Category Archives: Linguistic tour of northern Spain

¡Andalucía!

Granada Airport (women’s bathroom)

Yesterday I came home from a two-week trip to Andalucía, Spain’s southernmost region, with my consuegra Sue. My previous blog post, written just before our trip, describes our itinerary and includes a map of our route. We went everywhere by train, bus, and foot.

Although this was my fifth trip to Spain, I hadn’t been to Andalucía since my first trip, back in 1980 (!!), when a friend and I visited Córdoba, Sevilla, and Granada after attending a summer-abroad college program in Madrid. I remember loving Córdoba and Granada and getting sick in Sevilla. It was definitely time for a return visit, and Sue was up for a second excursion after our successful tour of northern Spain two years ago.

Andalucía is an ideal destination because it combines natural beauty with layers of human history. There is a lot to see and do, and Sue and I had a wonderful time. In fact, the only downside of our trip was the hordes of other tourists who had had the same bright idea. Sue and I share a low-key approach to tourism, and quickly became allergic to the large groups of camera-wielding tourists who thronged the top attractions. We found the omnipresent selfie sticks to be particularly intrusive, and hope that the Spanish Ministry of Tourism will soon follow the lead of the many public and private sites that have banned the devices.

Here is a city-by-city summary of our trip, with some of my own pictures and lots of links. I hope to follow up this post with others inspired by linguistic observations during the trip.

First stop: Córdoba

Without knowing it, we had scheduled our visit to Córdoba to coincide with the city’s annual Fiesta de los Patios, in which residents enter their beautifully decorated interior patios in a city-wide competition. This timing proved more of a nuisance than a blessing, since it brought more crowds into the city, and we didn’t have the patience (or interest) to queue up in the long lines to view the patios entered in the contest. On the other hand, we were happy to take advantage of the free flamenco performances scheduled around the city during the Fiesta. I’ll never forget a midday performance where we were close enough to see the male dancer sweat, and the female dancer lose the flowers out of her hair as she tossed her head passionately. We learned that flamenco refers more to music than to dance; in fact, a nighttime performance we saw at the Plaza de la Corredera had only singing (with guitar accompaniment) and no dancing.

In Córdoba the main attraction is the grand Mezquita, or mosque, whose forest of red-and-white striped columns is now interrupted by a cathedral. The Mezquita was one of the highlights of my 1980 trip and it was exciting to see it again. It is a popular attraction, so crowd avoidance was a priority. We stayed at a modest hotel right across the street from the Mezquita and made sure to queue up for the 8:30 am opening.

Another major attraction, substantially less crowded, is the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos. This fortress/palace features beautiful gardens, but we were most interested in some objects displayed inside: a stunning (and huge) Roman sarcophagus — note that its carved doors are ajar — and a group of mosaics from a Roman McMansion that were only discovered in 1959, when the ground under the nearby Plaza de la Corredera was excavated in order to refurbish the market. What a gorgeous surprise!

I recommend also a stroll along the Guadalquivir river, where you will see outdoor bars, wheels from ancient mills, and feral Siamese cats.

Our favorite place to hang out, though, was the Kurtuba Gastro Bar, where one can relax and enjoy excellent salmorejo (a thick cold tomato soup, quite distinct from gazpacho) and perfect croquetas while admiring the resurrected columns of a Roman temple across the plaza.

Next stop: Sevilla

I was especially looking forward to Sevilla because I’d basically missed it the first time around due to illness. The city did not disappoint. Its two main attractions are the cathedral and the Real Alcázar. We bought tickets ahead of time for the Alcázar and spent hours exploring the gorgeous rooms and gardens. It was a perfect marriage of natural and man-made beauty, and likewise a felicitous combination of Arabic and later styles. The cathedral was impressive, especially Columbus’s tomb, and we enjoyed the hike up the Giralda tower, except for the crowds and selfie sticks.

From an academic perspective, my favorite destination in Sevilla was the Archivo de las Indias, located between the two other sites. This houses Spain’s official records of the colonial period. The ground floor has a permanent exhibition of some of the institution’s treasures, including the original Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, and the “Capitulación of Santa Fe”, the contract between Christopher Columbus and the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. It was amazing to see these precious documents up close.

