – Granada the object toward which the action of the automobile is directed.

We pass by “the one with stone fence“, “the lady of the heights” Archidona – home to several archaeological sites from different periods and areas of ecological interest – such as the Natural Lagoons Reserve of Archidona and Hoz de Marín – and also the headquarters of the Andalusian and Mediterranean Film Festival.

Worthy of note and recommended is a visit to its Plaza Ochavada (Octavian Square), formed by a polygon made up of arcades of great beauty.

The area where the Square is today used to be an unhealthy area that caused hygienic problems in the city, which is why the construction of the Square was planned.

Above: Plaza Ochavada, Archidona, España

Once upon a time the territory of Archidona was covered by a dense oak forest accompanied by an undergrowth made up of rose hips, honeysuckle and clematis, among other species.

Today, forest masses of oak and pine and holm oak pastures are preserved.

Mediterranean scrub is very present, with species such as mastic, torvisco, rosemary, thyme, wild olive and esparto grass.

Above: Uses of esparto grass

Here are ducks and small birds of prey as well as the Iberian hare. 

Above: An Iberian hare

Also present are the mountain goat, the fox, the badger, the marten, the wild boar and the otter. 

Above: Otters

The Archidona Lagoons Nature Reserve is an important space due to its uniqueness, as they are the only lagoons of karstic origin in all of Andalucia.

They are located in a difficult-to-access area, with natural vegetation and are a point of attraction for birds during those particularly unfavourable years lacking rain.

The Big Lagoon is permanent, about 10 metres deep and has mineralised but fresh water.

It is home to species of amphibians that require fresh water for their larval development and reptiles, such as the leper turtle and the water snake, which are not very resistant to salinity, as well as some species of fish, such as barbels.

Above: Laguna Grande

In contrast, the Small Lagoon is semi-permanent and has saline waters.

Above: Laguna Chica

The town is a network of small, narrow perpendicular streets with steep slopes and steps.

Above: Archidona, España

Archidona-born Governor Unzaga and his wife Isabel Saint Maxent were the creators of the world’s first bilingual public education system in New Orleans and the promoters of the first aid to the United States to achieve its birth. 

Above: Spanish administrator Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga (1777 – 1782) –

(As an enlightened man, he created the first bilingual public education system in the world and allowed freedom of trade in a pioneering way.

He stands out for being the first to help the Americans achieve their birth as a country in several ways: with tons of gunpowder, flour, medicines, allowing free trade, with his diplomatic skills with English royalty and with his espionage networks.

 
He was the first to announce the end of the war or peace through Spanish governors and ambassadors throughout the American continent and even to various cities in the US.

He collaborated in the implementation of the dollar as a cross-border commercial currency, before it became the official currency of the United States.) 

Due to the enlightened character of Archidona, it was the first city in the province of Málaga to welcome French troops, with the hope of modernizing Spain.

Above: Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte (1768 – 1844), King of Spain (1808 – 1813)

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Archidona, along with Loja, was taken by militiamen of the Republican side on 24 July 1936, but in mid-August of the same year it was captured along with other towns in the north of the province of Malaga by the rebel side. 

Archidona is one of the places in the province with the highest number of executed people buried in mass graves, of which 125 have been counted until 2007.

Above: Images of the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939)

Overall, the population is characterised by ageing, due to a very low birth rate and a similar mortality rate.

Why that is I do not know, for we did not linger in Archidona.

Above: Archidona, España

Archidona is a predominantly agricultural municipality.

Although the weight of agricultural activities in the local economy has been declining since the last third of the 20th century, the productive structure of Archidona continues to be dominated by the primary sector.

Much of the municipal surface has been converted into arable land, especially olive groves.

Livestock farming is a modest activity in the municipality.

The largest herds are those of sheep and goats, with between 400 and 500 heads each. 

Above: Archidona, España

The Archidona Dog Fair in May is one of the most important dog shows on the Iberian Peninsula and a notable stage for the breeds of Spain, especially for the Andalusian Podenco.

The Archidona City Poetry Competition, which awards prizes for unpublished poems in Spanish or any of the languages ​​or dialects of the Spanish State, is dedicated to the literary arts. 

Above: Archidona, España

The Ochavada Short Story Competition awards prizes for unpublished stories on any subject. 

Above: Archidona, España

The Book Fair takes place during the month of April and is dedicated to a different facet of the world of literature each year.

In addition to the traditional stands, a series of activities – such as conferences, workshops and exhibitions – are organised in the town. 

Above: Archidona Book Fair

I envy the power of the poet.

To describe a mountain:

“Moss-thrummed, rocky, shady, cloud-headed, insolent, steep, ambitious, towering, aspiring, mossy, hoary, aged, steepy, surly, burly, lofty, tall, craggy, barren, stately, climbing, sky-killing, heaven-threatening, cloud-wrapped, high-browed, shaggy, supercilious, air-invading, hanging, brambly, deserted, uncouth, solitary, thorny, inhospitable, shady, cold, freezing, unfruitful, lovely, hunchbacked, ragged, unfrequented, forsaken, melancholic.“

(Joshua Poole, Handbook for Poets)

Mountains are warts and pockholes on the face of the Earth, high and craggy enough “to cause the heart of the most valiant man to melt“.

Then the sea:

“Working, floating, wavy, angry, raging, swelling, licentious, curled, insulting, swallowing, awful, dreadful, toiling, pathless, drenching, thrift, ever-drinking, floody, ireful, stormy, surgy, ebbing, flowing, glassy, tumbling, dropsy, unbottomed, wrackful, tumultuous, aged, hoary, ruggled, ruffled, wind-hewed, vaulting, filthy, troubled, foamy, belching, untamed.“

(Joshua Poole, Handbook for Poets)

Poole recoils from positive adjectives.

Mountains are not cathedrals but surly burly warts.

The ocean is not a place of pomp and solemnity but a licentious pathless puddle.

Other important events are the Archidona Cinema Festival or Andalusian and Mediterranean Film Showcase, which takes place during the month of October in the former Convent of Santo Domingo.

The Heritage Festival, is held within the autumn cultural cycle, the city’s participation in the European Heritage Days.

Each edition of the Heritage Festival is dedicated to a monographic theme that deepens knowledge of some aspect of the historical and cultural heritage of Archidona. ​

Above: Archidona Heritage Festival

Finally, it is worth mentioning the Plaza Festivals – musical events held in the Plaza Ochavada, such as the old Porra Flamenca Festival or the World Music and Dance Festival.

Above: Archidona Porra Flamenca Festival

In Archidona, articles made of cane, wicker, wrought iron, forge and inlaid wood are produced by hand. 

Archidona’s festive calendar begins on January 20 with the celebration of Carnival , which is characterized by Comadres, Compadre, Parents and Children Thursdays, meetings in which snacks are shared and preparations made prior to the festivities. 

The game of Corro de los Cántaros and the Burial of the Sardine also take place.

Above: Carnival, Archidona

On 2 February, the Candelaria takes place, a tradition widely spread throughout Andalusia.

This purifying ritual of fire is related, in the Christian world, with the Purification of the Virgin.

In Archidona, the festival of Candelaria dates back to the 16th century:

In 1586 it is mentioned in the ordinances of the town.

During the festival, an offering of cakes and pigeons is made to the Virgin, in the Church of Santa Ana, which goes out in procession from the hermitage of the Column, now disappeared, to its parish.

