J G Ballard at Club Med

J G Ballard at Club Med

[I wrote about the novelist J G Ballard in April 2016. He was a writer preoccupied with what he saw as the frailties of the structures holding modern civilisations together, and the chaos and savagery that have the potential to emerge if those structures bend or collapse. He also detected in human nature a disturbing tendency to be drawn towards such anarchy. His fictions explore these themes in imagined closed, or closely-linked, communities that “go wrong” in horrible ways. Much though I enjoyed my stay in a Club Med resort, it immediately struck me as fertile ground for the Ballardian imagination…]

LORCA - CASA NATAL

Federico Garcia Lorca – Casa Natal

The life of Federico Garcia Lorca began only a short distance from where it ended. He was born just to the west of Granada and was killed and buried somewhere just to to the northeast of that city.

There was an ironic reason why he found himself, fatally, in the midst of one of the few successful Francoist uprisings in Andalucía in the summer of 1936. He returned to Granada from what he thought was the insecurity of Madrid on the verge of civil war, also to celebrate his and his father's name day. In Granada, he wrongly supposed, he would be safe among “his people”.

Flying Uncertainties

Flying- Small Moments of Uncertainty

I’m reasonably content to fly with Easyjet. On balance, one is given a friendly and efficient service on the plane. The EJ Airbuses land fairly gracefully – unlike the Ryanair Boeings, which, in my experience, thump down hard. Perhaps the notoriously disgruntled workforce are on a mission to wreck undercarriages (and now there are more sobering reasons to prefer Airbus to Boeing, for the time being).

An Arc through Western Andalucia

An Arc through Western Andalucía

Piety and violence are never far apart in Spain. Of course, the relationship holds in many other places at many times. But Spain has its own special place, certainly given the many centuries of conflict that endure between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, and the fierceness of the Spanish Catholic response to the Reformation, let alone the treatment of subject Jews and Muslims, once the Reconquista had succeeded in 1492.

Socialist Realist Painting in Malaga

No Potemkin Village in Malaga- Socialist Realism at the Russian Museum

After securing an offshoot of the Pompidou Centre to grace the City’s redeveloped port-side promenade, the authorities in Malaga have gone to form an alliance with the Hermitage in St Petersburg, and jointly create El Museo Ruso (Russian Museum) in the vast and splendid building that was once the tobacco factory. Does Malaga intend to become the synecdoche of the world’s leading galleries?

The Ousting of Spain's Moors

The Ousting of Spain’s Moriscos

The last Moorish kingdom in Spain was extinguished in 1492 when Granada fell to the Catholic monarchs. Thus ended an era of 7 centuries during which there was Moorish rule over most, or some, of Spain (an increasingly shrinking “some”).

That historical event coincided (not entirely a coincidence) with a marked increase in nationalistic Catholicism – Spain, or its ruling classes, held their country to be a triumphant Catholic nation, becoming the foremost power in Europe. 

Scenes at the British Museum

Scenes at the British Museum

All the great galleries and museums rely on benefactors, who may be very rich, and endow a gallery or wing or two, or just art lovers who stump up a modest but not negligible sum for various “membership” schemes.