We stayed at the lovely Hotel Simón, down the street from the Cathedral, and had our breakfasts and one lunch at La Canasta bakery/café just across the street from the Cathedral. This is a Spanish chain similar to Panera and thus somewhat immune to being touristy. I obviously disagree with the negative reviews you see in that link.

Backtracking to Carmona

Sue and I both wanted to spend a night at a parador — a government-run luxury hotel — and so backtracked slightly on the road to Córdoba to stay at the one in the small town of Carmona, which my Top 10 guide book described as “one of the most impressive of all paradors”. For centuries Carmona’s hilltop setting gave the town a strategic importance, and the parador is located on the top of that hill, cheek-by-jowl with the ruins of the town’s Alcázar. Besides swimming in the inn’s outdoor pool, and sipping sherry at sunset on the terrace while admiring the view, we had a hard-working touristic morning exploring the Roman necropolis, located a ten minutes’ walk from “downtown” Carmona. This was one of the most interesting Roman ruins either of us had ever seen, and was amply signed and interpreted, with a museum housing the relics found in the tombs, including a carved elephant (!).

Here is a picture of Sue emerging from a Roman tomb:

We happened to be at the necropolis when a group of schoolchildren were visiting. They were treated to an educational re-enactment of a gladiator fight, and so were we.

The parador wasn’t expensive (it was cheaper than our digs in Cádiz), and we both thought that if you had a rental car it would be a great jumping-off point for a longer stay, with day trips to Sevilla and Córdoba as well as hikes in the countryside. Not to mention swimming and sherry.

Next stop: Cádiz

From Carmona we took the bus back to Sevilla and then a train to Cádiz, an ancient city with a strategic peninsular location on the Atlantic. Here we rented an apartment and settled in for two nights. During the day we dipped our toes in the ocean at nearby Caleta Beach, saw a really cool camera obscura built into an old tower, and walked all over the city. It’s a small town so you can get to know it fairly well in just a day, although a longer stay would be fun in beach season.

Pit stop: Ronda

The hilltop town of Ronda lies between Cádiz and our final destination of Granada, so we spent a night there at the fabulous little Hotel Ronda (our favorite lodging during the trip). Ronda is famous for its gorge and bridges. We basically spent half a day exploring the east side of the gorge, including the Arab baths and the rose garden, and half a day exploring the west side, hiking down into the gorge. We also had the best food of our trip at Casa Mateos.

Last stop: Granada

Granada’s main attraction is the Alhambra complex, containing the Palacios Nazaríes, the Alcazaba fortress, the Generalife summer palace, and many gardens. Based on my previous  trip to Andalucía we decided to visit the Alhambra twice, and this turned out to be a wise decision as the complex is so large and the crowds are daunting (despite timed tickets for the Palacios Nazaríes). The first day we visited the Palacios, a bit of the gardens, and the Alcazaba, which has fabulous views. We also enjoyed tea on the terrace at the parador, which has great views of the Generalife. The second day we explored the Generalife, where we had an illegal picnic on a bench in the gardens, and spent about an hour at the excellent museum within the Alhambra complex. Here’s a picture of some happy artichokes growing in the Alhambra gardens.

We rented a comfortable and light-filled apartment across the street from the Cathedral — two thumbs up for Casa de la Lonja! We bought food at the nearby Corte Inglés department store’s supermarket (tortilla española, gazpacho in a milk carton, flan, passable paella, excellent wine selection) and at the traditional market near the Cathedral.

Two specific sites I recommend besides the Alhambra are the Monasterio Cartuja, about a half hour walk from the Cathedral, and the Capilla Real adjacent to the Cathedral. The Monasterio features an over-the-top baroque chapel. Given how austere the monks’ lives were in general, entering the chapel must have been a daily shock to the senses. The monastery also features vivid (and sometimes gory) paintings by Juan Sánchez Cotán, a former painter of still lifes (I saw one in the Prado) who joined the order in his 40s, changing his life and his subject matter. The Capilla Real houses the bodies of the Catholic Monarchs (Isabella and Ferdinand) and Isabella’s personal art collection, which included paintings by Botticelli, Van der Weyden, Memling, and other masters. Not too shabby.

As a lover of all things Spanish who happens to be a modestly observant Jew, I usually don’t have any difficulty reconciling these two passions. But when I entered the Capilla Real and saw the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, I felt a wave of intense anger over what these leaders had done to my people back in 1492. Religion leads people to do the most awful things.

