Lady Harlech assumes command of the situation, Amanda.
I make an effort to recall a time when I felt truly joyful when I am lost. With its surrounding hills obscured by clouds and the Severn running old and wise at the foot of my farm in Shropshire, I frequently get lost when I leave home. However, I can recall waking up to a sense of the land—pungent, salty, and arid—and the sky—stretching like blue silk at dawn—coloring my childhood summers with the black and red of Spain, where black is as red as passion and light is defined by shadow.
At my family’s farm, which was tucked away among the mountains between Alicante and Valencia with the Moorish lilt of its name, Albardanera, reflecting the undulating camel-saddle of hills rising to the east, I first learnt to listen to Spain. We lacked power, and water was carried from wells tucked away in the shade of fig-scented patios and secret gardens. By sluicing water from the mountains down to the lemon, Muscat vines, peaches, and almond groves, we cleansed the salt from the sea away.
When we were little, we roamed the mountainside on wild thyme trails that were strewn with thorns and spider webs. I awoke to the sound of the goats bellowing as they down the stone terraces, the call to prayer from the minaret beyond Denia, and the rhythmic beat of bamboo sticks as our housekeepers José and Maria collected their crop of almonds on sheets laid beneath the trees. I also slept next to stars that were so close you could almost touch them. Up until this June, when I made my pilgrimage back to the country of my spirit, I had not gone back to Spain since 1981.
At dusk, as swifts screeched like kamikaze scimitar swallows between the sparkling decorative spires, I touched down in Seville. The jasmine-filled evening simmered. My George Scott Safari had started. Since the pickup time for the transfer the following day wasn’t until 4 PM, I instead spent the morning at the Hermandad de la Macarena exploring Spain’s superstition and splendour. I prayed here in front of The Virgin of Hope, the patroness of matadors and gipsies, after initially bowing in amazement. Her veils appeared to be woven from a silken light, changing and shimmering as though she were alive. She wore five emerald brooches that were gifts from the bravest matadors. Beyond the aristocratic stoicism that is grandly ascetic but also dark, the Moors taught the Spanish that there was something wonderful in life itself. I was lured to the Casa de Pilatos and found refuge in its cool, tiled chambers with tessellated Mudéjar designs that opened onto rose and fountain gardens. The castanet and the melancholy elegy of the gypsy quarter-tone, the cante jondo, started to play.
It was time to locate the minibus parked in a square while the heat shimmered with the chorus of cicadas. I panicked because I was travelling with three other skilled safari riders—two stylish Texans wearing stetsons and a Franco-Irish lawyer—and I worried that I didn’t have enough experience. However, I would eventually learn to put all of this behind me.
Even though I had heard so many friends rave about this gorgeously restored 17th-century farmhouse with a chapel, I was nonetheless astounded by Trasierra’s profound attractiveness and the high calibre of the emotions that coursed through me. The most exquisite house you could ever imagine exists in Spain thanks to George Scott’s mother, Charlotte Scott. Juan led us to our bedrooms (upright, graceful and courteous). The only sounds in the home were the cicadas and bird calls, and the light was slanting toward the wooded hills beyond the rose and white wisteria gardens. Spain has always been formal, and not much has changed since I was a child. Its dignity can be found in either its simplicity or its poverty. Take meriand. Tea with homemade dulce may seem quaint, but the timing is so gracious and the generosity so charming: the small cakes produced in the kitchen, the unnoticed hands that set the table, the careful folding of an ajouré linen napkin by a porcelain dish.
