Colourful

Thanks to William Blake, and probably more particularly to Hubert Parry, we know what colour England is. It's a green and pleasant land. I heard the tune the other day and it made me wonder what colour Spain is.

Round here my first thought is dust coloured. Alicante is summer and the summer is all orange and yellow and buff with a bright yellow sun. 

Blue as well. People often comment on the blue of the Alicantino sky. And the Med of course, despite being, apparently, full of plastic and other even more horrid things often gleams bright turquoise or sky blue. Just over the border into Castilla la Mancha, where they are a bit short of Mediterranean colour, they like to paint their towns white and indigo blue to compensate. 

If the Manchegos paint their towns blue and white the Alicantino tradition is of different colours to the facades of adjacent houses. Villajoyosa is well known for it but even in the streets of Pinoso the tradition is there if you look. Alicantino houses also have tall windows, with the jambs picked out in a different colour and fancy window grilles.

Of course it may be that Spain is green.  Not the British green. Well certainly not that drab grey and browny green of a cold English winter's day, complete with cawing crows. We do have greens. The vibrant greenness of the vines and the the, rather prosaically, olive green of the olives. Mind you, up North, the clichéd picture would show green pastures and black and white or Guernsey coloured cows. There may be pipers too; Galicia is big on bagpipes. The Cantabrian coast is called the Green Coast, la Costa Verde.

Down on la huerta, the market garden, of Valencia, the Orange Blossom coast, I could try to suggest that the orange groves provide another colour but the truth is that it's the smell rather than the look that oranges do best - at blossom time the citrus groves are pungently fragrant. That's not the case with the blossoms on the almond, cherry and peach trees with blossom which goes from the whitest of pinks to the darkest of reds.

When I asked Maggie what colour she thought Spain was she instantly said white. If you've ever travelled around Andalucia you'll know why. The villages there, often built on the hilltops are a blaze of white. Andalucia also uses that colour scheme beloved of bullrings - red and yellow. Like the colours of the Spanish flag. 

And all under the sun as the old advertising slogan used to say.