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What architectural places have inspired authors to write their works?
What architectural places have inspired authors to write their works?
Getting to know the buildings of Extremadura is a journey into history. Museums, hotels, theatres or towns, but also Roman and contemporary art, a heritage as extensive as its architecture. This leaves us a great inspiration for the authors to compose some of their works.
Trujillo Castle
Trujillo Castle
It is located in the highest part of the city, built on a rocky hill called Cabezo de Zorro from where you can control the entire city and the vast plain of Trujillo. The Castle of Trujillo, of Arab origin, was built in the middle of the 9th century and rebuilt in the 13th century after the king Alfonso VIII reconquered the area for the Christians. It then became part of the defensive strongholds of the crown of Castile. To the importance of its defensive work must be added relevant facts that happened in it since it served as refuge for Juana La Beltraneja, in her dispute with Queen Isabel I, until she had to leave to escape to Plasencia, where she married Alfonso V of Portugal, when the castle was granted to the Catholics. In addition, King Femando the Catholic, on the occasion of his trip to Guadeloupe, became interested in the works being carried out there. Source.
Pilar Alcántara was born in Cáceres in 1967. She is a teacher of Early Childhood, Musical and Primary Education. She currently works as a teacher of Early Childhood Education at the Public School "Moctezuma" in Cáceres. She is also a music therapist specializing in ASD. Her work as a writer focuses on the world of childhood. She participates and manages numerous literary blogs, she is also a co-founder of the diabetes project called "The Day That Changes". He has written numerous children’s poems such as "Poemas infantiles con X Extremeña y el cuento Dulcelina y la Fuente de la Vida".
When she was a teacher in Trujillo, she wrote these poems about the Castle as the children were fascinated by it and saw its involvement with the architectural culture of the place. Some of the poems are "El castillo de Trujillo", in which some animals have a party in the castle, or "Federico en el Castillo", which is intended to be recited by children at Feria del Libro de Trujillo 2017.
German Military Cemetery of Cuacos de Yuste
German Military Cemetery of Cuacos de Yuste
It is a military cemetery located near the Monastery of Yuste, in the municipality of Cuacos de Yuste, province of Cáceres, Spain.
Many of the German soldiers, airmen and sailors of World War I and World War II who arrived on Spanish shores and lands due to shipwrecks or the shooting down of their planes are buried there.
The German government, through the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (the body responsible for guarding German war cemeteries), decided to gather in one place the bodies of German soldiers scattered throughout Spain. The work began in 1980 and that same year the transfer of the bodies began, finishing the work in 1983, when it was officially inaugurated on 1 June, with the assistance of representatives of the German Embassy, Spanish authorities and family members arriving from Germany.
All graves are equal and have only one cross in dark granite. The inscription includes the name of the soldier, his military category, as well as his date of birth and death. Source.
Carlos Medrano was born in Salamanca in 1961. He lived in Don Benito until his family moved to Valladolid. He studied Hispanic Philology in that city, except for a course in the faculty of Cáceres by professors such as José Luis Bernal. He wrote numerous works such as "Corro" or the next hours". In one of his poems, "Sagrado y físico", he tells us about this cemetery.
From the first day I arrived at La Vera, I met the German Cemetery of Yuste, which since then has given me an attraction and special recollection. I visited him numerous times, strolled through him in silence, sat and read in peace, others looked at the landscape as well as crosses, names, explanatory tombstones. I remember the earth, sometimes dry, sometimes green, plus its plant elements. One night in June, shortly before nightfall, I went by him again and back home I wrote for several hours of which I was not aware of this poem that I still read with trembling. Now, at such a distance and with sea in between, I still feel what was calling me to go there and I wonder if a part of me contained that land.
These are some of the words the author tells us about how the cemetery makes him feel and the connection it presents with that magnificent place.
Álvaro Valverde, born in Plasencia in 1959, is another writer who dedicates one of his works to the "Cementerio Alemán, Yuste" as the name of the poem. He says it has been one of the most intense experiences of his life. As soon as he entered that lonely place, so strange and beautiful, he knew that he would write about it.
Arch of the Star
Arch of the Star
It is the main gate to the Historic Centre of Cáceres. It joins the Main Plaza with the Plaza de Santa María, which both have been epicentres of the old and new city for centuries.
Made in the Baroque style, it was built by Manuel de Larra Churriguera in the eighteenth century on a fifteenth-century construction. It is a low and wide-angled arch, made this way so that the carriages could easily pass through to the Historic Centre. It was drilled into the wall, which preserves its battlements.
