Guadalajara 21.10.2012

El Palacio de El Infantado, Guadalajara

Contrary to the popular UK conception of Spain, it’s a country with the capacity to astonish. No, not just sand, sangria and ‘la cuenta, por favor!’ in these here parts. Instead, Spain is a country of cultural, historical and architectural marvels, the likes of which, while not quite putting Oxford or York to shame, easily equal them and perhaps best them. To name just a few such places I’ve had the luck to visit in my nine months here: Avila, Barcelona, Cordoba, Merida, Sevilla, Salamanca, Segovia, Toledo. If you’re the kind of person that enjoys jetting off to foreign climes of a weekend, I couldn’t recommend these places enough. (I guess it’s sort of ironic that I wouldn’t include Madrid on this list, given that it’s both the capital of Spain and the city in which I live. This isn’t to say Madrid isn’t a fine city, but that it lacks the ‘Wow!’ factor you’re perhaps expecting of a weekend trip. As Ms. Herreros once told me, Madrid is a better city to live in than to visit, and I quite agree.)

So, yes, Spain = far richer than the British stereotype of the place. (I guess it should be obvious that Spain would have more depth than our one-dimensional conception, except that so few people make the effort to find that out, you kind of have to say it explicitly. I for one had no idea what to expect when I came here, nor the least idea of the treasures I would find, I was so ignorant.) But anyway, this isn’t meant to be a post about how good Spain is compared to the stereotype (that’s a topic for another time) but an account of my trip to Guadalajara last weekend.

I’ve mentioned these Spanish cities, these treasures, freely available to those who simply take the time to find out they exist. I’ve said that they would astonish most anyone. Well, Guadalajara isn’t like that. Guadalajara is probably closer in scale to Reading or Nottingham, say, than Oxford or York. That sounds quite bad. But the fact is that it’s a smallish industrial city, the length of which you can cross in twenty minutes. You arrive in Guadalajara, and you’re not confronted by hundred-foot tall cathedrals dating back to the thirteenth century, with murals designed by sainted artisans. No, you arrive, and you’re not even in the city centre. Instead, the train station is a fifteen minute bus ride out, and the first things you see are the typical bar (I’m yet to find a street in Spain that doesn’t have one!) and a small, dilapidated church. You might find yourself thinking ‘Oh god, why did I make the effort to get up at 06.30 on a Sunday morning to make a two hour journey to this place!’ as I sadly did.

La Plaza Mayor, Guadalajara

Fortunately however, there’s a good deal more to Guadalajara than meets the eye. If its treasures aren’t hundred-foot tall cathedrals, standing out like basketball players at a midget convention and booming ‘Yes, I am here! Be awed by my thirteenth-century presence, the likes of which your present-day architects could scarce conceive!’ then you have to do some digging to find this city’s gems. It’s something, for instance, to spend forty-five minutes getting lost among Guadalajara’s many side streets, to eventually discover the Pantheon, the second largest church of its kind in the world. You’ll be the only tourist there, and receive a personal guided tour of the place. That’s something you couldn’t get in Salamanca or Sevilla.

So what’s it like walking through Guadalajara? Well, it’s akin to the UK in one respect in that, while in most Spanish cities the centre of attention is the plaza mayor (the main square), in Guadalajara it’s the calle mayor (the high street.) It runs like an artery through the old part of the city, and most everything you would wish to see can be found to the left or right of it, usually after a shortish walk through the aforementioned side-streets. Exploring Guadalajara with the high street as your conduit rather gives you the impression you’re checking off bits as you go, with very little reason to turn back. This is different to other Spanish cities where, because they spread out concentrically from the main square, you feel you can walk in any direction you like, and you’re bound to come across something. No, exploring Guadaljara is a much more linear experience. On the one hand, this might make you feel as if you’re checking items off a shopping list as you progress. It can feel cheap. On the other hand, you can at least feel certain you’ve seen the best parts of the city, rather than getting back home later that day, looking up the place on Google, and realising you missed an especially nice church, because you were lost in an alleyway. Hence the city’s design works both ways.

One of the things I liked most about Guadalajara is that, though it might not be as outright impressive as Segovia or Toledo, and the vast majority of its buildings were everyday, this makes you feel as though the treasures you do find are all the more valuable. It’s quite nice to trudge through example after example of slightly dilapidated  housing, to come across a beautiful old church cramped between it all, with its small courtyard giving you room to breathe. This was especially the case with el Palacio de la Cotilla, which, though for all intents and purposes just a girls’ school now, includes one room papered wall to wall in exquisite illustrations of Feudal Japanese life. What’s it doing there in Guadalajara? I’m sure the guide mentioned it, but she must have spoken too fast for me to pick up. Anyway, it’s something totally unexpected, totally out of place, and absolutely fantastic to come across. That’s the kind of city Guadalajara is.

El Palacio de La Cotilla, Guadalajara

This was especially the case with the aforementioned Pantheon. I found this outside the city itself, I guess after half an hour walking through the suburbs and a large park, where it stands more or less apart from everything. It was this great white thing, with a domed roof and cross, that stood just like one of those thirteenth-century cathedrals I mentioned (though this was built in the nineteenth century.) Yet it wasn’t just the fact that it was beautiful that made it stand out. Perhaps because it was outside the city, or perhaps because it was in this park, but the building felt solitary. You know those old horror films, when a couple drives up to a cabin in the woods, and you’re shown the whole journey, just to illustrate how out of the way it really is? The Pantheon felt like that.

That impression extended into the building. It could have been because I was on the only one there, except the friendly tour guide, but all its stained glass windows, gold statue of Christ, and all the rest just made the Pantheon feel more alone. I’d go as far as to say the building felt hostile, it was so beautiful and apart at the same time. And the crypt! Good God, I’d never seen something so beautiful, that seemed to have had so few human eyes touch it. How can I put it? It felt like it had been designed to be loved, but then had just been put aside, and grown resentful. There were these statues of these angels, so beautifully rendered, yet they emitted this cold energy, as though hateful of whoever finally saw them, because so many more people should have been there. Well, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Pantheon is the most visited monument in Guadalajara, and I just happened to visit on a rainy October Sunday in the off-season. But that’s not the impression I got. Frankly, it left me quite shaken.

El Panteón de la Duquesa de Sevillano, Guadalajara

So Guadalajara. As you may have gathered, I wouldn’t place it among the top tier of cities to visit in Spain. In fact, in some respects, it’s a lot like Madrid, in that it’s quite an ordinary looking city on the whole, with some very nice bits tucked away. That’s good if you live there or, if like me, you feel you have time to get to know Spain a bit more deeply. But if you’re flying from the UK for a weekend trip, you’d doubtless be better off with one of the more venerable cities out here. However for all that, it was a great pleasure to mill around Guadalajara, and find (what felt like) these secret treasures. I had a really, really good time.