The virtual “Road Trip Across Spain” (Video here) involves 5 sessions of 2 hours and costs 60 euros (instead of 75). I’m asking people to sign up to all five sessions, but if you miss any, these can count as vouchers for future virtual tours. Every Tuesday for five weeks starting on Tuesday 10 November. We talk on the way about history (with plenty of Civil War and politics), geography, wildlife, environmental issues, the arts, culture, food, etc.

The pretence is we’ll be taking a road trip in a luxury coach enjoying great food and drink while learning about stuff in this nationally complex and fascinating country. While not attempting to provide an encompassing view of Spain, we will attempt to identify a few of major trends in the country’s history and today’s society, and give a good overview of the landscapes we’ll travel through. 

• Session 1: Catalonia -Aragón
• Session 2: Soria-Rioja-Euskadi-Cantabria-Asturias
• Session 3: Asturias-Galicia-Zamora
• Session 4: Zamora-Extramadura-Castilla La Mancha-Andalucia
• Session 5: Andalucia

Some topics

abandoned villages, Almanzor, Aneto, architecture, artichokes, AVE (train), barnacles, Basque, battles of the Ebro and Belchite, bears, bustards, cave paintings, cheese, cider, cocaine smuggling, concentration camps, conger eels, cranes (birds), crames (machines), climate change, cod, dehesa, depopulation, desertification, drover’s roads, emmigration, Francoism, Francoist place names and model villages, Gaudí, Galician language, gold mining, glaciers, greenhouses, Goya, human origins, hunting, hunting estates, Iberian lynx, the Ice Age, Iceland, Juan Carlos (ex king), malaria, masked dances, mass tourism, Miró, Moncayo, Moorish Spain, Los Monegros, mudejar art, mountain ranges, mushrooms, mussels, oil spills, paella, Picasso, Portuguese frontier, rain, la Reconquista” (so-called), reservoirs,  rice, Roman history, truffles, saffron, salt, seas, seafood, sheep, transhumance, whaling, wine, wolves, Yagüe