Above: Candelaria, Archidona

The following day, February 3rd, the day of San Blas is celebrated.

In this festival the boys and girls of Archidona hang necklaces of donuts around their necks, evoking the protection of the Saint against throat ailments. 

Above: Dia de San Blas, Archidona

Holy Week in Archidona is declared a festival of national tourist interest and dates back nearly 500 years.

Six brotherhoods take part in processions, with the Muy Antigua Cofradía del Huerto standing out for its antiquity and heritage.

Above: Holy Week, Archidona

The festival of the Cruces de Mayo is also celebrated with processions, in which boys and girls carry their crosses through the streets of the city and later compete for prizes.

Above: Cruces de Mayo, Archidona

The day of the caterpillar, also celebrated in May, whose procession takes place in the walled enclosure.

The origin of this festival dates back to 1743, when, according to legend, the patron saint made a plague of caterpillars that was ravaging the fields of the region disappear.

During the month of July, in Archidona Station , the San Aurelio festivities are celebrated, enlivened with sporting and cultural activities and a flowerpot competition.

Above: Archidona Station

The August Fair takes place between the 14th and 18th and includes musical performances, tasting of the porra archidonesa , horse rides, street parties, attractions and fair stalls.

The appointment of the corregidoras, the proclamation and the award ceremony of the Poetic Contest “Ciudad de Archidona” are also announced. 

Above: Archidona August Fair

Archidona is the setting for the film La insólita y gloriosa hazaña del cipote de Archidona (The unusual and glorious feat of Archidona’s cock) directed by Ramón Fernández in 1979 and based on the play of the same name by Camilo José Cela, which in turn was based on real events that occurred a few years earlier.

It tells the story of two young people forced to marry after causing a scandal in a cinema, exposing the sexual repression of the last years of Franco’s regime.

My mind wonders what a person could do in a cinema that could be considered a scandal.

Public displays of affection?

Pornographic possibilities?

I can only speculate on thoughts that titillate.

Miguel Cabello de Balboa (1535 – 1608) was an Archidona-born cleric and chronicler, author of the Antarctic Miscellany.

Seduced by the desire to catechize the infidels of other worlds, he went to the Indies.

In Bogotá he held a long conversation with the conquistador 
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada.

In Quito he began “the first drafts” of a general chronicle.

Balboa was asked to pacify the province of Esmeraldas, which for 25 years had been the centre of black slaves and rebellious Indians and invested as Vicar of Ávila, in the government of the Quijos, he faced a rebellion of the Indigenous natives.

He then requested a peace benefit and after presenting himself in Lima to the Viceroy Martín Enríquez, he obtained the curacy of the town of San Juan, in the valley of Ica.

From there he seems to have made short trips to various cities to gather information.

Loyal to his missionary vocation, he went to Charcas.

He managed to be named a priest of Camata, in the district of 
Larecaja, and from there he worked on the evangelization of the Indigenous natives of Carabaya and even made an entry into the Leco and Aguachile villages, in Amazonian lands.

Above: Spanish cleric Miguel Cabello Valboa (1535 – 1608)

The Antarctic Miscellany is a handwritten chronicle about the pre-Hispanic past of Peru, written by Balboa between 1576 and 1586.

It remained unpublished until the 19th century.

This history is an entertaining and somewhat confusing account of the various reigns of the Incas.

The name Miscellany suits it well, as it intersperses novelistic legends and love affairs mixed with historical events, such as the legend of Naymlap, the love of Efquen Pisan, son of the chief of 
Lambayeque and Chestan Xecfuin, and the sentimental story of 
Quilaco Yupanqui with Curi Coillor.

This love on the folkloric side does not diminish the authority of the chronicler, since he himself warns of the traditional origin of his stories.

The last part of Balboa’s chronicle, in which the war between Atahualpa and Huáscar acquires great length and detail, can be considered as the Quito version.

The Cusco Inca appears there in ridicule:

He withdraws from the war, rebukes his generals, insults his mother and sisters, pretends to enter Cuzco in triumph without having fought, kills defenseless old men and – instead of going to war – he stays fasting and praying.

His mother Ragua Ocllo reproaches him for his cowardice and cruelty.

Atahualpa appears, on the other hand, always victorious, his defeat at Tumibamba is diminished and the triumphs of the Cusco generals over him are silenced.

I like to think that were Balboa alive today that he might enjoy my blogposts.

I try to mingle stories and personal anecdotes with historical events in my writing as well.

Luis Barahona de Soto (1548 – 1595) was a Spanish poet.

Aware that fortune (“agra et severe”) did not favor him (“Being rich was lost on me.”), the poet would always maintain relations of dependence and service with great noble houses.

He was born a nobleman and poor and tried to live according to the rule of conduct that he stated in The Paradox :

The big diligence, the small fear,

and effort in the works without measure

They make the poor greater than the rich.

And so, he who lives in a miserable life

have this verse written very chorus-wise:

He who forgets himself never prospers.

Above: Luis Barahona de Soto Monument, Escuelas Pias de Archidona

The move to Granada to study medicine at its university between 1568 and 1570 was decisive for Barahona’s education.

Above: Alhambra, Granada, España

In addition to establishing a friendly relationship with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who praised his early “deep sense” and “varied lesson“, his stellar role in a circle of young poets is documented by the poems included in two manuscripts.

Above: Spanish poet Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503 – 1575)

But the teaching of Gregorio Silvestre is the focus of this stage, of whom he was “one of his particular friends of him“.

The intense poetic communication expressed in the praise exchanged between the two or the thematic correspondence of various kinds, ended by leaving the authorship of the series of ten compositions called Lamentaciones de Amor undecided. 

The friendship that united him to the poet Gregorio Silvestre was especially close: after his death he included a heartfelt eulogy in the most complex and elaborate of his eclogues.

Above: Spanish poet Gregorio Silvestre (1520 – 1569)

Here is a sample of the Lamentations in these verses, from the third, of which there were ten, written on the occasion of a serious illness of his beloved:

You will see, if you want to see me,

what your illness has done to me

a paragon of patience

and a banishment of pleasures.

Above: Scene from Watchmen (2009)

Silvestre’s influence is manifested above all in the mythological fables with a complex balance between the imaginative recreation of Ovid, the conceptualism of songbook tradition and the presence of an adjacent allegorical sense.

As a due tribute, Barahona will exalt Silvestre glorifying him after death (“crowned with flourishing ivy”) in the most complex and elaborate of his eclogues: that of Pilar and Damón.

Above: Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (aka Ovid) (43 BC – AD 18)

With such contrasting plot projections as impossible love and suffering in Actaeon and real and fulfilled love in Vestumno and Pomona, it is the descriptive plasticity of the female nude or the idyllic setting of the forest that is most novel, reaching qualities that led Cervantes to declare Barahona “most happy”.

Above: Actaeon and Diana, Titian (1559)

Actaeon was the son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, and a famous Theban hero.

He fell to the fatal wrath of Artemis (later his myth was attached to her Roman counterpart Diana), but the surviving details of his transgression vary:

“The only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did:

The hunter became the hunted.

He was transformed into a stag.

His raging hounds, struck with a ‘wolf’s frenzy’, tore him apart as they would a stag.“

Luis Barahona de Soto studied his second year of medicine in Granada in 1569, and from there he moved to Osuna, which at that time had a famous university, to continue his studies….

