There grew a darkness, a brooding gloom, about the region that both season and damp might have accounted for. The earth was dense, peaty in colour. Houses of crumbling stone. Horses and bulls haunted the hillsides. Spanish iconography all the way from Altamira to Picasso. The old stone houses and cottages with their red terracotta roofs were pretty, characterful. We were leaving the coastal districts now, beginning our ascent towards Madrid. This topography was so different from the arid plains I had shot through on the journey to Altamira. We were obliged to cross the Cordillera Cantábrica where the peaks and slopes were, by turns, snowcapped or bathed in soft mist. West of the Pyrenees begins this mighty limestone wall that divides Spain and France, the ranges that serve as a natural weather boundary between the climes of northern Europe and, way south, the Sahara. The driver negotiated the swings and verticality with skill, as though we were skaters on top of the world. I grabbed a jacket, feeling the drop in temperature. Ultra-sleek windmills crocodiled the summits. At one point, the coach swung a spectacularly altitudinous curve, exposing lofty precipices plummeting to what I took to be the distant Atlantic, but it could not have been. It must have been a vast, glacier-fed lake, a tarn. A sign to the left: Laguna San Pedro de Romeral. I was not sure, and lacked a comprehensive map.
I could not imagine that much had changed here since the last Ice Age. I read that a variety of Cuckoo flower blossoming in springtime, Cardamine pratensis, had been in existence in these eminences since post-glacial times. The intermittent upland streams, aguacheras, were coated in ice. Small horses were grazing on plant life that was white, frozen. How did the beasts survive in these gelid conditions? Were they wild? Who might they belong to? No homesteads, no farms; man had barely set a solid print here. Humanity was confined to lower boundaries.
In spite of the delays encountered, I enjoyed these long-distance coches with their access to country above the tree line, where no railway tracks had been laid. By turns I read or scribbled, but mostly I gazed out of the window at the timeless landscape. Five golden eagles glided by, right up close; it was thrilling. There were flocks and flocks of raptors in these high Cordilleras. I had never seen such congregations, flying five, six together, swooping to nests, perching with curled claws on cloud-capped outcrops. And then, suddenly, eleven eagles rose up out of the bleached stone, wings flapping hard and slow, a hunting party. We had reached imperishable summits, cresting from one to another, where the rocks were craggy and bearded; ridged, serrated, barren. I was twisting, turning, missing nothing. Spotted a couple of griffon vultures, but I could not be sure. Bears inhabited these perpendicular drops, but I saw none.
Approaching Burgos, a crossroads for a thousand years, a city founded in 884 as a fortification against Moorish invaders beating a path northwards. The surrounding countryside boasted plenty of fortified castles, castillos, hence Castile. In the Sierra de Atapuerca, fifteen kilometres from city centre, a prehistoric site has been discovered, revealing evidence of the oldest human settlement on the continent of Europe; bones and teeth belonging to an early man, Homo Antecessor, dated at 80,000 years. There was possibly a former incarnation, too, residing in this area, up to one million years ago. Sabre-toothed tigers had also roamed these high plateaux, millennia back, when the region had enjoyed a milder, more African climate. Beyond Burgos, woods of holm oak but no olives, little farming activity. Were we too high for olives? And back when the sabre-toothed tiger existed here, might the wild olive also have flourished? Passing the turnoff for Segovia, romantic Segovia, 1000 metres above sea level, below the snows, clad in pine forests lacking livestock, and no tigers or olives!
I was sitting at an outdoor café in Madrid’s principal square, Plaza Major, a seventeenth-century, old city marvel. Early, sunny February. Tourists everywhere, taking advantage of cheap flights, snatched weekend breaks. Booze flowing, voice levels rising; British, American accents decibels above the rest. The number of police in this pedestrianised cobbled square of frescoed buildings, where coronations and bullfights had once been the entertainment, was only marginally less than that of the foreigners. A lone woman at the table beside me attempted to strike up a conversation. A native of the city, a Madrileña, but also half Italian – handsome, forties, shoulder-length, immaculately coiffeured brindled hair, clad in beige slacks, twill cotton shirt, quality sneakers, gold signet ring – she spoke of her husband and family. I had assumed she was gay. Curious, though, that she was sitting alone, sipping beer in this square full of strangers on a Saturday. She warned me off the neighbourhood, particularly at night. Big drug problem. Gangs patrolled with guns and knives. Their hits were los extranjeros, the tourists.
