¡Arriba España!

the hottest country in europe, spain vaults into the 21st century

Spain is snapping and sizzling like oil in a red-hot paella pan. In a scant decade, the former land of sun-washed ennui has leapt from the rim of the Third World to the cusp of the 21st Century. Northern Europeans once sneered that Africa began at the Pyrenees. Now, Teutonic tycoons with umlauts in their logos look over their shoulders and see Spain gaining on them. Inflation is down, investment is through the roof and it has the highest-revving economy in Europe. And it's about to kick into turbodrive. The year to watch is 1992, a watershed of profound once and future significance. It's the fifth centennial of Queen Isabella's decision to underwrite a voyage by a man known to her as Cristóbal Colón. He bumped into an empire while she was busy ending eight centuries of Arab occupation. It is also the year the Common Market has chosen to drop its internal customs barriers, the longest step yet toward a united Europe. To celebrate, Barcelona nabbed the summer Olympics, Seville is mounting a six-month-long world's fair and Madrid has been designated "cultural capital" of the entire continent. All in 1992. No nation had a longer way to go. For nearly 40 years, Spain had been pinned in place by a rotund generalissimo named Francisco Franco, who managed to repeal several centuries. Couples were arrested for necking in public and men had to wear tops on their bathing suits at a time when France was inventing the monokini. While London swung, roosters were making wake-up calls in Madrid. When, in 1975, Franco finally gasped his last, after the most attenuated mortal illness in memory, the loudest sound was of closets opening.

Spaniards blinked and floundered in the light of what they dubbed La Libertad. They were baffled by all those...choices! Options! Alternatives! The sampling of once-forbidden fruits was nearly universal. Transvestites and punks and porn invaded the streets. Grass and hashish were decriminalized. Crime escalated. A new generation of magazines and newspapers, free of censorship, shoved at the boundaries of taste and credulity. La Movida, a loose coalition of nose-thumbing film makers, fashion designers and artists, outdid even them. Every week saw another strike or demonstration or election.

Spain made itself, in other words, a democracy. And today's Spain constitutes the best argument for that form of imperfect government since Thomas Jefferson. Now is the time to go, to witness a country reinventing itself. In 1992, there may not be room.

Spain is already the destination of first choice for its European Economic Community compatriots. Nearly 55,000,000 people flood over the borders every year, leaving behind almost 17 billion dollars in francs, pounds, marks, yen and greenbacks. They are drawn by a place that piques intellects and senses at every turn. A recent PR campaign held that Spain was "all Europe in a single country." Never has there been more truth in advertising. Name a need, a quirk, a kick, a desire...it's there. Sleep in an 11th Century castle. Walk by moonlight in a Roman theater. Dine as well as on the Right Bank. Swim in January on a subtropical island. Like Italy and unlike France or England, Spain boasts three great cities, not just one. And within a day's trip of Madrid, Barcelona and Seville are a dozen more--smaller but nearly as engrossing.

A curious brand of supply-side socialism is the engine behind much of the country's growth, and pragmatic prime minister Felipe González is its driver. The results are more Thatcher than Marx. State-owned industries are going private, caps have been imposed on union wage settlements, international banks and conglomerates have been allowed to rush in and carve out slices.

Spain, Inc., was long shrouded and stultified by ham-handed civil bureaucracies. The travel agency you used, the plane in which you flew, the car you rented, the gasoline you bought were all in the hands of (continued on page 200) ¡Arriba España! (continued from page 162) the government. González--an avowed socialist, remember--has been selling them off for seven years. The latest to go partially private was Repsol, the state oil behemoth, and Iberia Airlines is rumored next on the block. Modern Madrid bristles with towers housing multinationals. General Motors, IBM, Xerox, ITT, General Electric, Chase Manhattan and TRW are only a few that count themselves in on the feeding frenzy. Ford builds cars near Valencia, Citibank has branches in small provincial capitals, Seiko makes watches, Olivetti assembles typewriters.

Trickle-down has been as uneven as under Maggie and Ronnie, but it has happened. I bought a house in a village in rural Aragón the year the little dictator went to his reward. The only television sets in town were in the bars on the main square, and the most envied farmers were the three who owned pony-sized tractors. The 47 others had mules and carts if they were lucky, donkeys if they weren't. By last summer, roofs bristled with antennas, the transportation ratio was reversed and the last three mules were looking poorly.

