How do you prepare for a year in Spain?

My clothes rest quietly in my brother’s room, waiting, it seems, for the time to be placed carefully and with much thought in the luggage that will take them to places they’ve never visited. My passport, recently adorned with the crucial stamp of an accepted VISA, resides with other important documents in my desk drawer, also preparing for the vital role it will play in my life over the next ten months. With my “things” in order, I’m taking the final steps to assuring my head and my heart are as equally prepared.

Over the past few weeks, I have been studying maps of Spain and of Madrid. I’m creating my own crash-course Spanish lessons to get a quick review of the language and to polish my more-than-a-little-rusty speaking skills. Brain exercises, I guess you’d call them. I’m on the verge of embarking a brand new adventure, completely emerging myself in a culture, a country, and a city that I only know in theory.

Furman Spanish professor (and Associate Academic Dean) Dr. Linda Bartlett has asked me to share my experiences with her Spanish literature class this fall semester. The Spanish major in me is excited about keeping an academic focus on my Spanish ventures, and the Communication Studies major side of me is thrilled to tailor my blog to a particular theme. (Of course, I expect to recount tales that may lack in any academic relevance…) Nonetheless, I’m hoping to offer a deeper insight into Spain, its culture, its tradition, its values, and its people.

José Martínez Ruiz is a famous Spanish author of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His penname is Azorín, the name of one of his own characters, and he dubbed a small group of like-minded writers and thinkers of his time “la generación del 98.” Los noventayochistas (Miguel de Unamuno, Pío Baroja, Ramiro de Maeztu, Antonio Machado, and Azorín) wrote about their concerns of Spain at the turn of the century. For many, an extreme apathy towards progress of the Modern Era seemed to call for the scrutiny of the very soul of Spain (el alma de España), which was in dire need of definition and resurrection.

In his essay “España invisible,” Azorín discusses the multiplicity of Spain and ponders over how the foreigner (that’s me!) views the country. “¿Qué impresión—piensa mi amigo—les producirá España?” Spain, Azorín argues, has such a vibrant diversity of character, geographic landscapes, and appeal, but everything is united under lo essencial y lo spiritual, the spiritual essence of Spain. “La España que de puro visible no se ve,” he writes. The true Spain can not be seen, rather it must be felt.

How does an outsider discover el alma de España? How can a foreigner move beyond the superficial and into the spiritual realm in order to understand what lies behind the ancient facades? What is eternally Spanish?

I don’t know… yet.