EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALJanuary 2, 1999
Valdepenas
I’ve chosen the Centro de Arte Riena Sofia as my Madrid
museum stop before we hit the road towards Seville. One more night here will break the
bank.
The Riena Sofia is a 20th Century collection housed
in the former premises of Madrid’s General Hospital. It was built in the late 18th
Century but two exterior glass elevators were added in 1992 when the building was
converted to the Art Centre.
There’s plenty of Picasso and Miro. We stand in front of Guernica,
surrounded by studies and sketches. Picasso, so influential, so published, so popular at
art school and the poster shops. I always glazed through and gravitated to my most beloved
periods, Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Contemporary. Standing before a garden of
confident, liberated lines, drawn thick in black and coloured in grey, emphatically,
easily, I am struck and excited.
When one studies art one looks at colour plates in books, or slides.
Paintings reproduce differently. Sometimes a painting is a terrible disappointment in real
life. Sometimes, as in the case of Van Gogh, plates can never, ever do justice to the
actual work. To this day I have never found a book to capture the feelings I had at the Van
Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The lines are inspiring. We wander through rooms of 20th
Century Spanish art. Much of it follows Picasso’s Cubism and Expressionism. I love
the antithetical Miros. Pure, dancing, playful.
Valdepenas is the capitol of La Mancha’s vast wine region. This
region is the world’s largest expanse of vineyards. The city is sprawling and rather
modern, with an old town tucked away with a network of pedestrianized streets. Valdepenas
is a good stopping point between Madrid and Andalusia, Spain’s southern region.
Garages line the thoroughfare, and we look for an Alfa/Fiat. The Fiat
dealer deals in farm equipment only, and is closed permanently. Alfi is doing very well on
the plateau, but we want to have the knocking and pinging, and the grinding gearbox
examined before too long. Rich says something definitely shifted when we bumped along the
North Coast.
We’re in a side-of-the-road hostel, completely refurbished, and
with lots of 30’s charm. The marble staircase is wide and curvy, trimmed with wood
and mirrors. Our room is 5100 pesetas, one-third the price of the last two nights - much
more bang for the buck when we’re not in the big cities.
The attached bar is small, the bartender is the man who checked us into
the room. Tapas consist of baby squid, octopus, cheese and olives. The men drink
and smoke, and later their wives arrive with small children. A party ensues, with parents
enjoying a drink and the children singing and marching through the bar, laughing and
horsing around. We witness the concentrated construction of a KinderSurprise.
Football blares on the television.
Rich and I sit in a corner, quietly enjoying our Patatas Bravas. A
fidgety man, alone at the next table, keeps a close eye. First, he offers us a cigarette,
when he sees we have finished our Racione. We decline, and he asks if we are
English, and can he join us at our table. He slides up close to me, and asks if we are
married. He is old, shiny, scattered. He speaks no English and can’t understand us.
He does not recognize anything we pronounce.
Our new friend goes to great effort to make conversation. He was born
in Valdepenas, is a waiter (cabaleros), has four brothers, one of which has been to
Canada and says it is very nice. Our new friend wants to share a pitcher of local wine
with us, and persuades Rich to ask at the bar. Now Rich is at the bar and the shiny-faced
man is again asking me if we are married. He grins and taps his foot. We struggle through
topics like football and food and wine and where we are going. He seems to be enjoying our
conversation though he doesn’t understand us, even when we look up phrases and
pronounce them as they are phonetically written. We spend ten minutes on the pronunciation
on Seville (Seb-ee-ya). The other occupants of the tiny bar look on and observe him. They
know him. They watch us. Finally we’re exhausted from the struggle and Rich looks up
the phrase for, "I am very tired now".
The man from Valdepenas gets up and kisses me and shakes Rich’s
hand. We pay the bill and retreat to our little room on the second floor.
