Spain has decided to reopen the Altamira cave complex in Cantabria after eight years being closed to visitors, despite scientists warnings’ that heat from human visitors damages the art. Visits are to resume next year on a restricted basis. The main chamber at Altamira features 21 bisons painted in ochre, red and black, which seem to charge against a low, limestone ceiling. The site was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1985. The caves were first restricted and then closed after scientists warned that visitors’ body heat and carbon dioxide from breath were damaging the paintings, estimated to be 14,000 to 20,000 years old. El País

On seeing the paintings of bisons, horses, fawns and wild boars, Picasso famously proclaimed, ‘after Altamira, all is decadence’. A long line of great 20th century artists from Henry Moore to Miquel Barceló have been astonished and inspired by them. See also Altmira cave paintings

The caves are inscribed as masterpieces of creative genius and as the humanity’s earliest accomplished art. UNESCO

George Orwell fought during the Spanish Civil War in the Sierra de Alcubierre in the Monegros on the Aragonese Front, during the freezing winter of 1937 (above photo by batiskafo on Flickr). He famously described his experiences in Homage to Catalonia. Unlike the diaries he wrote in the very late 1930s and 40s, which have a truly remarkable number of entries on natural history, he wrote unsurprisingly little on wildlife during his time in Spain. There are, however, a few interesting nature-related passages:

THE days grew hotter and even the nights grew tolerably warm. On a bullet-chipped tree in front of our parapet thick clusters of cherries were forming.  Bathing in the river ceased to be an agony and became almost a pleasure. Wild roses with pink blooms the size of saucers straggled over the shell-holes round Torre Fabian. Behind the line you met peasants wearing wild roses over their ears. In the evenings they used to go out with green nets, hunting quails. You spread the net over the tops of the grasses and then lay down and made a noise like a female quail. Any male quail that was within hearing then came running towards you, and when he was underneath the net you threw a stone to scare him, whereupon he sprang into the air and was entangled in the net. Apparently only male quails were caught, which struck me as unfair.

…and on the geography of the Monegros:

As the road struck into the sierra we branched off to the right and climbed a narrow mule-track that wound round the mountain-side. The hills in that part of Spain are of a queer formation, horseshoe-shaped with flattish tops and very steep sides running down into immense ravines. On the higher slopes nothing grows except stunted shrubs and heath, with the white bones of the limestone sticking out everywhere. The front line here was not a continuous line of trenches, which would have been impossible in such mountainous country; it was simply a chain of fortified posts, always known as ‘positions’, perched on each hill-top. In the distance you could see our ‘position’ at the crown of the horseshoe; a ragged barricade of sand-bags, a red flag fluttering, the smoke of dug-out fires. A little nearer, and you could smell a sickening sweetish stink that lived in my nostrils for weeks afterwards. Into the cleft immediately behind the position all the refuse of months had been tipped–a deep festering bed of breadcrusts, excrement, and rusty tins.

and on the hills and the lack of birds

Often in the mornings the valley was hidden under seas of cloud, out of which the hills rose flat and blue, giving the landscape a strange resemblance to a photographic negative. Beyond Huesca there were more hills of the same formation as our own, streaked with a pattern of snow which altered day by day. In the far distance the monstrous peaks of the Pyrenees, where the snow never melts, seemed to float upon nothing. Even down in the plain everything looked dead and bare. The hills opposite us were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants. Almost always the sky was empty of birds. I do not think I have ever seen a country where there were so few birds. The only birds one saw at any time were a kind of magpie, and the coveys of partridges that startled one at night with their sudden whirring, and, very rarely, the flights of eagles that drifted slowly over, generally followed by rifle-shots which they did not deign to notice.

On stripeless tree frogs and snails

Spring was really here at last. The blue in the sky was softer, the air grew suddenly balmy. The frogs were mating noisily in the ditches. Round the drinking-pool that served for the village mules I found exquisite green frogs the size of a penny, so brilliant that the young grass looked dull beside them. Peasant lads went out with buckets hunting for snails, which they roasted alive on sheets of tin.

