We are not tourists. We are living in the frontier town of La Linea, literally ‘the line’ from where the Spanish army besieged Gibraltar some thirteen times – all to no effect. We are borrowing the home of our friends, who live here, whilst they are away in Latvia. Borrowing the homes of others is a good way to see the world. No one waits on us hand and foot but we get to sense the life style more accurately. Our friend put out a request for a cat sitter to look after Luna whilst they had to be away for six weeks. We bit their hand off within seconds of Tanya seeing their post. This is the only way we could have afforded nearly four weeks away. So, in our smug way, we don’t believe the posters and protests and water pistols that are being fired at tourists in Spain this summer, apply to us. We are travellers – and one’s who make no negative impact on the locals.
We’ve travel this way quite a bit. In the summer of 2023 our friends, Nick and Jane, put us up in their homes in the port of Marblehead near Boston, MA and in the mountains of New Hampshire. Angela took us in at her home in the woods in Connecticut. The same in New Zealand with Michael Fitzpatrick and Julie in 2017. And in Singapore with David and Jane Mayo in 2007, 2013 and 2017. The inside knowledge you get with locals is great and we always get to see so much more this way. What are friends for? Travel, it seems.
La Línea de la Concepción
La Linea is a nowhere place; not pretty pretty, just normal – wanting to be left alone to get on with life without having to get dolled up for visitors or cultivating an alien service culture to satisfy foreigners’ demands. If you visit this town, it’s you that has to fit in with them, not the other way around. The shops are not boutiques peddling dream catchers and kaftans or touristic tat – they are work-a-day: phone shops, toyshops, farmacia, shoe shops, bakery, supermercados. The restaurants and bars cater for the townsfolk, with corresponding prices. They are the canvas on which everyday life takes place. Any English that is spoken is halting and often resentfully used. La Linea is a sole Spanish garrison surrounded by armies of tourists.
A brandy, a pastry, a cafe con leche or cafe solo inside the Okay or at the old school cervazia on Calle Real. Work takes place in the morning before the heat is too intense. The older town members gather to watch the live football games of La Liga in the evening and the well to do gather for morning coffee and a chat. Nobody is in a rush, including the waiters, who dash, slowly, in and out of the air conditioned interior with silver trays borne aloft and loaded with coffees, aniseed pastis, carafes of water, tinto de verano – all manner of libations – to points various at the tables.
We sit. Our presence is clocked but we are ignored. There is a way of doing this; it requires patience. We bide our time. Eventually, an unsmiling waiter arrives ready to take our order. He makes no eye contact, just stands with his pad, staring into the middle distance, waiting. For him, this is not service Americane; this is their place, their rules.
Siesta kicks in at 4pm when the heat makes the streets lonely. Nothing happens until around 7pm when small groups venture out for a drink and a chat with neighbours over an aperitivo. This is the time many locals desert the beach after a day on the sand in this hottest summer month; it is when we venture out for a swim. Two beaches flank the town: the smaller one overlooks Gibraltar docks. The longer beach, at the other end of town, stretches several kilometres perpendicular to Gibraltar and has finer sand and better waves. Both have water that makes you feel dirty getting into it. It is not clean but it is welcomingly cool.
Andalusian senior people at night time. Lovingly holding hands, flirting, playing, wining and dining – enjoying life and each other. Looking at those couples at night you see flamenco – the story of love, joy and suffering – the story of life. Here’s to them!
Raising a glass to Spanish people and to coming here again in our 80s, wearing high heels and bright colours. But most importantly – holding hands and looking at each other with Spanish passion and tenderness.
Tanya Khandurova, Facebook
Dinner is a family affair: little children, parents, grand parents all together – the children running around the square playing. Elderly couples hold hands and seem to have learnt the knack of keeping each other entertained even after forty years of marriage. They laugh and touch – the spark has not dimmed. It is encouraging. Maybe this little life, far removed from wars and famine and the travails of more self-important countries, creates more contented citizens?
Tanya Khandurova is with Steven Kean and David Kean.
Spanish life. Afternoon heat. Night feasts. Colours. Lights. Celebrations. Endless celebrations of life.
Life here takes place in the shade. Slow. Sociable. Serene by day, raucous by night.