In the upper part, there is a temple with a statue of the Virgin of the Star, which gives the arch its name. Travellers would confide in this icon when they left the city, and they thanked her for their safe return.
It is considered the most important gate of the Historic Centre, since it was the place chosen by the Catholic Queen to swear in the Fueros (rights) and privileges in 1477. Also, in this same arch, King Fernando “The Catholic” swore in the Fueros to the city in 1479. Source.
Basilio Sánchez has a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Extremadura, and later specialized in Intensive Medicine, an activity he currently carries out in his hometown.
With his first book, A este lado del alba, he won an Adonais Prize for Poetry in 1983. After a period of silence of almost ten years, in 1993 he published his second book, Los bosques interiores, in which the tone and the features that distinguish his mature work are already clearly outlined.
The rest of his poetic work is composed of the following titles: La mirada apacible (1996), Al final de la tarde (1998), El cielo de las cosas (2000), Para guardar el sueño (2003), Entre una sombra y otra (2006), Las estaciones lentas (2008), Cristalizaciones (2013) and Esperando las noticias del agua (2018). He has also published two books of narrative that cover the territory of memory: El cuenco de la mano (2007) and La creación del sentido (2015). Source. The last one is a miscellaneous and fragmentary narrative, of extraordinary cohesion thanks to its character of travel through the territory of the memory of a poet who turns on himself, on his trade and on his past life. In it he dedicates some poems to Cáceres, his hometown. Some are Ciudad Antigua, Palacio de las Cigüeñas, Plaza Mayor and Arco de las Estrella.
Roman Bridge of Alcántara
Roman Bridge of Alcántara
The Alcántara Bridge is a Roman arch bridge built between 103 and 104, which crosses the Tagus River in the Spanish town of Alcántara, in the province of Cáceres. It is a bridge that combines refined technique with aesthetics and functionality, one of the clearest exponents of what was the Roman civil engineering impregnated with propagandistic character. Located in a seemingly unimportant area, it was built magnificently as a permanent watchman of the Roman Empire in a region well-regarded for its metalliferous deposits.
Its high pillars provided with buttresses that enhance its verticality and its arches propitiate the sought-after monumentality and were considered archetype of other works, such as the nearby but more modest bridge of Segura. Its central arch alludes to the emperor in whose period it rose, Trajan, and to the municipalities of the area that contributed to the project. Damaged and rebuilt on several occasions from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, it is a remarkable bridge among the many erected by the Romans, as the chroniclers have repeatedly observed, travellers and scholars who have been able to admire it and who have left countless testimonies of praise from the Middle Ages to the present day. Source.
Álvaro Valverde is a teacher. He launched the "Regional Plan for Promotion of Reading" (2002-2005) and directed the Extremadura Regional Editor (2005-2008). He was also president of the Association of Writers of Extremadura and founded, together with Gonzalo Hidalgo Bayal, the Literary Classroom "José Antonio Gabriel y Galán" in his hometown.
He has been a regular contributor to the newspapers ABC and HOY, which in 2000, awarded him the "Extremadura de Hoy" award. Another newspaper, Avuelapluma, awarded him his Literature Award in 2015.
In addition, he has signed critical notes, essays and poems in newspaper supplements and in numerous national and foreign magazines.
It is included, among others, in the anthologies La generación de los ochenta, by José Luis García Martín; La nueva poesía española by Miguel García-Posada, etc. Source.
He is the author of books of poetry such as Las aguas detenidas, Una oculta razón (Loewe Prize), A debida distancia, Plasencias, Ensayando círculos, Mecánica terrestre, Desde fuera y Más, Tanger.
In the work of Desde fuera, Álvaro Valverde includes a poem dedicated to the Alcántara Bridge and he tells us the content of the poem through these words:
The surprise vision of the Alcántara Bridge will be another one of the impressions that one will never forget. Despite having seen him since childhood in books (and on television) and being warned that I would meet him when I arrived in Alcántara, his imposing monumentality overwhelmed me. The poem includes an anecdote I was told about people who jumped into the river from it.
Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe
In the center of the bridge, on the central pillar, rises an Arc de Triomphe of about 13 meters high. Although it has been modified several times throughout history, it retains some inscriptions, such as the date of construction and a dedication to Emperor Trajan.
Roman temple
Roman temple
At one end of the bridge is a Roman temple on whose lintel you can read an inscription with the name of the architect, Cayo Julio Lacer, and the legend: it will last as long as the world lasts. Durará tanto cuanto el mundo durare.
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