On the cold, wild crocuses and mountains

The weather was mostly clear and cold; sometimes sunny at midday, but always cold. Here and there in the soil of the hill-sides you found the green beaks of wild crocuses or irises poking through; evidently spring was coming, but coming very slowly. The nights were colder than ever…..

I hate mountains, even from a spectacular point of view. But sometimes the dawn breaking behind the hill-tops in our rear, the first narrow streaks of gold, like swords slitting the darkness, and then the growing light and the seas of carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were worth watching even when you had been up all night, when your legs were numb from the knees down, and you were sullenly reflecting that there was no hope of food for another three hours.

• See also George Orwell in Gibraltar
• Alcubierre: George Orwell in Aragon

Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, (Poza de la Sal, March 14, 1928), the great Spanish naturalist and broadcaster, died 30 years ago today. He was killed in a helicopter accident while filming in Alaska on his birthday March 14, 1980.

He was an expert in falconry and animal behavior and spent many years studying wolves, but above all he was a great communicator who captivated Spain in the 1970′s, doing more than anybody to promote natural history among the general public. He is best known for the highly successful and influential series El Hombre y la Tierra (1975–1980), which you can watch online here. Millions of homes in Spain were captivated by the series, and there are possibly apocryphal tales of the streets being empty when the episodes were broadcast. The series and his other work played no small part in the change in attitude towards wildlife in general and wolves in particular. Rodríquez de la Fuente used wolves he had raised himself from cubs living in a semi-wild fenced estate for the film. They were different times with inferior cameras than today. But, for all its trickery, the episode on el lobo still stand out as superb and beautiful piece of nature documentary and holds a rightful place in contemporary Spanish folk memory. And his work inspired a whole generation of young Spanish naturalists who work in nature conservation today.

• More from Crónica Verde
• Wikipedia
• A certain degree of hagiography surrounds his figure (there are more 60 monuments to him in Spain including schools, plaques, parks and streets).
• Special in El Mundo

The legacy of his work is continued with the Fundación Félix Rodríguez .

I came across this rather harrowing photo in a book review of Historie de l’ours dans les Pyrénées in El Pireneo Digital. It was taken in 1928 after a hunt in Urdós, Valle de Aspe across the border in France. In 1935, some 200 bears still survived in the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees. The last bear steak was offered in restaurant in French Pyrenees in 1960. A ban on hunting came in Spain in 1967  and in France several years later. Today, with just 20 odd animals in the entire Pyrenees – most of which were brought from the Balkans, further reintroduction is the only way of re-creating a viable population of bears in the range.

Interesting documentary narrating the tragic events of 9th January 1949 when a dam upstream of Lake Sanabria, the largest in lake in Spain, burst. A wall of water swept down the Tera Valley and engulfed the village of Ribadelago. Around 100 people were killed. The Francoist authorities covered up the report on the defective construction of the dam.

• Video uploaded by forestman

More on Sanabria including contemporary news report by Time Magazine (iberianature) “One night last week all was quiet in Ribadelago. In the tavern men were playing cards. At the church Father Plácido Esteban-Gonzalez had just arrived on his motor scooter from the provincial capital of Zamora. An electrician named Rey was working late in his shop. Shortly after midnight the lights in the village flickered out. At the tavern, irritated cardplayers lit candles, went on with their game. Suddenly, a distant, muffled roar was heard..Read

The symbol of Madrid represented by the bear and the strawberry tree is well known, but here’s a much earlier image showing Iberian bears liking for these arbutus cherries. The bear forms part of a C4th AD mosaic found at Villa Fortunatus in Fraga, Zaragoza, and is part of an agricultural calendar, representing the month of November. It can be seen at the Museo Provincial de Zaragoza. Sadly today, bears in Spain no longer gorge on these fruits in autumn to the extent as they did as they are largely absent from the range of the strawberry tree.

• More here

Surfing the Net I came across the tiny Pheasant Island, one the world’s four remaining condominiums. The island is on the River Bidassoa and is under the joint sovereignty of France and Spain, and administered by Irun (in Spain) and Hendaye (in France) for alternating periods of six months. It covers 2,000 m2 and is known as Isla de los Faisanes in Spanish, Île des Faisans, Île de l’hôpital or Île de la Conférence in French and Konpantzia in Basque.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed here in 1659 putting an end the Thirty Years’ War, as shown in the painting below, and the site has been used for numerous exchanges of captives and princesses to be wed.

