Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’.
Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’. He has certainly written one of the strangest books on the country in recent years. His approach is gloriously and provocatively unfashionable. Whereas other authors on Spain today might dwell on its innovative new chefs, the modernity of Barcelona and Bilbao, the tawdry Costa del Sol, and such persistent Andalucían-based stereotypes as duende, bullfighting and Moorish sensuality, Howse has concentrated on an aspect of the country that was once no less integral to its image — its austere and spiritual side.
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.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in