ARCHITECTURAL TALES
An architect can “read” a city and tell you a story drawn from the assemblage of buildings and streets.
Walking through an urban setting with my late friend José Pérez de Lama Halcón, he would tease out class conflict, cultural conclusions, folkloric formulations, and lifestyles through an assessment of the ways in which the man-made landscape was laid out.
“The city tells its own story,” José would say.
In 1995, we went on an adventure to a mountain range south of Seville, the Sierra de Aracena, which rises from the mantle of provincial Huelva, near the border with Portugal and slopes down to the Atlantic Ocean.
A professor at the University of Seville, José was adept at securing academic stipends, scholarships, and grants. The assignment was an architectural survey of regional plazas de toros - bullrings - for the academic review of Andalusian culture, “Demófilo,” which was putting out an edition on bullfighting.
Now, beyond the boundaries of Andalusia, the “barbarism and cruelty” of this ancient rite are what generate the most commentary. Suffice it to say, in a region where “Los Toros” are woven into the culture, such talk is rarely countenanced.
Los Toros are an inextricable element to life; an industry that employs agronomists who gauge the soil in which bulls feed, veterinarians and specialists in animal husbandry, ateliers that craft the costumes for the spectacle, cape makers, meat butchers, cowboys, concessionaires, those who work in the bullrings, the army of scribes who rhapsodize...
I could not help but be amused when my lover in Seville, Margarita, upbraided her friend for dating a “banderillero” - one of those guys who do a balletic placing of long darts into the bull’s neck. “Un torerito!” Marga mocked her with the diminutive. “A little bullfighter!”
It’s just a part of things and I learned to keep my mouth shut.
I was there writing “Vedette,” about a flamenco singer who falls in with anarchists as the Civil War breaks out. Spain is that rare place where anarchist revolution acquired deep penetration, occupied villages where free love was decreed and the bullfights outlawed.
To be “anti-taurino” is an article of faith for Spanish anarchists. But flamenco singers must necessarily have bullfighter lovers and so did Vedette, which provided a way of drafting an anti-bullfight text while still imbuing the book with colorful features of the “fiesta.”
So, I was down for the trip. That and the fact Huelva is known for the best ham in Spain - Jabugo - taken from the Iberian pig that roams free and feasts on acorns, bits of which you can see in the final product.
Most of the structures surveyed were in tiny, white-washed towns consisting of what Vedette called “sugar-cube houses” sprinkled over the the sierra's rises and valleys. José would note where a bullring was connected directly to the church, or where its “Puerta Grande” opened onto the main thoroughfare, whether it was placed in the center of town or on the outskirts …and tell stories.
One plaza was from the 1600s.
In “Castillo de Las Guardas,” the “burladeros” which the bullfighters hide behind were emblazoned with large white circles (see image). I noted that these were lunar in aspect. When the article came out, it pleased me that Jose had not only appropriated the characterization (“burladero de luna”), but also credited “el poeta Esteban Siciliano” with the idea (see text image).
It’s why he brought me along on such sojourns, despite the fact I never had money. To his technical assessments I added the metaphors and allegories. He was Narcissus and I was Goldmund, although in Herman Hesse’s book, the latter dies first.
I’ve posted the one I did for Castillo de Las Guardas.
I miss my friend, who died less than a year ago. I think about how much of what we did together was directed toward self-improvement for a future that came, and for him, went too quickly. And what’s it all about anyway?
These days, when I read “Vedette,” there is an urge to change things. I write more precisely now, with less sensuality, but admire - too much - that younger man who risked so much for literature; and it is only the wisdom gained on the path leading away from him that keeps me from attempting a futile return.