An interesting piece of trivia for geographical nerds like myself. The rest of you may struggle to find any interest.

Books about the Basque Country I have read

The Basque Country: A Cultural History by Paddy Woodworth: Full of fascinating facts. An excellent balanced account.

The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky. Interesting in places but wildly opinionated.

Spanish Wood Pasture: Origin and Durability of an Historical Wooded Landscape in Mediterranean Europe

Spanish dehesas, the most extensive wood pastures in Mediterranean Europe, are a vivid example for demonstrating that the impact of rural communities on forests has not always been a bad thing. Environmental history is vital for understanding this cultural landscape. This article first analyses the origin of the dehesa. The border logic and the medieval Reconquest are elements that undoubtedly played a decisive part in its genesis; but, for the significance of Roman influence in Spain, it is necessary to consider the question of the possible existence of dehesas in Antiquity. The second aspect concerns the spreading of this landscape from the Middle Ages onwards. Dehesas are usually linked to the large properties owned by military orders, but most of all the spreading of the dehesa was favoured by the rise of transhumance from the thirteenth century onwards. Finally, the article emphasises that the durability of the Spanish wood pasture can be explained by a combination of several factors: insecurity along the border, the fact that transhumance was the most important industry in Spain for many centuries, and the protective laws adopted by the rural communities in order to protect their dehesas. Vincent Clément See also dehesa

A historical and cultural dictionary of Spain

Early days. Above Prestige Oil Disaster

The “aurora borealis” is a luminescent meteor, a phenomenon that frequently happens in areas close to the North Pole and which can also be seen in rather exceptional circumstances in regions of Central Europe. So the aurora borealis that could quite clearly be seen from the Pyrenees, and even from the top of the Tibidabo hill in Barcelona, on the 25th of January 1938, was an absolutely unusual occurrence. It was in fact a unique experience. There are no known accounts of any other event of that kind at such meridional latitudes. Furthermore, the phenomenon took place in the midst of war, thus causing terrible confusion and shock among the soldiers who were fighting on the Aragonese front.

From THE REPUBLICAN YEARS (www.bcn.es) by J. Fabre, J.M. Huertas and. Pradas

I came across this remarkable set of aerial photos of Catalonia. Above the Delta del Llobregat, now a sad vestige of its former glory. Continue reading …

Above the Delta del Llobregat, now a sad vestige of its former glory. Below, Montgat, just 20 kms from Barcelona, and a very different Lloret de Mar, though early domestic tourist constuctions are in evidence. Many more photos here at the Catalan Cartography Institute

Eco-ruin ‘felled early society’  From BBC here 

From Classical connections – commentary and critique “Goya (1746-1828) undermines faith in order, showing instead the isolated forest where disorder reigns: travelers plead for their lives to murderous but indifferent bandits whose ruthlessness is more a reflection of nature than inherently cruel. The dead bodies of coachmen bleeding away to senselessness are no deterrent to further savagery. Goya does not predict the outcome of this tragedy, rather invites viewers to speculate in clinical abstraction about the amoral motives of robbers and the plight of travellers. As the first of two similar scenes of robbers attacking carriages, the other a smaller canvas (43 x 32 cm) in 1793 set in a rocky landscape and now in Madrid, the scene “present a vision of Man’s helplessness before the forces of nature or human wickedness…” Goya’s pitiful surviving travelers have no recourse surrounded only by trees who seem to not hear the screams or last prayers any more than the musket shots and curses. Goya is not glorfying such attacks, only recording the abstract threat of rampant chaos to any civilization foolish enough to think it is safe. ”

