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Hemingway Adventure
Valencia, Spain (first day)
Spielberg looms over the Titanic and assorted Oscars.
They're a lot more complex and sophisticated nowadays, but the intention remains to poke fun, to be disrespectful and entertaining at the same time.Hard by a handsome eighteenth-century church in the Plaza del Pilar rises a huge and curvaceous flapper girl surrounded by a grotesquely made-up Mae West stretched out on a couch, alongside beaded madames and crazed sax-players. Outside the central market is a looming likeness of Steven Spielberg aboard the Titanic, holding a film camera from which springs the ET bicycle.
Politics, the church and the media are popular targets for the designers. At one falla I notice a real life TV presenter being filmed in front of a grotesque and joyfully lewd caricature of a trouserless television presenter.
Just as I'm feeling rather thankful for my anonymity, a short fair-haired man hurrying by turns and stops and greets me cordially. He says we've met before, at one of Graham Chapman's parties in the early seventies.
His name is Robert Misik and he's a Dutchman living and working in Valencia. He offers his help if there's anything we want. There is, of course. Like tickets to one of the bullfights and a bullfighter who will agree to talk to us.
Robert barely blinks at this and, after a quick exchange of numbers, vanishes into the crowds who are now gathering two or three deep along the route of yet another procession. This one lasts several hours as women from the various falla groups carry flowers through the city to a forty-foot high wooden effigy of the Virgin Mary. Every offering of flowers is then handed up to a special team which arranges them into a giant floral-tapestry. It sounds awful but it is done with great style and as it seems to give at least half the entire female population of Valencia the chance to participate, it is also truly democratic.
This evening, over a very fine meal of crayfish and delicately cooked, zingily fresh merluza (which sounds so much more exotic than hake) Robert brings us the good news that one of the top matadors at this year's feria has agreed to meet me early tomorrow morning, the day before his fight.
Choose another day from Hemingway Adventure
PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Valencia, Spain (first day)
- Country/sea: Spain
- Place: Valencia
- Book page no: 118
Bookmarks will keep your place in one or more series. But you'll need to register and/or log in.
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