3 nov

Stayed 50 yards from the sea last night. But it felt farther. There was a road and a railroad in between us and La Mediterranee. This evening we are staying outside Tarragona, twenty meters from the sea, at most. To the south of us there is a lighthouse, guiding us somehow. To the east of it there is quite a line of enormous ships that dropped anchor and look from a far as little villages in the landscape.
We went to see Montserrat. Tourist trap. The beautiful madonna with child is said to be carved by St Luke himself and brought over to Europe by St Peter. This is miraculous because the wood itself is not older than the twelfth century, recent research showed.
Stranger things have happened, I suppose.
This Madonna, beautifully black with a pronounced nose, is kind of the official symbol for Catalunya. Which is lovely but caused, on this sunday with another official holiday coming up on monday, an enormous line of people waiting to see this holy sculpture. We guessed it would take more than two hours, which was (way) more than we wanted to spend.
We sat down in the church. One day it had been real Romanesq, but an earthquake destroyed the original building, which was rebuilt after WWII, in a neo neo style. What to say. There was plenty to see, is maybe the kindest thing. Julie and Claire enjoyed the candleholders. I kind of liked the sculpture of St Anthony.
Sitting in the church you could see all the people passing the Madonna statue, which was high up, on the first floor above the altar. A Fascinating series of rituals. Touching her, kissing her, kneeling, embracing, bowing, just standing still. But it all ended the same: with a picture. Well deserved after that much time waiting, I thought.
The cultural part was disappointing, but nature compensated for it. The mountaintops around Montserrat are spectacular, rounded of like Gherkins. They inspired Gaudi, at least for his Sagrada Famiglia, which is (in its present form) not really ‘his’ building. He started the building, but all the paperwork was lost during the Spanish Civil War. In fact the Sagrada Famiglia was the only building that George Orwell had hoped that the revolutionaries would have burnt down. Which is odd. I mean anybody can dislike a building, but wanting to destroy it is of a narrow minded view that doesn’t resonate with Orwell.
We parked the camper at the bottom of the hill and took a little train up the steep hills. Spectacular views up to the far away Pyrenees. The most fascinating thing though was to try to find good old Merlin after every turn we took. What is close by is very often more fascinating than what is far away, I think.
We drove south again, afterwards, so that Claire would be able to get an easy train back to Barcelona tomorrow. We looked at seven campgrounds at the Costa Derrida. All were closed. Julie saw some campers at the beach. So that’s where we are staying right now. Not a real campground, but just a Campers Meeting Spot. We got into problems with our neighbour, because she thought the hot ashes from our bbq (sausages again) might set her camper alight. It’s all plastic, you know, she said. Dutch of course, this nutty obsessive woman. From the wrong side of the rivers, I would like to think.
But what the heck, the sound of the waves are comforting us. Never slept closer to the sea, not even on the ‘poor man’s cruise’ to Bilbao where the ship was so enormous that the sea seemed hundreds of yards away. And now there is rain. Water everywhere. Just like home. Very soothing.