Travel to Cuenca, Spain’s shy wallflower

Cuenca doesn’t preen for tourists nor does it flaunt its assets. It’s a shy wallflower of a city that beguiles chance wayfarers who stumble on it.

The Spanish, however, love to hang out in Cuenca, the main town in the largely wild, sparsely populated Castile-La Mancha region, to gawp at its rugged limestone formations and bottomless gorges. You are less likely to bump into camera-toting tourists, posing with fingers splayed in a victorious V sign, in the cobblestoned streets of the walled Old Town of Cuenca or against the backdrop of its Moorish castle.

We travelled by train from Madrid and arrived at dusk. The luxe Parador de Cuenca, located in a former 15th century convent, would be our temporary home. (The Parador in Cuenca is a part of the state-run chain of high-end historic hotels called Paradors). Magic happened when we parted the curtains of our room. Vintage homes, lights twinkling in windows, teetered on the rim of Cuenca’s bottomless, softly floodlit gorges of the two rivers, Jucar and Huecar.

Cuenca straddles the rocky limestone ridge of a hill and 15th century hanging houses (of which only three remain) are plastered into the cliff face, seeming to almost tumble down the slope. While the ‘new’ town spreads on the plains below, the Old Town resembles a stage set, ready for a performance to commence. Indeed, in Cuenca, we often felt like actors in a child’s fairyland fantasy where elves and goblins had the run of the place and sheltered in the Hanging Houses, framed by wind-swept cliffs lit by a full moon.

The next morning, we crossed the gorge-spanning San Pablo bridge to unlock some of the secrets from Cuenca’s past. In medieval times, hardened criminals would be pushed into the cypress-and- poplar-lined ravines, related our guide who had a sense of theatre. Want to run with the bulls, head there in September for the festival of San Mateo when Cuenca explodes with fun and colour. Pound the cobblestone streets with the bulls; novice participants beware! Come evening, revel in a rock concert in the square or a play held in a church-turned-library, with local fare to lubricate the fun.

We took a break from sightseeing and sat in a cafe outside the yellow limestone cathedral, where Mediterranean-style houses provided pops of colour. We pondered on Cuenca’s Moorish origins, dating back to the eighth century. After 400 years of Moorish rule, the town was liberated by the Christian King Alfonso VIII in 1177 when he was just 21. He laid a 9-month siege on the town, and only 500 people survived.

In fact, Alfonso VIII attributed his victory to the pine-wood statue of Virgin Mary that he had ceremoniously borne into battle. The ethereal over 800-year-old figurine still stands in the cathedral which resonated with the rich voices of a choir when we were there. On a certain feast day in October, the statue, dubbed Virgin of the Battles, is paraded around the cathedral, not outside it, as it is way too prized to be taken beyond the hallowed precincts.

Cuenca loves pageantry and on Holy Friday, two days before Easter, glittering processions with 40 elaborately ornamented floats meander across the town. The show stopper is a gigantic wood float of the Last Supper, borne by 66 men, each man groaning under the weight of 35 kg. (So realistic is the tableau that Judas’s face is turned away in a paroxysm of guilt.)

This lively photogenic town also spawned the Spanish Abstract Art movement. In the 1960s, the Old Town’s buildings were virtually falling apart; it was the time when the dictator General Franco helmed the government, and art was considered to be a subversive, frivolous, activity. But Cuenca blossomed in isolation while its wild topography protected it from the predations of time. It also fuelled the creative genius of many artists – Gerardo Rueda, Antonio Saura, Gustavo Torner…. They made this little town, bypassed by time, their home.

Around that period, Fernando Zóbel, an artist and collector, was scoping various places where he could showcase his collection of abstract Spanish paintings and sculptures. Zobel’s friend, artist Gustavo Torner, had a brain wave… of opening a museum in one of the 15th century Hanging Houses of Cuenca. Their unbeatable, cliff-hanging location would be a dramatic locale, he felt.

And thus was born the Spanish Museum of Abstract Art where we gazed at hundreds of paintings and sculptures. The art works seemed to come alive on the white-washed walls. The beamed ceilings, mustard marble floors and fabulous views lent an aura of drama and offset wildly the sometimes delicate, at other times, forceful brush strokes of some of Spain’s most celebrated abstract artists. The temptation to look out of the windows at the rugged deep gorge below was overpowering; we felt like mythical monsters could well emerge and slither up the sloping walls. That was a fertile period in Spain’s abstract art scene, and Cuenca with its eye-engorging landscape was the ideal site for an artists’ colony. Even today, a number of small museums and foundations are tucked into the neighbouring buildings including one in the 16th century church of San Pablo which showcases the work of Gustavo Torner, enhanced by light filtering through stained glass windows!

On our last evening, we dined at La Bodeguilla de Basilio, an intimate, atmospheric restaurant whose walls were strung with the photographs of the owner posing with various artists and celebrities. We savoured a spectrum of local delicacies ranging from Castilian soup, a game meat pâté, grilled sardines, baby squid with salad, and lamb chops.

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