The town has one main street and three squares. One square has a church. Our friends have made this place home for themselves and their three children. Their apartment is twice the size of ours and half the price. It has two large outdoor terraces. Living is cheap. The town is welcoming. The scenery stunning. You can see the appeal. They are clearly more acclimatised to the heat as they have not installed air conditioning nor do they possess a fan of any kind. Breeze is at a premium here. Sometimes it is even necessary to open the fridge just to enjoy the sensation of coldness on your skin.
After two days in the town I am getting itchy feet. I am not a ‘somewhere’ person – I need to move about. We rent a car and drive to Tarifa. I smile pretty much the whole way; it feels like we are on the road, my favourite place to be. I have been to Tarifa three times and we will visit it again on this trip. I enjoy the vibe – though it is a bit self-conscious, a bit Saint Tropez – and want to spend a bit of time here, in Malaga, Seville and Cadiz. Tarifa is so busy it’s impossible to park anywhere but the top of the town, near the main road. We walk through the Jerez gate, the only one of the original four Moorish gates left and down the white house flanked narrow streets. It’s siesta time. Many restaurants are closed but we get a table at the ‘best pizza restaurant in Spain 2024’. I discover a couple of boutique hotels which I mentally log for future journeys when it’s just Tanya and me. We explore and on a subsequent trip we have lunch and a drink after a whale watching – which yields a few dolphins and some pilot whales, but no orcas. Being on the sea is always mesmeric. We cross the Strait, dodging the tankers that ply this channel and can see the white buildings of Tangier about four kilometres away. Africa. This really is a special place. You can see why the ancients thought it was the end of the world – that beyond the Pillars of Hercules was the void.
Except it wasn’t. Around the corner is Baelo Claudia, a Roman settlement from the first century AD. It must have felt a million miles from Rome. Here the trade was tuna. Up the coast was Gādēs – Cadiz – one of the oldest cities in the world. All along this coast they traded and when the tuna ran in April, as they still do, it must have been quite a sight. We visit this place early to avoid the crowds, who arrive by the coachload as we are readying to leave. So we have the place to ourselves, pretty much. It is well done. The museum building is beautiful – white, wood and metal. Simple. Minimalist. With a vast open window on which overlooks the whole archaeological site and frames the land, the ruins, hills and sea. Except. All that design and thought and beauty put into this place by the architect is unpicked by the careless placement of a red and white ribbon of plastic safety tape which cordons off (quite unnecessarily) a part of the grand staircase to separate those coming up from those coming down. (Because people clearly can’t work that out for themselves.) The tape ruins the aesthetic. The architect would weep. Minor functionaries massacre sites like this all over the world. They can’t seem to keep their hands off and delight in health and safety protocols which render the entire effort of the design redundant. I have to manipulate the angles of my photos to edit out the offensive tape.
Tarifa and Bolonia
The Costa del Sol
The name conjures up package holidays, charter flights, thousands of families, acres of pasty English flesh burnt red on over-crowded beaches and lush, watered golf courses up and down this strip of arid land. Villas complexes and large hotels cheek by jowl, separated from one another by no more than a man’s chest width, packed in the boundary between motorway and sea. Palm trees. Familiar names: Marbella, Estapona, Sotogrande, Valderama. I know fifty something, first generation money business folk who make the pilgimage to southern Spain every year; some even have homes here. When they return to work for the final, autumnal push for profit as September kicks in, they wear white polo shirts or dresses until their tans fade or their skin stops peeling. This is a British playground where people return year after year. It is a Spain increasingly under siege from Airbnb where locals are priced out of the housing market.
A bit of touristy Andalusia. It’s fun, but I prefer places where they don’t have English menus.
Tanya Khandurova
It is a Spain I have enjoyed, staying at the San Roque Club in 2001 with Sam and Josh, when we lounged by the pool and strayed from the hotel compound occasionally – in search of something different, which we found in Tarifa. But that is another lifetime ago.
Now, the pueblos blancos and wild swimming are our chosen destinations. Whilst the children might be happy with a pool at a villa or hotel, we cannot lie on sun beds and so our time is spent searching out shady mountain streams and quiet mountain villages. There seem to be enough of either scattered up the snaking passes of the hills here. As always, the rewards for making the effort to escape the glitz of the touristy meccas are plentiful.
