This graffiti wall in Santander gets it. “Tan bonito que la cámara no capta la esencia.” So beautiful that the camera can’t capture the essence. We took hundreds of photos on our month in Spain anyway. This post shares some of them, and some stories to go with them.
First, where is Santander? It’s on Spain’s northern coast, and it’s the capital of Cantabria, a small region squeezed between the mountains and the sea. They call this part of the country “green Spain,” and it’s nothing like the hot, dry Spain you probably picture. Cooler summers, misty green hills, and beaches nice enough that the Spanish royal family made the city its official summer getaway a century ago. If the name rings a bell anyway, it’s probably the bank. Banco Santander started here in 1857 and kept its name as it expanded globally.
How we ended up in Spain again
Erika teaches Spanish at The University of Texas, which has run a summer program in Santander for years. Students take classes at the Universidad de Cantabria, live with host families, and can choose a course taught by a visiting UT professor. The faculty spots rotate, and this summer Erika was chosen.
The program runs about six weeks. The kids and I joined for four of them, giving Erika the first and last weeks to focus, and giving the kids a little runway before school starts back home.
I worked remotely from Spain for two of those weeks while the kids went to a day summer camp where they met other kids from around the world. I’ve worked remotely for 15+ years, but working on Europe time gave me new perspective on my colleagues outside US time zones. Our meetings skew pretty Americas-workday-centric, which meant Zooms stretching late into my evening. I took a few from the balcony. Good thing the sun didn’t set until almost 10.
Twenty years and a bus full of college students
Our first full day in Spain was our 20th wedding anniversary. A few weeks after we got married, Erika and I moved to Mexico to teach, and one of our jobs there was chaperoning students on a trip through Europe and Egypt. So it felt right that 20 years later, now with three kids of our own, we spent our first weekend in Spain on a bus with 20 of her students, headed to León and Salamanca.
We lived in Madrid before kids and have traveled all over Spain, but mostly south. These were two cities we’d never seen. And traveling with students again was a nice reminder that two decades later, some things never change.
The most interesting part was experiencing the trip through their eyes. Most of them were new to Spain, some homesick, all of them noticing the little differences in how people live. The big one for us Texans: no AC. It never even got that hot, but the AC was missed.
Salamanca has the oldest university in Spain, founded in 1218, and one of the oldest in the world still operating. UT’s campus architecture was purposely modeled on Spanish Mediterranean style, and you can see the resemblance in Salamanca. The buildings there are just several hundred years older.
No trip through Spain is complete without a winery stop, and Protos didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed the Verdejo, which is Spain’s answer to Sauvignon Blanc. And castles. This part of Castilla y León is packed with them, and we walked through Castillo de Fuensaldaña just outside Valladolid.
The night Spain won the World Cup
The night after we got back from the trip was the World Cup final. We thought about finding a big watch party, but the match started late, the kids had camp in the morning, and we were wiped out from the weekend.
So we watched from the apartment with the windows open, which turned out to be its own kind of watch party. Cheers from the streets and nearby buildings with every cheap Argentinian tackle, then after Spain won 1-0, hours of horn honking, fireworks, and one old man playing his trombone out a window. When we walked the kids to camp the next morning, some people were clearly still going from the night before.
Erika and I were living in Madrid when Spain won it all in 2010, and that night on the streets near Plaza de Cibeles was something to experience, too. Both finals ended 1-0, and both times we happened to be in Spain. Apparently Spain needs to fly us over every four years if they want to keep winning. Just saying.
Beaches, birthdays, and the town of three lies
Later that week, Erika’s sister and her husband joined us, and we spent a great stretch eating, exploring, and beaching together. I also turned 44 while they were there. Not a bad place for a birthday.
One of my favorite day trips was Santillana del Mar, a medieval village they call the “town of three lies,” because it is neither holy (santa), flat (llana), nor on the sea (mar). The church standing today dates to the 1100s, on a site even older. Walking the cobblestone streets felt like the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast, and I half-expected Gaston to come around a corner. I know, wrong country. But geographically not that far off.