24 hours in Madrid

Sue and I flew from Granada to Madrid (the photo at the top of this blog is from the bathroom at the Granada airport), and I had a brief stopover in Madrid before flying home the next day. This gave me enough time to visit my favorite paintings at the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza (no time for the Reina Sofía), walk through the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol, and attend a performance of El burlador de Sevilla, the original Don Juan play, first performed five hundred years ago and still going strong.

On my next trip I want to visit Asturias, and perhaps other northern destinations I’ve never seen, such as Santiago de Compostela, San Sebastián, and Bilbao. And something of the Pyrenees. Yikes!

A non-linguistic tour of Andalucía

[Here is a post I wrote about the trip afterwards.]

Two years ago, my consuegra Sue and I spent two weeks touring northern Spain, following an itinerary inspired by my research on the history of the Spanish language. On Friday we’ll meet up again in Córdoba to launch a two-week follow-up trip of Andalucía (southern Spain). This trip is purely touristic, though of course I’m looking forward to hearing Andalucían Spanish. Also, while in Seville we plan to visit the Archivo de Indias, which houses the records of the Spanish colonial period. It was Peter Boyd-Bowman’s research on these records that proved the Andalusian origin of Latin American Spanish (see Ralph Penny’s A History of the Spanish Language, p. 26).

This map shows our itinerary, looping counter-clockwise from Córdoba through Sevilla (the regions’s capital), the important port city of Cádiz, and the famous hill town of Ronda, ending up in Granada (poorly indicated on this map for some reason), where I’ve pre-purchased tickets to visit the Alhambra. Twice. You can’t see it on the map, but after Sevilla we’ll double back to spend one night in Carmona, a small town on the road to Córdoba (you can just see it to the right of the “A-4” marking east of Sevilla), so we can stay at its beautiful parador.

When I get back from Spain I’ll be hitting the road inside the United States: attending a wedding in Maryland, visiting grandkids in Philadelphia, touring Yosemite, visiting family in Salt Lake City, and grading Spanish AP tests in Cincinnati. I don’t expect to be blogging during these travels, so most likely you’ll hear from me again in late June. Wish us a ¡Buen viaje!

Wrapping up our tour in Barcelona

[This is a much-procrastinated final post about my linguistic tour of northern Spain in June.]

A visit to the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, in the Montjuic area of Barcelona, was the perfect capstone for my trip to Spain. This first-rate museum covers the human history of Catalonia from prehistory through the Visigoths. It is well laid out and the wall labels are consistently informative. (Some are in Catalan only, and some in Catalan, Spanish, and English.) A full visit would take two to four hours, and so can easily be combined with other Montjuic attractions including the Joan Miró museum.

The Museu d’Arqueologia’s collections of Iberian, Greek, and Roman artifacts reinforced what my friend Sue and I had already seen in person at Ullastret and Empúries on the Costa Brava. The museum also explained the active role of Phoenicians in pre-Roman Spain. We learned about Phoenician settlements such as Sa Caleta, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Balearic Island of Ibiza. My previous knowledge of Phoenician activity in Spain was, of course, limited to linguistics. I knew that several Spanish place-names are Phoenician, including España itself (probably from an expression meaning ‘land of rabbits’), Cádiz (‘fortress’), MálagaCartagena (after Carthage), Ibiza, and Mahón (the capital of Minorca). In addition, the Phoenician alphabet was the basis of the Iberian alphabet seen in artifacts such as those found at Ullastret.

The slideshow below shows some of my favorite artifacts from the museum.

 

The gender of sugar (azúcar)

I drank a lot of coffee when I was recently in Spain, partly because of jet lag and partly because the coffee was so good. As in the U.S., it was always served with a small paper container of sugar. Who ever reads these containers? I do — when I’m in Spain — and was rewarded with a linguistic gem: one sugar packet I opened was labeled azucar morena (see picture). This was truly surprising, not because of the missing accent mark on azúcar, but because morena is a feminine adjective, and azúcar is masculine.

Or is it?

Although I had learned azúcar as a masculine noun, and had always seen it treated as such, It turns out that azúcar is one of a handful of Spanish nouns that are ambiguous in gender, meaning that either morena or moreno is legitimate. You can see this for yourself on wordreference.com or in the Real Academia Española dictionary.

