Road Trip Spain: Art on the Autovía Mudéjar, Route A-23

This roadside sculpture nicely evokes the Autovía Mudéjar
iconography of highway meets Mudéjar star.

I've long been struck by all the art sculptures one encounters along the streets, roundabouts, and highways of Spain. America, for all of its "On the Road" car culture, can't beat Spain for its public investment in decorating its byways with visual spectacles designed by Spanish artists. My Spanish family and I frequently take road trips out of Valencia, many of which utilize a particularly well-decorated highway, the Autovía Mudejar or A-23, which runs from Sagunt to north of Huesca, and which features sculptures and tile decorations much of which invoke the "Mudéjar" art tradition of the moors who stayed in Spain after the reconquista. The highway links up to a variety of wonderful day-trip jaunts and "pueblos con encanto", such as Sagunt, Albarracín, and Linares de Mora, among others.

The 434 kilometer trajectory of the Autovía Mudéjar highway.

On the day I took most of these photos, there were a lot of cars like this one on the road
with bikes on top... Cycling team cars from La Vuelta a España cycling race,
moving bikes from the Jaca stage the day before to the Alcañiz site for that day's race.

Of course, the most famous highway decoration in Spain is the Osborne "toro", the highly popular bull logo billboards originally used to sell Osborne's sherry, left up all across Spain even after the government banned all other highway billboard advertising in 1994. The bull transcended its commercial roots to become a staple of Spanish national iconography. This kind of advertising-turned-pop-culture is more akin to the Route 66 Americana one finds back Stateside.

But in Spain, and especially along the Autovía Mudéjar highway section between Zaragoza and Huesca, one finds works of sculpture planted there not for profit, but solely for the edification of highway drivers. Some are quite impressive, others merely elegant embellishments to the scenery, and many are just plain humorous.

On a recent trip up to the Spanish Pyrenees and the Valle de Tena, me and the family once again drove along this visual feast, and I decided to take the opportunity to photograph some examples. Here are some photos of sculptures that I managed to photograph despite driving by them at 120 kmph...

Many of the sculptures and embellishments follow a decidedly Mudéjar design...

For a period of the highway, the overpasses are marked with these Mudéjar stars.

There is also a segment of the A-23 highway where one can see a wide variety of tiled or clay displays under the overpasses, on the side. Though these were much harder to capture in a photograph while on the go...

I got a kick out of this shrub design at one point along the Mudejar highway...

Then there are the curious, abstract art sculptures...

These sculptures, for example, which I took to resemble palm trees.
Note the painted underpass art on the left.

This sculpture looks like a cigarette in cigarette holder. Not sure why it was chosen for highway art.

This one near Zaragoza reminds me of a dancing fiddler.

I thought this sculpture was particularly cute and ingenious...
looking like an old-fashioned road signpost.

This post-modern shape on the left marks a highway exit roundabout

While I'm at it, it's worth mentioning other joys that come with driving the Spanish countryside... above all the scenic landscape...

So this is where all that "aceite de girasol" comes from...

Nothing more Spanish than windmills on the horizon...

And occasionally there were some real gems of sculptures to be found...

I liked this twist on the Osborne bull.

This region is famous for its "Jamón de Teruel", so it's only natural
that one sculpture would take up the jamón itself as an inspiration.
What a riot suddenly seeing this jamón looming large on the side
of the road.

My particular favorites along this stretch of highway were two of San Jorge (patron saint of the Crown of Aragon) killing the dragon, one located just north of Huesca and the other just south of the turnoff for Albarracín...

The Huesca San Jorge, shown killing the dragon that is attacking his horse

The Huesca San Jorge shown from a different angle

The other San Jorge located nearer to Albarracín, which nicely blends into
the rocky terrain along the highway.

And this is just a sample of one stretch of highway. I don't include the many other sculptures I've seen which decorate the Valencia city's roundabouts, or curiosities of other Spanish roads and highways traversed.

I propose to my readers that we make a game of it, much like my earlier "Great Granada Hunt" game. Have you discovered great "Road Art" in your local regions of Spain? If so, email a photo of it to me or a link to your blog post on it, and I'll include it in this post (with proper credits and linkbacks) in a "Viewer's Choice" section. Thanks!

It's the Little Things: Spain's True Wealth

I'm not exactly known for my brevity, but there are these little things I keep coming across, these beautiful treasures of Valencia, or of Spain, that I want to share. And I'm going to have to learn to share them without going on and on and on... Oh drat! There I go again.

For example, I recently came across this incredible video about "The birds of Spain" (for info on the types of birds shown in the video, read here), whose breathtaking footage was perfect for lifting me out of a funk from those (trivial) day-to-day problems:

The birds of Spain from Wildglimpses on Vimeo.

The video was made by one Raúl Tomás Granizo, a young Spanish freelance wildlife filmaker and nature photographer whose video exploits you can follow at his Vimeo Wildglimpses page or his personal webpage, Wildglimpses.com. One of Spain's many treasures is its biodiversity, particularly in birds because the Iberian Peninsula is a crossroads of sorts for birds migrating between Europe and Africa.

Having recently returned from the Pyrenees, I was also smitten with this other video by him, "Pyrenees, the mountains of light", shot mainly in my beloved Valle de Tena:

Pyrenees, the mountains of light from Wildglimpses on Vimeo.

Raúl, I'm a fan! Keep sharing these wonderful nature videos!

I share them with all of you out there who are reading as a salve for all the bruises and burns you might be feeling from the continued onslaught of overhyped negative press about Spain's economy. These videos kind of put it back in perspective... they remind us of Spain's true wealth.

Local Vocab: "El Afilador"

There are those city sounds, street noises, that become a kind of urban soundtrack and a distinct background to whichever city or neighborhood you live in. One periodic noise that you might hear in the streets of most Spanish cities is the flute call of the "afilador" (knife grinder). When I first heard it, I thought it was some new kind of street parade that I didn't yet know about. It sounded to me like a magical summoning straight out of a fairytale.


Click to hear my audio recording of the afilador passing by my house

The afilador in Goya's time

When my wife told me what it was, a traveling street vendor who sharpens people's kitchen knives, I was even more floored. That there was still a profession who made their living as a traveling trader or vendor just seemed, well, medieval. And the afilador does have old roots, seen here in this painting by Goya. It seems like one of those professions which should have gone extinct a long time ago, an obsolete occupation. But it's still going here in Spain, and if you hear it, you can run downstairs with your knives and he will most certainly sharpen them.

Nowadays, they often move around the city by bicycle, and in general I hear them pass by my house about once a month. It adds a little charm to city living here.

The afilador today