Above: Osuna, Sevilla Province, España

But not before taking part in the fight against the Moriscos (forcibly converted Muslims) in Las Alpujarras, as can be deduced some time later from the dedication of his poems:

“Relics of the restlessness I had between arms and letters, although poorly ripened fruits of my youth.”

Above: Sunset in the Alpujarras

The Alpujarras rebellion was a conflict that took place between 1568 and 1571.

The large Morisco population of the Kingdom of Granada rose up in arms in protest against the Pragmatic Sanction of 1567, which limited their cultural freedoms.

Above: Moorish rebellion of Las Alpujarras (1568 – 1571)

When the royal power managed to defeat the rebels, it was decided to deport the surviving Moriscos to various points in the rest of the 
Crown of Castile, whose Morisco population rose from 20,000 to 100,000 people. 

Above: Banner of arms of the Crown of Castile

Due to the severity and intensity of its fighting, it is also known as the Alpujarras War.

Spanish King Philip II was shocked by the massacres of priests carried out by the rebels.

Above: Spanish King Felipe II (1527 – 1598)

Apart from the deaths and expulsions, thousands were sold as slaves within Spain.

In Córdoba in 1573 there were about 1,500 Morisco slaves. 

Above: Córdoba, España

It was in Osuna where Luis Barahona de Soto wrote, as an epitaph for his friend Gaspar de Baeza, a sonnet in Latin, which I reproduce because it has no precedent in the history of literature:

Ecce membra quae (Behold the members which) divine spirit,

judicial insight, high memory,

viguere quondam, jacent sine gloria, (once alive, they lie without glory)

sarcophago majori ornatu (a sarcophagus with a greater ornament) worthy.

Hoc tegitur (This is covered by) Baetius, Caesarinus

pontifical who swears, et (and) oratory

magnus et magnus (great and great) in Hispanic history,

magnus sermone Baetico et Latino. (great in speech in Baetic and Latin)

Vos Musae vosque Charites, vos Divae (You Muses and Charities, you Divas)

Dauricolae, quae tempora vivirti (Dauricola, what times to live)

virtutum filio redimistis lauro, (You have redeemed the son of virtues with laurel)

this way numine praesenti (present god)

tuque, Eliberius bonds, laude lives, (and you, Eliberius bonds, praise lives)

quae in tumulo est praestantius ostro et aura.(which in the mound is more excellent than the star and the wind)

Above: Spanish poet Gaspar de Baeza (1540 – 1569)

In Osuna, Luis Barahona de Soto completed his medical studies in 1573, attending the fleeting Sandoval academy of “Latin and Castilian poetry”, which caused in him a dark process.

Above: Statue of Spanish politician Cristóbal de Sandoval (1581 – 1624)

Around that time Luis Barahona de Soto became friends with Francisco de Medina, through whom he soon came into contact with other humanists and poets from Seville.

It is the second decisive experience in Barahona’s career.

In 1571, after passing the 4th year, he went to Seville to graduate as a Bachelor of Medicine.

His stay in this city must have been very beneficial to him, since at that time “even the executioner and his assistant, who was the Count of Monteagudo, were poets in Seville“.

Above: Monumental Plaza de España, Sevilla

In Sevilla Luis Barahona de Soto met Fernando de Herrera, Diego Girón and Gonzalo Argote de Molina, among others.

Above: Spanish writer Fernando de Herrera (1534 – 1597)

Above: Spanish poet Gonzalo Argote de Molina (1548 – 1596)

He participates in the Annotations to Garcilaso and receives praise for his “wit and erudition”, of which “his works will give very clear testimony”.

Upon request he composed the Elegy on the Death of Garcilaso, already marked by the cumulative overflow of mythical elements and exotic presents that he would try out on a grand scale in his epic poem.

His poetry manifests a dark style (“Where there is no clarity there is no light nor can there be understanding.”).

He composed another Song for the loss of King Don Sebastian in Africa. 

Above: Portuguese King Dom Sebastiao (1554 – 1578)

After his stay in Sevilla, professional and romantic motives led him to remain in Granada for some time, and then finally to settle in Archidona, a place chosen, according to Dr. Conejo Ramilo, exclusively for health reasons.

Archidona was a town that was little affected by the terrible plagues of the time: the “epidemic disease called catarrh“, smallpox, typhus and the landres disease.

«It is beneficial to protect oneself from contagion by taking care of one’s health, and with this in mind, the Archidona Council agreed that the town should be guarded and that the innkeepers should be announced and notified to refrain from receiving outsiders who did not have health certificates.»

Such preventive measures managed to make Archidona gain a reputation as a healthy city, which sufficiently justified Barahona choosing it to exercise his profession of restoring health, since his own was not very buoyant either and needed to be restored.

From 1581 until his death he practiced as a doctor in Archidona under the shadow of the Duke of Osuna.

There he held the positions of corregidor and lieutenant corregidor, in addition to practicing medicine “with notable knowledge and experience” as the town’s doctor.

There he contracted a first marriage with Isabel Sarmiento (1582), from whom two daughters were born who did not survive the poet, and a second marriage with Mariana de Navas (1591).

Above: Archidona, España

Documents show him in possession of a respectable fortune and with various economic activities (buying, selling and leasing lands and houses, loans).

This prosperity is the background for a growing literary activity.

Fortunately, there will be memory of me living

in other centuries, and I will be read

and celebrated in pilgrim history.

In contact with the “poetic academy” of Granada, in 1586 the 
Angelica was published, the first part of a vast epic poem with a complex narrative structure and cult ambition that would not be completed, although some octaves and part of the plan of the second part have been preserved.

The idea of ​​a Spanish continuation and reply to Ariosto’s 
Orlando Furioso must have taken shape from meticuluous reading of the Italian poet.

Barahona, copying the title of a brief epic poem by Aretino, came to give an expressive twist to the loves of Angelica and Medoro, diverting the adventure itself, beyond the permanent din of arms, to an exemplary itinerary, which a series of allegorical levels allowed to be interpreted either as a manual of prudence, or as a reprobation of worldly love and a path to perfection.

After 1587, although some parts of the treatise and especially Book I were already prepared, a long and complete Arte de la Montería
in dialogues was completed.

Under the authority of the expert (Montano), two interlocutors (one active, Solino, the other skeptical, Silvano) lead the demonstration of all the varieties of hunting as an educational training exercise for knights, which assumes both contemporary practices and in-depth knowledge of the classical tradition.

In his later years, the poet corrected and prepared his Rimas,
incorporating retouched versions of his best-known poems and with the stylistic and ideological evolution that his masterpiece reveals: the Eclogue of the Hamadríades.

Records also contain an invaluable document of the culture of Barahona de Soto:

• the list of the 425 volumes of his library, where books on the medical profession and those of “poetic knowledge” coexist in a balanced way

Except for some preliminary compositions for books by others, his lyrical poems, which he had prepared for printing, did not see the light of day during the author’s lifetime.

His youthful verses shine, such as Lamentaciones and Libertades de amor.

He stood out within epic poetry with Primera parte de la Angélica (1586), also known as The Tears of Angélica, a long poem in royal octaves with outstanding descriptions, based on an episode from Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (the loves of Angélica and Medoro), although the author intersperses many other subjects.