I was familiar with this phenomenon from the examples of radioesperma ‘sperm’, and reúma  ‘rheumatism’. The latter two were borrowed from Greek as feminines because of their final -a, but have drifted toward masculine usage because the -ma masculine, most often seen in words of Greek origin, is associated with intellectual words such as temapoema, and apotegma.

In its Nueva gramática de la lengua española, the Real Academia points out that words of ambiguous gender are relatively rare. Besides azúcar, they list:

  • mar ‘sea’ (I believe that the feminine usage is confined to set expressions like pelillos a la mar ‘let bygones be bygones’)
  • agravante ‘aggravating circumstance’
  • armazón ‘shell, frame’ (as of a building)
  • azumbre ‘liquid measure, corresponding to 2 liters’
  • interrogante ‘question’
  • maratón ‘marathon’
  • prez ‘honor’
  • pringue ‘grease, drippings’
  • ánade ‘duck’

Now that I’ve written this post, I can finally throw out the sugar packets I brought home from Spain: a sweet reminder (jajaja) of how travel can open up new linguistic horizons.

Taxdirt?

My sister is a tax attorney, so when I saw this street sign in Barcelona I had to take a picture and send it to her. (Carrer is Catalan for ‘street’; its Spanish cognate is calle.)

"Taxdirt Street" in Barcelona.

“Taxdirt Street” in Barcelona.

I couldn’t find taxdirt in wordreference.com, my go-to Spanish dictionary; nor did I expect to, since it doesn’t sound at all Spanish. My next step was to ask a friendly server at a gelato shop we stopped at later that afternoon on the Ramblas. It turned out that he lived around the corner from Carrer de Taxdirt — but had no idea what it meant.

Fortunately, Google and Wikipedia soon came to the rescue. It turns out that Taxdirt is the name of a famous 1909 cavalry charge in Morocco, near Melilla (with Ceuta, one of two Spanish cities in Morocco). It has inspired a monument in Melilla, a set of toy solders (or perhaps ‘military figurines’), and even a hymn. Lyrics here.

 

On my way home

I’ve just arrived back in Madrid, by train from Barcelona, and have a little time on my hands before leaving for the airport. It felt odd to so quickly unwind the overall trajectory of the last two weeks, and to be on my own again after sharing this experience with my friend Sue. Odder still to think that in a few hours I’ll be home and picking up the threads of my normal life. I have some leftover posts to write about the trip, which should help soften the transition, and of course my normal life involves lots of Spanish!

Right now I’m sitting in a small patch of green grass just outside the Real Jardín Botánico, and feeling profoundly relieved to be back in a city that abounds in parks. So many spaces that appear green on a map of Barcelona turn out to be paved or graveled. It’s also a relief to be away from the hordes of tourists that seemed to be everywhere we went in Barcelona, like Times Square blown up to the scale of a full city. Barcelona has many wonderful things to see but I always feel more at home in Madrid.

I must now take advantage of my Left Luggage fee to stroll through the park before heading back to the station. If you’ve been following my blog while I’ve been traveling, I thank you for your time and interest, and hope you’ll continue to read once I’m home.

 

Where Latin came to Spain

When I planned my linguistic tour of northern Spain, I hoped that today’s itinerary would be the best conceivable combination of intellectual engagement and touristic pleasure. In fact, it exceeded my expectations.

The intellectual part of our day (“we” being my friend Sue and I) was a visit to the Greco-Roman ruins at Empúries on the Costa Brava. This site made it onto our itinerary because, as referenced in this post’s title, Empúries is where Latin came to the Iberian Peninsula. The Greek ruins at the site date from the sixth century B.C.E. They memorialize a thriving settlement devoted to trade: in fact, the Greek name for the settlement, Emporion, means ‘market’. The Greeks traded actively with the native Iberian tribes, including the Indikites, whose capital city of Ullastret Sue and I visited yesterday. The Roman ruins at the site date from the beginning of the first century B.C.E.

The touristic part of the day was swimming at the fantastic beach located JUST YARDS AWAY from the ruins. How great is Spain?!?

map

I enjoyed the the Greek ruins at Empúries more than the Roman ruins. This was partly because I hadn’t expected them — I had assumed that the Romans overbuilt the existing Greek city, whereas in fact they co-existed (see explanation below). Also, these were the first Greek ruins I’ve ever seen, whereas I’ve seen Roman ruins elsewhere in Spain and also in France, Italy, and Israel.

