Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its

Silent Past by Giles Tremlett

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Original Title: Ghosts of Spain

ISBN: 0802715745
ISBN13: 9780802715746
Autor: Giles Tremlett
Rating: 4.6 of 5 stars (489) counts
Original Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Download Format: PDF, RTF, ePub, CHM, MP3.
Published: February 6th 2007 / by Walker & Company / (first published January 1st 2006)
Language: English
Genre(s):
History- 117 users
Nonfiction- 92 users
Cultural >Spain- 88 users
Travel- 54 users
Politics- 12 users
European Literature >Spanish Literature- 9 users

Description:

The appearance, more than sixty years after the Spanish Civil War ended, of mass graves
containing victims of Francisco Franco’s death squads finally broke what Spaniards call “the pact
of forgetting”—the unwritten understanding that their recent, painful past was best left unexplored.
At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around the country and through its
history to discover why some of Europe’s most voluble people have kept silent so long.

Ghosts of Spain is the fascinating result of that journey. In elegant and passionate prose, Tremlett
unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such emotional
questions as who caused the Civil War, why Basque terrorists kill, why Catalans hate Madrid, and
whether the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people in 2004 dreamed of a return to Spain’s
Moorish past, Tremlett finds the ghosts of the past everywhere. At the same time, he offers
trenchant observations on more quotidian aspects of Spanish life today: the reasons, for example,
Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor’s white coat, and how women have
embraced feminism without men noticing.

Drawing on the author’s twenty years of experience living in Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a revelatory
book about one of Europe’s most exciting countries.

About Author:

Giles Tremlettis the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent. He has lived in, and written about, Spain
for the past twenty years.
Other Editions:

- Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country\'s Hidden Past (Paperback)

- Ghosts of Spain (Kindle Edition)

- Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past (Paperback)
- Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past (Paperback)

- Ghosts of Spain (Paperback)

Books By Author:

- Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII

 - Isabella of Castile: Europe's First Great Queen

- In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past

- Los prisioneros de Chalon

Books In The Series:

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- Barcelona

- Roads to Santiago

- The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

- South from Granada: A Sojourn in Southern Spain

 - The Tomb in Seville: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War

- Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago

- The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction

- The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century

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- The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation

- Spain: A History

- Andalus: Unlocking The Secrets Of Moorish Spain

- The Spanish Civil War

 - Homage to Barcelona

- History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the
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- Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece That

Changed the World

- Spain: The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish
People
 - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Rewiews:

Jun 15, 2016

Roy Lotz
Rated it: really liked it
Shelves: eurotrip, biography-memoir-travel
It is still a mystery to me how so many Spaniards can function on so little sleep.
Late one night in Madrid, as my friend and I finished eating our dinner on Spanish time—which
means we get home around midnight—we were walking back to our apartment when it suddenly
began to rain. First, it sprinkled; then, it drizzled; and soon it was pouring. Without an umbrella
(here amusingly named paraguas, "for water") we were forced to take cover in a bar.
As we stood there, looking out at the rain washin

It is still a mystery to me how so many Spaniards can function on so little sleep.