This work earned praise from Félix Lope de Vega. 

Above: Spanish poet-playwright Lope de Vega (1562 – 1635)

Luis Barahona, who was born in the city of Lucena in 1548, a nobleman but poor, was publicly praised for his literary merits by Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Vicente Espinel, among others.

Above: Spanish poet Vicente Espinel (1550 – 1624)

Miguel de Cervantes, who, when examining Don Quixote‘s library, said of him sincerely that he was “one of the famous poets of the world, not just of Spain“.

I invite you to reread Chapter VI of Don Quixote, which deals with the “clever and great scrutiny that the priest and the barber carried out in the library of our ingenious gentleman”:

“The priest grew tired of seeing more books, and so, with a full load, he wanted all the others to be burned.

But the Barber had already opened one, which was called Angelica’s Tears.

“I would cry for them” – said the priest on hearing the name – “if such a book had been ordered to be burned, because its author was one of the famous poets of the world, not only of Spain, and he was most successful in the translation of some of Ovid’s fables.“

Above: Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547 – 1616)

Another reference is found in the second part of Don Quixote , Chapter One, “of what the Priest and the Barber went through with Don Quixote near his illness“:

“This truth is clear, because later a famous Andalusian poet cried and sang his tears, and another famous and unique Castilian poet sang his beauty.“

It refers to Barahona and his Tears of Angelica and to Lope de Vega, and his poem The Beauty of Angelica.

Again Cervantes, in La Galatea, praises Barahona in the Song of Calliope:

Weave a crown of green laurel,

shepherds, to honor the forehead,

by Mr. Soto Barahona,

distinguished, wise and eloquent man.

Vicente Espinel also makes literary criticism of our character in the second canto of his poem The House of Memory :

And that divine liquor with which he has made

his eternal name Soto Barahona,

Here you will hear, and there you will see Neptune

few equals and better none.

Above: Spanish writer Vicente Espinel (1550 – 1624)

Barahona was born a nobleman, but his childhood and youth were spent in poverty, dealing with more or less generous relatives.

Born into an impoverished noble family, Luis Barahona de Soto lived a hard life during his student years, but he was always proud of his origins and the conditions of his existence.

His satire Of him against some foolishness is a poetic composition for the case:

The other who does not think that there is a second

on Earth to his blood and that descends

of the lineage of the Goth Sigismund,

Well, he sees that his money was from a leprechaun

and that lineage is born from money,

I don’t know how he doesn’t see that he doesn’t understand.

But how come I didn’t see it first?

In these verses, he makes clear his noble origins, the smallness of his fortune and his firm vocation for medicine:

Let whoever wants to be regretting

the return of the fortunate centuries;

that I think of looking for them by healing…

Above: Luis Barahona de Soto Monument, Escuelas Pías de Archidona

Of particular note are his paraphrases of Ovid (Fable of Vertumnus and Fable of Actaeon), two elegies (On the Death of King Sebastian, where he narrates the fateful Battle of Alcazarquivir, and On the Death of Garcilaso), the Funeral Eclogue for Doña María Manrique, and two other eclogues in which he mourns the death of Gregorio Silvestre.

Above: Battle of Alcacer Quiber, 4 August 1578

But surely the most beautiful is the Eclogue of the Hamadríades, with its chromatic pomp and sensory luxury.

He was, in the literary environment in which he developed, a good poet, a humanist.

He handled with justice the richness of language, that as regards words, as with money:

“Whoever spends them with no other aim than to show them off and show off, is more considered vain than generous“.

His works can be found in the National Library in Madrid.

A working knowledge of Spanish would be an asset in appreciating them.

I am neither in Madrid nor conversant in Spanish so I will have to accept others’ recommendations.

Above: Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, España

Follow the A92 east from the province of Malaga to the province of Granada and the town of “slab” – Loja.

Loja is a Spanish city and municipality of 20,580 inhabitants. 

The municipal economy mainly focuses on the agricultural and 
service sectors, with an important marble industry.

The establishment of the first reproduction centre for organic farming in the community is planned.

Above: Loja, España

The existence of stone or slab quarries in the Loja mountain range, near the town, possibly exploited since ancient times, would explain and justify the name of the town.

The appearance of vestiges of a Roman population in the Loja district would also support the identification of Ilipula Laus in the place where Loja is now located, or in its vicinity, although other sources indicate that during the Roman period it was called Tricolia due to its settlement on three hills.

Above: Loja, España

Apart from the mythological explanations provided by Friar Juan Seco, who tells how Tubal, grandson of the biblical Noah, founded the city of Loja in 2163 BC, naming it Alfeia, archaeological reality places the first occupation of its site around the 11th century BC.

The remains of these prehistoric settlers from the Bronze Age lie beneath the surface of the Alcazaba neighbourhood from their first years of presence until well into the 7th century BC, when contributions from the Phoenician commercial and cultural sphere represented the first “urban” flourishing of that original town:

The mythical Tricolia.

Above: Loja, España

The Iberian and Roman worlds were not foreign to the city.

Suspicions about the existence of a Hispano-Roman settlement in the nuclear district of Loja were able to become certainty thanks to the work of the Heritage Research and Promotion Service of the City Council of Loja, which in 1991 demonstrated a Roman presence, although reduced, in the Cerro de la Alcazaba.

A year earlier, the same body, and on the occasion of the construction of the House of Culture on Calle Real, was investigating the place known since then as the Necropolis of Las Vinuesas, which allowed the recognition of a Hispano-Roman population centre in that place.

In Roman times it was called Tricolia due to its settlement on three hills.

Above: Loja, España

But everything indicates that Loja only acquired its true urban dimension with the arrival of Islam, from the 9th century onwards.

The Arab chronicles mention the construction of the castle of Loja in 893.

Later it was transformed into a city, Medina Lauxa in the 11th century, when it was already shown as an important stronghold of marked strategic value in the role of guarding the Vega de Granada.

Above: Loja, España

As a border town, it was involved in numerous military events, including its attack and destruction by Ferdinand III “the Saint” in 1225.

Above: King Fernando III “the Saint” of Castilla (1199 – 1252)

The antechamber of the capital of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, Boabdil himself handed the city over to King Ferdinand of Aragon in 1486, after a painful siege lasting several days.

Above: Muhammad XII (aka Boabdil) (1459 – 1533), Emir of Granada

Above: King Fernando II of Aragon (1452 – 1516)

By that time, the city already had its construction features, and had even seen the birth of such illustrious figures in the Granada Court as the poet Ibn al-Jatib.

Above: Muslim poet Ibn al-Jatib (1313 – 1374)

With the conquest of the Castilians in 1482, Loja was occupied, although it was only after two failed attempts, in 1482 and 1485, that the city was taken on 29 May 1486.

​​The Muslims left the city free and escorted towards Granada.

From that moment on the settlement of new Christian inhabitants began, with the Catholic Monarchs ordering the distribution of houses, property and estates among the 500 new residents with whom they ordered to populate the city.

The city would be administratively incorporated into the Corregimiento of Alcalá la Real, to which Alhama was also attached.

From this moment on, Medina Lawsa gradually lost the characteristics of the Hispano-Muslim city and became a nucleus adapted to the concept of a Castilian-Christian city.

The basic structure of the Nasrid city was maintained, but those spaces were redefined and organized around parishes, while new architectural, spatial and symbolic landmarks were deployed.

