Spain days 53-55: Madrid to Cordoba

So I bought me a ticket, got on a plane to Spain, …

Joni Mitchell, California

October 11th: We should have been headed back to the US by now, but Carol really didn’t want to go back. So we looked for a country where COVID was low to spend a few extra days. Spain was the winner. We spent most of the day in transit to Madrid, checked into a hotel on the outskirts, and had dinner.

I had pork chops and Carol had chicken. It’s sort of sad when the healthiest drink option is Fanta Orange, but that was often the case.

Flan for dessert. This would become a recurring theme. 🙂

October 12th: Lunch enroute.

first course, cheese and bread

main course, pork peppers and potatoes

But our main goal for the day was the city of Cordoba, and the 8th century La Mezquita (“The Mosque”). This is a grailquest site for any fan of MC Escher.

The swastika tiling of the blue stained glass window has all the translational and rotational symmetries of an ordinary square tiling, but no reflective symmetries because that would flip the handedness of the swastikas. That puts it in the p4 (442) wallpaper symmetry group. There are exactly 17 wallpaper groups. The “orbifold notation” 442 is probably easiest to understand here. There are two different centers of 4-fold rotational symmetry (at the center of each swastika, and at the corner where 4 swastikas meet) and one center of 2-fold rotational symmetry (in the center of the edge between 2 swastikas). Hence 442; each digit describes a rotation.

When the Christians took over, they built a Catholic cathedral right in the middle of the mosque, complete with pipe organ. The clash in architectural styles is wrenching.

The upper-class section of the cathedral is carved from dark, almost black, wood. It’s so dark that it’s hard to see what any of the carvings are, even up close to them. It’s almost like they wanted to create a dark brooding hell in the center of the light airy whiteness. It looks lighter than actual here because the camera adjusted.

This is closer to how dark it is in reality. Maybe the Spanish Inquisition met here.

Every nook along the edges is a carved wooden seat. Each seat has different and unique carvings.

This tiling looks complicated, but it’s actually just repeated squares. If you take a square with corners at the centers of the circles, you can just step it. And it has all the reflections. So it’s wallpaper group p4m (*442), where the “*” indicates that all the rotation centers to the right of it have lines of reflection through them.

If we ignore which white lines cross over which, this is a full hexagonal tiling with all reflections, or wallpaper group p6m (*632). However, if we pay attention to the crossings, the reflections no longer work, so it’s only wallpaper group p6 (632).

October 13th: During Islamic rule, Cordoba was famed as a center of Jewish learning. Maimonides lived and taught here. The old Jewish quarter has their names all over it.

statue of Maimonides

The ancient synagogue still exists, but hasn’t been used for centuries. It’s smaller than I expected.

The hexagonal carving is another example of wallpaper group p6 (632).

Then we left Cordoba and headed out to the Madinat al-Zahra, an abandoned capital from the 10th century.

I like this method of making a spout. It’s simple and effective.

Part of a sundial.

Glassware. Simple pieces were made locally, but the fancier ones (especially cut glass) came from Persia or Fatimid Egypt.

These olive trees are more than a thousand years old.

For lunch, we found a little cocina with an amazing menú del día.

first course

second course

dessert

The afternoon was a long drive past small white cities.

And a nice dinner to finish the day.