Real Spain

In his book Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938, the author George Orwell wrote "I defy anyone to be thrown as I was among the Spanish working class..........and not be struck by their essential decency; above all, their straightforwardness and generosity .........it says a lot for the Spanish character that the English and the Spaniards always got on well together".

Eighty years on and the country isn't in the grips of a bloody and disastrous civil war and is long through the other side of the resulting 36-year Franco dictatorship. But the point remains that the Spanish are indeed a decent, straightforward and generous people and time spent in this country can be a real joy because of it. Ever wondered why you know next to nothing about the Spanish civil war which ended in 1939 immediately preceding - many would say precipitating - the second World War? Well, there is a reason for that and (my personal take is that) the Pact of Forgetting was only possible because of these inherent attributes. 

Okay, that's all a bit serious and this blog isn't. The Spanish are a wonderful nation with a rich history, much of which (the civil war aside) can be discovered, evidenced and witnessed without ever having to set foot inside a museum or get stuck into a weighty book. Indeed, much of the time you can do so with a (modest) beer for company. Pretty much everywhere you go in Spain you are confronted by its history, traditions, passions and its generosity towards the traveler. In this blog, I hope that I can provide a hint of the adventures available to the Brits who know, or at least suspect, that the country has a lot more to offer than Benidorm.