I have read

Eduardo Mendoza, La aventura del tocador de señoras (2001)
Antonio Muñoz Molina, El invierno en Lisboa (1987)
Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (1980)
Ramón J. Sender, El rey y la reina (1969)

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I have written

'Calentando los huesos en las tumbas'. El cuerpo post-orgiástico y el ocaso del mundo mediterráneo en Makbara de Juan Goytisolo

reading Spanish literature

I'm not sure if I can call myself a great reader of Spanish literature. Although I studied it, of course, I had to pass exams in Spanish literature, starting from El Libro del Buen Amor, Celestina, Don Quijote, etc., and then Unamuno, and similar. I read quite a lot of those things in my time, but somehow it evaporated from my brain almost completely. The only author to whom I consecrated greater attention in the adult age was Juan Goytisolo, and precisely with his revolt against the Castilian rottenness, just like in La Reivindicación del conde Don Julián.

from Goya to Zurbaran, and the Republic

I'm reading a book that has been with me for the last 30 years or so. An old Polish translation of Ramón J. Sender's El rey y la reina (1969). It is a story of a gardener who stays at the palace as a sort of commissaire for the Republic, hiding his former aristocratic female employer. There is a story of being a man and being a woman. Before the revolution, the lady did not see a man in the gardener, to such a point that she could shamelessly parade naked in front of him. As if he was just a piece of furniture. As the "Reds" take up the power, the situation changes. Although it is by no means automatic that the gardener gets his virility acknowledged.
What I find particularly interesting in this book is the role played by various colours and works of art. The aristocrate hides in the old tower of her own palace, slowly migrating from the upper storey lower and lower. The downward progression is acompanied by the protagonism of different works of art. As long as she is up, there is the yellow hue of the roses the gardener brings her. The disturbing painting with a skeleton at a ball may be removed. For the rest, there is a maritime painting and a gobelin designed by Goya, where the yellow of the roses gains space and the luminous volume. As she goes one storey down, she has to put up with a Zurbaran, where a crane stands out just as luminious against a gloomy background, but no longer brings the same atmosphere of insouciance. Death and blood comes closer and closer. The death of the gardener's wife, Balbina, and the death of the Republican soldiers stationed at the bombarded palace. Yet as well, it is denouncing and killing face to face; they are all implied in it, everyone is the villain. 

my travels in Spain

Honestly speaking, I am unable to tell how many times I travelled to Spain. It was an overexploited destination in my youth, on the way to Portugal, even if there are still many cities and regions where I have never been, such as Galicia. Overall, rather early in my life, I was in Madrid, and visited Prado. I know the south and the south east quite well, all the coast of Catalonia, as well as Andalusia. I saw the little beauties like Girona or Morella. I regret never to have been to Salamanca. But I have been relatively deep in Castilla.
Many of those travels happened before I got a digital cam; but also in some cases I lost all my photographic documentation due to neglect, not giving such a great importance to it as I do now. What remains is to exert my literary powers, try to remember and count the experience of Spain. Which is not such an easy task, precisely because I have been there so many times and it became so normal, so neutral for me.