My friend Debra came for a visit from Seattle on her way to an eight-day hike on the Costa Brava. In Debra’s three and a half days in Málaga and then three more days in Madrid, we did a lot of walking, a lot of talking, and a lot of eating. In between, there was a theater performance, a fashion show, live jazz, a flamenco show, a literary reading and workshop, and a couple of museum visits.

In Málaga, we went to a performance called “Concierto Lorca: Del Flamenco … Al Jazz,” which turned out to be less a concert than a powerful one-man play about Lorca with accompaniment by the pensive, intricate notes of a guitarist and the swoon-inducing sounds of a saxophonist. The actor played Emilio Aladrén, one of Lorca’s lovers, and delivered a monologue about the trajectory of Lorca’s life. It was in Spanish, of course, so there were parts that just whooshed past me, but I was familiar enough with Lorca’s life that I could track the narrative. It was a very Lorca-literate audience. At times, the actor addressed the audience with a question about a person, place, or thing in Lorca’s life and the audience responded, making this collective experience seem happily conspiratorial. We came away uplifted by this loving, tender tribute to a beloved Spanish literary light. It was a beautiful evening, so we skipped the bus and took to the seaside promenade for the hour-long walk back.

We had a beach day in Málaga and also did a day trip to Nerja, a coastal town an hour and a half from Málaga by bus, to browse the shops, eat a delicious lunch while admiring the view of the sea, stroll the Balcony of Europe while waves crashed over the rocks and onto the promenade, zigzag our way through sunbathers to get a closer look at the foaming surf, stroll through streets decorated with flowers, and visit the museum to learn about the nearby Nerja cave, first occupied by humans 35,000 years ago and discovered in 1959 by five teenage boys who slipped through a small, bat-frequented gap.

Back in Málaga, we caught part of the Málaga Fashion Week al fresco runway show on Calle Larios. Neither of us is much into fashion but we were drawn to the spectacle of tall, unusually attractive, shiny-haired, vacant-eyed, pouty-lipped people in a sassy strut. We skipped out midway through the show to grab some tacos. Then I led us to Calle Alcazabilla because I wanted Debra to see the Alcazaba lit up at night. There, in front of the eleventh-century fortress built during the period of Muslim-ruled Al-Andalus, we encountered one of the religious processions that pops up every so often to mark this or that celebration. The throne, a platform on which sits a sculpture depicting holy figures, is carried in a slow march by dozens of members of a brotherhood. The Catholic procession against the backdrop of the Muslim fortress is a reminder of the country’s history of conquest and reconquest.

The next morning, we were on a train to Madrid along with one of the tall, stunning models with a catwalk strut from the previous night’s runway show. We walked our own average person’s average walk all over the Centro during the day, gawking at monuments and the impressive ornaments atop buildings, sitting in the shade on the steps of the Almudena Cathedral opposite the Royal Palace to watch the crowds move past, relaxing at sidewalk cafes, and browsing a couple of bookstores. We stopped first at Librería Desperate Literature, the primarily English-language bookstore where I saw Seattle poet Susan Rich read from her new poetry collection last May. The bookstore is being evicted from its current location so the building can be renovated into luxury tourist apartments. It’s raising money to transform its new space, a former fruteria, into its new home. If you’d like to help Desperate Literature, visit the website on how to donate. We also stopped in at Librería Machado in the Círculo de Bellas Artes. I bought the Spanish translation of Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through? The Spanish version is titled Cual es tu tormento, which I like very much.

Each evening, we enjoyed a different form of entertainment, the first night jazz at Café Central and the next night flamenco in the Malasaña neighborhood.

Patricia

The third night was a literary workshop in the Barrio de las Letras. Our participation in the workshop came about from a serendipitous encounter the previous afternoon. We were walking on Calle Cervantes, a street I’ve walked many times before, because I wanted Debra to see the place where Cervantes lived and died. We were nearly there when I spotted an open doorway to a space I’d never noticed before. The sign said La Botica de las Letras and on the wall outside there was a series of 8×10 sheets with white text on a black background about the benefits of reading and books. The last sheet said, if you’ve read all the posters, you need to come in now. So, we went in and were greeted by a vibrant, lovely young woman named Patricia who told us that the space has no fixed schedule so whoever happens by when it’s open is lucky to learn about its existence and what it offers: a small bookshop and a space for readings and workshops. Aside from her association with La Botica, Patricia is a book and travel blogger. She told us about the upcoming workshop featuring Ana Belén Marín, a writer from Barcelona who would do a short reading and answer questions about her book Dale recuerdos and her writing process. The evening would be hosted by two other La Botica writers, another Patricia and Andrea, who would lead the workshop portion. Debra and I decided to sign up.

Andrea, Ana Belén, and Patricia

When we arrived the next evening as the only foreigners in the group, we were welcomed in the warm Spanish way and with a promise to speak slowly so we could understand them. But when the animated and energetically paced discussion of the book began, Debra and I were not about to inadvertently curb that enthusiasm by asking them to repeat or slow down. We hung in there.

For the workshop part, we were each given a page torn from an old copy of El Principito rescued from the trash. We were to read the page until a word or sentence struck us with inspiration to write a piece of advice to our younger selves. Okay, so I found my aha sentence but then totally forgot the assignment and instead just wrote what came into my head which was kind of a poem, though I can’t tell since I wrote it in Spanish and I’m not sure I can even write a poem in English.

Then we all put our names in a basket and a name was drawn. The winner received a copy of the famous Rubio workbooks for schoolchildren in Spain. This one was for four-year-olds and was on writing—the alphabet, that is. It’s all about slow, deliberate repetition of the shapes, an exercise that requires patience and perseverance. Kind of like writing stories. Who won this emblematic little instruction book? I did!

Debra and I left that evening feeling jubilant that we had spent an evening with women who loved books and writing, that we had immersed ourselves in a Spanish activity, and that we had attempted to write something creative in Spanish.

We also went to one of my favorite museums, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemizsa, which currently has a show called “La memorial colonial en las colecciones Thyssen-Bornemizsa.” Here’s the description from the museum’s website:

This exhibition sets out to decipher the elements of colonial power within the iconography of certain works in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections. A selection of paintings will reveal “invisibilised” stories of racial domination, marronage, and the civil rights struggle, as well as the introduction of the modern mercantile system based on European military control, the use of enslaved African workers and the appropriation of firstly Latin American and later Asian and African land and raw materials. Visitors will be introduced to fictitious representations of new Arcadias and will witness the Western projection of its unsatisfied desires in the form of the “Orient” and the construction of the “other” as barbarian or primitive.

I love how this museum through its temporary exhibits is constantly examining power structures, social inequities, cultural appropriation, and overlooked artists.

Lastly, a couple of other September happenings:

My review of Sayantani Dasgupta’s new book of essays Brown Women Have it All: Essays on Dis(comfort) and Delight appeared in Cha in early September. I hope you read the review and the book!

I voted in the U.S. General Election. I’m grateful that Washington State makes it easy for citizens abroad to vote. And speaking of citizens, I am now a Mexican citizen. My grandmother’s birth in Mexico qualifies me for doble nacionalidad. Thanks to my daughter who handled the process, I’m now an American and Mexican citizen—who’s living in Spain.