Europe @ 2.4 km/h (47 page)

Not all Portuguese are poor. On the bus from Portugal I meet a self-confident and generous entrepreneur, Eugenio. Portuguese — although resident in France for the past few years — he is moving to Salamanca to take over an established bar he has bought there. Formerly in charge of a team of disabled basketballers, Eugenio obviously admires anyone who gets out and does something in spite of a physical incapacity. I look at things differently. As one who enjoys travelling, the question for me is not whether to see the world but how. Before we are across the border, Eugenio — who says he has a personal fortune of €40 million (A$67 million), and who am I to doubt him? — issues two invitations. The first is to visit his restaurant tonight (where, after my arrival, he pays for all the food and drink I order, refusing even a modest contribution); the second invitation, extended to me, my parents and their dog, is to stay with his family at their Portuguese villa overlooking the Atlantic, with all airfares paid. This invitation is still outstanding. It’s not that I doubt his genuineness, just that the gesture is too overwhelming to take in.

At Eugenio’s restaurant I witness a scene worthy of a comedy classic, though manners forbid me to laugh out loud. An Italian family of three occupy the table opposite mine and, when a Spanish waiter appears, the po-faced mamma points to their five-year-old daughter and tells him, ‘We want to eat her, and then we.’ Only after intense thought does it become clear that they would like their daughter’s order to be served before theirs.

1388 km

Three hours by bus from Salamanca, I found Madrid — flat as a tortilla — bewildering from the outset. At the metro station next to the bus terminal, the same
señor
who sold me a train ticket then summoned the security guards to prevent me from using an escalator (there were no lifts) to reach the platform. When I asked why, he said it wasn’t safe. There was no insurance cover if the
guards
were injured.

1397-1406 km

This morning I make a beeline for the Australian Embassy, to vote in tomorrow’s election verdict on twelve years of John Winston Howard. My democratic duty done, it’s high time to embark on the prescribed round of sightseeing. In Madrid no obligatory destination could outrank the Prado, up there with the Hermitage and Louvre in the top flight of Europe’s art museums. Spanish humanity trumped officiousness after a few moments’ hesitation. The young attendant at the entrance started off by saying, as she must have done hundreds of times, ‘For a ticket you need to go to [some building kilometres away]’ and then stopped short and, perceiving that I was travelling in a self-powered vehicle, relented. ‘No, OK, you go in.’

The nation’s artistic heritage, on display here, demolishes the impression that — in cultural matters, at least — Spain developed in isolation from broader European trends. A Titian in the collection portrays Carlos at the decisive Catholic victory over Protestants at the Battle of Muhlberg (1547). There he is on his horse,
a caballo
, jut-jawed and ready to do battle, and it takes a while before I twig that the king known to Spaniards variously as Carlos I and as Carlos V is none other than the French monarch Charles V, who must have commissioned this triumphal scene for propaganda purposes. The Titians and Velázquezes of their time were dependent on the conservative nobility and equally conservative Church for their supper, but the income enabled them to travel and create a Europe of the mind, a common heritage.

Cultural genius, like the geniuses themselves, knew no borders. Rembrandt might be a Dutchman, Goethe the first citizen of Weimar, but all Europe soon laid claim to them. Velázquez, Goethe and Dostoevsky, each in his time, travelled to Italy. Van Gogh did not stay in the Netherlands, Titian came to Spain, El Greco’s name and history speak for themselves. In this sense Europe has been more than the sum of its parts for centuries. Without doubt it is the politicians who are lagging behind. Velázquez’s Fables — a temporary exhibition due to run for three months but opened only this week — showcases one such genius. If I could choose just one work that demonstrates Diego Velázquez’s ability to sum up what is typical in an individual’s face, my choice would be
La Venerable
Madre Jerónima de la Fuente
, a magnificently lifelike portrayal of a crabby Mother Superior. She is carrying a crucifix and a Bible, and that face would crack an egg at a thousand paces.

But this is Spain, and blood will out. In Francisco de Goya’s
Christ on the Cross
splotches of blood spatter Jesus’ feet, combining with the vivid portrayal of agony to make this an unforgettable work. Goya followed Velázquez in turning out royal portraits — he had to eat, after all — but was not coy about injecting his own opinion of the subject into his work. A 1786 canvas portraying Carlos III as a hunter borders on caricature. The gun dog lies asleep at his feet, his collar bearing a riband proclaiming him ‘The King’s Dog’ (in case His Majesty, or the hound, were in any doubt). For pure horror it’s hard to beat
Saturno Devouring One of His Sons
. A work of utter madness, it is brilliantly, disgustingly done. Goya’s delight in shocking the observer hints at Salvador Dali a century in advance. It must be something in the Spanish (lust for) blood. In the world outside these walls, bloodlust escapes from the realm of satire. Posters at bus stops across the city protest against ‘
violencia
machista’
— one of the nation’s gravest challenges — which they say has killed 69 women in the past six years.

