The words starting Don Quixote are perhaps the best known in Spanish. This "Place in La Mancha, whose name I do not remember" was a puzzle to all readers. Although it does not have to be resolved to enjoy the work considered the masterpiece of Spanish literature, this has always irritated the scholars’. At least so up to now. A multidisciplinary team from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid has made a relatively plausible hypothesis: Villanueva de los Infantes. In the study El lugar de La Mancha es... El Quijote como un sistema de distancias/tiempos [The place in La Mancha is... Don Quixote as a system of distances/times] ten experts from the centre appl

  The life of the poet Federico García Lorca has been well accounted in Granada, Madrid and even in New York. We can follow his steps in each of these three cities. What is not so popular is Lorca’s stay in the province of Almería, but his time in these lands marked his early years of youth and inspired one of his key works.   Lorca arrived in Almería shortly before his adolescence. He went there to train and while he was there he lived with his master and parents’ friend, Antonio Rodríguez Espinosa, in a house with pretty windows in the little Plaza Balmes. This place is near the Hospital Provincial, where Rodríguez Esp

  Just a few kilometres from Madrid in the province of Guadalajara is the region of La Alcarria. What you have closest is often most unknown to you and the Spanish capital’s inhabitants hardly knew of the existence of this place so nearby until in 1948, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Camilo José Cela, wrote his ‘Journey to the Alcarria’ undoubtedly the best known guide of Spanish literature.    Cela discovered the region on foot. The book, which at the time cost 65 pesetas (less than half a euro today) and was illustrated with photographs by Karl Wlasak, was a true best seller and soon became one of the must-reads on the school curricul

Culture finds different ways of showing its essence.  It does so majestically in large museums which for centuries have seen faces passing in front of the canvases, or from the day-to-day activity of places such as AlhóndigaBilbao. This is a cultural and leisure centre that considers its relationship with people from a closer, more enjoyable standpoint, and above all one that is highly innovative and sustainable. The building is a former wine, liquor and oil store that was refurbished by the French designer Philippe Starck and reopened in May 2010. Around the motto of Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, AlhóndigaBilbao has divided its space between three buildings that present

Like a good university city, Salamanca is one of the most entertaining and exciting cities in Spain. Salamanca University is not the oldest in Spain (this award goes to Palencia), but it is one of the four greats of Europe (along with Bologna, the Sorbonne and Oxford). Its very beautiful Plaza Mayor brings in all kinds of students, just as it has for centuries. This is also true of the fact that many of the best lessons one learns in life are taught in the street.    In all corners of the city, fabulous stories are told of the tricks that students had to do to survive (such as warming the seats of the rich in the cold winter months); to eat (many could only afford the so

  In February, Barcelona. In March, Carmona (Seville) and also L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). Getafe (Madrid), in October. What are we talking about? About some of the coordinates that detective story lovers can follow in Spain, which pays more and more attention to the black novel and creates and organises festivals that have become international benchmarks.   The top event of crime and detective lovers is the Black Week of Gijón. The meeting is a mirror to all other festivals which, more modest and with smaller budgets, try to imitate the great atmosphere felt around the city. Bars that make special kebabs for the occasion, nightclubs that open

  The novel might have started in any way, but Cervantes chose to omit the name of the main character’s birthplace. In its place, he decided that the first sentence of Don Quixote had to start with “Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember...”. Little is known about why the writer refused to reveal the name of the town where Don Quixote was born. What we do know is that the result of his decision was that, since the book was published, many villages in La Mancha have disputed the honour of being the home place to one of the most illustrious characters of universal literature.    In some, the local authorities and

As happens in other large cities, in Madrid there is a district where the young practice youth as a trade, going out to the fashionable bars each weekend, accepting hangovers as an occupational risk, taking care to be street wise. A district where the counterculture is an organised system: here a small art gallery that breaks with traditional schemes, there a six square metre pizzeria with electronic music, in the following street to the left there are two boys holding hands.   The curious thing about this district, which is called Malasaña, is that the coolest residents have been dead for two centuries. These occupy number 13 of calle de San Mateo: The Museum of Roman