Our seaside summer continues. It gets hotter; and more crowded. The water gets a little less blue, and the sand gets a little trashier. We sidestep and pick our way down forever expanses of sandy beaches sardined full of other holiday makers who seem to have only picked this particular plot for its proximity to their parking spot and the adjacent strip of restaurants with pictures on their menus. We were sure we’d made a mistake, that Spain in the summer was too popular, and our secret stretch of Spanish beach only existed in long out of print Lonely Planet books. This turned our to be only partly true. For every ten tourist traps there hides a hidden gem down a side street owned by a free spirited proprietress who will only whisper to you magic of the Spain less discovered. Walk further past the beach parking lots, and trumpeting summer camp marching bands; past the rows of floating yacht mansions, away from the melee and one of many of the country’s greatest paellas waits at the edge of a private beach cove, just waiting for a lazy swim after a long lunch. Back in town we let the crowds of people wash us into a dirt floored stadium open on one side to the marina. We stand behind barely narrow enough bars as teenage boys wait to test their manhood taunt raging bulls. They charge at kids who sometimes scramble back through the bars with us, while others dive headlong into the water coaxing the bull to follow them in. One or two of them take a head-butt or horn to the backside. This isn’t a Spanish bullfight from the travel channel. This is something much more raw, by the locals for the locals. This is the Spain we’ve been searching for.
As we work our way further north we move towards smaller towns inland. We find small tapas towns and the birthplace of a great architect. There are civil war reenactments and outdoor concerts at vermouth museums. We drive away from the coast and into Spain’s most under discovered wine country. There we find ancient hilltop towns perched atop red rock cliffs. Its few residents, as old as the town, hang lavender and dried flowers from their short wooden doorways. The cobbled streets smell like orange blossoms and stringed instrument music drifts out of an upstairs window. The roads through hills there only out of necessity, in the least obtrusive way to the landscape. Us and the occasional motorcycle are its only travelers. Occasionally we pass a small cluster of stone buildings, a street sign announcing a town’s name and then just as quickly another letting us know we’ve left. We stop in one outcrop for a tour of a gold medal winery. It’s barrel bellied owner waits for us on a sloping lane and takes us not to a winery, but into his home and backyard-basement wine operation. He speaks no English, but no translation is needed, we get the message.
Back down towards the water we meander our way closer to Barcelona. First we stop in a small port city. True to theme, they’re celebrating their local annual festival. There’s a parade with tall dancing statues in traditional dress and more marching bands. We stop in Barcelona just long enough to right a wrong and visit the inside of it’s most famous church. The colored light filtered through the stained glass reflects off every white surface. We stare up at the ceiling, its own city in the sky, long enough to make our necks ache for weeks to come. We promise each other to come back in ten years when its finished.
We drive still north into rocky beach coves dotted with white painted towns. Streets the size of sidewalks snake along a seawall where candle lit tables are perched just above the splashing water. Past a deserted border crossing there’s a little known French town where wine vines drip down into the sea. In a valley between clifftop roads we stop in a nameless beach bar in a nameless town where men are carrying baguettes. And of course, it’s their annual festival; complete with parade, and drums. Here in the middle of nowhere, on a beach from the long lost Lonely Planet book.
We again cross the derelict French border and drive past miles of fields of blooming yellow sunflowers and through the Pyrenees. In dire need of clean clothes and looking like street kids we land in Spain’s swankiest north coast city and food capital. We stand at the top of the bay as waves from far away slam into the cliffs and burst thirty feet over our heads. At a small wood paneled bar we stand shoulder to shoulder with locals and well informed travelers all here for the steak that is supposed to change our lives. It’s worth the journey.
Our Spanish summer finishes in Madrid where its brutalizing heat bakes into us that feeling we’ve been searching for in Spain. It’s become a general rule of travel for us that the harder a place is to get to, the better it’s going to be. And this has held true. But a summer in Spain reminded us that amazing experiences don’t always require going the distance, they only require being ready to receive them; a traditional bull run set next to the crowded beach, the inside of the country’s most famous church shoulder to shoulder with every other tourist, countless town festivals when we were only looking for a quiet cove, and men always carrying baguettes for a reason we’ll never know but an image we will never forget either. We went in search of a guidebook fairy tale, and we left Spain with real interactions and experiences that were completely different from the guidebook version, but no less magical.