1406-1415 km

After two weeks of lugging wet laundry across the Iberian peninsula, yesterday evening — at long last — I found myself staying at a hostel with a working washing machine. At least it was working until I put the clothes in. At two o’clock this morning the clothes were still wet, and they were no less sodden at 4 am when I sloughed off to bed. Rising early, I found a local laundry that promised to have the load back to me, dry, by 2 pm, its Saturday closing time.

At 10 am, having snacked rather than breakfasted, I was back at the hotel in time for my rendezvous. At 10.20 am (7.20 pm in eastern Australia), Sky News announces (as the fifth or sixth item of its bulletin): ‘John Howard appears to have lost his bid for a fifth successive term as prime minister.’ At half past ten the BBC confirms this with the addition of one detail, that Howard is tipped to lose his own seat. A tickertape litany of Coalition losses skitters across the bottom of the screen. Bennelong, Braddon, Corangamite — my gosh, Corangamite! My mind races back to 1975 when I was a cadet reporter at Camperdown, in Victoria’s Western District. Then, Corangamite was the second safest Liberal seat in the country and Labor’s Camperdown sub-branch had a membership of ten. Who would ever have thought? …

Three hours later, it’s time to retrieve the laundry. And time for the lift from the third level to the ground floor to follow the washing machine into limbo. Somebody down there is stuck in the lift between floors, and I’m stuck on this floor without a lift. Nothing for it, I prop myself against the staircase and begin lowering my body step by step, down three flights. Once a receptionist has fetched my chair, I power myself into it with a samurai-inspired action and hurry off to the laundry, arriving there just as the doors are closing for the weekend. One thing I have learnt from this serial fiasco, Spaniards are not surprised when machinery breaks down.

Of the modern European states, Spain alone has restored its monarchy. This clearly corresponds to the Spanish ideal. Every year on 6 January, in the spacious courtyard of the Royal Palace of Madrid (Palacio Real), the king takes the salute from his military forces —
a caballo
, I do not doubt. The royal family are not exactly short of palaces — there are five in and around Madrid, and a royal monastery as well — but, as the brochure puts it, this is the ‘palace for all eternity’. The security guard who accompanies me in the lift to the first floor unaffectedly calls it ‘the best palace of Europe’ and then, blushing, confesses she may be biased. But, I observe, you can be biased and still be right. The brochure also says that each room is more glorious than the last. Now usually I would discount this as hype, but in the Palacio Real it comes close to being the unvarnished truth. The Hall of Columns has played host to two historic events in recent times. One of them — Spain’s 1985 accession to the European Community, forerunner of today’s Union — would be judged a shining success; the other — 1991’s Middle East peace conference — would not.

A red-carpeted passage brings us to the Throne Room, studded with 18th-century rock crystal chandeliers, gilt-edged mirrors, a gold-sculpted throne canopy and four ornamental lions. An inner voice reminds me that Versailles has no peer; but, amid such opulence as this, there is no shame in coming second. And when I learn that Spain’s Carlos III was a grandson of Louis XIV the source of this inspiration seems beyond question.

Majesty succeeds majesty. I pass through the Gasparini Room, replete with Oriental fantasies; and then: the Carlos III Salon, honouring a king who died before it could be completed; the Porcelain Room, consisting of 134 ceramic panels; and the Gala Dining Room, where it is easy to picture the banqueting table set for 140 guests in November 1879 to celebrate the king’s marriage to Maria-Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine. The glasses that rest on it are of Bohemian crystal, and I crane my neck to view a wonderfully presumptuous scene overhead. Velázquez has painted Christopher Columbus offering a modest gift — the New World — to Ferdinand and Isabella, ‘Their Most Catholic Majesties’.

The mood of silent admiration is punctuated by the remark of an American tourist, ‘This room reminds me of the Randolph Hearst castle in California.’ I suddenly feel seized by an urge to move to Nevada, or the Sierra Nevada, but it’s simpler to carry on to the next room, the Salon de Ciné. In the time of Alfonso XIII, just after World War I, the royal family gathered here on Sunday afternoons to watch the latest films. I leave via the Silver Room, where visitors are invited to inspect ‘a selection of ordinary silverware of the royal family’, the most scandalous misuse of the term ‘ordinary’ I’ve struck in all my born days.