Mosques were consecrated as churches, so that the three main churches of the town are located on the sites of old mosques.

The religious geography of the city was completed with the foundation of several convents and hermitages.

The expansion of the city outside the walls took place throughout the 16th century, given the increase in the population.

Above: Loja, España

In the 19th century, Loja suffered, like the rest of the Spanish towns, the process of confiscation of both public and religious property.

It was occupied by Napoleonic troops (from 1 February 1810 to 6 September 1812), and was very involved in the revolutions of the 1860s and 1870s, with the peasant uprising of 1861 led by Rafael Pérez del Álamo, as well as in the cantonal rebellions of 1873. 

Above: Loja, España

The Loja Uprising, Loja peasant uprising, also known as the 
Bread and Cheese Revolution, took place on 28 June 1861 during the reign of Isabella II of Spain when a large group of day labourers , led by the veterinarian Rafael Pérez del Álamo and shouting “Long live the Republic and death to the Queen!” attacked the Civil Guard barracks in Iznájar as a result of the poor working conditions and the frustration of not being able to access the benefits of the 
disentailment.

The uprising had its focus in Loja and spread to other nearby towns such as Iznájar or Archidona.

Above: Bust of Rafael Perez del Alamo in Loja, España

The Cantonal Rebellion (or Cantonal Revolution ) was an insurrection that took place during the First Spanish Republic between July 1873 and January 1874.

Its leaders were in many cases the “intransigent” federal republicans, who wanted to immediately establish the Federal Republic from the bottom up without waiting for the Constituent Courts to draft and approve the new Federal Constitution.

This position was defended by the “centrist” and “moderate” sectors of the Federal Republican Party (also known as the “benevolent” as opposed to the “intransigent“), but the “intransigent” doubted their commitment to La Federal.

The insurrection also responded “to the popular expectations placed on the regime” republican.

The rebellion began on 12 July 1873 in Cartagena and spread to the regions of Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia from 19 July, after the resignation of the “centrist” Francisco Pi y Margall and the formation of the new government headed by the “moderate” Nicolás Salmerón.

The latter, faced with Pi y Margall’s policy of combining persuasion with repression, did not hesitate to use the army to suppress the rebellion and appoint generals Arsenio Martínez Campos and Manuel Pavía, opposed to the Federal Republic, to command military operations, a policy that was accentuated by the following government of the also “moderate” Emilio Castelar, who, after suspending the sessions of the Cortes, began the siege and bombardment of Cartagena, the last stronghold of the rebellion, which would not fall into government hands until 12 January 1874, a week after Pavia’s coup that put an end to the Federal Republic giving way to the Serrano dictatorship. 

Above: Hotbeds of cantonal rebellion during the First Spanish Republic

In these circumstances (to which we must add the economic crisis of the municipality, which has been dragging on practically since the 17th century, and the disestablishment of the local oligarchies in favour of the capital of the province or the Kingdom), Loja saw how the destruction and ruin of the historic buildings that had characterised the city during the Modern Age accelerated.

In a very short time, the city lost the physiognomy that had remained unchanged for three centuries.

The portals and the granary were sold off in 1801.

The prison was auctioned off by the National Property Board in 1863.

Hermitages and convents were confiscated.

Above: Loja, España

During this century, Loja was fortunate that a son of the city, Ramón María Narváez, was the Prime Minister of Isabel II.

Things could have been worse.

Above: Spanish politician Ramón María Narváez y Campos (1799 – 1868)

In the 20th century, the civil war – especially the famous fire organized on the night of 19 July 1936 inside the city’s temples – and urban speculation, were the cause of new attacks on the artistic heritage of Loja, although since the end of that century there has also been a significant effort to recover and rehabilitate what remains of it.

Above: Women pleading with rebels for lives of prisoners (1936)

In the social and demographic aspect, the municipality suffered in the mid-20th century the consequences of the rural exodus, losing around 30% of its population in just 20 years.

Above: Loja, España

In 1992, an episode of violence and revenge took place in Loja between two families, with two murders, which accentuated the ethnic tensions between payos and gypsies in the town.

There are few events as dramatic in the recent history of the town of Loja as those that, in the spring of 1992, claimed the lives of two young locals in a series of revenges between members of their families.

The dead were two boys of very similar age and who curiously had the same name:

Jesús Jiménez.

However, one belonged to a Castilian family known as “Los Santeros“, and the other was a member of a gypsy family known as “Los Parrones“.

This macabre exchange of victims created great tension in the town, accentuated by the circumstances of both deaths.

The events gave rise to conflicting views on both sides, a non-gypsy view and a gypsy view, to a large extent mutually incomprehensible.

What happened radicalised ethnic differences, making more visible the borders between two sides that separated in areas and relationships where there had previously been more trust. In short, they contributed to straining and impoverishing the configuration of non-gypsy relations in this town.

Within the rich monumental heritage of Loja, one can find important civil, military and religious buildings.

It is true that, despite the fact that over the centuries – and specifically in the last decades of the 20th century – a large part of this heritage has been lost, an important part of it still remains standing and has recently been restored.

The most significant monuments in the city are: 

• the Alcazaba — an Arab fortress built at the end of the  9th century

Above: Alcazaba, Loja

• the Church of San Gabriel

Above: Iglesia de San Gabriel, Loja

• the Church of Santa Catalina

Above: Iglesia Santa Catalina, Loja

• the Iglesia Mayor de la Encarnación

Above: Iglesia Mayor de la Encarnación, Loja

• the convent and conventual church of Santa Clara

Above: Iglesia Santa Clara, Loja

• the Pósito

The Legend of El Pósito is a beautiful legend that is part of the  Romancero de Jaén (1861).

It tells the love story between a captain of the Tercios of Flanders, Diego de Osorio, and a beautiful lady from the city of 
Jaén, Beatriz de Uceda.

This old story tells of a sad love affair between a handsome man and a beautiful lady from the city of Jaén.

They say that a captain, possibly from the Tercios of Flanders, arrived in Jaén.

He was gallant, uniformed, had a penetrating gaze, a weathered face and a courageous character.

It was said that the brave and handsome gallant was very rich.

His personal fortune was so great that telling of what he had caused incredible astonishment in anyone who heard it.

The talk of him was all over the city.

The marriageable maidens of Jaén fixed their eyes on him and observed him with careful interest when he went out for a walk around the town.

Despite having so many beautiful ladies at his feet, the gallant fell deeply in love with a young woman named Beatriz de Uceda.

This maiden had extraordinary beauty, a perfect figure and a discretion typical of ladies of her class.

She was an example of virtues:

Noble, sincere, prudent, sweet and candid.

The handsome gallant, whose name was Don Diego de Osorio, was so taken with her that he occupied all of Doña Beatriz’s thoughts.

He was constant in his gifts and attentions towards the young woman.

He was always attentive to whatever she wanted, following her steps wherever she went and arranging dozens of encounters to impress the beautiful lady.

However, Doña Beatriz had her heart occupied by another gentleman.

Even so, due to whatever circumstances, Beatriz de Uceda finally married Captain Osorio, leaving behind a memory of the man she loved so intensely.

The wedding was celebrated in style, and if the groom was rich, the bride was no less so.

They say they enjoyed happy days, where everything was calm and peaceful.