“The fifth sector, the Iberian, Luso-Hispanic, or Spanish and Portuguese frontier, includes between 1050 and 1250 the main southward surge of the Reconquest against the Muslims of the Taifa kingdoms and their Pyrenean valleys, to sweep beyond the Ebro at Saragossa into the Balearlics and Valencia; the Portuguese–newcomers in a frontier state created by secession from Leon, even as Kentucky from Virginia or Tennessee from North Carolina–expand from small-farming Minho and Beira to latifundial Algarve, along a coastline pointing towards America and Africa; and the Castilians, forcing their stubborn passage across the bleak plains and rocky sierras of the Iberian Meseta, occupy New Castile, Extremadura and Andalusia. Of all these colonizing peoples, the Castilians chiefly confronted and most decisively solved the problems that broke the Crusader East, perhaps, and one which Walter Prescott Webb has so emphasized in his The Great Plains–namely, the adaptation of a humid-zone society, based on abundant rainfall, forest resources, deep fertile soils, and manorial farming, to the arid, treeless, barren plains of inner Iberia. Producing in abundance stalwart, rootless freemen, and colonizing kings, nobles and churchmen who, long before Cortez and Pizarro, proudly styled themselves “conquistador e poblador”, these medieval Castilian frontiersmen took early to the horse, indispensable in such terrain for travel and warfare, and unmonopolized by a closed feudal oligarchy. On the rolling Meseta they evolved a novel ranching economy, based upon large fortified rural towns that dominated a village-less countryside,–an economy in which not tracts of land but grazing rights in royal, seigneurial and ecclesiastical domain were basic. Against this background there arose not only the great sheep flocks of the (12) Mesta, so often cited by historians, but the uniquely Castilian ranching of cattle, an industry which with its long-horned stock, its free-riding, bolero-jacketed vaqueros, and its round-ups, brandings and overland drives, was destined to prolong the Spanish Middle Ages in Latin America and the plains of Texas.”

The beach takes its name from the 172 English sailors who were drowned off the coast here on 10th November 1890, when their ship, the Serpent, sank in a terrible storm. The Serpent had sailed from Plymouth on Saturday 8 November bound for Sierra Leone. Although there are several versions of what happened, the final verdict was that the Serpent had been lost through an error in navigation. Three surviviors reached the nearby village of Camariñas and sounded the alarm. A search party was sent out and most of the bodies were recovered. They were buried on the beach close to the wreck spot and a small cemetery was built around them. It stands today as a rather sad and lonely mounment. Letters of thanks were sent by the British government to the villagers and the mayor was given a shotgun and the parish priest a gold watch. Unusually for the time the survivors wore lifebelts, and there are claims that the incident led to their widespread use in the British merchant navy.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Serpent
http://josecadaveira.tripod.com/militaryruins/id41.html

Here is my quick translation

“Pedro del Potro Riesco was a young man who entered the Army at an early age and by the age of 23 was already a second lieutenant. Returning on leave one day in December, he left his cart in Villaseca and had to walk the last steep 5km to his home. Not long after setting out he realised that there were two wolves following him and when he stopped, they would do the same. He hurried on, but they drew closer and closer, and as he approached the village he he could their tails brush between their legs. Then, just in time, the dogs belonging to Sabugo (a well known lawyer whose family lived in the area)  caught the scent of the beasts and set off in pursuit. The young man was able to reach his home,  but he was so shocked and scared that he was struck dumb for eight long days. When he finally recovered his speech the following week, he asked his mother for an omelette with eight eggs.
‘It is to give to Sabugo the lawyer’s dogs, for they saved my life.’

For wolf fright, see also Dave mother-in-law’s story from el Bierzo also in León.

Wolves in Somiedo

This one from La Playa de Fuengirola in the 1950s shows a cenachero de Málaga selling sardines. The disappeared Cenacheros were ambulant fish sellers. Today they have been relegated to a folkloric symbol in Malaga

The event was widely discussed by European Enlightenment philosophers, and inspired major developments in thinking, and also signalled the birth of modern seismology.

Lisbon in flames with a tsunami overwhelming the ships in the harbor (1755 engraving)

1755 Lisbon earthquake

1755 German copperplate image, “The Ruins of Lisbon. Survivors camp in a (rather fanciful) tent city outside the city of Lisbon, following the November 1, 1755 earthquake. The image shows criminal activity and general mayhem, as well as the hanging of quake survivors under constabulary supervision. Priests are present, one holding a crucifix, one possibly a prayer book, so appear to be giving last rites to persons being hanged. ” Wikipedia

See also

Tsunamis in Spain

earthquakes in Spain

http://www.juanmabcn.com/barcelona/XIX/1.htm

La Venta del Lobo. Impossibly bleak and ruined resthouse along the Cañada Real through the Sierra de la Culebra. A cherry tree is often the sign of old human habitation.