Breathtaking Andalusia. Just half an hour away from the yachts, cocktail bars and other “delights” of Costa del Sol there are unforgettable landscapes: beautiful mountains, quiet white villages, ancient fortresses, wild swimming places.
Tanya Khandurova in Jimena de la Frontera
Genalguicil and Jimena de la Frontera – white village renowned for works of art scattered amongst the houses and the second for Moorish castle and views across the plain.
Secret wild swimming in a village at the bottom of a precipitous cinder track miles from anywhere
Cape Trafalgar
Cape Trafalgar is a lighthouse and a small plaque on a roundabout which you walk to along a pedestrian road about a kilometre long. For the Spanish, less keen than the British to commemorate one of the most ignominious naval defeats of their history at the hands of Nelson, the place is known by its resort name of Los Caños de Meca. Only history buffs would visit to imagine the battle 21 miles out to sea to the northwest of the Cape; everyone else comes for the aquamarine water, the Atlantic breakers and the beach party vibe. Our first visit was a homage to have a look; our second, to swim in the glorious surf (Emily says she made friends with the sea here – I hope it’s a love affair that lasts a lifetime) and the third, on the Monday before we left – it was worth the 90 minute drive to find clean water and proper waves. And on the third outing, Emily caught a wave which gave her her first body surf. We have a lot to be thankful about at Trafalgar.
Malaga
It is north of 37 degrees. Emerging from the cool of our car to the scalding street level heat which bounces off the pavement makes me laugh in awe at the furnace ferocity of the city. I am at my happiest in the sun.
Malaga looks intriguing but it is another hot spot where locals are up in arms about living in a city that has become unliveable in. Rents are too high and little remains that isn’t catering for the hordes of foreign visitors; inhabitants have become estranged in their own town. The star attraction is the Picasso museum but it isn’t much to write home about; it is filled with the dregs of his work. You cannot blame the town of Pablo’s birth from trying to cash in on its most famous citizen although by doing so, they have added to the number of visitors and so exacerbated the town’s plight.
Done with the art, we skirt around the cathedral, sticking to the shady side of the streets like vampires, terrified that we will be immolated if even a sliver of skin is exposed to direct sunlight. At this hour of the day, it is like living under a magnifying glass which focuses the light to a white hot point. For the first and last time on this trip, we stumble into an Italian restaurant – all the Spanish ones are closed until 9pm – and sit at a table outside directly under the fans. In this heat, the fans merely douse you with molten air. Tanya gets redder. If she was fitted with a pressure gauge and a warning klaxon, they would be clearing the area.
We survive and, fed, feel more content. (We have a silly habit of going too long without having anything to eat – we don’t pack anything and nowhere is open between 4 and 8pm.) After an enticing amble back to the car – enticing because I have spied an interesting looking shady sherry bar and a few nice looking streets which imply Malaga has much to offer – we depart. Exploration deferred until next time. In the winter.
Provisions
Tanya has long since abdicated responsibility for choosing where we eat to me. It is not worth it, she says, to get it wrong and if I am miserable, I will make sure everyone else is, too. True. Bad provisions and a vibe I am not enjoying make me scratchy. So this is a wise policy. I have struggled in vain to educate Steven that the first place you see does not automatically mean you go there; for those who regard food as mere fuel and an irrelevance, the first place is as good as any. I can see that. I am not one of those people. For fuel to work for me, it needs to be high grade. Luckily – and, in contrast to Somerset Maugham’s assertion that Spanish food is awful in his book chronicling his travels in Spain, Don Fernando – Spain is one of the world’s great cuisines. It is true, some of the dishes are not done justice; but that’s the execution, not the notion. In La Linea, we hit gold. On our doorstep is Bodebar. A slick operation in the kitchen, immaculate front of house, a good wine list, inventive dishes. Mixing tapas with mains, we ate there a lot. It is my happy place. Bao buns with octopus, tomato and asparagus salad with orange vinagrette, salted grilled asparagus, paella at the weekends, grilled octopus. All cooked to perfection. Heaven every time. Good food helps conversation and whilst Emily disappeared to play in the square with all the other children, we had some lovely discussions with Steven about philosophy, politics, science and history. Food enables life’s nicer moments.
