Here I am in Salamanca, 10.30 at night, writing by the light of the night sky at my little wicker table on the strikingly handsome Plaza Mayor.
For company, I have a glass of Rioja and the myriad folk who seem to pass back and forth across the square several times a day
(they must do, I’m beginning to recognise them). And all is well with the world.
Respite for me from the rigours of hauling my weary bones & bags over from London recently, for the eternity that a week of moving can sometimes seem.
I set a game plan for checking out this elegant, graceful, exquisitely beautiful university town that sits between Madrid and the Portuguese border.
I’ve been here barely a week and already I can see – and sense – that this could well be the loveliest of the many towns and cities I’ve come to know and love in this endlessly fascinating and criminally under-appreciated country…. (If the British could only see beyond their English language menus in their concrete stalag-like compounds down there in Marbella and Torremolinos………..though on second thoughts, better perhaps they don’t).
Salamanca is impossibly rich in mellow gold stone, more so even than gilt-edged Jerusalem; a mellow gold that illuminates and defines the many turrets and towers, arcades and alleys that adorn the town in a burst of architectural splendour that makes Barcelona look positively bland by comparison.
Cathedral and church spires become home to armies of storks, which balance so precariously on spiky bits and the tops of down-pipes, (you wonder if they’re in it for the free enema).
This is one bizarre sight. Those of you who’ve seen them perform the same trick atop the El Badi Palace in Marrakech will know what I mean.
Big Plazas vie for business from the great people watching, coffee-drinking populous, with somewhere to sit and bask in the warm sunshine every few yards, and so many people to watch you bask – not in a claustrophobic over bearing, big city kind of way, more in a (folk-just-going-about–their-daily-business-and-having-a-damn-good-time-into-the-bargain) kind of way.
Salamanca is awash with students and the vibe is young and ebullient, in contrast to the fabric of the city which is stately and serene; and to me, who if not exactly stately and serene, seems to be the only soul in town this particular week significantly closer in age to the Cathedral than to the next oldest sitting on it’s steps.
There is so much to admire in Salamanca, so many gorgeous buildings; the Church of La Clerecia, with its grandiose Baroque courtyard that seems somehow like a scaled down Plaza Mayor; the 13th century convents and monasteries, the fabulous Romanesque Catedral Vieja, which is approached through the larger Catedral Nueva and houses the astonishing – and astonishingly huge – retablo by Nicolas Florentino, a mighty collage of 53 paintings depicting the life of Jesus surmounted by an apocalyptical portrayal of the Last Judgement. Mel Gibson would love it.
Behind the Cathedral stands the newest – and by some distance the quirkiest – of Salamanca’s endless artefacts, the Museo Art Nouveau y Art Deco.
What a building this is, wall to wall glass vases, lamps, figurines and scent bottles – and wall to wall glass on the outside, the construction deriving from the most stylised vibrantly painted glass you ever saw.
The finished object resembling the prodigal love child of a Sephardi/Sefardi synagogue and a Parisian bordello.
This really is a very special building, one you don’t so much walk through as bathe in.
Nothing in all of Salamanca though quite compares with the millennium-old university, a perfectly bewitching confection of buildings whose main façade –(really, you must see this for yourself, don’t take my word for it)—fairly explodes in a profusion of medallions, heraldic emblems and sumptuous floral decorations.
This has got to be the most beautiful university in the world – honestly, it makes Cambridge look soppy – and I gave the better part of a day to this glorious seat of learning (which is more than I ever gave any seat of learning when I was meant to, but that’s another story).
And sitting in the panelled library – a room stuffed to overflowing with thousands of antiquated books and immense globes of the world – gazing out across the cool, cloistered quadrangle, I could almost imagine what it must be like to be intelligent, articulate, and ready for a hard days demonstrating.
Mind you, who wouldn’t want to occupy this building.
Personally I’d stage my sit in, order lunch, then bid for the freehold.
But enough meditating on what might have been education –wise, for here I am once again where I feel I most belong, among the arcaded walkways and abundant cafes of the Plaza Mayor.
Time and again they draw me in to sit and ponder, to muse and shmooze, and sometimes just to close my eyes and listen to the comings and goings.
Every so often I desert my post to stretch my legs or re-order my thoughts.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I wandered down to the Rio Tormes. I’m an absolute pushover for a decent bridge, and the 400-metre Puente Romano is very decent indeed, a majestic edifice by any standards, 2,000 years old and 15 of it’s original 26 arches still intact.
It took just a few euros stuffed in the leathery hand of a construction worker to get me on the bridge – officially it’s closed for restoration – but it was worth every denomination of foreign currency in my back pocket.
The panorama is superb, a stunning view back to the old city high up on the hill above the bridge. And when the fancy takes me, I hop a few yards due south of the Plaza Mayor to the Plaza Colon, where stands the Torre de Clavero, a structure whose precise function has never been entirely clear – but who cares, when you can gaze on such whimsy: a 15th century octagonal tower with it’s endearingly odd Gothic pepperpot turrets.
Back, though, to the Plaza Mayor. With pen, a pad, a 1992 Rioja and a succession of cappuccino chasers, moments such as this in towns such as this are beyond price and find me sweet of disposition and lucid thought.
Right now they have me wondering just how sad it is that London – among all of Europe’s great cities – has not one such focal point, not one such Plaza beloved and cherished by locals and visitors alike, but Salamanca is a central meeting place of infinite charm, A living breathing entity with a unique heart & soul, and all of it free of litter, pan-handlers and drunken carousers.
Leicester Square? I don’t think so! Piccadilly Circus? You’re kidding surely! Trafalgar square? A traffic chaos nightmare, with a plague of pidgeons crapping on everything, forget it!!
Come to Salamanca – and many other magical Spanish places in Spain – and see how it’s done here.
Next stop; Zaragoza I think!
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Ciao.<br /><br />