Doña Beatriz tried to be happy in her marriage, giving herself body and soul to Don Diego.

It was not long before Beatriz had to once again show signs of her innate goodness and gentleness.

She selflessly put up with her husband, who, once extremely gallant and polite, had become a man of wicked ways, combining night and day in his spectacular revelry, becoming addicted to gambling and the most infamous earthly pleasures.

As time went by, Don Diego de Osorio fell deeper into debt, losing his money in the most unsuccessful games, becoming involved in heated quarrels.

A battery of torments for his long-suffering wife, the sad Beatriz, who smothered her feelings towards her husband’s attitude.

She barely endured such an unhappy and failed married life.

And finally, the end of this desperate situation came.

Captain Osorio spent every last coin.

There was no one left in the city to lend him anything, and he was forced to pay the losses accumulated in his unfortunate games.

Seeing himself desperate and in need of money in the middle of one of his games, he ordered a servant to go to his house and have Doña Beatriz immediately give him the jewel that he had given her as a sign of marriage.

The squire quickly went to convey such an unpleasant and inconceivable message to Doña Beatriz.

Doña Beatriz listened to the servant’s story with a look of astonishment.

She bowed her tearful face and, full of courage, sent the servant back with a message for her Lord.

If her husband wanted the jewel that she guarded with such zeal, he should ask her in person, without intermediaries, and she herself, with her own hands, would give it to him.

The squire returned, saddened for his lady, to deliver the message to Captain Diego de Osorio, telling him what he had heard from Doña Beatriz.

His wife’s message sparked harsh mockery in the crowded room.

Ashamed and furious that Beatriz had not complied with his request, having been accustomed until then to impeccable submission from his wives, he went to the place chosen by Doña Beatriz to meet him, the Plaza del Pósito.

There he saw her immediately, at the foot of the cross that stands in the middle of the place.

He approached her, she extended her hand and gave him the jewel, hiding her tears, like someone who gives away her most valuable treasure.

He snatched the jewel from her with an insolent tug, and once he had it in his possession, visibly enraged, he stabbed Doña Beatriz with a dagger, immediately ending the suffering life of the lady.

Soon the news spread and the whole city heard about the tragedy.

It was then that the boyfriend, Don Lope de Haro, challenged him and killed him during a fight that took place in the famous Plaza del Pósito in Jaén.

Visibly saddened by what had happened, Lope de Haro uttered the words “Pater Noster” at the moment when with his hand he ended the life of Captain Osorio.

Legend has it that since then, the afflicted ghost of Don Lope de Haro returns to the cross of the Pósito to pray an Our Father on every anniversary of this tragic day.

The current version is that the young man, repentant of having ended the life of another man, decided to take the habit of Saint Francis as a friar in the convent that at that time existed in the current Palace of the Provincial Council of Jaén.

The legend says that on some cold nights they see a black ghost wandering around the Plaza del Pósito, who stops before the cross and prays, repentant for having killed another person.

Various historians from the province of Jaén, and more specifically from its capital, have collected these curious facts about the Plaza del Pósito and there are those who say that, as in every legend, in its details there is something that is still faithful to the truth.

Above: Pósito de Loja

• the Narváez Palace 

Above: Palacio Narváez, Loja

• the fountain of the Veinticinco Caños

Above: Fuente de los 25 Caños (Fountain of the 25 Pipes)(aka the Moorish Fountain), Loja

Many of them have been declared assets of cultural interest.

In the Marx Brothers’ film Duck Soup (1933), a sequence of Loja appears as seen from the Mesón de Arroyo.

In the fiction, this city was called “Sylvania“.

With this name, a viewing point was opened in Loja in the same location, where the figures of the Marx brothers appear, as well as that of the cameraman who recorded the scene.

Wealthy widow Gloria Teasdale is asked to give $20 million to the small, financially struggling nation of Freedonia.

She agrees on the condition that Rufus T. Firefly is appointed leader of the country.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Trentino of the neighboring country of Sylvania is scheming to provoke a revolution in Freedonia in order to annex it.

He sends two spies, Chicolini and Pinky, to Freedonia to find out information about Firefly.

However, Chicolini and Pinky end up spying on the wrong man; this disappoints Trentino, but he agrees to give them another chance.

To collect information on Firefly, Chicolini and Pinky pose as peanut vendors and station their food cart outside of Firefly’s office.

Firefly hires Chicolini as Freedonia’s Secretary of War.

A short time later, Firefly’s secretary, Bob Roland, warns Firefly of Trentino’s scheme.

Roland advises Firefly to insult Trentino, hoping that Trentino will slap Firefly in response.

This will give Firefly an excuse to ban Trentino from entering Freedonia again.

Firefly agrees to the plan, but after a series of personal insults exchanged with Trentino, the plan goes awry when Firefly slaps Trentino himself.

The incident leads the two countries to the brink of war.

Both Firefly and Trentino attempt to woo Mrs. Teasdale in the hopes of acquiring her late husband’s wealth.

Trentino learns from Sylvanian spy Vera Marcal that Freedonia’s plans of war are in Mrs. Teasdale’s possession.

He tells Vera to assist Chicolini and Pinky in stealing the plans.

Chicolini is eventually caught by Firefly and put on trial.

During the trial, Firefly slaps Trentino again, causing Trentino to officially declare war on Freedonia.

Overcome with excitement for the war, everyone at the trial begins singing and dancing.

Chicolini and Pinky join Firefly and Roland in the anarchic battle.

After a series of violent mishaps during the battle, Trentino becomes caught in a makeshift pillory while Firefly, Chicolini, Pinky, and Roland throw fruit at him.

Trentino surrenders, but Firefly tells him, “Sorry, you’ll have to wait till the fruit runs out“.

Mrs. Teasdale joyously sings the Freedonian national anthem.

The four men begin throwing the remaining fruit at her instead.

Above: American actors Zeppo Marx (né Herbert Marx) (1901 – 1979), Chico Marx (né Leonard Marx)(1887 – 1961), Harpo Marx (né Adolph Marx) (1888 – 1964) and Groucho Marx (né Julius Henry Marx) (1890 – 1977) – Duck Soup

Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib (1313 – 1374), also known as Lisaneddín “language of religion“, was a Loja-born poet , writer, historian, philosopher and politician of Granada, as well as the Vizier and Prime Minister of the Emirs Yusuf I and Muhammad V of Granada.

Some of his poems decorate the walls of the Alhambra in Granada.

Above: Decorations inside Alhambra, Granada, España

He was a gifted young man.

His education was directed by the wisest doctors of his time in theology and law, philosophy, mathematics and medicine, excelling mainly in historical and political studies.

From his early youth, he experienced serious setbacks because his father Abdallah had fallen into disgrace with the King of Granada, who was at that time Mohammed IV.

Above: The Battle of Teba (August 1330) in which the forces of Muhammad IV (1315 – 1333) were defeated by Alfonso XI of Castile (1311 – 1350)

A defining date in Ibn al-Khatib’s life was the Battle of Salado on 30 October 1340, where the troops of Sultan Yusuf I suffered a great defeat and where al-Khatib’s father and older brother died.

Above: The Battle of Salado, in which the Christian troops of King 
Alfonso XI of Castile and King Alfonso IV of Portugal overwhelmingly defeated the Muslim armies of the King of Granada and the Benimerines

During the government of Yusuf I (r. 1333 – 1354) he went from being a chancellor’s apprentice to a private secretary, accompanying the monarch on his trip through eastern territories such as Almería, where he wrote the work Apparition of the Dream Image, Winter and Summer Journey.

