Retrospective: Written on 1/6/ 2006 - Part 1
(too big to install in a single sitting)
Lil ol me in the wilds of Spain & loving it! If you don't speak Spanish, don't worry too much: they are very sympathetic over this way because they can't speak English! I dragged myself out of Barcelona for a week thinking; if Barcelona is really so different to the rest of Spain, I should take some time out in the Great beyond the Barcelona city limits. Wow! I headed for a French run festival some friends let me know about over the web called the Freaky Dragon Festival, between a remote town called Nonaspe and an almost unheard of (in Barcelona anyway) village named Faio. The countryside is truly beautiful! For millenia the Iberian Peninsula has been fought over, plundered, guarded, abandoned, lived on, moved on, farmed and fertilised, but has somehow bounced back into a natural landscape so elastically that you are transported back in time. The festival itself was A+. It attracted people from all over the world, from South America to Germany (there were even about ten other Aussies there) in a five day fusion of non-stop bouncy trance music. We danced, fire twirled, ate very well, drank much wine (or in my teatotaler case, chai) and played the night through all week long to some of the more obscure, up and coming djs from across Europe. The final performance of the festival was a live French instrumental band (I didn't quite catch their name, but I think they were called 'Vanessa') for whom almost the entire festival came out to dance together. The most common languages spoken were English, French and Spanish (just in case my head wasn't confuddled enough between Barcelona'd mix of Catalan, Spanish and English) and the atmosphere was of a very warm, multicultural travellers' community. As my first real festival this side of the globe, it certainly gave me a taste of the carnivalesque history that Europeans have consistantly encouraged since at least the height of the Ancient Greek civilisations from the 5th century BCE onwards [if you want to know more about the history of European carnival, look up the Ancient Greek's festival of Dionysus, Petronius' Satyricon for Ancient Rome, Rabelais in Early Modern (ie. late Medieval) France and the history behind Halloween :) ]
From the festival I went to Zaragoza for a day, which was a very different city to Barcelona. Apart from the old area of town, the streets were wide set and fairly windy (watch out for your hats!). The people were eagerly friendly, but there was a stifled, wary feeling about the place with very few English speakers. I trained back to Barcelona from Zaragoza on Tuesday night and had to make some heartbreaking choices about what I could fit in before leaving for Scotland on Thursday afternoon. So Wednesday, my last full day in Barcelona, I went to the much acclaimed MACBA exhibitions; Barcelona's museum of modern art. Although I was eager to see the Salvador Dali gallery and the Gaudi park, I know I will be back in Spain soon and can soak them in then. The MACBA was exhibiting a number of interesting shows, particularly the Peter Friedl exhibit (fantastic space relations) and a history of album cover art from the last fifty odd years. So much of my focus in Barcelona was on the older areas of town and 'what was,' that the MACBA was a nice follow up to see where the art in this crazy city is now and where it was heading.
Thursday, unfortunately, I missed my plane to Scotland (yeah, yeah: laugh it up!)
.... to be continued.
