The Road from Santiago

  We’re leaving town.  First a quick walk past some mechanical units; then a neat row of terraces with trees down the centre of the street and then out into the country.  We might as well nip into Panda Lounge cafe & copas. 56 people give it 4.5 stars.  It is LGBTQ+ friendly, which seems appropriate in Pride Month.  The have an instagram page https://www.instagram.com/pandalounge__ Two days ago TRDZM said ‘A huge variety, everything is very good and the girl who serves is very attentive and friendly, it's a pleasure.’ Let us pick up the theme and amble with it.  As you would expect with cultures with a lot of fragile masculinity Spain has a long History of Anti-Gay laws. These were first repealed in 1822 but were brought back again by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1928. The Republic over turned those laws in 1932 but Franco brought them back.  Giles Tremlett, in his ‘The Ghosts of Spain’, quotes some Francoist propaganda which, when read ...

  It is a day that starts in the suburbs, passes a University Campus, goes through some post war mass housing and ends in the narrow lanes of old Puerto Real - so let’s start there. Being a nicely sheltered place in the Bay of Cadiz various people have lived in what is Puerto Real. Some learned folk think it might have even been the Roman settlement of Portus Gaditanus, i.e. Port of Gades - Cadiz’s maritime ad-on. The current town was founded in 1483 as a base for privateering and royal raids against North Africa.  Much of the town was destroyed in 1823 when the French deployed a little white terror against the Cadiz Liberal Revolt against Bourbon Absolutism.  Things go back on track by the end of the nineteenth century, when modern shipyards and warehouses were made. One thing of note is the ‘People’ section of the English wiki page. Of the sixteen souls named, fifteen are in the red ink of unlinked shame.  Only F rancisco Fernández Rodríguez ‘Gallego’ gets a link, ...

  Today we are mostly crossing the Puente de la Constitucion de 1812 so we better know a thing or two about it. In 1969 the Jose Leon de Carranza Bridge was opened. This 1400m long structure linked Cadiz to the mainland.   Who was Jose? I hear you cry.  Well, he a military officer and Francoist who was appointed mayor of Cadiz in February 1948, six months after an explosion in the Navy’s submarine base which killed 152 people, wounded 350 more and damaged over 2000 buildings. He held the post till his death on 23rd May 1969. He apparently promoted carnivals,  Spanish Wiki is positive towards him, but someone has noted that his Gold Medal for Merit in Labour was withdrawn in October 2022. With 40,000 vehicles crossing the old bridge it became clear that a second bridge was needed. In 1982 it became a thing,  The 540m span was built with a 69m clearance, a 150m removable span and two, 180m pylons. Everything was due to come to completion in 2012 but the 2008 Finan...

  Strap yourself in it is going to be - well, not bumpy, but fulsome ride.  Cadiz is gorgeous. It is so much crammed into such a small space, as we will see by the very narrow streets. It is another, on the long, long list, of places I really need to go to. We will start by going up the Avenida Periodista Beatriz Cienfuegos, and then head to the Atlantic road.   Before we do that let us muse  Beatriz Cienfuegos.  Bea [1701-86]  was born in Cadiz, to a wealthy bourgeois family.  She created La Pensadora Gaditana, one of the first periodicals written by a woman. We are walking by some fairly splendid looking sands. Playa de la Victoria gets 4.7 stars from 1870 reviews, so it must be nice. Two weeks ago Rafal was up on the beach and down on the dogs.  ‘A wonderful, wide beach, perfect for a walk along the ocean. The downside is the large number of dogs; dogs should be banned from the beach.’  Last October Francisco reckoned ‘A great beach in Cad...