We had mango daiquiris in Estepona, grilled squid in Tarifa, the best, crispy black pudding in Sevilla, we visited traditional old school tapas bars in Cadiz and near the Alcazar. We were always guaranteed a table because we came out slightly earlier than the business crowd and were usually the first customers in as they open up for food. There is merit in being unfashionably early – an hour later and they’re queuing at the door.
Colours of Andalusia
Colours of Andalusia. When you come to this place you feel that you lived in monochrome and watercolour back home.
Tanya Khandurova
Vivid blues, cremnitz white walls and windmills, rich ocre, terracotta, parched grass, black trees burnt in fierce forest fires, dark green cypress, flowing light green water in fountains and mountain streams, the stone crags of Gibraltar and Africa facing off across the Strait and the deep blue sea of 1600 fathoms in between. This is a rich palette.
Moorish
Design in Andalusia is heavily Moorish. Use of shade and running water, geometric pattern in marble, paint and on fabric, studded door panels, coloured glass lanterns, mosaics, ceramic tiles, iron castings, arches and cool spaces. Cadiz, Tarifa, Seville. The dark heaviness of Castilian architecture is always levened by the Islamic gift of light and colour.
The suit of Light
Whilst we were in Spain, I read Hemingway’s The sun also rises. The passages about bullfighting are sublime. Hemingway’s understanding – his aficion – permeates those chapters. And his enthusiasm and admiration for the art is infectious. Bullfighting is still big in Andalusia. Where it has been banned in Catalonia, to the north, and whilst there are voices raised against it in the south, the Suit of Light still illuminates the Andalusian soul. I am glad. And I want to see a fight. I know. You’re horrified. But remember that the reverence for the animal is real, as is the threat of harm to the matador and his entourage. Yes, death is a forgone conclusion for the bull. And I know all the arguments (for which I have some sympathy). But. Hemingway captures the honour and the drama, the science and the art in the raising of the bulls, the ritual, the atmosphere, the hazard and the sleight of body that makes some matadors sublime and others conmen.
Nobody lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.
The sun also rises, Ernest Hemingway
An interior landscape
Gibraltar
I do not like Gibraltar. Not modern Gibraltar, at any rate. It seems grasping and venal. When I came to visit here first in 1974, it was still a naval base. The Royal Dockyard closed in 1983 and the British Army left in 1991. When we stayed at The Rock Hotel, you could see the naval ships in port and the white uniforms were plentiful. The Royal Marine band was also to be heard. It was a better Gibraltar than the touristic version today. I remember the sun only emerged from the other side of the rock at about 10am, so the pool was too cool until then. This visit we returned to the hotel and although it’s still a grand dame and owned by the same family since 1953, the clientelle has deteriorated.
I booked afternoon tea on the terrace on our last Monday for Tanya and I. We ditched the booking in favour of going for a last swim at Cape Trafalgar en famille. I fear the tea experience would have been too depressing. Like most things which attempt to recreate something, it would have lacked authenticity. Tea was a ritual, a daily commonplace all over the Empire, with people discussing every subject but the tea. This ersatz parody would be about the tea experience itself. Which is sad and defeats the point. Having Singapore Slings in the Long Bar at Raffles at least had a point: to mark the successful completion of a job – business mixed with pleasure. Tea for tea’s sake, for the event, as a nod to a more glorious era would have been a disappointment. A microcosm of a Gibraltar which is a pale copy of it’s less venal glory days.
Gibraltar has its own weather system. It has history-a-plenty. It has apes and caves and simply spectacular views (depending on the weather system – see earlier). It has a Botanical Garden which is probably the nicest thing on it. It has a sweet airport that flies only to Britain, impressive feats of engineering in the famous siege tunnels and it even has its own language – Llanito. But it has no class. Everything has been turned into a day trip Disneyland designed to maximise revenue and extract money from the pockets of visitors in the sure knowledge that they will only visit once. It is a large duty free shop bereft of charm where everyone is on the make. Like a large, craggy con trick.