Approaching was my rendezvous, a Tunisian Doctor of Economics working in Madrid, a specialist in olive oil trading. I had met him a couple of years back at an olive symposium. An elegant man in his late thirties, well turned out in a perfectly pressed suit, tie, with a black briefcase, he offered his hand. Dr Kili spoke Spanish and French fluently, with little trace of accent. He had been resident in Spain for over a decade and loved it. His sons, both born in the capital, spoke the language better than Arabic. I wanted his opinion on what had catapulted Spain into first position in the international market after years of brushing the Italian shadow. He had agreed to a ‘brief meeting’.
His answer was simple. ‘We have over three hundred million olive trees, but go to Andalucía. Eighty per cent of our product grows there. It is the largest olive-growing expanse on the planet. This country has turned itself into a highly successful olive-production machine. We have become the centre of the olive world. Fortunately, olives and oil are fashionable and Spain is producing considerably higher quantities than anyone else. We are now the dominant player.’
‘Do the Italians challenge these figures, this loss of primary position?’ I would find this out for myself when I reached Sicily and ascended the Italian coast, but I wanted to hear both points of view.
‘They cannot argue facts. In terms of fruit and oil tonnage, Spain is without competitors. The other olive-producing countries, including Italy, will now be obliged to reconsider the market.’
‘And that means?’
‘Super-intensive olive orchard production. Quality, but above all quantity. Economically sound investments.’
‘How much oil can the market sustain?’
‘Leading Spanish producers and governmental organisations are aggressively seeking new territories, creating markets within countries who, traditionally, have never been olive-consuming peoples.’
‘Is there a downside, ecologically speaking?’
‘I think this is very good for Spain.’
I pushed a step further and asked directly what data his offices might be holding on the use of pesticides on Spanish olive farms.
‘I am not in a position to give figures, but all pesticides require phytosanitary registration with our authorities before they can be imported or sold. You can be assured the matter is highly regulated.’ Dr Kili glanced at his watch. He had arranged to meet his wife and two sons, he said. ‘A shopping expedition.’ He rose, offering his hand, his apologies. I thanked him for his time. It had certainly been brief!
A few yards in front, a swarthy individual in trilby, black, shiny trousers, highly polished stacked shoes was singing popular Italian opera gustily while accompanying himself on an accordion. Quite a feat. Los extranjeros paid no attention but a lively crowd of clapping Spaniards had gathered. A balding, elderly waiter in burgundy uniform arrived with the food I had ordered. I hadn’t eaten well since Barcelona. I craved fresh Mediterranean dishes, but the salad placed before me was the fare served everywhere: tinned tuna, tinned asparagus on limp lettuce, two quarters of tomato and strips of raw onion.
‘Olive oil?’
He returned with a thin liquid the colour of sallow skin, advising me to remove my mobile and camera from the table. I placed euros alongside the untouched dish, gathered up my belongings and strolled to the San Miguel food market, musing how best t
o fill my Saturday afternoon.
As I left the square, a one-legged man, crutches, flat cap, empty trouser leg folded up towards his waist, held with safety pin, upper torso entirely flagged in lottery paraphernalia, waved at me. ‘Winning ticket,’ he rasped. I shook my head. I had been rather taken aback by the sight of so many disabled throughout the country selling these tickets. At every coach stop, kiosk and coffee bar.
The interior of the renowned food mercado was deserted, save for stallholders packing away goods. I enquired whether it would be open the following morning.
‘It’s Sunday! You think we don’t need rest?’ was the trader’s response.
