Photo 1. Behind this blacksmith's door the ramps of Toledo begin to fall away.  The smallest cake is marzipan, and it is so sweet. A lot of sugar and a lot of almonds. The largest cake is a toledana and inside you will find these sweet streaks of candied pumpkin called vermicelli.    Photo 2. The Knights of the Middle Ages dressed in Toledo. The city was probably the most chic centre for armour.        Photo 3. A face has disappeared. A masonry plate has replaced this face.The plate is handmade. A craftsman has set stone after stone to make a perfect geometry.     Photo 4. On guard! Toledo is f

Nowhere is Madrid's "Passion for Life" expressed fully than in one of their dances--the flamenco. My own exposure was a visit to a club so small; we were practically on the wooden stage. Tall, lanky and dark-haired Jose Maria Velazquez walked out quietly, assumed a ballet position with both arms lifted over his head, feet at an angle. He looked like a natural for a basketball game, but could he perform the intricate steps that constitute a flamenco dance? The music began and the answer crashed upon our ears in a deafening tattoo of tapping toes and heels. The crescendo of the rhythm of his boots on the wood became a torrent of syncopation. His clothes were wet now and his ha

Every Sunday afternoon teams of costumed men gather in a historic square in Tarragona to assemble an unusual type of edifice ranging up to ten floors in height. But it’s not made of bricks and mortar; instead, its only building blocks are the participants themselves. The construction method is basic: one group stands on another’s shoulders, a third group climbs up to perch on the second’s shoulders, and so on, to form tier upon tier. Their finale is to pass a small boy from person to person until he is held aloft by the men at the pinnacle. As the structure rises, the crowd surges forward to physically support the builders who, body on body, continuously shift, balance a