If you want to experience a little bit of the old school British patriotism you may find it in the tunnels of Gibraltar. The Siege tunnels are particularly heavy on depicting the glory of the British Army. Old marches and patriotic hymns play inside the tunnel non-stop. After 5 minutes they sounded for me like a torture designed to get me out before I figure out all the secret corners of the tunnels. David, on the other hand, plunged in a bit of nostalgia recognising every tune. Emily was delighted to march and dance to the music she has never heard before and, God help her to never hear again. All of us were happy that it is just history now.
Tanya Khandurova
Seville
Tanya Khandurova is with Steven Kean and David Kean at Sevilla,Spain.
Seville is an exceptionally beautiful place. First time we came here several years ago just for a couple of hours and immediately decided we should come back for a couple of days. Now we think we should come again for a couple of months. There are so many things to experience here.
The main road to Seville from La Linea is bordered by flat topped trees which shield the countryside from view. The central reservation is white and pink bougainvillea. The road surface is smooth. It is an altogether nicer drive than British motorways. I am excited to have a proper amount of time in two of the places I remember most keenly on our 2018 trip down the Atlantic coast of Europe: Seville and Cadiz.
Tanya, Steven and Emily want to rest in the Alcazar hotel, which is just outside the walls across a thin strip of park with the tall monument to Ferdinand and Isabella I remember from our first visit here. But last time we only scratched the surface and we somehow skirted only the street where Carmen waited for Escamillo and ended up in the lovely Alcazar gardens. This time, I am left alone to discover the streets of the old city and I relish the freedom to explore. It is as magical as I hoped it would be. In an hour I have taken loads of photos of the architecture, the streets and people and waited, patiently, to get the shot I wants in several places where you have to wait for all the people to walk out of frame. It is infuriating when a couple wander neither left not right but carry on needlessly in a straight line and then stop, one of them walking out of frame to check out the direction of where they need to go…and then walk back into frame to tell the other one. They stand still, talking. “Fucking move”, I breathe, conscious that this couple could easily move off stage right only to overlap as another troublesome body enters stage left. Eventually, if I wait, they eventually go and I get the shot.
The city is incredibly photogenic. The awnings are fitted with water sprays which create mist every minute or so for a few seconds to cool down the air. I sit outside at a bar overlooking the cathedral and order a beer. Just one. The street is touristy but it doesn’t matter – it is beautiful. On the way back to the hotel I wander deliberately up side streets to seek out interesting buildings and find a hostel, an hotel, a dazzling colonaded roof and a wooden studded door. In an hour the heat will be less intense and we will come out for dinner. I have in mind the Bodega Santa Cruz in the old Jewish quarter.
The Alacazar palace courtyards and gardens are a pleasure. The best thing is to lose yourself in them and we do. There are echoes, unsurprisingly, of the Topkapi in Istanbul and of the Alhambra in Grenada – around every corner are little Instagramable photo ops. Which is the problem. Most people seem to focus on themselves in their selfie “I was here” way; there seems to be no interest in the place other than as a backdrop to ‘me’. They pout and pose. It reminds me of Stewart Lee’s finale in his ‘Content provider’ tour where he imposes himself as the contemporary wanderer in Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above a sea of fog but facing the camera instead of the view – to take a selfie. Selfie’s are artless and disrespectful to the setting.
Our first night we eat dinner on a roof terrace above the street where I had my solitary beer that afternoon. The Bodega Santa Cruz is too crammed. The second night we are first in to the bar area of a traditional tapas place recommended by Lonely Planet. It is my second choice – my first choice, El Rinconcillo (opened in 1670 and the oldest tapas bar in Spain) is not open tonight. Sod’s law. It gets rave reviews:
This is one of Seville’s classic tapas bar, dating from around 1670. We have visited it on several previous trips to the city and it a little challenging to find, as it’s located behind a church in the narrow side street Gerona to the north of the historical centre of the city. The characterful bar consists to 2 adjoining rooms on the ground floor and separate “comedors” upstairs for more formal dining.
