Category Archives: Spain

On the Spanish fighting bulls

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There is no figure more iconic in Spanish culture than the fighting bull, all 1,400 pounds of him. When students ask me about Spain, they inevitably also ask if we will be going to a bull fight, the ritual slaughter of one of these brutal animals. Even though the bull is highly recognized, highly iconic, he occupies a very small part of real Spanish culture. Yet bullfighting is such an odd and outrageous spectacle that it has become one of the most recognizable parts of Spain’s image. The fighting bull, a rather savage and brutal species of cattle, are native to Spain and have been bred for centuries for this one purpose: to be killed by a “matador de toros” or torero, armed only with a very sharp sword and his cape. Given the ferocious nature of these animals, bullfighting is an extremely dangerous line of work, and many men have died because of it. The bulls are raised in the distant high pastures of the central, southern, and western mesas that cover most of Spain. Curiously, the cows of the same species are relatively tame in spite of their large fierce appearance. The ranchers that raise these animals begin to cull their herds to the “plaza” when the bulls reach about three years of age and weigh in at about 1,200 to 1,500 pounds. I will skip the exact details of the ritual killing of these animals, ritual slaughter because others have written about it before and done a much better job–Hemingway, for example, in Death in the Afternoon. One might make an argument for the art of bullfighting, the danger, the ballet, the pressure, but I’m not super-impressed. Raising a large animal in order to kill it with a sword seems like animal cruelty, I’m just saying. Others would disagree and say that this is tradition, culture, and passion, but I would suggest that not all traditions, not all bits of culture, are worth saving. I don’t think that Spanish culture is better because of bullfighting, and I don’t think Spanish culture would be missing a whole lot if bullfighting went the way of the Dodo bird. A few old cigar-smoking curmudgeons with raspy voices will be free at five o’clock on any given afternoon, ranchers will have to raise regular beef cattle, and a few skinny guys with good sword skills will have to get real jobs. Still others will argue that it is hypocritical to challenge or criticize bullfighting and then go eat a hamburger. Yes, we slaughter our beef cattle, but it takes but a moment, not the average fifteen minutes that a single bull might last.To idealize bullfighting seems disingenuous, if not outright reckless, turning the ritual slaughter of an animal into a spectacle and business. Since I am not really Spanish, (I hear the murmuring), I just don’t understand either the ritual or the tradition. Perhaps I am just a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging, granola eating liberal that has no guts for a little pain and suffering, and I don’t understand the beauty of the pageantry, the glory and art of the successful bullfighter who runs that sword into the bull’s back. Perhaps I just don’t understand the danger, the challenge, the pain, the athleticism of the entire dark scene–blood, sweat, sand, swords, pink socks, and guys with ponytails. The bull is at the center of an extremely bizarre happening that is almost impossible to describe to the uninitiated. The animals are huge, fast, and dangerous, and the guys trying to kill them are definitely risking their lives, but in the end, I might ask, what’s the point? Prove they are more macho than the animal?

On garbanzos (chick peas) and cocido

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Dry, hard, flesh-colored, this member of the legume family promises very little in its uncooked state. Cooked is, however, a completely different matter. Most Americans do not really know the garbanzo or chick pea very well. Southern European and Middle Eastern cultures know it very well, and they have raised the cooking and preparation of the chick pea to an art. Although I love the simple, nutty flavor cold or in salads, I believe that the chick pea reaches sublime levels of flavor when it is prepared in the Spanish three-meat stew called “cocido.” Cocido isn’t that difficult to make, but it does take several ingredients that many cooks might not keep at the ready: salt pork, neck bones, blood sausage, dry sausage, and dried, aged ham. A stray piece of beef or chunk of chicken is required as well, but these are commonplace. After soaking your garbanzos (chick peas) overnight, you throw all of these ingredients in a pot with some carrots, potatoes, cabbage and two quarts of water, and you have cocido after about two hours of serious cooking. You can get specific recipes off of the internet without too much trouble, but the result is a multi-dish dish that will really fill you up. First, with the liquid and some fine noodles, you make cocido soup, which is your first dish. Then you dish up all the meats, the garbanzos, and the bones, and you decorate your platter with the potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. Nobody will walk away from this dish hungry. What I like most about the entire cocido experience is that everyone has a part of the cocido which they consider their favorite. I’m a big garbanzo fan, obviously, but I know many who live to eat only the soup and who can go on and on about a perfect cocido that they ate on a cold January day in 1958. Some folks live to pick at the bones, and others who know the finer points of eating cabbage. I am also a fan of morcilla (blood sausage) and the marrow that comes from the beef bones. You must have a strong red wine and crusty bread to accompany this dish. Side dishes might include fresh green onions or hot spicy peppers in vinegar. Eating cocido is, of course, a family affair, and the more people that you can share this with, the better. There is no specific recipe for cocido, but everyone’s mother makes the best one. I like to drop a couple of spoonfuls of garbanzos into my soup which I then proceed to garnish with some cabbage, some ham, and some green onions. This is not a dish to be hurried through–take your time and enjoy it, talk to people, savor the soup, pop a chick pea into your mouth, chew on some bread and check out the peppers. And when it’s all over and you are almost in a food coma, you pack up the leftovers for the next day when you can have soup all over again. Chopped up and shredded, the rest of the ingredients can be fried up into a delicious hash of meats, cabbage, and garbanzos. You don’t even need dessert when you make cocido because you can’t eat any more anyway. One restaurant in Madrid, the historic Malacatín, near Madrid´s open air market, the Rastro, only has one item on the menu: cocido, and even a party of two gets an entire capon to eat in an extraordinary bacchanalia of meats, vegetables, beans, bread, and wine. My only warnng? If you drink too much water with this dish, you are bound to get a stomach ache. iQue aproveche!