The Greek ruins include houses, temples, factories for smelting metal and salting fish, an agora, or public plaza (a frequent crossword puzzle word!), and a water system. Their water cisterns were noticeably deeper than the ones we saw at Ullastret yesterday (sorry, Indikites). My two favorite Greek sights from Empúries are illustrated below. The first is a mosaic-tiled banquet hall, whose inscription translates as ‘how sweet it is to be reclined.’ The second is a statue of Asklepíeion, the Greek god of medicine. These two features struck my both for their beauty, and for personal reasons: the “reclining” mention reminded me of the fourth question of the Passover seder, while the statue of Asklepíeion reminded me of my daughter, who is a doctor. (Once you’re a mom, you see the world a little differently.)

Greek tiled banquet hall. The inscription translates as ‘how sweet it is to be reclined’.

Statue of Asklepíeion, the Greek god of medicine

Statue of Asklepíeion, the Greek god of medicine

Our main mission at Empúries, however, was to see the Roman ruins, and thus learn more about how Latin came to Spain. A wall panel at the museum at the ruins offered this helpful summary of how the Second Punic War against Carthage led to this fundamental and irrevocable change in the Iberian Peninsula and its languages:

In the year 218 B.C., the Roman army landed at the port of Emporion, an allied city, with a view to cutting off the Carthaginian rear-guard on their way to Rome. Once the war was over, the Romans wanted to control and exploit the adjoining territory, a process which initiated the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. This process, known as Romanization, included two stages. The first, of conquest and military domination, did not lead to changes in native culture and organization. The opposition of the natives to the new power resulted in the establishment, in the year 195 B.C., of a Roman military camp, on the upper part of the hill of Empúries, so that the country could be controlled and peace maintained. The second stage, which started at the beginning of the first century B.C., entailed the absorption of the various existing societies into Roman culture. New cities were created, such as Empúries itself, Gerunda [Girona] or Tarraco [Tarragona]; a major road network was developed, whose main axis was the Via Augusta; development of the land was carried out according to the Italic models based on the creation of country houses of villae and, lastly, the progressive use of Latin was promoted and new religious cults were introduced. Assistance given to the Romans by the Emporitan Greeks meant that they could enjoy a status of independence within the newly built Roman city.

The Roman ruins were much larger than the Greek section, and included a stunning private house with a different mosaic pattern in each room.

"Domus 1" at Empúries

“Domus 1” at Empúries

The Iberian ruins of Ullastret

When I began to plan my linguistic tour of northern Spain, I knew that visiting Ullastret would be a top priority. One of the 101 questions in my book is “What other languages were spoken in pre-Roman Spain?” (this comes after two questions about Basque), and I illustrated it with a reproduction of this Iberian lead plaque, found in Ullastret. I was dying to see it in person.

Iberian lead plaque, from Ullastret, Spain

I’m using “Iberian” here to refer not to the Iberian Peninsula itself, but to a community, with a distinct language and culture, that populated the eastern part of the Peninsula in pre-Roman days. They shared the Peninsula with Greeks (on the northeast coast), Phonecians (in the south), Celts (in the north and center), and Tartassians (in the southwest). Ullastret was the capital of a specific group of Iberians called the Indiketes (see map below). They were known for their extensive contact with the nearby Greek settlements. To quote the wall text from the Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia at Ullastret, Fou una zona intensament hel·lenizada, per la presència de les colònies gregues d’Emporion (fundad cap a 600 a.C.) i de Rhode (fundada molt probablement a finals del s. Vè a.C.).

[The middle dot in hel·lenizada shows that the double ll is pronounced as a long l and not like a Spanish ll — which Catalan also has.]

Map of Iberian settlements in Spain (from Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia at Ullastret)

Map of Iberian settlements in Spain (from Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia at Ullastret)

According to our guidebook, one sign of the Indiketes’s Hellenization is the purely decorative groove they added to the main gate of the city:

One side of Ullastret's main gate, with a decorative groove, a sign of Greek influence.

One side of Ullastret’s main gate. Its decorative groove is believed to show Greek influence.

