Discovering Cantabria: El capricho de Gaudí

Villa Quijano, better known as El Capricho, is a modernist building located in Comillas. It was a project by Antoni Gaudí and built between 1883 and 1885, commissioned by Máximo Díaz de Quijano.

This work belongs to the orientalist stage of Gaudí, period in which the architect made a series of works of marked oriental taste, inspired by the art of the Near and Far East, as well as in the Hispanic Islamic art, mainly the Mudejar and Nasrid.

The building fell into disrepair after the Civil War, a state in which it continued despite its declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest in 1969. In 1977 the last descendant of the López-Díaz de Quijano, sold the property to businessman Antonio Díaz who Restored in 1988 and turned it into a restaurant. In 1992 it was bought by the Japanese group Mido Development. Finally, in 2009, the building became a museum.

CURIOSITIES

• It was a palace designed to fix the summer residence of its owner.
• It is one of the few works that Gaudí designed outside Catalonia.
• It is framed in a privileged natural environment, between sea and mountains, which must have impacted on its day.
• At first glance you can not appreciate the amount of details and ingenious solutions you have.
• Gaudí distributed the rooms of the Capricho based on day-to-day activities, making, in turn, follow the path of the sun (therefore the main symbol of this building are sunflowers).

For more information: https://www.elcaprichodegaudi.com/ 

There you can find out the rates to visit it, opening hours, how to get there ... besides indicating on your own page your social networks with which you can see photographs or even videos of the place.

-Marta.

Discovering Cantabria: Santander's Cathedral

The current building of the Cathedral of Santander are two overlapping churches of Gothic style.

The lower, was built in the first third of s. XIII is the parish of Christ and the superior was built during that century and had to be rebuilt and expanded in 1941.

In the Middle Ages it was the Abbey of San Emeterio and San Celedonio, later it was the Collegiate Church of the Holy Bodies and later in 1754 in the Cathedral of Santander.

THE LOW CHURCH OR THE CHRIST

It consists of three naves with four sections, plus the apses (part of the church located at the head, which houses the altar table). It measures 31 meters long and 18 meters wide. It is accessed by two doors, its style is transition from Romanesque to Gothic.Surprise the arches for such low vaults and the strong pilasters that support the upper church. Most of the capitals and keys have vegetal decoration, in some there is symbolic iconography.

During the archaeological excavations (1883) on the floor of the Church of Christ appeared abundant remains of a primitive Roman settlement, thermal facilities and fortification. You can see part of these excavations behind the area of ​​glazed floor. The chamber of the Roman oven was where the heads of the Holy Martyrs were kept during the Middle Ages: San Emeterio and San Celedonio.

THE HIGH CHURCH

The main access door opens to the cloister on the south.

In the s. XVI and XVII chapels were built nearby and in 1941 after the fire had to make some reforms. It was reopened to the cult in 1953, with double capacity thanks to the transept, dome, apse and ambulatory. The Gothic style was respected in the recovered part.

The little decoration consists of corbels, capitals, keys and a frieze of both vegetal and historical character. At the doors of access, the concentrated decorative abundance attracts attention where you can see real shields of castles and lions from Spain.

INSIDE

As the fire of 1941 burned the interior of the high church, most of the altarpieces except one or come from other churches or are new.

Inside the Cathedral of Santander there are several chapels where you will find:

• The marble pile that has Arabic inscriptions brought by the Cantabrian sailors conquerors of Seville.
• On the ambulatory, contemplate the beautiful fresco on a grandstand.
• Altar with reliquary of medieval origin.
• The choir of the Cabildo
• On the outside of the tower we find the monumental statues of the 4 evangelists.

• In the nave of the North is the tomb of the Santander-born writer Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo.

THE CLOISTER

It is a sober Gothic.

The naves are closed to the garden by arched galleries and slender mullions, reinforced by robust curved arches.

All the ships were marked in chapels, of which two stand out:

• The one of San Pedro where the general councils of the town were celebrated.
• The one of Santiago that was built by the important family of real shipowners of the Escalante.

Pics:

- https://www.yelp.es/biz_photos/catedral-de-santander-santander

-http://eltomavistasdesantander.com/2013/06/20/la-iglesia-del-cristo-se-construyo-sobre-una-terma-romana/

-Marta.

Female writer: Laura Gallego (1977-)

Discovering Cantabria: Bay of Santander

Hi guys! I'm Marta, how long without showing up here, right?

If you did not know, I'm in charge of the section "Discovering Cantabria", today I'm going to talk a bit about Santander Bay and show some pictures, I hope you like it.

It is located in the central area of the Cantabrian coast, next to the regional capital. It is the largest in Cantabria and it is located in the port of Santander. It is formed by the union of several minor rivers, such as those of Solía, San Salvador and Cubas, this last mouth of the Miera River, and on its banks there are extensive and crowded beaches such as those of Peligros, La Magdalena and Bikinis in Santander, El Puntal, Somo.

The Bay of Santander is the only one in Spain that belongs to the Club of the Most Beautiful Bays in the World.

Photographs by: @mccshoot

-Marta.

Female writer: Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Discovering Cantabria: Palacio de La Magdalena

Hi guys! In this blog entry you will know a new place in Cantabria. Today I will introduce you to the Palacio de la Magdalena, and also I will tell you some curious facts about it.

