Get out your walking boots and prepare to discover the hidden delights of Figueres. Come on a market day (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) and bring a stout basket. Forget Dalì for today, but plan to come again midweek in midwinter and spend a day taking in all five museums.
The legend of Fenouil and Fenouille was so familiar along the coast that Minister Jules Pams arranged for a statue be put up in Port Vendres to immortalise the lovers.
Cultural artefacts have long been targeted by armies as a demonstration of their superiority, dominance and power. The Spanish Civil War and WW2 were no different. Collectors and curators were therefore anxious to protect their cultural heritage.
During the Retirada, Spanish Republicans fleeing the Franco regime poured over the border into the P-O. But it wasn’t just people, many important pieces of artwork joined the exodus.
Originally designed as a home, then a musée d’art, check out the latest exhibition at the Case Carrère, Bages
You would think that the shameful, over crowded camps on the P-O beaches would be unlikely places for art to flourish….READ ON
1939 was a difficult year for France. Not only did it experience the indignity of an invasion on its North East border from Hitler’s hordes late in the year, the country suffered a very different incursion in its far South-West in the early months of the year.
French journalist and fiction writer Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux (1868 -1927) is best known for writing the novel ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra), first published in 1909
You may well have heard of Laurie Lee’s famous «Cider with Rosie”, a well known A Level lit study in the 60s and 70s, but did you know that it is one of a semi-autobiographical trilogy?
A 16th Century poet, Joachim du Bellay, wrote this charming little sonnet, celebrating the fun of Shrove Tuesday and Carnival