Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
land and coasts. A growing environmental
movement in Spain and Portugal has
repeatedly called for reform. Environmen-
talists have pointed to such episodes as
inadequate responses to oil spills that have
ruined fishing zones and the destruction of
Spain's Doñana nature preserve and Portu-
gal's Malcata wildlife refuge. They complain
that sluggish and irresponsible bureaucracy
makes promises but fails to fulfill them and
that the institutions of the democratic state
seem little better at doing the needed work
than those of the dictatorships. Whatever
the truth about the much-debated phe-
nomenon of global warming, the climatic
extremes of 2005 struck Spain and Portugal
with undeniable impact. Drought over-
whelmed much of the peninsula. Lakes
were reduced to dust bowls, and crops per-
ished. Cork, olives, grapes, and other agri-
cultural mainstays of Spain's and Portugal's
survival were profoundly, if not perma-
nently, ruined. Faced with what seemed to
be the ultimate intersection of natural disas-
ter and human-made pollution, Spain and
Portugal have been forced to confront the
catastrophic implications of putting off fun-
damental decisions.
and subsequent monarchs, as well as a suit-
ably grand seat for the dominant rulers of
Europe. Wishing to honor San Lorenzo (St.
Lawrence), on whose feast day—August
10, 1557—Spanish forces had won a deci-
sive victory over the French at the Battle of
St. Quentin, in Flanders, Philip conceived
the idea of combining a great church and
monastery that would visibly link the power
of church and state in the same structure. A
committee to explore possible locations
near the newly chosen capital, Madrid, rec-
ommended a site with a grand prospect to
the south and east and a splendid mountain
background to the north and west. The tiny
village near the site took its name,
Escorial,
from the iron-smelting operation that had
formerly been carried on there. Begun in
1563, with a plan drawn up by one Juan
Bautista de Toledo, the structure, with its
huge dome and its hundreds of rooms,
courtyards, and fountains, was laid out to
resemble the grid upon which St. Lawrence
had supposedly been martyred by pagan
Romans. The monastery and palace of San
Lorenzo de El Escorial was completed under
the direction of Juan de Herrera more than
20 years after its commencement. The
dimensions of the nine-towered granite
building led visitors to call it everything
from “the eighth wonder of the world” to a
“gloomy prison-like colossus.” In addition
to the modest rooms occupied by Philip II
from which he could gaze down into the
splendid chapel with its daily round of reli-
gious services, later monarchs fitted out a
whole complex of lavish apartments. Over
the centuries El Escorial became the reposi-
tory of a great collection of art and one of
the world's most magnificent libraries. In
keeping with the wishes of Charles I, he
and nearly all of his successors have been
Equatorial Guinea
Escorial, El (Royal Monastery of
San Lorenzo de El Escorial)
Residence of the kings of Spain since 1584,
this massive structure is located some 30
miles west of M
ADRID
in the foothills of the
Guadarrama mountain range. It owes its
creation to P
HILIP
II who intended it as a
final resting place for his father, C
HARLES
I,
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