A optional tour took may of us some forty-five minutes out of Madrid this morning to visit El Escorial, a royal mausoleum for the Spanish Hapsburg and Bourbon dynasties, a monastery for monks charged with reciting endless prayers for the peaceful repose of royal souls and a school embracing humanism as a counter-reformation tool designed to help reform and revive Catholocism beginning in the late sixteenth century following Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation. The enormous complex was the brainchild of King Phillip II who himself lived, ruled and died in his rather unpretentious chambers adjacent to the central catheral at its core.
Architecturally, the buildings reflect the emerging Renaissance style of straight line, unadorned simplicity but with touches of Counter-Reformation grandeur apparent everywhere as well. The sharp contrasts between the two are most apparent when comparing the king's austere living quarters with the more sumptuous decor of the cathederal and monastery portions of the building.
Before returning, we stopped off to see the Valley of the Fallen, a grandiose cathederal and burial site honoring Francisco Franco and those Spaniards who died fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939). The underground monument carved out of the mountain side and topped by a gigantic stone cross is impressive indeed -- and evidently still stirs contradictory feelings among those Spaniards whose wartime-related experiences have still not entirely faded away.
Back in Madrid Heidi and Lee took the subway across town to Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia to view Picasso's impressive and moving Guernica and some of the artifacts and photos related to the production of this magnificant work of art.
Later we met Carole Phipps, a good friend from Shaker Heights who was in the city with another tour group, for dinner followed by
churros (deep fried light doughy strips)
and chocolate at Chocolateria San Gines, a Maridian institution dating back to 1894.
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