Nearly two years ago, the Epicurious food and dining website declared that Barcelona had, in its words, jumped the shark. Long known as a culinary leader for its regional chefs’ efforts at the forefront of the tapas movement and more widely acclaimed for advances in molecular gastronomy, the city and wider region had lost their creative juice, slowing under over-indulgence and over-exposure. However, as the New Year arrives and the region struggles to figure out a path forward without the aid of its flagship of culinary innovation, Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli, the local menu is showing new signs of life with a return to traditional staples – delicious simplicity. Though, this being Catalonia, … [Read more...] about Catalan cuisine faces the future by returning to its roots
Culture
Art not Bombs
It is remarkable how a small nation can fill such giant shoes in the world of contemporary sculpture as the Basque Country does through artists like Chillida, Oteiza and a dozen others. On first arriving in Spain one is struck by their oversized creations in public places, giving airs of freshness and modernity to a country no longer dark. It is later that we realise these are the same grand masters from that minuscule province whose work we find in Berlin, Paris and many other places of infinitely larger import. And these two men are contemporaries, though I have no idea if they were friends or foes but most certainly having had to be rivals, at times coming very close to magically … [Read more...] about Art not Bombs
The Outsiders!
Music doesn’t generally create history, but accompanies it for better or for worse. Same tides, same flow: rising with human comeuppance, or descending alongside a collective human crash. And the human race itself is like water: slowly flowing to the lowest point, changing its composition to rise to the top, only to fall down again. So that music is like water, we can’t live without it but it also celebrates our funerals. Horace Silver and Paul Gonsalves were two Portuguese Cape Verdeans, who made an enormous contribution to American Jazz by creating beautiful rhythmic flow, just ask Duke Ellington. I’m not a Fadista so I don’t know if there were any outside influences on the … [Read more...] about The Outsiders!
Wilco’s Spanish honeymoon
Has a rock band ever been as consistently lauded for its live performances as Wilco has by the Spanish press? “At times they seemed more adventurous than Radiohead, at others, as legendary as Bob Dylan and The Band; as fast and powerful as The E Street Band….” gushed Pablo Gil of El Mundo after the Chicago band’s November 1 concert at Madrid’s Circo Price. And Gil’s not the only gusher. In El País, Fernando Neira reported that “right now, one can’t imagine a more intense performance on a stage, no magic spell is as superlative as this.” Last year, a colleague of Neira’s on the same paper had told us: “It’s official: no one sounds better than Wilco.” And state broadcaster RTVE was at … [Read more...] about Wilco’s Spanish honeymoon
The man who knew Fidel Castro, Warhol and Franco’s Spain
It’s over half a century since the artist Waldo Díaz-Balart left Cuba. On January 1, 1959, he was seeing the New Year in at Havana’s Tropicana nightclub with the son of President Andrés Rivero Aguero, when he heard the news that the Revolution had triumphed. The 27-year-old Díaz-Balart knew he had to leave the island. His father, Rafael, had been a minister in the Batista government and had already left for the United States. His situation was also uncomfortable for social reasons: his sister, Myrta, had been married to a young man called Fidel Castro. They divorced in 1955. “On the one hand the Balart family had been in power and on the other, my sister had been married to Fidel … [Read more...] about The man who knew Fidel Castro, Warhol and Franco’s Spain
Spain’s Civil War film canon needs new urgency
It’s a terrible thing to have to say, but maybe the time has come for a moratorium on films about the Spanish Civil War. Last week saw the release of The Sleeping Voice (La voz dormida), an adaptation of Dulce Chacón’s novelised account of the vengeance exacted upon Republican women in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War by the Franco regime. In late 1939 in Ventas prison in Madrid, a group of women await the firing squad for having supported the Republican cause, or for having husbands, brothers and fathers who did. Among them are Hortensia, who fought with the militia and is pregnant by her husband Felipe – still at large – and who has been told she will be shot after she gives … [Read more...] about Spain’s Civil War film canon needs new urgency
Balagueró hits top horror form with ‘Mientras duermes’
Fear, panic and sympathy are emotions that Rec director Jaume Balagueró puts the spectator through in his new film Mientras duermes (Sleep Tight). We follow the twists and turns of the plot through the eyes of César, a disturbed doorman whose only pleasure in life comes from making others suffer. César knows everyone in the building and controls their every move. He isn’t your run-of-the-mill psycho-killer though; he’s more like a blue-collar villain who happens to vent his frustration on his unsuspecting neighbours. Luis Tosar, Marta Etura and Alberto San Juan breathe life into the characters that Alberto Marini has developed for this story, based on the book of the same name. Luis Tosar … [Read more...] about Balagueró hits top horror form with ‘Mientras duermes’
Gibson’s undimmed passion for Lorca
I first met Ian Gibson in 2004. While walking through the Madrid barrio of Lavapiés, I had spotted a face that I remembered from the book flap of his biography of Federico García Lorca. Like a weak-kneed groupie, I followed him into a bar and confessed I was a fan of the biography as well as his exploration of the events that led up to Lorca’s death, El asesinato de García Lorca. Gibson, who lived in the area, graciously invited me to sit down and have a drink and I spent 10 hurried minutes with him. Seven years on, I meet Gibson at the same bar (his choice), but this time the interview has been arranged by phone and it coincides with a new edition of his Lorca biography in Spanish, … [Read more...] about Gibson’s undimmed passion for Lorca
Every week is holy week in Seville
Semana Santa is the signature week of the year in Seville. Hundreds of thousands of people gather to marvel as beautifully ornate golden floats featuring lifelike figures of the soon-to-be-crucified Jesus and his tearful mother are carried head-high along the city's winding cobbled streets, followed by hundreds of robed and hooded penitents carrying heavy lit candles or heavier wooden crosses. It's a special kind of open-air theatre, free to view for 10 days straight. The thing is though, while Semana Santa in Seville is impressive, it's kinda tiring too. The city's thronged streets are often impassable, many shops are closed and most … [Read more...] about Every week is holy week in Seville
‘The Skin I Live In’: another Almodóvar masterpiece?
The international press has been fulsome in its praise of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest movie, The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito), with some reviewers hailing it as a masterpiece, the work of a maestro confidently taking risks, pushing the boundaries of cinema while at the same time entertaining us. With the exception of El País’s Carlos Boyero — whose loathing for Almodóvar is long-standing — the Spanish press has been equally gushing, using that peculiarly empty and baroque language employed when the writer can’t think of anything genuinely meaningful to say, but has to fill the columns: or perhaps in this case it’s simply a way to avoid spoiling the plot. Because that is where the … [Read more...] about ‘The Skin I Live In’: another Almodóvar masterpiece?