Latest news with #Valencians
Euronews
09-05-2025
- Euronews
A time-travelling tour of Sagunto: heritage day trips from Valencia
Beyond the medieval grandeur of Valencia's historic centre, Valencia is a truly modern city, defined by sprawling botanic trails, avant-garde design and forward-thinking green initiatives. Venture into the wider Valencia region, however, and time inches backwards. From Requena's wineries to Chulilla's castillo, there's no shortage of historic day trips from Valencia, offering total immersion in Spain's rich archaeological, cultural and natural heritage. Today, we set our sights on Sagunto, an ancient fortress city just 30 kilometres from Valencia, where echoes of empire and rich culinary traditions can be traced back thousands of years. Beneath a sci-fi skyline, Valencia hums with the legacy of its mercantile past. The Silk Exchange (La Lonja), a UNESCO-listed Gothic masterpiece, still exudes the wealth and ambition of the traders who built it in the 15th century. Meanwhile, Valencians of today trade their produce at the vibrant Central Market, where fresh citrus fruits, Iberian ham and traditional horchata (a creamy tiger nut drink) can be found. As well as celebrating its past, Valencia is also committed to discovery and reinvention. It is home to one of Europe's most recognisable contemporary landmarks: the City of Arts and Sciences, a complex that features a number of futuristic works by local architect Santiago Calatrava, as well as a planetarium, oceanographic park and interactive museum. Move between Valencia's past and present easily via Turia Gardens trails. Carved from a diverted riverbed and snaking nine kilometres through Valencia's heart, Turia Gardens provides a green escape for cyclists, joggers, and anyone in need of a shady spot in nature. As Valencia reinvents itself, in Sagunto, traditions hold strong. In the short journey from Valencia, you'll be transported through centuries of Spanish history, arriving at the sprawling hilltop fortress which has stood watch over the Mediterranean coast for millennia. Take in panoramic views over the crumbling city walls and walk the uneven pathways within to find remnants of Roman forums, Moorish fortifications and underground water systems that once sustained entire communities. The Roman Theatre here, etched into the hillside in the 1st century, still hosts performances, including for Sagunt a Escena festival in summer when Greco-Latin plays, music, dance and circus shows bring the ancient theatre to life. Echoes of the past continue within Sagunto's old town. The narrow, whitewashed streets of the Jewish Quarter preserve a lesser-known chapter of Spain's history, while the Portal de la Judería, a gateway into the once-thriving medieval community, lies as a quiet counterpoint to the grandeur of the castle above, with a story equally as enduring. For natural heritage, Sagunto's coastline delivers. The city's beaches stretch 13 kilometres, flanked by dunes and pine forests. Of these, Puerto de Sagunto, Almardá and Corinto are Blue Flag recognised, and offer a quieter alternative to Valencia's lively Malvarrosa. Elsewhere, the protected wetlands of La Marjal dels Moros provide an ideal spot for birdwatching, while the proximity of Sierra Calderona and Sierra de Espadán natural parks both entice hikers through coastal and mountain trails. While the Valencian region is world famous for its traditional paella, in Sagunto, star dishes like arroz a banda (rice slow-cooked in fish broth) and arroz negro (rice tinted with squid ink) speak of the city's maritime past. Other local specialties span both the garden and the sea, such as ximos (fried buns), coca de tomate (tomato tart) and coca de llanda (olive oil and lemon cake). After a day of touring the castle, feast like Spanish royalty at Michelin-starred restaurant Arrels, under the Gothic arches at the 16th century Palace of the Dukes of Gaeta. A traditional seafood paella on the harbourside is equally worthy, an authentic testament to Sagunto's long-standing culinary scene. Sagunto is very well connected by train from the centre of Valencia. It is an easy day trip, but there are plenty of reasons to extend your stay. With over 300 days of sunshine a year, both cities are year-round destinations. To immerse yourself further in Valencian heritage, consider visiting during a traditional local festival. Celebrate Fallas and the arrival of spring in Valencia in March with art, bonfires and fireworks, while April's Holy Week is marked with extravagant street processions in Sagunto. Though separated by a short journey, when taken together, Valencia and Sagunto chart a passage through the ages. Whether exploring Valencia's medieval trade halls, watching a play at Sagunto's 2,000-year-old outdoor theatre or simply savouring traditional flavours overlooking the Mediterranean, your heritage tour of Valencia is set to be an immersive time-travelling experience like no other. Discover more about Sagunto heritage at
