Cuenca juts into the sky, vertical, atop a rocky spur created by the deep gorges of the
Jucar and Huecar rivers.
The Rio Jucar as seen from atop Cuenca's old town.
Cuenca's Cathedral is dimly lit with only natural light streaming through the aisles. 
The stained glass windows in the Cuenca Cathedral have been replaced with modern designs.
Clay pots almost blend into a fragmented stone window sill.
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EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNAL August
11, 1999
Cuenca
A Death-Defying View
Our self-sufficient farmer friend, Javier Lopez, lived in Cuenca with his wife and now
grown children before he put the roof back on Santa Maria and gave up city life for a
greenhouse, a fox terrier, eggs straight from the chicken’s bottom and a few hundred
kilos of potatoes. The province of Cuenca, Javier raved to us, was a place where one could
go fifty kilometres and not see a soul. Sounds like Canada.
The city juts into the sky, vertical, atop a rocky spur created by the deep gorges of
the Jucar and Huecar rivers. It’s a Moorish town of steep, winding streets with
Gothic and Renaissance monuments built with the profits of a flourishing 16th
century wool and textile trade. Over the precipitous drop into the Huecar gorge hangs a
feat of carpentry – the 14th century casas colgadas, or
"hanging houses" , which have dangled over the riverbank for six hundred years. Casa
del Reye was supposedly originally built as a summer residence with a death-defying
view for the royal family. Casa de la Sirena got its name from the siren-like
screams of a Cuenca senorita when she jumped from the window after her lover killed their
son. In the 18th century the houses were converted to the City Hall and after
that they went through periods of abandon and reconstruction. In his memoirs, pre-war
Surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel recalled watching dive-bombing swallows flying beneath
the toilet seat. Today I’m watching what appear to be the same kamikaze swallows from
the wide window of the Museo de Arte Abstracto Espanol. The interior of these
houses, now renovated and joined into a modern set of galleries, blots with the black and
white splatters and stop-gap-foam designscapes of Tapies, Saura, Chillida, Millares and
other members of the Spanish Abstract Generation of the 1950’s and 60’s. Here we
sit on a bench without a front or back – Rich faces the window, taking in the gorge,
the rock formations, the fearless birds. I’m sitting the other way, my back to the
cliff-edge, studying the big brushwork—indeed, a death-defying view. |
The 14th century casas colgadas, or "hanging houses" have
dangled over the riverbank for six hundred years.
Cuenca's Cathedral facade is larger than the actual church -- making it look like a
free-standing wall.
The Cuenca Cathedral's solid stone Gothic columns.
Modern stained glass windows depict streams of light and the Rio Jucar.
Brightly coloured homes emit three elderly ladies who meet in the street and head off to
Mass.
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