The beach was probably the kids’ favorite part of the whole trip, and we went as often as we could. Plus hiking around the cliffs and lighthouses. The water was clear and beautiful, but a little too cold for me. Think Schlitterbahn or Barton Springs cold. If you know, you know.
Living in Santander
Santander is big enough to keep you busy for a few weeks, but it’s nothing like Madrid or Barcelona, and that’s mostly a good thing. I’m guessing due to the mountains and hills, it is also relatively isolated. Unlike most of Spain, which is connected by one of the best high-speed rail networks there is, quick day trips are few and far between outside of the Cantabria region. Or we’d need a car.
I’d be lying if I said everyone was welcoming to visitors. We heard several comments, mostly from the old ladies who seem to run the city and aren’t shy about sharing opinions or shoving past you when trying to pay the bus fare. We never felt uncomfortable, but occasionally unwelcome.
And the hills. We lived at the top of a big one, which meant that no matter what we did, we were always climbing. The city has dozens of outdoor escalators scattered around, something I’ve never seen before — but they only go up, and going down a long steep hill can be harder on the legs anyway.
Food was a challenge for all five of us. Picky kids. Unfamiliar cuts of meat and names of fish. Burgers that are basically raw. A shellfish allergy in a region where most dishes could be hiding some. But everyone got a little adventurous here and there. Part of the fun of living more like a local is seeing what’s in the grocery stores and cooking at home. I can report that the ‘Old El Paso’ Mexican aisle is noticeably bigger in Spain than it was 15 years ago. It is almost as large as the white asparagus aisle.
Still, even with all the walking, between the french fries with every meal and ice cream on every corner, I managed to gain a few pounds over the month.
We also happened to be there for Semana Grande, Big Week, the city-wide festival built around the feast of Santiago on July 25. Two weeks of street magicians, concerts all over town, a huge carnival, a circus, vendors everywhere. Always something going on.
Older than it looks
For a city founded as a Roman port in the first century (Portus Victoriae, they called it), Santander doesn’t look that old. The city was bombed during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and we walked past a couple of the air raid shelters still preserved from those years. Then in February 1941, less than two years after the war ended, a fire whipped up by hurricane-force winds burned for two days and destroyed most of the medieval old town. Remarkably, only one person died, a firefighter who had come from Madrid to help. So the city center you walk today was mostly rebuilt in the 1940s and 50s, and once you know that, you see it everywhere.
There are fun Texas connections, too. In the 1700s, Spain named an entire colonial province Nuevo Santander, and it stretched from Tampico all the way up to the Nueces River. That means a big chunk of South Texas, including Laredo, started out as “New Santander.” The man who colonized it, José de Escandón, is called the father of South Texas, and he was born in Soto la Marina, a small town about 30 miles from where we spent the month.
Spain claimed Texas for about 300 years, from 1519 until Mexican independence in 1821. The Stars and Stripes has flown over Texas for about 180. Walking around Spain, I kept thinking about how some of my own relatives thought they might become Spanish citizens when they immigrated to Texas in 1821 (quickly turned into Mexico around the same time), and how a few turning points in history breaking differently would change what all this means today. This might not have been a trip abroad at all. And who knows what language I’d be blogging in.
Getting there and back (barely)
With Erika arriving in Spain a week before us, and staying a week after, I got to experience the joys of long-haul international summer travel with 3 kids on my own.
We all got to practice patience with flight disruptions on both legs. During a Chicago layover, our entire plane had to deplane and go back through TSA security for some unexplained reason, which made us miss our connection and bought us eight fun hours in the Madrid airport. On the way home, Iberia Airlines decided right before boarding they could violate EU law and randomly move one of the kids 30 rows back and away from the rest of us. Unfriendly and unhelpful gate and live chat agents, but we somehow all got moved to the back and closer together. Then delays in Dallas meant that for the second summer in a row, we unexpectedly spent a night there. We’re troopers at this point. Things go wrong when you travel, and it was worth every bit of it.
That graffiti was right. The camera didn’t capture the essence. But it got close enough to share. Grateful to be able to experience this as a family. Everyone is already talking about what crazy adventure they want to do next.
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