The Palacio de La Magdalena is a building laid on the peninsula of Magdalena, opposite the island of Mouro, in Santander (Cantabria, Spain), and that was built between 1909 and 1911, to accommodate the Spanish Royal Family. In 1977, it happened to be the property of the municipality of Santander

CURIOUS FACTS

• The Palace served for several functions during eight decades, that were damaging its state: international summer courses were held, it was a hospital, temporary residence for the victims of the Santander fire, it was a concentration camp for the prisoners of the dictatorship ...
• In these courses, great people from Spain have given classes throughout the summers, among them Miguel de Unamuno or Federico Garcia Lorca.
• It is currently the venue for conferences and meetings; during the summer the City Council transfers it to the Menéndez Pelayo International University as the center of its activities. In addition, it preserves a museum area that recreates the former Royal Residence and can also be visited.

• The Magdalena Palace was the scene of the Gran Hotel series: the exteriors of the series were filmed in the palace gardens.
• In the park of the Magdalena Palace there are many miniature wooden statues that Rogelio Verdeja molds with a chainsaw in his dead moments

Photographer

-Marta.

Female writer: Aphra Behn (1640-1689)

 

Discovering Cantabria: La Virgen del Mar

La Virgen del Mar is the patron saint of Santander since 1979. To this shrine comes whole ship’s crews after hard times onboard. The Santander bishopric chronicle that the carving appears floating in the coast, so it may come from a shipwreck. The people who lived nearby tried to build the shrine in Rostrío, but the very next day the building materials appear back where the carving was found. They take heed of the message and erect the shrine in the isle of San Román de la Llanilla.

The location of the shrine of La Virgen del Mar is near the sea. This cause the partially destruction during the storms. Perhaps its biggest destruction was at the end of the seventeenth century. The first shrine dates from about 1400 but there was another after because it is known that there was an ancient shrine in 1315.

The festivity of La Virgen del Mar it is held on Pentecost Monday, that is, 51 after the Resurrection Sunday. That is why every year it changes the date.

Few days after the festivity as the patron saint of Santander, the icon of the Virgin is carried in a night procession with light torches to the parish of San Román. Then, in her big day, is also carried back in a procession led by the bishop and the mayor of Santander to his former place, the shrine of La Virgen del Mar. That day, the city council offers a free lunch outdoors to every one that is in the isle. This lunch consists of the typical Cocido Montañés (highland stew) and Sardinada (a barbeque of sardines). In the afternoon there are several activities and the festivity is finish with a traditional ‘romeria’.

INSTAGRAM  photographer

-Marta.

'The handmaid's tale' by Margaret Atwood

Title: ‘The handmaid’s tale’

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Vintage Classics (Penguin)

Pages: 479

Year: 1985

IBSN-13: 9781784871444

Price: 6.01 (Amazon)

Note: 10

Travel tips

Hi everybody!

I’m Saru and I am responsible of the travel section. I will give you some tips and advises and I will talk about my experiences in the places I have been to.

First, I would like to talk about is the most difficult part about organizing a trip, the destination and the plane tickets. I am very curious, and I make a lot of researchs and follow a lot of Instagram profiles of cities or countries tourist offices as well as photographers or hashtags. Each time I see an interesting place, landmark, landscape, anything worth visiting, I tag it in Google Maps as “want to go” or “starred place”. When I save enough money, I choose a destination among the ones marked in the map. Then, I start to search through internet webpages about that destination to investigate about the prices, customs, traditions, etc.

Once I have read all of that, I look through different flight search engines to find out what are the cheapest companies that flight to that place (that kind of webpages used to make you pay a bit more for being the intermediaries) and what are the most common layovers. Once I write down all that information I start to search myself for similar flights in the low-cost companies’ sites. I used to travel with Norwegian, but I have also travelled with Ryanair and Transavia. I don’t like Transavia because it only allows you to travel with one piece of baggage and they doesn’t assure you that it will get in the cabin and they will make you check it in, making you pay for it. The good thing about Norwegian is that they have the ‘low-cost calendar’ and you can see where you can see the prices of the flight all the days of the month, allowing you to choose the cheapest.

I am from Spain, therefore the best airports from where to travel are Barcelona and Alicante, but I am from the north (Santander) so the best airport for me is Madrid, where I also can get cheap deals.

Norwegian is a Scandinavian enterprise (from Norway) so the cheapest flights they offer are to fennoscandinavia. Then, you can, for sure, find a cheap flight making a ‘layover’ (you buy separately both flights) in Oslo, Stockholm or Copenhagen. Thanks to this I went to Finland (buying Madrid-Stockholm, Stockholm-Helsinki and Helsinki-Madrid) for 120€ when a direct flight was 210€, almost 100€ cheaper.

Beware of the cookies! Your computer saves the cookies of the webpages you visit and, true fact, the prices rises each time you make the same search. So, I recommend you to delete the cookies each time before researching and to write down in a notebook the prices and the day of the week because, as many of you already know, it is cheaper to travel early in the morning or late in the day and in Tuesday and Thursday. Beware! I am talking about the best hour to travel, not the best time to buy the tickets! Ryanair uses a tool for the selling of tickets that vary the prices according to the demand. Therefore, to buy to Ryanair the best is to buy when people do not use the computer, I would venture to say that about 9/10 in the morning or 12/1 in the night.

Well, these are the tricks and tips I use when I buy plane tickets. I will upload more tips and advices for your trips.

Greetings!

Saru.