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  • The terracotta Wild Spain cover features a traditional hilltop farmhouse.
  • Pages from Wild Spain with a field of orchids and is a map of the Spanish Pyrenees.
  • Pages with travel tips for northern Spain and a photograph of a meadow in the Picos de Europa.
  • A regional map and a photograph of the Rio Cuervo illustrate two pages of Wild Spain.
  • A panoramic photograph of olive groves illustrates the introduction of Chapter 6, on Andalucia.
  • Travel tips are accompanied by line drawings of ducks and a close-up map.
  • Photographs of Menorca and Illa Vedra dominate these two pages of Wild Spain.
  • A long description of El Torcal is accompanied by a photograph of the rock formations.
    • “Compact, lavishly illustrated, intelligently written, it is a model of its kind.”
      Lookout
    • “A wonderful hybrid of practical travel guide and literary paean.”
      Douglas Schatz, The Bookseller

    Wild Spain

    A Traveller’s Guide

    £12.50

    The author takes the reader south from the Pyrenees, across the central meseta of Castilla and Aragon and down to Andalucia. He finds wild mountain walks above the tourist resorts of Mallorca, dragon trees on the island of Tenerife and deserted beaches on the Delta del Ebro.

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    Details
    • RRP: £12.50
    • Format: 210 mm x 149 mm (8 ¼ x 5 4/5 in)
    • Pages: 224
    • Weight: 0.4 kg (0.9 lb)
    • Pictures: 50 colour, 45 b/w
    • Maps: 8 colour, 18 b/w
    • Binding: Paperback
    • ISBN: 978 1 873329 32 0
    • Publication: 2000
    Description

    With a compelling sureness of touch, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Frederic V. Grunfeld offers the reader an intimate knowledge of Spain gained over twenty-five years. He takes the intending traveller south from the Pyrenees, across the central meseta of Castilla and Aragon and down to Andalucia. He finds wild mountain walks above the tourist resorts of Mallorca and dragon trees on the island of Tenerife. Grunfeld’s flair for portraiture shines through wherever he goes: ‘Here are fieldstone houses and Romanesque churches’, he writes, ‘that seem to grow out of their hilltop sites like so many stone mushrooms. Except for telephone and electric lines you could easily imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages.’ Following the personal style set by the series, he indulges his own fancies, wandering through La Mancha in the steps of Don Quixote and tilting against his own windmills in the form of the shoe-box hotels of the Spanish Mediterranean.

    This edition has been completely revised with the assistance of the Ministry of Environment in Madrid. The editors have revisited exploration zones and added hotels, itineraries and new train and bus information, with fax numbers, e-mail addresses and web-site details. The entire text has been reset, bringing this established guide-book fully up to date.

    Contents

    About the Series

    WILD SPAIN: AN INTRODUCTION
    Map of Spain Showing Chapter Areas

    THE KEY TO SPAIN’S WILD PLACES
    The Shape of the Wild
    Wild Habitats
    Protected Wild Places
    To the Reader

    CHAPTER 1: THE PYRENEES
    La Garrotxa
    Cadí-Moixeró
    Aigüestortes & Estany de Sant Maurici
    Vall d’Aran
    Valle de Benasque
    Ordesa
    San Juan de la Peña & Canfranc
    Roncesvalles

    CHAPTER 2: NORTHERN SPAIN
    Orduña & Sierra Salvada
    Las Marismas de Santoña
    Las Sierras Palentinas & Alto Campóo
    Picos de Europa
    Somiedo & Pajares
    El Bierzo
    Islas Cíes

    CHAPTER 3: NORTH MESETA
    Sierra de Gredos
    Sierra de Guadarrama
    La Cuenca Alta del Manzanares
    Sierra de Ayllón
    Sierra de la Demanda
    Sierra de Peña de Francia
    Camino de Santiago

    CHAPTER 4: SOUTH MESETA
    Serranía de Cuenca
    Montes Universales
    Sierra de Albarracín
    Alto Tajo
    Laguna de Gallocanta
    Las Lagunas de Ruidera
    Tablas de Daimiel
    Montfragüe

    CHAPTER 5: THE MEDITERRANEAN COAST
    Aiguamolls de l’Empordà
    Illes Medes
    Montseny
    Montserrat
    Delta del Ebro
    Puertos de Beseit
    L’Albufera de Valencia
    Sierra Espuña

    CHAPTER 6: ANDALUCÍA
    Sierras de Cazorla
    Segura & Las Villas
    Sierra Nevada & Las Alpujarras
    El Torcal de Antequera
    Fuente de Piedra
    Lagunas de Córdoba
    Grazalema
    Laguna de Medina
    Doñana
    Las Marismas del Odiel
    Sierra de Aracena
    Sierra Morena

    CHAPTER 7: THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
    Mallorca
    Archipiélago de Cabrera
    Menorca
    Ibiza
    Formentera

    CHAPTER 8: THE CANARY ISLANDS
    Lanzarote
    Fuerteventura
    Gran Canaria
    Tenerife
    Gomera
    Hierro
    La Palma

    Glossary

    Further Reading

    Useful Addresses

    Author

    Frederic V. Grunfeld was born in Berlin in 1929 and educated in Switzerland, England and the United States. A writer and cultural historian, he lived in Mallorca from 1961 until his sudden death in 1987, shortly after completing Wild Spain. During those years he travelled from top to bottom of mainland Spain. He wrote extensively for Time-Life Books on Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia as well as on places beyond Europe.

    His books include Berlin, Prophets without Honour (a history of German Jewish thinkers and artists), The Art and Times of the Guitar and Wayfarers of the Thai Forest (a survey of the Akha tribe of Northern Thailand). He also wrote a biography of Auguste Rodin, for which he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He was successively the editor of Queen, a roving editor of Horizon and contributing editor of Connoisseur.

    Preview

    THE PYRENEES
    Here are fieldstone houses and Romanesque churches that seem to grow out of their hilltop sites like so many stone mushrooms. Except for telephone and electric lines you could easily imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages. Virtually the entire region makes good rambling country, and, indeed, some of the most enjoyable areas for walks and explorations are not among the loftiest peaks but further down, in gentler valleys like that of the Río Isábena, which is flanked by peaks in the 1,500-2,000-metre (4,900-6,500-foot) range. Here there is even a whole cathedral in miniature, one of the most astonishing Romanesque buildings in existence, which looks out across fields and meadows.

    CAMINO DE SANTIAGO
    The way from Roncesvalles, in the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela in distant Galicia, is a matter of some 800 kilometres (500 miles). In the Middle Ages it was one of the great pilgrimage routes, which many people covered on foot and the most pious on their knees. For centuries there were miracles and apparitions to be seen at every turn of the road to Santiago: you could meet angels, beggars, kings and status-seekers – the Plantagenet king Edward I on horseback, St Francis of Assisi walking barefoot, and a certain Flemish wayfarer who is reputed to have carried a mermaid around with him, in a tub.

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