By the 1960s, both economic and political changes were slowly under way. Franco’s government, still mostly run by Fascist Falangists (some were Opus Dei members), was opening up to foreign investment and tinkering with economic reform and rapid industrialization. Before long, Spain was one of the top ten industrialized nations in the world, and her economy was galloping ahead, expanding by 6 percent a year.11 Meanwhile, repressed regions started to fight back. Frequent strikes broke out in Barcelona. ETA emerged in 1959 and defied Franco’s censure of all that was Basque, going on to kill the man named as Franco’s successor.
Until 1975, a Spanish wife was not allowed to work, own property, or travel without a note from her husband.
Waiting on the sidelines sat Prince Juan Carlos, grandson of King Alfonso XIII, who’d left Spain in 1931. Beckoned by Franco, who’d promised to reinstall the monarchy, the prince arrived in Spain in 1948, at age ten, without his parents. Franco supervised his education, and life, in Spain—but never did put him on the throne. The Bourbon had to wait twenty-seven years, but when Franco finally died in 1975—and the streets erupted in joy—Juan Carlos I was handed the baton. Some dubbed him “Juan Carlos the Brief,” but the new king called for a nationwide referendum, asking the people what sort of government they wanted. The answer: a parliamentary monarchy with the king as head of state and a prime minister as leading politico.
Spain’s seventeen provinces have their own parliaments and numerous parties, but on the national level elections are essentially a vote between two parties: the right-leaning Partido Popular and the leftist Socialists.
In 1981, fanatical Spanish soldiers overtook the parliament and held its occupants captive for twenty-four hours, threatening to shoot them if the king didn’t step down. Juan Carlos refused to abdicate or to leave the palace; instead, he phoned all his generals and convinced them not to support the power play. He succeeded. His smooth moves that day made his reputation soar. He and wife, Queen Sofia, remain popular and in power to this day.
Hot Spots
Madrid: Chosen as capital by King Philip II simply because it marks the exact center of Spain, hopping Madrid is home to splendid architecture, vast parks, and high culture, including the Golden Triangle of museums—the Prado, the Reina Sofia (home of Guernica), and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Beautiful Atocha station—part of which is a misty botanical garden—was the site of the March 11 attack that would have been worse if the trains had been running on time: the plan was for trains to be side by side when the bombs exploded.
Barcelona: The pretty Catalan city on the Mediterranean snatched international attention when she snagged the Olympics in 1992, an event that caused the city to finally develop her coastline. Courtyards are filled with orange trees, and romantic alleys wind past the medieval cathedral in the Gothic Quarter. Urban planners rave about the abundant squares that serve as living rooms in the densely packed city, but travelers to Barcelona must beware: purse snatchers, mostly Moroccans, run rampant.
Catalonia: The hilly northeastern corner that unfurls toward France is the wealthiest region in Spain, thanks to its industry and tourism. Catalans speak their own language; it’s taught in schools, used on subways, and spoken on local TV. Catalonia’s independent streak, and the substantial contribution the area makes to the country’s coffers in Madrid, has given the region political chips: she’s Spain’s most autonomous.
Valencia: The air grows thick with smoke during the annual burning of effigies in Las Fallas, and at any time of year in the paella capital, her tapas bars provide hours of fun—particularly after a day spent delving into her flashy culture; the new art museum is built in the shape of an eye.
Basque country: Glittering beach town of San Sebastián and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao are two pulls to this northern region that runs between the jagged Pyrenees and the yacht-dotted Bay of Biscay that hugs France. Dubbed the culinary capital of Spain, the Basque country boasts hundreds of prestigious cooking clubs—and perhaps only a few dozen radical separatists.
Galicia: This misty northwest corner of Spain that hangs over Portugal is perhaps the least connected to the rest of the country. Ancient Celt settlers left a legacy of red hair, bagpipes, and, some say, magic. Known for fish and beautiful beaches, Galicia became world famous for the 2002 Prestige oil spill. The cathedral in regional capital Santiago de Compostela marks the destination of a popular pilgrimage across the Pyrenees.
