Cosas variadas

Many things happened today.
Most importantly, I rode the train an hour north of Madrid. I wanted to see El Valle de los Caídos, a monument to the 'glories of fascism and the Catholic Church' built in the 1940's-50's by the dictator Francisco Franco. Unfortunately, I think?, the government closed the memorial until later this year because of renovations. It's pretty strange that the present, democratically elected government keeps maintaining a monument entirely devoted to authoritarian rule. Oh, and wholesale murder of Spanish citizens. There is a law called "La Ley de Memoria" that specifically says that any Spanish government cannot erase the past, regardless of its awfulness. The memory law tries to keep the evil past visible in the future so that, the hope goes, evil will not return. The present government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero found a loophole in the memory law that allowed them to remove symbols of Franco's rule, such as statues of the man himself *and* symbols of his Fascist political party, La Falange. El Valle de los Caídos (the Valley of the Fallen) contains many fascist symbols. To ameliorate the discomfort of tourists of all nationalities, the Government covered up the symbols with red tapestries. You might think "well, doesn't the memory law prohibit this?" and the answer is: Yes, it does. The loophole is that the red tapestries do not destroy (the key verb in Spanish is 'borrar,' meaning 'to erase.' The law prohibits any erasing of the past; the government goes around the letter of the law -- but, I reason, not its spirit -- by erecting the tapestries.

Wow, I wrote a lot about a place that I didn't get to visit!

La Comunidad de Madrid (I'll stop to explain that there are two Madrids: the Ayuntamiento ((The City of)) and the Comunidad ((The State of)) -- the Ayuntamiento de Madrid sits inside the much larger Comunidad de Madrid) has a fantastic network of trains called Las Cercanías which spread nearly 50 miles outside the city's borders into other towns within La Comunidad. Imagine if Chicago's CTA also connected South Bend or Milwaukee and you'll have a good idea. So, I walked to the central train station called Atocha and bought a round trip train ride to El Escorial Monestary. The cost was only six euros and the travel time just over an hour. I enjoyed the ride immensely because I saw cows grazing in open fields (which surely would upset American agribusiness), wild deer-like animals, and lots of small towns. I uploaded quite a few pictures from today's voyage into the Picasa photo album, so take a look. Anyway, El Escorial is famous for a few reasons but the most important is its collection of religious (Catholic) texts, ornate monastery, and -- what I enjoyed the most -- El Panteón de los Reyes: The Patheon of Kings. Inside the Pantheon are the tombs/crypts of Spain's royal families beginning in the 1500s and continuing up until today. I read that the present king, Juan Carlos I, and his family will also be interred in the Pantheon. I must say that seeing the caskets of actual kings and queens had a solemness effect. Oh, photography whilst inside El Escorial is prohibited so check out pictures on the site's Wikipedia entry: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripta_Real_del_Monasterio_de_El_Escorial

Much more happened today. A lot, really; but, I feel exhausted. This evening I ran more or less 4 miles through Madrid and that was *after* walking all day through El Escorial (including uphill nearly 1.5 miles).