A powerful message in the Queen Sofia Museum
It would be a shame to visit Madrid and miss its museums. Since I had less than a day to see the city, I really only had time to do justice to one museum. I chose the Queen Sofia Museum (named for the wife of Spain’s current constitutional monarch, King Juan Carlos I) because it houses what is arguably Pablo Picasso’s most famous painting, Guernica.
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| Madrid is a city of impressive statues & monuments. |
I arrived at the Puerta de Atocha station (site of the March 2004 terrorist bombings which killed 191 people) on an early morning (10 October 2012), high-speed AVE train from Córdoba, stashed my bags in a locker, and walked a few blocks to the museum arriving just as it was opening. It was easy to find Guernica –it has its own room. I was surprised by its size. Guernica is not just a painting; it’s a huge black, white, and grey mural about 11½ feet tall by about 25½ feet wide. Picasso painted it for the 1937 Paris Exhibition as a stark denunciation of the carpet bombing of a Basque village in northern Spain by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War. The Nazis carried out the attack in support of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, leader of the Spanish Fascist forces, in order to demoralize the Basque resistance fighters who opposed Franco. Over a three hour period, the Luftwaffe dropped 100,000 pounds of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the defenseless village killing 1,600 civilians. The painting is a graphic and disturbing surrealist/cubist illustration of the horrors of Spain’s three-year civil war (1936-39) which killed an estimated 365,000 people and was followed by 36 years of Fascist rule in Spain.
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The Queen Sofia Museum is dedicated to modern Spanish art featuring such luminaries as Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. I was surprised that I was allowed to photograph some of these paintings (without a flash). A section of the museum focused on photography and one particularly gruesome image caught my eye. The photographer captured a bullfighter, Florentino Ballesteros, at the moment he was gored by a bull in 1917. He died the following day.
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Face of the Great Masturbator (1929), Museo Reina Sofía.
Is this pornography or just another bizarre Salvador Dalí painting? |
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Two classics of modern art at the Queen Sofia Museum.
Left:Head of a Smoker (Joan Miró, 1925).Right: Figures by the Sea (Pablo Picasso, 1932). |
A digression into the violent side of Spanish culture
In an earlier blog post (December 11, 2012), “Toning Down the Political/Historical rhetoric” (http://wanderinggeographer.blogspot.com/2013/08/opinion-toning-down-politicalhistorical.html), I acknowledged that perhaps I had been unnecessarily harsh in my comments about Balkan politics, history, and political leaders. However, it’s hard to spend a couple weeks in Spain and turn a blind eye to its history. After all, this is a culture with a history of violence that perfected religious intolerance in the Inquisition, gave us the cruel “sport” of bullfighting (not much of a sport since the odds are stacked heavily against the bull), facilitated innumerable atrocities on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, and tolerated a dictatorship which ended only with Franco’s death in 1975.
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Florentino Ballesteros Gored (Alfonso Sánchez García, 1917, Museo Reina Sofía).
In the photo, it appears that Ballesteros is being gored in the head but two separate reports indicate that el toro got him in the chest.
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Of course, Spain doesn’t necessarily have a more violent history than many societies including my own. And, I must emphasize that the country is changing rapidly as young Spaniards become more European and less traditionally Spanish in their attitudes and behavior. For example, depending on which survey you believe, only 10 to 30% of Spaniards now actively support bullfighting. The remaining 70-90% either oppose it (including Queen Sofia) or don’t care.
Still, there is a violent element in Spanish culture that persists, particularly in rural areas. I’ve become personally acquainted with this cruel part of the culture because my partner, Judy, is involved with Spanish greyhound rescue organizations both in the USA and Spain. Spanish greyhounds (galgos in Spanish) are used for competitive rabbit hunting in the Spanish countryside. The galgueros (Spanish hunters who use galgos) hunt with large packs of dogs but kill most of them at the end of the hunting season - they don’t want the expense of feeding them the rest of the year. They keep only the best hunting dogs for the following hunting season or to breed them. Most are not humanely euthanized. Instead they are shot, clubbed to death, hanged from trees, or turned over to municipal dog killing centers that do the galgueros’ dirty work for them. Our own little galgo, Prisa (Spanish for “hurry”) was thrown down a dry well north of Madrid with four other galgos in 2005 and left there to die. Miraculously, the five were discovered by a passing motorist and pulled from the well by a local fireman who is an animal lover (he rappelled into the well wearing an oxygen tank). Sadly, most Spaniards turn a blind eye to the treatment of galgos and podencos (a similar breed with large, cute ears). The few that are rescued usually go to adopters in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The Spanish generally don’t consider them “pet” material.
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Prisa by Hugh Gordon. Hugh is an ol’ friend whom I met in Botswana in 1986. He drew our galgita (little female Spanish greyhound) from a photo Judy and I provided him. Hugh now lives in Ireland and has a website of his photos which can be accessed at www.lucitphoto.com.
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A wonderful monument to a great writer
From the Queen Sofia Museum, I took the Madrid Metro to the Plaza Puerta del Sol, then walked west on the Calle Mayor to the Plaza Mayor de Madrid. The architecture was wonderful, and I was now close to a vegetarian restaurant that I’d found on the web.
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| Madrid’s Plaza Puerta del Sol |
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| Art and architecture at the Plaza Mayor de Madrid |
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Heavy meat consumption seems to be an important part of Spanish culture. Most restaurants don’t have much in the way of vegetarian options.
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Madrid has a few restaurants specializing in vegetarian fare.I had a delicious lunch at a quaint veggie joint near the Plaza Mayor.
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After lunch, a short metro ride took me to Plaza de España. I noticed on my map that the plaza had a monument to my favorite Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, a contemporary of Shakespeare and author of the epic Don Quixote de la Mancha. It was a short walk to a towering monument where I was delighted to see a larger than life stone sculpture of the seated author overlooking bronze statues of Don Quixote in a heroic pose on horseback and his faithful companion, Sancho Panza, riding a donkey.
I identify with the character Don Quixote who “dreams impossible dreams”and struggles against injustice. Seeing this wonderful monument to Cervantes and his noble characters was an emotional experience for me now that I was nearly at the end of my around-the-world journey. It also reminded me that there is a positive side to the Spanish people that is gradually emerging after centuries of repressive rulers and an oppressive culture.
Coming next: Lisbon, Portugal
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| Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) is memorialized at the Plaza de España. |
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| Don Quixote (left) and Sancho Panza (right) at the foot of the Cervantes monument. |
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