Diverse Spain [antikvár]

CopperCopper, If I had to choose a colour that would synthesize the impression one receives from the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, my choice might well be the colour of copper. After a long journey all over Spain, one's eyes retain a predominant coppery tone that comes to mind when one is far away and distinguishes in one's memory that old "bull's hide" both from the Europe to which it belongs and from the Africa to which it is the gateway.Over-simplification, you might say - and you would be right. Any colour is always a synthesis of the whole, infinitely varied range of colours, one of the results of chromatic diversity. That is what happens with landscapes. In all of them all the colours of the rainbow ar^ present in their different gradations of tone, but there is always one that is predominant, one that subjugates the eye of the beholder and comes to his mind when he evokes these landscapes at a distance in time or space. And this also happens in the case of countries, which, though they may possess a great variety of scenery, will nevertheless have one particular landscape, or one series of such landscapes, that represents them all.Yes, it is indeed over-simplification to say that Spain is the colour of copper. But perhaps the reader will understand the need that 1 feel to simplify when I tell him that what the publishers have asked me to do is to tell him, in these few pages of text that accompany Ramon Masats' photographs, just what Spain is, what Spain is like, the Spain of all time and of today, not only from the viewpoint of the landscape but from all other aspects as well. "A mere nothing", as we Spaniards ironically say. And it is only my conviction that, in the same way as Ramon Masats has done it with images, there is nothing that cannot be expressed in words, that has persuaded me to accept this extremely delicate task. And I must also say, in kindness to the reader and out of deference to my own tastes and inclinations, that my account will necessarily resemble a café conversation rather than an erudite lecture.And because 1 may have over-simplified the beginning of my description, reducing the colour of Spain to this coppery tone, I must now mention a fact that is vital to any knowledge or understanding of Spain, which is that this country's geographical circumstances have given it a really immense variety of natural scenery. Any peninsula is like a continent in miniature, and throughout its territory, from north to south or from east to west, the Iberian Peninsula reproduces all the variety of the continent of Europe.From the oak forests of the Pyrenees to the olive groves of Jaén, from the beech woods of Asturias to the swaying palms of Elche, from the meadows of Galicia and the cliffs of Galicia to the deserts of Almería or the languorous beaches of the Mediterranean, traversing the bare, high plains of Castile or the untilled wastes of Aragón, not to mention the contrasts to be found in Spain's island groupings of the Balearios or the Canaries, everything in the country is eloquent of diversity, of a multiple reality within a geographical unity.Between Europe and AfricaI invite the reader to confirm for himself the existence of the wealth of scenic variety to be found in this world of Iberia, straddling the gap between Europe and Africa, which in its geology and climate, its flora and fauna, partakes of the wealth of both these continents - in rather the same way as its situation between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic brings it under the influence of the sunny or foggy weather prevailing in the seas that surround it. Any traveller who has had the experience of an extended trip all over the country will undoubtedly arrive at the conclusion that he finds himself not so much in a country as in a country of countries, in a nation of nations that provides as many headaches for geographers and meteorologists as it does problems for the politicians who want to govern it without upsetting the conditions nature has imposed on it.Down through the centuries, and even in quite recent years, there have been countless attempts to impose political uniformity on this heteroge-neously country by means of imported centralizing systems. But not one of them has either succeeded in its self-imposed task or proved capable of wiping out the differences that give each of the Spanish regions its distinctive personality. We will return to this subject when we come to speak of the different peoples, cultures and languages that coexist in Spain. For the moment I will only say that recognition of the fact that it is on this very diversity that the country's greatest wealth is founded is an indispensable condition for the coexistence of all Spaniards and for the democratic life to which the country aspires after the bitter experiences of the past.But now, overcoming the nervousness every writer feels when he has to compete with photography, thanks to that apparently unappealable law