Reuters
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Huge New York sign tells under-fire Valencia leader he need not return home
MADRID, May 2 (Reuters) - A giant digital sign in New York's Times Square told beleaguered Spanish politician Carlos Mazon on his visit to the city that he had "228 reasons not to come home", in reference to how many people died in October's flash floods on the Valencian regional leader's watch. The Spanish left-wing party Compromis said on Friday it had taken advantage of Mazon's trip to New York to place the sign on Thursday, saying in a statement that it was "reminding him of his disastrous management" of the floods. Mazon has faced repeated calls to resign over his management on the day of the torrential rainfall that flooded commuter towns around the city of Valencia. He has refused to step down. The huge New York sign, with text written in the Valencian dialect, showed Mazon's face with images of overflowing rivers in the background. A spokeswoman for the Valencian government declined to comment. Mazon has posted photos of his meetings in New York on Facebook as he promotes his city. Mazon was criticised for not sending an alert to Valencians until after 8 p.m. on the day of the floods, when streams of water had already swept away cars and houses. A judge is conducting an investigation into the floods.
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- The Guardian
‘Their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta': how two centuries of British writers helped forge our view of Spain
Almost 200 years ago, the pioneering British travel writer Richard Ford offered an observation that has been happily ignored by the legions of authors who have traipsed in his dusty footsteps across Spain, toting notebooks, the odd violin or Bible, and, of course, their own particular prejudices. 'Nothing causes more pain to Spaniards', Ford noted in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 'than to see volume after volume written by foreigners about their country.' Given some of his waspish pronouncements, the pain in Spain was thoroughly justified. Catalonia, to Ford's mind, was 'no place for the man of pleasure, taste or literature … here cotton is spun, vice and discontent bred, revolution concocted'. He found Valencians 'vindictive, sullen, fickle and treacherous', while reporting that the 'better classes' in Murcia 'vegetate in a monotonous unsocial existence: their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta'. Ford, whose often acid nib belied a deep love of all things Iberian, is one of 20 British authors profiled in a new Spanish book, Los curiosos impertinentes ('the annoyingly curious'), that explores the UK's enduring fascination with Spain and reflects on how two centuries of travel writing have shaped the country's image abroad. The book is prefaced by Ford's pain quotation and by another, from the late Spanish writer Ramón J Sender: 'There's nothing like a foreigner when it comes to seeing what we're like.' The writers selected by the book's author, the British journalist and writer William Chislett, include Ford and his contemporary, the Bible salesman George Borrow, as well as some of their 20th-century successors, among them Laurie Lee, Gerald Brenan, Norman Lewis, VS Pritchett and Robert Graves. Authors from more recent decades are represented by Miranda France and Giles Tremlett, and by the late Michael Jacobs, to whom the book is dedicated. 'I deliberately began in the 19th century with Ford and Borrow and didn't go further back because I felt I had to start somewhere,' says Chislett, who has lived in Spain for almost 40 years. 'One could regard Ford's book as the first travel book … Then we skip forward to the 20th and 21st century for 18 other people, most of whom are absolutely unknown here, let alone in the UK.' The book, which was originally conceived of as an exhibition, is published by the Instituto Cervantes, the governmental organisation tasked with promoting the Spanish language and Hispanic culture. Chislett says there is no escaping the fact that all the books he cites 'have forged an image' of the country that has shifted over the centuries. He points out that the old British idea of Spain as a dark, devout place – built on anti-Spanish propaganda and best summed up by the austere majesty of El Escorial, Philip II's monastery-cum-palace near Madrid – began to give way to something altogether more wild and romantic in the 19th century. In the aftermath of the peninsula war, Britons began to be seduced by Spain's history, architecture and culture, and El Escorial had given way to the distant, Islamic splendours of the Alhambra in Granada. 'It was unknown territory and had all these exotic elements,' adds Chislett. 