Gain a lot, lose a little. The construction crane may be the truest symbol of Spain's surging prosperity. Shaped like an inverted L, it looms over every city, town and beach. By 1992, there will be more than 3500 miles of new roads and highways, no irrelevancy in a country where a Sunday drive in the country has always been an exercise in terror.

But the captivating soul of Spain remains. Acolytes of Papa Hemingway still fling themselves into encierro, the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Castanets and guitars sound in shadows scented by orange blossoms. Aficionados shout "¡Olé!" at a matador's perfect veronica. Fiestas, whether secular debauch or ecclesiastical ecstasy, emblazon every month of the calendar with skyrockets, bonfires, torchlight processions and mock medieval pageantry. Affluence has triggered a blossoming pride in ethnic roots. Matrons and teenagers flock to dance schools to relearn the sevillanas, an exuberant form of flamenco performed by night-club patrons, not pros.

Spain is nirvana for night birds in a world run by morning people. Cocktails at 11 and dinner at midnight are the rule in fashionable circles. Discos don't even begin to fill until two a.m. Whether done up as rococo seragli, postmodernist caverns or neobrutalist prison yards, they thump on to dawn and beyond. Culture is served by open-air jazz and classical concerts in Madrid and Barcelona, by film and opera festivals in San Sebastián and by dance recitals held in the prehistoric cave of Nerja and the Moorish palaces of Granada.

Many visitors to Spain have nothing more elevating in mind than a two-week goof with warm sand up to their ankles. The Costa del Sol accommodates them. Backed by coastal ranges, the nearly unbroken strand runs about 100 miles along the southern lip of the Iberian Peninsula. Between Málaga and Estepona to its west are dozens of tennis courts and a score of championship golf courses. Many of the latter were designed by Robert Trent Jones, which presumably will mean more to the afflicted than it does to me.

Ambivalence tempers my feelings about the "Sun Coast." It is in Spain but not of it, an international enclave with Spanish spoken here signs in shop windows. Jumbo jets daily disgorge regiments of package tourists from Europe, the Middle East and Japan, most of whom stay in hotels booked by nationality. They then blow their six days and five nights drinking the same beer and eating poor imitations of the same food they left behind.

Still, the fabled Mediterranean is right there, bordered by five-star gran lujo resort hotels peopled by lovelies who no longer have to wear bras on the beach. Two hours away are the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, skiable from October to April. The hopelessly fit can thus schuss in the morning, swim or parasail at sunset, then boogie and tell lies until daybreak in the clubs of Torremolinos and Marbella. There are worse ways to spend a week, and it needn't cost more than spring break in Daytona.

Day trips or overnight excursions can be easily combined with beach-blanket bingo. The white villages of Mijas, Ojén and Casares are within easy reach of Marbella, the class act of the Costa del Sol. Testaments to the virtues of architecture without architects, their tiled-roof houses tumble down mountainsides like heaps of sugar cubes.

A little farther away is Granada, a city that would be of no great appeal were it not for the Alhambra. That ridgetop complex of fortresses, palaces and gardens was left behind by Moorish caliphs, evicted from their last major stronghold in Spain in, you guessed it, 1492. Mullahs of the Arab world still mourn its loss. Well they might, for it is easily the equal of the Parthenon in splendor.

The principal attraction of Córdoba, which is somewhat farther from the coast, is a six-acre mosque with a flat roof supported by 800 red-and-white columns with stacked arches. Prelates of the Church Triumphant inserted a grotesque baroque cathedral in the heart of the mosque in the 16th Century, but that desecration only serves to heighten the mysterious grace of the original structure. Outside is the Judería, the ancient Jewish quarter of white houses, cobblestoned streets and patios cascading with flowers. June is the time to go.

April is best for Seville. That is the time of two quintessentially Spanish celebrations, one sacred, the other raucous, if not exactly profane. The nights before Easter, brotherhoods representing 52 neighborhood churches carry immense pasos on their backs through the streets to the cathedral. The floats depict saints and Biblical scenes, the effigies bejeweled, robed in flowers and rendered in meticulous detail. They are led by candle-carrying penitents in conical black hoods and robes. These are startling to American visitors, for a white version of the costume has been subverted to another cause by the Ku Klux Klan.

