Sharing Sherry with Hemingway's Ghost
A Spanish travelog about matadors, tapas, and questionable Catholic carpentry choices.
I re-read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls last month in preparation for our road trip to Spain. In case you’ve not read it—or you read it in tenth grade and immediately forgot it—it’s the story of Robert Jordan, an American volunteer for the left-leaning Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. He’s assigned to sneak behind enemy lines to Segovia and blow up a bridge with the help of guerrillas hiding in the mountains. There, he falls in love with a young woman, Maria.
From there, Robert and Maria spend a surprising amount of time either having sex or negotiating over sex. The novel is remarkably dirty for high school curriculum and I can’t believe 16-year-old me didn’t pick up on that. All I remembered was that, at one point, Robert eats a raw onion sandwich, a common motif in Hemingway’s books and a bold choice for a guy who spends his nights negotiating over sex.
When Robert and Maria aren’t rolling around in the grass, they hike up and down the mountains wearing “rope-soled shoes.” I’ve owned several pairs of rope-soled shoes (also known as espadrilles) over the years and I’ve never been able to walk much farther than the mailbox without getting blisters. Still, Hemingway worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, so I take his word for it that the guerrillas must have had incredibly leathery feet.
Marilyne and I decided to go to Spain because one of Marilyne’s favorite French troubadours, Francis Cabrel, was performing in Madrid. We were also eager to road-test our recently purchased Volkswagen California Caddy. Basically a cross between a camper van and a family minivan, this fusion of escapist functionality and workaday mundanity is a dream vehicle for economically-minded, middle-aged adventure seekers with nothing to prove—like us.
We took the long way, driving east to the French Mediterranean to visit family, following the coast down into Spain, then hooking a right to Madrid.
Unfortunately, much of this route was blocked by tractors and flaming piles of hay. French farmers had chosen this week to shut down various highways in protest of their treatment by the government. It was as if they had gotten hold of our itinerary in advance and decided to barricade the exact roads we needed as we needed them.
We spent two days either at a complete standstill, or on Google-proposed, tiny rural routes, Mad Maxing it against stressed-out semis and entitled Parisian Audis.
In all fairness, the protests were impressive. Some highways were flat-out blocked by rows of farm equipment. Others featured slow parades of tractors escorted by police. I’m too new to France to have an opinion on the matter, but every French person I spoke with—whether left or right leaning—admitted that the farmers had a good point.
Regardless, we were fried by the time we crossed the Spanish border. We pushed on for a while, climbing a twisty mountain road to Montserrat, which neither of us knew anything about. The fact that it was pitch black outside only added to the mystery. We found a flat patch of gravel on the side of the road and stopped for the night.
Marilyne’s aunt and uncle in Serignan had stuffed us full of fish curry the night before and my cousin in Perpignan had continued the trend for lunch with scallops, so for dinner we settled for thick slices of homemade sourdough bread, cheese, and red wine—a very Hemingway dinner, only minus the onion.
The next day, we awoke to discover that Monserrat is awesome. We had stopped about a kilometer away from the thousand-year-old Santa Maria de Montserrat abbey, which we used as a base for hiking to the Sant Jeroni summit. The 11-kilometer hike felt good after all those hours cramped up in the van and the views were spectacular. Doing it in espadrilles might have added to the authenticity, but I was happy wearing my Asics and orthotic insoles. Pointlessly painful footwear is a younger man’s game.
After our hike, we headed to Saragossa. While Monserrat was majestic, things took a downturn once we left the mountains. The land between the two points has largely been given over to agriculture, but not in bucolic sense. Sure, it’s winter, so the fields were fallow, but the air was dirty brown and the little towns all seemed dominated by some sort of ugly factory or chemical plant.
Upon arrival in Saragossa, we parked the Caddy at the municipal campground and hopped a bus to the old town. Saragossa has been around since Roman times (which doesn’t mean much in Europe, frankly). It’s famous for a few things, including the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar and tapas.
