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…
A slightly sweet, slightly sour scent of apples lingers in the squares of Oviedo in
“Take a photo of him,” she says, her eyes smoky with eyeliner, her words smudging together in the Andalucían way.
I glance up at the head on the wall.
On a spring afternoon, with orange blossom filtering the sunshine, I saw my first one. Looming tall and dressed entirely in black, the hood masked his face before rising upwards to a point above his head. His hands were gloved, the dark robe flowing and two, blinking dark eyes…
They may look as though they’re just potatoes with more wrinkles than Mick Jagger and a crusting of salt on the top but
Spain, like many European countries, has plenty of cathedrals.
But how many have an astronaut in their delicately-carved stone?