It was December of 2015, and my visit to Spain was about to come to an end. But there was one last thing I had to see before I left.
On a Friday night, I took an overnight bus from the sunny, southern city of Málaga to Madrid. From there, a quick train ride brought me to San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a small town nestled around the palace from which Philip II hurled the Spanish Armada like a thunderbolt against the heretic bastard Elizabeth while enforcing religious unity at home through the tortures of the Inquisition.
After spending the morning exploring this shrine to Spain’s once-unrivaled empire of crown and Church, where the bones of King-Emperor Charles I lie in repose next to a similar casket prepared for those of the still-living former king Juan Carlos II, I took another, much shorter bus ride to another, much newer monument.
No comments:
Post a Comment