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| SEVILLE, Spain -- Flamenco music, particularly the songs that accompany the dances (usually sung by men) reminds me of African-American blues: Both lament powerfully the sorrows, the pains, the disappointment of life. The dances are something like what the Irish step dances might become if the Irish could reach a state of abandon -- which, of course, we will never do. The beating of the feet and the castanets suggest a vitality that can never be snuffed out. | ||||
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The bull fight (from which
I held myself excused) is also a ritual of irony and death, subjects about
which the Spanish obsess. There's been a lot of violent death in Spain since
some of the first Iberians (whoever they were) decided to walk north in the
new land yielded by the last retreating ice and cross dry land to the places
that would become the British Isles. Those who remained merged in history if
not in fact with Celts and became the Celto-Iberians. They were followed by
the Romans, who founded Toledo and produced two famous (or notorious)
emperors: Trajan and Hadrian. Then came the Carthaginians, who used Spain as a base for their land attacks on Rome. The Romans returned, only to be assaulted first by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe who gave their name to ruffians and destroyers, and then by the blond West Goths. The Vandals remain in history in the name of the southern part of Spain (according to one account): Vandalusia. |
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. The Goths had come west as Aryan heretics, but eventually became Catholics. They established a feudal kingdom that divided itself into warring principalities (56, by actual count) and was a pushover for Tariq bin Ziyad, who led his Muslim army across the Straits to support one side in a local Christian conflict. Tariq and his successors found the Visigoths a soft touch because there was no centralized authority. Eventually, once the central power of the Caliphate in Cardoba weakened, the Muslims had little more unity than the Christians, and indeed Muslim princes began to fight one another as well as the Christians. Spain in those years was like central Europe (or Ireland). Independent nobles with small armies battled one another and ignored the king or the caliph, if there happened to be one. Finally, through alliances and marriage, Castile emerged as the dominant Catholic power and retook the formerly Catholic cities: Toledo, Valentia, Cordova and Sevillia. The early battles of the Reconquest were probably fought by small forces, as were the battles among the potentates in central Europe. The influence of Islam on Spanish culture -- art, music, architecture, poetry, language -- continues today, as do the conflicts. There were a million deaths in the 1930s Civil War. The rivers and the mountains cut the country into little pieces. The kings never controlled the whole country. Even today, Catalonia (Barcelona), the Basque Country and Galicia insist on their own language and culture and some form of self-government. The Basques want independence and are willing to fight for it. The most powerful axis of division is between clericals and anti-clericals, as it has been since the time of Isabella the Catholic and the Inquisition. Spain is not a nation so much as it is a country balancing demands of several nations. The Spanish state makes no claim to be Spain. As I watch the full moon glow over the Guadalquiver River and think of all of those who died fighting in this blood-soaked land, I pray for the dead and that there be no more killing -- perhaps someday not even of bulls..
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