Postcard from Great BIg Shouty Spaces

Altarpiece, Cathedral, Burgos

I was having lunch at Burgos with a lovely couple from Manchester, England.  Lee and I had met them on the funicular at San Sebastian and a few days later I ran into them again in the Museum of Human Evolution at Burgos -- as you do. They are both retired architects and we were discussing some of the buildings we had been seeing in Spain -- the Museum of Human Evolution of course, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and the Balenciaga museum in Getaria. All these buildings are new, grand, spacious, vast, shiny, and completely out of human scale. And Steve called them "great big shouty spaces".

And so they are. There is no doubt that when Spain builds new buildings, it doesn't do it by halves. Not to mention its cathedrals, the one at Burgos being a prime example of how you can raise decoration from tasteful, to overblown, to something almost beyond description. 

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

But back to the great big shouty spaces. The Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art at Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, is truly magnificent, made of stone, glass and titanium, covering a vast space, with shiny exterior surfaces reflecting the light, marvelous curves and angles, approached from the parking station through parkland and a vast concourse with a Jeff Koons flower-covered Puppy, ensure you are suitably awed and impressed before you even enter the building. Ditto for the central gallery inside, with a vast light-filled atrium, giving onto galleries and a terrace on the river with three very impressive and fun sculptures, and overlooked by balconies at higher levels linked to more galleries, and all around curves that don't happen in either nature or normal architecture. We did enjoy it, and spent a fair amount of time on the terrace (including taking a family photo for someone who was only getting the wife and kids in and was terribly grateful we got him into his picture -- and he then did the same for us). 

Me, Lee and  Jeff Koons' Tulips,
Bilbao Guggenheim

It was just a Matter of Time for Lee

Loved the three fat ladies dancing and the tulips by Koons of Puppy fame.And the Richard Sierra installation The Matter of Time, a series of large steel shapes on their end: curves, labyrinths, spirals you walk into, through, around. But frankly, we could only take so much. It was too big, too grand, too overwhelming the senses, and our brains were quickly full. Maybe we'll go there some other time to explore some more, but at the moment, like after a very rich piece of chocolate cake, I don't want any more!

The Cristobal Balenciaga Museum at Getaria, only 30 minutes' drive from San Sebastian along an absolutely magnificent coast (and part of the Camino Norte), is similarly impressive and similarly overwhelming. Again a superb, shiny, curvy, very modern building, this time as an "annex" to an old mansion, the Palacio Aldamar. Again vast spaces, both inside and outside, and unlike the Guggenheim, hardly any visitors when we were there. The museum is also amazing, and people who don't particularly care about fashion still find it fascinating and beautifully done, with good explanations and illustrations showing why Balenciaga was such a force in fashion and so far ahead of his time. This is I think another hallmark of these big shouty spaces -- organisation, arrangements, displays, everything is done precisely, beautifully, often with infomration at least in English as well as Spanish, and sometimes French as well. (In Galicia in Galician, too -- like Spanish but different.)  Entry fees are reasonable, with special prices (or sometimes free) for retirees: "jubilados" -- don't you love the word? This museum hadn't really got the hang of the gift shop concept yet, and most of what it had was overpriced and not very interesting -- a travel sewing kit tied with ribbon and costing some 5 Euros, lousy pens (by comparison to what we have found elsewhere), etc. I easily resisted the impulse to load myself up with souvenirs.

Entry, Museum of Human Evolution, Burgos

And finally, to cap off this threesome of great big shouty spaces, is the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos. Burgos is a surprisingly uninteresting, unwelcoming town in many ways, but then it has this building!. Connected to a concert hall/conference centre, this one has the right angles and flat surfaces more common in modern architecture, but still vast and shiny (is there that much glass and titanium in the world?). Again large spaces and lots of clean, white surfaces, straight lines in stark contrast to the Guggenheim, and again an excellent presentation, well-signposted to follow the information that they had carefully curated for best effect. Burgos, it seems, is very close to a series of caves (Atapuerca) where remains of humans and animals from 800,000 years ago have been found. The first part of the museum provides almost but not quite too much information on how the caves were formed, how the remains would have got there, why they were so well preserved, and the history and organisation of the digs, which are still going on (the site is pretty much on the Camino trail in case you want to visit it, which is possible). 

Model of the human brain - not to scale

Then we segue into Darwin and the theory of evolution, along with a mock-up of the Beagle, information on recent variations to the theory and of course how we got from apes to humans, with lots on brain size, opposable thumbs, feet and legs for walking upright rather than climbing, jaws and teeth for eating different kinds of food, etc . Finally, on the almost top floor (floors reached by long escalators), a walk-in model of a brain, to demonstrate the neural network more than the different parts. A shop, where you could buy all sorts of books in Spanish, but I resisted.  Free on Wednesday afternoons and always for jubilados, and reduced price for pilgrims, children, groups.

A surprisingly empty street in Burgos

I spent three days in Burgos, which was surprising in its mostly uninteresting, unwelcoming architecture and  broad, often empty, streets and spaces. I only really started to enjoy it on the third day when I took the little tourist train (so shoot me, I'm a tourist) and met a couple of lovely women from Colombia who are living in Barcelona and trying to get work and stay in Spain. Their English was not as good as my Spanish, and that's saying something, so our conversation was pretty stilted but we got along well and exchanged email addresses. I tried to find out how they could stay in Spain. I think they have Spanish parents or grandparents and are eligible eventually for Spanish citizenship, but I'm not sure. Apparently there is even less work in Colombia than in Spain (where overall unemployment is 25% and over 50% for young people) and the pay is very poor when you can get work. 

And another surprisingly empty street
in Burgos

Then I screwed my courage to the sticking point, as Lady MacBeth would say, and drove from Burgos to Santiago de Compostela (hereafter referred to as Santiago, and not to be confused with the one in Chile), a trip of some 450 km (not counting when Samantha, my Google navigator, led me astray and sent me north for about 20 km). Not really too hard a trip -- autopista almost all the way, very good roads, not much traffic, and the only inconvenience the tolls (and about $60 in diesel fuel).  It wasn't Samantha's fault, but when I got to Santiago I had trouble finding the Europcar agency at the train station, and when I did, of course it was closed, what with it being Saturday afternoon. They could make big in-roads into the unemployment in Spain just by keeping businesses open a bit longer, I reckon. Although I'm sure a Spanish economist could find the flaw in my reasoning.  

My soon-to-be new friends from Coloumbia

PS: About a month after the drive to Santiago I got an email from Europcar telling me I had picked up a 40 Euro fine on the highway. Don't bother to challenge  -- we,ll just debit your credit card. Oh well.