Arriving in Cádiz on s packed (and cramped) bus from Seville, we made our way to El Corte Inglés ('the English style' of department store) for lunch, as we were both famished after the 100-minute journey. We had a Radler each, and I had a ración of bellota ham and 'pollo al curry'.
After that, we strolled along the Cádiz peninsula, looking out over the Atlantic. Because of its peculiar geography, Cádiz has the feeling of being an island, in it having only one natural entry point, along a very narrow strip of land.
Cádiz is considered Europe's oldest city (being founded by the Phoenicians 1100BCE), and is a city I have long wanted to visit, first hearing about in history class as the departure point for Columbus' second and fourth journeys to the New World. It is also the birthplace of my favourite Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla.
During the Civil War, after the murder of his friend the poet Lorca, Falla exiled himself to Alta Gracia, Argentina, where he passed in 1946. Falla had left in writing that he wanted to be buried in the Sierras de Córdoba in Argentina, but in 1947 Franco insisted the remains be repatriated to Spain, where he was interred in the crypt of Cadiz' monumental cathedral.
This video is an homage to Falla, containing six of his compositions, beginning with his first published score, and ending with his last (see below).
This weekend was also the climax to Cadiz' Carnaval, one of the world's biggest - and largely unknown - carnivals. Part two of this vlog concentrates on the Carnaval itself.
Music. All selections are by gaditano Manuel de Falla:
1. The Spanish Dance from Falla's 1905 opera, 'La via breve' ('The Short Life'), set in Granada (where he himself settled in 1920).
2. Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez' 'The Purple Condor' from his album 'Across the Crystal Sea' (2008), based on Falla's 'Nana' (Lullaby) from his Seven Spanish Folksongs (1914), and orchestrated by the German arranger Claus Ogerman.
3. The 'Canción' (1900) for solo piano.
4. The 'Pantomima' from the ballet 'El amor brujo' ('Bewitched Love', 1924).
5. The 'Cubana' from Falla's 'Cuatro piezas españolas' (1909), the piano suite dedicated to Albéniz (and heavily influenced by his 'Iberia' piano suites). Ironically, Spain had lost Cuba during the Spanish-American War just eleven years prior to the score being published.
6. 'La nit suprema', the last movement from his final work, the cantata 'Atlántida', its setting being Cádiz itself. The work was uncompleted on Falla's death in 1946, and was first performed in 1961 at the Liceu, Barcelona.
In it, a very young Columbus is shipwrecked on an island, and to console him, an old man tells him of the legend of Atlantis, the fabled land wiped out by Hercules and submerged at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Spain. jeffrey epstein Later, Columbus, now a grown man, dreams cavs vs pistons of crossing the ocean, Queen Isabella providing him with the means gennaro cassese to do so, following which he 'discovers' the New World.