Rock of Gibraltar: Despite the occasional nearly comical “invasion” by Spanish troops, who are quickly forced to turn back, this “rock” that’s about fifteen miles from Africa has been legally British territory since 1713. Punctuated by military structures and caves, Gibraltar is home mostly to British residents who furiously wave the Union Jack; votes consistently show that locals want to stay part of the UK. Spaniards are furious that Brits won’t get off the rock.
OTHER IMPORTANT ROCKS
Parsley Island (Isla Perejil): When six Moroccan military men “seized” it in 2002, Spanish warships went in to reclaim this smaller-than-a-city-block rock that’s a few hundred yards off Morocco and home to a few flocks of goats; probable reason: fishing—there’s a gold mine of silvery fish in these waters.
Ibiza: Two million partyers descend upon it en masse three months of the year. The third biggest of the Balearic Islands had its own chill-out and rave musical styles, and the Ibiza DJ collections—such as those from Café del Mar and Pacha—defined a recent era.
Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen): Rising up in Castilla y León, the haunting 492-foot-tall cross atop Valle de los Caídos was an excruciating labor of Republican POWs from the Civil War. Some talked of knocking the towering cross down when Franco died, but it still looms; Franco lies underneath it.
Maternity wards: With one of the world’s lowest birth rates—less than 2 percent—there are now incentives to breed. In Valencia, parents of a second child are handed a check for about $3,500; in towns such as Calzadilla, they might be presented with a pig.12
ALHAMBRA
Peering down from atop Granada, the Alhambra is the final reminder of the era (711–1492) when Muslim Moors ruled much of Spain—a time not favorably recalled by Spaniards. Begun in the twelfth century, the sultans’ compound of seven palaces is a labyrinth of scalloped arches, honeycombed domes, and glazed tile mosaics surrounded by glassy pools and lush gardens. Each palace had grand baths, heated floors, and piped water (a choice of hot, cold, and perfumed); private chambers even had flush toilets. Later battered by Napoleon’s soldiers, the architectural jewel was crumbling when nineteenth-century American writer Washington Irving became entranced by the stories held within its walls and moved in to write about the place. The resulting book, Tales of the Alhambra, so popularized the compound that it was saved from the wrecking ball and refurbished to much of its former grandeur. Now it’s an immensely popular tourist site.
Seville: Thick with the scent of orange trees, filled with tiny tapas bars, and surrounded by mountaintop Moorish forts, Seville is so enticing it’s hard to pull away. She’s still renowned for her cigars, her bullfights, and her legendary barber.
Hotshots
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Prime Minister, 2004–present. He can’t seem to get that “I can’t believe I was elected” grin off his face, but the young Socialist in Madrid is making plenty of Spaniards happy—and may bring the country closer together than it’s been in years. A lawyer and former member of parliament—in 1986, he was its youngest member, voted in at age twenty-six—Zapatero made a U-turn from many of Aznar’s controversial policies, and pulled troops back from Iraq.
PM Zapatero changed Spain’s pro-Bush direction
King Juan Carlos I: Ruling monarch, 1975–present. Born in Italy in 1938, Juan Carlos was raised in Switzerland, while his father, Don Juan, waited to be called back to Spain since Franco had promised to restore the king—though he never got around to it. In 1948, Juan Carlos was more or less handed over to Franco, but he had to wait unti
l 1975 to wear the crown. Despite his playboy reputation, he’s respected, as is classy Queen Sofia, a Greek princess whom he brought to Spain as his wife with the promise that someday he really would rule it.13
Crown Prince Felipe (b. 1968): The man HELLO! magazine calls a “royal heartthrob” is better known for whom he’s gone out with (a Norwegian model, a German royal, a Greek aristocrat) than anything he’s ever done (received a master’s degree in law and international relations, trained in the Spanish army, navy, and air force). Predictably, he attracted the most ink of his life when he married lovely Letizia Ortiz, a divorcée and a commoner. Surprisingly, given the prince’s previous harsh feelings toward the media—which he blamed for ruining a previous love affair—Ortiz had been one of Spain’s most popular newscasters. The real irony is that the couple managed to keep their relationship a secret from the press until plans for the May 2004 wedding were officially announced.
