Wings To Spain

[Music] the towers of Madrid say something of an ancestry that is both Christian and Muslim baroque and moorish there is something of everything in the Prado Spain's great treasury of paintings Velazquez Koya el Greco Ribera amore oh and an almost unending roll call of the Immortals make the Prado all by itself worth a trip to Spain [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Madrid is modern Spain in a country where according to some foreigners are people who come from the next town all this has changed through one of Spain's most recent evolutions the massive advent of a Spain on wheels [Music] the towns and villages of Spain rise abruptly unexpectedly razorsharp from the countryside like islands on the land sometimes like the fortresses they truly were [Music] [Music] sherry is the wine of head Eze bottled sunshine local saying has it no one has managed to create it outside this particular Andalucian region of Spain [Music] I stamped the earth therefore I exist the floor symbolically the solid earth itself is the very medium of the flamenco [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I am the first of God's creatures and must celebrate the fact thus the Matador battles a competitor worthy of his cape and steel the corrida is ritual more than sport drama more than a contest the best-preserved country in Europe the late evil and war characterized Spain Segovia's 10 mile-long Roman aqueducts is still in use today the most perfect walled city on earth Avila with a magnificence that was Rome is Spain it is as if the long departed six centuries of Roman rule are still part of the environment today [Music] [Applause] Toledo a village before the Romans came capital of the Visigothic Kingdom after the Romans fell from power an emirate of the Moors who later conquered most of Spain a Toledo Church still flaunts the chains that kept the Christian soldiers captive until the Spaniards re1 their independence [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Toledo once one of Europe's richest commercial and cultural centers where Christian and Muslim and Jew learned to live and to work together for many centuries [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] like unto the villages the churches and monasteries of Spain bear the fortress like image of history to protect the Christian faith against the conquering Moors the Benedictines built the shrine of the black Virgin of Montserrat high in the jagged almost unreachable mountains near Barcelona thus the moorish conquest set a permanent stamp upon the face of spain the great cathedral of seville built over a mosque that once dominated the site is the world's largest gothic building [Music] the casbah like lanes and alleys a touch of North Africa in modern Spain [Music] the mores occupiers of Spain for seven centuries planted their civilization and power their art and architecture upon Spanish soil nowhere more predominantly than in Cordova [Music] [Applause] graceful patios open unto many of Kauravas simple homes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the glory of Moorish architecture was once a Roman temple now a Catholic Church the Moors built their Great Mosque the mesquita in the 8th century [Music] a stone forest of columns of Onyx and marble Jasper and granite the mesquita proclaims to this day the intent of the Moors to build the mesquita to surpass all other mosques anywhere in Islam in its magnificence of all the lands the Moors had seen in Europe and Africa none came so close to the heaven described in the Quran as the plain of Granada here they built a great city and atop its central hill a palace of ochre red or in arabic al Umbra al Umbra a palace befitting paradise [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in one great final push the forces of Isabella crushed the Moorish power in Spain at this very alambre this final victory of the Christian forces in the year 1492 became a time for celebration [Music] five centuries since the victory at Granada are not enough to erase the memories of an enduring faith here religious Spain expresses her convictions with the flowers of the field much as Greece confer the laurels Rome the olive wreath this is Corpus Christi day in CJIs near Barcelona [Music] the fiestas of the Rome area celebrates the finding of an image of the Virgin in a hollow tree trunk [Music] [Applause] in the festival itself the changing moods of the pilgrims from intense prayer to merriment and dancing are a miniature of Spain for self [Applause] [Music] in 1492 Spain freed at last from the Moorish overlords looked to new outlets for her energies during this very room area festival some sailors overstayed their leave thus delaying the departure of one Christopher Columbus who was impatient to begin his voyage to the distant East Spain herself can you sum up a nation in her proudest moments the triumph at Granada led to undreamed-of conquests barcelona pays homage to Christopher Columbus who points the way west across an ocean said to flow over the edge of the earth to this very harbor he returned in triumph received by Ferdinand and Isabella he presented the first Americans ever to set foot on European soil thus Barcelona's role as the Gateway to Spain has been confirmed by time Barcelona is the industrial commercial capital of Spain in the arts Barcelona has been avant-garde since the 19th century as evidenced by the fantastic creations of the architect Gaudi a forerunner of today's ultra-modern Spanish artists Gau DS great cathedral bearing his unique stamp has been under construction since 1881 [Music] Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and the Catalans who speak their own language among themselves Spanish to everyone else [Music] Barcelona Spanish village was built as part of the World's Fair of 1929 it compresses much of Spain into a few acres the city's great Cathedral built in the Spanish tradition over a Roman temple and a Moorish mosque witnesses a strange sight every Sunday after services [Music] the traditional Sunday morning dance called the sadhana before the cathedral reveals something of the Spaniards reserved and dignity yes of all peoples in Europe the Spaniards are among the easiest to meet easiest to talk to easiest to be with in a world that's in a hurry the Spaniard has the time to be polite [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thus the Catalan sadhana a dance believed to have originated with the Sun worshipers themselves who antedated even the Romans even the Phoenicians [Music] [Applause] [Music] the windmills of the almost rainless Mediterranean island of Majorca pump fresh water from wells not far from the sea they are landmarks harbingers of yet another Spain menorca Ibiza and then the Costa Brava and the Costa del Sol [Music] enamoured as you may become of sea and sand and the little cafes alongside The Sun Also Rises elsewhere in Pamplona every day for two weeks in July at 7 a.m. rockets signal the start of the Running of the Bulls [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] here on the great plane of La Mancha the Spanish character itself was immortalized in the person's of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza the one seen giants disguised as windmills the other down-to-earth and realistic to the core thus the mystic kept company with the pragmatist [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Spain herself Europe's third largest country is no longer beyond Europe just because she is beyond the Pyrenees the 10,000 foot wall between Iberia and the rest of the continent Spain still unshadowed before the tremendous impact of the 20th century preserves a Europe that is disappearing elsewhere [Music]