'You must look until it hurts.'

"A mystery of time, history, lost centuries, a past too prolonged, hope perpetually deferred, a language which is also an ethic, an ethic which speaks by signs, an art of speech derived from an oral literature, an oral literature that contains the experience of a people - a kind of experience that borders on the metaphysical - a knowledge of human nature and character which is almost like the individual knowledge of someone exceptionally gifted in expressing his feelings...
Spain is disturbing. And you can't just visit it like a museum, paying your entrance fee. It needs more than that: love and the deep respect which creates an inevitable bond. Spain demands of its visitor certain virtues, and the first of these, to my mind, is the courage to see. You must look until it hurts."

from Spain, by Dominique Aubier and Manuel Tuñon de Lara;
translated by Neline C Clegg; Studio Vista, 1960.
Photo © 2006 S Carlos