I wandered the vacant alleys until I reached a poultry stall, festooned with headless birds, where a handful of customers were still shopping. An elderly crone clutching a tartan trolley bag was giving out about something, screeching like an irate peacock. The queuing Madrileños ignored her. I wondered what was making her so furious. The fowl trader, moist, podgy fingers plucking skilfully at a goose, responded to her in monosyllables. Quite suddenly she swung and levelled her anger at me. Her baggy, grimacing face was shocking, flushed from booze and deep-rooted fury. I recoiled, but she yelled until her lungs rattled, until spent of force, then she made for the nearest exit, dragging her wheelie behind her. But she could not negotiate the iron door. I stepped to assist. She shuffled through and at the last moment turned, smiled, muchas gracias, señora. Even so, I doubled back and exited by my port of entry.
Outside a bistro in a neighbouring square, where boisterous foreigners were lunching, where it was windier, lacking the suntrap quadrangle of Plaza Major, napkins were flapping against cutlery like expiring fish. From around a corner arrived three armed officers. Two men and a woman, pushing through the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of tables, striding into the bar. I followed. All in black, a female, puffed face, thirties, was sobbing openly. The police encircled her and led her outside. A barman hurried to the door, calling after her, ‘all will be fine’. I had assumed she was under arrest. Quite the contrary. She was the victim. Credit cards, passport, cash, bag, all expertly pickpocketed in the grand Plaza. As I retraced my steps I spotted the security cameras on every pillar.
My trajectory to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía took me the length of Calle de Atocha with its scruffy shopfronts, its closed-up, wartime feel, its shops with darkened windows or stores offering articulos religiosos that bore no relation to religious articles. This was barrio Atocha, an insalubrious quarter littered with sex shops and XXX-rated video outlets. Outside Mundo Fantastico Sex, a steady traffic of assorted men with stale, furtive faces were shuffling in and out, hands deep in pockets. When I eventually reached Atocha Square, it was populated with black Africans trading from cuts of cloth laid out flat on the pavement. At each corner was attached a length of string. The instant a police officer or cruising law car was sighted, the illegal hawkers swiftly drew their contents into the home-made swag bag and fled.
Atocha station, the site of the 11 March 2004 bombings, extending the length of one side of the Plaza del Emperador Carlo V, had been fenced off. I wrongly assumed that the station was out of use, that the purpose of the digs was reparation of bomb damage. Later, I learned that major renovations to one of the metro lines were the cause of the disruption.
Free entry to the museum. I had only to show my passport. I ascended directly by the external glass lift to la plancha dos, the second floor, where Guernica, along with studies made in 1937 for the painting and photographs of work in progress taken by Picasso’s mistress of the moment, Dora Maar, were on permanent display. Standing in front of Guernica, immense, black, grey and white, directly after Altamira, was disquieting. Guernica, Gernika in the Basque language, is a small city in the autonomous Basque region west of Bilbao, neighbouring Santander, where I had just travelled from. On 26 April 1937, the Nazi Condor Legion, acting on behalf of General Franco, bombed the city in one of the first carpet-bombing operations to take place. It preceded the destruction of metropolises such as Cologne, Coventry, Dresden and Hiroshima. In Guernica on that spring afternoon it was market day (even though market days had been outlawed by Franco’s Nationalists). Everybody was out of doors, at their most vulnerable and quite unprepared for what was to come when the local church bells of Santa Maria sounded the alarm. The Luftwaffe let rain from the skies a hundred thousand tons of bombs that killed or injured sixteen hundred locals, a third of the population. Many were hampered by laden shopping bags. Those who were able ran from the town centre or buried themselves in shelters and watched on helplessly as their city was destroyed, pounded to rubble. Witnesses spoke of how the fighter planes continued, back and forth, back and forth, for more than three hours, endlessly strafing the fleeing, panicked crowds beneath. The city burned for three days. The flames and smoke could be seen for miles in every direction.
The carnage caused an international outcry. Franco denied all involvement. The German commander claimed that the highly equipped bombers had been targeting a nearby bridge, a target that did not suffer a single hit. After the news of this decimation of innocents, Pablo Picasso set to work on his masterpiece, his response to the barbarism. It was intended for the Paris Exhibition of 1937. The painting was never exhibited in Spain, at Picasso’s request, until after the death of Franco when it was taken first to the painter’s home town of Málaga and then later installed in its own private sala at the museum where I was now viewing it: a heaving, grieving chaos, a tangle of bulls, horses, human limbs and weeping women locked together in a claustrophobic space beneath a naked overhead electric bulb. It was all the more shocking seen directly after the elegance, simplicity and innocence of the rock art. Bison and horses, bulls and horses have remained the imagery on this land mass for at least eighteen thousand years.