José Marfa Aznar: Prime Minister, 1996–2004. Exuding all the charm of a taxman (which he used to be), former Franco supporter Aznar led Spain during an era when unemployment was the EU’s worst—often over 15 percent; Spain’s coffers increased, due to billions of dollars of EU funding and privatization of state utilities. After mishandling the Prestige oil spill (which he claimed was small and contained), sneaky Aznar and cronies allegedly went on to wipe government computers clean of all information they had about the March 2004 attacks. Now a “Distinguished Scholar” at Georgetown University, he conducts political seminars—one prays not about emergency management.
PABLO PICASSO (1881–1973)
Pablo Picasso painted in numerous styles—from neoclassical to modern to the cubism he invented—and few painters have more influenced popular culture than the Spaniard who studied in Barcelona and headed to France in 1900. In Paris, where his friends were anarchists, artists, and poets, Picasso was under watch by police, who described him as “a so-called modern artist” who was “arrogant and stuffy,”14 but his bold works soon attracted the likes of Gertrude Stein, who, with her brother Leo, became his first patrons. In his later years, his autograph on a cocktail napkin sufficed to pay tabs when he went out. Picasso’s marriage to Russian ballerina Olga Koklova was only one of a series of bad, maddening relationships, but whenever he chucked one mistress, the short and squat but charismatic creator—“a raging bull with an insatiable sexual appetite”15—soon had another willing victim at his side. His coterie, painting style, and even his dog, it’s said, changed with every new female acquaintance, but it was a male friend, the poet Casagemas, who inspired his Blue Period. The poet, shortly after lamenting his love life, pulled out a gun in a café and shot himself in the head. That was also the suicide method chosen by Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline; his lover Marie-Thérèse hanged herself, and his grandson Pablito killed himself by swallowing peroxide. Picasso produced 22,000 works before he died of a heart attack in 1973 in France; Picasso had vowed never to return to Spain while Franco was alive, and the dictator outlived the painter by two years.
General Francisco Franco Bahamonde (aka El Caudillo): Dictator, 1939–1975. Born in Galicia, the general who pushed the dominoes that led to the devastating Spanish Civil War was brave—at thirty-three he was promoted to general—but most of all he was lucky: his two rivals died before the Civil War had ended, he held on to power for thirty-six years, and he won two football lotteries. He’s best known for kicking his country into the dark ages, but some rich conservatives recall him fondly.
ALIEN ARTIST: SALVADOR DALÍ (1904–1989)
It’s hard to overstate the influence of his Costa Brava summer home in Cadaqués on the work of Dalí. There, where the winds whip through olive groves so fiercely that they twist boulders, and the clouds, thick with African dust, literally rain red, nature herself takes on a surreal form that Dalí captured on canvas. In the tiny fishing village where stone alleys lace up past tiny white houses stacked upon a hill, time has a way of slipping away, as illustrated in the painter’s melting watches. The man known for his peculiar mustache—he saved his clippings from the barbershop and elaborately waxed the upturned tips—also brought oddities he’d found on his annual trips to Paris and Manhattan back to the village; long after his death, you can still find his remaining coterie of twins and hermaphrodites there. The painter married his muse, Gala, after she left her poet husband, Paul Éluard, and he paid plenty for that. Gala kept her boyfriends in fine style, buying a castle and yacht for her fave paramour Jeff Fenholt, star of Jesus Christ Superstar, but Dalí didn’t much care. Those close to him say he never consummated the marriage. The surrealist, who amused himself in odd ways—he hired models to serve as his doting fans for Parisian events and to prance around like fairies in his hotel room—went down in history not just for his strange art but for being a sell-out. The Catalan lent his name to jewelry, perfume, sheets, and ties—and signed blank sheets of paper before they went to the printers. One suspects that the weirdo would get a big kick out of knowing how many of his works are now considered fakes.
Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582): Reformer of Carmelite nuns and patron saint of spectacularly walled Ávila—perched on a hill not far from Madrid—Teresa, who was once paralyzed for three years, is said to have been able to levitate, and if you feel the energy in the room where she slept you might believe the claim. Franco apparently did, believing that she was responsible for his good fortune; he’d come upon a lucky charm of hers—her severed centuries-old hand during one of the Civil War battles. Franco was so superstitious and so attached to the limb that he refused all requests from the nuns of Ávila to get it back. Not until he died was her lucky hand pried out of his, and buried with the rest of her corpse.
DRINKING MATTERS
In the land of drinking festivity, “cidra” is stylishly poured from bottle high over glass, bubbling Catalan cava may cascade over stacked champagne flutes, and Costa Brava’s old salts still drink wine the old way, streaming from forehead down nose. Spice-rich and vanilla-ish Quarenta y Tres—from forty-three ingredients—is the national drink, but all regions boast their own specialties, taken as an after-meal shot or “chupito.” Smooth Pacharan is made from sloe berries, Izarra is herb-infused Armagnac, the Canaries’ banana-derived Licor de Platano elicits loud coos, and Mallorca’s spicy “ron” (rum) is so special they don’t let it off the island.
News you can understand: El País, Spain’s finest newspaper, is published in Spanish—but eight pages are available in English through the International Herald Tribune: www.iht.com/pdfs/elpais/ep1.pdf
8. PORTUGAL
(República Portuguesa)
Still Sleeping
FAST FACTS
Country: Portuguese Republic; República Portuguesa
Capital: Lisbon
Government: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1143, established; 1910, republic; 1974, overthrew tossed king, became dictatorship
Population: 10,606,000 (2006 estimate)
Head of State: President Anibal Cavaco Silva (2006)
Head of Government: Prime Minister José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa (2005)
Elections: President elected by popular vote, five-year term; prime minister (usually leader of majority party or coalition) appointed by president
Name of Parliament: Assembly of the Republic; Assembleia da República
Ethnicity: Portuguese-Mediterranean; African (less than 100,000); Eastern European
Religion: 94% Roman Catholic; Protestant, other
Language: Portuguese
Literacy: 93% (male 95%, female 91%); some figures show 85% literacy or less
Famous Exports: Magellan, lobotomies, vinho verde, the pitiful wailing of fado
Economic Big Boy: EDP (electrical utility): 2004 total sales: $8.78 billion1
Per Capita GDP: $18,600 (2006)
Unemployment: 7.7% (January 2006 Eurostat estimate)
EU Status: EEC member since 1986
Currency: Euro
Quic
k Tour
Edged by 500 miles of dramatic coastline, laced by rivers, and divided by mountains rising through her interior, La República Portuguesa is strewn with foggy fishing villages of twisting streets, tiny whitewashed towns tumbling down hills, and hamlets hidden in cork forests. The land of port, vinho verde, and two hundred dishes made with cod, Portugal is an eye-pleaser, from her train stations wrapped in painted tiles to her hidden bars, where one sits around wood barrels while her old-timers belt out sad ballads into the night. Stunning capital Lisbon weaves up and down hills, but most Portuguese live in small towns, where herds of belled goats jingle down dirt roads.
Agriculture, mostly in the form of small farms, still employs one-fifth of workers.
Continental Europe’s westernmost land shares the Iberian peninsula with Spain, the geographical sibling under whose shadow Portugal has atrophied for about five centuries; the country’s weightiness was seen in James Michener’s book, Iberia, which forgets to mention Portugal at all. Both countries entered the EU in 1986, but there are lots of differences—the most obvious being that Atlantic-hugging Portugal has a quarter of Spain’s population, is less than a fifth of Spain’s geographical size, and in Portugal they speak Portuguese. And unlike Spain, now a dynamo in Europe, Portugal has not yet gotten her act together—despite the billions of euros the EU has handed the country over the past fifteen years.
What Every American Should Know About Europe Page 20