On windmills

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The windmill is a serendiptous invention, which seems both obvious and frivolous at once. The wind may or may not blow, but because it is a function of the weather, the result can only be chaotic (and predictable) or predictable (and unpredictable). I admire the Dutch engineers who decided to harness the constant winds that blow off of the North Sea. For the Dutch the applications were variable, but pumping sea water off of the their below-sea-level lands was a priority. Grinding grain or cutting wood also come to mind as do a half-dozen other industrial applications. In Spain, where the windmill has achieved iconic status as the arch-enemy of Don Quijote, the windmill is making a comeback, and it now dots the countryside of La Mancha, whether they were there four hundred years ago or not. The windmill is, of course, an iconic reminder that Don Quijote, that dreamer of impossible dreams, was fighting modernization and industrialization, contemporary villians that were quickly consuming what was left of medieval Spain when he and Sancho sallied forth to right wrongs and save damsels in distress. The windmill is a symbol of industrial development, technology, human ingenuity, and entrepreneurism. All of those elements present in the windmill are all enemies of the medieval period which had already turned to dust when Cervantes wrote his masterpiece of the human comedy. In fact, Don Quijote was a laughable figure who didn’t understand that the age of knights and their ladies had been over for more than a hundred years by the time he was born in some anonymous town in La Mancha. The windmills is an icon of modernity that cannot be stopped by high ideals, unresolved dreams, or unrequited love. The windmill, an industrial device of gears and wheels, is blind and unconscious, unfeeling and inert, but it arms spin, the gears move, and the wheat is ground into flour, which, in turn, will be baked into bread, distributed to stores, bought by soccer moms, consumed by families for breakfast (with grape jelley). Capitalism trumps all ideals, all beliefs, all ideologies, for all times. It preys on our pride, creates envy, promotes fear, drives us all insane so that we always buy the next thing. Today, new windmills dot the countryside, but today they are found worldwide, and they generate electricity, pump water, and drive machinery. The high ideals that drove Don Quijote to ride out one day in search of adventure are gone like a puff of smoke in the wind, a wind which has long since been harnessed, domesticated by the windmills. Quijote saw them as evil giants; perhaps his vision of them was more correct than any of us ever guessed.

On windmills

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The windmill is a serendiptous invention, which seems both obvious and frivolous at once. The wind may or may not blow, but because it is a function of the weather, the result can only be chaotic (and predictable) or predictable (and unpredictable). I admire the Dutch engineers who decided to harness the constant winds that blow off of the North Sea. For the Dutch the applications were variable, but pumping sea water off of the their below-sea-level lands was a priority. Grinding grain or cutting wood also come to mind as do a half-dozen other industrial applications. In Spain, where the windmill has achieved iconic status as the arch-enemy of Don Quijote, the windmill is making a comeback, and it now dots the countryside of La Mancha, whether they were there four hundred years ago or not. The windmill is, of course, an iconic reminder that Don Quijote, that dreamer of impossible dreams, was fighting modernization and industrialization, contemporary villians that were quickly consuming what was left of medieval Spain when he and Sancho sallied forth to right wrongs and save damsels in distress. The windmill is a symbol of industrial development, technology, human ingenuity, and entrepreneurism. All of those elements present in the windmill are all enemies of the medieval period which had already turned to dust when Cervantes wrote his masterpiece of the human comedy. In fact, Don Quijote was a laughable figure who didn’t understand that the age of knights and their ladies had been over for more than a hundred years by the time he was born in some anonymous town in La Mancha. The windmills is an icon of modernity that cannot be stopped by high ideals, unresolved dreams, or unrequited love. The windmill, an industrial device of gears and wheels, is blind and unconscious, unfeeling and inert, but it arms spin, the gears move, and the wheat is ground into flour, which, in turn, will be baked into bread, distributed to stores, bought by soccer moms, consumed by families for breakfast (with grape jelley). Capitalism trumps all ideals, all beliefs, all ideologies, for all times. It preys on our pride, creates envy, promotes fear, drives us all insane so that we always buy the next thing. Today, new windmills dot the countryside, but today they are found worldwide, and they generate electricity, pump water, and drive machinery. The high ideals that drove Don Quijote to ride out one day in search of adventure are gone like a puff of smoke in the wind, a wind which has long since been harnessed, domesticated by the windmills. Quijote saw them as evil giants; perhaps his vision of them was more correct than any of us ever guessed.