Perhaps because I was on an olive quest, roots of a Mediterranean theme, in my mind’s eye I compared this story, this artwork, to the Roman annihilation of Carthage. Once the magnificent and powerful Phoenician city had finally been levelled, it burned for days on end. As at Gernika, the flames had roared high, visible for miles in every direction including out at sea.
Beyond Altamira, all is decadence.
I failed to discover in which year Picasso visited Altamira. It had to have been before 1934, but I found a postcard in the museum shop: a photograph by Man Ray of hands painted by Picasso, circa 1935. The left was black with white markings and the right was the reverse. I wondered whether this experiment was a direct result of his visit to the rock chambers. I also came across a Robert Doisneau photograph in which a bald-headed Picasso in matelot T-shirt holds both hands levelled against a window, studying them intently. The hands of creation. I tried to picture those prehistoric artists in the caves of Altamira, their hands, instruments of their art, pressed against the indentures of the rock walls, contemplating them, reproducing them, leaving indelibly their signatures.
Strolling back to my hotel in the vespertine light, clear, crisp, wintery. Interspersed with the relentless roar of autos and motorbikes with sawn-off silencers were the sonorous, forbidding peals of church bells. Saturday evening, the first mass of Sunday. Clustered outside the ornate churches were black-coated mamas, in headscarves, mingling with a smattering of elderly gentlemen, hats in hand. If the Muslims had maintained control of the peninsula, I would have been listening to the muezzin’s call. There are three major galleries along this wide, tree-lined Paseo del Prado: the Reina Sofia, which I had just left, the world-famous Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. Within the wellhead of this Golden Art Triangle, I sat and watched the weekend paseo of the Madrileños. The Neptune Fountain was in view and beyond lay the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. On either pavement of this avenida grew forty species of magnificent trees including magnolia and acacia though, alas, I found no olive. These alleys of venerables had spent the past five years waiting to be uprooted in a drastic remodelling of the historic boulevard. Until Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, former beauty queen, Miss Sp
ain in 1961, fifth and final wife, now widow, of the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, stepped in, objecting vociferously to such arboreal destruction. The Baron, a Dutch-born Swiss citizen with a Hungarian title, had gained his phenomenal wealth in the steel and armaments industries. His private art collection was judged to be second only to that of Queen Elizabeth II. Carmen, who had married the Baron just a few years before his death, had been instrumental in the transfer of his artworks to her mother country. A coup for Spain and her national reputation. When the plans for the remodelling of the Paseo del Prado were made public, the Baroness threatened to remove their museum from the capital if a single branch of the trees was touched. In stylish suffragette fashion, she chained herself to one of the ancient trunks, promising to climb its canopy and remain there until the plans were redesigned. Baroness Thyssen-Bornemisza had successfully extricated two not inconsiderable fortunes from the sibling inheritors of her past husbands. She was not a woman to lose a battle and eventually her powerful voice, supported by numerous other campaigners, proved too forceful. The Portuguese architect overseeing the redevelopment scheme was forced to return to the drawing board. I smiled silently at the feisty, fabulously wealthy Baroness’s triumphant passage from youthful beauty pageants to internationally respected connoisseur and patron of art who, today, was standing up for The Tree with the determination and passion of a virago. It brought to mind a Minoan ring, rediscovered in 1926, exquisitely fashioned out of gold some 2200 years before Christ. Engraved within it was a Goddess of The Tree descending to the island of Crete where two mortals were paying homage to a tree, almost certainly an olive. I rose from my bench. Night had fallen on the Paseo. I felt winter blow and a stab of loneliness, homesickness, as I strolled on past the Ritz, guests dressed up, congregating. I fancied I might contact the Baroness and suggest to her that, within the remodelling plans for this stately avenue, the developers plant a cluster of olive trees, to honour the plant that has brought Spain international recognition and premier leadership.
The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2) Page 7