In the Cathedral, I was particularly taken by the wooden confessional booths lining the cavernous halls. Many of them were adorned with little placards stating the languages spoken, I assume, by the priest within.
Unlike the confessionals of my Catholic youth, the confessor’s section wasn’t fully enclosed. The priest, head and shoulders silhouetted through a mesh screen, sat facing the sinner kneeling before him. You could see the sinner’s lower legs and feet sticking out the side, but any interaction between their upper half and the priest’s lower half was obscured by an intricate wood panel. I did my best not to think about what might take place behind that panel, either literally or metaphorically.
Many of the booths featured kneeling space for two sinners. I tried even harder not to think about those.
The old town, famous for its tapas bars, faces the Cathedral. It’s a grid of boulevards filled with European chain stores and impressively talented street performers. (We watched a young rock band laying it down as good as any live band I’ve ever seen.) Off these boulevards we found a web of walk streets filled with the tapas bars.
Tapas are Spanish hors d’oeuvres. When I spent a month in the south of Spain in 2000, they came free with your drink. They were generally very salty—I remember a lot of olives—inspiring you to drink more. I don’t know if this is still the case down in Andalusia, but in northern Spain, you pay for fancier tapas, although the bartender will still set you up with peanuts or potato chips on the house.
The variety of tapas bars was overwhelming—and they were all filled with people. Marilyne wanted me to choose, so I picked a small place called El Albero de “El Cubero.” It was unassuming compared to most of the other bars. White-tiled floors and white walls covered with bullfighting memorabilia: corrida posters, photos of matadors, scarves, and flags. A guitarist in the corner banged out poppy flamenco music for a local-looking crowd.
We ordered two Ambar Especial lagers and a tortilla—in Spain, tortillas are a sort of ubiquitous potato and onion omelet. No relation to their Mexican counterparts. If you don’t eat meat, you end up eating lots of tortillas. In fact, I’d had a tortilla sandwich for lunch at Monserrat.
I also ordered an anchovy skewered like an “S” on a long toothpick with an olive between each turn. It was topped with a small green chili. Delicious.
As I rhapsodized to Marilyne, swearing that skewered anchovies and olives would become a mainstay back at La Villatte, one of the barmen—a young Spaniard with a Roman nose and slicked-back hair—pulled out a pocket knife and proceeded to carve up a plastic water bottle right in front us. This bid for attention killed our conversation, but we were happy to oblige. He explained in Spanish that he was making sure that the knife was sharp in case he needed to cut the ear off a bull. Or, at least, that’s what it sounded like he said. Marilyne, who speaks fluent Spanish, confirmed this to be true.
For a few minutes, I thought this to be some weird Spanish expression, then I noticed that he had the same flat nose as one of the matadors in the wall photos. In fact, all the matadors on the wall had that nose, probably because they were all the same nose. The pictures were of the barman. He was a matador and this was his bar. He was “El Cubero.”
I don’t really advocate bullfighting. That said, the sport features prominently in the gospel according to Hemingway. It comes up in For Whom the Bell Tolls. He even wrote a whole book about it called Death in Afternoon. So, my feelings towards matadors themselves are mixed. On one hand, leave the poor bull alone. On the other hand, they’re complete badasses. Tonight, I was in his bar, drinking his beer and eating his delicious twisty fish pokers, so I chose to lean into the latter sentiment.
I asked for a selfie and we swapped Instagram handles. Now I’m besties with a matador, making me badass by association.
The next morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn and headed for Madrid, a drive considerably prettier than the one to Saragossa, a combination of farmland, rocky hills, and scrub that reminded me of Southern California.
Madrid itself is incredible. Any splendor lacking in the countryside to the east is twelvefold made up for by the palatial architecture of the Casa de la Panaderia, the Royal Palace, the Teatro Real, and dozens of other over-the-top buildings. Gold horse statues are a big deal in the city for some reason. We couldn’t walk more than a block without looking up to see another gilded chariot about to careen off a roof seven stories up, the fiery steeds casting their savage gazes on the pedestrians below, as if to say, “Some rich, old, dead white guy paid a lot of money to put us up here, so appreciate our majesty. Now.”
