Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Ghosts of Spain



Late evening... wet... sprawled naked beside the emerald green kidney, the last shards of the Andalucian sun streaking across my scrotum....some solace from the day's searing 40° C ....the agapanthus are in full bloom, large melon-sized globes of white and blue-violet, snaking upwards from their pots against a backdrop of Haliborange hibiscus.....the bougainvillea strangles the hardy Opuntia dillenii as it sways in the fucking madness of the gale force June - July Gador winds, scattering its magenta leaves into the emerald green kidney... the wind lacerating the banana palm leaves into ribbons.... the Lithops is about to pop another stone-like bud and my hard-back copy of ''Ghosts of Spain " has just arrived via The Book Depository ( a great website that does free delivery to most of the civilised world ).

A few days ago, the Redhead was reading out captions from the '' Ghosts of Spain ", Giles Tremlett's new book published earlier this year. She found the Franco references and descriptions of life under him in the Sixties very familiar as she was at school in Andalucia at the time. Giles Tremlett is the Guardian's Madrid correspondent and has lived in Spain for the last 20 years. He talks of the various facets of Spain , the silence of the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, how they have just forgotten and eradicated certain elements of their past....the book covers brothels, gypsies, flamenco and corruption in the construction industry amongst other aspects of daily Spanish life.

" Why do Spaniards go to plastic surgeons, donate their organs, visit brothels and take cocaine more than any other Europeans ?" More to follow as I plough through it distracted by the fucking discombobulating wind.........

Tags: Ghosts of Spain + Giles Tremlett + The Book Depository