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This is the Spain represented above all by Philip II’s uncompromisingly severe Palace Monastery of El Escorial, a monument which earlier British travellers (mainly Protestant, and anxious to denigrate Catholicism in the interests of extolling the country’s Islamic past) habitually characterised in terms of morbid religious fanaticism and intolerance. Howse, an orthodox Catholic, takes a refreshingly different view to that of his romantic predecessors, on whom he otherwise largely models himself. To him the Escorial is Spain’s most beautiful building.
His observations on Spain are based on ramblings made over a period of ‘20 or 30 years’, and focused principally on rural Castile. This is a region containing some of the most depopulated areas of Europe, with vast tracts surviving today mainly through wind farms, retirement homes and immigrant workers. Howse, though quoting impressive demographic statistics, barely conveys the reality of this world, being far more interested in the Castilian past. His comments on modern Spain seem at times to have drifted in from another era, as when he mentions, say, that ‘Spanish women can be smelly too, because their dresses are less easily laundered’.
He is a determinedly old-fashioned traveller who dislikes ‘loafers’ and ‘shapeless leisure-wear’, can remember Johnny Duncan and the Blue Grass Boys, and admirably rejects touring by car in favour of buses and trains. At the heart of the book is regret at seeing Spain losing its traditional values and idiosyncrasies. This has been the perennial moan of visitors and Hispanophiles from at least the time of Laurie Lee. Yet it is hard not to agree with Howse when he talks about ever more restrictive bureaucratic regulations, the drastic restoration of monuments such as the medieval walls at Ávila, and the uncertain future of Spain’s pleasantly chaotic local museums.
In many ways Howse’s book is comparable to some of the barely visited ecclesiastical treasuries he so eloquently praises: ramshackle, slightly fusty and with corners both obscure and splendid. His long, dense paragraphs are discursive sometimes to the point almost of stream-of-consciousness, but his digressions are always fascinating to follow, whether these be ponderings on etymology, discussions about Spanish window grilles, or thoughts on subjects ranging from Middlemarch to the ubiquitous serving of flan in Spanish restaurants. His curiosity is astonishing, as is his range of recondite information. One moment he is happily talking about the ophthalmic problems once suffered by 30 per cent of Seville’s population, and the next telling you all about the Visigothic saint after whom a budgerigar is named.
Aided by a good ear, an eye for the absurd, an obviously refined sense of smell, and a pair of binoculars given to him by Bruce Bernard (‘the expert on paintings and photographs’), Howse appears to register everything about his immediate surroundings, from the musings of a batty old woman, down to the grafitti in a toilet, and to a place comically named the centro de inseminación porcina. His evident deep knowledge about ornithology and botany lends precision to his lyrical descriptions of nature, and few other writers have evoked so well as he has the atmosphere of a traditional Spanish bar.
A Pilgrim in Spain is a book whose myriad eccentricities mirror those of the Spain it celebrates. But its greatest strength is to turn the attention of the potential tourist away from the country’s more ephemeral aspects and towards the churches and cathedrals that still loom so massively over the emptying landscapes. There are, as Howse rightly states, countless pseudo-spiritual and self-indulgent books about the experience of the Santiago pilgrimage; and there are growing numbers of tourists searching in Spain for Templar mysteries and other such questionable esoterica. What Howse does is far more worthwhile: he encourages an informed response towards one of Europe’s greatest and most neglected ecclesiastical legacies.
Because you read about book review
Also by Michael Jacobs
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