Spain Journal #1 - A View from Above*

From way up on high, the Spanish landscape is like nothing I've seen before. The countryside is a quilt of incongruous patches, with dissimilar and unordered shapes somehow contributing to one infinite expanse. Flights over the US accustom their passengers to regular rectangles of farmland upset only by perfectly primmed circles of green. The Spanish terrain, however, more closely resembles the city streets of Jerusalem - both seemingly planned out before the discovery of the straight line. It is the geometry not of Pythagoras, but Picasso.

Those observations are no doubt effected by previous run ins with the Iberian kingdom. Since AP Euro in 10th grade, I've harbored an unsettled curiosity towards the people and nation of Spain. When studying other countries, like France or Russia, it felt as if I had just returned from a real life visit: I had achieved a tangible sense of the place, even if in the consciously superficial way of a tourist. I had experienced closure. With Spain, however, the pieces failed to fit. I cannot cope with Spain as a truly European country, with all the history, haughtiness, order, and cold weather that the word connotes. I associate Spain with Mexico and Colombia, not Brussels; Carlos and Juan, not Charles and John. I am reminded of Muslim rule lasting through the fifteenth century, of individuals surnamed Ibn, of a government largely absent from world affairs for the past four hundred years: is this really a major European nation? No - in some small way, Spain is unsettled, exotic, non-Western, and always at summer.

Nothing expresses this dichotomy better than the physical terrain itself. In attempting to divide Spain, to level order upon it, an in-between emerged: clear divisions of wild, unordered pieces of land. Other unique features point to the same pattern. For one, the earth is of a dusty, terracotta hue - a pink-brown I should expect from Tunisia, not Tarragon. The desert-exotic requires a balance, which comes in the form of numerous dark blue lakes. Unlike the grand, roundish look of American lakes, these have a fractal, reptilian shape. Sharp and severe, they appear as if imposed upon on an unwelcoming land, one unfit for typical European geography. These inlets are insistent:"Errr! This is Europe, not North Africa - have some decency/lakes!" Upon a arid mountainscape, they hang on for dear life. Spain's sparse forests stand to a similar effect. Sprinkled in neat lines across the dry-blood earth, they grow with enough distance between each neighbor that even from 30,000 feet one can distinguish individual saplings. Not quite the lush forests of northern Europe, but if Spain insists upon being a Middle Eastern exclave, the Continent can settle for something less Jordan and more Lebanon.

The placement of Spain's ancient townlets also catches my attention. High above America's more rural states, a discerning eye might surmise that the highways came first, linking major cities, with little communities later popping up around these transportation links. Towns float by in straight lines, following their concrete guides. Not so in Spain, where cities emerge in the most inefficient of locations: annoyingly perched on top a cliffy peak, within an uncomfortably tight mountain pass, or two so close as to make the other unnecessary. The odd whereabouts speak history - here, cities were built with military matters in mind, or in contest with Muslim/Christian rivals. Here, the towns appear first and modern man's roads must meander their way amongst the diffused expanse and winding hill tops. Here, the cities spread out in medieval fashion, in little triangular chunks revolving around various central plazas; the towns are turned in upon themselves and their centers, oblivious to any hope of a structuring grid, oblivious to their position in any grand nation-wide scheme. Touring the next Spanish city never means just continuing straight - each visit requires a crazy left turn.

Together, the clash of far-flung disorder and civilizing European-ness lends itself to one last feature I attribute to Spain: it is a Land of Exile. The tension between settled down and something-is-up, between European metropolis and desert-esque expanse, between feeling at home and constant wandering expresses itself in more than the history of Spanish Jewry, but in the very land we once tread. Dwelling over these thoughts while we taxied across the runway, I found affirmation in the last geographical feature noticed from the plane, in that first, welcoming site seen by all arriving in Madrid:

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*None of the photos were taken by me, who previously thought that airplane window pictures would have no real use. It's easier to see the choppy-ed up shapes from the zoomed in view of the first photograph, which is linked under "sprinkled in little neat lines" a few paragraphs into the post. The caption for that photo, found on flickr, seconded my observation: "Spain from above...notice the grid-like placement of trees"