During a plague epidemic that swept the Iberian Peninsula in 1348, he first enunciated the notion of contagion and recommended isolating the sick and destroying their sheets.

He rigorously described the development and spread of an epidemic. 

Above: Scene of the Great Plague of Sevilla (1649), Hospital del Pozo Santo, Sevilla – showing the crowd in front of the Hospital de la Sangre waiting for medical attention. In this epidemic, 46% of the city’s inhabitants died.

 

The death of his teacher Ibn al-Yayyab (1274 – 1349) in 1349 when this Black Death epidemic was in full swing and the fall from grace of Prime Minister Ridwan caused him to rise through the political ranks as head of the royal secretariat, minister and military command.

According to al-Khatib himself:

“When my teacher Ibn al-Yayyab died, Yusuf I gave me the position of Vizier, doubled my salary, and also added to me the performance of the general command of the army.“

Above: Palacio de Comares, Alhambra, Granada – built on the orders of Sultan Yusuf I (1318 – 1354)

On 19 October 1354, Yusuf I was assassinated and, although the powerful Ridwan was restored as Prime Minister, al-Khatib remained in all his positions after the proclamation of Muhammad V.

Above: Court of the Lions- one of the crowning achievements of the Alhambra, Granada, commissioned by Mohammed V (1339 – 1391)

Although al-Khatib had amassed a great fortune from all his positions, in late August 1359 there was a coup d’état by Ismail II (1339 – 1360), the Emir’s uncle, the monarch fled to Guadix, the Prime Minister Ridwan was assassinated and al-Khatib was imprisoned and all his property confiscated.

Above: Guadix, España

Thanks to the efforts of his friend Ibn Marzuq, secretary of the Marinid sultan Abu Salim, he was released and, instead of sharing exile with the deposed Emir, he settled in Salé and travelled throughout the Maghreb. 

Above: Images of Salé, Morocco

Muhammad V managed to regain the throne of Granada in 1362 and, despite the misgivings between the Emir and al-Khatib about his return from exile, decided to continue trusting him for his great skills as a politician and diplomat.

Tired of the palace intrigues and even accusations of treason against him, even by his own student Ibn Zamrak, al-Khatib decided to leave the Kingdom with the excuse of watching the western borders and crossed into the Maghreb.

The politician sent a letter to Muhammad V explaining the reasons why he was fleeing the Emirate, although the monarch was furious, especially because of the harassment policy of Ibn Zamrak and al-Nubahi.

Above: Bust of Ibn Khaldoun (aka Ibn Khaldūn)(1332 – 1406) in the entrance of the Kasbah of Bejaia, Algeria

Eventually, due to both the Granadan and Marinid courts, al-Khatib was arrested and imprisoned in a prison in Fez, where he was tortured and strangled to death in the autumn of 1374 when he was 61 years old.

His friend Ibn Khaldun relates that after his murder, he was buried in the cemetery at the Puerta del Quemado.

The next day, he was exhumed and his body burned, where it was displayed for two days until it was reburied.

For this horrible death he became known as du al-mitatayn, “the one of the two deaths“.

Above: Fez, Morocco

His more than 70 works, covering a wide variety of subjects, can be divided into the following categories: 

• anthologies (Al-Katiba al-Kamina – “The Squadron on the Prowl“, Kitab al-sihr wa-l-shi’r – “Book of Magic and Poetry“)
• asceticism and Sufism (Istinzal al-lutf – “Invocation of Grace“, Rawdat al-ta’rif bi-l-hubb al-sharif – “Garden of the Definition of Supreme Love“)
• law
• biographical genre (Al-Ihata fi ta’rij Garnata  (The Complete Information about the History of Granada), ​Iklil al-zahir – “The Resplendent Diadem“)
• epistolary genre
• geography and travel (Jatrat al-tayf , Mi’yar al-ijtiyar)
• history (A`mal al-a`lam – “Deeds of Men“, Al-lamha al-badriya – “The Radiance of the Full Moon“, about the Nasrid dynasty)
• medicine (Kitab al-wusul and a treatise on the Plague, Muqni’at al-sā’il ‘an al-maraḍ al-hā’il)
• politics
• poetry 

He wrote many of his books in the midst of insomniac crises, which is why he was called Dhu l-‘umrayn or “the one with two lives“, since while others slept, he remained awake, so that he also lived at night. 

In 1369, he wrote an autobiography. 

In 2022, the documentary film The Builders of the Alhambra was released, directed by Isabel Fernández, in which the actor Amr Waked plays the role of Ibn al-Jatib. 

The film shows the role that the Vizier played in the creation of the Nasrid Palaces of Granada based on the texts of his chronicles. 

The Builders of the Alhambra narrates the historic construction of the Alhambra in Granada from the point of view of Ibn al-Khatib, recreating the social, cultural and economic context of Granada in the 14th century.

The film intertwines the current vision of the Alhambra in Granada with scenes recreated in space and time (1340) to discover the characters responsible for the construction of the palaces of the Alhambra, its history and the reasons that led them to build it.

The film focuses on the construction of the Alhambra under the siege of Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada, prior to its disappearance by the advance of neighboring kingdoms, and who entrusts his Vizier Ibn al-Jatib, a poet and genius ahead of his time, with the challenge of building a building that reflects the splendor of his civilization:

The palaces of the Alhambra.

However, with the succession of the throne to the sultan’s son, Muhammed V of Granada, he involves new policies of his reign and has much more ambitious ideas to finish the construction of the Alhambra. 

Rafael Pérez del Álamo (1829 – 1911) was a Loja-born veterinarian and anarcho-syndicalist .

He was the main leader of the peasant uprising in Loja in July 1861, which he tried to give a republican-democratic character and about which he has written his own version of the events.

Above: Rafael Pérez del Álamo

(The Loja uprising is part of the social struggles developed by the Andalusian peasantry during the reign of Isabel II, with antecedents in the events of Arahal in 1857.

Above: Spanish Queen Isabel II (1830 – 1904)

Apparently the movement was created by a secret society of a liberal and republican nature, with strong influence from the Democratic Party and followed massively by the peasantry in the face of the high cost of living and the strong social inequality present in the Andalusian countryside.

It seems that the rebels anticipated the uprising in the face of the Mollina mutiny of 24 June, which raised the risk that the plan would be discovered by the authorities.

The elimination of the entailed estates, the feudal system and the limitation of access to communal property led to a marked impoverishment of the field workers.

In 1857 the first peasant protest movements took place, which were quickly suppressed by the security forces.

The revolt began on 28 June 1857, four days after the Mollina Mutiny, with the capture of Iznájar by 600 men led by Pérez del Álamo and the occupation of the town hall and the Civil Guard barracks with little resistance.

In this town the rebels published a manifesto in which they asked the town’s inhabitants to join and proclaimed that their objective was the defence of democracy and property.

Above: Iznájar, España

On 29 June 1857, with an army of 10,000 armed men, the rebels entered Loja, raising the flag of the Republic and singing the Hymn of Riego. 

Loja was the fiefdom of Ramón María Narváez, who served as a true chieftain in his hometown.

