Everything’s still, save for a breeze so slight it’s invisible until it reaches the window and makes the curtains sigh. I hear railway sounds from another century, a whistle and muted metal clanging, before the landscape of northern Spain picks itself up and learns to glide by.

I’m not used to seeing hedgerows at right angles and beaches with vertical shorelines…

Standing beneath the swirls of the Oscar Niemeyer Centre in Avilés, the world seems to fall away. The earth, that only moments ago felt sturdy and reliable, now spins with a heaviness that threatens to topple my balance. Harsh white lines cut an outline against the sky:

A slightly sweet, slightly sour scent of apples lingers in the squares of Oviedo in northern Spain. Inside the siderias, it doesn’t so much linger as call up every one of its friends and invite them to a party.