Kate O’ Brien’s Spain
- Book: Farewell Spain
- Location: Spain
- Author: Kate O'Brien
Prolific Irish author Kate O’ Brien (1897-1974) was greatly inspired by her time working in Spain as a governess. Like many of us, once Spain got into her head and heart, there was no dislodging it.
In ‘Farewell Spain’, she returned there in 1936, just at the start of the Spanish Civil War, a “class war”, as she termed it. She was firmly on the Republican side, “the Army in Overalls”. She travelled throughout the country, but her preference was for the northern half and Madrid itself. She goes into enormous detail about Santiago de Composela, St. Teresa of Avila and El Escorial.
She hated Moorish architecture, with its arches and decorative flourishes and lattice work, preferring the solid austerity of the northern style. I part ways with her there, as for me the Arab legacy is one of the richest seams to mine in Spanish history, in terms of architecture, food and language.
She absolutely adored Madrid: “its sibilant acacias, its garden cafes, friendly bootblacks, pretty children; of its gay, courageous, ancient slums; its elegancies, its clubs, its flying witticisms.” I share this love. Madrid’s public culture, its street life, must be the liveliest and most gregarious in Europe, to which I yearn to return.
‘Farewell Spain’ is a fascinating snapshot of Spain in the 1930s, and also of an Irishwoman who defied convention to travel, write and live her life on her own terms at a time when the Catholic Church did everything it could to clip our wings.
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