The Spanish capital is also no slouch in the tapas department, albeit at twice the expense of Saragossa, and Francis Cabrel didn’t disappoint, but my favorite part of Madrid was an unassuming sherry bar called La Venencia that we probably passed a couple times before I bothered to Google “Hemingway’s favorite places in Madrid.” La Venencia frequently tops the list—and I seriously doubt they put much SEO effort into making this happen.
During the Civil War, the bar was a Republican hang-out. It had—and still has—two rules. First, no photos. This was to prevent any Fascist spying. Second, no tipping because the leftist nature of the Republicans meant that everyone was equal. Hemingway would frequent the bar as both a reporter and a lush to get news of cause. If you haven’t guessed yet, he was firmly on their side.
Today, the bar doesn’t look much different than it did a century ago, except for several posters from the fifties promoting festivals in the Spanish sherry-making region of Jerez—and they were probably shellacked up there upon date of issue. There are also a couple recently-posted signs reminding people that the no-photo rule is still in effect.
Wood paneling covers every surface. Behind the bar are rows and rows of ancient, dusty sherry bottles, although these are probably just for effect since all the sherry—the only beverage available—comes from large wooden casks to the right of the bar.
Marilyne had spent the day translating for me. Judging by the way she resolutely took a seat at a rickey old table, it was up to me to hunt and gather our cocktails without her linguistic skills.
I approached the barman, probably looking very American despite my months of French farm living, since the first thing the barman said to me was, in English, “Only sherry.”
Always quick on the draw, I responded with, “Si,” the extent of Spanish vocabulary in my repertoire of use in this situation except “gracias” and “dos.”
Next, he said, “Only dry,” which turned out to be a reasonable warning considering the only sherry I’ve ever had was a bottle Harvey’s Bristol Cream that my Scottish friend George left me when he moved to New Jersey. It’s really sweet.
“Bueno,” I responded. I’m not sure if that word applied, but it felt right.
“Light or…?” he asked. He finished the question by making a fist with his pinky slightly protruding, then pressing downward as he grimaced slightly in a positive way, like how Robert DeNiro makes a silent affirmation. This is a southern European gesture that means “strong.” It typically applies to alcohol, coffee, and women you really don’t want to mess with. For example, my wife Marilyne.
I looked at him blankly, not knowing how much the alcohol content on sherry varies. I’ve been badly burned asking for strong alcohol in foreign countries in the past, but possess far too much toxic masculinity to ever ask for a “light” drink.
He sighed. “Before eating or after eating?” Lunch had been a bag of pre-washed lettuce and cherry tomatoes doused in lemon juice we’d bought from a grocery store and inhaled on a park bench because, after two days of bread, cheese, and tapas, we were both desperate for greens and fiber.
I said “After.”
He nodded knowingly and said, “Amontillado” which is a darker, slightly fortified style of sherry. He grabbed a plain bottle that was sitting next to one of the casks and poured amber liquid into two small wine glasses. He then scooped some salted peanuts into a little ceramic bowl. I thanked him.
I returned to our table with strong sherry for my strong wife. We toasted to Madrid. The sherry was amazing. We sat back and talked about the day’s visit to the Museo del Prado, the highpoint being the Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which I’m not going to bother trying to explain except to highly recommend not looking at it if you’re on any kind of hallucinogenic drug.
Eventually, I stopped talking and just let myself get lost in the history of the bar. Despite the warnings, Marilyne snapped a photo with her phone.
The urge to tip was strong, but I fought it. Marilyne joined the conversation as I paid the bill, so we were able to learn that the barman was one of several owners of the bar. I think this means, true to its Republican spirit, La Venencia is a co-op.
I took a bunch of photos outside the bar. There are no rules against that. Marilyne got out her phone only to discover her clandestine shot inside the bar didn’t turn out.
We blamed it on Hemingway’s ghost.