A week or two later is the April horse fair. A city of tents rises on an empty fairground. Some are furnished with crystal chandeliers and oil paintings, and caterers and orchestras are hired. Others have no more than a few tables and chairs and a record player. Everyone moves in for the week. Sleep is forgotten. Aristocrats and pretenders circulate endlessly on horseback or in carriages, the men (and some women) dressed in flat-brimmed black hats, tight, short jackets and intricately tooled leather chaps. Most women don vivid tiered dresses and lace mantillas, their backs straight, fists on hips, breaking into staccato clapping and foot stamping at any provocation. The flaps of the tents are drawn back to reveal their sevillanas-dancing occupants, a thousand tableaux vivants that don't wind down until morning. Many tents welcome any passer-by for the price of a beer.

Bullfights are held daily during the fair in one of the oldest, most impressive plaza de toros in the country. The drinking, eating and dancing is round the clock, as if Sevillanos wanted to stockpile sins for which to atone during next year's Holy Week.

Seville and the rest of southern Spain are to be avoided in summer, when weeks of 100-degree-plus temperatures are routine. Spaniards then escape to the evergreen coast of the Bay of Biscay, the Mar Cantabrico. Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest corner of Spain, was a pilgrimage site rivaling Rome during the Middle Ages. The city hasn't changed all that much since then. Its centerpiece is a cathedral, a people's church that becomes downright festive during the Feast of Saint James in July. On the 25th of that month, citizens haul out the prized botafumeiro, a giant silver incense burner. It is hung by velvet ropes from the domed transept of the church, then swung in an ever-higher arc until it nearly reaches the ceilings on both sides, trailing contrails of fragrant white smoke. Gasps and squeals from the S.R.O. crowd are hardly worshipful, at least by Protestant standards. Fun in church? And all this preceded and followed by parades and fireworks in the great plaza out front.

Celts settled this region before they moved on to Ireland. They left behind a type of bagpipe called the gaita and the sword dance it accompanies. But food, not folklore, is the best reason to visit the north country. Right where Spain connects with France is the Basque country, split by the border and the source of separatist friction for centuries. Reports of Spanish terrorism nearly always involve extremists of the E.T.A., a sort of Basque I.R.A. Since they target politicians, police and military personnel, they are of minor risk to tourists.

Gastronomes are not deterred, for the Basques are Spain's premiere chefs. Proximity to Gallic culinary influences hasn't hurt, and local restaurateurs have developed a nueva cocina--new cuisine--that even those chauvinistic Michelin Red Guides grudgingly applaud. San Sebastián, a handsome resort city with a scimitar-shaped beach, is the place to sample the causes of approbation. If there's time for only one meal, set aside three hours for Akelarre, on a slope falling to the sea west of the city. Michelin awards it two stars. It deserves three.

Noshing is as good a reason as any to linger in Madrid. The city may have invented tapas and certainly perfected the grazing food that has enjoyed a mild vogue over here. Along and near Victoria Street, hip-to-hip bars ladle out their specialties from platters lining the tops of their counters. Garlic shrimp, fried octopus rings, snails and grilled quail are among offerings that can total 50 or more. Just point to your choices. For an old-time tapas bar that still doesn't rely on microwave technology, seek out La Trucha, near the Plaza Santa Ana.

Madrid was founded by Philip II in 1561, not many years before Peter Minuit bought Manhattan. Long the youngest of major European capitals, it was also the stodgiest. No more. A true 24-hour city, Madrid crackles with the vitality of a citizenry discovering its creativity. Its avant-garde fashion industry makes eyes pop in Paris and Milan. Its nascent film industry has already gained recognition through the quirky flicks of such hot directors as Pedro (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) Almodóvar. The city already had more than 50 museums, including the renowned Prado--home to a magnificent collection of Goyas--but new ones have opened, notably Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, housed in a former 19th Century hospital.