According to some sources, the rebels sacked the city, establishing a rudimentary system of land distribution.

Above: Loja

The uprising spread to Archidona, Íllora, Huétor Tájar and Alhama de Granada.

Above: Archidona

Above: Íllora

Above: Town Hall of Huétor Tájar

Above: Alhama de Granada

On 3 July 1857, the Captain General of Granada sent military forces to restore order, taking Loja the following day in a bloody battle.

After sending a strong contingent of troops led by Brigadier Serrano del Castillo, Pérez del Álamo retreated to Alhama on 4 July.

After this, they decided to advance towards Granada to try to conquer it, being defeated near the town of Las Pilas.

Above: Pilas de Algaida

Once the revolt was over, the leaders of the rebels were executed by summary procedure.

According to official figures, 116 of them were shot – although Pérez del Álamo had managed to flee to Madrid – while around 400 were deported.

Above: Royal Palace, Madrid

The following year, during a trip through Andalusia by the Queen Isabel II, amnesty was decreed for all those involved, including Pérez del Álamo.

After its failure, he managed to hide, until later he was amnestied and confined in Arcos de la Frontera, where he founded the Workers’ Centre and the Fraternidad Obrera Society, through which unemployed workers dedicated themselves to the reconstruction of ruined buildings to raffle them off among themselves or sell them and share the proceeds.)

Above: Arcos de la Frontera

The Workers’ Centre was the only security for the western Andalusian worker at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century .

The revolutionary ideas that had exploded with anarchist and socialist ideas could only be calmed with the brutal repression of the government and partly with workers’ brotherhoods such as the one organised by Pérez del Álamo.

His collaboration, together with other revolutionaries, in sending all kinds of information to Pablo Iglesias was decisive in the founding of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.

Above: Logo of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party)

Also in the last years of his life he corresponded with Benito Pérez Galdós, who included the feat of Pérez del Álamo in his famous National Episodes:

(The National Episodes are a collection of 46 historical novels written by Benito Pérez Galdós that were written between 1872 and 1912. 
They are divided into five series and deal with the history of Spain from 1805 to 1880, approximately. 
Their plots insert experiences of fictional characters into the narration of the main Spanish events of the 19th century, from the 
Spanish War of Independence (a chapter that Galdós, still a child, learned about through the narratives of his father, a soldier who had participated and fought in it), to the years of the 
Bourbon Restoration in Spain, a period that the writer himself lived through.) 

Above: Caricature of Benito Pérez Galdós 

He was truly an extraordinary man, endowed with precious faculties for organizing the plebs and leading them to rightfully occupy a place in the governing citizenry.

Rough and lacking what we call enlightenment, he demonstrated natural sharpness and a subtle knowledge of the art of revolutions – a negative art if you will, but which in reality never goes alone, since it has on the other side the qualities of the man of government.

He represented an idea that in his time was considered delirium.

Other times would bring the reason for that unreason.

Around the world in the Numancia (1906)

Emilio Quintana Pareja is a Loja-born writer and poet.

His first writings appeared in the late 80s in the cultural supplement “Citas” (Diario de Jerez), directed by José Mateos.

From 1992 to 1994 he directed the literary magazine Nada Nuevo.

He has collaborated in magazines such as Contemporáneos, Escrito en el agua, Clarín, Rosa cubica, Nadie pensé or the Spanish-Portuguese magazine Canal.

He currently publishes in the cultural magazine Ambos Mundos.

In 1992 he won the Villa de Benasque Prize for poetry with El mal poeta.

His poetic work has been included in various anthologies of contemporary Spanish poetry.

In 2012 he published Poems written in pencil. 

Above: Spanish writer Emilio Quintana Pareja

THE BAD POET

So many afternoons reading Baudelaire.
So much effort to play the bastard.
The fights with my father,
who never understood
why I called him
Aupick and not Quintana.
That time when I started
looking for a mulatto woman
as a lover.
And in Loja.
That was when I realized
that chastity was not my thing.
That Belgian girlfriend I lost.

But I am a Quintana,
a bourgeois and provincial poet.
A guy who is bored
– like all of you –
and instead of going on vacation
he writes poetry. Someone
who is slowly accepting
that nobody needs him,
fortunately:
and least of all
the history of literature.

Well, as you can see, it’s
a disgrace.

Above: French writer Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

Continue east on A-97 past Moraleda de Zafayona – “a place full of mulberry trees“.

Above: Moraleda de Zafayona

We approach Granada.

Above: Granada

Archidona, Loja, Huetor Téjar, Moraieda de Zafayona, Fuente Vaqueros – merely names on a map and entries in the Spanish version of Wikipedia.

Faraway places just off the motorway of the mind.

I think of Ann Morgan:

“I glanced up at my bookshelves, the proud record of more than 20 years of reading.

I found a host of British and North American greats staring down at me.

I had barely touched a work by a foreign language author in years.

The awful truth dawned.

I was a literary xenophobe.“

In 2012, the world arrived in London for the Olympics.

And Ann Morgan went out to meet it.

She read her way around the globe’s 196 independent countries, sampling one book from every nation – from classics and folk tales to current favourites and commercial triumphs, via novels and short stories and memoirs and biographies and narrative poems and countless mixtures of all these things.

It wasn’t easy.

Many languages have next to nothing translated into English.

There are tiny tucked-away places in the world where little is written down at all.

Her literary adventures shed light on the issues that affect us all:

Personal, political, national and global.

What is cultural heritage?

How do we define national identity?

(Should we define identity by one’s nation?)

Is it possible to overcome censorship and propaganda?

How can writing celebrate, challenge and change our remarkable world?

Reading is a solitary act, but one that demands connection to the world.

I could not walk the streets of Archidona or stroll the lanes of Loja.

Huetor Téjar remains hidden.

Moraieda de Zafayona is a mystery.

I have never, and probably never will, frequent Fuente Vaqueros and have it vanquish my heart with its unseen beauty.

But to read the literature of a place is, in a way, to see that place, even if one never sets foot inside it.

Step inside a book and you can travel anywhere anytime.

Time and space await.

Read Pareja and linger in Loja.

Remember del Alamo and recall the rebellion of the region.

Invite Ibn al-Jatib into your life and the Alhambra becomes more alluring, the desert desired for its divinity and Loja plazas are rendered poetic.

Barahona spent half his life in Archidona.

The reader of Barahona finds the missing half of his soul in the tears of Angelica and the meaning of life in his laments.

Balboa is both Peru and Archidona.

If a body cannot be in the boundary of reality then a book can let the mind wander as it will.

My feet did not feel the cobblestones of Archidona.

My mind flew over the city.

A map marks where Moraieda stands.

A poem places Archidona inside the soul.

A car captures my body and hurtles it across distances.

We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.

It is as simple as that.

But what the senses portray pales in comparison to what the mind and a few well-chosen words can manufacture – the dreamscape that it can weave.

I have never lived in Loja and yet the literature of Loja lives within me.

I have not ambled the alleys of Archidona and yet Archidona has an avenue within me.

I need a thousand lifetimes to see the world.

I only need a thousand words to create my own.

Sources

Francis Bacon, Essays

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Margaret Cavendish, Speeches by Dying Persons

René Descartes, Meditations

Google Images

Michel de Montaigne, Essays

Ann Morgan, Reading the World

Joshua Poole, Handbook for Poets

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Wikipedia