Late one night in Madrid, as my friend and I finished eating our dinner on Spanish time—which
means we get home around midnight—we were walking back to our apartment when it suddenly
began to rain. First, it sprinkled; then, it drizzled; and soon it was pouring. Without an umbrella
(here amusingly named paraguas, "for water") we were forced to take cover in a bar.
As we stood there, looking out at the rain washing down the tiled streets, I heard somebody
behind me say, in accented English, “It’s finally raining in Madrid.” I turned around and saw that it
was the Spanish waitress, looking pensively out at the rain. Beside her was a bald patron, with the
same thoughtful look on his face. “Oh, Madri’,” he said, in a thick Scottish accent. “It’s a beau’i’ful
ci’y. Jus' beau’i’ful.”
To me, this moment summarized my reaction to this city so far. It’s lovely here in Madrid. I had
never planned on moving to Spain; I wasn’t even particularly interested in visiting Spain on
vacation. It was a mixture of chance and opportunity that prompted me to pick up and fly over
here; and consequently, I had no idea what to expect. The most pleasant surprise, for me, is how
easy it has been for a New Yorker to feel at home here. Madrid has many of the positive qualities
one finds in New York City: bustle, inclusiveness, diversity, variety, nightlife. Added to this, Madrid
is safer, cleaner, cheaper, and, most conspicuously, much more relaxed.
The besuited man (or woman) walking quickly down the street holding a disposable cup of coffee
is an omnipresent figure on the streets of NYC. Meals are quick there; people swallow their food
and keep moving, often simply eating on the go. The $1 pizza, which you can get by throwing a
dollar at the cashier, who then throws you the slice in return so you can eat it without breaking
your stride, is perhaps the quintessential New York meal. You can do anything in NYC—anything
except slow down.
In this respect, Madrid is quite the opposite. Rarely do you see people running for the trains, for
the busses, elbowing their way through crowds. Virtually nobody eats while walking; and
disposable coffee cups are a rarity, as coffee is normally drunk sitting down. When Madrileños eat,
they like to take their time. They sit and chat, for perhaps hours, sipping their drinks and
occasionally snacking on tapas and raciones. Here, the waiters don’t bother you; they serve you
your food and disappear. Often, I have to chase them inside in order to get the check; but this is
probably because I am an impatient American.
As a consequence of this generally relaxed attitude, I’ve found adapting to life here to be
extremely pleasant (despite my ignorance of the language, which is a constant impediment). And
I’m glad that, to help me through my own transición, I have Giles Tremlett as a guide, a British
journalist who has been living in Madrid for decades.
This book is about the historical imagination in modern Spain. Through thirteen chapters, Tremlett
examines some of the political fault-lines that run through the country. He begins with an
examination of Franco’s regime and its aftermath. There is, apparently, no safe way to talk about
the past in Spain—not even something which, to me, should be as uncontroversial as Franco’s
fascism. But different political parties propose competing interpretations of the past, which of
course reflect their different interpretations of the present. Hard as it is to believe, but the horrible
bombings of commuter trains on March 11, 2004, were also the occasion of political squabbling,
as the right-wingers insisted that ETA (the Basque terrorist group) had something to do with it.
To tell the story of modern Spain, Tremlett takes the reader across the country: from Madrid, to
Bilbao, to Barcelona, to Galicia, and even to Spanish jails and slums. He examines flamenco,
Basque and Catalan separatism, Spanish art and cinema, political corruption, gender relations,
prostitution, tourism, and much more, as he attempts to pin down the quickly changing country.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his background, his method is journalistic. He focuses on the sorts
of things that would make the news; and his writing-style bears the hallmarks of his
profession—impersonal rather than personal, intended to convey information rather than emotion
or analysis.
Like every book, this one isn't perfect. Although Tremlett packs an impressive amount of
information into the book, his analyses are often superficial, or just nonexistent. He has the
journalistic habit of letting others do his thinking for him, merely reporting their opinions. Thus,
while informative, I didn’t find Tremlett to be a penetrating guide. What’s more, though I generally
found his writing quite strong, I sometimes felt that his style, which he obviously honed while
writing shorter pieces for newspapers and magazines, did not have enough forward impetus to
carry me through a whole chapter. In a longer format such as a book, more organization, more
interconnection, more integration is needed than Tremlett is accustomed to; and thus his chapters
sometimes seem scatterbrained, disconnected—too much like a list of facts and quotes.
(I’d also like to note, in passing, that Tremlett’s comma-use is the exact opposite of mine, which I
found continually irksome. He typically omits commas where I would include them, and includes
commas where I would omit them. For example, he writes “He or, normally, she is joined…”
whereas I would write “He, or normally she, is joined…” Admittedly, this is surpassingly trivial.)
These are fairly minor complaints, however. Really, all things considered, it is hard for this
anglosajón to imagine a better book to read as an introduction to this fantastic country. I still have
a great deal to learn—not least Castellano—but at least now I have had a grand tour of the place.
And perhaps one of these days, as I wander back from another late dinner, I’ll bump into Tremlett
himself, and gratefully shake his hand.
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