Spain
The man who’s destroying Spain
Madrid In the mid-1990s, Spain’s socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez saw his political career collapse under the weight of a…
Rafael Nadal: king of the orange brick court
No tennis player was so well suited to the centre court at Roland Garros, where the Spaniard won a record of 14 French Open titles
Why is Spain so anti-Trump?
Spain has been receiving some lavish praise of late in the British press. ‘Booming Spain is on track to a…
Portrait of the week: Trump’s victory, Kemi’s shadow cabinet and footballer killed by lightning
Home Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative party, appointed a shadow cabinet. She made Robert Jenrick, whom she…
Dam shame: what really caused Valencia’s floods?
Who is to blame for the devastating floods that hit Valencia on 29 October? The mob that surrounded King Felipe…
The treasures of sherry
We were talking Spain and drinking Spanish. The UK and Spain are very different societies, but we did find points…
48 hours of food in Andalusia
In Spain, you can eat all day – and we did. Earlier in the summer, I spent two days in…
Can Begona Gomez get a fair trial in Spain?
Begona Gomez, the wife of Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, has received a court summons for 5 July, in connection with…
A middle-aged man in crisis: How to Make a Bomb, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
Travelling home from an academic conference, Philip Notman suddenly feels sick and disorientated. But it will take a long time for him to identify the cause, and possible cure
Do we really want to bring back the wolf?
The apex predator is making a startling resurgence in Europe – many say to the enrichment of the landscape. But it’ll take a lot to convince the British of that
England just need to have fun
So the end is near… or it certainly will be soon if England’s rugby players carry on trying to do…
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
The war that changed the map of Europe
Rachel Chrastil describes how Bismarck, relying on Gallic pride to provoke the war he wanted, ensured that France would fight without a single ally
Red bull
I am assured that this is not a legend. But a few years ago, an Irishman’s life was twice saved…
Our understanding disability
This book reveals one man’s determination to enable his brother to live his best life. It is also a fable…
A dangerous balancing act
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
Spain’s shift towards the radical right
Yesterday’s snap election in Castile-León, one of the 17 regional autonomies into which Spain is divided, was another excellent day…
Can Spain save its dying villages?
In a little village on the Spanish Meseta, I once asked an old lady about the next village some three…
A bottle with the battle
Four hundred and fifty years ago this month, a great victory helped to safeguard European civilisation. The battle of Lepanto…
Bullfighting and the fight for Spain’s future
Being sanctimonious about foreigners and their cruelty to animals has long been a British tradition. The taste for dog meat…
Spain’s growing culture war over General Franco
There are hundreds of mass graves dotted around the Spanish countryside. In roadside ditches, down hillside gullies, dumped in pits…
City of dreams
I’ve never been to Barcelona, but Rupert Thomson makes it feel like an old friend. The hot, airless nights and…
Spain’s pardoning of Catalan separatists may backfire
In one of his adventures on the highways of 17th-century Spain, Don Quixote encounters a gang of prisoners ‘manacled and…
Is this a new dawn for the Spanish right?
In Tuesday’s regional elections in Madrid, the right-wing Partido Popular emerged as by far the most successful party, more than…
