We Find A New Park

Sunday, January 13, 2019 – The almost unbroken sunshine continues here. Temperatures are rising again after a few days of highs in the mid-teens. It’s supposed to go up to 19C tomorrow, in which case we’ll head for the beach. The sickness, whatever it is/was, is not entirely gone, but we’re soldiering through.

We did get out for a short walk Friday afternoon after I last posted, and made a great discovery. We went north and west, a direction we have thought of as not very interesting because it very quickly leads – or led – to grungy railroad lands. But we walked a couple of blocks up and caught sight of what looked to be gardens and newly sand-blasted old buildings.

Parque Centrale

We had discovered the recently-opened Parque Centrale, a massive beautification project made possible by putting the last couple of kilometers of high-speed rail lines into the city underground. The project had begun, we later learned, in 2011, the first year we came here. The first phases opened to the public just this past December. When we came this way in the past, all we saw was hoardings probably, some of which remain.

Parque Centrale

It’s a 66 hectare site with 23 hectares of gardens, fountains, pools and repurposed railway buildings. There is still a lot more to come, including a “lake” and Mediterranean garden. The old railway buildings have been sand-blasted and restored, but are mostly empty shells for now. They will eventually house exposition spaces, an auditorium and, if we’re understanding correctly, university classrooms.

Parque Centrale

It’s quite lovely, and a little surprising. There has been a lot of political blow-back in Valencia over the years from high-priced, not-wholly-successful civic projects – a now-mothballed Formula One racing facility, America’s Cup docklands redevelopment that left a lovely new marina but also mouldering buildings on the waterfront, and the City of Arts and Sciences, which is amazing but went massively over budget. You’d think the city or region would pull its horns in a bit on inessential infrastructure projects, but apparently not.

We haven’t fully explored it yet, but it’s only a few blocks away, so we’ll have lots of opportunity.

Yesterday morning, we paid our first vsit to the Ruzafa market, having forgotten what a mad-house it is on Saturday. There were great long line-ups at the more popular stalls. We saw one butcher’s place with about 10 or 12 customers waiting for a single server to wait on them. We determined pretty quickly not to try and buy anything here today. We’d come back early in the week. In the meantime, it was fun to drink in all the lovely sights and smells.

It’s a market ten times the size of our market in London, and it’s one of several around the city, including the much larger Central Market which is only about a kilometer and a half away.

We also walked up to the Bakery of the Drunkards at the end of Sueca – or is it The Drunken Oven, as Google translates it (El Horno de los Borrachos) – for our weekend treat of chocolate-filled pastries. They are sinful. We finished off the outing with a small shop at the Mercadona, which was busy, but no busier that it often is through the week.

After lunch at the apartment, we headed over to IVAM,  Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno. We started off riding bikes, but discovered the way we’d headed – back over towards the Parque Centrale – was still no good for biking. We had to ride and walk the bikes back up alongside the tracks to the main train station, Estación del Norte, in the centre. We dropped them there and walked the rest of the way.

IVAM used to always be free on Sunday. Now it’s also free on Saturday afternoons. Our plan is to come back regularly and take in one exhibit at a time – there are usually four or five on at any one time. We started with one that was ending in few days, 1936–1976 Spain. Artistic avant-garde and social reality, a show about a famous art exhibit by avant garde Spanish artists at the Venice Biennale in 1976, the first year after Franco died.

The Day I learned to Write With Ink, 1972, by Equipo Crónica, a 1960s Valencian art collective

It wasn’t the official Spanish Biennale exhibit – there wasn’t one that year – but it was a grand summing up of avant-garde art during the Franco era, and pointed the way ahead in the post-Franco era. The IVAM show brought together works in the gallery’s permanent collection by artists who were in the 1976 show and some documentary stuff about the original show. This wasn’t the best exhibit we’ve seen at this IVAM, or even close to it. There were a few pieces that caught my eye, though, including some art post-cards by a Valencian artist, whose name I stupidly forgot to note, and now can’t find.

Calle de Quart street art

By the time we’d made the long trek back, through the centre this time, I was done in. This illness just keeps hanging on – very irritating. Skype with Caitlin in the evening, TV, bed, blessed sleep.

La Lonja de la Seda gargoyle

La Lonja de la Seda gargoyle