These are the last two topics I want to post about from our recent trip.

Las Setas, or The Mushrooms, is a fanciful version of a pergola, a lattice roof supported by columns, and is inspired by the large cathedral described two posts ago, but earns its ubiquitous nickname from its appearance. The city created an architectural competition seeking ideas to revive a defunct area in downtown Sevilla, and that goal was achieved: it opened in 2011, and today is one of the most visited tourist attractions in that city. We bought tickets that allowed us to walk on top of it, then viewed a clever, dialog-free promotional video of the city in a delightfully air-conditioned surround-style theater; the temperature was close to 100°F during our walk. You can also shop in or below it, visit a Roman archeological site underneath, or come late at night to see a dramatic light show, none of which we did. My pictures are just ok since I tend not to linger in high, open spaces. The last picture is of a scale model.

Thanks for my husband for finding out about this. We would all recommend it.

Most trains to Barcelona change in Madrid, so my husband and I decided to stay two nights there. It has a reputation for being warm, but this May it was about 10 degrees cooler than Sevilla. What we hadn’t thought about was the altitude. Madrid is 2000 feet above sea level, and even though we spent three hours on a train getting there, I was noticing my breathing on the first day.

Our hotel was very close to El Retiro, a huge city park that reminds us of Central Park in New York, the Boston Common, and Golden Gate Park, each in different ways. We don’t think Barcelona has a park like this, either in terms of size or in terms of hanging around. There were lots of people enjoying the park, mostly by lounging, yet it didn’t feel crowded, just pleasant, or as pleasant as the outdoors can be in such heat. There are lots of trees as well as grassy areas, some statues, a small number of buildings, fountains, and a lake. We were happy to see the statue of the Fallen Angel, aka Satan, not a common statue honoree. We were not able to find the 600-year-old olive tree, despite asking for help from passersby, who were very interested to learn there was such a tree around, but didn’t know where it was. We couldn’t figure it out from the description in the guidebook.

Unsurprisingly for a capital city, Madrid is quite grand, by impression perhaps a bit more uniform and rectilinear than Barcelona, but more regal, and we didn’t even see the Royal Palace. The public buildings are huge edifices in Greco-Roman architectural styles topped by oversized statues of winged horses or gryphons and festooned with columns and cornices and friezes. Of course, DC also has extremely large classical stone buildings that house various government agencies and museums, or at least it did last October when we were there.

We also checked out two famous plazas. The red one in the picture below is Plaza Mayor, whose color was chosen by democratic vote shortly after Franco died, but right up until then, in the early 70s, was the site of heavily attended public executions by garrote. The statue is Rey Don Felipe III’s horse. The lighter colored plaza is Puerta del Sol. Both of them were grueling in the heat so we didn’t spend a lot of time there.

The main attraction of Madrid for me is the museum Reina Sofia, which houses Guernica. We were only in Madrid for one full day, a Sunday, and the museum was only open for about four hours, but it turned out to be enough.

We spent the majority of our time on floor two, which has eight Salas. Each sala is associated with a concept and the displays include pictures and sculptures, of course, but also posters, newspaper articles, common daily goods, anything that contributes to understanding the concept. I really like this contextual approach, but it requires a lot of processing and attention. My husband and I mostly wandered separately.

Topics on floor two include the Spanish Pavillion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, Cubism, Surrealism, Political Art, and Guernica. The exhibitions are arranged so that each subject has the amount of space it needs, so some topics take multiple large salas and others are in one small (for a museum) sala. In general the rooms are spacious and were not crowded of them. Cubism is my favorite, and I’ve now decided that our house needs a full-sized poster of a piece by Juan Gris, ideally one with a guitar in it. I’m also very impressed by the collection of motivational posters from the Spanish Civil War, which I found very affecting. The only thing I want to talk about in depth though is Guernica.

It was actually disturbing to see Guernica. I’m quite familiar with it, but at full-size it makes a huge impact, which I don’t even have words to describe. I stood in front of it for at least 10 minutes, not sure really. I did not take any pictures because no picture could possibly do it justice, and I wanted to look at it. You may know that Franco agreed to allow the Nazis to test their Air Force on a small town, Guernica, in the Basque country, and their weapons worked very well. Picasso, in Paris, imagined the scenes based on reports he heard, and in fact never returned to Spain afterward, because he refused to enter while Spain was under Franco’s rule, and Franco both outlived him and died in office. The figures in the painting are simple yet extraordinarily explicit and evocative and brutal. These are images we know only too well, having seen them on our television sets for years, but somehow the cubist style makes it fresh and very real.

If you are imagining me in a quiet room having a moment, though, perish the thought. I was patiently inching my way through the crowd to the front and then slowly across; it’s about 25 feet wide. All the while people were stepping forward and taking selfies with a big smile, or chattering about the size of the testicles on the bull, or chattering about anything, not that I could understand most of them, but these people were clearly not feeling thoughtful or horrified or moved. Some were, but not most. I do not know how the guards can stand the assignment. If I’d had to stay there an hour, I think I would become a misanthrope.

I’m fighting a bit of a cold today so I decided to use the time to do this mega-post. I may take a little time off, especially since we’ll be in the US for part of June. I noticed while I was writing this that I do have an expat characteristic I need to ween myself of, which is expressing units in degrees Fahrenheit and feet and miles and so forth. That’s just lazy of me. Maybe I’ll try to do the opposite while I’m in the US just to practice.