Spain

“I have long believed that any man interested in either mystic or romantic aspects of life must sooner or later define his attitude concerning Spain.” James Michener. Iberia.

Among all the countries of the world, Spain stands apart for me. The thoughts it stirs go beyond travel: it’s where relationships began, where I wrestled with questions of politics and good government, and where I found adventures worth keeping close. It was the place that sparked conversations with a young woman that eventually led to marriage. It was also where I first left the streets of America behind on my own; a country of history and contradictions, of daydreams and lived memories.

What can I say about Spain in a few paragraphs?

It’s a good steak seared on a hot stone and a glass of Rioja at a crowded plaza in Ayamonte, where kids turned the square into a dozen soccer fields and parents lingered at the edges of the night. Even after dinner ended and the streetlamps came on, the games carried on — laughter, arguments, and glances toward the groups of young women watching from the sidelines. We wandered the lit-up streets looking for a nightcap, and found the town itself was enough: the laughter, the chatter in the cafés, the quiet alleyways. That, too, is Spain.

Maybe I’m drawn to Spain because of the mark it left on my own home in the American West. The whitewashed missions of Arizona and New Mexico are but faint echoes of the empire that built them: the cathedrals of Toledo, Seville, Madrid. The same cathedrals where, centuries earlier, Coronado and Cortés knelt before setting out across the ocean. Today tourists shuffle through, distracted and hurried, but the stones are still there, holding the weight of that history.

When I think of Spain, so many places come to mind: San Sebastián, once a fishing village of the Pyrenees, turned seaside retreat for kings and queens. Barcelona, with its Gothic alleys and hilltop fortresses still flying the Catalan flag. The countryside rushing past a train window: rolling hills, endless olive groves, the windmills of La Mancha.

For thousands of years, Spain has been Europe’s frontier — once the western edge of the Roman Empire, later the line where Christendom met the Moorish emirate of Granada. Today, it’s a country that still unsettles outsiders a little: too bold, too alive, too unwilling to be tamed. That tension is part of its draw. As Michener put it, Spain is a place where crossing its borders means risking being captured. I was, and happily remain, Spain’s captive.