Visitor
Instead, we eat at Bar Casa Morales. It fits the bill but I mis-order to start with and have to point at dishes being presented at the table behind us to get the food I meant to order. The gazpachio is sublime. I have a Tio Pepe and a beer. As we leave, only forty five minutes after entering, the place is already full and buzzing. Locals come in for a dish or two and a drink. The room next door – behind the bar – has sherry tanks and is also heaving. It’s 9pm and the night is in full swing. Earlier in the day we walked to the Plaza d’Espana, an anachronistic monument to the Spanish Empire and colonies which looks old but was built in the 1920s. Redundant and out of date from the day it was built, it is an Ozymandian folly – a place tourist buses visit and whose sole purpose now seems to be as a backdrop for selfies. It is grand but has none of the life of Madrid’s Plaza Real; there are no restaurants or bars or cafes or shops to give it life. It just is – big, pompous, self-important, useless. No. It had one use: I watched the new series on Netflix called KAOS, starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. The Plaza’d’Espana was the main set for a modern day Crete where the cult of the Olympian Gods still prevailed. So not useless; but as meaningful and as substantive as a Hollywood studio set.
Seville feels civilised. Civilised enough to want to know more. It feels like it would be a very good place to live a little. But that will have to wait for next time.
Cadiz and Jerez de la Frontera
Approaching Cadiz, driving over the salt marshes towards the iconic steel suspension bridge, we spotted flamingos off to the left of us. Cadiz is special; it is very self contained, on a peninsular.
Just forty minutes east is sherry country. I remember the bone white soil from a work trip I had to visit the Gonzalez-Byass estates when we were pitching for Tio Pepe. Sherry is a magnificent drink. The English have a strong connection in these parts, as they do in Oporto in Portugal. We like a fortified wine. Some of the names of the exporters and wine merchants in Jerez sound as English as treacle pudding, and as rich. The town of Jerez is made up of a very long drive through dullness to a tiny old quarter. Just as I am prepared to drive on through and head out for Cadiz, we get to the cathedral and Alcazar. Not as famous or spectacular as their Seville namesakes, they are nonetheless pretty. Lying in their shadow is the bodega of Tio Pepe – a sprawl of many whitewashed buildings set up for tours and tastings. But not today. It is closed. We amble around the area and take all that Jerez has to offer architecturally; we do not sample the wares of what the town is most famous for. I make up for that over the next few weeks.
Cadiz. We park in Plaza San Antonio and walk to Plaza San Francisco. The narrow streets feel familiar and once we have checked in, I eat a tuna stew for lunch at a place in the square, opposite our hotel. The kids rest in the room. Tanya and I explore, walking to the more touristy end of town where the catherdral is. Inside the cathedral is unremarkable. There are supposed to be three Goyas but I am always appalled by the extravagent displays of silver and gold and the macabre fascination the catholics have with suffering and over ornamentation. Seville cathedral – third biggest in the world after St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London – was deliberately designed to be “so big, they will think we were mad”. Now, I bow to no one when it comes to making such bold statements – ambition on this scale is to be applauded, always – but it’s what they put in the cathedrals that’s so vulgar. Like the Albert Memorial in London, gaudy, gold, over decorated. Every chapel is festooned with ornate silver and gold; fat cherubs cavorting, severe looking priests made of wood, in brown hassocks but with golden crowns and halos, picture after picture of that poor pin-cushioned Saint Sebastian; stone saints, bloodied and be-thorned Christ figures, oozing pain and suffering; vast silver chalices and Ark of the Covenant-sized gilt boxes, relics, confessionals – all the paraphernalia of idolatry. It raises my deeply buried protestant heckles.
I cannot get out of Cadiz cathedral fast enough; it is too hot in there – is it my soul burning with heretical thoughts? We wander back and in the evening we stroll through the Parque Genovés. Emily hangs upside down from a tree and ducks behind the waterfalls. We see a group of woman practising flamenco in a bandstand in the park, accompanied by two men on guitars. Then we hurry on to eat in Calle Zorrilla – the street with the best tapas in town.
Time to say goodbye. It’s probably one of the most civilised and cosy airports. It took us just 7 minutes on foot to the borders from the home of our friends in La Linea where we stayed. Then 2 more minutes to the airport. No queues at security. Most passengers are enjoying their drinks at the balcony overlooking Gibraltar and the runway. We will miss Andalusia, very warm Spanish nights and Spanish people. There’s so much to miss. I hope we’ll be back one day. It’s so great to come back to places you love.