'Word got around that there were all these abandoned castles and flamenco … You've got these two contrasts: you've got the 'black legend' version of Spain and then you've got the romantic version of Spain.' Borrow and Ford were followed by Lee, who immortalised Spain on the cusp of civil war in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and by Lewis, whose Voices of the Old Sea captures a dying way of life in Farol, a profoundly superstitious village on the Costa Brava, as fishing gives way to mass tourism. The authors' reflections also reveal that concerns over what is known today as overtourism are hardly new. Ford, who perhaps did more than most to put Spain on the tourist map, complained that the 'implacable march of the European intellectual is crushing many native wildflowers', while Pritchett later lamented that Spain had been 'invaded by tourists'. Equally familiar, as Chislett and others mention, is Spain's love-hate relationship with how it is viewed through foreign eyes. 'Maybe Spaniards are prickly because so much has been written about them,' he says. 'I haven't come to any conclusion, but maybe you could say Spaniards – unjustifiably now, but maybe justifiably during the Franco regime – have an inferiority complex, which I like to think they've got rid of totally, given what's happened over the last 50 years. 'In many ways, Spain is way ahead of other European countries.' While Chislett describes the book as a 'labour of love' and an attempt to repay Spain for its kindness and hospitality over the past four decades, he hopes it will also introduce Spanish readers to some of the great British travel writers. 'There are books earlier than Ford and Borrow, going back to the 18th century,' he adds. 'It's about highlighting this tradition, which still goes on.' In his foreword to the book, the Spanish novelist and travel writer Julio Llamazares advises his compatriots to cast aside their 'pride and patriotism' so that they might glimpse themselves anew in its pages. 'It's worth being prepared to accept the foreign gaze or, perhaps more accurately, the foreign gazes, given how many authors have written about us after touring our country and getting to know it,' he writes. 'Like English-speaking Quixotes, they paint our portraits with their words, even as they demonstrate their passion for a country and a culture that, despite being so different to their own, has marked them forever and for life.'
The Guardian
17-02-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Project helps Spain's flood survivors restore family photos
Family photos recovered from the devastating flash floods last year in Valencia, Spain, hang to dry during a restoration process conducted by students and professors from the conservation and restoration programme at a field laboratory at the Valencia Polytechnic University Valencia Polytechnic University students put up posters and spread the word about turning in soiled photos to see what could be saved, with the help of Esther Nebot, a professor of cultural preservation at the university and one of the project's coordinators Many photos stayed soaked for weeks A slide from an album belonging to a Valencia resident named as R Luz Damaged family photos recovered from the floods. Each image is cleaned in shallow bins of water. Later, they are are hung to dry and mounted on a special paper, before they are returned alongside a digital copy The restoration process starts with volunteers registering each photo and taking pictures of them, including to record how they were arranged in an album The photography students have received 230,000 photos and 1,800 albums Many Valencians who survived the floods, Spain's worst natural disaster in recent memory, learned about the project by word of mouth. Some say it has helped them protect their family histories A volunteer works on family photos. Many are hard to decipher but for the odd preserved caption The project's organisers want to get to every photo by the first anniversary of the floods, but have said they will not turn anyone away who comes with more albums 'When you realise how much you've lost, you can see that you've lost something fundamental, like visual memories,' said one resident who survived the floods but lost all her possessions in an apartment in the town of Aldaia Nebot said the time it takes to clean a picture depends on how damaged it is coming in A picture damaged during the devastating flash floods last year in Valencia is submerged in water as part of a restoration process A slide from an album belonging to a Valencia resident named as R Luz A slide from an album belonging to a Valencia resident named as R Luz A slide from an album belonging to a Valencia resident named as R Luz A slide from an album belonging to a Valencia resident named as R Luz
The Independent
14-02-2025
- Climate
- The Independent
