in Cadiz

Almost a century ago the writer Laurie Lee roamed Spain on foot and with a fiddle in his hand. During a short stay in Cadiz Lee saw a city full of beggars and paupers. He loved Spain and the Spaniards - he fled Cadiz. In his memoir ‘As I walked out one midsummer morning’ he showed no mercy: “Cadiz at that time was nothing but a rotting hulk on the edge of a disease-ridden tropic sea.” I admire the humanistic way Laurie Lee writes about a country that is now a modern European state, but had then become a provincial backwater. Inspired by his book I travelled to Cadiz. Wandering the narrow streets of the old city, I probably passed the same places Lee did. As time goes by.