I know a Spain. The peninsular one.
Vast, beautiful and always generous to me, from the coast to its mountains.
I have felt its cold and its heat in my core.
I have slept in churches, farmhouses, country estates, mills, sheds, stations, hamlets, palaces, shacks, haystacks, and in a mosque in Toledo.
I have strolled through the dark, medieval alleys of Cáceres.
And across the rooftops of Gothic cathedrals.
I have been awakened by dislodged bulls and vampires. In places I forget.
I have walked La Mancha in timeless days, from Cuenca to Andalusia.
Which is like walking on the ground and on pages of history books from other days.
I have carried greetings from Roncesvalles step by step to Covadonga. And from Covadonga to Santiago.
I have Murcian genes.
And all kinds of adventures along the east coast.
I know and feel Madrid as my own town.
And I experienced snow for the first time in my life from the Cantabrian coast to the Riojan Ebro.
I walked up the Deva River and crossed all the Picos de Europa bare.
I have rested in monasteries in places unheard of for their beauty and silence.
I have wandered through Galicia, along its coasts and among its dead.
I have been a ghost in cathedrals here and there and in abandoned castles.
And a wolf in its forests. And alone, alone in many places.
And I have had a gun to my chest. A real threat.
I have lost all sense of everything in the beauty of the plains of Castile.
The storms have spoken to me in the Pyrenees.
And I have dreamed in the old port of Bilbao.
I have eaten acorns and wheat grains, walking on the frozen ground.
I was welcomed into some hearts, where I learned about loving and being loved.
And above all, not to act smart.
With or without a bed, with or without a roof.
I met noble and brave men with whom I walked and sat.
And desperate madmen and women.
I have looked into Phoenician, Celtic, Iberian, Carthaginian, Roman, Arab, Gothic eyes. Eyes from everywhere. Perhaps even from stolen dandy lineages.
I know the same stars that cover its sky from as many places as stars I have counted.
I have penetrated its history through caves and cracked stones. And also through paintings and sophisticated works.
I have passed through submissive towns until they said enough and through other brave and libertarian ones beyond my amazement.
And through many others abandoned. Evicted, dead, forgotten.
I have known good nuns and good whores. And deceitful priests and unthinkable thugs.
And I don't think I've been anywhere where someone hasn't killed someone. Even in the most isolated wasteland.
And bigger than the list of its towns, bigger are the motives for the blood.
I have felt how it was invaded from the north, east, and south, once and a thousand times in thousands of years, and how it went out to invade the world from the west.
In search of new blood, more pain. To conquer, be conquered, reconquer, and be reconquered, thus forever locked.
I have slept alone in the Alhambra of Granada, me, of Christian baptism, fraternized with the Moors.
In the three most delightful nights a human has ever dreamed.
And I never knew if they liked death or hated the life of the other.
Whatever it is, from one side to the other, I only saw humans.
So I, somewhat Catalan and somewhat Murcian, can feel this onslaught, this hand, in my core. This blow made of past blows.
Yellow journalism and blood from one side and the other. Country of swindled people.
Vast and beautiful peninsular Spain.
By Ginés Díaz Pallarés
