Love Among the Ruins

“Love Among the Ruins” is the title of a poem, a novel, an album, and a movie. The title came to mind because last week the Begur International Film Fest was held here beneath the one thousand-year old castle in ruins. And I love movies! A red carpet was laid out on the cobblestone walkway between the main plaza and the old Casino building where movies are held. Although I’ve seen advertisements for the film festival in past years, I’d never attended. I went this year on opening night. The theatre was packed with locals. The mayor spoke, the organizer of the festival spoke, as well as the director of a documentary film about a man from the village who was known as the Photographer of Begur. He chronicled in photos Elizabeth Taylor’s stay in Begur during the course of making the movie “Suddenly Last Summer” in the 1950’s. All of the speeches and the documentary were in Catalan. Then came TWO additional short films (each about 30 minutes in length), in Catalan, before they finally got to the feature film, “The Miracle Club,” which was in English. But by that time, my friend (who spoke no Catalan) and I were exhausted and left. It kind of took the fun out of it, but hey, I participated in a local activity!

I girded myself for what might await me at the closing of the Film festival, and with good reason. Fifth graders at two area elementary schools made some “creative” films. Besides sitting through those, we sat through the introduction of each of the students from both schools – some two dozen kids. Small town life! But it was worth it. The movie that closed the festival, “Tramuntana,” tells the story of my town, Begur, in days gone by through the eyes of some of its elderly residents. It was a beautiful film and made me cry. If you have any interest, here is the trailer for the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0xOLrWf5V4&t=204s

During the festival, the castle was lit up in red!

I bring up the ruins also because I recently visited some ruins in Empuriès, about 30 minutes’ drive north from my house. The remains of one of Spain’s earliest cities prove that it was a thriving market town with places of worship, salt factories, irrigation, art, palaces for the wealthy, and stone dwellings for the poor. Greek traders were sailing around this area as early as the seventh century BC before they established a settlement a century later and took advantage of trading routes with inhabitants of the peninsula. The Greek/Roman ruins at Empuries were considered to be the gateway to the Iberian Peninsula for the classical cultures and is the only archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula where the remains of a Greek city coexist with those from a Roman city.

The Greeks called the city Emporium, meaning “market,” and it was an ancient port city that thrived for some 300 years. By 195 BC, the Romans were building their own city adjacent to the Greeks’ Emporium. They renamed the site Emporiae, and for roughly 100 years it was occupied until the more accessible ports at Tarragona and Barcelona led the Romans to abandon it. The stunning location backdrop to the city was the sparkling blue Mediterranean.

The Empuries ruins were discovered in 1908 and excavations are still ongoing. Only 25% of the large site has been excavated to date. The most renowned feature of the ruins are the beautiful roman mosaics floors you can see above.

A crazy thing happened to me last weekend. I was trapped in my apartment. The door wouldn’t open. The lock, which is somewhat medieval, has a metal bar that goes into the ceiling and down into the floor. When I turned the key, the part in the ceiling came down, but the part in the floor did not come up. My landlady talked me through dismantling the whole thing. Tasks like that are not really in my wheelhouse, but I successfully removed the lock. It was the secondary lock, so I’m perfectly safe without it until they get the replacement part, but it was a little scary not being able to get out. I suggested to my neighbor, who was trying unsuccessfully to unlock it from the outside, that I lower the dogs down in a bag from the balcony. They’d been waiting, mystified, for a couple of hours to go out for their morning pee and poop. He declined to take part in that I Love Lucy plan.