The Visigoth

the visigoth

What is: Andorra Land Art

What is: Andorra Land Art

In the 1960s an art movement was born which rejected the locating of art in the traditional habitat of the gallery or museum. Artists such as the American sculptor Robert Smithson reacted to an encroaching commercialization of art typified in the Pop Art movement, by taking their work into the great outdoors, where they would use natural, sustainable materials to create sculptures embedded in the natural landscape. Central to this 'Land Art' or 'Earthworks' movement was the n

Sexy Iberian Village of the Week: Montefrio

Sexy Iberian Village of the Week: Montefrio

Packed in between a river lined with ruined windmills and olive groves on one side and the prehistoric burial chambers of the gloriously named Peña de los Gitanos on the other, Montefrio is one of those Andalusian pueblillos you'd like to think is some secret gem only stumbled upon by you, Washington Irving and Laurie Lee's violin. It's a fiendishly odd-looking place at first glance. Above a choppy sea of whitewashed houses, its emblematic fortress-church is so precariously p

Shit Barcelona: A Guided Tour

Shit Barcelona: A Guided Tour

From crap fashion to cheesy tourism, annoying stag nights and theft-related ethical dilemmas, here are just a few of the things that can burst the bubble of clemency in Barcelona... 1 'Woyoy!' The mating call of the inebriated stag-nighter. It's a primeval noise that can instantaneouly deflate even the most benign mood. But there's something particularly escalofriante about it reverberating through the handsome backstreets of the Casc Antic in full daylight. There's a much m

Spain's Frontier Towns

Five Montañas Close to Barcelona

Five Montañas Close to Barcelona

Barcelona province is blessed with stunning mountain scenery. From the Serrated Mountain to the Eagle's Pass and Bertí's Crags, here's five mountains within half an hour's journey from BCN. We begin with the Sant Llorenç range and one mountain that really does mola... La Mola The chief pico in the Sant Llorenc del Munt I Obac mountain range, La Mola is one of the three main mountains (the others being Montserrat and Montseny) visible from the top of Tibidabo. The mountain is

When a Paella isn't a Paella

When a Paella isn't a Paella

El patrimonio de la paella. The concept of paella goes back to the medieval Moorish tradition of cooking rice and cod casseroles during Lent (when meat was off the menu). But the modern version of paella - derived from the Catalan for 'cooking pan' - was born in the Valencian region of Albufera in the mid-19th century. Today, with the indiscriminate cross-pollination of food cultures taking place across the world's kitchens, traditionalists are digging trenches around their m

Death to Saloufest

Death to Saloufest

Critic Peter S. Beagle, writing about Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, commented on the 'erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty.' For decades Spain has been sold as such a place, a place of 'perfect liberty', by budget tour companies. In particular, for the last sixteen years British students have converged in the handsome Costa Dorada locality of Salou, intent on turning it into a scene fro

La Mercè 2016

La Mercè 2016

'The most daring, accessible, surprising, decentralized, participative and innovative one ever' according to its organizers, Barcelona's biggest annual cultural festival starts this weekend. Here's a - mercèfully brief - guide to the 21 venues, 300-odd acts and special themes of this year's event. Un signo de fraternidad: Following the terrorist attacks on Paris last year, Barcelona's mayoress Ada Colau contacted her Parisian counterpart Anne Hidalgo to suggest a cultural col

Moving to...El Born

Moving to...El Born

El Born: At the gateway of the Cuitadella Park, just a Via Laietana away from the Gothic Distric and fifteen minutes' walk from the beaches of Barceloneta, few districts in Barcelona are so well placed. But you'll have to earn your little piece of Born. It's expensive, space is at a premium and every fashionable thirty-something with a couple tattoos and a little dog wants to live there. Historical charm, an infinite array of dining and drinking spots and a relative lack of c

El Toro de La Vega: A Festival of Life and Death

El Toro de La Vega: A Festival of Life and Death

His name is Pelado - ''baldie.'He's a strapping, handsome bull weighing 675 kilos, and he was born and raised on a farm near Jerez de la Frontera. He has had the honour - and misfortune - to be chosen as el Toro de La Vega, the 'Bull of the Meadow'. Every year on September 13, the town of Tordesillas - 28 km southwest of Valladolid, population 9000 - holds its annual event, one of the most controversial, and divisive in Spain. This event is described by its local Ayuntamiento

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