Beauty and Ugliness- Spain

 Great Beauty and Extreme Ugliness – Spain

 

 

In any of the old Spanish cities and villages the visitor will find magnificent structures: castles, palaces, churches (in Cordoba a mosque violated by a church). From more modern times, expect well-judged avenues, pedestrian promenades, good C19 and early C20 buildings. And always inviting restaurants, cafes and bars.

 

But, but.. Outside well preserved and well curated centres, most Spanish towns quickly deteriorate. The staples are ugly apartment blocks, thrown up in profusion, with indecent architectural values.

 

Malaga is a case in point. Its historic centre and port area are wonderful, but a few hundred metres away unattractive blocks lean into one another.

 

The English Cemetery, a hillside graveyard founded by C19 Anglican piety for the burial of non-catholic dead, possesses a melancholy charm that is instantly familiar to anyone acquainted wit

h the similar Victorian cemeteries in Britain. But it is small, and surrounded by indifferent apartment blocks, some of which, from a higher position on the hill, loom over the cemetery and invade its tranquillity.

 

When one climbs up some magnificent structure, built high above some city, such as the palace/forts in Malaga or Almeria, or the Alhambra in Granada, you can be certain of good views of mountains or sea, but the urban view will mostly be of jumbled concrete skylines.

 

The ugliness in the countryside is equally unforgiveable. 

 

The overbuilt coastal towns of the Costa del Sol are joined up by the congealing dots of wretched developments, or half developments, or abandoned developments.

Inland, in the wonderful sierras which range along or near the coast, there are broadly four factors. First, Spain has designated vast areas of the mountainous countryside as “Parque Natural”, thankfully preventing development.

Secondly, the farm and pastureland in the hills and valleys can blend well with the natural landscape. But, thirdly, where there’s anywhere flat enough, the eyesore of plastic fungus of intensive cultivation spreads – horribly triumphant everywhere in the province of Almeria. Fourthly, in the Sierras that fall outside Parque Natural protection, the usual speculative and visually grating building goes on, and on..

 

The “White Villages” in the hills, dating from Moorish times, offer some relief. Their streets and buildings are well preserved and protected. But typically bad developments nibble at the edges, and chaotically spread outwards where they can.

 

Poverty and cynical business opportunism lie behind all this. Poverty leads to cheap buildings crammed in anyhow, and to local intensive farming under tatty plastic. Business opportunism leads to bigger and uglier buildings and larger acres of plastic intensive farming.

 

In choice areas, expensive, incongruously modern (ie not in keeping with any traditional style- glassy rectilinear designs seem to the current favourites) are flung up on infill sites or on the wastelands that are the by product of indiscriminate development (join the ugly dots…).

 

 

Whilst writing this post, I read an article in The Guardian about a new Spanish book, Ugly Spain, written by a journalist from El Pais. The book seems to cover the same ground, and more, and with much more knowledge than I possess. Here’s a link to the article https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/19/spain-is-ugly-el-pais-editor-takes-on-his-countrys-cultural-catastrophe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other:  I hope 

the book will be translated.

 

April 2022