As often as not, night for Madrileños begins at the Cafe de Oriente. Established by a priest turned restaurateur, it boasts a fin de siècle atmosphere and sidewalk tables that pull in everyone from haggard cellists to Sony execs to the studded-leather and fluorescent-cockade crowd. Across the way is the Royal Palace, a 2000-room wedding cake that ranks as the capital's número dos attraction (after the Prado). After a mid-night bracer, the patrons peel off to any of 100 clubs. Discos attract all ages and classes, not just kids and freaks. Those whose complexions have cleared up often choose Joy Eslava, a converted movie theater, or Mau-Mau, in the modern northern district. Al-Andalus is the place to take a turn at the sevillanas.

Madrileños are educating their taste buds, too. Where once the only available foreign edibles were wan chow mein and greasy curries, a new generation of chefs is challenging the conservative Spanish palate. A few among many are the California-outpost Armstrongs, the Franco-Asian El Mentidero de la Villa and the tony northern-Indian Annapurna. The apex of Iberian dining is Zalacain, and it comes very close to perfection.

An entire vacation can easily be spent in Madrid and environs. Within easy range are many of the nation's most compelling smaller cities. Toledo, the capital of the Visigoths and site of two of Spain's handful of synagogues, looks much as it did in El Greco's famous painting. Segovia is dominated by a functional Roman aqueduct. Philip II erected his ponderous Xanadu in El Escorial. Ávila retains its magnificent fortress walls with 88 carefully preserved sentry towers, featured in The Pride and the Passion, a bad Fifties epic starring a skinny Frank Sinatra as a rebel leader.

Barcelona doesn't have as many must-see attractions in its orbit, but then, few want to leave once in its thrall. Certainly I didn't, even the first time. Despite the oppressive Franco regime, the Barcelonéses were then the most progressive, creative and energetic of Spaniards. They still are.

If the rest of Spain is finger-poppin' down the road to '92, Barcelona is at a dead run. Under construction are an Olympic village (to be converted after the event to 14,000 apartments and a museum), a new airport and an extended subway, a dozen hotels, a refurbished Montjuich Stadium and a domed arena. The 1929 Mies van der Rohe Pavilion--the one that showcased the classic Barcelona chair--is being re-created, and the Beaux Arts National Palace has been gutted for a $26,000,000 make-over.

The entire city is primping, cleaning and refurbishing. New parks and plazas fill up with monumental sculptures by such international artists as Roy Lichtenstein and Anthony Caro. They must compete with the works of the late Antonio Gaudi, the Catalan iconoclast whose riveting buildings are surrealism in stone. Conjure up a church designed by Disney and Dali, a glorious, goofy admixture of frozen star bursts, melting lintels, dripping portals and polychromed saints. That gives a wisp of a hint of Gaudí's unfinished cathedral, La Sagrada Família. He outdid himself all over town, with apartment blocks, town houses and parks providing a feast for architecture buffs.

Repasts of the temporal sort are preceded and followed in a multitude of tabernas, boites, bistros, bars, "sexy shows," B-girl havens, night clubs and dance halls sufficient to break Olympian training rules for a year. Mannered bumptiousness meshes with laid-back conviviality. One old-time bar is Quatre Gats, in the ancient Roman quarter, where the youthful Picasso and Miró plotted artistic revolution. Euro synth and Euro trash are made at home in hyperchic Bikini and Nick Havanna. Devotees of the grape slouch negligently in champañerias, which promote the Catalan cavas, wines made by the champagne method.

When the urge for a cleaning respite of wind and sand bubbles up, we head for the Costa Brava, the "Rugged Coast" that curls from Barcelona to the French border. So have millions of others, with the result that much of the coast is drowned in ill-conceived ticky-tack. Isolated pockets of country-squire urbanity persist, however. Top of the bin is Hostal de la Gavina, near the fishing village--cum--resort of San Feliu de Guixols. It is the love child of the late José Ensesa, an industrialist who devoted his life to scouring away all infelicities that might distract from a night at his plush, antique-filled inn.

A meal in the hostel's restaurant demonstrates why the Catalan kitchen is easily the match of the Basque. Afterward, preferably by starlight, we walk out along the mile-long path carved into rock above the silvered crashing sea. At our backs, we sense the palpable vigor and spectacle of Spain, a place of time slip and paradox.

"The hopelessly fit can schuss in the morning, swim or parasail at sunset, then boogie until daybreak."