Our best wishes to the group of Scholars who left us last weekend. Remember that you have a second home in Madrid! When you come to visit the city again, please come see us. We will love to hear how you are doing!
We say goodbye (or better say "see you later") with a lovely photo of the last day lunch and another of the winner of your cohort's photo contest: Our Morgan!
Good luck!
The course is almost over for all of you and soon you will be enjoying your summer like the people in this picture below. Its author is Joaquín Sorolla, whose house-museum is one of AU Madrid's favorite museums. If you have not yet visited it, we suggest you do it, because you are going to love it. If you do, buy the tickets online (at least if you go on a weekend, otherwise it's impossible to get them). You can find a post about this museum in this old post: A Charming Hidden Museum
And now the awaited announcement! The new winners (by a tie) of our photography contest are Yvette Nau for the first photo that can be seen below and Morgan Marsh for the second. You can pick up your prize in Isabel and Eva's office. Congratulations to both of you and thank you very much for participating!
At this time all the groups of the summer programs have gone to Andalusia and have received some notions of Spanish history.
Some of you have shown interest in the figure of Juana la Loca (Joanna of Castile), daughter of the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. She is a tragic character, with a sad ending, which has given rise to a wide variety of novels, plays (the picture in black and white below shows the famous actress Margarita Xirgu playing the role of Juana), movies, but also academic research. Some historians have reviewed the official version and claim a parallel story where Doña Juana comes out better off.
That official version always presented a woman involved in a marriage of convenience to Felipe el Hermoso (Philip the Handsome, the only surviving son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian ), mad with love for his infidelities and his early death. Historians, however, have been expanding and correcting some aspects of that perspective over the years. They remind us, for example, that her father, her husband and her son conspired to remove her from her rightful throne. Also, she died almost imprisoned by her own son in a palace in Tordesillas, what could aggravate or even cause her mental illness. Little by little, theories have also emerged about her "exagerated" reactions to her husband's betrayal, also related to the turbulent political situation in which she lived. Her mortal remains rest in Granada.
Our universal poet García Lorca (another essential character in our history, about whom I invite you to read at least on Wikipedia, to begin with), wrote a minor poem about her when he was 20 and had not yet written his best texts. The poem ends in this way (excuse my clumsy translation, please, the original is here):
You can also watch some movies about her:
LOCURA DE AMOR: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040544/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
JUANA LA LOCA: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0270480/
The first one is from the Franco era and is therefore full of hidden propaganda about his regime (linked to the "glorious" past of Spain).
The second one, filmed in 2001, won many awards.
Read me next week!
Welcome, new AU Spain students! We hope you are enjoying Madrid. Every week we will upload some new ideas to this blog so that your stay here is as pleasant as possible.
Today we recommend an easy and very beautiful visit that may interest you. About 30 minutes by train (below you can see the Renfe lines that you can take and where), you will find the city of Alcalá de Henares (attention: do not get off at the "Alcalá de Henares universidad" stop but at "Alcalá de Henares; the first is that of a modern campus, not the city). Your transportation card will allow you to get there for free.
This place was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. On one hand, it is the hometown of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote (this writer is our Shakespeare). You can visit his home and learn about his life and work, and why he is such an important figure in our country. And on the other hand, it has a beautiful university from the late fifteenth century and other artistic monuments that you cannot miss. Finally, being a university city, the offer of FREE and good-sized tapas is spectacular. Have fun!