Valencia is back open for business: Why you should head to the Spanish city this spring
In October 2024 the world was shocked by television footage of storm water surging through southeastern Spain' s Valencia region. Cataclysmic floods took the lives of 224 people and caused billions of euros worth of damage; the worst of it was in smaller towns in the greater metropolitan area and southern suburbs like Sedaví, where scores of cars were piled up by the water. The city of Valencia itself and the many wonderful things in it were spared and, four months later, is very much open to visitors. There are 300 days of sunshine a year in Valencia; go now and you're very likely to hit one of them. Man-made climate change allowing, there are, on average, only three days of rain in March and temperatures can reach 20C. If it does rain, retreat into the old town and search out vintage 20th-century wall tiles in the bric-a-brac shops or sip some sunshine with an agua de Valencia, the city's own cocktail made from freshly squeezed orange juice, vodka and cava. Aficionados admire the version served at Café de Las Horas, the baroquely ornate bar on the Calle Conde de Almodóvar. If your tastes are more conservative, drink at Casa Montaña on Calle de Josep Benlliure in the historic Cabanyal district. This bar, here since 1836, is lined with barrels of Valencian wines and spirits including cazalla, the city's potent version of anis. March is also the month of the city-wide celebration, the Fallas. More than the football, more, even, than the food, the Fallas is how Valencians define their civic identity. Included by Unesco on its 'Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity', the festivities see communities throughout the city creating fantastically imagined larger than life figures (ninots) that can range from the dove of peace to Vladimir Putin. Ninot design often comments satirically on politics and current affairs, and the authorities' perceived lack of readiness for the floods are likely to feature this year. Nonetheless, the overwhelming mood will be one of celebration. For 18 days from 1 March there will be parades, parties and daily fireworks – mascletà – let off outside city hall. These pyrotechnics are not primarily about achieving spectacular visual effects (there are evening fireworks to do that) but maximum percussive force – so take earplugs if you don't like loud noises. On 19 March, the ninots are burned in public in an event called the cremà, but the best will be spared the flames and exhibited with others dating back as far as 1934 in Museo Fallero de Valencia. And, of course, there will be food – in particular freshly fried churros dipped in chocolate, and mountains of paella. Everyone has their own idea of the best place to eat the region's famed rice dish, but you won't go far wrong at Casa Carmela, near the beach at Malvarrosa, where the chefs cook on open wood fires. Or you could follow the origin story back to El Palmar, the village in L'Albufera Natural Park, immediately below the city, which claims to be paella's birthplace. Presently bidding for Unesco Biosphere Reserve status, much of L'Albufera is covered by a large freshwater lake surrounded by reed beds, home to over 300 species of birds. When the floods came, plastics and other waste was dumped in the park and visitor numbers dropped off because people mistakenly thought L'Albufera was a disaster zone, but the mess had been cleared up within a month. Valencians have overcome floods before. In October 1957 the banks of the river Turia burst and the city was inundated, killing 81 people. In response, they moved the Turia south of the city (it was this re-routed river that took millions of gallons of flood surge away to the south last year). The old course of the Turia is now lush parkland and home to the City of Arts and Sciences complex, famous for Santiago Calatrava's opera house in the form of a white-tiled ancient Greek helmet but also, nearby, Félix Candela's wave-roofed Oceanogràfic aquarium. More innovative buildings are coming to the city. September sees the opening of glittering new home for the city's basketball team. Roig Stadium is funded by Juan Roig and Hortensia Herrero, the same supermarket billionaire couple behind the recently opened Hortensia Herrero Art Centre, a fabulous contemporary art gallery in the restored Valeriola Palace. Both these projects involved Valencian architects – stroll anywhere in the city and you'll find evidence of the local genius with bricks and mortar. The Gothic cathedral is among the oldest examples, but this year will be the centre of renewed attention as 2025 is a special jubilee for the Holy Chalice, the agate cup recognised by the Vatican as the vessel used at the Last Supper. There are likely to be queues for the chapel where it is housed – but what better place to express quiet gratitude that none of this was washed away?
