Salamanca
Simon Courtauld
HV Morton, travelling for the first time in Spain in the 1950s, described Salamanca as probably the finest city in the country, and wrote of its Plaza Mayor: ‘I cannot think of a more beautiful and graceful memorial of the 18th century in Europe.’ Certainly I would put Salamanca, together with Seville and Barcelona, in my top three Spanish cities, and the first sight of the Plaza Mayor really does take the breath away. A friend of mine, a former military attaché at the British embassy in Madrid, has told me that if he could choose where to spend the last night of his life, it would be in Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor.
This baroque masterpiece, built in sandstone by the famous Churriguera family of architects and sculptors, forms a huge, slightly irregular square, with several entrances and three floors of shuttered windows and balconies on the façades above rows of colonnaded arches. Most interesting, to the student of Spanish history, are the medallions between the arches, with images of various monarchs, generals, statesmen and philosophers.
There are no longer any statues of General Franco to be seen in Spain, nor any streets named after him, but
I was glad to see his medallion in the Plaza Mayor when I was last there three years ago. After all, he did govern the country, for better or worse, for almost 40 years of the 20th century. But I have read that this last public image of el caudillo was removed in 2017. An indirect link with Franco remains, on the north side of the plaza, in the curiously named Café Novelty, former meeting place of intellectual and political Salamanca. There sits the sculptured figure of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, novelist and enthusiastic Francoist supporter during the Civil War.
Wellington quite rightly gets his medallion in the plaza, but it is sad to record that, despite being largely responsible for evicting Napoleon’s forces from Spain in what the Spanish call the War of Independence, no memorials or statues to the Iron Duke are to be found anywhere in the country (though he has a very good hotel named after him in Madrid). The battle of Salamanca in 1812, fought a few miles outside the city, was the turning-point of the war, and the following year, on his way north, Wellington stayed in Salamanca, in the Palacio de San Boal, but no plaque marks his visit.
A beautiful little Romanesque church provides another English connection in Salamanca. This is the Iglesia Santo Tomas, dedicated to Thomas à Becket. After his murder on Henry II’S orders in 1170, monks went from Canterbury to Spain to found several churches in his name, no doubt encouraged by Henry’s daughter Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII of Castile and built a shrine to Becket in Toledo cathedral.
Wherever you walk in Salamanca, you are aware of the wealth of beautiful buildings, the stone of many of them glowing golden in the late afternoon sun (Salamanca is known as La Dorada). Perhaps the most striking is the 16th-century Casa de las Conchas, its façade covered in scallop shells, as symbols of the Order of Santiago; it is overlooked by the mighty Clerecia towers. Then there is the Renaissance Palacio de Monterrey, the magnificent monastery church of
‘No memorials or statues to the Iron Duke are to be found anywhere in the country’
San Esteban and the two cathedrals – one Romanesque and the other Gothic/baroque. The buildings, which are joined, date from the 12th to the 18th century.
Salamanca has the oldest university in Spain, founded in 1134 and preceded only by Bologna and Oxford. Standing in the courtyard, facing the university’s main entrance, is a statue of the celebrated 16thcentury theologian and teacher, Fray Luis Ponce de Leon. He was arrested by the Inquisition while teaching, accused of expressing heretical opinions in his commentary on the Song of Songs. After four years in jail he returned to the university and supposedly began his first lecture with the words Dicebamus hesterna die (‘As we were saying yesterday….’)
In a lecture hall a few doors away, another great teacher at the university, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, gave a memorable speech in 1936 which was to be his last. The civil war was only three months old, Unamuno was rector of the university, and was presiding over a ceremony attended by Franco’s wife and many Nationalist supporters. Responding to shouts of ‘Death to Intellectuals!’ the venerable philosopher told his audience: ‘You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince, because…. you lack reason and right in the struggle. I consider it futile to ask you to think of Spain.’ These courageous, devastating words cost Unamuno the rectorship, and he died of a stroke a few weeks later.
A number of famous names are associated with Salamanca. Emperor Trajan, who was born in Spain, was probably responsible for building the Roman bridge which takes pedestrians (no cars permitted) over the River Tormes and is the best way to arrive in Salamanca. The women who, until a few decades ago, were on their knees washing and drying clothes on the river bank are no longer to be seen. But the city skyline, dominated by the two cathedrals, remains gloriously unchanged after several centuries.