On caprice

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It is summer, time for vacations and excursions, time for new experiences, getting away from home, meeting new people, trying new foods, exploring new landscapes, escaping the normal, the everyday, the humdrum, letting caprice carry you away. Yes, for all you rational empiricists, caprice is a naughty word associated with irrational and illogical behavior bordering on insanity. Caprice is about wanting things you shouldn’t want, doing things on the spur of the moment, letting go of the controlled life. For many people, caprice is childish and foolish. One should be able to live their whole life without being either spontaneous or unpredictable. All of life should be planned, logical, thought out, reasonable, predictable, and unsurprising. I know lots of people like this, and they are wonderful, if not a little boring. Caprice, on the other hand, can lead to all sorts of trouble: one might eat too much chocolate or ice cream, or heaven forbid, to much chocolate ice cream. No one needs chocolate ice cream for any reason whatsoever, so it is a caprice. Caprice might mean staying up too late to watch an old movie about good guys and bad guys, beautiful dangerous women, whiskey, big cars and palatial estates where some old guy grows orchids he hates. Nobody needs any of that. Caprice might mean eating that lobster as opposed to watching it swim in its aquarium. Nobody needs lobster, and besides, eating lobster usually leads to drinking white wine with someone you love, and of course, love only leads to rack and ruin, so lobster is a caprice. Life’s caprices will ruin your heavily structured, well-toned life of predictable and good behavior. Caprice is almost always about being bad, wanting something that is not good for you, getting something that is bad for you. Jetting off to Paris is a caprice because no one really needs to go to Paris when they have everything they really need in the United States, probably at the mall just down the street, or maybe even closer in that big box retailer on the corner near your house. And heaven forbid you should go to Madrid, which is full of caprices: lobster, flamenco, bull-fighting, the Prado, tapas, red wine, terraces, handsome people, wild night life, and chocolate ice cream. You might as well throw in the towel if you go there because you will be assaulted on all sides by unwelcome caprice of all kinds. You might lose control of your well-tailored life, of your managed respectability, of your over-sculpted identity. Caprice is a bad thing, no question about it. Stay at home and eat rice cakes. Drive a four-door, respectable, good-mileage sedan with an automatic transmission. Caprice can have nothing to do with your well-run life. Please stay away from other people, roses, fast cars, jazz, art museums (all sorts), bars, restaurants that offer lobster and/or chocolate ice cream, and airports, which only leads to flying and before you know it, you’re eating lobster on some beach where half-nude people are sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. Don’t be tempted. Stay away from caprice and live your life.

On caprice

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It is summer, time for vacations and excursions, time for new experiences, getting away from home, meeting new people, trying new foods, exploring new landscapes, escaping the normal, the everyday, the humdrum, letting caprice carry you away. Yes, for all you rational empiricists, caprice is a naughty word associated with irrational and illogical behavior bordering on insanity. Caprice is about wanting things you shouldn’t want, doing things on the spur of the moment, letting go of the controlled life. For many people, caprice is childish and foolish. One should be able to live their whole life without being either spontaneous or unpredictable. All of life should be planned, logical, thought out, reasonable, predictable, and unsurprising. I know lots of people like this, and they are wonderful, if not a little boring. Caprice, on the other hand, can lead to all sorts of trouble: one might eat too much chocolate or ice cream, or heaven forbid, to much chocolate ice cream. No one needs chocolate ice cream for any reason whatsoever, so it is a caprice. Caprice might mean staying up too late to watch an old movie about good guys and bad guys, beautiful dangerous women, whiskey, big cars and palatial estates where some old guy grows orchids he hates. Nobody needs any of that. Caprice might mean eating that lobster as opposed to watching it swim in its aquarium. Nobody needs lobster, and besides, eating lobster usually leads to drinking white wine with someone you love, and of course, love only leads to rack and ruin, so lobster is a caprice. Life’s caprices will ruin your heavily structured, well-toned life of predictable and good behavior. Caprice is almost always about being bad, wanting something that is not good for you, getting something that is bad for you. Jetting off to Paris is a caprice because no one really needs to go to Paris when they have everything they really need in the United States, probably at the mall just down the street, or maybe even closer in that big box retailer on the corner near your house. And heaven forbid you should go to Madrid, which is full of caprices: lobster, flamenco, bull-fighting, the Prado, tapas, red wine, terraces, handsome people, wild night life, and chocolate ice cream. You might as well throw in the towel if you go there because you will be assaulted on all sides by unwelcome caprice of all kinds. You might lose control of your well-tailored life, of your managed respectability, of your over-sculpted identity. Caprice is a bad thing, no question about it. Stay at home and eat rice cakes. Drive a four-door, respectable, good-mileage sedan with an automatic transmission. Caprice can have nothing to do with your well-run life. Please stay away from other people, roses, fast cars, jazz, art museums (all sorts), bars, restaurants that offer lobster and/or chocolate ice cream, and airports, which only leads to flying and before you know it, you’re eating lobster on some beach where half-nude people are sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. Don’t be tempted. Stay away from caprice and live your life.