Ullastret was a full-fledged city, with protective walls, streets and houses, temples, water cisterns, and grain silos. The silos were reused as garbage receptacles once the grain had been consumed (or sold to other settlements). This makes them a gold mine for the archaeologists who have studied Ullastret, since garbage is always a prime source of information about a culture.

“My” lead plaque was easy to find. It is part of a display of artifacts showing Iberian writing. Please see the presentation below. You can click on the double-headed diagonal arrow to the left of the LinkedIn “in” logo to see the presentation in full-screen mode.

In conclusion, I have to say that as much as my friend Sue and I enjoyed Ullastret, we both strongly preferred our previous visit to the Castro of Ulaca. The latter ruins are harder to get to, but are more impressive, and the location itself is more beautiful and magical.

 

The -se imperfect subjunctive is alive and kicking

My friend Sue and I didn’t visit any language-related destinations today, making it an exception in our linguistic tour of northern Spain. I’d like to take advantage of this “day off” to share with you some uses of the -se imperfect subjunctive that I unexpectedly observed yesterday.

The -se imperfect subjunctive is one of my favorite phenomena in Spanish: not only does the language have both present and past tense subjunctives, but also, the past tense subjunctive has two different forms. This is an unusual and possibly unique type of grammatical redundancy.

Of the two past subjunctives, the version that ends in -ra is much more common than the one that ends in -se. One sees the -se subjunctive in literature, but I’d never heard anyone use it in conversation, or seen it in any casually written text. (It does shows up in literature.) I was thrilled, then, to run into the -se subjunctive twice yesterday. First, our tour guide at the Monasterio de Suso used it once or twice in his explanations. Later, during our lunch stop in Zaragoza, I spotted it on a poster for an anti-aging treatment. This text on the poster asks ¿Qué edad tendrías si no supieses la que tienes? ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’; I’ve underlined the subjunctive. The newer, and more frequently used, form would be supieras.se subjunctiveSeeing the subjunctive in action, after spending so much time researching and writing about it, was a real thrill. Plus, I love the poster — and I’m glad to say that Dra. Montserrat Salvador López, whose services it advertises, is listed as one of Spain’s Top Doctors!

A pilgrimage to the Monasterio de Suso

Most pilgrims who visit the Monasterio de Suso are drawn by its religious significance. The monastery is built around, and still incorporates, the hillside cave where the Visigothic hermit San Millán retreated from the world, gathering acolytes over the decades until he died in 574 C.E. at the age of 101. His sarcophagus is still in Suso, though his remains have been transferred to the Monasterio de Yuso, the larger monastery later built at the base of the hill to support his increased following.

Our peregrination, though, was linguistic (“we” being I and my friend Sue, who’s joined me on a linguistic tour of northern Spain). Suso originally included a “scriptorium” — a room devoted to the copying of manuscripts. Here, some unknown scribe made annotations, in an early form of Spanish (and also in Basque) in the margin of a Latin text. These annotations, known as the Glosas Emilianenses, are among the earliest examples of written Spanish. The volume containing the glosas is now in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid. The scriptorium no longer exists.

A sampling from the Glosas Emilianenses, from a presentation by Magda Liliana Barrero Vàsquez

Just getting to the Monasterio de Suso was an adventure. My GPS blanked out briefly as we approached a key intersection, then directed us along a series of bumpy local roads through the vineyards of La Rioja for about fifteen minutes. It was a beautiful detour and we ended up safely at the Monasterio de Yuso, where we boarded the bus to Suso with a few dozen German tourists. Our guide was an elderly gentleman who has obviously been giving the same tour for years. He pointed out the monastery’s key features:

  • the cave where San Millán fasted and secluded himself
  • San Millán’s now-empty sarcophagus
  • a shelf containing bones from donors to the Monastery, housed there as a condition of their donations
  • the doorway that used to lead to the scriptorium
  • a series of archways that encapsulated Suso’s history: one Visigothic, some Moorish-style, and some Gothic (see picture below)
Arches at Suso: Visigothic (left), Moorish (middle), Gothic (right)

Arches at Suso: Visigothic (left), Moorish (middle), Gothic (right)

Back down at Yuso, we were tempted to stop for a snack at the “Mesón Las Glosas” but had to push on to Girona.

Glosas