Spain “…is said to be north-northwest of Portugal and could be reached by sailing in that direction for about eight or nine days from Portugal [one of Hsieh’s mistakes in indicating directions.] The area of this country is larger than that of Portugal: the people are fierce and wicked. Catholicism is the main religion. Its products are gold, silver, copper, iron, wine, glass, and watches, etc. The silver dollars used in China are manufactured in this country. “

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13/12/2006 An enjoyable morning in the Delta del Llobregat today with Juan Carlos Fernandez of Grupo de Aves Exóticas de Catalonia. There was too much water and so not much variety birdwise, though I’d never seen a short-toed eagle there before.

Juan Carlos told me about his grandfather who lived in the Sierra Tejeda in Granada. When the Civil War ended, Juan José Fernández alias José Patillas (José Sideburns) and thousands others in the defeated Republican Army had to walk back home. It took him months. Life in post-war Andalusia was harsh, and hunger rife. As everywhere, the cats in his village were soon eaten - herein, I think, the Spanish expression dar gato por liebre (literally to give a cat for hare: to take somebody in). José kept his family of seven children alive by trapping in the hills with nets, snares and gin traps. He carried a wicker sack (capacho), with the catch stuffed inside, and a bunch of grapes on top to fool the Guardia Civil, for game was only for the rich. Most of the birds and rabbits he sold to buy oil, pulses and bread. Sometimes he’d trap a beech marten or a badger. The fur was sold and the meat eaten. One day he caught a lynx. After hanging it out in the moonlight, just as you have to do with a village cat, the family ate the animal they called gato clavo (clavo – sharp/nail - after its pointy ears). He took the skin to a fur merchant who offered him a good price -some 500 lynx skins were sold every year in Madrid until the 1940s- and said if he had two he could have made a waistcoat. Although poor and in need of money, a lynx-fur waistcoat was too much to resist, and why should only the rich have the best! He declined the offer and a few months later, he trapped another lynx, and wore the coat until he came to Catalonia in 1965. At first, the family lived in a shack along a railtrack in Barcelona. There were many other Andalusians, and also Hungarians. He worked as a bricklayer and when he had enough time and money he built a house in Terrassa. Old habits died hard. He used to take a young Juan Carlos, today a fervent defender of birdlife and an expert ornithologist, out netting for songbirds for the pot. One day they caught a badger. They ate badger stew that night and after they made shaving brushes from its hairs. Other times. Juan Carlos still nets birds, but as a ringer for ICO.See Iberian Lynx

That night they reached the very heart of the Sierra Morena, where it seemed prudent to Sancho to pass the night and even some days, at least as many as the stores he carried might last, and so they encamped between two rocks and among some cork trees.(Trans John Ormsby, 1829-1895) Don Quijote library. See also Epistemology in Don Quixote + Dehesas de Sierra Morena

Piedrafita [in Jaca], a little village containing forty six houses is fed by a little valley and surrounded on every side by mountains. The shepherd dogs are large, well qualified to engage the wolves, which are here in great abundance. They wear a spiked collar to protect the neck, and to prevent the wolf from fixing on that mortal part. …..[Pyrenees] On the mountains I am told, are not only wolves, but bears and a species of the tiger; all of which, in the winter are exceedingly ferocious. From the dread of these, the shepherds constantly drive their flocks of sheep and goats into the villages by night, and when they are feeding on the mountains they are attended by strong dogs with spiked collars…. [Pyrenees] All the dogs in the little villages through which we pass have spiked collars . These are absolutely needful because wolves abound in these regions. In winter they become ravenous and bold, but in the summer they commit frequent ravages among the flocks by night if either the shepherd or the flock are sleeping soundly. [Somiedo]

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And here is one of the spiked collars, a carlanca. More here. (Fapas)