Salamanca

 

I took a bus from Leon to Zamora, and then Zamora to Salamanca. I checked into Hostal Granada. Went to a local restaurant to get a serious meal, then headed into the old city, where I visited the tourist office first, and then three museums. The first museum was an art nouveau and art deco museum, which was quite interesting; It had many extremely beautiful small things, such as small statues. I always like art deco.

Citroen DS-23

The next museum was a car museum. This was a little different take on a car museum than in the US, in that it had mostly European cars.

My next stop was to the archives of the Spanish Civil War. Franco centralized his police state like records here, and they’re stored in there for researchers. for some reason Franco was fixated on the Masons, thought they were communist. Apparently the Masons were the intellectuals of the day, and Franco did not like those folks. It sounds a little bit like 2025…..

On Friday, I signed up for a monument tour, in Spanish, because that was what was available. It was an excellent tour; it took us to the university of Salamanca, which is the oldest in Spain, and one of the oldest in Europe. we also visited the new and the old cathedral. The new cathedral is very difficult to get your head around. It is huge and extremely high. Lots of beautiful artwork.

Salamanca has a unique arch, came from the Muslims

They replaced some deteriorated stone carving
with new stone carving.  Look for the astronaut.

In the afternoon, I decided to visit two more museums, because of course you can never visit too many museums. The first one was the museum of commerce, which I enjoyed very much, with a special exhibit on radios and a lot of old photos. The second museum was the contemporary art museum called Domus Artium., a converted jail. As is often the case in contemporary art museums, there was a lot there that I did not understand or appreciate. I tend to think that art needs to show a certain level of skill, and so much of the contemporary art does not. There were some good photos, however, and a well done video of women singing a woman’s story of spousal abuse and jail.

Sometimes I joke, and I’m not sure it’s a joke, that I could go to a big city, and visit two museums a day for a week, and think that I had a great vacation. ;-)